Possible balance issue: Electric energy / Effectivity

[EDI]

Hi!

Browsing through the wiki (as well as the .lua files), I came to the conclusion that the effectivity of electric devices is always at 100% - they drain exactly the amount as stated. This might be great for looking at the tooltip and knowing immediately, how long your energy will last, how high the impact on your network is, etc.

What bothers me, is that boilers are set to 50% effectivity, while the rest of the burners work at 100% (Burner drill, burner inserter, ...)

The burner inserter has 180W of power - compared to the electric counterparts, this thing should be amazingly fast. It might be a strange suggestion, but why not set the power to 18W, and the effectivity to 10% ? It would equal out in the speed the coal is consumed, but the value is better comparable.

More or less the same thing with the drill... The burner drill is slower, has a smaller footprint, but uses *more* power than the electric drill.

So far so good - changing these values won't make much difference gameplay wise, maybe the effectivity would even make it harder to grasp the overall concept ("why is it using up the coal that fast?!?")

Now for the things with actual effect on gameplay...

A stone furnace can smelt 12.7 iron/copper with one unit of coal.
A steel furnace can smelt double the amount using up the same amount of fuel - a really great upgrade, but shouldn't the used power per smelted unit be the same?
I can understand that it's supposed to be faster (why else would you use it), but twice as fast using half the fuel is quite overpowered in my opinion.

Finally, the electric furnace. It might seem that it's all fair, after all, it uses the same amount of power, while increasing the footprint(in return, no more need for coalbelts/inserters) Great for automation, but... the 180W are actually twice as high (considering coal/solid fuel power via boilers), since the boilers only provide half of the power they consume.

A coal-boiler-steamengine powered electric furnace uses more space (9 tiles, instead of 4... which is more than double), has the same speed as a steel furnace, but...
one unit of coal makes it produce 12.7 iron/copper. That's merely half of the steel furnace's efficiency. I'm also aware of the two slots. However, I don't understand, why a level 3 effectivity module is required in order to reach the same coal consumption as compared to the steel furnace.

Am I missing something, or should the steel furnace be nerfed? I have hardly ever used electric furnaces, not even during late endgame, when I had tons of solar panels and accumulators. I had a few, just to test out the modules' effects, but I ended up reinstalling the steel furnaces and feeding the modules to the assembly machines instead. Yes, using only effectivity modules decreased the consumption a lot, but the equal speed and more-than-twice-as-large footprint compared to the steel furnace makes me think...

I suggest to increase the effectivity of boilers (while maybe decreasing the available coal and/or joules per coal), to decrease the effectivity of the steel (and probably stone, for realism) furnace and/or to make the electric furnace use less energy.

[Khyron]

I want to preface this with a comment that this was the most difficult post I've responded to so far on the forums... It took me many edits and rethinks to try and sort through and understand EDI's post. I nearly gave up twice.

Whoa a lot of strange conclusions there. Let's start with divorcing two of your concerns to simplify things:
Balance questions are quite separate from concerns about how information is presented to the player.

What bothers me, is that boilers are set to 50% effectivity, while the rest of the burners work at 100% (Burner drill, burner inserter, ...)

Are you implying that boilers should have the same effectivity as burner devices? Why?

The burner inserter has 180W of power - compared to the electric counterparts, this thing should be amazingly fast. It might be a strange suggestion, but why not set the power to 18W, and the effectivity to 10% ? It would equal out in the speed the coal is consumed, but the value is better comparable.

Not sure how you came to the conclusion that it should be faster. Perhaps rather than reading the wiki and .lua files you should look in game. A burner inserter is labeled "Energy consumption: 180kW". It doesn't show the effectivity to the user. I don't think you've considered pros and cons of the current system vs the alternative you propose.

More or less the same thing with the drill... The burner drill is slower, has a smaller footprint, but uses *more* power than the electric drill.

So far so good - changing these values won't make much difference gameplay wise, maybe the effectivity would even make it harder to grasp the overall concept ("why is it using up the coal that fast?!?")

