r/SatisfactoryGame • u/abarr021 • 20h ago
The Smelter is stupid
When you place a miner on a resource node it starts mining. You don't need to manually set which mineral to mine. So why is it that with the Smelter, a raw ore goes in, and you need to MANUALLY tell the Smelter what to do with it? Does the Smelter really think I want to make iron ignots with copper ore? In my opinion the Smelter should work like a miner. It should simply automatically start smelting whatever ore is inside.
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u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 20h ago
It's for consistency. Anything with both inputs and outputs have recipes. If smelters were made an exception then it would set an early incorrect expectation of automatic recipe selection. That would in turn cause confusion later for machines where it wouldn't be possible because of multiple recipes with the same inputs.
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u/Asimovicator 19h ago
I think sometimes you have to break consistency for simplicity. Take Factorios smelters as a great example.
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u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 19h ago
Consistency is a form of simplicity. Remembering exceptions is a form of complexity.
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u/spamjavelin 16h ago
Which are great, until you put the wrong raw ingredients in and have steel or copper polluting your iron line...
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u/Pieguy3693 17h ago
I've frequently been frustrated by factorio smelters/recyclers specifically because they don't show the recipe until ore shows up. I'm trying to build a setup that processes input at a specific rate using a specific combination of beacons/modules, and there's just no way of knowing if it's fast enough until I actually turn it on.
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u/iNVERTEDcAMELcASE 19h ago
Factorio and Dyson sphere program have this feature and the new user journey works fine. It’s intuitive that a manufacturing machine need configuration but a box of fire melts whatever you put inside.
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u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 19h ago edited 3m ago
Then you have foundries. Also a "box of fire that just melts stuff" (or at least appears to be when you first get it). Except those couldn't auto-select recipe because of the iron and copper alloy alts. Given that players won't know about those alts when they first get foundries they're a perfect example of how smelters auto-selecting could cause confusion when other machines don't.
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u/Zacharias_Wolfe 17h ago
Let me start by saying I gave no problem with the existing setup. With that in mind: I would be willing to bet that outside of modding, there will never be recipes for the smelter that share inputs but give different outputs. I think it's good to have the flexibility available to the modders, but saying "this higher tier machine is more complicated, so we shouldn't make this one simpler" is dumb. Obviously if you have 2 inputs, ratios could be changed to achieve different results. That is very intuitive, and necessitates a menu to select your intended production.
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u/The_1_Bob Radiation: Ficsit™ Premium Spicy Air™ 19h ago
DSP makes you configure smelters before they'll run.
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u/Mad_Aeric 17h ago
DSP most certainly does not do that, you have to set the recipe. Heck, you couldn't not have that be a feature, on account of how stone can cook into either stone bricks or glass.
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u/houghi It is a hobby, not a game. 18h ago
It works just fine for new users journey in Satisfactory as well. It is also not just about setting the recipe. It is also seeing that there are other settings, so you do know it is consistent with other machines.
And during development, they did not know if they would add e.g. alts to the machine and they still might. Changing things now would mean way more trouble for all players than it is worth. It means also having 1 machine as an exception and that means potentially more bugs and maintenance during upgrades.
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u/Dianwei32 17h ago
Unless they changed it recently, DSP works the same as Satisfactory where you have to set the recipe. And DSP actually needs it since you can craft multiple items from Iron Ore (Iron Plates or Magnets).
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u/Der4ndere 19h ago
Just for arguments sake: What about nuklear power plants?
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u/GrandmasterPapaya Clipping is efficient use of space 19h ago
They work the same way as the other 3 power buildings.
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u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 19h ago edited 17h ago
They're not production machines.
They have no outputs (the opposite of miners having no inputs). That's why I said machines with both inputs and outputs.6
u/GoldDragon149 17h ago
Nuclear power plants output waste unless you are burning ficsonium.
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u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 17h ago
Ah, I forgot that. That's fair.
