Thank you for showing the fuel consumption so i can get a better feeling on how much ionized fuel i need. I already knew the speeds and energy value of each fuel type but i coudn't find anything related to drone energy usage or fuel amount per kilometer or sth like that now i know how much it fuel it needs for a pretty large distance. Video came perfectly timed and thanks to the youtube algorithm
Here are the times of travel and the number of each item it takes per trip (with the amount of time it takes for one item to be consumed (so the longer it takes the better)) - Ionized Fuel : 4:08 for 6.02 units (that’s ~41 sec/unit) - Plutonium Fuel Rod : 4:08 for 0.04 unit (that’s ~103 min/unit) - Uranium Fuel Rod : 4:22 for 0.08 unit (that’s ~54.5 min/unit) - Batteries : 4:49 for 9.71 units (that’s ~30 sec/unit) - Rocket Fuel : 4:50 for 8.29 units (that’s ~35 sec/unit) - Turbo Fuel : 5:33 for 30 units (that’s ~11 sec/unit) - Fuel : 6:14 for 79 units (that’s ~4.7 sec/unit)
Time stamps: 0:00 The Setup + Explanation 3:21 Liftoff 5:53 Transfer Speed Comparison 7:40 Round Trip Time Comparison FAQ: Q: Why are the drone ports set up in a straight line rather than perpendicular? A: To avoid what was explained at the beginning in the video, with drones following the landscape. Setting them up like this makes sure they all take the exact same route. The ports are ordered 1234 1234 to keep the distance the exact same as well. Q: Can drones run on other fuel types? A: These 7 fuel types are all drones can run on currently. Liquid biofuel, any coal, and Ficsonium fuel rods are not supported. You can check the supported fuel types for drones (and other things) by clicking the fuel icon next to the input slot in the UI. Q: Why would I ever use the radioactive fuel rods? A: While yes, the fuel rods are radioactive, their consumption rate is miniscule compared to the other fuel types, so they can be much more efficient in terms of fuel used per trip. (I can't pin this comment because TH-cam considers it an "advanced feature" that needs ID or facial verification - no thanks?)
I rarely subscribe mid video, or even from one video watched. you sir are the exception. clear video, clear content, no bs, well planned, no wasting time, no promo up to 80% of the video (which is where I'm at writing this).
Thank you so much, I'm really glad you liked it! Don't bother subscribing though, I'm not looking to grow a TH-cam channel. Just uploading my personal stuff, and things like this if I feel there's a need for it. Go and subscribe to MechYarg instead :)
This is a great video with a well thought out and run experiment. Thank you for taking the time to make this. One consideration in my mind is that the nuclear powered drones don't create any waste, so could be used to burn plutonium fuel rods to close the nuclear loop (depending on how many drones you have) without needing to create ficsonium.
Thanks for this video. I am actually building a plastic factory and my first done port of this play through from the spire beach area that you are testing from. I plan to use Turbo Fuel for the first setup, and this was helpful.
@@princemarkied8071 Sounds good! Hope you'll have fun setting it all up! They recently fixed an annoying bug with duplicate drone port names, so now everything should work as intended.
Great setup and video, thank you! It's also good to see my gut decision for rocket-fuel-fueled-drones validated. Consumption numbers were also very interesting to see. Thanks again!
Greatly done video! I can see the effort and the time invested behind all this setup you have made, i'm hopeful you will keep experimenting while having fun.
Videos like this makes me lament that there isn't really a downside to just making really long belts everywhere. The fun demands using all the alternatives, but to optimization addict in me demands belts, haha. Great comparison, by the way! Very clean and informative.
@@AurallWow I faced the same dilemma, but I already loathe having to route one belt through half of the map, so I quickly decided I'll go with the fun alternatives :D
yeah for most people there isn't a downside. but for the players with lower end machines or those who build mega factories, you can start to run into physical game engine limitations that make long belts detrimental to use. i think Bitz and Xclipse both had series they had to put on the backburner because they ran into unity object limit in their worlds. while there have been optimizations since then, the unity limit still exists. Edit: erm, i mean the object limit of the unreal engine, not unity.
I encountered this during my first play through. I WANTED to use a truck to transport coal around from a vein that felt a little too far for a conveyor, a little too close for a train. But it ended up just being annoying, due to the fact it took fuel mostly. But also due to the awkward space requirements. I ended up just replacing it with a long conveyor.
This video was recommended to me at the exact right time, because I just finished my Ionized Fuel Plant for all my Drone needs. Good to see the estimated fuel consumption, since I couldn't find ANY info about it. Also makes me realize that my 520 packaged ionized fuel per minute are basically all I could ever need (hopefully) :D
If I understand correctly, If I am already making Rocket Fuel its a little cheaper aluminum-wise to just package some of that rather than build a whole battery production chain. It might be better Sulfur wise to make batteries if I'm getting power elsewhere but right now I am already building huge Rocket Fuel productions for power so I might as well bottle some of that up to start using Drones
Flying with the drones looked really fun, also, very useful. I'm glad we have option of using expensive fuel for fast drone, and and just have option of using ordinary fuel. -sincerely Uel
I really appreciate this video! As I close in on end-game in 1.0, I've been really curious what the new drone fuels bring to the table, and I wanted to know how the differing flight speeds could affect the fuel consumption of the drones. I'm not sure if it's applicable to all routes, but for yours, I converted the item/m fuel consumption back into MW to compare them: Fuel consumes 171.5MW Turbofuel consumes 195.333MW Batteries consumes 222MW (Although you can't use them for power) Rocket Fuel consumes 225.6MW Ionized Fuel consumes 268.333MW Uranium consumes 250MW Plutonium consumes 250MW What I find surprising, is that (with the exception of nuclear fuels (Rounding errors?)) drones will always consume more power the faster they fly. This seems somewhat self explanatory as it mirrors real life, but it's certainly not what I was expecting from the game. Dividing the MW by the item/m transport rate brings them all much closer, but the trend stays the same. I was hoping that Ionized fuel would burn far more efficiently in drones than other fuels, but it still seems like it is of dubious value beyond jetpack fuel. For me personally, I'll probably end up using Rocket Fuel if I build a lot of drones, as it seems to be one of the best fuels when you consider how easy it is to create each MW with it.
