kittens-game
I have an increasing need for gold, but haven't made it to geologists yet (with the upgrade). I've taken to building more and more smelters. The flavour text says that an additional smelter will add 0.00 gold. My gold per tick has been stuck on 0.02 for some time, despite producing an additional 8 smelters.
Am I wasting time building additional smelters? Is there another, better way to obtain gold that doesn't involve geologists?
Gold is used in many buildings, the Tradepost and Temple being among them. It's also required for trading, so if you want to ever get specific resources faster, you're going to need gold. It's also used in many faith upgrades, and some workshop upgrades.
Any way you look at it, gold is very useful. You need it. Lots of it. Compared against the Amphitheater, though, it depends on what your current happiness level is at. The lower your happiness, the more I would weight getting them, as they give corresponding kitten efficiency bonuses, whereas gold is used to progress.
You have to click on the button part with the text, just like with any other building (most don't have + button, so it may seem confusing at first). The + button is for increasing the active levels after you have it bought.
Since it uses up resources when active, it has +/- buttons to increase and decrease the active levels of smelter, in case you want to free up the resources that are being used by it.
Best Answer
They add gold, but it is notably little. It does help, but if you're finding Smelters to not make a noticeable difference, you probably need to go a different route.
General production increases: Without resetting, the best way to get a total production increase is probably the "Solar Revolution" faith upgrade. This gives a percentage increase to nearly all production values (ivory appearing to be a noticeable exception) and, once researched, costs only faith to increase.
Another option is Paragon. If this is your first pass through the game, you're probably hitting a stall point where you just don't produce enough anything to feel like you're making any progress. At that point, you might be best served by focusing on population for a while, as many kittens as you can get, and then resetting. This gives Karma and Paragon, both of which are major boosts to production (Paragon affecting virtually all building production, and Karma increasing all kitten job production).
It's later-game, but Reactors and Magnetos give a significant boost to all production as well. Note that Magnetos give a bigger boost if you have lots of Steamworks.
Gold-specific boosts: The only way I've found so far to get more gold specifically, besides making more Smelters, is the Geodesy upgrade you mentioned.
Lots more smelters are an option, though. Smelters take only minerals (and some wood to run) to create, and Mines are relatively easy to make (and Quarries provide another option) to mass-produce smelters. If you're going to go this route, consider building a Ziggurat and sacrificing unicorns at least once, for the Tears that give another 10% boost to Happiness.
TL;DR: Smelters, Reactors, Magnetos (with Steamworks for more effect), the Solar Revolution faith upgrade, and Paragon are the best only ways to get gold before you get the Geodesy upgrade for your Geologists. Note that all of these - being percentage boosts to the Smelters' base gold production - will be more effective the more Smelters you have. To directly answer your question title, No, Smelters do not stop producing gold.