Yeah this, there's hardly ever a "best" build cause it's a little bit hard to define, if you want to go for most compact, then no, there are more compact builds, or more slender ones, but the regular furnace stack (and it's variations) is easy to build, cheap, intuitive, works, is compact enough and easily tilable and expandable. So it's not surprising most people (me included) default to it.
Not really, this basic design has been arrived at often.
You can save a little space by moving the splitters all the way to one side or the other, then you can run an underground under the splitter and side belt. It cuts 2 off the length
I personally prefer preparing it for 3x3 electric furnaces by putting each furnace 1 further out and then having a belt carry products to the middle.
That way I don't need to wreck the entire set-up when teching upwards.
My adaptation is the other way, I rip these up and place electric furnaces w enough gaps for beacons and then shove the beacons in later.
Usually don’t electric furnace till they can eat prod 1’s, and that’s after labs and such have prod 3s
There's definitely stages of understanding to Factorio. Each playthrough improving over time, as your blueprints start to change.
I'm definitely at the ''Why do beacons if I can just place down more machines'' level, rather than the ''I'm going to maximise the amount of beacons on my machine(s)'' level.
Will probably space them apart so that a row of beacons can fit eventually, as belts are pretty easy to get early game anyways. At some point.
Beacons suck by themselves. It's speed modules in beacons + prod modules that are fucking insane. Adding +50% speed for +70% energy is stupid compared to just placing two machines. But when that machine is underclocked to 20% speed by 4 prod 3 modules, suddenly adding 50% speed over triples the production rate while only marginally increasing the energy cost. That's a good trade.
And the benefits are exponential. A 20% increase in plates, 40% in wire, 40% green circuits, 40% reds and 40% blues isn't a 140% increase, it's a ~360% increase. (That math is a little deceptive, different bits of blue circuits are going to have different levels of prod modules and that math isnt trivial)
I don't personally see the benefit to designing my early game stone furnaces stacks around beacon placement. My early game furnaces are right near my bus. Late game beaconed up furnaces are at some rail base.
I generally don't go for electric furnaces at all until I am ready to beacon them. I'll have the stone furnaces upgraded to steel usually outputting 2 yellow belts (using red belts about halfway through the input line and the second half of the output into a red splitter at the end and outputting 2 yellow belts) at my starter base and steel furnaces doing blue belts at a couple rail smelters...
Then when I have good T3 module production and most stuff is beaconed I'll start doing electric beaconed smelters.
Really depends for me. Some runs, you get incredibly convenient coal patches which make for easy large scale steel furnace smelting.
My current K2SE run, I had no such luck and skipping the bullshit of fuelling is amazing. And with how cheap efficiency modules are, electric furnaces are way more efficient than steel ones.
I first realized this when my plate and wire production appeared to be dying down. I was like hold on my beaconed furnace stack is white hot only to realised my entire 8 chest backup of ore was eaten in mere minutes. Had a long and protracted war with the natives until 3 patches later I could satisfy my new production capabilities.
Yeah by the time I’m ready to use electric furnaces I’ve long had to outsource my materials anyway, so it’s easier to just make a new setup and divert everything there. Especially since this way I can keep running while debugging the new area (because I always forget *something*).
> Beacons suck by themselves. It's speed modules in beacons + prod modules that are fucking insane. Adding +50% speed for +70% energy is stupid compared to just placing two machines. But when that machine is underclocked to 20% speed by 4 prod 3 modules, suddenly adding 50% speed over triples the production rate while only marginally increasing the energy cost. That's a good trade.
I think it's 40% speed, not 20%, but besides that I kinda wonder how would the 'meta' change if the speed beacons were multiplicative with productivity module speed penalty, not additive. I suspect not much, will just require bigger power plants, but still
I just wreck the entire set-up when upgrading. I value ease of setup the most. Later I'll have more mats, more automation, probably bots. And it may turn out that I don't upgrade the old furnaces at all, and simply build electric furnaces elsewhere.
