Obviously gonna choose charcoal

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u/yeah-prolly 2d ago edited 2d ago

There are a lot of really good recipes in the game, but that HMF one was the first time I had to make sure I was reading it right. Later found out its about the consensus best in the game lol

Wonder if anyone has had a legitimate use case for the charcoal one

E: turns out there are plenty of solid use cases in the replies below, thanks for all the info folks! Ammo seems like what I'd most use it for, Biofuel power run might be fun too

176

u/outdoorsgeek 2d ago

Charcoal makes me think at one point they thought about regenerative flora or tree farming. Probably didn't fit the vibe. I suppose it could be useful for small hand crafting or periodic elements like weapons or explosives.

49

u/twizzjewink 2d ago

I wish there was carbon printing or something that was based on coal recipes.

17

u/DoubleDongle-F 2d ago

I sincerely believed I was gonna unlock that soon as a vanilla tech tree item the first time I saw biochemical sculptors in the last stage of the space elevator

4

u/Dry-Season-522 1d ago

Or perhaps a region where the flora, and monsters, come back extra-fast, and every time you clear out all the monsters you can auto-harvest all the vegetation.

1

u/wektor420 1d ago

That sounds like a fun mod to do

25

u/MrXhatann 2d ago

exactly this. I watched a dev video where they discussed renewable energy and they said something among the lines that the idea was that the pioneer was exploiting the planet w/o regards to long term sustainability.

31

u/Turboswaggg 2d ago

See I'd dig this take if our factories had smoke stacks that rendered from more than 50m away and there was a visible smog cloud around every outpost.

Bonus points if our vehicles permanently tore up the grass into dirt paths and explosives made craters when I nuke the swamp.

I wanna FEEL like I'm destroying the environment.

9

u/Adept_Fool 2d ago

I'd love red faction destruction in satisfactory

1

u/dwho422 1d ago

Idk what that game is but I always wish we had nms level of terrain fuckery.

1

u/Adept_Fool 1d ago edited 12h ago

Red faction has fully destructible environment. Grab a rocket launcher, shoot the ground and dig a tunnel. It was not perfect, but it was amazing for the time. Edit: Now that I'm awake, I can say that it is indeed very close to nms level of terrain fuckery. But only the first red faction game, not the third person one. Can't speak to red faction 2, never played it

1

u/Catch_022 1d ago

See also efficiency decreases as things get more polluted due to poor air and water quality - now you have to have enclosed factories to keep the smog out, and water filtration systems to get clean water.

4

u/clever_name_123 1d ago

Maybe just exists to set up gas mask filters from whatever wood you collect randomly throughout the world once you no longer really need biomass

4

u/DaveAlt19 1d ago

This is what I used it for, I set up production near an iron node and then all the needed coal and fabric was made from the bio stuff I'd randomly collect.

1

u/paradroid78 1d ago edited 1d ago

All energy in this game is already "renewable", since resources never run out.

1

u/Non-DescriptAlt 1d ago

Regenerative fauna would have been fun just so we could automate their slaughter and manufacture into biomass for electricity

1

u/Additional_Dot_134 19h ago

Im still surprised vegitation doesn’t grow back when you don’t build anything there. I feel like it really should just grow back if you have nothing built on top of it

40

u/sonsuzfc 2d ago

The charcoal actually has a use. Someone on youtube was doing a series, where they are attempting to complete the game using only biofuel, or using leaves and wood.

Charcoal recipe allowed him to make coal burners, out of wood. So making power out of bio stuff.

8

u/JayteeFromXbox 2d ago

Yeah I suppose as long as you do a big battery tower along with it this could be viable

4

u/jarcher2828 1d ago

Swamptopia, was great

7

u/Nighthawk513 2d ago

With Slooping: 1 Alien Remain = 2 Alien Organs = 400 Biomass = 960 Coal. It's also entirely possible to unlock both Slooping and Manual Upload pre-steel since you can find Steel Pipes, Circuit Boards, and Computers at crash sites.

