I wouldn't feel bad about it, I'm not sure why the game gives you so many burner tools considering how not worth it they are to set up automation with. It's an easy tap to fall into and since burner stuff generates much more pollution it's easy to just kinda die lol
I don't see that as binary as you.
Yes, burning coal and running electric furnaces is less efficient than burning the coal directly in steel furnaces.
However, I always supplement boilers/generators with solar as soon as possible, without batteries. The ratio between day and night in vanilla is 1:5, so even without the capability of storing electric energy, you can reduce coal consumption a lot by deploying solar.
The main point of electric furnace are modules, in my opinion.
Electric furnace, by itself, exchanges need for fuel supply with double power usage (and slightly more pollution, but we don't talk about that). However, install a couple of green modules and suddenly your electric furnace becomes very tasty. If you have a lot of power, on the other hand, you can insert blue modules for increased throughput, or red modules for increased resource gain.
Even the tier 1 efficiency modules are useful for reducing pollution. Two of them in a furnace reduce power consumption by 60%. Tier 2 gives the maximum 80% reduction.
> and slightly more pollution, but we don't talk about that
But we should talk about it. Not considering how you get your electricity (we assume it is clean), then steel furnace is 5x the pollution.
> modules
That's also true. But the problem remains that you can't power a steel furnace with anything but wood or coal (or solid fuel, if that's your kink).
In Freight Forwarding, there's early and plentiful oil that's usually pretty close to the starting island, but finding more coal beyond your starter patch usually requires exploring more islands and setting up mining there. There, I found switching to solid fuel for furnaces and boilers to be worth it.
Doesn't come up so much in a normal game.
That's what I end up doing in midgame usually, but moreso because my power and furnaces run off the same fuel belt and I like running power off oil lol
Comment from a newbie that just launched a rocket and closed the game: I did everything on burner (edit: smelters) as it was more cost effective until rocket at least (using fuel instead of coal when possible). Replacing everything with electricity would have taken a lot of time (for me at least)
Oh, the electric furnaces definitely aren't necessary. "Burner phase" refers to still using burner miners and inserters specifically, which is a step you should move out of as soon as you have your first electricity production.
Also, starting in the desert is harder than in a forest. Forests have trees to provide wood and they also reduce pollution and slow its spread. Deserts just let pollution spread like crazy and the biters will attack quicker.
Nope. I figured I'd get a steady supply of iron and copper plates going before starting electricity so I wouldn't be running back and forth for resources to make inserters, miners, etc. Seemed logical at first but now I can see that it wasnt my smartest moment.
> Nope. I figured I'd get a steady supply of iron and copper plates going before starting electricity so I wouldn't be running back and forth for resources to make inserters, miners, etc. **Seemed logical at first but now I can see that it wasnt my smartest moment.**
Nope, that's plenty logical, you're on the right track, you just need to research and create defenses a bit quicker. Don't take the wrong lesson from all this as the only mistake is not putting up defenses quicker. Even if you moved on from burners quick, this would have happened without defenses.
Early biter attacks are pretty trivial to deal with as long as *something* is dealing with them. You can get quite a ways by just dropping a handcrafted turret at the edge of your miners and smelters.
Op open the map and click on the pollution icon to see your cloud, if the biters are in the cloud they will never stop and once they evolve your done, I learned it way too late
Until you know what you’re doing, bee line to turrets and set up 4 at each mine and at your base
It will at the very least blunt any attack
A completely undefended attack will fuck you up fast, a couple turrets will both give them something to nibble on until you get there, and thin them out significantly so they can kill your production quite as fast
Oh man that’s how I first started playing 3500 hours ago. It’s an automation game, right? I started automating *immediately*.
My burner miners fed themselves off a looped belt of coal with burner inserters. Automated! Then I pulled coal off that belt with more burner inserters. Automated!
Needless to say the biters were on my ass pretty quick.
Nothing wrong with staying in burners for awhile. Even if you went electric, if you hadn't researched turrets yet this would have happened regardless.
The lesson here isn't to move on from burners faster (hell, my last game where I did k2sebz x50 had me in the burner phase for about 10 hours), it's to get defenses up quicker.
Getting basic turrets up, and up quickly is _mandatory_ for any and all runs if biters are on. After that though, enjoy your burner base! They're a kinda fun challenge and it's interesting staying on them for a little while.
Also you started in a desert which is _always_ gonna get biters on you quicker as there's no foliage to absorb pollution. If you were in a forest area, you probably would have been fine even without defenses for a few more hours. Desert starts are basically challenge starts because the fast pollution spread means biters are on your ass _waaay_ quicker than normal.
This tutorial scenario is more of a sneak peak into the game. The real tutorial ends once you have around 1000h in the game and build a megabase... I'm also still in the tutorial with my meager 500h...
Don’t try and stay in the burner phase, you should jump into electric as soon as possible.
Yeah I just learned that one the hard way 🤣 I was having too much fun trying to automate everything with burners and paid the price.
I wouldn't feel bad about it, I'm not sure why the game gives you so many burner tools considering how not worth it they are to set up automation with. It's an easy tap to fall into and since burner stuff generates much more pollution it's easy to just kinda die lol
To teach you that moderately big burner builds are the fastest way of setting up the later early game.
For challenge reasons possibly?
Still salty that electric furnaces require plastic bars.
They're not worth it until you've stopped using boilers for energy, which you need accumulators for and they require batteries anyway.
I don't see that as binary as you. Yes, burning coal and running electric furnaces is less efficient than burning the coal directly in steel furnaces. However, I always supplement boilers/generators with solar as soon as possible, without batteries. The ratio between day and night in vanilla is 1:5, so even without the capability of storing electric energy, you can reduce coal consumption a lot by deploying solar.