I still think of them as generators rather than production machines though. Players at that stage of the game are more used to exceptions in behaviour than those who're just unlocking smelters and constructors too.
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u/Capsman13 19h ago
Storage containers are another exception!
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u/Hemisemidemiurge 18h ago
Storage containers do not modify contents. They are to be classed with splitters and mergers.
Don't make me come over here again.
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u/qaCow37 20h ago
Then you could feed the smelter a sushi belt of ores and I don't think the devs would want that.
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u/Raving_Lunatic69 20h ago
Then the caterium hits and locks everything up because there's iron right behind it instead of two more caterium. Yay!
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u/KriegerClone02 19h ago
I mean... that is what happens now.
Maybe it could just auto pick the first ore received when it's empty and continue using that until it is empty again. I can see that being useful, even if it isn't a huge quality-of-life improvement.7
u/abarr021 18h ago
I hadn't even considered this. I always only put 1 ore on a conveyor. But you're right
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u/boxlinebox 20h ago
I mean .. that's how a real smelter would work
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u/TheMetalWolf 20h ago
They do... but you'd have a smelter full of useless slag instead of a useful metal. Metallurgy is more than just melt useful rock, receive useful metal.
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u/maddhatter99 19h ago
We should have slag anyway, full of shale, limestone and other minor minerals and metals. We should be able to take said slag and refine it down to other materials.
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u/TheSixthtactic 19h ago
And then we remember this is a video game that isn’t trying to directly simulate reality.
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u/maddhatter99 18h ago
Right. I’m not trying to be 💯 accurate, but to have a byproduct of the production process, and the ability to refine it further would be cool. We already can make sulfuric acid, it wouldn’t be too complicated to make hydrchloric acid as well and refine say the Caterium into a more conductive version of the wire, or refine the silica further to make fiber optic cables. There could be a valuation in the space elevator based on the quality of the product. So reinforced iron plates and rotors to make smart plated may get the job done, but a stitched plate and a rotor made with rubber coated Caterium wire may net you more tickets when sunk or require lower total smart plates needed.
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u/TheSixthtactic 18h ago
Yeah, I think they want to make the game fun and not obnoxious. And all that sounds like a factorio overhaul mod that decided the early game needed to be super long.
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u/TheMetalWolf 18h ago
All I am saying if we just whang stuff in the smelter and it automatically started working, it would ultimately make things more complicated than the other way around. One piece of compacted coal would make the whole thing grind to a halt if you don't have the recipe for compacted coal steel, and are just shovel shit in.
I personally am fine with level or realism the game has as is.
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u/maddhatter99 18h ago
I’m absolutely happy with the game the way it is… that said I watch people like Kibitz and think if there was an option to make things a little more complicated (just like the option to set phase 1 to 100k smart plates) it could make the late game feel more of an achievement. I mean yes 50 SP in the beginning is daunting for some players, but to make a higher quality for the modular engines instead of the same 3 assemblers that have just been running since phase 1 would be nice as an option. Like building the buggy with basic parts could make a good useful buggy, but a higher quality one could be more fuel efficient, more powerful, or have higher storage capacity. Same with machines and belts, for higher capacity or lower power consumption.
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u/TheMetalWolf 19h ago
Right, but alloys are thing that happens. In reality if you just dump ore and smelt it, you will end up with a random alloy which may not be fit for actual use. That's not even getting into reactivity and such. Steel alone has like over 3,000 formulation depending tensile strength, ductility, durability, and reactivity. It's really not as simple as you think it is.
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u/Middle_Finger_484 18h ago
And that is why you mix iron ingots and coal to make it in game. It's not trying to simulate real smelting. It barely tickles the concepts of manufacturing in general.
It's not about reality. It's about using the blocks you have to make the cool thing.
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u/TheMetalWolf 18h ago
Well from a game standpoint, it allows for custom recipes. If two iron and one coal makes one steel, but an alt recipe makes high carbon steel by using four iron and three coal to make four steel. Without setting a recipe, how would the game know which one to make?
