Is steel furnance used by anyone?

[libik]

I have never used it before and its fine, all of us has different way to play.

However now I started 100x science run (which is amazing by the way, highly recommended if you already finished factorio once or more times).

So now each "era" takes much longer, making any tech viable for quite some time. Still steel furnances come quite late and are quite expensive. So even with 100x science it was easier to wait a bit more and then switch to electric ones (which are close in tech tree to steel furnance, even on 100x science).

So am I missing something?

[TurtleZ]

I use steel furnaces in every save. In fact, with the release of space age, I normally transition straight from steel furnaces to foundries!

The reason I find them so handy is they're a great in-place upgrade to stone furnaces. I unlock them pretty early into green science, at which point I normally have 1 furnace stack for copper, 1 stack for steel, 1 for stone, and 1-2 for iron. Upgrading stone furnaces -> steel furnaces and yellow belts -> red belts allows me to immediately double all my resource output without building any new stacks.

Without modules, steel furnaces are actually more fuel-efficient than electric furnaces + boilers. So rather than invest time and resources in building electric furnace stacks after blue science, I usually build additional steel furnace stacks to get me to space - once the inner planets are conquered, I build an entirely new base with foundries + other space age tech.

[mmmPI]

I very often use steel furnaces as i build my stone furnaces array with yellow belt, and upgrade them to red at the same time as i upgrade the stone furnaces because as mentionned it feels "fast" , little actions to double ressources rather than doubling the size of the factory with cliffs , trees , walking around more as negative consequences. I tend to go Fulgora first in most game, and upgrade the steel furnaces to electric ones with modules and beacons from there in map view, when Nauvis has recovered from making the first space platform and i see some machines underused.