I personally don’t mind having to do aluminium before tungsten, aluminium has PLENTY of uses one might want to have before going into tungsten processing.
Namely filters, machine covers (with circuits of course) and other useful alu alloys.
Smelters, to me at least, are not nearly as good as crucibles in the early game. For automation they are a must (sadly) but other than that, smelters are just a worse version of the crucible.
I haven’t tested it but i am sure i can make a “smelter” out of a crucible if i put a robot on it which will extract molten stuff and put them into pipes.
Mind you, you don’t HAVE to use a “cup” to scoop out molten stuff from the crucible.
The crucible can hold 2304 liters of molten stuff. The jug is 2000 liters so that works exceptionally well for most cases below 2000 kelvin.
In any other case, or when i need to scoop out more than 2000 liters at a time, i just use a barrel.
Using a barrel on molten stuff in the crucible will pick that stuff up assuming the barrel can handle the temperature. (possibly even protecting you against acid stuff)
What bothers me is i haven’t found tantalum yet… So i can’t even get to tungsten via that route even if i wanted to.
I am actually entering EV (because i want cheap and big batteries) without being past the iridium crucible. And it’s iridium because i don’t have tantalum of course.