Steel slag chunk
Steel slag chunk
A chunk of steel slag. While it's useless in its current form, it can be smelted to recover steel.
Base Stats
- Type
- Chunk
- Beauty
- -8
- HP
- 300
Building
- Size
- 1 × 1
- Cover Effectiveness
- 50%
Creation
- Deconstruct yield
15
Steel slag chunks are a type of chunk created by the destruction of several different structures and objects. They provide cover and can be smelted at an Electric smelter for 15 steel.
Acquisition
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Steel slag chunks are created from destroying certain buildings and raider's drop pods and cargo pod events, but never the pods of orbital trader's or quest reward delivery.
Summary
Their primary use is to be smelted at an Electric smelter for 15 steel. This requires 400 ticks (6.67 secs) of work.
They also act as 50% cover.
Analysis
While smelters are available early, or even immediately if playing the Crashlanded scenario, you have many other sources of steel.
Smelting a steel slag chunk would take 26.7 ticks (0.45 secs) per 1 steel. Below 16 Mining skill, this is actually better than mining steel. It is also better than deep drilling. However, this does not consider hauling time. Since drop pods usually land far away, it takes a long time to haul them back.
The benefit is that steel slag chunks are renewable, as raiders and thus drop pod raiders are renewable. Even when steel ore is available, smelting allows non-miners to generate a supplemental source of steel. Later in the game, deep drills can provide vast amounts of steel, but smelting is often faster (especially for non-miners)
It takes 170 Steel, 
2 Components to make an electric smelter, which is quite costly (12 chunks to break-even). This discourages creating an electric smelter in the early game, where you won't have enough things to smelt. As steel slag chunks won't go anywhere, you can wait a while before actually building the smelter. Once you can smelt enough objects, though, smelters provide a continuous profit of steel through chunks, weapons, and apparel.
If you have a mechanitor,
then lifters and/or fabricors can be used to automate the hauling process.
Cover
As a chunk, it provides 50% cover, so should be cleared to a stockpile away from areas where enemies could use them. Conversely, they should be exploited when fighting field battles to provide cover to your own pawns. With its modestly high HP and non-flammability, it makes for more durable and rapidly deployable early cover than wooden barricades at the cost of providing 5% less cover.
Gallery
Variant A
Variant B
Variant C
Version history
- 1.3.3200 - Changed slag steel chunk mass from 5 to 8 so it doesn't weight less than the steel you get by smelting it.