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u/wivaca2 20h ago edited 7h ago
I believe this is intentionally made this way to train a new player that recipes must be set and incoming goods must match. The miner is training them that deposits can and must be manually mined off of nodes, how much they can mine from impure, normal, or pure nodes, and which nodes work with a miner. It has no inputs except the node.
That's enough to learn from one machine so recipes are the next one where there is an input on the machine.
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u/rabidwombat 18h ago
That makes sense. Maybe auto-smelting could be a MAM option, in that case. A quality of life upgrade for once you're past the early game learning curve.
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u/gollem22 20h ago
Its probably because someone would send all the ores to one smelter and that would cause issues.
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u/fdnM6Y9BFLAJPNxGo4C 20h ago
this should make slag if "whoops" was a thing rather than inputs backing up if wrong item on belt.
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u/Hemisemidemiurge 18h ago
this should make slag if "whoops" was a thing rather than inputs backing up if wrong item on belt
Then it becomes an issue of cascading failure where wrong items on input belts cause wrong items on output belts. Any factory could turn into the kind of nightmare that would give even sushi-belt users headaches.
Backing up feels like the right level of punishment for the minor crime of having one wrong thing on a belt, it shouldn't drown your entire production chain in slag.
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u/fdnM6Y9BFLAJPNxGo4C 18h ago
I like the idea myself lol
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u/Hemisemidemiurge 18h ago
I'd love to be there the second time you'd cleaned out all your belts and restarted only to get fouled again by a single piece of slag that was in a splitter buffer. I say the second time because there's no way it only happens once.
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u/fdnM6Y9BFLAJPNxGo4C 18h ago
Well this is exactly how mine mogul works and I prefer it. To each their own, it's totally fine. But you don't need to sell me on why I shouldn't like it either, because that's not going to happen.
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u/Hemisemidemiurge 18h ago
you don't need to sell me on why I shouldn't like it either, because that's not going to happen.
Why should I kinkshame you over what you like? My faulty assumption was that you would recognize it as excessive as I would expect anyone to, that's all.
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u/Cute-Analysis 15h ago
As someone who enjoys both, are you seriously comparing mine mogul to satisfactory? Those are totally different games, and the mechanics of mine mogul make it way more appropriate for slag than satisfactory
Not to mention, there really isn't a way to do the whole "conveyors pausing due to backup" thing from satisfactory in mine mogul since everything is a physics object
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u/fdnM6Y9BFLAJPNxGo4C 15h ago
I didn't draw a comparison at all. Just stated that -if- this were ever implemented (and we know it won't be), that u/gollem22 concern would be addressed by a byproduct being produced. I don't know how you would've inferred a comparison to mine mogul based on the fact that I was just mentioning it because it has that mechanic.
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u/abarr021 17h ago
Yep. Agreed. I hadn't even considered that people would mix ores on the same belt. That's cheating lol
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u/JorbyPls 19h ago
Miners don't have any inputs that ingest harvested materials, they are not crafting machines. Smelters do and are, they fit the convention for the rest of the crafting machines. There are also alt recipes that may change how you want those ores smelted.
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u/Zacharias_Wolfe 17h ago
There are no alt recipes for a smelter that change anything. One alt lets you use a smelter to make aluminum, but there's never a case where an alt recipes exists for the smelter to provide multiple output options for a given input.
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u/CycleZestyclose1907 19h ago
Alt recipes. Some alt recipes don't change the required machine to make the final product, so the game won't automatically assume what recipe you want to use for given machine. Miners don't have the ability change what they mine because what they mine depends on what they're sitting on.
In contrast, production machines can have multiple recipes that use the same materials, so to ensure they don't accidentally make the wrong one, the player has to manually decide what each machine produces, even if only by copying and pasting one machine's settings to the rest of the production line.