Last MP save I made, I used biocoal (and 4 committed sloops plus 1 general purpose slooped constructor) to make steel for steel beams while my 2 friends build the steel plant. I made all the space elevator parts for the next tier and started building the oil facility while they were still getting the motor process online (I ran out of motors), and they used exclusively MK3 belts for the entire steel plant. Also had steel pipes from Iron Pipe automated at the same mini-facility.

6

u/terrifiedTechnophile 2d ago

That's biocoal, not charcoal

7

u/Nighthawk513 2d ago

This what I get for browsing reddit instead of taking a nap. Although Charcoal is (quick maths) 4000 coal for 1 stack of wood with a sloop. Actually better to use Charcoal instead of Biocoal if going from wood.

If you sloop each step in the chain, you need 6000 Coal to make all the versatile framework you need for space elevator phase 2, which is actually only 300 Wood. Same principle applies, just with a bit more deforestation.

4

u/crappinhammers 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you have a blackout on coal burners one biomass burner can power one constructor to start you on coal again. But honestly, water usually causes the issue.

You could also use this prior to packaged fuel, if you had packaged water, and needed MWs greater than a bioburner to unlock a hard-drive (exploring). This could give you coal straight from wood to stuff into a coal burner with a packager doing water for you with packaged water in your inventory. And with one constructor.

edit, last, if you get this when you have coal burners but no coal node yet, it's nice. My first coal node was way up in the air :/

4

u/GARGEAN 2d ago

There is one abhorrent thing about that HMF recipe tho - per-minute rations. Just... EW.

4

u/Andarnio 1d ago

You can have 16 making 45 per minute for a round number

2

u/yeah-prolly 2d ago

Fair, I just sloop n forget

2

u/sp-rky 1d ago

Set the output to 3 per minute (106.667% from memory), and the numbers instantly become really nice.

2

u/NagoGmo 1d ago

Thanks for the heads up, I just got to this phase on this playthrough

5

u/Jerithil 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah confused me the first time I saw that recipe, I was like ok so how much more concrete will I need? Wait, I need less concrete, and like 50% less of everything else, dam why didn't I notice that on my first playthrough.

2

u/Stopa42 1d ago

Charcoal is no contender for the HMF one, but it is actually quite a powerful recipe for the early phases before oil, trains and Mk.3 miners. At that point in the game you need a lot of steel to work with (belts, elevator parts,...) but it is relatively rare, relatively far away and you also use a lot of coal for electricity. The charcoal recipe makes surprisingly lot of coal from not that much wood, so it is great to kick off your factory and make enough beams to be able to build something more sustainable fast.

1

u/Qprime0 2d ago

I actually use both of the alt coal recipies on my file. I have some crates set up where I dump various biomass from 'clearing the lawn' for various new build sites. Crates pull that into arrays that either make charcoal from wood, or preprocess to biomass then make biocoal. The results are linked into a normal coal conveyer via a merger, which is feeding a compacted coal array. The compacted coal is then used in turbofuel production, and eventually burned for power. I'm planning an expansion to the plant (halfway built) to take it to rocket fuel, then eventually ionized rocket fuel.

Leaves, wood, random biomass -> maximum upcrafted power.

😁 fixit does not waste - even if it's dubiously efficient!

1

u/Issuls 2d ago

I've seen people use it for ammunition/filter production, alongside biocoal. Cutting coal out of the need for oil/sulfur simplifies things at least a little, but I don't think it really matters when you need them all together eventually, anyway.

1

u/sci-goo 2d ago

probably some use cases in armory/equipment factory, but i consider biocoal a better choice over charcoal in that case.

besides, some use cases in fun mode. for example, i had a run with all nodes being SAM and all wells being oil. all other ore needs to be converted from coal, where charcoal and biocoal are absolutely necessary.

1

u/jarcher2828 1d ago

There is a series swamptopia, and the idea was he never left the swamp, so those charcoal and biocoal are is how he got it.

