Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Change Concrete Recipe to something more 'realistic'

What ?

Make Concrete from iron sticks, not iron ore

Why ?

The concrete recipe is already unrealistic, but iron sticks instead of iron ore give the idea of it being 'reinforced', rather than bricks with ore and water mixed together.

DRY411S wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:51 am

TL;DR

Change Concrete Recipe to something more 'realistic'

What ?

Make Concrete from iron sticks, not iron ore

Why ?

The concrete recipe is already unrealistic, but iron sticks instead of iron ore give the idea of it being 'reinforced', rather than bricks with ore and water mixed together.

I like the concrete recipe because it isn't just the matter of plopping it on the bus and being done as it requires iron ore wherever you have that. Adds a bit of complexity, doesn't it. You could move the furnaces out of your base, but you will have to decide what to do with concrete production.

IRL, (non-reinforced) concrete is made from water, an aggregate like gravel, and a binder (cement, asphalt).
I believe that the aggregate here is iron ore and the binder equivalent is stone bricks (cement needs to be "cooked").
Wube probably didn't pick stone for aggregate because it would make for boring gameplay ?
So your suggestion might actually be less realistic than the current recipe ?

(Sulphur concrete might be a cool alternative though - but then we get reminded of the weirdness in how Factorio's sulphur is made - from petroleum gas, which IRL would be the worst way to get it - AFAIK to be more realistic it would need be separated from the oil in the Refinery itself, or from Heavy Oil, rather than Gaseous Oil.)

I don't want that because of realism but because belting iron ore to the concrete assemblers is super annoying. There is a mod that changes it to iron sticks and it works pretty great.

'Realistic' was an overstatement I agree.

I like the idea of there being more 'chemistry' in the recipe. Perhaps it should also be produced in a chemical plant?

Actual recipe is actually realistic since you need calcium, silicon and iron oxide to create ciment.
So it's basically stone and iron in Factorio.

Oh, right, what I missed because I didn't search deep enough is that Portland cement is 95% blast-furnace slag - a by-product of smelting iron (& steel) from... iron ore !
P.S.: It would be *very* nice if Factorio had a built-in "Factoriopedia" - I learned quite a bit of history "against my own will" from the Civ4 Civilopedia !

BlueTemplar wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2020 8:22 pm Oh, right, what I missed because I didn't search deep enough is that Portland cement is 95% blast-furnace slag - a by-product of smelting iron (& steel) from... iron ore !
P.S.: It would be *very* nice if Factorio had a built-in "Factoriopedia" - I learned quite a bit of history "against my own will" from the Civ4 Civilopedia !

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-397

Serenity wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2020 12:05 am I don't want that because of realism but because belting iron ore to the concrete assemblers is super annoying. There is a mod that changes it to iron sticks and it works pretty great.

I planned to write a new post with exactly that

I think the recipe itself is fine. It's always a nice treat when a recipe does something special that can't just be done by slapping a few factories down in your main base.

That said, I think the real issue with concrete isn't that it's too hard/annoying to craft, the issue is that it's not worth crafting. Outside of what you need for nuclear reactors, the movement speed bonus really isn't worth it for how annoying it is to craft.

There's many (possibly hundreds!) of forum posts suggesting changes to concrete to make it more useful, like giving machines a production bonus or slowing biters or etc, but they have all been rejected for various reasons. I feel like finding better uses for concrete to make it worth the annoyance of crafting is the way to go.