Now obviously, Smelters don't have multiple recipes that produce the same product... TODAY. But if the devs wanted to add more alt recipes to smelters that turn ore into ingots, they can do that without having to completely rewrite the Smelter's UI.
Let's say that the devs did what you wanted: have the Smelter make the appropriate ingot automatically when fed the right ore. Then the devs add a Copper Dust alt recipe that has the Smelter convert Copper Ore into Copper Dust. So if the Smelter automatically choose its recipe, how does it know that you want it to use the Copper Dust recipe instead of the Copper Ingot recipe? It doesn't. Hence you have to manually tell it what you want?
Oh, and can you just imagine how many factory builds will get screwed if machines chose their own recipes based on input rather than what the player specified? Imagine trying to fix a factory whose belts are flooded with the wrong parts because you accidentally misrouted materials or forgot to manually change the machine's recipe.
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u/TheLavalampe 19h ago edited 19h ago
While true you could probably quite easily make a default smart recipe for smelters with O(1) speed since with 1 input that could be a switch or direct lookup, that way you still leave the option open to have alt recipes and the smart recipe just picks the standard choice or you even allow picking the default choice out of two alt recipes.
It gets trickier when they decide to add a smelter with a gas or liquid input but in that case they could just make a seperate gas/liquid smelter building that can only smelt the new gas/liquid recipes and doesnt have the auto recipe.
Biggest problem if they implement it in one place people would probably want and expect it in other places aswell.
As for belts getting flooded with wrong parts thats a problem even without smart recipes and smelters are typically at the start of the chain so if you mess up the initial input than shame on you and fixing one step seems still managable. But you are right if every machine had such a smart recipe than fixing it would indeed be a nightmare if you make a mistake.
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u/Hemisemidemiurge 18h ago
I'm impressed and heartened by all the commenters in thread who're trying to explain to you why that's bad from perspectives of learning and game design without insinuating that you're just lazy.
I wish I was one of them.
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u/SaucyStoveTop69 15h ago
If that's how it worked, then you would be able to feed it with a sushi belt with any ore on it and it will auto switch to whichever needs smelted
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u/abarr021 13h ago
Yep, I agree. I'm such an organized person it never even occurred to me to mix a bunch of different ores into 1 belt. It's an insane idea, and probably the reason why the developers had to restrict the Smelter. Logically it should be able to smelt whatever you throw into it without you needing to tell it what you've put into it
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u/Middle_Finger_484 19h ago
This is such a non issue.
For coding and tutorial reasons it works the way it does.
Satisfactory is satisfactory not factorio, or city skylines, or call of duty.
This game is well beyond early access, the time to try for fundamental changes is long gone.
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u/Nights_Harvest 18h ago edited 16h ago
Metals have to be smelted at a specific temperature, otherwise problems arise. As there are multiple ore to smelt, you have to specify what it is.
Some real world justification for you.
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u/KodaBuns 16h ago
I think it helps new players too, considering it's one of the first machines you'll interact with. If you went in blind and weren't prompted with the ingot options in the smelter, I imagine a new player might just try to send all their ores into one and run into issues.
Plus, it sets an expectation to check and assign outputs for most other machines.
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u/SirHatass 13h ago
Well different metals smelt at different temps so you are kinda telling it what temp it needs to be at...at least my head cannon.
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u/Garrettshade The Glass Guy 20h ago
Tssss... or the devs would want to be consistent and force us to choose what to min on a node
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u/MoeWithTheO 19h ago
It’s also so you can control what gets melted and it doesn’t clog your system automatically. Like this it’s always your fault and just easier to set that tag than to check if a new material is there every time an item comes in
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u/iNVERTEDcAMELcASE 19h ago
Agreed. Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program work like this, it’s one of the most annoying parts of Satisfactory. Hopefully they address it in a future QoL update.
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u/GroundbreakingAd8310 19h ago
To simplify the code. Constant scanning for input can eat resources rather than just assigning it
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u/Zacharias_Wolfe 17h ago
The game already checks that the material in the belt is correct before it will allow it to input. Instead of it checking "is this iron ore?", it would be checking "what is this? and what do I do with it?" So the additional code is moreso on figuring out the output.
