The most useless thing in game.

[aRatNamedSammy]

useless (for now, until a change or balance)
-electric discharge
-flame thrower.. lack in range and efficiency (BUT, i could see a FLAME TURRET, in front of a wall of laser. (yes, like the one we see in starcraft 2, hidden in ground until enemy get closer)

all other things, well, it depend on how i play
landmines, i use it very rarely, when some specific corners are easily destroyed by spitters, but bots always replace it too fast, so it get attacked and destroyed sometimes, so i use it in specific situation.. for defenses, its presently just a very little bit usefull..
but still, i can found some use for it, like a place where i know bitters travel often, before grouping to attack me, so just for fun, i lay a line of mine.. SURPRISE, DEAR BITTERS !!
always keep in mind that mines take few secs before getting hidden to enemy
personnal laser are fun when used inside the tank.. i load my mk2 armor with 2 generator and 1 shield.. and load of personnal laser, drive the tank shooting cannon at nests, laser attack bitters and i frag or poison all around
when running, i dont use laser, but shields and exo, with combat robots . those weaponry are usefull in combination with an other one in a different situation.. the one you prefer depend on how you like to fight, but your way to use these stuffs may be good when you combine it with your friend way to fight ( you running with load of bots, him with tank, or whatever he like )

[JayS]

The Burner Mining Drill. I build maybe 3 of the things before I get to electricity then they sit in storage forever.

I disagree, they are perhaps one of the more important items in the game, extremely useful at the start of a world by allowing you to quickly do basic automation so you can avoid spending a long time mining by hand.

[Ailure]

I would love to recycle items that are obsolete at certain points in the game, sure it's probably not going to give you back much even if it returns 50% of the used material but I feel better about it than putting it in some random trash chest. Haha, maybe make it a full mod full with generated heaps of garbage you can 'mine'.

I have barely used burner grabbers after the tutorial, infact I can't recall using them in most recent games at all. My early Factorio games usually involves chaining a burner drills and a stone furnaces until I can manage to build steam power, then I finally bother to automate things a bit more. And while I do use steel furnaces, I tend to replace them with electrical furnaces around the time when I start making efficiency module as I try to make my factories as clean as possible, which usually involves replacing steam power with solar as soon it's convenient, as a bonus creepers seems to leave you mostly alone if you're not polluting too much, especially if you're lucky enough to be surrounded with thick forests (they do seem to have a tendency to home in on radars though when there isn't too much else producing pollution).

I do use all chests though, especially since I like to use the smallest chest I need as possible so even lategame I have wooden chests with just one slot open in places.

[Ranakastrasz]

Flame throwers and Rockets are too weak by the time you get them to be worth using. Rockets could be useful before you get piercing shotgun shells to kill big biters due to high impulse damage, but grenades are probably more efficient. Flamer throwers are far inferior to poison capsules.

Landmines are too weak to be practical. They have to compete with laser turrets after all. If they could ignore biters and only go off on spitters, it might be worthwhile, since spitters always get a few shots off.

Laser defense module is ALMOST useless. Before you get piercing shells (which you should have by the time you get laser defence access) the damage is able to kill the heavily armored biters or turrets, but using that space for extra fusion reactors and shields wins out every time otherwise. It does have one use, which is to act as a tracer weapon, marking targets.

Discharge defense's damage output is theoretically large, but due to you having to be surrounded, and the low damage per target, it is infeasible to use. Before I tried it out, I was hoping it to be like a Yamato Cannon blast. Which would be awsome.

[indjev99]

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.

I'm always short on alien artifacts until at least MK1 : I play very very slowly, and even if I don't pollute much, evolution factor is usually around 0.7 when I go and collect my first artifacts. So getting enough of them is always always a pain in the ass. I have to cope with big worms and big biters with the car, poison capsules, regular shotgun, and a big load of repair packs (I didn't activate experimental releases).

As for ressource efficiency for iron chests, I did have the same reasoning before, but ... at the beginning, when it really counts, I don't need that much chests that are bigger than wood chests. And when I start needing them, the excess of needed ressource to make steel chests is negligible next to my factory's needs. And finally, I always end-up replacing my "beginner's" chests (wood or iron) with logistic chests, and I would find it a waste to have many iron chests I can't give a second life

Watch Zisteau's Linear Factorio. In there he could not afford wooden chests because there was very few trees so he needed iron ones since he didn't have access to steel.

[Ohz]

I want to point out that when you play Marathon and everything is over expensive, you prefer to make iron chest than steel chest the first 10 hours of the game, to stock stuff.

[thirstyhirsty14]

What about Handgrenades ? I never used them at all.

Hand grenades are extremely useful for clearing large forested areas if you don't have poison capsules.

[Kokelvogel]

I don't like the car. It's useless within my bases (too crowded for driving at any speed) and useless outside as soon as you run into a forrest (which I always do sooner or later).

Nor do I use burner inserters as I prefer an emergency-only boiler/steam engine set-up.