@@Steampunk_Wizard Good stuff! I think the major difference is that, unlike IRL, resourced are unlimited. So if you have the means to craft the better fuel, you can sacrifice efficiency for speed without major drawbacks.
Great vid, I was really happy when I heard that drones can use more than just batteries. Opens up a lot of doors and I love me some turbo fuel in my jetpack so I'll probably settle for that for now. Would've been funny to see packaged Biofuel in this experiment, it probably would make regular fuel look not too bad by comparison lol.
@@dmgdmgdmg2122 I think it makes sense since you unlock liquid biofuel very early in the game, but drones only in tier 8. By that point, pretty much everyone has some kind of fuel generator setup, so you can jump right into drones.
Nice comparison. Too bad that you can't really limit the stack size for the nuclear fuel rods.With just 0.01/0.02 per minute it is extremely wasteful to have large stacks in the drones.
But on the other hand, a full stack has the potential to last literally hundreds of hours (especially in Plutonium's case) I'm actually making Plutonium Rods purely so I can just have stacks to manually put into Drones and abuse the hell out of them whenever possible.
I actually forgot to talk about the fuel consumption more, thanks for pointing it out! I guess you can either have a full Nuclear Plant with overproduced rods and use the overflow, or split the rods belt a bunch of times to only extract a small amount for drones. But I agree, it would be nice to have a more elegant way of handling that.
@@DragonFinlay another option is you can actually get more Plutonium Rods pretty easily. Since the alt Recipe can be made in an Assembler, it makes it a fantastic candidate for Slooping. A couple Assemblers overclocked with Sloops thrown in can easily make a pretty decent number of Rods a minute.
Nice one, good video. Good illustration. If you look at your usage per round trip the fastest is not going to be the most efficient, which is important when you have a problem with having the drones fueled
On the drone port randomly opening. I've seen a few odd animations in my own world. Haven't gotten to drones yet but the trains get funky sometimes. Had it leave the traincar and pick up the box it dumps them in instead once (like, the part of the station) and put that on the train, had a few where it desyncs and picks the cars back up, it's a whole thing
Very helpful video! For some reason, the satisfactory wiki is very vague about fuel types, and stated that drones could only use batteries, so I went out of my way to start aluminum before I was fully ready. Seeing how innefecient fuel is, I don’t regret establishing a good supply of batteries.
@@soursylveon4784 I highly recommend using the wiki.gg one, not the Fandom wiki. The latter is poorly maintained, and there are tons of reasons to avoid Fandom. Search for Mossbag's video on Fandom if you wanna know more.
I also noticed the usage of rocket fuel is less than bateries. And they have the same speed. And I think rocket fuel is generally easier to produce in large quantities than baterries
Very interesting. I actually have a megafactory in the northern tributary to make use of that wide river for Pure Ingot production. Now that the Peak Uranium deposit has been downgraded I might just make a map wide Uranium powered Drone Network for all my production needs with the Tributary Megafactory as the central hub.
Good video. Would have been cool to see fuel consumed per trip by each drone instead of just fuel though! Would help for a calculation/cost of 1 uranium drine vs 2 fuel drones for example.
@@nangz Check the last third of the video, in the drone port UI you can see the fuel consumption per trip, as well as per minute. I assume that's what you meant?
I haven't used drones before but I'd like to give them a go in my current playthrough. What's the go with the maximum transfer rate? How does the fuel type affect this? I figured it would be determined by the belts in and out of the drone port like a truck station?
@@Danbotics Drones have comparatively low throughput, meaning they don't have a lot of storage (9 stacks of items). To make up for that, they are by far the fastest transport vehicles, so they are more efficient the further they travel. The maximum transfer rate helps you predict how many stacks this drone is transporting with the given fuel type and distance. The fuel only has to be supplied in the given amount - usually you would just produce enough of the fuel to supply several drone ports (e.g. 300 rocket fuel per min) and distribute that accross the other drone ports. You can see that the rocket fuel drone only needs close to 2 fuel/min, so I could supply 150 drones flying across the map, which should be plenty enough. Of course you still need to produce enough items/min to make full use of the drone (in case of the example with rocket fuel here 2.04 stacks/min), but with larger factories, it's usually not a problem. Let me know if you'd like more info!
Very cool test, this is a very significant difference! Nuclear fuel is a bit nasty i think. So, if you don't want to go for batteries, rocket fuel probably ist the fuel of choice. easy to produce and fast.
Yeah, the distance definitely plays a huge factor for their efficiency (due to landing/liftoff taking so long), but in the end, the ranking would be the same.
@@raphlin7 True, but I wanted a visual comparison and look at all the numbers myself, since you can't know if all the info on the wiki is up to date. Also, the wiki doesn't specify anything regarding round trip times, stacks/min, etc. because those depend on the fly distance.