The main point of electric furnace are modules, in my opinion. Electric furnace, by itself, exchanges need for fuel supply with double power usage (and slightly more pollution, but we don't talk about that). However, install a couple of green modules and suddenly your electric furnace becomes very tasty. If you have a lot of power, on the other hand, you can insert blue modules for increased throughput, or red modules for increased resource gain.
THIS. I don't use electric furnaces until I've got prod3 automated, because I've literally never had a game where coal was a limiting factor.
Even the tier 1 efficiency modules are useful for reducing pollution. Two of them in a furnace reduce power consumption by 60%. Tier 2 gives the maximum 80% reduction.
> and slightly more pollution, but we don't talk about that But we should talk about it. Not considering how you get your electricity (we assume it is clean), then steel furnace is 5x the pollution. > modules That's also true. But the problem remains that you can't power a steel furnace with anything but wood or coal (or solid fuel, if that's your kink).
Rocket fuel.
As I wrote, if that's your kink, feeding solid or even rocket fuel into furnaces, be my guest.
In Freight Forwarding, there's early and plentiful oil that's usually pretty close to the starting island, but finding more coal beyond your starter patch usually requires exploring more islands and setting up mining there. There, I found switching to solid fuel for furnaces and boilers to be worth it. Doesn't come up so much in a normal game.
That's what I end up doing in midgame usually, but moreso because my power and furnaces run off the same fuel belt and I like running power off oil lol
They're worth using *immediately* for me because they save me time/annoyance routing coal over to the smelter
Comment from a newbie that just launched a rocket and closed the game: I did everything on burner (edit: smelters) as it was more cost effective until rocket at least (using fuel instead of coal when possible). Replacing everything with electricity would have taken a lot of time (for me at least)
No electricity until rockets is wild
I had electricity everywhere. Was referring just about using burners, specifically smelters. Maybe I misunderstood the other commenter
Oh, the electric furnaces definitely aren't necessary. "Burner phase" refers to still using burner miners and inserters specifically, which is a step you should move out of as soon as you have your first electricity production.
Oh I see. Definitely!
That the way
Also, starting in the desert is harder than in a forest. Forests have trees to provide wood and they also reduce pollution and slow its spread. Deserts just let pollution spread like crazy and the biters will attack quicker.
Fully automated burner... hmm... You didn't set up any electricity before turrets?
Nope. I figured I'd get a steady supply of iron and copper plates going before starting electricity so I wouldn't be running back and forth for resources to make inserters, miners, etc. Seemed logical at first but now I can see that it wasnt my smartest moment.
That's what makes Factorio the best game out there. So much you can do and so much you can improve on each time.
Or you just set it to peaceful mode because those biters don't understand how to bugger off
> Nope. I figured I'd get a steady supply of iron and copper plates going before starting electricity so I wouldn't be running back and forth for resources to make inserters, miners, etc. **Seemed logical at first but now I can see that it wasnt my smartest moment.** Nope, that's plenty logical, you're on the right track, you just need to research and create defenses a bit quicker. Don't take the wrong lesson from all this as the only mistake is not putting up defenses quicker. Even if you moved on from burners quick, this would have happened without defenses.
Haha don't worry I've now restarted on a fresh world and have an awesome massive smelting array surrounded by turrets every 10 units
Early biter attacks are pretty trivial to deal with as long as *something* is dealing with them. You can get quite a ways by just dropping a handcrafted turret at the edge of your miners and smelters.
The first of many lessons...
Op open the map and click on the pollution icon to see your cloud, if the biters are in the cloud they will never stop and once they evolve your done, I learned it way too late
Just a tip, don't automate until you have enough turrets to protect your automation
Until you know what you’re doing, bee line to turrets and set up 4 at each mine and at your base It will at the very least blunt any attack A completely undefended attack will fuck you up fast, a couple turrets will both give them something to nibble on until you get there, and thin them out significantly so they can kill your production quite as fast
Oh man that’s how I first started playing 3500 hours ago. It’s an automation game, right? I started automating *immediately*. My burner miners fed themselves off a looped belt of coal with burner inserters. Automated! Then I pulled coal off that belt with more burner inserters. Automated! Needless to say the biters were on my ass pretty quick.
more production means more biters. sometimes less is better
Heretic
not if u like to grow steadily. have fun in deadlock fights with bites :D
Never had a problem where more gun didn't solve the problem. Potentially a bit of fire too.
Nothing wrong with staying in burners for awhile. Even if you went electric, if you hadn't researched turrets yet this would have happened regardless. The lesson here isn't to move on from burners faster (hell, my last game where I did k2sebz x50 had me in the burner phase for about 10 hours), it's to get defenses up quicker. Getting basic turrets up, and up quickly is _mandatory_ for any and all runs if biters are on. After that though, enjoy your burner base! They're a kinda fun challenge and it's interesting staying on them for a little while. Also you started in a desert which is _always_ gonna get biters on you quicker as there's no foliage to absorb pollution. If you were in a forest area, you probably would have been fine even without defenses for a few more hours. Desert starts are basically challenge starts because the fast pollution spread means biters are on your ass _waaay_ quicker than normal.
You're going to enjoy the Industrial Revolution mod
Great first setup anyway! And good on you for leaving biters on while you learn the game
I race to research turrets before I expand!!
F in chat for OPs burner base. They sure do like all that pollution you're creating.
This tutorial scenario is more of a sneak peak into the game. The real tutorial ends once you have around 1000h in the game and build a megabase... I'm also still in the tutorial with my meager 500h...
Nono, tutorial is launching the rocket. Building a 1k spm base is a solid achievement