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Currently a tier 1 splitter is crafted with 5 electronic circuits, and tier 1 assembly machine is crafted with just 3 of them, with a much cheaper recipe overall. This leads to really counter-intuitive and unrealistic decisions to put extra assembly machine instead of splitting belt network where the latter might fit better otherwise. Same holds for tier 2.

Is this intentional/reasonable? I see the point that devs might be afraid to make assembly machines more expensive leading to people tending to craft things manually more. But this stands less for the marathon difficulty imho, because it is probably intended for more experienced players who are able to judge whether it's reasonable to automate crafting or not (yet). On the contrary, more expensive assembly machine recipe will encourage automating its production.

According to the wiki, unless I am misreading it, both entities take the same amount of plates (50) to construct in expensive mode, just that splitters use 10 more iron.

Patashu wrote:According to the wiki, unless I am misreading it, both entities take the same amount of plates (50) to construct in expensive mode, just that splitters use 10 more iron.

Thanks for the info, this makes much more sense for me now

Yeah, they are both 50 plates; 25/25 for splitter, 35/15 for assembly machine