@@Gazer75 True, but not the specific round trip times, stacks/min etc. since they depend on the distance. I wanted to get a feel for this by doing this test, and to have a visual comparison :)
I was wondering about this ever since they announced alternate fuel types! I already have batteries and was looking into using rocket fuel. I didn't know they would be exactly the same! Where batteries fit in was one of my top questions about this update.
So what I got out of this is that Ionized fuel is awesome, but Plutonium Fuel Rods can fuel things forever so long as they're being made and not causing radiation. I'd use those for like Nuclear and whatever since moving Uranium around isn't as easy by train.
@@Sonic7012 Thanks! I figured not everyone is interested in the details :) Also, there's time stamps in the description, but I think TH-cam doesn't add them automatically to a video jnless the channel has a certain size...
From my experience they seem to be spot on, but the drone ports in my actual save are always full to the brim, so I don't know if it stays accurate if you run out of items.
Hey thanks for doing this comparison @Finlay! Are you able to tell me the exact port to port distance for this test? I'm doing some calculations around this and that would be useful to know. Also, would you consider doing a follow-up video which shows the stats after a number of runs? The figures seem to settle after a while and they can differ as compared to just a single run.
@@10Sambo01 Hi! Thanks for the comment! I still have the save, so I can definitely go and measure the distance. Perhaps I can even upload the save game and share it here. What specific distance are you interested in? Front edge to front edge of ports with the same fuel? Sadly, I don't have the time nowadays to let it run for a while, but perhaps the save file will let you allow to do that.
very nice. getting close to drones in my playthrough, and i've been wondering about the speed differences myself. personally, i feel like even if the radioactive fuels are much faster, it's probably not worth dealing with the radiation, but that's just my take. for a "more perfect" scientific test, having all of them placed side-by-side would be ideal, though with matched rows at either end, i don't think it would actually make any difference.
@@tzxazrael I might've not explained it well enough in the video, but the reason why I lined them up like this is to avoid differences in landscape. If you place them side by side, the leftmost drone e.g. might fly through a valley or over a mountain that the rightmost drone can avoid, which saves time. In order to make it equal, the ports are placed in the opposite order on the other side, so the first drone has to fly to the last port etc. So I think this should be "more perfect" :)
@@DragonFinlay the line vs side-by-side i get your reasoning. i wonder if there's really enough variation in the terrain being crossed that it would make a difference, but whatever. when you say "opposite order" that makes me think 1234 4321 ... which would give drone 4 an advantage over drone 1 because drone 4 doesn't have to fly over the other ports on each pass. i'm assuming you meant 1234 1234 ...? and are just having trouble explaining it
@@tzxazrael Yeah, if you watch the original video by MechYarg (linked in the description), the terrain caused a big issue, though for them it affected the liftoff and landing of the drones. I just wanted to avoid that as much as possible, even though it probably doesn't make a huge difference. And yes, the setup is 1234 1234
Very good video, kudos to you. I thought rocket fuel was slightly better than batteries (like 5-6%, not much but relevant...I tried a very basic comparison in my game and it seems better like that)...but apparently they are basically the same
@@HairyStuntWaffle My assumption is that the game keeps track of the percentage that one fuel unit has been used up, and reduces it by one when that percentage reaches zero.
I loved being able to beat the game without nuclear, trucks, trains, drones, or blueprints haha 😂 probably could have finished earlier with them, but i didn’t ‘need’ them :) love how there’s no ‘wrong’ way to play Satisfactory
turns out batteries are the ideal option overall, both fairly simple to manufacture and keeps the drones at good speed plutonium is quite a waste to be used as any vehicle fuel, I get it that it's one way to get rid of nuclear waste but you'd be better off either sinking it or making more power with it ionized should only be used for jetpacks honestly and fuel is simply the cheapest option available if speed doesn't matter at all
@@FreakinMagic I personally stick with rocket fuel, there are a few placed on the map to easily get all the resources, and you can use the byproducts for lots of other things like plastic, rubber, fabric, black/smokeless powder
It’s kind of breaking my brain that different fuels not only burn at different rates, but also cause vehicles to move at different speeds. Feels like too many variables.
I just use batteries. They seem to be a good all-rounder. I don't want drones spreading radiation everywhere, and it seems like a waste of late-game resources. The only time I use fuel to power my drones is when I need plastic and rubber byproducts transported off my oil rig to my train station nearby. I usually have plenty of excess fuel and it's more convenient than transporting batteries to them as I have all the resources for packaged fuel on site. It also frees up more ports at my battery factory for other factories.
@@PowerofRock24 Sounds good if you already had that set up. I didn't have a battery factory, but instead already had a fuel factory that was just waiting to get upgraded to rocket fuel, so that's what I went with :)
I honestly had no idea you could use anything different from batteries, I always just produced a ton of batteries and had drones deliver batteries everywhere to all my drones, I just always just assumed they were electric drones, I wish I knew about using burnable fuel ages ago
@@fhdang8978 Don't worry, you are not wrong! Pre-1.0 drones only supported batteries, so you weren't dreaming :) Only 1.0 brought support for other fuel types, and that's why this video was made.
@@DragonFinlay AH okay thanks, good comparison on the drone fuel types, definitely thinking about changing setups around now knowing I can use the other types in drones 👍
I recently discovered that all my drones should be using plutonium fuel, and it doesn't really cause radiation. Never using any other type of drone fuel again.
Good video! The moment I saw they were in a line, pointing in the direction instead of perpendicular it kind of triggered me, because of the different lengths. But then you mirrored them!❤ Thanks for taking that into consideration. Probably a tiny difference but it would have bothered me, hehe
@@NicoBuilds-g3u Yup! The line setup was needed to avoid differences in landscape, so the only way to keep the distances the exact same was to line it up the same way, first to last and last to first.
