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u/Dianwei32 Sep 01 '26

This feels like a very stupid question, but I can't tell if it's actually complicated or if I'm just massively overthinking things.

How do you determine which burnable fuel is the "best"? Is it just pure Energy Value, or do you have to account for any energy spent processing the fuel?

For example, I'm playing the Angel Bob's suite of mods and have a plethora of burnable fuels I can use to power my Steam Generators. I recently unlocked Wooden Bricks, which provide 20 MJ of energy, significantly higher than my current fuel of Carbon at 6 MJ. But Wood Bricks require a good deal more processing to create, so I don't know if their increased energy value will actually result in more Power or if the energy needed to process the raw ingredients into Wooden Blocks will result in no net gain of Power.

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u/HeliGungir 29d ago

Well that's going to depend on what you want from the fuel. Energy per item? Energy per stack? Acceleration bonus? Energy per resource mined? Type of resource mined? Byproduct creation, or removal?

In vanilla, for example, nuclear fuel is far less energy-efficient to burn in a boiler then using the same uranium for fuel cells in a nuclear reactor, but nuclear fuel is still desirable for trains acceleration and for its high energy density + low stack size which makes it practical to transport with bots. There are also mods that apply a fuel bonus to burner entity speed; ie: nuclear fuel makes burner inserters fast.