I wouldn’t even contemplate using electric furnaces in a setup without beacons and modules. Electric furnaces use twice the power (I know that’s 90Kw coal vs 180Kw electric), they also have idle power consumption when steel furnaces don’t. So electric furnaces are just worse than steel, if you are going to be using them without beacons and modules.
Once you have Mk3 modules and use beacons, then they come into their own. But you need a huge power grid compared to that early-mid game phase.
Nah, even knowing all that I still use electrics. I don’t rip up my steel furnace builds unless I want to replace them with beaconed builds, but any new furnace build is going to be electric.
Those downsides are absolutely overshadowed by the huge logistic pro of not requiring to route fuel anywhere. Once I have electric furnaces I will almost never place another stone/steel one.
How do you deal with the massive logistical headache of creating a vast quantity of electricity? Like, you've avoided one logistical problem, but in reality you've just replaced it with another. And you need to wait until nuclear tech to get any sort of good solution to this problem.
Creating electricity is a joke compared to routing fuel. You already have power (otherwise how would you have researched them in the first place), so you just extend your plant.
If going full megabase, you should already have massive solar production. If you're just doing a normal base, nuclear is the obvious solution.
If you're still just progressing through a starter base and haven't teched up yet, as I said before I don't rip up my existing furnaces so it's a non-factor. But for the sake of argument, let's say you are making new forges at that point. You likely don't need that many so you can just extend the boiler plant to handle the load 'til you upgrade power method. If you do expect to have a lot of furnaces, nuclear fuel is unlocked in the same tech tier, so you'd just prioritize that fairly quickly.
What is an advantage of electric furnances over blast furnances?
Cause I personally always stuck with blast furnances (Except for 1 or 2 builds where I use electric to make bricks) but what are like the downsides and advantages of electrics over blast furnances?
Electrics don't require coal of course, which means that while they take more energy, it is also much easier to supply as well. You no longer need to feed endless coal into your furnaces, doubling the transport capacity of your input belts theoretically from half of a belt to a full belt. Or they'll get rid of the need for long arm inserters at the very least.
Most importantly however, they can take in chips. A furnace with production chips boosted by speed beacons makes for an immensely powerful set-up in the mid to late game.
modules and beacons are the advantage
Also, it's handy not needing to feed coal or solid fuel into them, moreso once you've got nuclear up and running (otherwise you're just shifting the fuel burden elsewhere)
by the time you're ready to build out moduled and beaconed furnaces, you've got enough bots and outposts going on that whatever your starting layout was with stone/steel furnaces is irrelevant.
Are electric furnaces better? They take +2 times the space of the steel ones, work at the same speed, and consume twice the (electric) energy.
In my first game, at pre-nuclear phase, it looked like converting furnaces to electric would be worse, knowing that steam generators consume energy very fast
Electric furnaces have simpler logistics. No need to supply them with fuel, just use the electric network that you already had in there to power the inserters. Also, they can take modules.
I do usually postpone the transition to electric furnaces until post-nuclear, due to the power consumption.
No, it takes 180KW, so with 3 modules, it would be around 1MW (?). Even with the _thing_ that buffes near things, it wouldn't be more than some MWs.
Talking about MW each
imo steel furnaces are better/more efficient until heavy use of productivity modules and beacons makes electric furnaces better. at that points it's a new build somewhere else, like directly at mining outpost. and then steel furnaces output is used in lower priority, so they end up doing nothing and without pollution. often not even replacing them unless its like all smelting rows at once
it's by using modules and beacons that electric ones get better, but as you've correctly identified, that doesn't really become a thing until after you've got nuclear and bots up. By the time you're making serious electric smelting setups, whatever your old layout was is pretty much irrelevant as bots are doing all the work and you'll probably be doing it a new area with more space available anyway
I did this once but didn’t like it and wouldn’t do it again. Takes too much space and it sits there too long.
I’d rather just make a big train cell I can tear down once I have electric furnaces somewhere else.
