Rushing for coal power in early game

[ждун]

Before EA it was clear that you want to established coal power as quickly as possible, because it can be fully automated of course and fiddling with bio mass burners was a pain.

But now, as bio mass burners got semi-automated and can be automatically loaded its by far no such pain anymore (loading them manually was 90% of the pain) and there are actually good reasons not to rush for coal power as soon as possible anymore, but stay on bio mass burners for some time. At least as much as a few of them are sufficient for the early game power demand.

The remaining disadvantage of Biomass Burners is that you still have to collect raw materials and keep an eye on remaining fuel.

But they have a lot of advantages too.

1. The basic setup is very cheap to build.
for the complete line, including solid bio fuel production, all you need are plates, rods and wires and not even many of these. Now for coal power you need a lot of rotors and reinforced iron plates (consider MK2 belts for coal as well). Quite a lot of them for even a small setup (8:3). Normally you would not have automated this already and if youre rushing to coal power you likely find yourself crafting a lot of rotors and plates manually at the craft bench which can be a pain by itself crafting enough of them.

2. BB run at variable speed producing only as much power as actually required without wasting anything.

3. The setup is compact and does not require a lot of space.

4. The line setup is flexible. It can be build anywhere. and unlike with coal power you must not find a suitable spot where coal and water are available and is not too far from each other and from the starting location. Hence you must not run between the power plant spot and basic production location back and forth too much.

5. It can be very easily extended by simply adding more burners and eventually more constructors in the fuel production. Unlike with coal power where you have to maintain a 8:3 ratio with the water extractors, which is also really a minimum setup that makes sense. Extending this again only makes sense doubling the whole thing to 16:6. Which can be difficult due to lack of space at the initial spot, hence you may find yourself having to rebuild the whole setup or even looking for another spot with more available building space.

6. BB's can be easily overclocked (when OC becomes available). One must not overclock the whole setup and match with the water extractors properly, but each burner can be individually overclocked as finding more slugs for easy increase of available power supply capacity.

So I find there are good reasons not to rush to coal power too soon in early game but instead establish solid fuel production early and stay with biomass burners until reinforced iron plates and rotors production is established and until having produced enough of them for building a larger coal power plant with at least 16 generators (up to 3000 MW when overclocked to 250%).

In my 1.0 fresh start I considered all this and stayed with bio mass burners extending the line when necessary and did not rush to coal power instead focusing on establishing basic production required for comfortable switch to coal power. It makes a much more relaxed start. Collecting bio resources is really not a big deal. Once you have the chainsaw you probably need to go for leaves and wood only one time filling up the buffer containers for the solid fuel production, that lasts forever (probably a whole real time day) before you ever have to worry about fuel. By the time you run out of fuel with a full container of wood you should already have everything you need to build a large coal power plant and overclock it already @250% right away.

[kLuns]

The main reason to switch to coal power is to remove the task of gathering entirely.

Once you need more than one constrcutor making biofuel, the gathering becomes too much of a job (imo) which is at a demand of 450 MW.

You got more flexability but once you want a decent amount of complex iron items coal becomes more attractive. You can lean back some more but don't fall asleep ;)

[ждун]

of course at certain point you should switch to coal power. Im just saying now BBs are optimal for starting now and you must actually not make rushing to coal power your primary task at the beginning anymore.

450 MW is more than enough for establishing basic early game production. Its important not to over-dimension the basic production in the beginning. With the chainsaw I collected wood, leaves and mycelia only one time for about 20 minutes until the containers for them in the fuel production line were full. That lasted me long enough until having everything to build 3000 MW coal power plant. In fact i ended up with only 350 MW demand before comfortable switch to coal power.

[Daerious]

For example, I have just completed all the deliveries / research for Tier 3 using a collection of biomass burners which have a total output capacity of 300 MW; however, rarely did they peak over 200 MW and average about 150 MW while still producing smart plating, rotors, reinforced plating, etc. at a slow and steady pace. For me, since I do not want to destroy / impact the beauty of the natural environment, it is the collection of dead wood from around the Dune Desert that is the most time consuming but this does mean that my small factory is slowly producing components while I am away. To date, I have collected fewer than 70 leaves which are being stored for accounting purposes and only produced a single batch of biomass (100 units) from alien remains. Since landing on Massage-2(A-B)b, all my power generation has come from the wood itself or the biomass and the biofuel created therefrom. (As an aside note, I even modified my building layouts to avoid placement of foundations on top of the several beryl nut bushes that were nearby so that I would not be essentially destroying them.)

While I have unlocked the ability for coal generators, I have not yet found a suitable location for their placement nor am I sure that that is the most important project for me to undertake next. Since on my explorations of the Dune Desert I have found numerous caves blocked by boulders, I am currently leaning towards steel production so that I can manufacture more explosives to eliminate these obstacles and explore what caves and recesses lie beyond.

