I feel there's some issues with the recipe summaries always assuming that the player has every relevant alt without saying so, illustrated here: we say Caterium Wire is less efficient. But on their own, that's not the case: using Tools figures (so no extraction costs), to make 60 Wire:
- Wire: 12 MW (3 machines), 30 Copper Ore
- Iron Wire: 14.21 MW (5 machines), 33 1/3 Iron Ore
- Fused Wire: 8.482 MW (3 machines), 8 Copper Ore, 6 Caterium Ore
- Caterium Wire: 2.639 MW (2 machines), 22.5 Caterium ore
So as a recipe taken by itself, it's actually quite efficient in terms of power, space and ore use (it also has the best ingot:wire conversion rate of any of them at 1:8). It's more to do with Pure Caterium Ingot's 12/min Refinery borking the power figure. Early on before it has competition from Quickwire-using recipes, it isn't actually a terrible way to use a Caterium node. Evil Tim (talk) 22:34, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
- We're considering removing alt recipe analysis from the wiki entirely, because it's impossible to do them objectively. The current approach just assumes that there's one recipe that's the overall best for each item, and uses it everywhere. Because alts are very situational, we'd need to compare every possible way to reach every item. --Ondar111 (talk) 07:00, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think I'd go quite that far: fundamentally since the data is mathematically derived from the game code it is completely objective (anyone who does the sums correctly will reach the same result). There are simply some cases where it doesn't reflect all the details of the differences between recipes or gives results that might not fully describe a given recipe's advantages and disadvantages. The most obvious would be the WP figures for Turbo Electric Motor versus Turbo Pressure Motor: the latter loses out because it uses a lot of Nitrogen Gas which is uncommon, but since there isn't a lot one can use Nitrogen Gas for, Pressure Motor is the better recipe in 99% of production scenarios because it saves just about every other important resource.
- Personally I would lean towards using defaults for all other recipes in a comparison so that the pros and cons of additional alts aren't being factored in: that would show the relative benefits of only the recipe being evaluated. One could then go on to describe recipe chains that produce substantially better results if such things exist. Perhaps even describe them in subheadings, there's no need to try to put so much information into a single image if there's too much of it.
- (I mean there's also the issue of bias in WP figures that aren't the best being used anyway in some cases (eg not using Coke Steel or Steel-Coated Plate), but one thing at a time).Evil Tim (talk) 09:50, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- We've been discussing a solution to this in the Satisfactory Discord for quite some time. If you have an account, it'd be great to join the discussion there.
- I guess the focus should be to answer what people are looking for, which can vary a lot:
- "what recipe is best" (often asked by new players, unfortunately, there is no "best")
- optimized for an easy setup/low building count
- optimized for low/specific resource usage
- Your points are valid, however, still opinionated in a way. They just show that specific items need specific considerations. Using defaults instead of an alt deemed to be the "best" ultimately leads to the same problem (different players looking for different answers, or an answer not suiting all players, all while assuming a specific setup to be used).
- To sum up: I don't think the wiki can provide a recipe analysis that can be agreed upon by everybody. A dedicated external website for recipe comparisons that adjusts to user input would probably work a bit better. --Ondar111 (talk) 13:44, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
- Update: We've concluded that removing the math tables in favor of explanations in plain text is the most feasible solution, which maintains objectivity and isn't immensely complex. The qualities of each recipe shall be explained in a way that even a new player should understand. That way, everyone can make their own conclusion on what fits them best. --Ondar111 (talk) 17:15, 26 October 2022 (UTC)