Compact coal isn’t a popular resource to generate power in Satisfactory except for its use for Turbofuel, but it can be used as an alternative to regular Coal. We’ll analyze if it’s worth replacing coal with Compacted Coal or if it’s only good for Turbofuel.
How to make Compact Coal in Satisfactory
You first need to unlock it via the Sulfur Research chain in the MAM in Satisfactory. It’s the fourth research item in the chain, and requires one Hard drive, 25 Sulfur, and 25 Coal to unlock. Once you unlock it, you’ll have to put at least five Coal and five Sulfur in the Assembler to get five Compacted Coal.
You’ll notice the Sulfur Research chain is late-game content since you’ll only be able to scan the world for Sulfur at Tier Seven, meaning you’ll need to have Space Elevator Phase Three completed.
Compact Coal stats explained
Compact Coal produces 630 MJ and has a stack size of 100, which means you can stack a maximum of 63,000 MJ if you use it. The big difference between Coal and Compact Coal is the burn speed. While one regular Coal burns in four seconds in the Coal Generator, one Compact Coal burns in 8.4 seconds.
This means you’ll need half the amount of Compacted Coal to produce the same amount of energy as regular Coal. The difference also carries over to other machines such as the Tractor, Truck, Explorer, and Cyber Wagon. You can also use Compacted Coal to make Turbofuel and, following the alternate recipe, Fine Black Powder, Compacted Steel Ingot, and Turbo Heavy Fuel.
Is Compact Coal better than regular Coal?
When it comes to stats, yes, it is better since it burns slower than Coal, but if you want to replace Coal to generate power, then no. It’s only worth it if you fall into the rare but most favorable situation of finding a Sulfur node. You need to consider the work you’ll put into finding, extracting, and transporting Sulfur to make Compact Coal before you use it for power in your Coal Generator.
Considering Sulfur is the rarest resource in the game only behind Uranium, it won’t be worth replacing Coal for most players, especially in the late-game stage where you probably already have a steady supply of Coal and an organized power grid. We recommend focusing that resource on Turbofuel, but you can also use it to fuel smaller machines like Trucks, for example, since you won’t be able to restock the fuel so often.
Most players don’t use Compacted Coal or only make it out of curiosity, since using Coal is already enough to power everything, and finding more Coal nodes is easier than finding Sulfur ones, but if you do find them close to one another, there is no reason to not double the energy you can produce and maximize the power you can get from a Coal node.
