Stone bricks in the biochamber

[CyberCider]

What?

Make the biochamber able to perform the stone brick recipe.

Why?

Stone bricks can only be made in electric furnaces, which have 2 module slots and no innate productivity. This weirdly inflates their cost in the endgame because all the other intermediates have gotten large productivity bonuses by that point.

On top of that, it would be nice to have more uses for biochambers on Nauvis. They’re great on Vulcanus, but on Nauvis they’re a little too good at what they do. An entire megabase’s oil cracking needs can be handled by two or three biochambers, meaning they don’t actually see too much use. Electric furnaces actually have a crafting speed of 2, which is the same as a biochamber’s. Meaning there is no risk of the same thing happening to stone bricks.

If anyone is worried about stone furnaces becoming fully obsolete because biochambers are not crafted out of electric furnaces… Well, you need to make thousands of them for purple science. I don’t think it will ever be an issue.

[eugenekay]

This makes no sense thematically. The Biochamber building represents a “Caged Pentapod”, which is being force-fed nutrients in order to perform a biological process. This is a bit of a stretch for the Oil cracking recipes, but it makes some sense.

The Furnaces’ smelting process turns Stone into Bricks through Heating. How does this fit into the Biological nature of the Biochamber?

[mmmPI]

I agree with a little bit of both, it would be interesting for gameplay reason mentionned, but it makes very little sense thematically. Or some lore about pentapod biology needs to be rewritten, maybe they can digest stone into bricks

[CyberCider]

This makes no sense thematically. The Biochamber building represents a “Caged Pentapod”, which is being force-fed nutrients in order to perform a biological process. This is a bit of a stretch for the Oil cracking recipes, but it makes some sense.

The Furnaces’ smelting process turns Stone into Bricks through Heating. How does this fit into the Biological nature of the Biochamber?

Maybe it’s a chemical treatment of the stone instead of a thermal one. Many biological enzymes (typically produced by plants instead of animals, but we’re talking about aliens) are known to affect stone. But I really don’t think this matters at all, factorio was never a particularly realistic game.

Besides, stompers have shells made of stone, as you can see when you mine them. Maybe pentapods eat rocks in their spare time?

[h.q.droid]

Maybe instead of smelting stones, they should convert nutrient + wood into bricks. Thematically it's the high fiber food giving the inner pentapod a constipation.