[Dwane Dibbley]

Getting coal power takes like 2 hours? No reason to not rush it. Getting messages about factory shutdowns during exploration isnt fun.

[Maehlice]

Originally posted by Dwane Dibbley:

Getting coal power takes like 2 hours? No reason to not rush it. Getting messages about factory shutdowns during exploration isnt fun.

Exactly!

I think for a brand new player, having a belt feed on the Burner makes sense; they're likely to be on biofuel for a while and unlikely to skip milestones to bee-line Coal.

But for everyone else, staying on Biomass feels unnecessarily forced.

[MaddogDino]

I've never rushed for coal power. Never felt the need for it really.
I get great use out of Bio-Burners right up to early late game.
The best thing about Satisfactory is, there are so many different ways to get your job done.
None of them the right or wrong way to do things. Ask if it's working for now and what you want to do when it isn't.
A good example of how I use them in my Mid-Game is, when exploring, to put a miner on a node, feeding into a large container. Plonk down a Bio-Burner and underclock it to match the miners power requirement. Carry on exploring.
Pop back and collect When I need the materials and top up the Bio-Fuel, Eventually incorporating said node into the automation when I'm ready to.
With all that said;
Once I have built my coal power setup, things really get moving.

[ждун]

Originally posted by Dwane Dibbley:

Getting messages about factory shutdowns during exploration isnt fun.

Sure, but this is now no issue anymore, this was happening mostly because you had to load fuel manually and one a couple of burners ran out of fuel you were getting blackouts often. This is now no problem, with the belt sockets for burners 90% of fuel management is now automated. You must not run to burners every 20 minutes now. You simply collect tons of leaves and wood, drop it in containers and you can go exploring the whole day.

[shoopy]

I don't consider it rushing to start using coal power when it unlocks. It unlocks at that point for a reason.

However I can see holding off if you don't know the good spots to build a coal power plant.

Also you need the pump to generator ratio when going for max generators but it's still fine to run one pump and two generators, or two pumps and four (or five?) generators.

I usually start with four coal generators which means I could delete 10 biomass burners (if I ever had that many)

On that note I continue to use burners for remote power, e.g. popping miners down while exploring. Which is why I keep the materials to build them and biofuel in my tractor inventory. Which means I can just explore and not need to go back because I never have to fill anything even if it's just a single container now.

[sgargoyle]

but thos burners are eating all my biofuel ingredients how am i supposed to annoy giant stinggers if the power supply eats all my jetpack fluids.

[Leland Palmer]

Originally posted by ждун:

Before EA it was clear that you want to established coal power as quickly as possible, because it can be fully automated of course and fiddling with bio mass burners was a pain.

But now, as bio mass burners got semi-automated and can be automatically loaded its by far no such pain anymore (loading them manually was 90% of the pain) and there are actually good reasons not to rush for coal power as soon as possible anymore, but stay on bio mass burners for some time. At least as much as a few of them are sufficient for the early game power demand.

The remaining disadvantage of Biomass Burners is that you still have to collect raw materials and keep an eye on remaining fuel.

But they have a lot of advantages too.

1. The basic setup is very cheap to build.
for the complete line, including solid bio fuel production, all you need are plates, rods and wires and not even many of these. Now for coal power you need a lot of rotors and reinforced iron plates (consider MK2 belts for coal as well). Quite a lot of them for even a small setup (8:3). Normally you would not have automated this already and if youre rushing to coal power you likely find yourself crafting a lot of rotors and plates manually at the craft bench which can be a pain by itself crafting enough of them.

2. BB run at variable speed producing only as much power as actually required without wasting anything.

3. The setup is compact and does not require a lot of space.

4. The line setup is flexible. It can be build anywhere. and unlike with coal power you must not find a suitable spot where coal and water are available and is not too far from each other and from the starting location. Hence you must not run between the power plant spot and basic production location back and forth too much.

5. It can be very easily extended by simply adding more burners and eventually more constructors in the fuel production. Unlike with coal power where you have to maintain a 8:3 ratio with the water extractors, which is also really a minimum setup that makes sense. Extending this again only makes sense doubling the whole thing to 16:6. Which can be difficult due to lack of space at the initial spot, hence you may find yourself having to rebuild the whole setup or even looking for another spot with more available building space.

6. BB's can be easily overclocked (when OC becomes available). One must not overclock the whole setup and match with the water extractors properly, but each burner can be individually overclocked as finding more slugs for easy increase of available power supply capacity.

So I find there are good reasons not to rush to coal power too soon in early game but instead establish solid fuel production early and stay with biomass burners until reinforced iron plates and rotors production is established and until having produced enough of them for building a larger coal power plant with at least 16 generators (up to 3000 MW when overclocked to 250%).

