0.17+ mining & smelting numbers

[DanGio]

0.17 will change how mining is calculated (FFF #266) but also belt throughput and (maybe ?) smelting recipe time (FFF #276). I've read several messages that - basically - said : "mining and smelting builds are the biggest part of my factory, although the least interesting part to build". I agree with this, and would like to share some thoughts on the subject. I won't mention fuel consumption balance to avoid confusion between 0.16 and 0.17 fuel values, I just imagine the fuel consumption to be ajusted accordingly to the drill/furnace speed in each suggestion.

Electric mining drills :

• Now : the drill produces 0.525 iron ore/s, you need 26 to a fill a belt (13.33 items/s).
• Planned (AFAIK) : the drill produces 0.5 iron ore/s, you need 30 to fill a belt (15 items/s).
• My suggestion : the drill produces 0.625 iron ore/s, you need 24 to fill a belt (15 items/s). This is almost a 20% buff compared to the present 0.525 one, so crafting the drill require 12 iron plates, 6 iron gear wheels and 6 electronic circuits

Plate smelting recipe :

• Now : 1 stone furnace smelts 1 iron plate every 3.5 seconds (~0,2857/s), you need 46.66 furnaces (rounded to 2*24=48) to fill a belt (13.33 items/s).
• Planned (AFAIK) : 1 stone furnace smelts 1 iron plate every 3.5 seconds (~0,2857/s), you need 52.5 furnaces (rounded to 2*27=54) to smelt a full ore belt (15 items/s). Even worse, you need 26.25 steel furnaces rounded to 2*14=28.
• V453000's suggestion : 1 stone furnace smelts 1 iron plate every 3.2 seconds (0,3125/s), you need exactly 48 furnaces to smelt a full ore belt (15 items/s).
  I rewrote this for readability of my post, you can find the full suggestion here : viewtopic.php?p=392508#p392508
• My suggestion : 1 stone furnace smelts 3 iron plates every 8 seconds (0.375/s), you need exactly 40 furnaces to fill a belt (15 items/s). It reduces a lot the size of smelting rows, at the downside of showing a weird recipe with 3 output items right at the beginning of the game. This is a 31% buff to the furnace speed, so crafting a stone furnace cost 8 stone, and crafting a steel furnace cost 8 steel plates & 12 stone bricks.

Burner mining drills :

• Now : the burner mining drill produces 0,2625 iron ore/s, the stone furnace smelts 0.2857~ iron ore/s. So in the early game "burner->furnace" setup, the furnaces "flicker" (they go off for like 0.3 second every 3.8 second), which ruins the flame effect IMO, and looks "broken".
• Planned : no idea
• My suggestion : remove the gap by speeding up the burner drill. I'm thinking of... hang on ... 0.4 iron ore/s so it would be faster than the 0.375 iron plate/s furnace suggested above. I think it's not that OP : burner drills are thrown away past the first 15 minutes anyway, because electric drills have bigger mining zone, and don't need refuel. This is a 52% buff to the burner mining drill speed, so crafting them now requires 5 iron gear wheels, 5 iron plates, and 1 stone furnace.

What do you think ?

[V453000]

Electric mining drills:
- I don't think balancing a drill compared to the belt is necessary, and 30 is already a nice number. What does your suggestion try to achieve? "Just" a buff?

Plate smelting recipe:
- I did actually have this one in my spreadsheet as well, but it's important to note that plate smelting recipe is one of the first things that you see in the game. Making it weird x3/8 is a REALLY high price in this case.
- Instead of x3/8 you could have 2.6 and get close enough.
- Some people seem to mention that it's always better to overproduce a little, I'm not sure if that really applies here though.
- 3.2 is a nice "safe solution" which just makes the existing setups work a little nicer, but I'd definitely be more on the side of reducing the time because smelting columns are crazy long, and early there is no construction robots to help you. There is always going to be some tedium and that's fine, but I think it's too much now.
- 4 is a nice number but 60 furnaces per belt is just ridiculous early on.
- with that, I'd feel very happy with 2.5 or even 2 as well. 2.5 doesn't lead to perfect belt ratios which is probably not a tragedy and keeps some overproduction to be safe, with about 38 furnaces per belt, 19 per side.
- 2 does give integer results (30 furnaces per belt), but a single row would be 15. Is that a problem though.

Burner mining drills:
- planned is 0.25/s as a half of el. mining drill
- note that plate smelting time of 2 would make you need 2 burner mining drills per furnace, which I wouldn't have a problem with

The mining drills I wouldn't touch, the furnace I'm not absolutely sure which of the options I prefer the most. I personally would probably like 2. Super simple number and reducing furnace count would in my mind definitely be a good thing.

