Factorio Forums

Wooden chests are there in the beginning, as you dont really have any other choice. 8 iron plates takes a fair bit of effort in the "manual" part of the game. Once you automate smelters, the jump is massive. You get double the capacity for only 8 iron, which is cheap once you get automation.

....then come the steel chests. For 5 times the raw cost, you get 50% more storage.....in many cases i find myself not really caring which i use, as the jump from 32 to 48 seems rather negligable.

Its hard to explain, but in early game the jump from wood to iron feels like a massive improvement. In mid game, the jump from iron to steel doesnt really seem worth it. Its not till late-game, when Ive already increased my steel supply to feed other systems, that I decide "I have a lot of steel. Might as well use some steel chests. "

I believe steel chests should hold more to make it worth it earlier in the game. Simply boosting from 48-64 would be enough, and leaving logistics chests at 48 (or even reducing to 32) would give players a choice. Do you want massive storage, that you need to directly pull from? Or do you want less storage, for the ability to let bots to use the storage?

The true benefits of steel come from the logistic power not their storage capacity once you have that all steel chests in your logistic network coalesce I'm not suggesting the buff would be unwelcome just that the cost benefit of steel chests reflects that

Personally 56 slots seems like a nice number and losing 8 for the benefit of logistics 64 seems too big.

so you think the upgrade should be linear? i think diminishing returns on upgrades is fine the way it is personally.

Advantage to Steel chests is that they aren't dead-end items, they build into Logistics chests of all types later, likewise, the basic Wooden chests can be burnt as fuel and hence can be 'recycled'. For this reason, Iron chests are the one I skip using.

Personally i wouldn't mind if wooden chests were upped to 24 and iron chests removed alltogether. Steel chests need automation later anyway. And iron chests turn into "trash" after that.

eradicator wrote:Personally i wouldn't mind if wooden chests were upped to 24 and iron chests removed alltogether. Steel chests need automation later anyway. And iron chests turn into "trash" after that.

See. I was thinking that too. Iron chests are in a weird position, where when you are able to produce them, its a godsend, and THE chest to use.....but minutes later its like "eh... Ive automated steel... Might as well use steel chests. " if the jump was wood to steel, steel would definitely feel worth it, beyond an ingredient for logistics chests.

Personally, I don't really care about the cost of chests when I'm setting up my base. A steel chest costs about the same amount of metal as a MK II assembly machine, but I've got ten times less chests than assembly machines. The cost of the chest is nearly nothing compared to the rest of my base. So, like others in this thread I see iron chests as useless, because they don't get used in a recipe, and can't be burned later like wooden chests.

I will say, eliminating the iron chest would make steel chests so much more worth it.

In early game

With wood chests, you just have to cut down a tree

With iron chests, you have to mine iron, coal, use a smelter.
It's all a hassle in the very start, before you get your first automation systems up, and a great reward for doing so.

Then steel just needs another furnace.

It just doesn't feel like a big accomplishment going from iron to steel. If iron chests weren't in the game, steel chests would be amazing, as opposed to "I guess. Why not? "

All upgrades like this are "Kinda Meh" by this gauge
Going from assembler 1 to 2 is double the price and I think power cost for a mere 50% speed boost.
Assembler 3 is like 10x the price (or at least the complexity) for around 60% speed boost, and a large power penalty. You get it because it uses less space and allows more modules.

Steel chests cost more, sure, but the capacity increase takes up no more space and hence lets you store way more in a small area.


As for "Enough Steel", I generally find that steel chests are the second thing I make with steel. Pickaxes come first, naturally, then chests, and then train everything.

The only time I've EVER crafted an iron chest, was in a desert world where there wasn't enough wood to go around to make things as it was, and I wasn't up at steel yet, so it was cheaper to craft iron chests, rather than wood.