Factorio Forums

Kovarex enrichment looks like small and incremental way to covert Uranium isotopes: U-238 to much more rarer U-235.

The recipe takes 40 U-235 and 5 U-238 and gives 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In its essence, you convert 3 U-238 to 1 U-235, rest of the input ingredients are returned.

However with productivity modules, filled productivity bar gives all of the resulting products as bonus, disregarding the fact the overall conversion is only 3 U-238 into 1 U-235.

So for example, if we take 2 Productivity module 3 into Centrifuge, every 5th craft (because of 20% productivity bonus) we will get for free 41 U-235 and 2 U-238.
Which means, we spend 3 * 5 - 2 = 13 U-238 and get 1 * 5 + 41 = 46 U-235. This is almost 10x productivity boost, and it makes U-235 supply abundant once you got first initial recipe runs.

I'm attaching small sandbox test setup with this issue. It contains one Centrifuge with 2 productivity module 3s and 40 U-235 and 17 U-238, which are exact requirements for 5 runs. After it runs 5 times, total amount of U-235 will be 86, which is 46 if we subtract initial 40 (81 will be in Centrifuge, 5 more in chest). To start the Centrifuge, turn on the power switch on the right.

@devs:
Just reverse the amounts? Make the recipe take 5 U235 and 40 U238. Then return 6 U235 and 16 U238. Perhaps drop the U235 amount a little more.
Productivity would still be worth while but won't give silly amounts of U235.

Wouldn't that be better filed under Balancing?

credomane wrote:@devs:
Just reverse the amounts? Make the recipe take 5 U235 and 40 U238. Then return 6 U235 and 16 U238. Perhaps drop the U235 amount a little more.
Productivity would still be worth while but won't give silly amounts of U235.

I think it would be better to fix how productivity handles ingredients which are passed through recipe without consuming, because 0.15 added a few such recipes (another example is coal liquification). My suggestion would be to subtract recipe requirements from results and filter out what gets less or equal to zero. Productivity should only apply to what remains, in case of enrichment that would be +1 U-235 every 5 crafts.

MeduSalem wrote:Wouldn't that be better filed under Balancing?

I think this can be classified as a bug. Productivity does not take into account ingredients which are passed through and not consumed, which was not an issue before 0.15 because there were no such recipes. With enrichment the problem became apparent.

Balance is balance. Critical Bug including gameplay balance issues are bugs. The devs right now are focusing on bugs and it only makes sense to post it here.

agmike has the right approach. Productivity modules currently yield "rate * Output." They should yield "rate * (Output - Input)," where "Output - Input" is multiset subtraction. For most recipes before now, "Output - Input = Output."

People mentioned that "Coal liquification" recepie has the same issue

Thanks for the report, I didn't think of this one
The solution is a simple one. This recipe was just removed from those that can be used with the productivity modules.

Fixed for 0.15.2

kovarex wrote:Thanks for the report, I didn't think of this one
The solution is a simple one. This recipe was just removed from those that can be used with the productivity modules.

Fixed for 0.15.2

To be honest, I don't think that's a good solution at all. I think this should be addressed in some other angle.

SHiRKiT wrote:To be honest, I don't think that's a good solution at all. I think this should be addressed in some other angle.

I think it is debatable...


But personally I would also agree that productivity Modules should be allowed, but the way the productivity is calculated should be changed.

MeduSalem wrote:

SHiRKiT wrote:To be honest, I don't think that's a good solution at all. I think this should be addressed in some other angle.

I think it is debatable...


But personally I would also agree that productivity Modules should be allowed, but the way the productivity is calculated should be changed.

What we need is for there to be a "catalyst" input that is required but not consumed, then have the recipe only produce whatever isn't the catalyst, and have that used for productivity calculations.

Modders could go crazy with that mechanic, so fingers crossed

MeduSalem wrote:But personally I would also agree that productivity Modules should be allowed, but the way the productivity is calculated should be changed.

+1.

So the inputs here are 40 U-235 and 5 U-238, and the outputs are 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. It seems you could determine the "product" by subtracting the inputs from the outputs, and apply the productivity bonus to the difference. So you'd just get 1 extra U-235 when the bar fills up, and you'd ignore the U-238 since you get back less than you put in.

Is there a way to "un-fix" this using lua script ?

There's to less uranium ore generated on existing map.

It is possible, you just have to re-add the recipe to the productivity whitelist.

That said, once you can enrich uranium, I am pretty sure you will have way more than enough

I can't recall exact numbers, but I am pretty sure you get .7% rich uranium and 99.3% poor, meaning once you enrich it you get about 34% of the mined uranium as rich.

I have no idea what I would do with 30k out of the 90k uranium mined....