@@DragonFinlay ohhhh, you are right! It was pretty clever! I would have made them perpendicular (want to avoid ficsit pilot crashing into each other! Thats not efficient!) And therefore made a worse experiment. Nice!
They can't, the 7 fuel types covered in the video are what drones can use. If you click the little orange fuel icon on the drone port's fuel input, you'll get a list of all the compatible types.
so, its basically going according to the information put out by the devs. fuel value: speed (m/s) Packaged Fuel 750 25 Packaged Turbofuel 2,000 30 Battery 6,000 37 Packaged Rocket Fuel 7,200 37 Packaged Ionized Fuel 10,000 45 Uranium Fuel Rod 750,000 42 Plutonium Fuel Rod 1,500,000 45 in terms off efficency vs cost to produce, i think ionized fuel is by far the best fuel choice for the drone fleet, and what im using.
@@goldeneagle256 Late-game definitely, though I like getting into drones as soon as I can after completing phase 3 and I often find myself just expanding what I already have. Perhaps one day I'll attempt a switch to ionized!
@@tristanridley1601 If you see it as waste disposal? Before 1.0 plutonium was the "upgraded" uranium with better efficiency and less waste. Only with 1.0 it's now possible to further process Plutonium to fully get rid of the waste.
@@DragonFinlay what ive done, i just pick up little extra rocket fuel from my power plant, package it, and send it to a location where i have some shard production going, and turn it into ionized fuel, before spreading it around my drone network. but yea, you cant do ionized fuel before you get to lateest stuff in the game
soo theres a lot of extra talking that has nothing to do with the actual video taking up the time so you can hit the 10 minute mark... get to the point stop wasting my time...
@@Chumbucket187 I get it, not everyone's interested in the details, but I wanted to avoid misunderstandings or questions about why I did this or that. Even though I explained most of the stuff, there's still lots of people having questions, so there's that :)
@@Chumbucket187 Also, I couldn't care less about how long the video is and whether I hit 10min or not. I'm not trying to attract viewers, I'm not trying to grow a channel, I'm literally just putting my insights out there and explaining the experiment and why I did things the way I did them.
another thing to compare, due to the drone fueled by regular packaged fuel requiring so long to take off what is the difference at 1/4 this test distance?
Thank you for showing the fuel consumption so i can get a better feeling on how much ionized fuel i need. I already knew the speeds and energy value of each fuel type but i coudn't find anything related to drone energy usage or fuel amount per kilometer or sth like that now i know how much it fuel it needs for a pretty large distance. Video came perfectly timed and thanks to the youtube algorithm
@@martin-gaming Nice to hear, happy to be of help! Good luck with setting up your fuel!
Here are the times of travel and the number of each item it takes per trip (with the amount of time it takes for one item to be consumed (so the longer it takes the better))
- Ionized Fuel : 4:08 for 6.02 units (that’s ~41 sec/unit)
- Plutonium Fuel Rod : 4:08 for 0.04 unit (that’s ~103 min/unit)
- Uranium Fuel Rod : 4:22 for 0.08 unit (that’s ~54.5 min/unit)
- Batteries : 4:49 for 9.71 units (that’s ~30 sec/unit)
- Rocket Fuel : 4:50 for 8.29 units (that’s ~35 sec/unit)
- Turbo Fuel : 5:33 for 30 units (that’s ~11 sec/unit)
- Fuel : 6:14 for 79 units (that’s ~4.7 sec/unit)
Time stamps:
0:00 The Setup + Explanation
3:21 Liftoff
5:53 Transfer Speed Comparison
7:40 Round Trip Time Comparison
FAQ:
Q: Why are the drone ports set up in a straight line rather than perpendicular?
A: To avoid what was explained at the beginning in the video, with drones following the landscape. Setting them up like this makes sure they all take the exact same route.
The ports are ordered 1234 1234 to keep the distance the exact same as well.
Q: Can drones run on other fuel types?
A: These 7 fuel types are all drones can run on currently. Liquid biofuel, any coal, and Ficsonium fuel rods are not supported.
You can check the supported fuel types for drones (and other things) by clicking the fuel icon next to the input slot in the UI.
Q: Why would I ever use the radioactive fuel rods?
A: While yes, the fuel rods are radioactive, their consumption rate is miniscule compared to the other fuel types, so they can be much more efficient in terms of fuel used per trip.
(I can't pin this comment because TH-cam considers it an "advanced feature" that needs ID or facial verification - no thanks?)
Great effort put into a very controlled experiment. good video
Fascinating. I didn't know fuel affected speed, I thought it was just the burn rate. Thanks for doing this, and love your avatar!
@@serverdingo Thank you, likewise!
The developers mentioned it did affect speed, I was waiting for a video to come out or something so then I wasn't struggling.
I rarely subscribe mid video, or even from one video watched. you sir are the exception.
clear video, clear content, no bs, well planned, no wasting time, no promo up to 80% of the video (which is where I'm at writing this).
Thank you so much, I'm really glad you liked it! Don't bother subscribing though, I'm not looking to grow a TH-cam channel. Just uploading my personal stuff, and things like this if I feel there's a need for it.
Go and subscribe to MechYarg instead :)
Good job man, very good planned video, keep up the work
True just needs to post more!
This is a great video with a well thought out and run experiment. Thank you for taking the time to make this. One consideration in my mind is that the nuclear powered drones don't create any waste, so could be used to burn plutonium fuel rods to close the nuclear loop (depending on how many drones you have) without needing to create ficsonium.
