Foundries instead of furnaces on Nauvis?

[Eram]

Is it even a reasonable idea? I much prefer how compact you can get foundries, but the fact that even for smelting iron ore you need calcite, and calcite is only obtainable via space platform on Nauvis makes me think the devs want furnaces to be used on Nauvis.

[Linsanga]

There probably is a window of time where it's useful to drop calcite from orbit for smelting steel and gears. But you quickly reach a point (with higher tier modules/beacons/prod tech) where ore is so plentiful and furnaces so fast, that taking an extra dependency on calcite isn't worth it.

[BlueTemplar]

You could also consider shipping calcite from Vulcanus...
And/Or only use it for a few select recipes in select spots.

[mergele]

It's 1 calcite to 50! ore, and once its smelted you are in pipes and can do with it as you please. And founrification increases speed and productivity massively. Flying in a bit of calcite from vulcanus (500 per rocket) in an automated transport is super cheap and gives huge result. It's also very cool and that is the most important part.

[Visione]

Yes, it is!

I have been playing with foundries everywhere since a while now on nauvis and its a blast. I run my production base and my 3.6k raw SPM / 21.6K effective SPM science base with it. So not super big base, but decent enough for a good experiment.

First of all, once you get some proper interplanetaire logistics going its really not so hard to mine calcite on vulcanos and move it over to nauvis. You could opt for space mining calcite. But honestly, rockets really are cheap, and space platform hauling is basically free. (I have a huge dedicated import hauler for each planet. That sofar only hauls in 1k calcite a trip, but scaling it to 10k would be super easy)

Secondly, you really don't need that much calcite. The foundries have innate productivity bonuses,you can stack prod modules in them, and the calcite/ore to molten iron/copper ratio is really good. The ore to end product ratio using calcite compared to the convential production supply chain is superior a couple times fold. Hundreds of regular smelters can be replaced with just a few foundries. It's totally worth it.

I think however the biggest benefit is tho that you can haul molten iron and copper around in fluid trains. This transforms your supply chain infrastructure. Where in past you needed several trains to haul in iron plates, copper plates, gears, wires and steel bars you now only need 1 or 2. One molten iron fluid train and/or one molten copper fluid train. Then you plant a few foundries down and make whatever you need on-site. Because the concentration of molten iron/copper in the fluid wagons is extremely high (partly due to fluid train buff) compared to end product or iron/copper plates this is the superior material to haul around.

Honestly I can only tell you to try it out yourself. People are overthinking the hurdle of calcite. It really is trivial to overcome. And after that the foundries are insane.

[mergele]

I think fluid wagons actually have a slightly lower carry capacity for iron plates (in the form of molten iron) than normal cargo wagons. With the 50% productivity bonus on foundrires they can carry 3750 plates, while a normal cargo wagon does 4000. However this in my opinion is easily outdone by the wastly improved handling. Pumps can load/unload 540 plates per second from one wagon, no way inserters can match that. Also, they have a miniscule footprint and unlimited throughput to producers (within a certain range).

[DeadMG]

There probably is a window of time where it's useful to drop calcite from orbit for smelting steel and gears. But you quickly reach a point (with higher tier modules/beacons/prod tech) where ore is so plentiful and furnaces so fast, that taking an extra dependency on calcite isn't worth it.

It's totally the opposite. Since you can farm calcite in orbit for free after Gleba, or ship it trivially from Vulcanus, and Foundries have more modules and fit more beacons, Foundries are fantastic immediately and only get better compared to Nauvis smelting recipes.

[jaylawl]

Wouldn't foundries also be more UPS friendly than the machines they replace? (assuming that you would multiple machines to replace just one foundry for the same output)

[Khagan]

I think fluid wagons actually have a slightly lower carry capacity for iron plates (in the form of molten iron) than normal cargo wagons. With the 50% productivity bonus on foundrires they can carry 3750 plates, while a normal cargo wagon does 4000.

2.0 fluid wagons are 50k capacity, so that casts to 7500 plates.

[J-H]

They draw more power, but you have nuclear for that.

I've just finished implementing foundries on Gleba. Calcite mining in orbit is a bit slower than I'd like, but the double production buff (+50% at processing copper, +50% at turning it into copper wire) is worth it. With tier 2 production modules, the foundries are running 190% productivity.