Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Concrete recycling should take 1/10th of time it currently takes

What?

Some of Factorio items, such as: Concretre, Refined Concrete, Biter eggs, Nuclear fuel cells are produced in bunches of 10. (and copper wire/iron sticks 2 per craft)
Recycling time of those items should be calculated as 1/10 of the recipe to be proportional and consistent with idea of "recycling takes 1/8 time of the production" So if 10 blocks of concrete takes 10 second to produce, those 10 blocks of concrete should take 1.25 second to recycle.
Right not it take 12.5 seconds to recycle 10 blocks of concrete - LONGER than time to craft them!

Why?

Consistency and predictability of behavior. It also notable that some mods made some crafting recipe to produce a lot of items, for example Ultracube have some recipes that crafts in bunches of 500 and now it would make x62.5 times more to recycle that crafting process than to made one.
IF any material should be "hard to recycle" there should be obvious and deliberate multiplier that will tell to player that "This is hard to recycle, it takes 900% more times to do so"

+1

+1, unintentional/inconsistency that has severely negative gameplay impacts.

The time to recycle 1 concrete should be based on the time to produce 1, not the time to produce 10, so it should be 10x faster than it is right now. This mistake is why people were doing the hazard concrete recycling etc - that was removed, but this wasn't fixed.

Also affects a lot of other items significantly (just less obviously).

All in all, bloats the number of recycles that you need quite a lot and makes the needed amount of recyclers extremely inconsistent between different items/builds, which is a problem for both fun and UPS.

Disclaimer: Factorio is a game; realism for the sake of reality does not matter.


Have you ever TRIED to break up concrete in real life? It is a very hard, durable material that is resistant to most impacts, weathering, and lasts for decades without maintenance. Heavy hydraulic machinery, dynamite, or jackhammers is the way to go.

This line of complaints seems very arbitrary; I am sure that the numbers as we see them now are the intended balance or else they would not have been adjusted! Breaking changes were reserved for 2.1; enjoy re-designing your Factory to handle them. Or don’t! Nobody is forcing you to try the Experimental versions.

eugenekay wrote: Wed Jun 24, 2026 5:33 pm Disclaimer: Factorio is a game; realism for the sake of reality does not matter.


Have you ever TRIED to break up concrete in real life? It is a very hard, durable material that is resistant to most impacts, weathering, and lasts for decades without maintenance. Heavy hydraulic machinery, dynamite, or jackhammers is the way to go.

This line of complaints seems very arbitrary; I am sure that the numbers as we see them now are the intended balance or else they would not have been adjusted! Breaking changes were reserved for 2.1; enjoy re-designing your Factory to handle them. Or don’t! Nobody is forcing you to try the Experimental versions.

Have you tried to break low density structure, power armour MK2 or Foundry?
1 block of concrete takes same time to recycle as 1 whole foundry.

And that idea "don't complain that is experemental"
is totally backward. That is PERFECT time to fix such issues. And ifthere will not be complain it will left unfixed.

eugenekay wrote: Wed Jun 24, 2026 5:33 pm Disclaimer: Factorio is a game; realism for the sake of reality does not matter.


Have you ever TRIED to break up concrete in real life? It is a very hard, durable material that is resistant to most impacts, weathering, and lasts for decades without maintenance. Heavy hydraulic machinery, dynamite, or jackhammers is the way to go.

This line of complaints seems very arbitrary; I am sure that the numbers as we see them now are the intended balance or else they would not have been adjusted! Breaking changes were reserved for 2.1; enjoy re-designing your Factory to handle them. Or don’t! Nobody is forcing you to try the Experimental versions.

Disclaimer that reality does not matter in a game -> brings up reality as an argument.
Regardless, even IF they are intended, bringing it up as worth changing is normal, that's literally what ideas and suggestions are for. And presumably, if not brought up, this would make it into 2.1 stable, so the only time to bring it up is now.

+1. Just removing the most reasonable way to recycle concrete is not a great idea. Especially as it is basically caused by a bug.

+1. Devs have said it isn't a bug, but in that case it is an oversight with negative gameplay effects. Getting rid of concrete shouldn't be the hardest thing about fulgora.