Remove telescopic recipes of big drill, biolab and heat tower

[CyberCider]

TL;DR

Big drill, biolab and heat tower shouldn’t be crafted out of their lower-tier variants.

What?

The big drill recipe includes a mining drill, the biolab recipe includes a lab, and the heat tower recipe includes a boiler. I think this should not be the case. These components of the recipes should either be removed, or be replaced with appropriate amounts of intermediate items.

Why?

Telescopic recipes only make sense for items that are replaced 1:1 with their upgraded variants. That’s the only place where they’re necessary, and in all other cases it’s best to avoid them. They add nothing but unnecessary bloat. Even more than usual when the lower tier items are so basic and cheap. It’s not a meaningful complexity or resource cost increase, it’s just an annoyance. And telescopic recipes were even made extra unnecessary by the adition of the recycler, which gives players a convenient way to squeeze some use out of discarded items. There’s simply no reason for those recipes to be that way.

Also, boilers, seriously? Heat towers don’t even boil water!

[Tinyboss]

I don't know if it's likely to change at this point, but I agree with you completely.

[Muche]

Here is the list of items using other incompatible items as ingredients (ignoring pipes):

Transport belt -> Splitter
Stone furnace -> Boiler
Stone furnace -> Burner mining drill
Electric mining drill -> Big mining drill
Transport belt -> Lab
Lab -> Biolab
Boiler -> Heating tower

Notable exceptions (compatible replacements without item as an ingredient link):
Steam engine -> Steam turbine
Stone furnace -> Steel furnace


In view of this, I would agree Stone furnace+Steel->Heating tower makes more sense than Boiler->Heating tower.
Labs and mining drills are fine.

[CyberCider]

Transport belt -> Splitter
Stone furnace -> Boiler
Stone furnace -> Burner mining drill
Transport belt -> Lab

These are all so early, cheap and simple that they're pretty much exempt from any and all rules. Like, they're so inconsequential that it's not worth looking into them at all. Their nature is mostly due to the fact that at such an early stage, there aren't a lot of intermediate items, so some basic finished entities are used in their place. While the three recipes I complained about are both expensive, and unlocked in the midgame when the player has access to all the intermediates. And their items will be crafted in quality, so their recipes are extra relevant.

[Tinyboss]

Here is the list of items [...]

Wow, that was comprehensive! Did you just go through everything manually, or do you have some smart way to query it?

[CyberCider]

Here is the list of items [...]

Wow, that was comprehensive! Did you just go through everything manually, or do you have some smart way to query it?

There are so few of them and they're all from the same part of the game, they probably named them off the top of their head. I know I probably could, with a few minutes to think.

[Muche]

I went through recipes manually. It seemed like the quickest way.

My reading of OP's suggestion was to strive for a kind of consistency (compatible items should be part of telescopic recipes).
But the list showed violation of that consistency idea from both sides (there are other telescopic recipes with incompatible items; and non-telescopic recipes with compatible items).

Lets say belts, inserters, modules, assemblers are good for being telescopic (as entities/items have the same footprint and function).
Why is Belt in Splitter good if they are not directly interchangable?
Why is no Steam engine in Steam turbine good as well? Shouldn't it be included?

Now they are saying that early recipes are exempt (I'll ignore the reliance on the vaguely defined early game).
So it's fine requiring a Belt (complexity 3;6) in a Lab (complexity 4;16), but a Lab (4;16) in a Biolab is too simple compared to a Refined concrete (complexity 3;13).

That left upon me the impression that OP focused strictly on some hand-picked recipes and did not do the homework of how the idea can and/or should affect other recipes.

[CyberCider]

I went through recipes manually. It seemed like the quickest way.

My reading of OP's suggestion was to strive for a kind of consistency (compatible items should be part of telescopic recipes).
But the list showed violation of that consistency idea from both sides (there are other telescopic recipes with incompatible items; and non-telescopic recipes with compatible items).

Lets say belts, inserters, modules, assemblers are good for being telescopic (as entities/items have the same footprint and function).
Why is Belt in Splitter good if they are not directly interchangable?
Why is no Steam engine in Steam turbine good as well? Shouldn't it be included?

