Should Steel Slag Chunks give more than 10 steel?

[Toste]

tl;dr - Electric Smelter w/ Steel Slag doesn´t feel balanced for the investment you put into it. 10 steel per slag, plus the work needed and the power consumption doesn´t feel worth it for 10 steel.

I had been struggling with steel for a while, I no longer am after making mining colonies next to my base but in the early midst of my steel struggle I invested in the Electric Smelter.

I excitedly collected all the slag on my map. Slag from our original pods of which two of those four colonists are no longer with us and slag from pods crashing into our colony were gathered and hauled in a full work-day. I took one of my least busiest pawns (since we were struggling from the aforementioned losses earlier that season) and got him working on the smelter.

I watched as he melted down the slag and out pops : 10 underwhelming steel. All of the slag from the map, of which there is 17 would give me 170 steel. I smelted all of my available steel items and gained about ~103 steel. I made a very small profit off of my investment.

I moved on from the Smelter and about a day later I notice the lights in the freezer are going off. Scrolling to my batteries I realized my mistake, I left the damn smelter on. My food didn´t spoil luckily.

Is this balanced? Is this going to change come next alpha when ¨The Balancing¨ comes?

[Canute]

If the slag would give you more then 10 steel, then you need to adjust the drop of slags from destroyed buildings like turrets too.
Or you might get more steel out of slags then you would need to build.

Maybe you should get more raids, so you got more weapons to smelt.

[Lawlzer]

tl;dr - Electric Smelter w/ Steel Slag doesn´t feel balanced for the investment you put into it. 10 steel per slag, plus the work needed and the power consumption doesn´t feel worth it for 10 steel.

I had been struggling with steel for a while, I no longer am after making mining colonies next to my base but in the early midst of my steel struggle I invested in the Electric Smelter.

I excitedly collected all the slag on my map. Slag from our original pods of which two of those four colonists are no longer with us and slag from pods crashing into our colony were gathered and hauled in a full work-day. I took one of my least busiest pawns (since we were struggling from the aforementioned losses earlier that season) and got him working on the smelter.

I watched as he melted down the slag and out pops : 10 underwhelming steel. All of the slag from the map, of which there is 17 would give me 170 steel. I smelted all of my available steel items and gained about ~103 steel. I made a very small profit off of my investment.

I moved on from the Smelter and about a day later I notice the lights in the freezer are going off. Scrolling to my batteries I realized my mistake, I left the damn smelter on. My food didn´t spoil luckily.

Is this balanced? Is this going to change come next alpha when ¨The Balancing¨ comes?

I think it's balanced well. In my current colony, I have likely hundreds of slag, which makes it super balanced for me.
Plus, isn't the smelter also what allows you to smelt weapons? That's also super helpful, even if to just exchange a plasteel knife for some plasteel, it helps a lot mid-later game when you have more guns than you know what to do with, and just smelt them all
I think it's pretty okay (maybe bad)for early game, but when you get a colonist with free time in mid-late game, that's likely when it shines.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I mostly use the smelter to strip useful metal like uranium out of enemy weapons. It spends the rest of the time turned off. There is so much steel underground. Plus when I disable infestation I am not terrified to mine the map.

[Shurp]

A better way to ask the question would be, "is the electric smelter really worth building?"

If you're playing on sea ice with no mineable steel, it's probably your only source of steel.  But otherwise, it's not a very useful technology.  So what would make it worth building?

What would be really neat is if you could use it to manufacture plasteel from steel and chemfuel.  Or maybe steel and devilstrand?  If you could do something with it other than recycle destroyed turrets (which is hardly worth the trouble) then it would be a technology worth building.

[Ser Kitteh]

Rather than give a normal 10 for each piece, why not scale it to crafting? Say a dumpy 5 for 0 Crafting but 18-20 for a level 18, with a low chance of 25 steel if you're maxed.

[Canute]

We allready got that in the past.
But that result in exploiding these mechanics. So now you are geting a fixed result and maybe lesser with bad skills like at mining or butchering.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

If you really don't mind exploiting the game, you can either make a quick patch mod to change it or just change the value in the files.

