Factorio Forums

Boilers used to supply 390 kW of energy, and you needed a little over 1.3 per Steam Engine.

Now they supply 1800 kW of energy, and you need 0.5 per Steam Engine.

Looking at energy alone, they're over 4.5 times as good as they used to be. But they're still as dirt cheap as they were in 0.11 to 0.14 (I haven't played 0.10 or earlier).

They need to be made more expensive. I don't think added complexity is warranted, so it's simply a question of increasing their cost, say by tripling the number of required Pipes and Stone Furnaces, from 4 Pipes and 1 Stone Furnace to 12 Pipes and 3 Stone Furnaces.

Even with that, they're still cheap. Rightly, it should be 18 Pipes and 4 Stone Furnaces. But I'd settle for a tripling to start with.

As it is, when setting up power, the expense lies in the Steam Engines. Those are costly (and now give 900 kW where before they gave 510 kW, so arguably those should cost 75% more mats to craft too, but the Boilers are the more urgent issue of the two)) to build, very costly, and early game it's not often chosen to just build all of them (in the case of 0.15 all 40 of them for a dual-Pump setup).

But the Boilers? Given how dirt cheap they are, I might as well craft all 20 of them right away, and set up the skeleton for my 2-40-80 Steam Power Setup to eventually yield 72 MW. Craft and place all the cheap Boilers right away, and then I can late craft the expensive Steam Engines on an as-needed basis.

Doing this would make the "lazy boy" achievement impossible to get.
Aside from that, boilers were always dirt cheap. A pipe and a stone furnace (5 stone). They're not the kind of thing you mass produce anyway, but making them too expensive could be harmful to early game play if you're short on stone in your starting area.

I always use a burner miner for stone early, apart from maybe one game where i scavenged rocks. Something like double the stone, triple the iron cost wouldn't make very much difference to the game start IMO.

Yeah, maybe the "lazy bastard" achievement would need tweaking. (Did this get easier when boilers were made more powerful?)

leoch wrote:Yeah, maybe the "lazy bastard" achievement would need tweaking. (Did this get easier when boilers were made more powerful?)

No, because you only build one by hand to get power going to research factories.

It wouldn't affect the achievement if the only added cost was in raw materials, i.e. just lots more iron. But really I don't think it's a big deal or a deal at all. The only appreciable thing you're doing by making them more expensive is adding about 30 seconds of wait time to the burner phase of play.

leoch wrote:I always use a burner miner for stone early, apart from maybe one game where i scavenged rocks. Something like double the stone, triple the iron cost wouldn't make very much difference to the game start IMO.

I think even with my proposed quadrupling, it won't cause any damage.

The Achievement thing simply needs to be adjusted to take into account that instead of having to craft 1 Stone Furnace and 3 Pipes, 4 items, to make 1 Boiler, it's not 4 Stone Furnaces and 12 Pipes, 16 items, to make 1 Boiler.

So increase the Achivement figure by 12.

Not that I take Achivements seriously, anyway. It's never why I play computer games.

Peter34 wrote: Not that I take Achivements seriously, anyway. It's never why I play computer games.

That's not a good way to look at it. after all, the game was made for a wide variety of people, not just you. if someone enjoys achievement hunting, that needs to be preserved.

Also, increasing the boiler cost isnt a bad idea. Every time I start a new game, it feels like an accomplishment to get the first steam engine setup. As others have put it, it signifies stepping out of the "burner" age, which is exciting to new players. Making it cost that much more in the early stages would make it feel a lot more satisfying to set up your first science building.

that, and the boiler is now 6x the size it was.

maybe instead of making it cost several furnaces and more pipe, it would cost extra iron and stone?

No reason for a change, the Steam engine is most of the cost (20/26 of the Iron plates worth in 0.12-0.14), so I don't see the Boiler's cost as being that relevant (5 Stone and 1 Iron plate is nothing).

Peter34 wrote:I think even with my proposed quadrupling, it won't cause any damage.

The Achievement thing simply needs to be adjusted to take into account that instead of having to craft 1 Stone Furnace and 3 Pipes, 4 items, to make 1 Boiler, it's not 4 Stone Furnaces and 12 Pipes, 16 items, to make 1 Boiler.

So increase the Achivement figure by 12.

I'd rather have the limit as 128. Much nicer number than 111. Yes, I do write code.