Now they are saying that early recipes are exempt (I'll ignore the reliance on the vaguely defined early game).
So it's fine requiring a Belt (complexity 3;6) in a Lab (complexity 4;16), but a Lab (4;16) in a Biolab is too simple compared to a Refined concrete (complexity 3;13).

That left upon me the impression that OP focused strictly on some hand-picked recipes and did not do the homework of how the idea can and/or should affect other recipes.

Well, I did focus on hand-picked recipes. I never claimed not to. The title of the post specifically points out these three recipes. I never claimed to strive for some kind of consistency, I just dislike these three recipes.

But, I feel like I’ve now realized exactly why. I definitely should have brought it up in the post itself, but I will do it now: The reason yellow splitters and labs being made of yellow belts (or for example red inserters being made of yellow inserters) is ok in my eyes is because you want to be producing yellow belts for another purpose. But once I have their “advanced versions” unlocked, I would never want to make boilers, electric drills or regular labs. The telescopic recipes make me automate something that I will never actually place down/use in any other way. Inserters, belts, modules and assemblers make this excusable with their 1:1 instant-replace nature. But these three buildings don’t even have that in their favor. So all these factors combined make those three specific recipes unacceptable to me. There’s also the fact that the lower tier items are so insignificanty cheap compared to the rest of the ingredients, that they’re not even a meaningful contribution to the recipe’s cost. They’re nothing but an annoyance.

In fact, you bringing up steam engines/turbines only makes me more confident in that. Once you’ve unlocked steam turbines, that means you have access to either nuclear or heat power, which means you no longer have any reason to use boiler power. This means that you a) Have no reason to automate steam engines on their own and b) You won’t be upgrading steam engines to steam turbines, because you will be tearing down your boiler builds instead of upgrading them. And just like that, steam turbines being made of steam engines would meet my conditions for being a bad telescopic recipe. Same with burner inserters and yellow inserters. You won’t replace your burner inserters with yellow ones, you will simply destroy your whole burner build and build a completely different electric one.

Also, just for the record, I will say that I always disliked the boiler recipe. I could forget burner drills in 5 minutes after starting a playthrough, but In 1.1 boilers actually found continued use in coal liquefaction. Which meant that you had to have stone furnaces automated even in your beaconed nuclear powered base. I disliked it, and I was glad to see that the expansion was adding a replacement for boilers which surely wouldn’t be crafted with a stone furnace. Oh, imagine how I felt when I saw the heat tower recipe…

Did I ramble too much? I hope not

[IsaacOscar]

Seriously? What exactly is the problem here?

I think it's good as it lets you do something with your lower tier items, e.g. once you're ready for heating towers you can convert all your existing boilers

I think more of the recipes should use this approach (e.g. steam turbines from steam engines)

[CyberCider]

Seriously? What exactly is the problem here?

I think it's good as it lets you do something with your lower tier items, e.g. once you're ready for heating towers you can convert all your existing boilers

I think more of the recipes should use this approach (e.g. steam turbines from steam engines)

Ok, but when you run out of lower tier items that you had lying around? That will happen very quickly. Then you will just have to keep automating them even when you’ll never use them anymore. I don’t like automating things that are useless to me. Besides, now that the recycler exists, you already have something to do with useless items: Recycle them and reuse their components.

[IsaacOscar]

Ok, but when you run out of lower tier items that you had lying around? That will happen very quickly. Then you will just have to keep automating them even when you’ll never use them anymore. I don’t like automating things that are useless to me. Besides, now that the recycler exists, you already have something to do with useless items: Recycle them and reuse their components.

Right, but having complicated recipes to automate is kind of the point of the game...

And I haven't even needed to automate these "telescopic" recipes anyway (except belts and splitters) as they're usually quite easy to handcraft and I only need a couple of them.

Oh and you do have a point about the recycler, unfortunately it's not unlocked that early and you have to import it from another planet.

[eugenekay]

So the game that is about Crafting…. Has too much Crafting in it?

Where is the Problem?

[CyberCider]

Right, but having complicated recipes to automate is kind of the point of the game...

So the game that is about Crafting…. Has too much Crafting in it?

Where is the Problem?

I’m not saying these recipes are “too complicated” or “too much”, I’m saying they’re stupid because they force you to automate something useless.

[eugenekay]

One person’s “Useless” is another person’s “Resource Sink”. It gives you something to do, which is part of the fun.