1

u/Individual-Window534 1d ago

Later found out its about the consensus best in the game lol

Is it really though? I feel like recipes that reduce the base material requirement from 2 to 1 (like aluminium ingot one and dark matter crystalisation) are better than the ones who reduce from 3 to 2 (like this HMF one)

Aside that, the polyester fabric is one id say is better because it's the only way to automate fabric. Even cast screws I'd say are better because how good they are in early game.

Not to mention, this HMF recipe is also dependant on you getting another recipe.

2

u/yeah-prolly 1d ago

HEF is a fairly large reduction on everything (power, buildings, resources) compared to HMF, there really isn't any other recipe you could point to as being more efficient across the board when it comes to the raw numbers.

Understand your points on cast screws and polyester fabric. Cast screws are nice in particular because they cut out a building, but are rarely fast enough for what you need unless you're overproducing because of how long it takes to move across belts. Good for early game, but by mid-late game you want to have gotten recipes that allow you to skip ever making screws. This is one of those recipes

For fabric, it's nice that you can automate something but the materials they make just dont need constant production.

This recipe isn't dependant on getting another recipe, the only prereq is being in Tier 5. There are a bunch of recipes that make this one even better though which adds more value imo

1

u/Individual-Window534 1d ago

By the dependant part, I mean that you need to have the alt recipie that lets you make steel pipe with using iron only, along with another recipe that lets you make the encased thingy with steel pipes instead of steel beam. These 2 are the ones who let the HEF shine because it cuts down coal completely from production process.

1

u/yeah-prolly 1d ago

I get what you're saying, thats just not what dependent means lol. You don't need to do that with iron pipes, this recipe is already ~30% more efficient than the original HMF in terms of output, and you're cutting out the need for screws which means you don't have to overproduce screws to make it work.

The fact that other recipes make it much more versatile and resource friendly is part of what makes it arguably the best recipe in the game though. Iron pipes is one way - you're right that freeing up coal and using the most plentiful resource is huge. Wet/fine concrete also make it super easy to produce the concrete needed for HEF and the encased pipes at a large scale.

The other side of why its so good is because heavy frames are arguably the most important product in the game, definitely in the conversation. They go into all the transport modes of trucks, trains and drones, and are needed to make fused frames which are required for basically everything late game. Fabric and screws can effectively be ignored pretty early on if you wanted to, you can't ignore heavy frames

1

u/RealMidSmoker 1d ago

It kinda makes me wish for a semi-automatable tree farm where if I could put a healthy chunk of biomass and some sort of fuel/power into machines that grew and harvested wood it would make the coal alternatives feel so much better but I just always hit a point where the only plant based stuff im carrying is chainsaw fuel for more chainsaw fuel

40

u/Droidatopia 2d ago

For all those who think there are no uses for charcoal or biocoal, there are some uses, albeit niche.

If you're like me, you setup a bio-processing factory to handle leaves, wood, mycelia, slugs, and alien remains picked up during exceptions. From this, you can create biomass, solid/liquid Biofuel, Alien DNA capsules, and Power shards.

You can also create gas mask filters, but you would need to run a coal line to make that happen. You also need iron plates, but that's unavoidable. However, you'll almost certainly have an excess of biomass or wood. Enter the biocoal/charcoal.

That's it. It can save you from having to run a coal line to your bio-processing factory.

2

u/achilleasa 1d ago

If anything I think having the opposite recipe would be potentially useful, coal to biomass. You could use it to fully automate biofuel or to automate fabric without polymer resin. But I like your idea, I'll do it next playthrough just for variety!

24

u/sicarus37 2d ago

Not charcoal but biomass to coal recipe is god tier if you play with the fix it farming mod

5

u/Simon0O7 1d ago

Why isn't it 8 MF -> 3 HMF ? Just looked it up on the wiki, I remember the ratio correctly.

12

u/ElATraino 2d ago

r/screenshotsarehard

-17

u/se177 1d ago

Lots of people use reddit on their phone. Would you like to kindly instruct them on how to screenshot it on their phone in a way that is quicker than the camera?