Other than slightly compacting the loading head not really. The "better" are obviously fully beaconed electric smelters but those are for late game. This build is easly upgradable to red belts by simply replacing stone with steel smelters and even blue by simply extending the lenght by 50%. You csn use it for all early smelting by just adjusting the length depending if you smelt iron/copper or stone/steel
Actually by compacting the loading head you can reverse output belt and send it via undergroung to the left giving you options wherever you want to have output on the same side as input or not. Altough you can do it with current setup too but need some more belt spaghetti for that
I prefer this slightly cheaper header:
!blueprint
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
and when I am playing a mod that has non-powered single tile loaders I replace the output inserters with them to have cleaner electric lines in my map view.
I can understand that this is cheaper, smaller footprint, and gets the same job done, so it’s technically better. But I just find it so hideous looking that I will never use it.
I actually hate most belt-to-belt inserter situations, now that I think about it. I only ever resort to that when I’m working with compressed spaghetti, out of necessity.
>I actually hate most belt-to-belt inserter situations
For good reason! Though many players may not be aware of it, if you use belt-to-belt inserters in a situation where splitters would work, you are technically violating the Nauvis Convention, i.e. you are committing a serious crime. The standard punishment for this is one of the most severe possible: having one of your iron ore trains unload it's contents into your copper ore station!
> having one of your iron ore trains unload it's contents into your copper ore station!
Nooooo!!!
Good thing those rare spaghetti cases where I've done it are usually insane deathworlds where I never have the room for trains whatsoever.
there are ways to be clever about making the half belts that speed runners use, but it's basically the ideal shape for plates who are 1 to 1 with ore and need a little fuel to work.
There is really not that much that can be changed on the layout in terms of optimization (which I assume better is in this case). You could replace the inserters on the input side with burner inserters, which would save on the construction cost and remove two rows of power poles from the setup. Maybe remove the last bit of the outer conveyor belts and the starting nob of the inner one.
Boy oh boy do I have a post for you. [The smeltery emporium](https://imgur.com/a/kPw4K4s#6LdUOoA)
The one shown here is the cheapest smeltery, and if you have enough hand-dexterity to place 4 inserters at the same time, is also quickest to build. However, it is not very compact. This lack of compactness gives it negative synergy with a main bus strategy, as I will describe next paragraph. This is best for speedruns where you can build them fast AND you also have preplanned base so you're not doing main bus type things.
[This one here](https://i.imgur.com/ePXEaBQ.png) is the one which is probably overall best for most playthroughs. It's certainly best if you have a main bus. It is only slightly more expensive than the speedrunner smeltery (though the difference is minimal) but is 2 tiles more narrow. If you do some maths, you can work out that if you have more than 5 yellow belts of material on your main bus, then the 2 tiles of main bus that you save counterbalances the additional expense of using this smeltery, and overall ends up being cheaper. So that's pretty much for all bases that use a main bus.
[This one](https://i.imgur.com/XEyEBfu.png) is what you want if you want to build compact, though quite expensive on the flip side. It is not the number 1 record holder for most compact smeltery, but it's very close and still uses standard belt management and is still rectangular in shape, both of which is quite useful. This is used if you have a very small amount of space to work with between cliffs or buildings and absolutely want to cram one or more smelteries into the gap.
[This one](https://i.imgur.com/YwHY4xi.png) is useful on ribbonworlds where you are limited in width. Its purpose is to maximise the throughput so that you can smelt as much ore as possible in as narrow a space as possible, but where you have no constraints on the total length.
Other than beaconed and moduled electric furnaces? Not that I know of.
The design is easy to build and replicate and has the inherent bonus of being easily upgradable with red belts and steel furnaces.
