Underpowered Electrolyser Electrode?
So I was getting ready to switch my slag production over to "dirt water separation 2" which doubles the slag production, when I had to stop myself after doing some calculations that seem to show that this is a really bad slag production method.
Using my current level of technology (molten steel, processed iron, mineral catalyst iron ore sorting), 1 Electrolyser Electrode costs:
- 1 charcoal
- 7.5 slag
- miscellaneous oxygen, sulfuric acid, steam and purified water
So with 4 seconds of recipe time, I can make 1 slag using dirt water separation 1, or using dirt water separation 2, I can run the recipe twice making 2 slag... but costing me 40% of a Electrolyser Electrode, which even ignoring everything else (the other ingredients and the processing efforts), means I'm spending .4*7.5=3.0 slag. So I'm SPENDING 3 slag (plus other ingredients and a bunch of processing time) in order to gain just 1 slag.
Even as I get future technologies (steel sheet coil, better sorting, iron pellets, etc), even if I can cut the cost of steel by 1/3 (I don't think those techs are THAT powerful, are they?), I'm still just barely breaking even on just the pure slag costs to run dirt water separation 2.
Am I missing something, or why would anyone use dirt water separation 2 at its current cost level?
Posted Jul 10, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC
You're not missing anything. The "advanced" electrolyzer recipes are just plain terrible. With the lvl 3 ingot recipes, ingot mixing, AND coil casting they are sort of competitive, but at that point, why even bother? The change to electrolyzers cemented geodes as the best mineral sludge creation recipe by a decent margin.
Angel seems to go with an iterative balancing method where the new stuff (alternate paths) starts out terrible and after 6-12 months gives it a rework. That's probably better than the alternative of introducing brokenly overpowered stuff, but can be pretty lame sometimes.
I think u/HodorTargaryen's post shows what's actually going on in this particular case: the advanced electrolyzer recipes are really there as an option for regular Angel's, where you run electrolysis to get hydrogen and oxygen, not to intentionally get slag. In the end Seablock is an extension of AB, so Trainwreck didn't decide to remove it, even though in Seablock you almost certainly would not want to use it except maybe very very late game.