@@robbgosset674 That is a very good point, I did not think far enough for that. Very interesting!
Pretty nice comparison, simple and I liked that you reversed the drone ports at the end.
Very scientific approach, sound experiment. Thanks for this!
Thanks for this video. I am actually building a plastic factory and my first done port of this play through from the spire beach area that you are testing from. I plan to use Turbo Fuel for the first setup, and this was helpful.
@@princemarkied8071 Sounds good! Hope you'll have fun setting it all up!
They recently fixed an annoying bug with duplicate drone port names, so now everything should work as intended.
Great setup and video, thank you! It's also good to see my gut decision for rocket-fuel-fueled-drones validated. Consumption numbers were also very interesting to see. Thanks again!
Greatly done video! I can see the effort and the time invested behind all this setup you have made, i'm hopeful you will keep experimenting while having fun.
@@konraddeak546 Definitely always experimenting, it's what makes the game fun for me!
Thank you, excellent video. This was a really great change for 1.0 and gives you so many more choices in factory designs and focus.
Great video man, also you explained really well
Now this is a very good fuel comparison, thank you for this video, you have earned my sub.
@@exhale1804 Go sub to MechYarg who had the initial idea, my video is just a follow-up :)
@@DragonFinlay I'll go check it out
Videos like this makes me lament that there isn't really a downside to just making really long belts everywhere. The fun demands using all the alternatives, but to optimization addict in me demands belts, haha. Great comparison, by the way! Very clean and informative.
@@AurallWow I faced the same dilemma, but I already loathe having to route one belt through half of the map, so I quickly decided I'll go with the fun alternatives :D
yeah for most people there isn't a downside. but for the players with lower end machines or those who build mega factories, you can start to run into physical game engine limitations that make long belts detrimental to use.
i think Bitz and Xclipse both had series they had to put on the backburner because they ran into unity object limit in their worlds. while there have been optimizations since then, the unity limit still exists.
Edit: erm, i mean the object limit of the unreal engine, not unity.
I encountered this during my first play through. I WANTED to use a truck to transport coal around from a vein that felt a little too far for a conveyor, a little too close for a train. But it ended up just being annoying, due to the fact it took fuel mostly. But also due to the awkward space requirements. I ended up just replacing it with a long conveyor.
@@cranberrysauce61 Did you mean Unreal? Since that's what Satisfactory runs on.
@@DragonFinlay ... yeah. i been playing a quite a bit of Unity games the past week. so that got stuck in my mind lol.
This video was recommended to me at the exact right time, because I just finished my Ionized Fuel Plant for all my Drone needs.
Good to see the estimated fuel consumption, since I couldn't find ANY info about it.
Also makes me realize that my 520 packaged ionized fuel per minute are basically all I could ever need (hopefully) :D
If I understand correctly, If I am already making Rocket Fuel its a little cheaper aluminum-wise to just package some of that rather than build a whole battery production chain.
It might be better Sulfur wise to make batteries if I'm getting power elsewhere but right now I am already building huge Rocket Fuel productions for power so I might as well bottle some of that up to start using Drones
Without checking the numbers, yeah, I would say so!
Flying with the drones looked really fun, also, very useful. I'm glad we have option of using expensive fuel for fast drone, and and just have option of using ordinary fuel. -sincerely Uel
I really appreciate this video!
As I close in on end-game in 1.0, I've been really curious what the new drone fuels bring to the table, and I wanted to know how the differing flight speeds could affect the fuel consumption of the drones.
I'm not sure if it's applicable to all routes, but for yours, I converted the item/m fuel consumption back into MW to compare them:
Fuel consumes 171.5MW
Turbofuel consumes 195.333MW
Batteries consumes 222MW (Although you can't use them for power)
Rocket Fuel consumes 225.6MW
Ionized Fuel consumes 268.333MW
Uranium consumes 250MW
Plutonium consumes 250MW
What I find surprising, is that (with the exception of nuclear fuels (Rounding errors?)) drones will always consume more power the faster they fly. This seems somewhat self explanatory as it mirrors real life, but it's certainly not what I was expecting from the game.
Dividing the MW by the item/m transport rate brings them all much closer, but the trend stays the same.
I was hoping that Ionized fuel would burn far more efficiently in drones than other fuels, but it still seems like it is of dubious value beyond jetpack fuel.
For me personally, I'll probably end up using Rocket Fuel if I build a lot of drones, as it seems to be one of the best fuels when you consider how easy it is to create each MW with it.
@@Steampunk_Wizard Good stuff! I think the major difference is that, unlike IRL, resourced are unlimited. So if you have the means to craft the better fuel, you can sacrifice efficiency for speed without major drawbacks.
Thanks for this, really interesting
Very informative, and great to see them visually compared 👍
Great vid, I was really happy when I heard that drones can use more than just batteries. Opens up a lot of doors and I love me some turbo fuel in my jetpack so I'll probably settle for that for now. Would've been funny to see packaged Biofuel in this experiment, it probably would make regular fuel look not too bad by comparison lol.
@@dmgdmgdmg2122 I think it makes sense since you unlock liquid biofuel very early in the game, but drones only in tier 8. By that point, pretty much everyone has some kind of fuel generator setup, so you can jump right into drones.
Nice comparison. Too bad that you can't really limit the stack size for the nuclear fuel rods.With just 0.01/0.02 per minute it is extremely wasteful to have large stacks in the drones.
But on the other hand, a full stack has the potential to last literally hundreds of hours (especially in Plutonium's case) I'm actually making Plutonium Rods purely so I can just have stacks to manually put into Drones and abuse the hell out of them whenever possible.