I think you've just pointed out the most compelling reason why not to make this change.

A stone furnace can smelt 12.7 iron/copper with one unit of coal.
A steel furnace can smelt double the amount using up the same amount of fuel - a really great upgrade, but shouldn't the used power per smelted unit be the same?
I can understand that it's supposed to be faster (why else would you use it), but twice as fast using half the fuel is quite overpowered in my opinion.

Being faster is almost irrelevant. I mean, why not just build twice as many stone smelters? They're easier to make and it's not like space is at a premium. In fact the only reason to upgrade to steel furnaces is that they are more fuel efficient. The magnitude of efficiency is a question for balance, but it seems fine to me. What efficiency do you think would be more appropriate?

I think the devs lead you down the garden path (on purpose) by somewhat obscuring the efficiency gain behind the speed gain. I think a lot of people get tricked by that and I honestly think the devs have done it on purpose to make people curious and pause to investigate why steel furnaces are better. It's somewhat obvious to engineer types who are familiar with SI Units (not SI specifically, but units of measurement in general) but to the lay person they might not be sure without some observation and investigation. That's exactly what you did: measure the number of ore smelted on one unit of fuel.

Finally, the electric furnace. It might seem that it's all fair, after all, it uses the same amount of power, while increasing the footprint(in return, no more need for coalbelts/inserters) Great for automation, but... the 180W are actually twice as high (considering coal/solid fuel power via boilers), since the boilers only provide half of the power they consume.

Again, I'm quite sure this has been done on purpose. If you rely on steam engines for power generation steel furnaces might be the way to go! I think your initial assumption was "electric furnaces are tier 3 and so should be universally better than steel furnaces". You've investigated and proved that this assumption is not true but you haven't followed through by reconsidering the ways in which electric furnaces are better.

A coal-boiler-steamengine powered electric furnace uses more space (9 tiles, instead of 4... which is more than double), has the same speed as a steel furnace, but...
one unit of coal makes it produce 12.7 iron/copper. That's merely half of the steel furnace's efficiency. I'm also aware of the two slots. However, I don't understand, why a level 3 effectivity module is required in order to reach the same coal consumption as compared to the steel furnace.

What about two level 1 effectivity modules? What about if you're using solar power?

Am I missing something, or should the steel furnace be nerfed? I have hardly ever used electric furnaces, not even during late endgame, when I had tons of solar panels and accumulators. I had a few, just to test out the modules' effects, but I ended up reinstalling the steel furnaces and feeding the modules to the assembly machines instead. Yes, using only effectivity modules decreased the consumption a lot, but the equal speed and more-than-twice-as-large footprint compared to the steel furnace makes me think...

You are missing something Mainly I think you were ignoring solar power but I think you might also have ignored pollution.

[Ohlmann]

A stone furnace can smelt 12.7 iron/copper with one unit of coal.
A steel furnace can smelt double the amount using up the same amount of fuel - a really great upgrade, but shouldn't the used power per smelted unit be the same?
I can understand that it's supposed to be faster (why else would you use it), but twice as fast using half the fuel is quite overpowered in my opinion.

As Khiron have said, that's not overpowered at all. In my opinion, both the fuel consumption and the speed are completely irrelevant on thoses thing. The only advantage of the steel furnace is that it take less space for the same amount of production, while the main advantage of the electric furnace (that I don't really use either) is that it unburden you from the coal logistic chain.

[EDI]

I think you've just pointed out the most compelling reason why not to make this change.

Yes and no - yes, because it *is* more confusing to have different coal consumption than expected and no, because boilers already do consume coal at a different rate.

You are missing something Mainly I think you were ignoring solar power but I think you might also have ignored pollution.

I didn't ignore solar power, but solar power can't be measured in coal, because it's infinite energy. Coal is a somewhat limited resource, and you'll need quite a lot of it in order to build a decent solar array. And don't forget, that solar arrays use up space. Electric furnaces also use up space (by that I mean, more space than the other furnace types). Now, if you power the already larger Electric furnace, you need an even larger solar array (and accumulators, substations, various poles, ...).

