Well, I didn't want to get into exact numbers for various layouts because because layouts vary and every layout compared is actually quite a bit of work. Originally posted by AlexMBrennan: electric furnaces still do the same work as steel at the same speed but require much more space (9 squares vs 4).That is correct assuming you hand-fuel them or use bots (unlikely in the early game) a realistic comparison would have to include the extra space used by the coal belts & the coal bus to supply them. It takes a very well developed factory to got to this point though. Once you're at beacons+modules, they are clearly fantastic. For what it's worth, I think I would only go out of my way to make the switch at this phase in the game if the map is forcing a fuel shortage.Įlectric furnaces really only come into their own when you're ready to start using modules and don't really care too much about power and space constraints anymore. The only really big advantage they have in this phase of the game is a reduction in pollution. In the mid game when you're on solar/nuclear power, they're still only situationally useful as coal seems to be as plentiful as ever. This means that when you're in the steam power phase of the game, electric furnaces are still taking twice the fuel to produce a plate as a steel furnace and have an idle power draw on top of that. This doesn't help the electric furnace any though, as the new stone and steel furnaces only use half the fuel that they used to. The change is that in v 0.17, boilers now convert coal into electricity with 100% efficiency.
![electric furnace factorio electric furnace factorio](https://mods-data.factorio.com/assets/46566cf82c42e7677247d11e477060d9536e167a.thumb.png)
Until you hit the very late game phase, electric furnaces are still mostly junk.Īs in v16, the v17 incarnation of electric furnaces still do the same work as steel at the same speed but require much more space (9 squares vs 4). Since there seems to be a lot of new players around and we're now on 0.17, I just wanted to restate this with more current information. The last time I brought this up, we where on v0.16 and things where a bit different.