I actually forgot to talk about the fuel consumption more, thanks for pointing it out!
I guess you can either have a full Nuclear Plant with overproduced rods and use the overflow, or split the rods belt a bunch of times to only extract a small amount for drones. But I agree, it would be nice to have a more elegant way of handling that.
@@DragonFinlay I mean i sink the plutonium fuel rods so i don't get uranium (or plutonium) waste
@@martin-gamingThat's valuable ficsonium you're sinking!
@@DragonFinlay another option is you can actually get more Plutonium Rods pretty easily. Since the alt Recipe can be made in an Assembler, it makes it a fantastic candidate for Slooping. A couple Assemblers overclocked with Sloops thrown in can easily make a pretty decent number of Rods a minute.
Nice one, good video. Good illustration. If you look at your usage per round trip the fastest is not going to be the most efficient, which is important when you have a problem with having the drones fueled
@@Hhunted Yup, the efficiency is something I forgot to cover here, but some of the other comments pointed out some interesting things already!
On the drone port randomly opening. I've seen a few odd animations in my own world. Haven't gotten to drones yet but the trains get funky sometimes. Had it leave the traincar and pick up the box it dumps them in instead once (like, the part of the station) and put that on the train, had a few where it desyncs and picks the cars back up, it's a whole thing
@@dacomputernerd4096 Got it, thanks for the info. I don't mind small visual bugs like these, was just wondering...
Very helpful video! For some reason, the satisfactory wiki is very vague about fuel types, and stated that drones could only use batteries, so I went out of my way to start aluminum before I was fully ready. Seeing how innefecient fuel is, I don’t regret establishing a good supply of batteries.
@@soursylveon4784 I highly recommend using the wiki.gg one, not the Fandom wiki. The latter is poorly maintained, and there are tons of reasons to avoid Fandom. Search for Mossbag's video on Fandom if you wanna know more.
There are multiple wikis still showing 0.8 information. Drones could use only batteries until 1.0
great video, just started using drones so this is very nice to know!
Great test. Good work
thank you for making this video
I also noticed the usage of rocket fuel is less than bateries. And they have the same speed.
And I think rocket fuel is generally easier to produce in large quantities than baterries
Very interesting. I actually have a megafactory in the northern tributary to make use of that wide river for Pure Ingot production. Now that the Peak Uranium deposit has been downgraded I might just make a map wide Uranium powered Drone Network for all my production needs with the Tributary Megafactory as the central hub.
Good video. Would have been cool to see fuel consumed per trip by each drone instead of just fuel though!
Would help for a calculation/cost of 1 uranium drine vs 2 fuel drones for example.
@@nangz Check the last third of the video, in the drone port UI you can see the fuel consumption per trip, as well as per minute. I assume that's what you meant?
I haven't used drones before but I'd like to give them a go in my current playthrough. What's the go with the maximum transfer rate? How does the fuel type affect this? I figured it would be determined by the belts in and out of the drone port like a truck station?
@@Danbotics Drones have comparatively low throughput, meaning they don't have a lot of storage (9 stacks of items). To make up for that, they are by far the fastest transport vehicles, so they are more efficient the further they travel. The maximum transfer rate helps you predict how many stacks this drone is transporting with the given fuel type and distance.
The fuel only has to be supplied in the given amount - usually you would just produce enough of the fuel to supply several drone ports (e.g. 300 rocket fuel per min) and distribute that accross the other drone ports. You can see that the rocket fuel drone only needs close to 2 fuel/min, so I could supply 150 drones flying across the map, which should be plenty enough.
Of course you still need to produce enough items/min to make full use of the drone (in case of the example with rocket fuel here 2.04 stacks/min), but with larger factories, it's usually not a problem.
Let me know if you'd like more info!
Very cool test, this is a very significant difference! Nuclear fuel is a bit nasty i think. So, if you don't want to go for batteries, rocket fuel probably ist the fuel of choice. easy to produce and fast.
great comparison! thank you
That was very helpful!
for some reason the "Hi, I'm Finlay" introduction reminded me of direwolf20's intro
How about the acceleration ? Try lower distances like ascend ing and travelling through a factory.
Yeah, the distance definitely plays a huge factor for their efficiency (due to landing/liftoff taking so long), but in the end, the ranking would be the same.
can they also fly on ficsonium fuel rods and does that make them go even faster?
@@Henkie95 Nope, drones can't run on Ficsonium as of now.
If it did it would likely be slower because ficsonium is less energy dense than plutonium
You can see the fuel and speed values on the wiki
@@raphlin7 True, but I wanted a visual comparison and look at all the numbers myself, since you can't know if all the info on the wiki is up to date. Also, the wiki doesn't specify anything regarding round trip times, stacks/min, etc. because those depend on the fly distance.
Speed and consumption is already listed on the wiki since release.
@@Gazer75 True, but not the specific round trip times, stacks/min etc. since they depend on the distance. I wanted to get a feel for this by doing this test, and to have a visual comparison :)
I was wondering about this ever since they announced alternate fuel types!
I already have batteries and was looking into using rocket fuel.
I didn't know they would be exactly the same!
Where batteries fit in was one of my top questions about this update.
So what I got out of this is that Ionized fuel is awesome, but Plutonium Fuel Rods can fuel things forever so long as they're being made and not causing radiation. I'd use those for like Nuclear and whatever since moving Uranium around isn't as easy by train.
Interesting. Thank you.
the actual test starts at 3:30 if you want to avoid the extra talking
@@Sonic7012 Thanks! I figured not everyone is interested in the details :)
Also, there's time stamps in the description, but I think TH-cam doesn't add them automatically to a video jnless the channel has a certain size...