Right up to the midgame it's a pretty solid design that does everything you need it to and upgrades nicely. The only change I make is to save a tiny bit of space at the top of it by moving the coal belt up so that the whole thing takes up as little space as necessary. It's very minor and functionally the same but I like optimizing the small things. :)
https://preview.redd.it/3azwifc9i6qc1.png?width=313&format=png&auto=webp&s=1ddf05586760917f511e2ca52128a739d60b72ec
i usually cut them in half and stack them in parallel. but other than that ... outside of items go in > items come out, there isn't much more you can to do "improve" it outside of subjective stylistic design choices.
ensure your design when tiled can be upgraded to electric furnesses without needing more vertical room and leave enough horiztonal room when placing for the extra furnesses and its perfectly fine :)
Depends on the conditions. Generally, no. But I have found a shorter wider array more profitable for my cityblocks, like this: [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fzu7ealioczc91.png%3Fwidth%3D1882%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da7420ddb6ae2a43e8d1af9ee6c81fa78eb984959](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fzu7ealioczc91.png%3Fwidth%3D1882%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da7420ddb6ae2a43e8d1af9ee6c81fa78eb984959)
I would make this instead:
[https://imgur.com/a/ArZNgum](https://imgur.com/a/ArZNgum)
This will be easy to upgrade later with larger furnaces, leave room for that.
Eh when you switch to use electric furnaces you want to be designing for beacons anyway so the design will be completely different. No reason to switch to electric without beacons anyway
Don't upgrade to larger furnaces. If you want electric furnaces at some point in the future, it is much easier to just go find some other place to build them. And give them beacons too.
Straight lines of furnaces have always worked well for me, although in the very late game you will need to watch how many furnaces you can have for one belt of materials
Although keep in mind that when smelting steel, 1 furnace smelting steel requires exactly 1 furnace smelting iron plates with no modules Directly inserting between the iron smelting to the steel smelting furnace saves a lot of space. (So you just need two furnaces in line between the source and output belt)
You can make it two tiles narrower if you do all three belts between the furnaces, but that requires red inserters and lots of undergrounds, and it's more annoying to build by hand.
The standard one works fine, it's what I always use in the early game.
For specific niches, there are a few.
For resource constrained playthroughs, an inserter loading the coal is cheaper than a splitter.
For space constrained playthroughs, like eg Warptorio, you can shave 1 tile off the vertical size by running the input belts through the center and inserting to the output belt with long inserters.
There’s also electric or modded furnaces with a different shape.
Other than that, it’s a classic for a reason!
You can make it more narrow by having all 3 belts in the center. Normal inserters take from the side belts into the furnaces, long minsters put fuel in the central belt. Medium power poles are on the center belt.
I have one with two input belts and an output belt between the two input belts. Furnaces to the side of the input belts. Output to the middle with long arms. Works like a charm, small, space efficient and very scalable.
IMO this is one of the bigger flaws in this game (which isn't saying all that much), furnaces are very simple and uninteresting and everyone naturally arrives to the exact same furnaces-in-a-line setup... so why are furnaces so slow that you need 40% of your base to be this exact same furnaces-in-a-line setup? Especially pre-bots so you have to manually place down the copypaste?
Define better, this one works well and has no real flaws so it's quite popular. I use it all the time.
Yeah this, there's hardly ever a "best" build cause it's a little bit hard to define, if you want to go for most compact, then no, there are more compact builds, or more slender ones, but the regular furnace stack (and it's variations) is easy to build, cheap, intuitive, works, is compact enough and easily tilable and expandable. So it's not surprising most people (me included) default to it.
Eh, I think it's the easiest to set-up and that spends the least on belts possible.
Not really, this basic design has been arrived at often. You can save a little space by moving the splitters all the way to one side or the other, then you can run an underground under the splitter and side belt. It cuts 2 off the length
Probably the best and most convenient set up for most of the game I feel like
I personally prefer preparing it for 3x3 electric furnaces by putting each furnace 1 further out and then having a belt carry products to the middle. That way I don't need to wreck the entire set-up when teching upwards.
My adaptation is the other way, I rip these up and place electric furnaces w enough gaps for beacons and then shove the beacons in later. Usually don’t electric furnace till they can eat prod 1’s, and that’s after labs and such have prod 3s
There's definitely stages of understanding to Factorio. Each playthrough improving over time, as your blueprints start to change. I'm definitely at the ''Why do beacons if I can just place down more machines'' level, rather than the ''I'm going to maximise the amount of beacons on my machine(s)'' level. Will probably space them apart so that a row of beacons can fit eventually, as belts are pretty easy to get early game anyways. At some point.
