[kovarex] [0.17.9] Pollution of furnaces has changed

[lvllord]

Hello there,

I'm not sure if really a bug or just documentation problem and intended as it is.
With the change of higher efficency of the stone/steel furnaces (and reduced energy of coal/fuel), the pollution seems to has also been reduced in game, which does not match with the wiki nor 0.16.

Here are the pollutions for 0.16 and 0.17 for the furnaces normalized to a crafting speed of one.

0.16
stone: 1.8p / craftspeed (in game+wiki)
steel: 1.8p /craftspeed (in game+wiki)
electric: 0.45p / craftspeed (in game+wiki)

0.17
stone: 0.9p / craftspeed (in game), 1.8p / craftspeed (in wiki)
steel: 0.9p / craftspeed (in game), 1.8p / craftspeed (in wiki)
electric: 0.45p / craftspeed (in game+wiki)

I don't know if this is intended. But as I understood, the change in productivity for the furnces was to reduce complexity and not anything else.

Edit:
Seems to be an probable issue with other coal burning elements as well.
For example the burner mining drill also has a higher pollution in wiki (10p) as in game (5p). This results that the electric mining drill is only slightly better in pollution (18p / craftspeed) that the burner one (20p /craftspeed, in 0.16 it was 28.5 / craftspeed).

[orzelek]

Update changed fuels. Coal fuel value was dropped by half and efficiency of burner entities was increased from 50% to 100%. That would affect pollution value changes.
Question remains if thats intended.

[BlueTemplar]

It's not as simple (assuming coal-powered burners) :

Burner drill is 20 pollution per extracted ore. But then it needs 600 KJ to do that, so 0.15 coal, which will create 3 extra pollution, and require extra 90kJ, so 0.0225 extra coal, etc.
- for a bit more than 23 pollution per ore total.

Electric Mining drill is 18 pollution per ore, but it then needs 180kJ (electric) to produce that ore, so will use 5% of a boiler for 2 seconds, which will generate 2.77... pollution and need 0.045 coal, which will create 0.81 pollution from the miner, and need 8.1kJ, so will create 0.125... pollution from the boiler, so 0.002 extra coal, etc.
- for a bit more than 21.7 pollution per ore total.

So electric drills are about 5.7% more pollution-efficient than burner drills in 0.17.

Of course, other factors are in play, like the energy consumed by inserters, how you might want to stick longer with burner drills for coal for safer power, but *especially*, how electric drills allow you to decentralize part of the pollution from the mining area to the boiler area (stick those in the / near a forest if you can!)

EDIT : Same logic goes for furnaces of course, I'm a bit math-tired right now to see if they end up less polluting than before or not (I'd guess still less).

P.S.: Burner Furnaces and Drills were 100% efficient in 0.16 already.
Boiler was 50% efficient, now is 100%. But efficiency had NO effect on pollution / steam MJ. So the boiler still generates the same pollution / steam MJ.
Now, the pollution from *extracting* coal to get the same steam MJ has likely significantly increased, considering that you need twice the coal now !
(EDIT : no, you don't need twice the coal now for boilers, math-tired as I said... :p )

[lvllord]

Hi BlueTemplar,

from where do you have the coal pollution information? In the wiki I can't find any information about additional pollution beeing added depending on the fuel burned. So I thought the pollution of the burning material is already included in the pollution statistic of the burner itself.
But since I'm still "new" (only 500 hours), I'm happy to learn more

If not, I would suggest to combine all pollution to the burner, because otherwise it is much too compicated to calculate anything with pollution (to be honest, I lost track in your calculation somewhere in the middle).

The boiler is all right. Nothing has changed there and the pollution factor is what is was.

Yes, the efficency has not changed in the burner furnace/drill. But the "power required" has changed from 180 KW to 90 KW. It still uses the same amount of burning material, since its energy has been halfed.
Since the wiki has been updated and the power required has been reduced from 180 KW to 90 KW but the pollution was kept, I think the pollution reduction was not intended. That's why I think the internal formula of pollution/KW needs to be adjusted, to make the same pollution as in 0.16.
But only the devs will know if I think right

[TruePikachu]

I just dug into the prototypes, pollution for burner entities appears to be based directly on power consumption from the power source. Specifically, 0.17 `stone-furnace` defines an energy usage of 90kW, and a 100%-efficient burner power source with emissions of 0.01. The only relevant difference from 0.16 is that energy usage was halved from 180kW. Note that if we assume that the emissions value is in units of p/kW, 0.17 `stone-furnace` gives 90kW * 0.01 p/kW = 0.9 pollution, while 0.16 gives 1.8 pollution -- the same numbers from in-game according to OP.

The fix, if pollution was intended to remain the same, would be to double the emissions factor in the relevant burners.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, stone furnaces had their direct pollution halved,
but also the time for all their recipes was reduced by about 10%.
So in total, it seems like their (direct) pollution per smelted plate has been reduced by about -55%.

from where do you have the coal pollution information? In the wiki I can't find any information about additional pollution beeing added depending on the fuel burned. So I thought the pollution of the burning material is already included in the pollution statistic of the burner itself.

No, coal doesn't (directly) pollute more than other fuels (in vanilla at least).
However, you have to extract that coal first ! And those drills mining the coal also pollute ! (Depending on what kind of drill you use.)
Then for electric-powered furnaces and drills, the power they require would also pollute when you generate it if you use boilers !

[quyxkh]

So electric drills are about 5.7% more pollution-efficient than burner drills in 0.17.

Of course, other factors are in play, like

The biggie of course is you can put three E1's in an electric miner for an 80% pollution and energy-use reduction, and a pair of them in an electric furnace for 60%. With the increased pollution spread through camps and the new deconstipated camp layout I suspect efficiency builds are much more competitive now because reducing pollution has so much bigger knock-on effects.

[kovarex]

So, I wanted to fix this, but to fix this, I needed to know what should the values actually be, and then I realized, that the pollution values need to be presented better, and then I realized, we need feedback of what is producing/consuming pollution.

So this is basically fixed by the set of changes done for 0.17.12

[lvllord]

Hi Kovarex,

thx for the bigger change. It alltogether looks great now
But are you sure, that the electric furnace should have in total a bigger pollution than an directly coal burning steel furnace?
steel: 1p/s
electric: 1p/s + p from electricity

I just want to be sure, because it was different in 0.16.

Thx for the better pollution system

[kovarex]

You are right, I changed the steel furnace from 1 to 4 to keep the original concept.

The concept is, that steel furnace has double speed and double efficiency when it comes to fuel consumption, but pollution production per item produced is the same, while electric furnace has 4 times less pollution per item produced.

[Fluffles]

I thought I was going insane when I realized it took two efficiency 2 modules to get an electric furnace to match the pollution of steel furnaces. Glad this got fixed