The most useless thing in game.

[kovarex]

First I used Handgrenades to remove forests, then I realized: Oh, you cannot built on craters, screw that!

That was a bug that is already fixed.

[Jonathan88]

What about Handgrenades ? I never used them at all.

They are pretty good at removing rocks in early game...

[GaliMatias]

Burner inserters.
I never used those yet. Not ever.

[MeduSalem]

There's still quite some stuff that eventually gets useless/superseded at some point with enough research and with no useful way to get rid of them once you got them early on. I even made a thread about that in the balancing section a few weeks/months back. ( https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =16&t=6169 ) ^^


But to get to the bottom of the barrel of stuff that is actually so useless that I'd never even consider building them in the first place and which I'd never miss at all if it got removed from the game entirely... Here's a list of my alltime nightmare items:


Place 5 goes to... Steel Furnaces

Why? Why should I ever build that? It doesn't take long to get to Electric Furnaces and even if it would take forever to research them it would be quite easy to survive with Stone Furnaces until then. I fail to see the advantage/usefulness of Steel Furnaces.


Place 4 goes to... Iron Chests

Again... Why should I craft one? Wooden Chests are just fine and at least I can burn them if I don't need them anymore. It's easy to wait for Steel Chests which can be turned into Smart Chests later on.


Place 3 goes to... Land Mines

The explosion damage and radius is so small that when a horde of biters approaches even a huge minefield doesn't even slow them down. It's almost as if they aren't even there. It's just a waste of resources.


Place 2 goes to... Flamethrower

It's only good enough to light a cigarette with it since it doesn't even fear/scare the biters a second.


Place 1 goes to... *drumroll*... Discharge Defense

For people with a deathwish.


So... with other words those items need a radical change to be worthwhile their effort.

[FishSandwich]

I fail to see the advantage/usefulness of Steel Furnaces.

Interesting! I could say the exact same thing about electric furnaces.

[Xterminator]

I fail to see the advantage/usefulness of Steel Furnaces.

Interesting! I could say the exact same thing about electric furnaces.

True, but at least you can put modules into electric furnaces. :p Definitely their main advantage.

As for !oat useless thing... I am gonna have to agree with discharge defense. It sounds cool, but is horrible and will just get you killed.

[MeduSalem]

I fail to see the advantage/usefulness of Steel Furnaces.

Interesting! I could say the exact same thing about electric furnaces.

Easier logistic: One doesn't need to feed additional coal into them, which allows for more Furnaces to be grouped in a straight line. It eventually saves space, depending on the layout.
Module Slots: One can put production modules into them. When paired together with Beacons filled with Speed Modules the overall power consumption and throughput is way better than pure Electric Furnaces/Steel Furnaces. It's actually that good that I only need 1/4 of the amount of Furnaces I would need otherwise and thereby save a LOT of space. That's the fact if the furnaces run 24/7 to feed a mass storage.
Less Pollution/Energy consumption, especially when paired with solar energy or when using Effeciency modules.

The Steel Furnaces however... have no real advantage at all, they are nothing more than a speed upgrade to Stone Furnaces. At least I haven't noticed any advantage... but I'm open to suggestions. ^^

[FishSandwich]

So to make electric furnaces more efficient than steel furnaces, you have to spent many resources into researching modules/beacons, and spend more to build it. Whereas steel furnaces have one cost only.

And for people that don't want to waste time and resources to do that, steel furnaces work just fine, so hardly useless.

And yeah, no matter how you line up those electric furnaces, you can't fit more into a small space than you could steel furnaces.

[Marconos]

So to make electric furnaces more efficient than steel furnaces, you have to spent many resources into researching modules/beacons, and spend more to build it. Whereas steel furnaces have one cost only.

And for people that don't want to waste time and resources to do that, steel furnaces work just fine, so hardly useless.

And yeah, no matter how you line up those electric furnaces, you can't fit more into a small space than you could steel furnaces.

I have to agree with fish here. I generally give for steel furnaces, they are cheap and fast. Electric furnaces are big and require oil to be setup. I love them and eventually replace all my steel ones but it takes quite awhile. I also dont use solar power so that affects my opinion. Need to start a thread most overpowered items .... solar panels and lasers!!!!

[MeduSalem]

So to make electric furnaces more efficient than steel furnaces, you have to spent many resources into researching modules/beacons, and spend more to build it. Whereas steel furnaces have one cost only.

And for people that don't want to waste time and resources to do that, steel furnaces work just fine, so hardly useless.