My favourite ingame items are construction robots even if I don't use them as consequently as I should

[SNORKOFOB]

What I think about all said above:
Flamethrower: useful for clearing trees out of the way.
Landmines: never used those.
Burner mining drills: 100% useful until you get electricity.
Burner inserters: never used those, but useful for fueling stuff.
Personal laser defense: tried to use, combat shotgun does all the killing much better.
Discharge defense systems: same as above, but needs to be activated manually.
Personal solar panels: I never could make a loadout for modual armor that would not have 1x1 empty blocks. And they fit perfectly for filling those.
Rocket launcher: used for a while, until tried combat shotgun with all upgrades and piercing shells.
Tank: used until tried rocket launcher
Grenades: combat shotgun is better, shotgun is better, assault rifle is better... Useless.
Fish: ZE MOST USEFUL ITEM EVAR, 1862908409826/10, WOULD EAT AGAIN.
Night vision: useful when clearing biters at night.
Car: tried to use, after breaking some poles stopped using it at all.
Steel furnaces: used those a lot, they help with solving iron problems.
Iron chests: well, when you are low on steel, those are really useful. But after solving all of the iron problems there is always enough steel OR steel/smart/logistic chests.

[roman566]

You probably won't believe me, but I would add walls to the list... yeah, the large, stone thingies that keep bitters from killing the poor turrets defending the last bastion of... something.

Still, the moment Laser Turrets become available, deployed in sufficient amount and upgraded, walls become obsolete. Even the largest bitters have trouble reaching a turret nest with 24 laser turrets. Only ranged ones are a problem and... yeah, walls do not protect from those.

So here I am, mid-late game, several hundred turrets protecting my base and... several stacks of walls sitting in my inventory. Maybe I will start writing stuff on the map with walls and see how much time bitters will spend blowing it up?

[Enigmatica]

You probably won't believe me, but I would add walls to the list... yeah, the large, stone thingies that keep bitters from killing the poor turrets defending the last bastion of... something.

Still, the moment Laser Turrets become available, deployed in sufficient amount and upgraded, walls become obsolete. Even the largest bitters have trouble reaching a turret nest with 24 laser turrets. Only ranged ones are a problem and... yeah, walls do not protect from those.

So here I am, mid-late game, several hundred turrets protecting my base and... several stacks of walls sitting in my inventory. Maybe I will start writing stuff on the map with walls and see how much time bitters will spend blowing it up?

Walls are good for making a sexy factory/military base I would like, however, for there to be upgraded walls that are taller, thus preventing ranged attacks. As well as being stronger (perhaps made of steel and stone?).

Also, a lot of people said tanks are useless but I used one to take out biter bases fairly easily. It took a lot less time than turret lurching, but now that I have power armor 2, I have no use for a tank anymore

[roman566]

Drone assisted turret spam is rather fast. If you use substations rather than poles, you won't even have to get close. After the battle is done, have drones clear everything and move on.

Sure, PAMKII with combat drones is better, but before you get there... turret spamming!

[wwdragon]

Things I find useless:

Burner Inserters (I just put in whole stacks myself)
Mines (never used em; maybe if they were self-replicating like on ST:DS9 )
Discharge Defence (slow firing, requires manual firing... basically useless for all the effort to be able to build it.)
Hand Grenades (rocket launcher with aoe rocket is better!)
Combat Bots (all of them because temporary)
Shotguns (wide area damage, but you only get it when enemy already has 8/0 phys resist)
Flamers (I thought it would bypass phys resistance, but from what I can tell it doesn't... that or it's doing only 1 point of damage per shot; Useless either way)
Cars (why use these when you have tanks only minutes later)
Solid oil, fuel, etc. (I just pipe it all where it's needed, then forget about it.)
Red and Green wire (I control the amount of materials in system with passive provider slot limits and requester amounts)
Slowdown Capsule (I wanna run fast with my power armour upgrade or kill them, not slow them down.)
Radar (doesn't seem to have any purpose outside story campaign, since you can just walk or drive around to reveal map)

[Udav]

Hand grenades available before oil processing.
Combat Bots -- deploy 50+ of them and runs through the hive, and then another 2-3 of them...
Shotguns -- Down with stones and solitary lair at a reasonable price.
Car -- Faster and economical than the tank.
Solid Fuel -- Not bad burns (if coal and wood scarce).
Red and Green wires -- The peculiar thing, but it is very useful to control the flow of raw materials. And if the developers will add sensors will be necessary.
Radar -- Not only it scans the area, but also shows the running enemies.

[ridcully]

I'm not sure, if this a bug, that will be fixed. but when playing in peaceful mode, using landmines, you are not considered aggressive. just run in the base, throw them around like a mad man and wait for the biters to trigger them for some "peaceful" alien artifacts.

For the flamethrower I'd like to see things to get ignited so they burn other things in their neighbourhood. That would be really nice for deforestation.

[Cordylus]

Radars show the trains on the minimap!
I'm using them everywhere around rail tracks and they are VERY important in the train management!

[cpy]

Things I find useless:

You should learn how to play first, most of those items are very useful for advanced stuff!

If only bots could replace mines and mines could walk like spider mines in starcraft and deal good damage, then they would be useful.