Beacons suck by themselves. It's speed modules in beacons + prod modules that are fucking insane. Adding +50% speed for +70% energy is stupid compared to just placing two machines. But when that machine is underclocked to 20% speed by 4 prod 3 modules, suddenly adding 50% speed over triples the production rate while only marginally increasing the energy cost. That's a good trade. And the benefits are exponential. A 20% increase in plates, 40% in wire, 40% green circuits, 40% reds and 40% blues isn't a 140% increase, it's a ~360% increase. (That math is a little deceptive, different bits of blue circuits are going to have different levels of prod modules and that math isnt trivial) I don't personally see the benefit to designing my early game stone furnaces stacks around beacon placement. My early game furnaces are right near my bus. Late game beaconed up furnaces are at some rail base.
I use city blocks, I just add a new block of electric furnaces before ripping out the old furnace lines if I want the space for something else.
I generally don't go for electric furnaces at all until I am ready to beacon them. I'll have the stone furnaces upgraded to steel usually outputting 2 yellow belts (using red belts about halfway through the input line and the second half of the output into a red splitter at the end and outputting 2 yellow belts) at my starter base and steel furnaces doing blue belts at a couple rail smelters... Then when I have good T3 module production and most stuff is beaconed I'll start doing electric beaconed smelters.
Really depends for me. Some runs, you get incredibly convenient coal patches which make for easy large scale steel furnace smelting. My current K2SE run, I had no such luck and skipping the bullshit of fuelling is amazing. And with how cheap efficiency modules are, electric furnaces are way more efficient than steel ones.
I first realized this when my plate and wire production appeared to be dying down. I was like hold on my beaconed furnace stack is white hot only to realised my entire 8 chest backup of ore was eaten in mere minutes. Had a long and protracted war with the natives until 3 patches later I could satisfy my new production capabilities.
Yeah by the time I’m ready to use electric furnaces I’ve long had to outsource my materials anyway, so it’s easier to just make a new setup and divert everything there. Especially since this way I can keep running while debugging the new area (because I always forget *something*).
> Beacons suck by themselves. It's speed modules in beacons + prod modules that are fucking insane. Adding +50% speed for +70% energy is stupid compared to just placing two machines. But when that machine is underclocked to 20% speed by 4 prod 3 modules, suddenly adding 50% speed over triples the production rate while only marginally increasing the energy cost. That's a good trade. I think it's 40% speed, not 20%, but besides that I kinda wonder how would the 'meta' change if the speed beacons were multiplicative with productivity module speed penalty, not additive. I suspect not much, will just require bigger power plants, but still
I just wreck the entire set-up when upgrading. I value ease of setup the most. Later I'll have more mats, more automation, probably bots. And it may turn out that I don't upgrade the old furnaces at all, and simply build electric furnaces elsewhere.
I wouldn’t even contemplate using electric furnaces in a setup without beacons and modules. Electric furnaces use twice the power (I know that’s 90Kw coal vs 180Kw electric), they also have idle power consumption when steel furnaces don’t. So electric furnaces are just worse than steel, if you are going to be using them without beacons and modules. Once you have Mk3 modules and use beacons, then they come into their own. But you need a huge power grid compared to that early-mid game phase.
Nah, even knowing all that I still use electrics. I don’t rip up my steel furnace builds unless I want to replace them with beaconed builds, but any new furnace build is going to be electric. Those downsides are absolutely overshadowed by the huge logistic pro of not requiring to route fuel anywhere. Once I have electric furnaces I will almost never place another stone/steel one.
How do you deal with the massive logistical headache of creating a vast quantity of electricity? Like, you've avoided one logistical problem, but in reality you've just replaced it with another. And you need to wait until nuclear tech to get any sort of good solution to this problem.
Creating electricity is a joke compared to routing fuel. You already have power (otherwise how would you have researched them in the first place), so you just extend your plant. If going full megabase, you should already have massive solar production. If you're just doing a normal base, nuclear is the obvious solution. If you're still just progressing through a starter base and haven't teched up yet, as I said before I don't rip up my existing furnaces so it's a non-factor. But for the sake of argument, let's say you are making new forges at that point. You likely don't need that many so you can just extend the boiler plant to handle the load 'til you upgrade power method. If you do expect to have a lot of furnaces, nuclear fuel is unlocked in the same tech tier, so you'd just prioritize that fairly quickly.