@finlay9260 also I was wondering can you use liquid bio fuel?
@@Sonic7012 When hovering over the fuel icon in the drone port, these 7 types are what's listed. Biofuel, coal and Ficsonium don't seem to be usable.
Very good setup. I like the data. =)
Do these stack per minute accurate or they differ in actual no.
From my experience they seem to be spot on, but the drone ports in my actual save are always full to the brim, so I don't know if it stays accurate if you run out of items.
Hey thanks for doing this comparison @Finlay! Are you able to tell me the exact port to port distance for this test? I'm doing some calculations around this and that would be useful to know.
Also, would you consider doing a follow-up video which shows the stats after a number of runs? The figures seem to settle after a while and they can differ as compared to just a single run.
@@10Sambo01 Hi! Thanks for the comment! I still have the save, so I can definitely go and measure the distance. Perhaps I can even upload the save game and share it here.
What specific distance are you interested in? Front edge to front edge of ports with the same fuel?
Sadly, I don't have the time nowadays to let it run for a while, but perhaps the save file will let you allow to do that.
@DragonFinlay yeah, just the port to port distance basically. Geting hold of the save would be awesome!
@@10Sambo01 So! The distance is exactly 733 foundations, or 5864 meters. I added a download link for the save file to the description :)
Thank you@@DragonFinlay
@@10Sambo01 Feel free to share your findings here. Or will you make a video?
Thank you. Looks like i'm going to skip nuclear for my gameplay. Or at least would try it on endgame.
very nice. getting close to drones in my playthrough, and i've been wondering about the speed differences myself. personally, i feel like even if the radioactive fuels are much faster, it's probably not worth dealing with the radiation, but that's just my take.
for a "more perfect" scientific test, having all of them placed side-by-side would be ideal, though with matched rows at either end, i don't think it would actually make any difference.
@@tzxazrael I might've not explained it well enough in the video, but the reason why I lined them up like this is to avoid differences in landscape. If you place them side by side, the leftmost drone e.g. might fly through a valley or over a mountain that the rightmost drone can avoid, which saves time.
In order to make it equal, the ports are placed in the opposite order on the other side, so the first drone has to fly to the last port etc. So I think this should be "more perfect" :)
@@DragonFinlay the line vs side-by-side i get your reasoning. i wonder if there's really enough variation in the terrain being crossed that it would make a difference, but whatever.
when you say "opposite order" that makes me think 1234 4321 ... which would give drone 4 an advantage over drone 1 because drone 4 doesn't have to fly over the other ports on each pass. i'm assuming you meant 1234 1234 ...? and are just having trouble explaining it
@@tzxazrael Yeah, if you watch the original video by MechYarg (linked in the description), the terrain caused a big issue, though for them it affected the liftoff and landing of the drones. I just wanted to avoid that as much as possible, even though it probably doesn't make a huge difference.
And yes, the setup is 1234 1234
Very good video, kudos to you.
I thought rocket fuel was slightly better than batteries (like 5-6%, not much but relevant...I tried a very basic comparison in my game and it seems better like that)...but apparently they are basically the same
Yeah, seems like they are almost exactly the same, with batteries having a slight edge.
In the wiki they are both listed as 37m/s but rocket fuel has 20% more energy
so its a race ya want ...then that is what you get ...my head made a hole anime of a drone race now lol
burn rate on the construction page, definitely something they should add!
with the fuels that use less than 1 whole per trip, do they just never take more fuel after the first unit?
@@HairyStuntWaffle My assumption is that the game keeps track of the percentage that one fuel unit has been used up, and reduces it by one when that percentage reaches zero.
Deserve a sub & like - wel done sir.
@@georgehewitt8041 Thank you! You won't get much out of a sub to me, but go sub to MechYarg for the initial idea of making this comparison!
Real good. Thanks
4:15 that's the manta lol
looks similar tho
The Geiger counter went nuts... 😂
@@ecogent It diiid! Is it worrying that I like it? :D
I loved being able to beat the game without ever having to create a single battery
I loved being able to beat the game without nuclear, trucks, trains, drones, or blueprints haha 😂 probably could have finished earlier with them, but i didn’t ‘need’ them :) love how there’s no ‘wrong’ way to play Satisfactory
i know what ill be doing with plutonium rods this play through ! thanks
can drones run on packaged crude oil or biofuel?
@@pirwzy Nope
Hey man, great video but you missed biofuel
@@yoorboo You can't fuel drones with biofuel :)
@@DragonFinlay sorry, didn't know, thx xD
I was today years old when I found out drones can use nuclear fuel.
20 is accurate, and the info you're looking for shows up when you hover it in the build menu, fyi. :)
Yeah, I didn't think about that in the middle of making the video. Thanks!
Welcome! :)
Thanks for the complete absence of nonsense in this video
@@Nallenbot It's the magic of not trying to grow bigger, I literally just wanted to get this video out :)
can't ficsonium fuel rods be used as a fuel ?
@@nexyr_ Nope! Maybe in the future, who knows!
turns out batteries are the ideal option overall, both fairly simple to manufacture and keeps the drones at good speed
plutonium is quite a waste to be used as any vehicle fuel, I get it that it's one way to get rid of nuclear waste but you'd be better off either sinking it or making more power with it
ionized should only be used for jetpacks honestly and fuel is simply the cheapest option available if speed doesn't matter at all
@@FreakinMagic I personally stick with rocket fuel, there are a few placed on the map to easily get all the resources, and you can use the byproducts for lots of other things like plastic, rubber, fabric, black/smokeless powder
Wow I never knew that different fuel types had different speeds I thought it was just different consumption ammountd
It’s kind of breaking my brain that different fuels not only burn at different rates, but also cause vehicles to move at different speeds. Feels like too many variables.