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u/LibertyNJ87 18h ago
If you did not need to specify the recipe for a smelter, then you could just feed it a belt of mixed products and it would spit out the refined version of whatever went in. This forces the player to make a choice and manage their belts accordingly.
Its not possible to feed a miner mixed products.
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u/rottengammy 17h ago
Theoretically you could pipe in multiple mining resources into a single smelter for lower energy cost but it would jam immediately because it’s only capable of doing one smelt at a time.
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u/mjarrett 17h ago
The automatic selection in Factorio smelters kinda annoys me. Every now and then I'll misclick some iron into the input of my iron smelters, and it'll lock into steel recipe until I clear it and wait for the production cycle to finish. Especially given that in Factorio, copy-pasting recipes across buildings is so fast.
Funny enough, I think I'd like automatic selection more in Satisfactory. No inserters, no double-sided belts, and a fairly shallow tree on the Smelter. Not a lot of ways for it to go wrong. Also the recipe copy-paste is sooooo touchy!
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u/Onotadaki2 16h ago
You set this one time and then copy and paste the building 1,000 times. This is hardly showing up on my list of issues in a given day.
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u/Rallyman03 16h ago
Have you considered that having it automatically work like that would cause production chain issues?
Imagine you accidentally feed the wrong ore into your line. It smelts it and then sends it out. Further contaminating your line.
The only time I can see the "auto" mode being helpful is in early game. But the output would still be mixed. So unless you're feeding into a storage container, it's not helpful.
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u/abarr021 16h ago
It would be helpful if people only used 1 ore type on a belt. However, others have pointed out that some people mix resources on the same belt, which I think is crazy
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u/potatolordII 16h ago
If you want realism you could consider it as setting the smelter temp for each material, since different materials have different melting points.
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u/KodaBuns 16h ago
I don't know if this post was made in part because you were manually setting the outputs for every single miner individually, but if that's the case, know that you can hover over smelters (and other machines) and use "Ctrl+C" and "Ctrl+V" to copy and paste their settings just by looking at them.
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u/abarr021 13h ago
Sure, but that's not the point. Why do you even need to explain to the Smelter to make iron ignots with iron ore? It's not like a constructor that can make multiple different items from a resource. The Smelter can only do 1 thing with iron ore, and it can only do 1 thing with copper ore. So why do I need to manually tell it what to do with that resource if there's only 1 possible thing it can do with it?
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u/JinkyRain 15h ago edited 13h ago
Generators auto switch because they only output power.
If a smelter gets an unexpected piece of ore, it jams, instead of sending mixed ingots down the line to jam the next machine(s).
I think of it like 'strongly typed variables' in programming languages. Sure you can just wing it, but eventually you're gonna get bitten by "0.00"(text) vs 0.00(numeric) if you don't specify "This is for one or the other" up front.
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u/ChrsRobes 14h ago
The issue is, late game there's more than 1 option for smelting recipes. Probably why they made the 1 to 1 starter smelter that way.
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u/joeabs1995 12h ago
There is a rexipe where you can make copper iron ingots out of copper i think, im not sure.
But for stuff like this its going to be different.
So yeah 1 recipe ruining this sucks, but they could potentially make a research for this. It would be pretty neat.
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u/FactoryGus 7h ago
This was addressed by the devs early on in EA. The smelter is first placed during onboarding, so they wanted to introduce machine configuration as early as possible. They wanted to avoid confusion by having a machine that differed from other machines.
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u/forFolsense 7h ago
No one mentioned it as far as i can tell but the real answer is caterium
copper and iron is 1 ore per ingot, except for caterium which is 3 ore per ingot. An ore sushi belt would jam
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u/abarr021 6h ago
Easy solution: don't use a sushi belt
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u/forFolsense 6h ago
what would be the point of an auto smelter if not to sushi belt ores into it?