I did indeed not consider pollution however. I'm not really sure, how much difference it makes, if you make a comparison between the smelter types.

It's somewhat obvious to engineer types who are familiar with SI Units (not SI specifically, but units of measurement in general) but to the lay person they might not be sure without some observation and investigation. That's exactly what you did: measure the number of ore smelted on one unit of fuel.

I'm not 100% sure, if there's a hidden offense. I assumed that it would be more efficient AND faster at the same time I looked at the stats. While I know the SI, I didn't know all of the game's mechanics, such as the speed value. (also, the base effectivity is a hidden value, so there *could* have been a difference aswell). I honestly couldn't believe that the same used power (Watts) lead to a larger result of smelted resources. A larger amount of work(Joules, therefore coal/fuel amount) faster should require more power(for a shorter time) - or so I thought - which is why I inserted one piece of coal into each burner furnace type and naively investigated their output.


As you already noted before, I'm no "engineer" type, apart from a bit of researching on my own. I believe that furnaces work with heat - and that heat is required to smelt the ore, remove the junk from the liquid metal, and let the "good things" cool, then export it in a solid state. If you want the process to work faster, you need more heat, since the liquid state can be reached faster that way. More heat means more coal - at least from my perspective. The only way to use less coal for the same amount(not even speaking of double the amount) would be through better processing or insulation. Appearently, this is not the case, or else, the effectivity couldn't be at 100%.

[Ohlmann]

As you already noted before, I'm no "engineer" type, apart from a bit of researching on my own. I believe that furnaces work with heat - and that heat is required to smelt the ore, remove the junk from the liquid metal, and let the "good things" cool, then export it in a solid state. If you want the process to work faster, you need more heat, since the liquid state can be reached faster that way. More heat means more coal - at least from my perspective. The only way to use less coal for the same amount(not even speaking of double the amount) would be through better processing or insulation. Appearently, this is not the case, or else, the effectivity couldn't be at 100%.

You don't need more heat to melt thing faster. You need the same amount of heat per unit of metal, but injected faster into what you want to heat. And if one melt faster, he is supposed to lose less heat ; if you need only 30 minutes of work at melting point for your work instead of 60, you only need half the energy per unit of metal. In other word, the consumption make sense if we suppose 100% of the coal energy is used to put the metal at melting point and that a steel one allow for faster work.

Note that the game don't even try to take into account the thermodynamics law who prevent 100% effectivity. 100% is a standard effectivity, not the best one, since you cannot reach the best effectivity in the real world.

[Gammro]

As you already noted before, I'm no "engineer" type, apart from a bit of researching on my own. I believe that furnaces work with heat - and that heat is required to smelt the ore, remove the junk from the liquid metal, and let the "good things" cool, then export it in a solid state. If you want the process to work faster, you need more heat, since the liquid state can be reached faster that way. More heat means more coal - at least from my perspective. The only way to use less coal for the same amount(not even speaking of double the amount) would be through better processing or insulation. Appearently, this is not the case, or else, the effectivity couldn't be at 100%.

I could follow your thinking until the last sentence. Why couldn't effectivity be 100%? I can't follow your logic. However, I have some remarks about the rest of your comment.

Furnaces essentially work with energy. This energy is in the form of heat. All furnaces have the same max power use, 180kW. A higher tech or better built furnace can transfer energy more efficient(by burning at higher temperatures, but with the same coal consumption, for example look up pellets), making it smelt faster. So a higher temperature doesn't have to mean fuel is burnt at a faster pace.
What I do agree with is that it's weird that the recipes for smelting states "energy required", while the furnace has both a static "smelting speed" and a power use in their specifications. The energy required is then used by the smelting speed, and not the thing you would expect it to: The power input.
I understand this is "gamifying" the system. It is an implicit efficiency definition, and while you still can't derive any specific efficiency, you can say a steel furnace is twice as efficient in transferring energy to smelt the ore.