[Nefrums]

I like the 2s suggestion. Having the same speed as an electric mining drill opens up for some interesting direct insertion designs.

[DanGio]

Electric mining drills :

What does your suggestion try to achieve? "Just" a buff?

Yes. I feel like getting full belts from starting patches will become harder, and I would prefer the drills to speed up rather than to slow down, compared to now.

Plates :
I also like the 2s recipe suggestion.

Burner mining drills :
With a 2s recipe, I'm fine with 0.25/s. I would also be OK with keeping 1:1 ratio between burner drill and stone furnace, but with more expensive burner drills. Like I said, the electric mining drills offer so good possibilities with electricity & 5*5 AOE that I wouldn't mind Burner speed to be buffed.

Stone furnace cost :
Making the stone furnace cost 10 Stone would compensate the indirect buff. We often end up with a thousand stone in the early game anyway.

[Phoenix27833]

I agree with 2s crafting time is a nice round number although it is a massive buff to smelting (that might be ok?)

Regarding electric furnaces: They are currently not worth building until they can be fully beaconed with module 3s. They have the same base craft as steel furnaces but take 2.25x more space and 2x more fuel (50% fuel efficiency in boilers).
Therefore I suggest increasing the electric furnace crafting speed to 3.

[Serenity]

Increasing the electric furnace speed would be nice in a conventional setup. But when beaconed electric furnace lines are already tiny. You only need 13 for a blue belt

[Avezo]

Lowering it below 3.5s may cause problems with heavily beaconed setups - unloading products may require 2 inserters, which I wouldn't want.

[mexmer]

Lowering it below 3.5s may cause problems with heavily beaconed setups - unloading products may require 2 inserters, which I wouldn't want.

that's where stack inserter can say a word

[DanGio]

that's where stack inserter can say a word

Those suggestions imply indeed heavy changes on smelting setups. Steel furnaces would need blue inserters, beaconed electric would certainly need stack or 2x blue inserters. Seems fair to me.

[Raphaello]

Yes, I like 2s proposal as well - this will make early smelting setups less labours intensive. This will make this boring task less boring

I would also not mind changing steel recipe. Currently smelting steel is also a bit boring: 1 iron plate furnace feeds directly into 1 steel smelter. Decreasing steel smelting time to i.e. 7.5s and keeping the current recipe would make steel smelting more interesting. Old setups would still be viable (steel smelter would not be fully utilized but it would still work as previously) but possibility to optimize would certainly be used by some.

Another possibility would be to increase steel time above 10s (all the time assuming iron plate smelting time of 2s) but this would make steel smelting setups even bigger than in 0.16 which I don't think is a good idea.

[lee1026]

A crafting cycle of 2 seconds would mean that mega bases would be mostly assemblers instead of smelters, which would be wonderful, as smelting is probably the most boring of the recipes.

[Jap2.0]

that's where stack inserter can say a word

Those suggestions imply indeed heavy changes on smelting setups. Steel furnaces would need blue inserters, beaconed electric would certainly need stack or 2x blue inserters. Seems fair to me.

Wouldn't that be 1/s, which is fine for a yellow inserter?

[DanGio]

According to the wiki, yellow inserters move 0.83 items/s.

EDIT : you probably included stack bonus and I didn't... That's why our numbers don't match. I'm used to calculate without the bonus for speedrunning. So... Yeah speedrunners would need blue inserters, but everyone else should be fine with yellow inserters and stack bonuses. But they wouldn't be able to upgrade their smelting lines before "Inserter capacity bonus 2".

[Avezo]

Inserters don't have constant and reliable item/s transfer when interacting with partially filled belts. Just saying.

For most furnace setups I still resort to pre-belt-auto-compression tricks due to that.

[DerGraue]

I think it should not be balanced with the belt speed in mind and rather with mining drill <-> furnace ratio.
So that you can mine directly into a smelter, as it is basically now.

So burner mining drills produce as many items as one stone furnace can handle and electric mining drills produce exactly enough for one steel or electric furnace.

[JimBarracus]

Since we have mining productivity messing with the mining output it is rather pointless to get a nice ratio.

[Jap2.0]

According to the wiki, yellow inserters move 0.83 items/s.

EDIT : you probably included stack bonus and I didn't... That's why our numbers don't match. I'm used to calculate without the bonus for speedrunning. So... Yeah speedrunners would need blue inserters, but everyone else should be fine with yellow inserters and stack bonuses. But they wouldn't be able to upgrade their smelting lines before "Inserter capacity bonus 2".

Okay, slightly lower than I thought. I generally consider them good for ~1 item/s, but again, stack bonuses come.