Steelbars bug crafting stations

[gamerphate]

Once you get high enough to make items that require steel bars, if you switch to another type of weapon, the field stays as steel bars. I imagine if I destroy the crafting station and rebuild it and just be really careful when I build things or rotate the que around. I don't mind having to buy steel bars for the items that need them, but to make cheaper items it is a bit tedious to keep restocking them.

Is there a way to make steel bars ourselves?

[Clawdius Talonious]

Another issue with the steel bars is when you go to craft a weapon that requires steel bars, it will give you the message that there are no suitable crafting stations if you don't have any steel bars in the crafting station. Another error message in that circumstance would be more suitable.

[castleguard215]

I was under the impression that I needed a higher level workbench to do the higher level weapons. I have trained up my weapon crafting to about 11 but can not make most of my high level weapons.

So does this mean that if I have steel bars then I can make these better weapons?

[Clawdius Talonious]

Yeah you'll need to go to towns and buy the steel bars I guess, or at least I haven't discovered any tech to make them myself yet.

[philthymcnasty]

Another issue with the steel bars is when you go to craft a weapon that requires steel bars, it will give you the message that there are no suitable crafting stations if you don't have any steel bars in the crafting station. Another error message in that circumstance would be more suitable.

This confused me. I thought that my bench just wasn't getting anymore power and built a generator. So we cant make steel bars either? I hope this gets updated soon.

[gamerphate]

Yeah you will know when you have to use them. On the crafting station the icon for space for ore changes from a square into a long thing row for a steel bar. And as neat as all this is, having to use steel bars on EVERYTHING is kind of a bummer. I mean, for now I don't mind buying them to make the high level swords, but if I can't be churning out low level swords while one or two guys work on the good stuff, it makes the process a bit tough.

On a side note - I built 2 large outposts and filled them both with small weapon crafting stations, then I can cue up around a dozen guys to train blacksmithing without using any resources and with little management, short of making sure random attacks get healed up.

[gamerphate]

Just bumping this thread cause I saw other people ask questions about this earlier, so maybe they will see this post and not have to make a duplicate.

[Someguy]

On this, it's surely already been discovered, and I may have some confusion on how it works, but just in case:

If you have a backstock of ore in the smithing bench hopper prior to bench upgrade, even though the bench is high enough, it appers to retain the ore field instead of changing to steel bar input. This happened to me on my first go at it and gave the message to the effect of bench not high enough or perhaps no materials. I did not test removing the ore, or building a second bench as I was unaware of the bar requisite.

Forgive the imprecise nature of the data, it was rather confusing and I wasn't honestly bug hunting at that point.

[PnzrNorm]

Just to throw my two bits into this particular topic, I've found the best way to do this is:

1. Build a weapon smithing bench I to train noobs in weapon smithing and to craft the cheapest weapons without wasting fabrics.
2. Build 2 weapon smithing bench II, only craft weapons on the bench that you will not be upgrading and upgrade the other once you've acquired the tech. (I'm sure you can get away with building only 1 and save bench III for later)

So you'll be able to utilise all 3 tiers of benches for maximum productivity, as well as choose what materials you want to use should you desire to craft weapons that don't require your top tier bench.

If you have a backstock of ore in the smithing bench hopper prior to bench upgrade, even though the bench is high enough, it appers to retain the ore field instead of changing to steel bar input.

I've also found this to be the case. Except that if the ore runs out while bench III is de-selected, it will change to require steel bars instead.

Yeah you'll need to go to towns and buy the steel bars I guess, or at least I haven't discovered any tech to make them myself yet.

There is a mod to add in a steel bar production building. I'm about to try it out.