I'm curious, because I think I'm missing something.
What is the reason (real-life or gameplay, or both?) for being able to make Imersium plates via both nanotubes and refractory?
When comparing the two recipes:
The nanotube method (third in the screenshot) is much more efficient on graphite,slightly more efficient on imersite and raw metals, but adds iron, and sulfuric acid and nearly octuples the number of machines required (almost all of which are used in the production of nanotubes themselves).
On the other hand, the refractory method (second in the screenshot) uses 9x as much graphite, between 10-20% more imersite/rare metals, and provides a surplus of sand, but has a very small fraction of the footprint and power usage. (Silica can be taken from the sand byproduct)
What am I missing? Why would I ever choose to use the nanotube recipe? (few more ingredients, slightly more complexity, but WAY more machines) I see that both are noticeable improvements over the "raw" recipe (first in the screenshot), but nanotube straight-up loses to the refractory recipe for me.
(Side note: I notice there's no vulcanite recipe for imersite - I assume that's a K2/SE balance design, rather than BZ mods interfering)
Thanks for raising the question about imersium plates via refractory. The purpose of doing it by nanotubes is basically an intentional design decision forsome late/endgame recipes to give the option of using nanotubes to drastically reduce the raw resource needs for advanced materials. (There are some similar recipes for Space Exploration, and one in vanilla for LDS)
The refractory recipe is more of an accidental artifact of how I set up refractory recipes to work (anything that ends in -plate or -ingot will get a refractory recipe. I had explicitly excluded a few things including, for example Naquium to not have too big of a negative effect on the Space Exploration endgame.
I think it's probably right to not allow refractory for imersium plates by default, because I think for endgame stuff, the nanotube recipe is more balanced. (And hey, Imersium is scifi anyways) That said, I might need to tone down the time it takes to create nanotubes....
I'm curious, because I think I'm missing something.
What is the reason (real-life or gameplay, or both?) for being able to make Imersium plates via both nanotubes and refractory?
When comparing the two recipes: The nanotube method (third in the screenshot) is much more efficient on graphite,slightly more efficient on imersite and raw metals, but adds iron, and sulfuric acid and nearly octuples the number of machines required (almost all of which are used in the production of nanotubes themselves). On the other hand, the refractory method (second in the screenshot) uses 9x as much graphite, between 10-20% more imersite/rare metals, and provides a surplus of sand, but has a very small fraction of the footprint and power usage. (Silica can be taken from the sand byproduct)
What am I missing? Why would I ever choose to use the nanotube recipe? (few more ingredients, slightly more complexity, but WAY more machines) I see that both are noticeable improvements over the "raw" recipe (first in the screenshot), but nanotube straight-up loses to the refractory recipe for me.
(Side note: I notice there's no vulcanite recipe for imersite - I assume that's a K2/SE balance design, rather than BZ mods interfering)
(Source: Xynariz) (Source: Brevven)