... power is just a gimmick to produce lots of energy for comparable little amount of effort. Nothing hinders you to use steam engines instead. Nuclear and steam are already interchangeable. Without nuclear power being a door opener to a new stage of the game we are fine with steam, solar and nucleanuclear ...

... It's just to good. Nuclear has it's advantages, but the problem with it is it will run out of fuel much faster than something like solar or steam, due to the small amount of uranium in the world. Crazy amounts of power comes at a cost. In addition to the uranium problem, you are always using other resources just to get it to your processing station (fuel for trains, sulfuric acid for mining, electricity for pumps, miners, and the many machines you need to process it effectively). So the question arises... is uranium really the ultimate choice for power? This is why we should have other forms of power such as wind or geothermal. A patch of 200,000 Uranium Ore turns into 20,000 Uranium, probably about 140 U-235 and 19860 U-238 (random, but it'd be around here). That's enough to kickstart Kovarex and-then some. If you use Kovarex to achieve the ratio If you get 850 U-235 (+710 from Kovarex), you'd have 17730 U-238 left over. It ain't a perfect ratio, but close enough. This is enough to make 8500 fuel cells of 8GJ of energy. Or... roughly the time to run 4-reactors @ 480MW full-out for 425000 seconds, or 118 hours . I think you can find and start using a new patch of Uranium within 118 hours, right? And my nearest "big patch" of Uranium was close to 500,000 in my game, so really, my first patch will last till the 200+ hour mark. I've also got some efficiency savings due to saving fuel by storing excess energy in tanks. In any case, a small patch of Uranium leads to huge amounts of energnuclear. ...

... It's just to good. Nuclear has it's advantages, but the problem with it is it will run out of fuel much faster than something like solar or steam, due to the small amount of uranium in the world. Crazy amounts of power comes at a cost. In addition to the uranium problem, you are always using other resources just to get it to your processing station (fuel for trains, sulfuric acid for mining, electricity for pumps, miners, and the many machines you need to process it effectively). So the question arises... is uranium really the ultimate choice for power? This is why we should have other forms of power such as wind or geothermal. with a centrifuge running Kovarex enrichment (40 235U loop) uranium really isn't an issue. still i would like to see geothermal and wind solutions for pre-nuclear power, and outposts etnuclear. ...

... It's just to good. Nuclear has it's advantages, but the problem with it is it will run out of fuel much faster than something like solar or steam, due to the small amount of uranium in the world. Crazy amounts of power comes at a cost. In addition to the uranium problem, you are always using other resources just to get it to your processing station (fuel for trains, sulfuric acid for mining, electricity for pumps, miners, and the many machines you need to process it effectively). So the question arises... is uranium really the ultimate choice for power? This is why we should have other forms of power such as wind or geothermanuclear. ...

... It's just to goonuclear. ...

... criticality here. ), but I still wouldn't use it, because you would most likely get radiation poisoning before your enemy does, considering you are carrying your gun filled with nuclear bullets everywhere you go. Yay, hip cancer. :roll: Still, it's a pretty interesting idea. I would use DU not for radiation damage, but for much increased kinetic damage. The thing about DU is that it is heavy. Really heavy. If you would somehow find a way to accelerate the DU bullet to a velocity similar to a AK-47 bullet, you would inflict a ton of damage. That is, if you can even get it to that velocity without blowing up your gun. Since DU bullets are so heavy, they need more propellant to get it up to speed. To get it up to a reasonable speed, you might need to add so much propellant that, if fired, might simply blow up the gun due to the stress exerted by the expanding gasses trying to push the bullet outwards. Of course, designing a stronger gun isn't much of an issunuclear ...

... option: I really like the idea of using nuclear power in the game, however, I feel that having only 2 choices to generate energy is not enough. I would also like to see choices for uses the depleted nuclear fuel aside from building myriads of storage tanks for them: 1) Some kind of disposal that would bury the depleted uranium a few miles underground. There would be a special building that would drill a hole in the ground, producing tons and tons of stone that would need to be stored somewhere (like 5000 units or something). The building would then become a disposal unit for the depleted fuel, but with a limited capacity. Once it's filled up, 90% of the stone needs to be put back in and the waste will be forever trapped deep underground. Then the player would have to build another one somewhere else, and the same location couldn't be used twice to store fuel. 2) Some way to turn the depleted uranium into radioactive bullets that would deal radiation damage, hurting enemies over time. 3) Some super-super-super high tech option to encase the fuel in a special box that nullifies radiation, acting as a lamp that consumes no electricitynuclear ...

