What are the most impractical items in Factorio?

[Pi-C]

[Iron chests are nice and cheap for any purpose. … you can recycle steel chest to logichests

I used both iron and steel chests when building malls. There usually aren't that many slots required anyway, just some stacks to always have a sufficient supply of things I may wanted to carry around, so iron chests were quite sufficient for most things. As I liked to lay out my malls well in advance for things I couldn't even make at that point, and my game also progressed quite slowly, I used steel chests as a marker for what chests I'd need to upgrade to logistic chests later on.

[jodokus31]

[Iron chests are nice and cheap for any purpose. … you can recycle steel chest to logichests

I used both iron and steel chests when building malls. There usually aren't that many slots required anyway, just some stacks to always have a sufficient supply of things I may wanted to carry around, so iron chests were quite sufficient for most things. As I liked to lay out my malls well in advance for things I couldn't even make at that point, and my game also progressed quite slowly, I used steel chests as a marker for what chests I'd need to upgrade to logistic chests later on.

Sounds good, if you can afford it. But, if you play casual, it shouldn't be a too big investment.

[dognosh]

I was trying to think of what I rarely, if ever use:

Water barrels, can't think of a use for them, tbh.

If you play Space Exploration then they're useful

[Haladon]

I found use for Destroyer robots in late game deathworld. I would first state that I don't feel like defender robots became obsolete for me when I teched into PLD. I can use both and plough through spawners at double the rate. (And also shooting an atomic bomb every so often.)

But why switch over from defender to destroyer capsules? They are deployed 5 times as fast and last thrice as long. Additionally, they are upgraded by energy weapons research so it is easier to upgrade them along with PLD.

Once spidertons got added to the game, all of this became less relevant. Now I can send hordes of spiders to claim land.

[J-H]

I tried doing a "no nuclear power" run. Even with 6k solar panels and ~5k inserters, I still had power outages when everything was running. Four factories for both of panels & accumulators couldn't keep up with demand.

Solar/battery is pretty impractical and completely obsoleted by nuclear power.

[NotRexButCaesar]

I tried doing a "no nuclear power" run. Even with 6k solar panels and ~5k inserters, I still had power outages when everything was running. Four factories for both of panels & accumulators couldn't keep up with demand.

Solar/battery is pretty impractical and completely obsoleted by nuclear power.

Solar power is the best for UPS: it is essentially free in terms of UPS, while nuclear power needs both infrastructure & the plant itself.

[mrvn]

I was trying to think of what I rarely, if ever use:

Water barrels, can't think of a use for them, tbh.

Doesn't that go for all filled barrels. Unless you are a trainaphobic or botaholic.

I have one use for filled barrels: limiting or splitting the throughput. You can't limit a pump to 100/s. Or pump half the fluid to the left and the other half to the right. At a large scale you can use trains but fluid wagons are usually a bit too large a unit to use for this.

[coppercoil]

Or pump half the fluid to the left and the other half to the right

You can pump 1/2 of fluids by using circuits.

[jodokus31]

Or pump half the fluid to the left and the other half to the right

You can pump 1/2 of fluids by using circuits.

Yep, exactly.
use a tank with two directly connected pumps. connect wires to pumps and pump only, when tank is filled to a certain level not too low.

[mrvn]

Or pump half the fluid to the left and the other half to the right

You can pump 1/2 of fluids by using circuits.

Yep, exactly.
use a tank with two directly connected pumps. connect wires to pumps and pump only, when tank is filled to a certain level not too low.

The pumping speed then depends on the level/flow of the pipe after the pump and indirectly the length of the pipeline and speed of consumption. It doesn't split 50/50 until one of the pipes is full but drifts away from 50/50 depending on the fullness on each side.

But if that is too nitpicky for you try splitting 1:2 or 3:4 or other ratios easily done with splitters.

Anyway, I think I used that once.

[coppercoil]

The pumping speed then depends on the level/flow of the pipe after the pump and indirectly the length of the pipeline and speed of consumption.

No. You need storage tank right after the pump, and then another pump, no less.

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Copy blueprint

But if that is too nitpicky for you try splitting 1:2 or 3:4 or other ratios easily done with splitters.

We could start a contest for compact N:M fluid spliter design

[mrvn]

But if that is too nitpicky for you try splitting 1:2 or 3:4 or other ratios easily done with splitters.

We could start a contest for compact N:M fluid spliter design

I challenge you to a 17:23 ratio. Easily done counting barrels but have fun trying it with pumps.

[jodokus31]

The pumping speed then depends on the level/flow of the pipe after the pump and indirectly the length of the pipeline and speed of consumption.