As a person with affinity for engineering, I would like to see a power consumption and efficiency value. From this, the smelting speed can be derived. For example a power consumption of 180kW and an efficiency of 55% would give an effective power of ~100kW. This would mean that ore, which would need 100kJ to smelt into a plate, needs to be in the furnace for 1 second. But I understand this might be a bit too difficult for most people to work with.

This comment was written over the course of an hour(I am supposed to be working), please tell if something was unclear

[Ohlmann]

Why couldn't effectivity be 100%?

Quick question, since I learned physic in another language than english (and consequently can easily mix up term). Isn't effectivity 100% litteraly impossible by virtue of the thermodynamic laws ? Or there is another term for the % of energy effectively used for something ?

[Khyron]

@EDI
Absolutely no offense intended. I don't know anything about you or any of the other players, especially age, so I try to avoid making assumptions about what they know or don't know. I don't think it's naive to test things like how much ore per coal etc. To me that means you're critically thinking rather than just mashing buttons and hoping for the best.

I think your focus on the effectivity variable is not a question of balance but more to do with the architecture of the game. If you think a device/process/reaction uses too much coal/power, by all means discuss that. I think you shouldn't worry so much about the architecture of the game. Leave that up to the developers. The exact meaning of effectivity is... ambiguous. It's not a regular word in English. But for some reason they chose not to call it efficiency. There was a discussion on that but I didn't care to read it.

Where I'm a bit confused is when you talk about the boilers using coal faster than you expected.. I think almost no players see 8MJ and 390kW and thinks "ah, this reaction should last 20.49 seconds real time". That's a discussion for calculators, not people But moreso, when the game offers day/night cycles in a matter of minutes you'd have to question what assumptions you're making about how time elapses inside the simulation. Broadly speaking, I'm talking about having no frame of reference by which to say "hey this reaction is too fast". I believe most people will watch a boiler consume coal and go "huh. Ok, that's how fast it is".

As for real world smelting it's vastly different from the simulation. Normally there are chemical processes so you add ore and a chemical as well as heat and you end up with the metal and slag. A lot of that is abstracted in the game so you just get ore+heat=metal. But you could simply imagine that one of the issues with the stone smelter is it doesn't insulate the heat very well and so a lot of energy is lost via radiation, convention and conduction. The steel smelter represents a redesign using more advanced alloys and ceramics which improve the maximum operating temperature (speed) and insulation efficiency (less power per smelt).

[Gammro]

Why couldn't effectivity be 100%?

Quick question, since I learned physic in another language than english (and consequently can easily mix up term). Isn't effectivity 100% litteraly impossible by virtue of the thermodynamic laws ? Or there is another term for the % of energy effectively used for something ?

Correct, practically, no process is 100% efficient. However, that was not the reason I was questioning why he came to that conclusion. Since this is a game, and 100% efficiency is possible in games, and (IMO) the laws of thermodynamics are primarily there for a feeling of plausibility.

Where I'm a bit confused is when you talk about the boilers using coal faster than you expected.. I think almost no players see 8MJ and 390kW and thinks "ah, this reaction should last 20.49 seconds real time". That's a discussion for calculators, not people But moreso, when the game offers day/night cycles in a matter of minutes you'd have to question what assumptions you're making about how time elapses inside the simulation. Broadly speaking, I'm talking about having no frame of reference by which to say "hey this reaction is too fast". I believe most people will watch a boiler consume coal and go "huh. Ok, that's how fast it is".

Time scale is 1:1 though(at least it should be while you're running 60fps). The days are just only a few minutes long(which can be explained by it being a different planet). So a you can still calculate how much time it would take for a process to take like you would in the real world. So if a process says it needs 1000kJ to complete, and the machine supplies 100kW(let's assume 100% efficiency) to this, you should be able to say: this process takes 10 seconds to complete. If it would take any other time, it would be strange. And factorio is pretty consistent with this, while the energy values for smelting aren't visible in game(and don't have any unit in the lua files), for all things that do have visible energy requirements, the time can be calculated by the power that is used.