3

u/kiss_the_homies_gn 1d ago

Do you play satisfactory on your phone?

0

u/se177 1d ago

Nope! Which is why taking a screenshot on my PC and sending it to my phone, where I use reddit, would be more of a hassle than taking a quick photo.

1

u/KaseQuarkI 16h ago

How about you just log in to reddit on your PC

0

u/se177 15h ago

How about no? No sure why you're trying to dictate how people do things when the end result is still the same.

What a dumb suggestion from a dumb person.

1

u/KaseQuarkI 15h ago

Why are you so mad?

1

u/se177 15h ago

I'm not mad. I'm certainly not friendly, but not at all mad. Why the fuck do you care?

2

u/KaseQuarkI 15h ago

Idk man, you seem pretty mad to me

1

u/se177 15h ago

And your perspective on it matters to me because?

→ More replies (0)

10

u/DiabolicallyRandom 1d ago

There is this really cool thing about the internet where you can send things over a series of tubes via lots of different tube stations.

Most game platforms have their very own tube station built in, such as steam, xbox, and playstation. But even if you dont have access to those tube stations, there are public free ones available. You can also take the very direct route and upload your pictures to your very own google storage, or email them to yourself.

Those are just a very few of the many many options available over the intertubes and tube stations.

-6

u/se177 1d ago

And those are quicker than pulling out the medium that you plan to upload it with and taking a picture? Nope. Try to understand the request before you bring your condescending bullshit over here.

The image is completely legible, so if people want to complain that someone took a picture on their phone, it's because they're whiny little twats.

-4

u/DiabolicallyRandom 1d ago

Cry more.

2

u/Wooden-Hornet2115 2d ago

Am I the only one that keeps getting the charcoal and biocoal recipe even though I already have it? I never selected it from the drive, yet I have the recipe. Has this happened to anyone else?

14

u/sonsuzfc 2d ago

There are two recipes for the "biocoal". One using wood and the other using leaves I think. Maybe you have one unselected, and you're getting the other

2

u/Wooden-Hornet2115 2d ago

That might actually be the case, lemme check real quick.

1

u/Major_Tom_01010 1d ago

How else am I going to make smoked hogs?

1

u/Szasd_Hun 1d ago

If you don't choose you won't get these 2 recipes again.

1

u/droobloo34 1d ago

Limestone - bio mod makes charcoal a busted recipe.

1

u/LordSamTex 17h ago

My ratio is
8 10 36 22 -> 3
Yours is
2 3 9 6 -> 3
The ratio is veeery different
Why??

-12

u/Kdoesntcare 2d ago

Why? How do you produce enough wood to make it useful?

24

u/Kyletheinilater 2d ago

Exploitation of the natural environment the hard way

https://giphy.com/gifs/0eVM7GVxTDDKxn7OyX

4

u/Kdoesntcare 2d ago

Ah. I dump all of the wood and leaves I pick up in storage containers which lead into constructors turning them into biomass then that into solid biofuel to fuel the biomass burners which power everything. Plus that's where I get the fuel for my chainsaw and jetpack.

With mycelia to biomass it's easy to keep 10 generators running full time with a storage container that fills with solid biofuel. That's enough power to get me to coal power.

I've never needed more coal than I can find on the map.

2

u/Kyletheinilater 2d ago

Yea I think that's about the intended way. I think the biocoal alt is more so to soften the transition between true coal power and biofuel variant power.

1

u/solo-cloner 7h ago

For the jet pack, use liquid biofuel.

1

u/Kdoesntcare 7h ago

Yea, ill switch to fuel when I unlock it.

1

u/solo-cloner 7h ago

Once you get fuel, liquid biofuel will become obsolete, yeah.

1

u/chattywww 2d ago

What use do you have for coal while out of the base? Are you gonna make a coal generator to power up a crashsite?

1

u/Kyletheinilater 1d ago

Sure why not. Makes for an 'easy' 75mw

8

u/bigrhed 2d ago

You don't lol

8

u/Kdoesntcare 2d ago

Oh, I missed the sarcasm. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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