You'll find the value in this file:

rimworldfolder/mods/core/defs/recipedefs/Recipes_Production.xml

On line 64 (at least that is what line it is for me with notepad++, if not, look very close to there) you'll see the value of 10, just change that value to what you want and restart the game and you should be good to go. That will probably wipe everytime Rimworld updates, so you may need to change it back to your setting every so often.  A mod would work better in that case, but is slightly harder to do depending on your comfort level with xml files.

[Toste]

tl;dr - Electric Smelter w/ Steel Slag doesn´t feel balanced for the investment you put into it. 10 steel per slag, plus the work needed and the power consumption doesn´t feel worth it for 10 steel.

I had been struggling with steel for a while, I no longer am after making mining colonies next to my base but in the early midst of my steel struggle I invested in the Electric Smelter.

I excitedly collected all the slag on my map. Slag from our original pods of which two of those four colonists are no longer with us and slag from pods crashing into our colony were gathered and hauled in a full work-day. I took one of my least busiest pawns (since we were struggling from the aforementioned losses earlier that season) and got him working on the smelter.

I watched as he melted down the slag and out pops : 10 underwhelming steel. All of the slag from the map, of which there is 17 would give me 170 steel. I smelted all of my available steel items and gained about ~103 steel. I made a very small profit off of my investment.

I moved on from the Smelter and about a day later I notice the lights in the freezer are going off. Scrolling to my batteries I realized my mistake, I left the damn smelter on. My food didn´t spoil luckily.

Is this balanced? Is this going to change come next alpha when ¨The Balancing¨ comes?

I think it's balanced well. In my current colony, I have likely hundreds of slag, which makes it super balanced for me.
Plus, isn't the smelter also what allows you to smelt weapons? That's also super helpful, even if to just exchange a plasteel knife for some plasteel, it helps a lot mid-later game when you have more guns than you know what to do with, and just smelt them all
I think it's pretty okay (maybe bad)for early game, but when you get a colonist with free time in mid-late game, that's likely when it shines.

I smelted all of my steel-based weapons from every raid, including my fallen colonists weapons (Minus my legendary sniper rifle, I keep it in the freezer morgue next to her body. Awaiting the day her and her husband get revived.)

I got enough steel to move on. It´s been about 1 year ago or so in the colony and I now have plenty of steel from caravan-ing to my quarry bases. The faction of the NCR is slowly rising and becoming a power to be reckoned with.

Until Randy blows away my base with targeted meteor strikes and tornadoes. #PraiseRandy

[Call me Arty]

 I've got too much slag and it doesn't give enough steel in return. It's obnoxious. I'd much rather have slag drop much less often in return for more steel. It doesn't make sense that one turret can turn into four slag chunks that take up four times the space, and melt down into only ten steel apiece (which has to be individually dragged to a stockpile).

Quick fix? Make them give more steel.

Not-so-easy fix? Let us use a hopper or a deposit or something to store steel before hauling, and set-up a conveyor system so that you don't have to walk to the steel, drag the steel back, smelt it, haul the steel to the stockpile, and repeat.

[cultist]

It's a very long-term investment and not really worth it unless you are constantly short on steel. But at that point, deep drilling, raiding other colonies or simply buying the steel is much faster and less obnoxious. There's also the amount of labor put into smelting to consider, which is significant.

[mebe]

Seems about right to me. The only place I've properly needed smelting is on sea ice and then the minimal return feels about balanced. You have traders, trade ships, deep drilling and disassembling mechanoids or if all else fails a minining settlement a couple of tiles away. Trading for steel is probably the answer.

[Ser Kitteh]

Perhaps smelting could be an automated job like the nutrient paste dispenser but instead of food we put slag into the hopper.

[Snowcaller]

not really, imo. But a faster process for melting it down might make more sense.
Maybe a quicker melt and the pawn first melting as much as it can carry before running off to store it

[tmo97]

things like lights and smelters should not consume any power unless they're being used, or have "self-discharge" like batteries do. have a light only be on when someone is in the room to see the light. for the investment that is an electric smelter, you'd want to have it be worth it. atm the hassle of getting one vs the returns, even in the long run, it's kinda sad. i'd be okay with it if the machine churned out some extra that isn't steel.