... power: 1. Please don´t add an additional resource. Uranium could be extracted out of stones, which currently is a bit underused in the game anyways. Makes an interesting chain with extration and enrichtment. 2. I am also strongly voting for an atmoic waste managment implentation. I would go for a storage-building, which has to be constantly supplied by empty barrels ore else create a big pollution. 3. DU-Tank-Ammunition souds great - should release a lot of pollution on impact! 4. I also think wind would be a good addtion, letting players go green but with a lot of efford. For that a "priority mode" for accumulators would be crucial, to use at night before coal, but keeping some in basic mode for defence. 5. Buring wood should create less pollution than burning coal. 6. Power loss in the electricity-network sounds interesting, mainly because it forces me to use the bigger poles for long distance. Currently I mostly use small poles, cheap and fast to make with all the excess wood. Another way could be to only allow ~ 5-7 small poles in a row to carry power and after that it cut´s off, so you have to build a backbone of large poles. Kind Regards, Daninuclear ...

... power, which is great. However, please make the energy setup a choice . Right now it is a clear progression without much choice: You start with Steam Engines and eventually supplement them (or not) with solar panels . This is kind of the only real choice you have - use solar panels before accumulators or not to reduce pollution during the day and prepare your solar fields later on. Then you move on to solar power and I guess in the new update to nuclear . Please give players more options for all stages of the game. Give an alternative to steam early on - maybe something expensive but clean like wind. Make wind turbines have reduced efficiency if they are not spaced out and wham, you got a perfect clean early game power source with enough drawbacks to make it impractical later on. Maybe add a semi-clean alternative to solar panels (oil?) for the mid/late game and something along nuclear power for whatever stage you plan it onuclear ...

... generators. It would be cool if you had to manage the heat of them some how to prevent meltdowns and explosions. Those are my thoughts on new sources of energnuclear ...

... power. I feel like it's a bit... clunky? Having to have the nuclear reactor feed into the burners. Why not change it so that both the burners & nuclear reactors produce steam? & the steam fluid then feeds into either steam engines or turbinenuclear ...

... power. If the water supply decreases energy does too, so you need to have a reliable water supply ((coal pump)? or eletrical pump with windmill). The energy infrastructure could be a challenging branch of gameplay. The proposed minigame for the nuclear powerplant could be a good way to implement that. Greetings, Noisnuclear ...

... power expansión... Nice job. I think though that this is very similar to something I saw in an older post. https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5&p=196808#p196808 Anyhow, good job stilnuclear ...

... power I really like the puzzle minigame called Reactor Incremental (also present in Industrial Craft for Minecraft). Players build small components like fuel cells, coolant, etc, and it becomes puzzle mini game. Fuel cells produce electricity, but they also produce heat. Too much heat and the reactor will need to shutdown or the items will break (or the reactor explode!). This heat can be mitigated by building cooling vents and such. The thing that makes this interesting is that fuel cells that are placed adjacent to each other produce electricity more efficiently, but they produce MUCH more heat. This lets players build reactor designs that can be very fuel efficient and powerful, but possibly dangerous, or go for less efficient, safer options. For factorio it might make sense to build a large reactor building with an equipment_grid accessed just like the modular armor. The gird based minigame looks something like this: http://i.imgur.com/x1EbK.pnnuclear ...