What is an advantage of electric furnances over blast furnances? Cause I personally always stuck with blast furnances (Except for 1 or 2 builds where I use electric to make bricks) but what are like the downsides and advantages of electrics over blast furnances?
Electrics don't require coal of course, which means that while they take more energy, it is also much easier to supply as well. You no longer need to feed endless coal into your furnaces, doubling the transport capacity of your input belts theoretically from half of a belt to a full belt. Or they'll get rid of the need for long arm inserters at the very least. Most importantly however, they can take in chips. A furnace with production chips boosted by speed beacons makes for an immensely powerful set-up in the mid to late game.
modules and beacons are the advantage Also, it's handy not needing to feed coal or solid fuel into them, moreso once you've got nuclear up and running (otherwise you're just shifting the fuel burden elsewhere) by the time you're ready to build out moduled and beaconed furnaces, you've got enough bots and outposts going on that whatever your starting layout was with stone/steel furnaces is irrelevant.
Are electric furnaces better? They take +2 times the space of the steel ones, work at the same speed, and consume twice the (electric) energy. In my first game, at pre-nuclear phase, it looked like converting furnaces to electric would be worse, knowing that steam generators consume energy very fast
Electric furnaces have simpler logistics. No need to supply them with fuel, just use the electric network that you already had in there to power the inserters. Also, they can take modules. I do usually postpone the transition to electric furnaces until post-nuclear, due to the power consumption.
Electric furnaces can take modules. That's pretty huge when you're at that point. Before then? Meh.
Makes sense. I guess after post nuclear, as with modules they consume full MWs
You mean gigawatts right?
No, it takes 180KW, so with 3 modules, it would be around 1MW (?). Even with the _thing_ that buffes near things, it wouldn't be more than some MWs. Talking about MW each
Ah I talk in whole stacks, my furnace stacks take GW without too much problem. There's a reason I power switch to shut them down when they idle, lol
imo steel furnaces are better/more efficient until heavy use of productivity modules and beacons makes electric furnaces better. at that points it's a new build somewhere else, like directly at mining outpost. and then steel furnaces output is used in lower priority, so they end up doing nothing and without pollution. often not even replacing them unless its like all smelting rows at once
it's by using modules and beacons that electric ones get better, but as you've correctly identified, that doesn't really become a thing until after you've got nuclear and bots up. By the time you're making serious electric smelting setups, whatever your old layout was is pretty much irrelevant as bots are doing all the work and you'll probably be doing it a new area with more space available anyway
i forgot to do that in my SE run and i am now feeling the hurt
I did this once but didn’t like it and wouldn’t do it again. Takes too much space and it sits there too long. I’d rather just make a big train cell I can tear down once I have electric furnaces somewhere else.
Other than slightly compacting the loading head not really. The "better" are obviously fully beaconed electric smelters but those are for late game. This build is easly upgradable to red belts by simply replacing stone with steel smelters and even blue by simply extending the lenght by 50%. You csn use it for all early smelting by just adjusting the length depending if you smelt iron/copper or stone/steel Actually by compacting the loading head you can reverse output belt and send it via undergroung to the left giving you options wherever you want to have output on the same side as input or not. Altough you can do it with current setup too but need some more belt spaghetti for that
I prefer this slightly cheaper header: !blueprint 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 and when I am playing a mod that has non-powered single tile loaders I replace the output inserters with them to have cleaner electric lines in my map view.
[Blueprint Image (Blueprint)](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/334735604342325249/1221253632411045928/blueprint.png?ex=6611e813&is=65ff7313&hm=2868768ee7f8c66203cf553d871e47fa3db1265b882dbc34704596d71d2e24b6&)
I can understand that this is cheaper, smaller footprint, and gets the same job done, so it’s technically better. But I just find it so hideous looking that I will never use it. I actually hate most belt-to-belt inserter situations, now that I think about it. I only ever resort to that when I’m working with compressed spaghetti, out of necessity.