[Khyron]

As a person with affinity for engineering, I would like to see a power consumption and efficiency value. From this, the smelting speed can be derived. For example a power consumption of 180kW and an efficiency of 55% would give an effective power of ~100kW. This would mean that ore, which would need 100kJ to smelt into a plate, needs to be in the furnace for 1 second. But I understand this might be a bit too difficult for most people to work with.

Yes, I think showing gross power consumption is better than showing net power consumption plus a second efficiency variable. Probably a good way to design the game would be to store net consumption and efficiency per reaction/device/etc. (for modding and easy balance changes), but multiply those two out when they show "Power consumption" on the UI. Maybe that's what they already do. I didn't check. But I suspect they've ended up setting effectivity to 100% for all power consuming devices simply so that the power value shown beside "Power consumption" isn't confusing.

This comment was written over the course of an hour(I am supposed to be working), please tell if something was unclear

Back to work!

[EDI]

@Khyron: Thanks for the clarification. My personal opinion is still that the step stone->steel is way larger than steel->electric, but I should trust the developers, rather than question them

@Gammro: When I said that the effectivity couldn't be at 100%, I meant that the amount of work needed to heat a certain volume of materials should be equal. If power is lost in boilers, there should be a reason behind that - such as bad insulation, etc. Coal is therefore used with an effectivity of 50%, when used by boilers.

Now, if the steel furnace can process more materials with the same amount of power, then it's effectivity should be higher, compared to the stone furnace. However, both are at 100%. So I wonder, where the power comes from, because stone and steel use the same amount of power, but steel uses it more efficiently.

What I do agree with is that it's weird that the recipes for smelting states "energy required", while the furnace has both a static "smelting speed" and a power use in their specifications. The energy required is then used by the smelting speed, and not the thing you would expect it to: The power input.

^ That's exactly what I meant

---

I guess, I'll just keep my ore processing chain the way it is (steel furnaces all the way), and switch to electric, once I got plenty of power and high end modules.

[Khyron]

@Khyron: Thanks for the clarification. My personal opinion is still that the step stone->steel is way larger than steel->electric, but I should trust the developers, rather than question them

I guess, I'll just keep my ore processing chain the way it is (steel furnaces all the way), and switch to electric, once I got plenty of power and high end modules.

I hope I didn't confuse you. I think it's perfectly fine to question the developers on issues of balance. It's a beta, things change and I'm sure the feedback is appreciated. You can make a case that getting steel furnaces is very quick to research and build and gives you way too much early game advantage. What I was trying to suggest you avoid is debating how the game should calculate rates of consumption through variables like "effectivity". I hope that distinction is clear.

I think you're right, it's usually best to switch to electric furnaces when you have ample solar power and/or some efficiency modules. But keep in mind that's based on how the game currently gives you heaaaaps of coal and oil. If you try playing a map with minimum amounts of coal and oil.. maybe you will want electric furnaces sooner.

[Ohlmann]

In fact, it's the abundance of coal who make the steel furnace a less than tempting option for me. Since I don't need the efficiency, it only help for compacity.

[EDI]

I just believe that this hidden effectivity of 50% within the boilers breaks the balance between burner furnaces and their electric equivalent, as long as you produce electricity with fuel - but that has been discussed already.

As soon as fuel is less abundant, alternative energy sources are needed (and stone/steel can't be fed electricity). Thanks for the tip, by the way - I definitely should play a map on low fuel for a change

[Schmendrick]

Yes, using only effectivity modules decreased the consumption a lot, but the equal speed and more-than-twice-as-large footprint compared to the steel furnace makes me think...

You are missing something Mainly I think you were ignoring solar power but I think you might also have ignored pollution.