Iv never use Drones but can they use BioFuel? Would be interesting on the consumption levels if so.
They can't unfortunately. The 7 fuel types shown in the video are all the ones you can currently use.
does ficsonium not work on drones?
@@darkloaf1033 Currently it doesn't, maybe in the future!
@@DragonFinlay damn that sucks :(
Why is TH-cam suddenly suggesting another dragon to me
@@KouenTenshi Oh? I assume you're interested in Satisfactory as well though, it's not just the dragon? That would be crazy :D
Is'nt there a charcoal drone ???
@@nArgari Not really? Unless I'm missing out on something hidden :D
I just use batteries. They seem to be a good all-rounder. I don't want drones spreading radiation everywhere, and it seems like a waste of late-game resources.
The only time I use fuel to power my drones is when I need plastic and rubber byproducts transported off my oil rig to my train station nearby. I usually have plenty of excess fuel and it's more convenient than transporting batteries to them as I have all the resources for packaged fuel on site. It also frees up more ports at my battery factory for other factories.
@@PowerofRock24 Sounds good if you already had that set up. I didn't have a battery factory, but instead already had a fuel factory that was just waiting to get upgraded to rocket fuel, so that's what I went with :)
The drones seem to only pick up a miniscule amount of plutonium fuel rods, so the only radioactivity is the refueling station.
I honestly had no idea you could use anything different from batteries, I always just produced a ton of batteries and had drones deliver batteries everywhere to all my drones, I just always just assumed they were electric drones, I wish I knew about using burnable fuel ages ago
@@fhdang8978 Don't worry, you are not wrong! Pre-1.0 drones only supported batteries, so you weren't dreaming :)
Only 1.0 brought support for other fuel types, and that's why this video was made.
@@DragonFinlay AH okay thanks, good comparison on the drone fuel types, definitely thinking about changing setups around now knowing I can use the other types in drones 👍
I recently discovered that all my drones should be using plutonium fuel, and it doesn't really cause radiation. Never using any other type of drone fuel again.
Good video! The moment I saw they were in a line, pointing in the direction instead of perpendicular it kind of triggered me, because of the different lengths. But then you mirrored them!❤
Thanks for taking that into consideration. Probably a tiny difference but it would have bothered me, hehe
@@NicoBuilds-g3u Yup! The line setup was needed to avoid differences in landscape, so the only way to keep the distances the exact same was to line it up the same way, first to last and last to first.
@@DragonFinlay ohhhh, you are right! It was pretty clever! I would have made them perpendicular (want to avoid ficsit pilot crashing into each other! Thats not efficient!) And therefore made a worse experiment.
Nice!
I thought you could only use batteries for drones, woah
That was the case before the full 1.0 release, where they added the option to use all these other fuel types :)
The future is now old man
Why not tested BioFuel?
Drones can't use biofuel, the video shows all 7 fuel types drones accept. Check the video description :)
Can drones run on liquid biofuel.
They can't, the 7 fuel types covered in the video are what drones can use. If you click the little orange fuel icon on the drone port's fuel input, you'll get a list of all the compatible types.
so, its basically going according to the information put out by the devs.
fuel value: speed (m/s)
Packaged Fuel 750 25
Packaged Turbofuel 2,000 30
Battery 6,000 37
Packaged Rocket Fuel 7,200 37
Packaged Ionized Fuel 10,000 45
Uranium Fuel Rod 750,000 42
Plutonium Fuel Rod 1,500,000 45
in terms off efficency vs cost to produce, i think ionized fuel is by far the best fuel choice for the drone fleet, and what im using.
@@goldeneagle256 Late-game definitely, though I like getting into drones as soon as I can after completing phase 3 and I often find myself just expanding what I already have. Perhaps one day I'll attempt a switch to ionized!
Isn't the cost to produce plutonium roughly zero as it's a byproduct of uranium waste disposal?
@@tristanridley1601 If you see it as waste disposal? Before 1.0 plutonium was the "upgraded" uranium with better efficiency and less waste. Only with 1.0 it's now possible to further process Plutonium to fully get rid of the waste.
@@DragonFinlay what ive done, i just pick up little extra rocket fuel from my power plant, package it, and send it to a location where i have some shard production going, and turn it into ionized fuel, before spreading it around my drone network. but yea, you cant do ionized fuel before you get to lateest stuff in the game
@@goldeneagle256 Ionized is extremely obnoxious and resource intensive, def prefer to make rocket fuel although plutonium sounds fun
soo theres a lot of extra talking that has nothing to do with the actual video taking up the time so you can hit the 10 minute mark... get to the point stop wasting my time...
@@Chumbucket187 I get it, not everyone's interested in the details, but I wanted to avoid misunderstandings or questions about why I did this or that. Even though I explained most of the stuff, there's still lots of people having questions, so there's that :)
@@Chumbucket187 Also, I couldn't care less about how long the video is and whether I hit 10min or not. I'm not trying to attract viewers, I'm not trying to grow a channel, I'm literally just putting my insights out there and explaining the experiment and why I did things the way I did them.
@@DragonFinlay with that attitude i wont be viewing any more of your videos. better get a real job...
another thing to compare, due to the drone fueled by regular packaged fuel requiring so long to take off what is the difference at 1/4 this test distance?
I would assume it's just less of a difference, the fuel drone only took like a second longer than the others.