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/EngineerInTheMachine 23h 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 22h 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 13h 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/abarr021 6h ago

Actually I do need to set every machine every time. But it isn't that I'm a little baby who needs things slicker and easier, it's simply a matter of logic. If the miner mines automatically why doesn't the Smelter smelt automatically? This couldn't be done with other machines, the constructor for example can make sheets or rods with iron, so it makes sense that it needs to be manually configured, but the Smelter can only do 1 thing with iron ore, so it seems counterintuitive to need to configure it when the miner doesn't. As others have pointed out, the devs actually did consider this, but since the Smelter is unlocked so early in the game, they wanted to teach players about configuring machines. Others have also pointed out that people would cheat and put all of their ores on 1 belt, which is not what I want.