I think it makes perfect sense that a Boiler (an item with a Combustion Chamber) is a component of a Heating Tower. A “Big Mining Drill” is just a smaller Mining Drill wearing a fancy tungsten coat. A Biolab is… a Lab that has been setup to do Bio research.

If you’re not having fun, have you tried not playing the game?

[Tesse11ation]

I'm going to have to disagree with OP here. I quite like sending all my excess mining drills that I'm no longer ever going to use off to Vulcanus where they can get upgraded into big drills. That's way more fun and rewarding than recycling them into scrap.

I think this suggestion is a very good candidate to be a mod, but absolutely not something to be imposed on the base game.

[CyberCider]

One person’s “Useless” is another person’s “Resource Sink”. It gives you something to do, which is part of the fun.

I think it makes perfect sense that a Boiler (an item with a Combustion Chamber) is a component of a Heating Tower. A “Big Mining Drill” is just a smaller Mining Drill wearing a fancy tungsten coat. A Biolab is… a Lab that has been setup to do Bio research.

If you’re not having fun, have you tried not playing the game?

Give me something to do? I have something to do no matter what the recipe is. Again, I'm not saying the amount of "work" or complexity or resources is the issue here. I'm saying these recipes make whatever I'm doing look ever so slightly uglier for no good reason, and I kind of don't like it. I'm saying it's bloat.

In fact, let's say the big drill recipe changed to actually use 10 electric drills instead of one. That would actually be preferable to just one drill. Because now those drills would have a purpose: Add more resource cost to the recipe. But as the recipe stands now, the drill simply adds nothing. It does nothing except make me automate electric drills which I don't want to see ever again now that I have big drills unlocked.

Again, I don't want to automate something that's used for only one recipe and nowhere else. Do you miss rocket control units? I know I don't. That's what these recipes feel like to me. Like each of them has its own little "rocket control unit" that's used for this one thing and nothing else. And you know what happened to rocket control units? They got removed, because the developers know that one-off automation like this is unfun and a sign of poor design.

[CyberCider]

I'm going to have to disagree with OP here. I quite like sending all my excess mining drills that I'm no longer ever going to use off to Vulcanus where they can get upgraded into big drills. That's way more fun and rewarding than recycling them into scrap.

I think this suggestion is a very good candidate to be a mod, but absolutely not something to be imposed on the base game.

Well, then I guess it's a difference in mentality. Even if the recycler wasn't on the table, I would prefer to put my old drills in a chest and blow them up.

And don't worry, I fully intend to mod this in, along with the many, many suggestions I've already made on this forum. It's going to be one of those configurable mods that lets you flick individual features/changes on and off. As soon as I acquire the necessary skills and free time. I'll get around to it some day, I'm sure...

[Factoruser]

I like this kind of "recycling". Otherwise you will have to "scrap" many buildings when you are upgrading. But especially the big drill of course means no advantage - those can only be built on Vulcanus => you'd have to send your old drills to Vulcanus... But in this case it would be e.g. better the recipe gets changed e.g. using tungsten plates, craftable with assembling machines everywhere. The heating tower should e.g. be based upon steel furnaces instead of boilers - or directly stone bricks and steel bars...

[IsaacOscar]

I like this kind of "recycling". Otherwise you will have to "scrap" many buildings when you are upgrading. But especially the big drill of course means no advantage - those can only be built on Vulcanus => you'd have to send your old drills to Vulcanus... But in this case it would be e.g. better the recipe gets changed e.g. using tungsten plates, craftable with assembling machines everywhere. The heating tower should e.g. be based upon steel furnaces instead of boilers - or directly stone bricks and steel bars...

Why steel furnaces? They do something completely different to a heating tower.
Whereas a heating tower is really half-a-boiler (heat echangers being the other half)

[Factoruser]

The heating tower should e.g. be based upon steel furnaces instead of boilers - or directly stone bricks and steel bars...

Why steel furnaces? They do something completely different to a heating tower.
Whereas a heating tower is really half-a-boiler (heat echangers being the other half)

No, the heating tower is more like a furnace than a boiler => no pipes. Boilers are even made out of stone furnaces. But considering that furnaces are creating metal plates out of ore, they can't be just simple burning chambers.

Just some stone bricks resp. concrete and steel bars plus heat pipes for heating towers are making most sense.