Hoppers and Electric Smelters

[Dan_Backslide]

It really seems to me like hoppers are underutilized, and there are a few things that could be done to make them more useful. Electric smelters was something that came to mind immediately. Have a hopper able to accept metal slag and feed it to an electric smelter. To me this makes a lot more sense than essentially hand feeding the smelter. Also make the smelter larger than it is now, more akin in size to the crematorium. Essentially what we're talking about is being able to melt iron and steel, which is between 1300C and 1500C depending on which way you're doing it. Not exactly good for people to get near. In addition to this you could add some negative event where there is a failure in the smelter and a spill of molten steel that causes a fire.

[Sono]

Yes, I would like that. As currently only the nutrient paste dispenser uses the hopper and I never bothered to use them, I also never bothered to use the hopper at all.

[Deimos Rast]

Let me see if I got this straight:
>Bigger smelter
>Hopper accepts slag
>Smelter accepts hopper


There is a mod that tried to make a version of the hopper for modders to use, but I don't think it ever caught on (Autoloader). The changes you want should be pretty easy to make I think.

[Deimos Rast]

Here you go.
I made the hopper a universal storage thinger. You can limit it as you normally would in the storage tab.
The smelter is now the size of the crematorium. It also wants a hopper now.
Note: I tested it in game, and while my colonists put slag chunks on the hoppers correctly, they then immediately took them off shortly after. Not sure what that's about, but everything is working under the hood flawlessly.
Cheers.

Download

edit: gonna poke it some more in the AM, might be workgiver issue

[Dingus]

It'd be cool if you could make a pipe system of hoppers, like minecraft style.