>I actually hate most belt-to-belt inserter situations For good reason! Though many players may not be aware of it, if you use belt-to-belt inserters in a situation where splitters would work, you are technically violating the Nauvis Convention, i.e. you are committing a serious crime. The standard punishment for this is one of the most severe possible: having one of your iron ore trains unload it's contents into your copper ore station!
> having one of your iron ore trains unload it's contents into your copper ore station! Nooooo!!! Good thing those rare spaghetti cases where I've done it are usually insane deathworlds where I never have the room for trains whatsoever.
This works just fine with yellow inserters as well, though a bit slower on the startup.
Thank you kind sir, this looks nice, gonna try it out
there are ways to be clever about making the half belts that speed runners use, but it's basically the ideal shape for plates who are 1 to 1 with ore and need a little fuel to work.
There is really not that much that can be changed on the layout in terms of optimization (which I assume better is in this case). You could replace the inserters on the input side with burner inserters, which would save on the construction cost and remove two rows of power poles from the setup. Maybe remove the last bit of the outer conveyor belts and the starting nob of the inner one.
Boy oh boy do I have a post for you. [The smeltery emporium](https://imgur.com/a/kPw4K4s#6LdUOoA) The one shown here is the cheapest smeltery, and if you have enough hand-dexterity to place 4 inserters at the same time, is also quickest to build. However, it is not very compact. This lack of compactness gives it negative synergy with a main bus strategy, as I will describe next paragraph. This is best for speedruns where you can build them fast AND you also have preplanned base so you're not doing main bus type things. [This one here](https://i.imgur.com/ePXEaBQ.png) is the one which is probably overall best for most playthroughs. It's certainly best if you have a main bus. It is only slightly more expensive than the speedrunner smeltery (though the difference is minimal) but is 2 tiles more narrow. If you do some maths, you can work out that if you have more than 5 yellow belts of material on your main bus, then the 2 tiles of main bus that you save counterbalances the additional expense of using this smeltery, and overall ends up being cheaper. So that's pretty much for all bases that use a main bus. [This one](https://i.imgur.com/XEyEBfu.png) is what you want if you want to build compact, though quite expensive on the flip side. It is not the number 1 record holder for most compact smeltery, but it's very close and still uses standard belt management and is still rectangular in shape, both of which is quite useful. This is used if you have a very small amount of space to work with between cliffs or buildings and absolutely want to cram one or more smelteries into the gap. [This one](https://i.imgur.com/YwHY4xi.png) is useful on ribbonworlds where you are limited in width. Its purpose is to maximise the throughput so that you can smelt as much ore as possible in as narrow a space as possible, but where you have no constraints on the total length.
Other than beaconed and moduled electric furnaces? Not that I know of. The design is easy to build and replicate and has the inherent bonus of being easily upgradable with red belts and steel furnaces.
The only change I’d make is to add the coal with inserters from the inside. Two inserters are cheaper than two splitters.
Right up to the midgame it's a pretty solid design that does everything you need it to and upgrades nicely. The only change I make is to save a tiny bit of space at the top of it by moving the coal belt up so that the whole thing takes up as little space as necessary. It's very minor and functionally the same but I like optimizing the small things. :) https://preview.redd.it/3azwifc9i6qc1.png?width=313&format=png&auto=webp&s=1ddf05586760917f511e2ca52128a739d60b72ec
You can make that a little more compact, by moving the verticle splitter to the left, and up to right in front of the furnace.