In my 1.0 fresh start I considered all this and stayed with bio mass burners extending the line when necessary and did not rush to coal power instead focusing on establishing basic production required for comfortable switch to coal power. It makes a much more relaxed start. Collecting bio resources is really not a big deal. Once you have the chainsaw you probably need to go for leaves and wood only one time filling up the buffer containers for the solid fuel production, that lasts forever (probably a whole real time day) before you ever have to worry about fuel. By the time you run out of fuel with a full container of wood you should already have everything you need to build a large coal power plant and overclock it already @250% right away.

I didn't rush to Coal Power.

I wanted to make a proper auto-fed Biomass Burner setup.

So I did a bit of automation for leaves and wood.

Leaves & Wood => Biomass => Solid Biofuel = fed into 12 Biomass burners - that stayed so stable for like forever - just topping off the wood and leaves every now and then, but nothing frantic - like before the automated Biomass burners.

But, I'm not going to be a saint here; I DO like not having to worry about 'feeding the biomass burners' ofc. ;-)

[kLuns]

Originally posted by sgargoyle:

but thos burners are eating all my biofuel ingredients how am i supposed to annoy giant stinggers if the power supply eats all my jetpack fluids.

Kill your way up by killing small creatures first.
Stun rebar is pretty effective because it allows you to attach a bomb to your enemy. Imagine a stinger jumping at jou and then you detonate the puls nobelisk making it jump backwards :)

[mbraunen]

Do you already have an idea of ​​how big your factory should be?
I currently have 4 biomass generators including the two from the HUB. And with that I operate 4 smelters for iron, 2 copper smelters, 2 constructors each for iron plates and iron rods, 1 for cast iron screws, 1 for copper sheet, 1 for copper wire, 1 that makes cables from copper wire and 2 that alternately make biomass from leaves and wood and then produce solid biofuel. Oh and 2 constructor for concrete. This means that with 4 biomass generators I currently operate 13 constructors and 6 smelters. And at the end all the products go on a conveyor belt into a storage container so that I still have supplies if the power goes out, because the belt continues to run without electricity.

Problem: I'm still in the launch area, collecting building supplies for my actual factory that I still want to build, and I haven't even built the space elevator yet because I need to expand my logistics first.
Which isn't possible because the game crashes every 30 minutes due to an "access violation".

What I'm actually saying is: If you don't want to constantly convert alien proteins into solid biofuel later on, you'll eventually have to switch to coal for larger factories. And I hope you already have the compressed charcoal recipe or whatever it was called again. Because 100 coals disappear after less than 5 minutes.

[ждун]

its just before 1.0 you were reading it in all guides and from all the youtubers: Don't bother about bio fuel burners, rush for coal.

Which was indeed a good idea before 1.0 as having to baby-sit the burners was really such of a pain. But I have an impression that this became actually a habbit. I hear it often in the forums. Im just saying relax, burners must not be baby sitted anymore, and they are actually better for early game and even quite a bit into mid game. No reason anymore to skip on bio fuel as soon as somehow possible. Bio fuel power has its advantages over coal in early game even if you have coal already unlocked, you must not jump on it and craft rotors and reinforced plates at craft bench just to get rid of bio burners right now.

[mbraunen]

Originally posted by ждун:

its just before 1.0 you were reading it in all guides and from all the youtubers: Don't bother about bio fuel burners, rush for coal.

Which was indeed a good idea before 1.0 as having to baby-sit the burners was really such of a pain. But I have an impression that this became actually a habbit. I hear it often in the forums. Im just saying relax, burners must not be baby sitted anymore, and they are actually better for early game and even quite a bit into mid game. No reason anymore to skip on bio fuel as soon as somehow possible. Bio fuel power has its advantages over coal in early game even if you have coal already unlocked, you must not jump on it and craft rotors and reinforced plates at craft bench just to get rid of bio burners right now.

Well, that's right. Now you have this option. If possible, just make sure you have a large inventory for leaf and wood storage so that you can react in case of an emergency when you return from your exploration tour. After all, that's the second most fun part of the game: searching and finding!

[shoopy]

Originally posted by ждун:

its just before 1.0 you were reading it in all guides and from all the youtubers: Don't bother about bio fuel burners, rush for coal.

Which was indeed a good idea before 1.0 as having to baby-sit the burners was really such of a pain. But I have an impression that this became actually a habbit. I hear it often in the forums. Im just saying relax, burners must not be baby sitted anymore, and they are actually better for early game and even quite a bit into mid game. No reason anymore to skip on bio fuel as soon as somehow possible. Bio fuel power has its advantages over coal in early game even if you have coal already unlocked, you must not jump on it and craft rotors and reinforced plates at craft bench just to get rid of bio burners right now.

You should already have the plates and rotors automated using your burners.

I was already swimming in them because they are required for the space elevator to unlock the coal power anyway.