Factorio Forums

Hi,

Short version:
I think I've half answered my question whilst typing this & working out what i'm trying to ask but am I right in saying that you get quite a bit less actual ore when mining Saphirite > Crushing > Sorting then smelting to iron plates (without processing the slag that comes with this process). Am I right? Does anyone by any chance have some comparison anywhere of how much less it is without me trying to work it out myself?

Long version:
I'm about 40 odd hours into a new build and have made very little progress. I upped the mob difficulty, frequency etc when I started it as I like a challenge but either my settings or something in a recent patch or another mod (Bobs perhaps) has made them quite difficult on this run. I don't have a problem with that as I like the whole barely surviving aspect but I also enabled expensive mods and i'm finding it difficult to keep even a reasonable trickle of iron flowing and feel like I could lose it if the biters go up a stage or two if I haven't managed to keep up with military. The low material output and the mob difficulty means i'm constantly waiting for materials and spending probably half of everything I get repairing and making ammo.

I have done an expensive run before with just Bob's enabled and whilst it slower, it was nothing like this and wasn't all that bad. It seems that until I get to the higher tiers of ore processing, I get a lot less actual ore from what I am mining. Is slag processing worth it? I'm currently just storing all of that for a rainy day and perhaps that's what i'm missing here? Giving the time it takes to research anything, i'm juggling progression and military so really only researching what I need to survive.

I'm tempted to just disable expensive recipes This run is like pulling teeth but not sure if I can quite bring myself to do it so any suggestions would be great.

Cheers

On expensive recipe mode with AngelBob's, it takes 5 crushed saphirite to make 1 iron plate. If you first sort the crushed ore then 6 saph pops out 2 iron ore. If smelting directly from there it takes 5 iron ore to make 3 iron plates.

The least common multiple of 5 and 6 is 30, so just scale both processes up to that for ease of math. Times the first 5 to 1 by 6 to get 30 crushed saph makes 6 iron plates. Times the 6 to 2 by 5 to get 30 crushed saph sorts into 10 iron ore which converts to 6 iron plates.

So they're equivalent in terms of getting iron plate out, but the sorting also yields copper and slag, so sorting on expensive mode is definitely better than just smelting the crushed ore itself even before you factor in any of Angel's smelting stuff.

Thanks. After another setback and thinking long & hard I ended up disabling expensive recipes and i'm a lot happier now. Still struggling but it's gone from feeling like it's impossible to just really hard now. Thanks for the response!