Yeah. Electric Furnaces are more of a sidegrade in my opinion. While they don't need fuel, they're bigger and way more expensive than the other furnaces, and use electricity. Enough electric furnaces can put serious strain on your network.
While steel furnaces may need coal, it's pretty easy to manage, and in late game you don't really use coal for much else.
I personally disagree, I think electric furnaces are better for a few reasons.
1) You don't need to refuel them. You need tons of coal lategame for plastic for the oddles of advanced you need (notably tier 3 modules need 310 total plastic each). Having dozens of steal furnaces is a pretty huge fuel requirement.
2) Refuling them is a pain. Yes, you can do it automatically, but having to drag extra fuel everywhere is a annoyance.
3) They have module slots. Even if you use only T1 modules you get some pretty significant benefits, while T2 or T3 make a huge difference.
Now, steel furnaces have their advantages too, notably:
1) Size.
2) Initial building cost.
3) Fuel directly instead of drawing on the power network.
I don't think these are that important after early game though. You have tons of space as you expand, and having to automatically refuel them reduces the size bonus (effectively 3X2 instead of 2X2 as you need an extra line for the coal). The build cost is pretty trivial mid-late game. The third point is fairly big, but a single efficiency module makes the electric furnaces more energy effective then the steel ones.
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Topic: Factorio - Factory building game (Read 268999 times)