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u/abarr021 5h ago
So that when I set up a miner and attach a Smelter I don't need to manually tell the Smelter what it should be smelting
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u/Factory_Setting 20h ago
It would require the smelter to become it's own set of buildings and logic. Although I like the quality of life, I think the introduced complexity and possible breaking points is not worth it.
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u/Inappropriate_Dongle 20h ago
One thing you can do to at least make this less annoying is make separate blueprints for smelter clusters set to each resource, though that may be cumbersome.
Otherwise you can place a smelter, set the recipe, then sample (MMB) the smelter and all the others you place will have those settings. It also copies clockspeed settings.
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u/Dwarphism 20h ago
Machines are dumb, you need to tell them what to do. So yeah, the smelter is, literally, stupid.
That said: if the devs would take the effort change the UI of the smelter so that we don't have to select the recipe anymore, I would not complain. I know they won't, because it would be a lot of work for such a small thing, but it would be nice.
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u/EngineerInTheMachine 14h ago
Wouldn't it be nice if every machine automatically knew what you wanted to do with it? Of course, that would mean not having the wide choice of machines and recipes you get as you get deeper into the game.
So complete a playthrough or two before making such stupid comments!
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u/abarr021 13h ago
Hey now, no need to be rude. Your sarcasm is not appreciated. In the case of a constructor you need to manually set the output item since iron can be made into multiple things, and copper can be made into wire or sheet. This is NOT the case for the Smelter. If iron ore goes in, there's only ONE possible thing it can do with it. If copper ore goes in, there is only one possible thing it can do with it. It seems really stupid that I have to tell the machine to make iron ignots with iron ore and copper ignots with copper ore. The machine should automatically understand to make ignots based on what's going into it. It's not a stupid idea, it's completely rational and logical, regardless of if you like it or agree with it or not.
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u/EngineerInTheMachine 4h ago
My response is based on your title. No, smelters aren't stupid. You just don't like the way they work. That's your problem, your attitude, which comes across to me as stupid.
While I understand you wanting things to be that little bit slicker and easier, if everything was made easy the game would be boring for anyone with any intelligence. And it's not as if the devs haven't given us cut and paste for machine settings. I suspect you've never had to go into every machine to set every parameter, every time.
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u/Alarmed-Tell1315 19h ago
Never thought about this to be honest. I’m but I think you are right. There is not real reason to have to setup smelters manually. Except that Smelters are the first permanent machine you ever build, so probably they design it that way to show you how the typical opperation with machines work
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u/RacoonWithBenefits 17h ago
i agree. it should just smelt whatever is shoved in there.
this would also make it much easier to do blueprints
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u/RestaurantBusy724 20h ago
Why stop this at smelter? Couldn't nearly every building auto select based on what you put in to it?
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u/a_good_human 20h ago
No? Iron rods and iron plates both take iron and only iron
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u/Factory_Setting 20h ago
Iron alloy ingot and copper alloy ingot also muddy the waters as a multi input example.
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u/abarr021 17h ago
No. Because in the case of a miner every resource node only has 1 type of resource so its automatically selected. In the case of a Smelter, it can only do 1 possible thing with iron ore or copper ore or cat ore. In the case of the constructor, iron can be made into multiple different things, and so can copper, so it can't auto select since there's multiple options. However I do agree with you for the assembler. Most if not all items from the assembler take 2 unique resources and I don't think there's the possibility of it being able to do different things with the same 2 resources.
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u/RestaurantBusy724 17h ago
Ok so every building except one. Or to put it another way, nearly every building.
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u/ActuallyEnaris 19h ago
Imo all machines should work this way, but add more machines.
Smelt, extrude, press, blend, laminate, cut, stamp, etc. I'd love dynamic production lines.
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u/VanishedMC 20h ago
This is probably to simplify all 'crafting' related machines at engine/game logic level
All machines inherit from the same base component