And yeah, no matter how you line up those electric furnaces, you can't fit more into a small space than you could steel furnaces.

Depends on how long you play a map. If you only have speed runs in mind and quit each map after playing on it for 10-20 hours then crafting Modules doesn't make sense in any case no matter what. But if you play 100-200 hours on the same map on the other hand you'll reach the break-even point sooner or later and then I'm quite happy that I didn't have to waste millions of coal to smelt some ore. ^^


And as space consumption goes:

Anything that has 2 input resources to form 1 output resource automatically needs more space than something that has only 1 input and 1 output, or at least it restricts you in design choices.

Having 3 belts with one resource/output type each automatically leads to more space consumption.

You may use one single shared belt for coal and ore if you wish, but that will only lead to the fact that you can't have as many furnaces along that belt as you could have if you'd fill that belt only with ore alone, so you are bound to have many more lines in parallel to make up for that limitation I don't have to deal with. And with that comes a lot of splitter cascades, corner slowdowns & workarounds and other bullcrap to gurantee an even flow between those multiple parallel belts. It eventually needs more space and there's nothing you can do about it. ^^

[rorror]

for me also the discharge defense. Does anyone EVER use that? and if so, WHY?

once for trying, not going to use them ever more.

but burner inserters, i love them for the steam engines, just fire them up with 1 coal, and they fill themself up when they need it.
- no polution, vs inserters, that needs power, that uses more fuel for the power, that produces more polution...

[FishSandwich]

I willl just leave this here

[MeduSalem]

I willl just leave this here

Oh well then. The interlacing stuff. There's no way to argue to beat that, true. I'll admit I can't say anything rational against doing it that way.

But I'm actually no friend of the interlacing underground belts. I'd never use that stuff because somehow it's against my design philosophy. Back then when there where discussions about if it should become a feature or not I strongly felt it was like a cheap cheat since the belts would somehow cross in the underground. ^^

But then again my opinion on the interlacing stuff is obviously not what majority felt like and if someone finds it pleasing to use that stuff and look at it without having weird thoughts about it, it can't go past me either and I have to accept my defeat to rest the case. xD

[FishSandwich]

Back then when there where discussions about if it should become a feature or not I strongly felt it was like a cheap cheat since the belts would somehow cross in the underground.

I don't know, to me it makes sense. There are many instances in real life where two or more underground tunnels are interlaced(like underground trains).

I have to accept my defeat to rest the case. xD

I graciously accept your defeat.

[MeduSalem]

I don't know, to me it makes sense. There are many instances in real life where two or more underground tunnels are interlaced(like underground trains).

Yeah I know interlacing tunnels are quite common practice in industry as well as construction engineering (which I studied and I've been working as myself) to fit two or more tunnels into a narrow passage, but they all need quite a lot of room in the forefield because of the slopes and ramps to make the sideway shifts and to get ontop of each other. So it would be quite impossible to place the entrace of the two tunnels right next to each other. The way it is done in factorio bends the rules of 3 dimensional physics.

It would seem more fair if there would have to be at least a 1 tile gap between two tunnel entraces that are placed in an interlacing manner. But that would obviously prevent many applications and the community would cry & rage. So I'll live with the way it is even I'll probably never grow attached to it. ^^

I graciously accept your defeat.

[FishSandwich]

The way it is done in factorio bends the rules of 3 dimensional physics.

I think there are many more instances than this in factorio that break the rules of physics.

[Koub]

The things I consider as useless (for my play style) :
Personal discharge
Basic modular armor (always go for the MK1 directly)
personal solar panel
grenades
flame thrower
rocket launcher
landmines
Iron chests

Things thare are not useless, but I don't use (because I fond them too complicated, or too demanding, or too expensive in ressources for the benefit) :
Trains/rails
Beacons
Robot capsules

[Nemoricus]

The things I consider as useless (for my play style) :
Basic modular armor (always go for the MK1 directly)
personal solar panel

If you're short on alien artifacts, then your only choice is to use these. They're not useless in and of themselves, just situationally useful. The personal solar panels are a bit anemic, though. Boosting them to 20 W at least probably wouldn't hurt.

Iron chests

Resource efficiency. Steel chests use five times the materials for only fifty percent more capacity.

[FishSandwich]

This thread reminds me of the saying "One man's rubbish is another man's treasure."

[Nemoricus]

Oh yes. There's little in the game that's truly useless, just not necessarily useful in the situations that the player wants to use them in.