Factorio Forums

coffee-factorio wrote: Tue Aug 11, 2026 10:54 pm Concrete specifically needs calcium containing stones.

I wonder if asphalt concrete could be a good stand-in for some applications in Factorio where concrete is usually used. The recipe could be approximated (very roughly) using petroleum processing of some kind. I imagine asphalt concrete is what "refined concrete" actually is as it gives the largest speed boost of all the tiles in vanilla but it doesn't use petroleum of any kind.

Asphalt my beloved

That's one where, would need a structural engineer to figure it out and to make a judgement call at the level of game design. When available asphalt makes for nice roads, it's very stylish.

Don't forget, AFAIK, the main application at hand is making furnaces, not roads. And maybe military/production science.

Well, for furnaces what I know comes from looking up what I find in mods. Bricks for those applications is a stand in for refractory bricks, which are being placed into furnaces to get... blown up over time basically. You're blowing hot air in like a jet engine and using that to melt down iron. It's really neat. So that's a silicon/alumina ceramic brick, just by looking at lay knowledge. And you'll find that in Angel-Bobs or Nullius where the science writing is really good.

Silicon and aluminum are actually pretty common. But that gets into territory where you'd consider an overhaul of Space Age to bring the science writing in and dial up or dial down some factors. You'd have to make decisions about whether or not to have internal combustion engines in space due to your research on that subject, and that gets pretty weird because you run into stuff like spontaneous cold welding, which does happen. You have stuff where an Engineer could do it but maybe not Kovarex's take the Engineer it; and I don't feel like that's an insult to say because part of the intention is to leave a space for people to come up with stuff like Warp Drive Machine that is an artists own take on it.

This was already suggested here : viewtopic.php?t=121220

Hurkyl wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2026 11:14 pm Don't forget, AFAIK, the main application at hand is making furnaces, not roads. And maybe military/production science.

This is true for stone and stone bricks, but refined concrete is just a tile, it's not an ingredient to any building, hence why I drew an analogy between refined concrete and asphalt.

erectile_pisfunction wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2026 5:47 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2026 11:14 pm Don't forget, AFAIK, the main application at hand is making furnaces, not roads. And maybe military/production science.

This is true for stone and stone bricks, but refined concrete is just a tile, it's not an ingredient to any building, hence why I drew an analogy between refined concrete and asphalt.

Refined concrete is required for elevated rails and several of the Space Age production buildings.

macdjord wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2026 6:30 pm

erectile_pisfunction wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2026 5:47 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2026 11:14 pm Don't forget, AFAIK, the main application at hand is making furnaces, not roads. And maybe military/production science.

This is true for stone and stone bricks, but refined concrete is just a tile, it's not an ingredient to any building, hence why I drew an analogy between refined concrete and asphalt.

Refined concrete is required for elevated rails and several of the Space Age production buildings.

I completely forgot about space age... oops