Arc furnace should smelt silicon
Submitted
The Arc furnace is already less efficient than a full refinery. But its basically unusable without being able to smelt silicon. Too many functional blocks need computers, including the arc itself or upgrading to full refinery. So its inefficient when you can fit a refinery, and a dead end where you cant. Keep the lower efficiency, but make it usable for any ore found on a planet to be valid for progression. Leave platinum out if you must, but give us silicon at least! This would also allow for smaller respawn ship designs that still allow full progression.
I like this feedback
In real life, silicon is refined using...wait for it...an arc furnace. It makes sense and I agree with the recommendation.
In real life, silicon is refined using...wait for it...an arc furnace. It makes sense and I agree with the recommendation.
Real life is nice and all, but this is a game. The rule of fun reigns supreme here, as well as being a game about engineering your way past problems, whether those problems be making a better mining ship, defending against hostile fauna, drilling clear through a planet, wiping an entire enemy PC faction off the map, or overcoming limited resources. Getting stuck in a dead end situation that cannot be overcome short of giving up and cheesing in a respawn ship with a full refinery is not fun. And in permadeath mode would leave someone well and truly unfairly boned with zero maens to progress.
Thinking a bit more on this, I'd expand the idea to remove cobalt from the ores the arc furnace can smelt, replace it with silicon, and remove/change to something else the cobalt requirements for the basic T1 tools. This would still allow you to craft basic equipment, survive and progress, even to the point of getting off planet with just an arc furnace, while gating heavy armor and weapons and advanced tools behind getting a full refinery going to produce cobalt. It solves the problem of the dead end, actually smooths and enhances the progression path, and throws the doors wide open for design ideas on everything from smaller respawn or scout ships to colony/station seed ships and self-building bases, needing a full refinery for full production and all options but being able to get started (or restarted) with the arc. Wolves already drop enough magnesium powder to not need the arc to handle it to keep yourself in ammo.
Real life is nice and all, but this is a game. The rule of fun reigns supreme here, as well as being a game about engineering your way past problems, whether those problems be making a better mining ship, defending against hostile fauna, drilling clear through a planet, wiping an entire enemy PC faction off the map, or overcoming limited resources. Getting stuck in a dead end situation that cannot be overcome short of giving up and cheesing in a respawn ship with a full refinery is not fun. And in permadeath mode would leave someone well and truly unfairly boned with zero maens to progress.
Thinking a bit more on this, I'd expand the idea to remove cobalt from the ores the arc furnace can smelt, replace it with silicon, and remove/change to something else the cobalt requirements for the basic T1 tools. This would still allow you to craft basic equipment, survive and progress, even to the point of getting off planet with just an arc furnace, while gating heavy armor and weapons and advanced tools behind getting a full refinery going to produce cobalt. It solves the problem of the dead end, actually smooths and enhances the progression path, and throws the doors wide open for design ideas on everything from smaller respawn or scout ships to colony/station seed ships and self-building bases, needing a full refinery for full production and all options but being able to get started (or restarted) with the arc. Wolves already drop enough magnesium powder to not need the arc to handle it to keep yourself in ammo.
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