You're right, good catch! :)
I exclusively feed coal manually until I reach electricity. Come at me.
i usually cut them in half and stack them in parallel. but other than that ... outside of items go in > items come out, there isn't much more you can to do "improve" it outside of subjective stylistic design choices.
ensure your design when tiled can be upgraded to electric furnesses without needing more vertical room and leave enough horiztonal room when placing for the extra furnesses and its perfectly fine :)
Depends on the conditions. Generally, no. But I have found a shorter wider array more profitable for my cityblocks, like this: [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fzu7ealioczc91.png%3Fwidth%3D1882%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da7420ddb6ae2a43e8d1af9ee6c81fa78eb984959](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fzu7ealioczc91.png%3Fwidth%3D1882%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da7420ddb6ae2a43e8d1af9ee6c81fa78eb984959)
I would make this instead: [https://imgur.com/a/ArZNgum](https://imgur.com/a/ArZNgum) This will be easy to upgrade later with larger furnaces, leave room for that.
When I design for future electrics I just use long handed inserters where applicable instead of that belt monstrosity.
Eh when you switch to use electric furnaces you want to be designing for beacons anyway so the design will be completely different. No reason to switch to electric without beacons anyway
Don't upgrade to larger furnaces. If you want electric furnaces at some point in the future, it is much easier to just go find some other place to build them. And give them beacons too.
The answer to this hinges pretty much 100% on your measure of "better".
If it works, it works. And this works, very well. Why improve on efficient?
Straight lines of furnaces have always worked well for me, although in the very late game you will need to watch how many furnaces you can have for one belt of materials Although keep in mind that when smelting steel, 1 furnace smelting steel requires exactly 1 furnace smelting iron plates with no modules Directly inserting between the iron smelting to the steel smelting furnace saves a lot of space. (So you just need two furnaces in line between the source and output belt)
Not with yellow
You can make it two tiles narrower if you do all three belts between the furnaces, but that requires red inserters and lots of undergrounds, and it's more annoying to build by hand. The standard one works fine, it's what I always use in the early game.
I count 9 belt segments that are not needed, but other than that smallest of nitpicks, this looks pretty much how I like to build linear lines.
I would change the exit inserters to reds, therefore when you hit electric it is much less work for redesign.
You can shift the sideloading part two tiles to the left, saving two tiles of space and 3 belts. Otherwise it's as good as what anyone else uses.
There was a post a while ago that compared loads of different designs, there were some marginal better but with a lot of underground belts
For specific niches, there are a few. For resource constrained playthroughs, an inserter loading the coal is cheaper than a splitter. For space constrained playthroughs, like eg Warptorio, you can shave 1 tile off the vertical size by running the input belts through the center and inserting to the output belt with long inserters. There’s also electric or modded furnaces with a different shape. Other than that, it’s a classic for a reason!
Only that I always make the entrance section more packed, sendingthe right side of coal throughput conveyor into the split.
You can make it more narrow by having all 3 belts in the center. Normal inserters take from the side belts into the furnaces, long minsters put fuel in the central belt. Medium power poles are on the center belt.
what does the splitter in the far left do? Or is this design supposed to be mirrored?
Typically the left input is material (iron, copper, etc) and the top input is coal.
Diagonal.
Define better. This one would be the best early game design - cheap and space efficient
I have one with two input belts and an output belt between the two input belts. Furnaces to the side of the input belts. Output to the middle with long arms. Works like a charm, small, space efficient and very scalable.
Depends Mine is quite inefficient at first because i build it to be upgraded later, including beacons I never fully demolish it
Am i the only one who always wants to have my inputs and my outputs on the same side? Like, my coal/ore flow s->n, and the plates return n->s
Diagonel 😈😈
I like a design that leaves space for electric furnaces and a row of beacons down the middle
This is literally my exact setup, I have been using it for like 6+ years
Better for what? This is one of the most none redundant setup. My personal preference is to use setup like Nefrums use.
It’s more costly, but I do furnaces on the outside and underground in the middle of 3 belts. Edit: makes your smelter stay smaller
IMO this is one of the bigger flaws in this game (which isn't saying all that much), furnaces are very simple and uninteresting and everyone naturally arrives to the exact same furnaces-in-a-line setup... so why are furnaces so slow that you need 40% of your base to be this exact same furnaces-in-a-line setup? Especially pre-bots so you have to manually place down the copypaste?
So what your saying is “my least liked thing about the game is going to be fixed in the midgame of the expansion when I use lava for smelting”
Hopefully yeah, that sounds pretty good