... power expansion: (look at the picture (download with rightclick) to understand the production chain) New Items: - Uranium ore (no radiation) - Depleted uranium (low radiation) - Enriched uranium (medium radiation) - High enriched uranium (high radiation) - Extreme enriched uranium (extreme high radiation) - Depleted nuclear fuel (low radiation, 2 in game days burning time, not stackable) - Enriched nuclear fuel (medium radiation, 5 days burning time, not stackable) - High enriched nuclear fuel (high radiation, 15 days burning time, not stackable) - Wasted depleted nuclear fuel (low radiation, not stackable) - Wasted enriched nuclear fuel (medium radiation, not stackable) - Wasted hich enriched nuclear fuel (high radiation, not stackable) - Nuclear waste (medium radiation, not stackable) - Uranium ammunition (no radiation) - Nuclear artillery ammunition (low radiation) - Heavy Water New placable objects: - (Nuclear) Processing plant (with 2 outputs) - Nuclear plant - Disposal chest (Bigger than a steel chest, but with the same capacity; creates radiation/pollution scaled by the content) Science: - red "circle": >>Nuclear Power I<< - brown "circle": >>Nuclear Weapons<< - the rest: >>Nuclear Power II<< Notes: - All four slots in a nuclear plant must be filled to heat up the water, if there are only three or less slots filled it will consume electricity (3->750kW, 2->500kW, ...). If the energy consumption can't be ensured, a heat bar in the nuclear plant will quickly fill up and when it's full the plant will explode (much area damage and pollution). (temperature control via circuit network? ->emergency accumulators) - Radiation can be defined for it self or in pollution, so biters will focus on disposal chests and try to destroy it. If a disposal chest (with nuclear waste in it) is destroyed, biters in a scaled (by the content) radius will mutate. Those biters should be very hard to kill. For nuclear plants a similar solution is imaginable. - The player will suffer damage, if radiation emitting materials are in his inventory. - Uranium ore should be rare and take more time to mine than other ores. - Small "nuclear batteries" could be an energy source for armor (electric vehicles? ->train, car) Some Math: 300 uranium ore = 60 depleted nuclear fuels / 4 slots = 15 loads * 2 days per load = 30 days of energy production 300 uranium ore = 12 enriched nuclear fuels / 4 slots = 3 loads * 5 days per load = 15 days of energy production 300 uranium ore = 8 depleted nuclear fuels / 4 slots = 2 loads * 15 days per load = 30 days of energy production 300 uranium ore = 2 nuclear artillery ammunitions The first technology (Nuclear Power I) will give you the possibility to do something with uranium at all. But the second tech (Nuclear Power II) will give you much more efficiency. If you are using depleted uranium you produce less waste, but high enriched uranium is partially recyclable, allows strong artillery ammunition and doesn't need heavy water. End note: I tried to make a simplified factorio-like version of the nuclear industry. But this is just a proposal, so feel free to correct, change, cut or expand it like you wish. Redo the math, add new processes, change costs, cut the prduction chain, whatever you like. Greetings from germany! Noisnuclear ...

... that uses steam in the game. If I were the one implementing it into the game I think I would do it like this. -Have a "radiation" system thats similar to pollution, it could do health damage at really high levels. -Uranium ore should be relatively easy to come by but it should need a lot of work to refine it, convert it to an enrichable form, enrich it, then assemble it into fuel rods. -You should also need to redo the enrichment a large number of times to make it usable in a bomb and it take a very large amount of ore to end up with a bomb. -There should be nuclear waste that needs to be assembled into a storage container of some kind. -You would be a short term and a long term radiation system and that handling the waste right after it comes out would kill you. -The nuclear plant would take in water and output hot water like a boiler that uses uranium instead of coal. -It would respond slowly to changes in energy output. You would need either accumulators or regular coal power to make up for sudden peaks like from laser turrets and it could melt down if it overheats from not get enough cooling water, although it could dump the heated water to make room for new cold water maybe. I would also make it so that hot water slowly loses heat in pipes or storage containers, that way you can't just use a storage container instead of accumulators. The way I see it, in factorio the way game balance works is things either cost space, materials to use, materials to set up, or effort to set up. Solar trades space and raw materials to set up for no material use over time. It also doesn't work at night. This makes it great for long term power because it has no recurring cost. Nuclear would be similar in that once the fuel production is set up, the material use over time would be cheap. It would just trade space usage for effort and material to set it up. If it turned out nuclear was too easy/good I would make it necessary to have two separate cooling loops where one goes though the plant and becomes slightly radioactive and needs to use a heat exchanger to heat the water that will go through the turbines. Basically, it would be a very complicated, end game power source. In this form it might be more suitable to be a mod than in the actual game because of the complexity and number of materials and components that would be added to the game, but I personally would love to be able to build thinuclear ...

... will hopefully pose a tricky logistical challenge, but I don't think water should be a part of it, at least not needing a large constant flow for the reactor itselNuclear ...