Interestingly, if you are using only steam (and not using modules), steel furnaces are superior to electric furnaces in every way except for the logistic issue of feeding them coal.

• They are smaller
• They are cheaper
• They use less fuel
• They pollute less

(disclaimer: this knowledge is from 0.9.8, I have not tested in 0.10 and made the assumption that nothing changed)

Pretty much everything in this game operates at 100% efficiency except for boilers; even steam engines, whose electricity output varies linearly with the temperature of the water put in. So one piece of coal, regardless of how many boilers and steam engines you have set up, ends up as 4 MJ of electrical energy; the setup merely affects how fast you are able to perform this conversion.

The 50% effectivity listed on boilers occurs "between" the solid fuel and its heating effect on the water; the 390kW rating refers to how fast energy is (or can be) imparted to the water (which is later extracted with 100% efficiency by a steam engine). At a pollution rating of 6, this means that every 65 kW used by a machine is equivalent to +1 pollution rating (under a pure steam setup).

Steel furnace pollution rating: 3.6
Electric furnace pollution rating: 0.9, + (180kW -> 2.769 pollution) = 3.669 pollution equivalent

However, as mentioned, even a little solar (even just 1 solar panel per 4 steam engines) offsets this, and modules make a world of difference, whichever direction you want to go with them.

[MisterSpock]

Hi!
The burner inserter has 180W of power - compared to the electric counterparts, this thing should be amazingly fast.

A steel furnace can smelt double the amount using up the same amount of fuel - a really great upgrade, but shouldn't the used power per smelted unit be the same?

I agree. Burner inserter should buff a bit. And steel furnace should require double amount of coal. But i disagree with the change of energyefficience of boilers.

[Rahjital]

Burner inserters are a cheap low-tech item that, unlike regular inserters, does not use any power when idle. If it was also faster than normal inserters, then there would be no point in using standard inserters at all.

Half of the advantage of steel furnaces is that they smelt faster with the same amount of fuel, therefore being more efficient. It makes sense, too, since the steel furnace doesn't get its increase in speed by burning fuel faster but by holding the heat inside better.

Boilers, on the other hand, are inconsistent with the rest of the machinery. Even the rest of the burner machines is 100% efficient. This was most likely done as an attempt to increase the usage of coal (which I can agree with, coal is not nearly as important as it should be), but the way it is done is not right in my opinion.

[Marconos]

Hi!
The burner inserter has 180W of power - compared to the electric counterparts, this thing should be amazingly fast.

A steel furnace can smelt double the amount using up the same amount of fuel - a really great upgrade, but shouldn't the used power per smelted unit be the same?

I agree. Burner inserter should buff a bit. And steel furnace should require double amount of coal. But i disagree with the change of energyefficience of boilers.

I agree here in part, I don't care about burner inserters, personally never use them. Steel furnace should definitely require more coal.

[jianadaren1]

This isn't a real balancing issue: generating heat via electricity via coal-fired turbine should be less efficient than generating heat by burning coal directly.

The 50% boiler efficiency is meant to show energy lost in the electricity-generation process - wikipedia says [uncited] that stationary power plants generally operate at about 50% efficiency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_ef ... ficiencies

The game could have made boilers 100% efficient and the steam engines 50% efficient (or made them both 70.71% efficient) for the same effect, but as long as there aren't different types of boilers/engines those decisions don't affect the balance. Realistically, maybe you'd want 90% boiler efficiency and 55.5% steam generation efficiency if you want to keep the same balance (with potential upgrades of more efficient boilers/engines - maybe CHP plants that act as furnaces that also produce electricity?)

Electric furnaces are inefficient and should be so. The only reasons you'd want to use them instead of coal-fired would be if you had access to a super-efficient form of electricity generation (solar?) or access to electricity was much easier than access to coal.

Burner inserters shouldn't be more efficient: they appear to be running on some sort of steam-turbine or ICE. They're atrociously inefficient and shouldn't be buffed. That's the cost you pay for not having access to electricity.