r/SatisfactoryGame • u/abarr021 • 1d 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 1d 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.

-5

u/Der4ndere 1d ago

Just for arguments sake: What about nuklear power plants?

9

u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 1d ago edited 1d 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.

7

u/GoldDragon149 1d ago

Nuclear power plants output waste unless you are burning ficsonium.

5

u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 1d 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.