Drone Fuel Type Comparison - Satisfactory 1.0

MechYarg's video: • Drone Fuel test compar...
Please check it out and leave a like :)
0:00 The Setup
3:21 Liftoff
5:53 Transfer Speed Comparison
7:40 Round Trip Time Comparison

[@gnhatch]

Great effort put into a very controlled experiment. good video

[@martin-gaming]

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

[@finlay9260]

@@martin-gaming Nice to hear, happy to be of help! Good luck with setting up your fuel!

[@apexmace1271]

Good job man, very good planned video, keep up the work

[@landonphillips-de7bk]

True just needs to post more!

[@WoutLamers]

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!

[@serverdingo]

Fascinating. I didn't know fuel affected speed, I thought it was just the burn rate. Thanks for doing this, and love your avatar!

[@finlay9260]

@@serverdingo Thank you, likewise!

[@mmcion1]

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).

[@finlay9260]

Thank you so much, I'm really glad you liked it! Don't bother subscribing though, I'm not looking to grow a KZbin 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 :)

[@Steampunk_Wizard]

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.

[@finlay9260]

@@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.

[@LordDamokles]

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.

[@Kutan]

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.

[@finlay9260]

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.

[@martin-gaming]

@@finlay9260 I mean i sink the plutonium fuel rods so i don't get uranium (or plutonium) waste

[@blockchaaain]

​@@martin-gamingThat's valuable ficsonium you're sinking!

[@Kutan]

@@finlay9260 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.

[@konraddeak546]

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.

[@finlay9260]

@@konraddeak546 Definitely always experimenting, it's what makes the game fun for me!

[@Sevetamryn]

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.

[@soursylveon4784]

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.

[@finlay9260]

@@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.

[@tristanridley1601]

There are multiple wikis still showing 0.8 information. Drones could use only batteries until 1.0

[@27hund1]

Interesting. Thank you.

[@exhale1804]

Now this is a very good fuel comparison, thank you for this video, you have earned my sub.

[@finlay9260]

@@exhale1804 Go sub to MechYarg who had the initial idea, my video is just a follow-up :)

[@exhale1804]

@@finlay9260 I'll go check it out

[@gunjitkumar]

Great video man, also you explained really well

[@gregglazewski7557]

great comparison! thank you

[@BakaGrappler]

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.

[@GokaiGoblin]

Very informative, and great to see them visually compared 👍

[@nep1062]

great video, just started using drones so this is very nice to know!

[@Hhunted]

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

[@finlay9260]

@@Hhunted Yup, the efficiency is something I forgot to cover here, but some of the other comments pointed out some interesting things already!

[@dacomputernerd4096]

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

[@finlay9260]

@@dacomputernerd4096 Got it, thanks for the info. I don't mind small visual bugs like these, was just wondering...

[@kayzeke8571]

thank you for making this video

[@blueswales9990]

Thanks for this, really interesting

[@NicoBuilds-g3u]

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

[@finlay9260]

@@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.

[@NicoBuilds-g3u]

@@finlay9260 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!

[@jonobrien8848]

burn rate on the construction page, definitely something they should add!

[@Nallenbot]

Thanks for the complete absence of nonsense in this video

[@finlay9260]

@@Nallenbot It's the magic of not trying to grow bigger, I literally just wanted to get this video out :)

[@Thomas-ld4ie]

can they also fly on ficsonium fuel rods and does that make them go even faster?

[@finlay9260]

@@Thomas-ld4ie Nope, drones can't run on Ficsonium as of now.

[@pondwtreblex9379]

If it did it would likely be slower because ficsonium is less energy dense than plutonium

[@dimercamparini]

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

[@finlay9260]

Yeah, seems like they are almost exactly the same, with batteries having a slight edge.

[@martin-gaming]

In the wiki they are both listed as 37m/s but rocket fuel has 20% more energy

[@shirozoi]

Do these stack per minute accurate or they differ in actual no.

[@finlay9260]

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.

[@blockchaaain]

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.

[@juiceguy4784]

Great test. Good work

[@raphlin7]

You can see the fuel and speed values on the wiki

[@finlay9260]

@@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.

[@tzxazrael]

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.

[@finlay9260]

@@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" :)

[@tzxazrael]

@@finlay9260 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

[@finlay9260]

@@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

[@thoriandragontamer1411]

20 is accurate, and the info you're looking for shows up when you hover it in the build menu, fyi. :)

[@finlay9260]

Yeah, I didn't think about that in the middle of making the video. Thanks!

[@thoriandragontamer1411]

Welcome! :)

[@Gazer75]

Speed and consumption is already listed on the wiki since release.

[@finlay9260]

@@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 :)

[@Thebuird]

I loved being able to beat the game without ever having to create a single battery

[@evanherriges4042]

4:15 that's the manta lol looks similar tho

[@Turtle_on_da_skateboard]

Wow I never knew that different fuel types had different speeds I thought it was just different consumption ammountd

[@tristanridley1601]

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.

[@georgehewitt8041]

Deserve a sub & like - wel done sir.

[@finlay9260]

@@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!

[@lordtulkus40]

Iv never use Drones but can they use BioFuel? Would be interesting on the consumption levels if so.

[@finlay9260]

They can't unfortunately. The 7 fuel types shown in the video are all the ones you can currently use.

[@Sonic7012]

the actual test starts at 3:30 if you want to avoid the extra talking

[@PowerofRock24]

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.

[@finlay9260]

@@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 :)

[@tristanridley1601]

The drones seem to only pick up a miniscule amount of plutonium fuel rods, so the only radioactivity is the refueling station.

[@nArgari]

Is'nt there a charcoal drone ???

[@finlay9260]

@@nArgari Not really? Unless I'm missing out on something hidden :D

[@gwellsgavin]

Can drones run on liquid biofuel.

[@finlay9260]

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.

[@Fawstah]

I thought you could only use batteries for drones, woah

[@finlay9260]

That was the case before the full 1.0 release, where they added the option to use all these other fuel types :)

[@martin-gaming]

The future is now old man

[@goldeneagle256]

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.

[@finlay9260]

@@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]

Isn't the cost to produce plutonium roughly zero as it's a byproduct of uranium waste disposal?

[@finlay9260]

@@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.

[@goldeneagle256]

@@finlay9260 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