Is copper junk now?

[Balthazar]

I kinda thought iron was heavily overused compared to copper in 0.8, but 0.9 from what i can tell have removed a lot more copper from recipes, in particular replacing electronic circuits with batteries in capacitors and laser turrets. In addition, the new oil industry requires several fuckloads of iron for pipes, tanks and the refinery / chemical plant have copper to iron ratios of ~ 1:5.

I'm only a few hours into the game and i have only 4 miners on copper with ~20 doing iron, and the copper miners are mostly idle.

Anyone else think this is becoming a problem?

[haunted_1]

I dont think it is a problem. It's not like the ratio of Fe and Cu needs to be 1:1. But still yes, it seems like you dont need Cu as much as Fe and you need even less Cu in 0.9.

[Zourin]

Copper is still dominantly used for chip production, as well as peircing ammo, I'd hardly consider it worthless.

It's just that the oil industry is now the huge bottleneck and new logistic twist, needing 2-3 more techs in order to produce advanced circuits, and an entire logistic network to produce the plastics.

Iron is still king though. There are a LOT of new recipes that demand steel, and each steel is 5 iron plates/ore. 25 iron for a single oil barrel is pretty steep.

[Balthazar]

Copper is still dominantly used for chip production, as well as peircing ammo, I'd hardly consider it worthless.

Both of these are very close to 1:1 in copper/iron usage. What i mean is, if i have more iron i can always find something to do with it; make barrels, conveyer belts, bullets, train tracks, train wagons , chests and pipes are all iron exclusive items that you'll always have some use for, theres NOTHING you can do with copper alone. Could we maybe get an alternative recipe for electronic circuits where you replace the iron with plastic, so modules are almost exclusively produced from copper instead?

[Zourin]

Copper is still dominantly used for chip production, as well as peircing ammo, I'd hardly consider it worthless.

Both of these are very close to 1:1 in copper/iron usage. What i mean is, if i have more iron i can always find something to do with it; make barrels, conveyer belts, bullets, train tracks, train wagons , chests and pipes are all iron exclusive items that you'll always have some use for, theres NOTHING you can do with copper alone. Could we maybe get an alternative recipe for electronic circuits where you replace the iron with plastic, so modules are almost exclusively produced from copper instead?

Copper is more a suppliment. Most places its used, other than chip plants, is going to be at 1:1 or less (armor piercing ammo is 1:1). I generally will deal with copper in a 2:2:1ratio (2 copper smelters, 2 iron smelters, 1 steel smelter). Most useful things eat electronic circuits like pancakes at a lumberjack convention, especially anything electronic (like solar panels, substations, modules, and armor mods), and that is where close to 90% of where your copper is going to wind up going. That 3:2 ratio for electronic circuits adds up to huge copper demands later on.

That's why I chip any factory associated with an Electronic Circuit factory with Production modules, especally module production. Any opportunity to cut down on the effective material cost on an item that can single-handedly eat thousands of copper bars in seconds is not to be taken lightly.

[syneris]

According to my production stats, i'm consuming 2:1 iron to copper. I'm bottle-necked with just one advanced circuit machine, so the ratio might get a little better when I adjust my layout for more room (and logistic bots now that I managed a slow blue pack production). During red and green stages, there is heavy demand on iron.

There hasn't been a very noticeable increase in steel needed for mass production, though the new buildings need a bit. A train transporting barrels will need a chunk of steel to start up, but you'll likely only want a fixed amount to prevent potential stalling issues. I haven't checked changes of the stocking mechanics for multiple outputs, but if your unloading plant can't push out empty barrels it might not be able to pull in new ones.

[Calico]

Late Game copper is still King.... loads of modules, mountains of circuits. Also plastic for the production of processing units. You still need loads of iron, but copper easily wins late game. Iron wins the early and midgame. Overall my ratio for this last game is 1,33:1 Iron to Copper , almost finished with the rocket defense so i don't expect any big changes until the game ends.