No. You need storage tank right after the pump, and then another pump, no less.

OK, i guess, that's needed for an quite exact splitting.
I use this system to distribute fluids equally to the 6 angels ore crystallizers of seablock. The pipes after are quite empty, because i overbuild crystallizers.

I challenge you to a 17:23 ratio. Easily done counting barrels but have fun trying it with pumps.

Maybe a fun challenge, but whats the real purpose. I usually use 1:N or just straight prios and let the factory backup (also avoiding buffers)

...OK, ok, i believe that there are real purposes, but I wait until i need it

[coppercoil]

I challenge you to a 17:23 ratio. Easily done counting barrels but have fun trying it with pumps.

I suggested a contest for ANY customisable ratio . I think this is not a challenge for me, so I'm not interested in it without contestants.

BTW splitting fluids with barrels is not a feng shui in Factorio

[mudcrabempire]

I would like to revise my previous statement of barreled fluids being useless. I remembered an edge-case where they are invaluable: When you play in high difficulty settings, setting up large pollution-producing outposts is hard, especially for far-away patches. Like oil. Also, in the beginning one does not really need large amounts of oil. This means it is very usefull to be able to drop a few pumpjacks, stuff the oil in your inventory/car inventory and get the hell out before things get hot. This is only possible with barrels.

[foamy]

I don't use barrels much, but if you're doing heavily-botted designs they can be quite useful. I also like to retain a small reserve of barrelled heavy oil for booting up a coal liquefication plant.

A lot of the other items people are naming as 'impractical' I use pretty frequently, either at the start of the game before you have anything better or in specific niche cases.

For example:

Burner miners are both vital to the early game and still surprisingly handy for an uninterruptible boiler power source.
Lamps are a bit of a luxury item, but useful as both a status indicator and for simple illumination before/instead of NVGs, which frees up a 2x2 grid slot in your armour.
Speakers have all sorts of use-cases as alarms and alerts. It's especially useful with some circuitry to warn you of near-miss problems -- for example, power loads that approach brownout but don't quite get there. Otherwise you wouldn't spot it until an actual brownout occurs and your machinery starts slowing down. I also like to wire them into train intersections and crossings, so's I can tell when a train's coming through and avoid getting mulched.
Gates are tremendously useful, if in fairly limited quantity. Not only can you use them for the simple convenience of passing through a fortified wall (or allowing a train to do so) without having to mine up and replace things, they can act as a guard rail for train crossings and are the only thing you can use to send manual circuit signals without opening up a combinator interface.
Modular armor's ability to have personal construction bots is such a massive gameplay change that I can't fathom why someone would call it impractical, even if you have to run it on solar panels. Super super handy. The Mk1's larger grid is less game-changing but still incredibly useful, and it's better to have early than hold out for the MkII IMO.
The advanced power poles are nominally more expensive than the wooden ones (although in practice the difference in a factory that's trying to launch rockets is microscopic), but all use resources that are much easier to automate than getting wood is and also have unique advantages that make them situationally better. The long wire reach of the large poles allows them to cross water gaps or other obstacles, or a factory gap without tangling power grids (and work better for carrying signal wire long distances), and the medium poles and substations have the larger distribution areas.

I'd probably pick iron chests, myself. Wooden ones are cheap and quick early, and steel ones tend to get automated en route to logistics boxes anyways so tapping into that flow for stuff that doesn't need the smarts is super easy and effective (and any you make pre-bot can then be recycled into log chests if you want to). Iron doesn't really have a point IMO and can't be turned into anything else afterwards (a complaint I have about a number of other things, the big one being boilers. I wish they were used in making locomotives).

[mrvn]

The medium power poles also allow placing them between each wagon of a train and having 6 inserters between them. The small poles can only power 2 inserter each side.

[Rjskeet]

Most of those things that you listed are awsome... artillery is amazing for offense and scouting if you use manuel targeting. The tank is just awsome. the cannon shells murder bases and the explosive type murders groups. The shotgun is the best early seige weapon because of its massive damage on bases and worms(maybe you don't really play with difficult bitter settings) gates can be used both for letting trains through walls and making safe train crossings. Medium power poles dont require wood which becomes a pain to collect.

Honestly I just wish there was a recycler that was vanilla. Put a powepole in and get wood and copper ore back, something like that.

[mrvn]

Well, power poles shouldn't need copper wire at all. Placing and connecting them should. And destroying them should give back the wire.

You can throw the wooden power poles into furnaces I think. Recycle them to produce more copper.

[NotRexButCaesar]

and are the only thing you can use to send manual circuit signals without opening up a combinator interface.

you can also rotate an inserter that reads hand contents, but that only works for pulses.