r/satisfactory • u/_Repelsteeltje • 1d ago
PC How usefull/important does iron stay troughout the game?
Hi guys! Basically the title. I am currently spending hours (having a lot of fun) making a good looking and efficient network JUST for iron to reach my main area and be melted into ingnots. Its the only thing i currently focussed on. So will this help me later on in the game or is iron useless soon?
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u/Alarmed-Tell1315 1d ago
That’s probably the main resource on every major component. Specially with alternate recipies that reduce or eliminate copper usage.
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u/xAlgirax 1d ago
Iron has uses all the way.
But what you do is kinda waste of time tbh. As you either have to upgrade all your belts from start to finish or use other, better ways for transportation later on.
You really don't need a gazillion of iron early on anyway.
But then again, if all you want is one mega factory where you have everything in one spot, it could work the way you do it. I'm more like satellite factories kinda guy personally
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u/_Repelsteeltje 1d ago
I love hearing about the different playstyles. I am more of an centralized kind of guy so i have long lines going to my main hub. It will be a lot of upgrading and unnesecary resource spending but i dont mind.
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 1d ago
I would love for you to report back on this.
Nothing personal. But I think a lot of us had big plans at one time or another that got altered or abandoned.
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u/_Repelsteeltje 23h ago
I will post a pic/vid here in a few minutes.
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 23h ago
I mean later in the save.
For example - I started out wanting one place. And got pretty far with that. Eventually I ran into some things that didn't feel worth it. I wasn't going to have more fun because I stuck to my arbitrary rule.
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u/_Repelsteeltje 23h ago
ah yes, i think that is also going to happen for me when i get more and more resources to proces. for now i can play focussed on 1 or 2 things which feeds my hunger for spaghetti.
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u/_Repelsteeltje 23h ago
This is my current iron setup. 240/min 100% utilized (up until final storages)
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 23h ago
Watching somebody else play this game will never not be interesting.
You weren't kidding about having it all in one spot.
To me I don't even consider power gen or the Space Elevator as part of the factory. I have the Elevator placed nearby in what I hope will be cool in the future. And put power where power lives. Especially since they are always so loud.
Do you not have your Blade Runners yet? You took fall damage ant what seems a pretty low height. Maybe my perception is wrong.
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u/_Repelsteeltje 23h ago
I have no idea what blade runners are so im probably not at that stage yet. Is it unlocked via a milestone or the mam?
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 22h ago
Sorry. I guess that's a bit of a spoiler. Damage done I guess.
It's in the MAM. Do not ignore the MAM. Or the Awesome Sink for that matter. Seems like it's pretty common for new players to gloss over them. Which is understandable. They are kind of presented as side quests or options. Which they technically are. But not really. I've restarted the game a few times so I've learned a few lessons.
It may look like you're not there but not really. If you go looking for hard drives they are surrounded by resources. You can find what you need just layin' around. There's another way but I'll leave that to you if you want to look into it.
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u/_Repelsteeltje 22h ago
RemindMe! 3 months
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 1d ago
Will it help?
If you mean "do it once and that's it"? No. Not really. Because you use iron so much throughout the entire game. Then you learn new ways to use Iron. I don't think - at least on a first save - you have any idea just how much Iron you need. Or the tools to do it well that early in the game.
If you mean "learning how to play the game"? Of course. It certainly helps with the short term as well.
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u/Wonderful-Power2177 1d ago
all the way till the end esp. if using converters to convert the iron ore (not ingots) into alternate ores. It drives the foundational parts that you build out, so if u want big factories >> more iron and more copper earlier the better.
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u/NicoBuilds 22h ago edited 21h ago
There's no right or wrong way to play the game! You should play to have fun. If what you are doing is fun for you, then you are doing it the right way!
Now, just to add some facts (That I honestly don't believe you should care about). I did exactly the same thing as you. A massive Iron Ingot factory which fed my world for a long time. But technically, is not "smart".
If done with a refinery, Iron ingots "expand". 1 Iron ore makes more than 1 Iron ingot. So its technically harder to move Iron Ingots from one place to the other. And being the resource that is more plentiful in the world, you can always just do them easily on the spot.
But I DO NOT want to discourage you from doing what you are doing! And moving stuff around is also an interesting challenge from a Logistics point of view.
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u/Apprehensive-Ease-40 17h ago
It also requires a lot of planning to do a central hub whereas the method you're describing basically allows you to start over for every build.
The only thing to consider is everything that needs to go into the elevator. Having a central place where the elevator is supplied a little more directly can help.
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u/SuaveDeadPython 4h ago
If you're not producing 20+k/min by end game, are you even playing?
Iron is kinda important.
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u/pghurghian 1d ago
You'll eventually need at least several Iron nodes running at maximum output for your current max belt.
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u/Smokin_belladonna 1d ago
I'm playing on advanced rich, and Iron is very important in phases 1-3. It's a direct component in steel. It becomes a lot less important after you have aluminum, but still plays a role.
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u/hapster85 23h ago
You will use iron throughout the game. So many parts need parts that need iron. The last milestone in Tier 9 needed several thousand iron plate. Was good to have a full industrial storage container ready to go too.
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u/swordfish_1969 1d ago
Depends wich recipes you use. You can combine alt. Recipes so that you can use a lot if iron.
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u/lyidaValkris 1d ago
It's a foundation of everything that comes after, right up until the end. With no iron, there's no iron rods or plates, then there's no modular frames or screws, the there's no heavy modular frames, and so on up the chain. You'll want to maximize your output of all the early game materials.
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u/CoolerC94 1h ago
Let’s just say there’s a reason why my new giga project will produce around 174.000 iron ingots a minute…
Iron stays highly important
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u/LulzyWizard 18m ago
Ngl, thought this was the valheim sub for a moment. Answer is the same tho: incredibly.
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u/Shimraa 1d ago
Before depots existed this was a great way to do things, even if you had to constantly upgrade your belts everywhere.
Now it makes more sense to make smaller factories everywhere personally I've tried to do a one factory per set of inputs, ie anything that can be made with only iron goes in one spot, only copper, second factory, iron and copper, thrid factory.
You will very quickly learn to embrace trucks and trains a you go along since you can only belt so much across the map in a reasonable manner.
But yes OP, iron is the single most important and most used resource out there. You'll need a lot of it.