... should power steam engines... That's backwards and defeats the object of nuclear. With how little coal is used and how big the deposits are it's easier and more efficient to use it and you can get set up almost as soon as you launch the game. Besides, steam power is mainly for when the engineer has just landed and he needs to throw something simple together to make electricity. Nuclear is end-game with tens of thousands of research vials used, when he has the time, resources and logistics to do it properly. It's not unrealistic to expect that he knows (or can research) a way to convert nuclear energy directly to electricity, or at least in fewer steps (as each conversion is subject to energy loss so the more steps the less efficient it is). I think that it would be overpowered and against idea of Factorio to get huge amount of electricity from single nuclear reactor. There must be complex processing chain with logistic challenges. I suggest that there will be tiers for boilers (I think that this is suitable place for suggestion). 1. Low powered coal boiler with 100 C output. 2. High powered superheated coal boiler with 300 C output. 3. Nuclear reactor with very high power and 300 C superheated output. And three tiers of steam engines/turbogenerators. 1. Low powered entry level wet steam engine with low efficiency. It would give maximum power at 100 C liquid. 2- High powered superheated steam engine with moderate efficiency. It would give maximum power at 300 C liquid. 3. Very high powered steam turbine with 300 C input and highest efficiency. Every boiler and engine could be paired, however there would be possible loss of efficiency or ridiculous number of small powered units per one high powered unit. It would need only one little change to game. Efficiency should be property of engine instead of (or in addition to) property of boilenuclear ...

... power should be more realistic than other things in the game? I think that it is quite unrealistic that animal species would mutate to thousand times larger in couple of days if they just smell a little bit of industrial smoke. It may be also little bit unrealistic that one man could build huge production facilities, including nuclear power plants and orbital rockets, and survive if he drops on a planet full of strong hostile aliens. I agree, that there should be strong relation to realism in Factorio, but it should not be the most important thing. I agree, additionally we are talking about a point in technological progress where space travel has advanced enough to visit inhabited worlds. If you went back even just 30 years and talked about the idea of a smart phone you would have been told to be realistic, what will technology be like in another thousand years? I don't think nuclear should power steam engines... That's backwards and defeats the object of nuclear. With how little coal is used and how big the deposits are it's easier and more efficient to use it and you can get set up almost as soon as you launch the game. Besides, steam power is mainly for when the engineer has just landed and he needs to throw something simple together to make electricity. Nuclear is end-game with tens of thousands of research vials used, when he has the time, resources and logistics to do it properly. It's not unrealistic to expect that he knows (or can research) a way to convert nuclear energy directly to electricity, or at least in fewer steps (as each conversion is subject to energy loss so the more steps the less efficient it isnuclear ...

... power plants. You would need to implement a full waste simulation instead of the general "pollution" factor we have now. Not necessarily. Factorio could take best things from reality and something from imaginary. There is no obligation to make exact simulation of real world. Separate pollution with somewhat different properties could give an interesting addition to game without being too complex for beginners ot too fictive. Especially if nuclear power was a late game thing players have hundred hours of experience in that phase. But I would for once like to see a more realistic representation of nuclear power in a game. Especially in a sci-fi oriented game. Why just nuclear power should be more realistic than other things in the game? I think that it is quite unrealistic that animal species would mutate to thousand times larger in couple of days if they just smell a little bit of industrial smoke. It may be also little bit unrealistic that one man could build huge production facilities, including nuclear power plants and orbital rockets, and survive if he drops on a planet full of strong hostile aliens. I agree, that there should be strong relation to realism in Factorio, but it should not be the most important thing. A futuristic nuclear power plant should be small, compact, and with a very high power output. To make nuclear worse for game balancing purposes only perpetuates the myth that nuclear is not the best power source humanity have available. I agree what you said about nuclear power in real life. It should be investigated and build much more to replace more harmful (practically all other) energy sources. However, I think that purpose of computer games should be entertainment and not propaganda. Nuclear should be the better version of solar without accumulators instead of some sort of coal analogy. What is the exact problem with accumulators? If I choose default values I can put couple of assemblers to produce solar cells and accumulators faster than I can build energy consuming assemblers or miners. When I get construction bots I can cover huge areas with solar panels and accumulators with little work and playtime. I think that nuclear power will be relatively boring and futile addition, if it is just insanely overpowered easy, infinite and free endgame energy source without any significant drawbacks or trade offs. If there is not ideological and political resistance and high capital costs in Factorio, we could balance it for example by exaggerating pollution and dangers little bit, in my opinion. That would not need huge modifications in game idea or programming wornuclear ...