[0.9.1] Solid fuel/cracking balancing

[BurnHard]

Since light oil can be transformed 1:1 into solid fuel, but one unit solid fuel needs 2 units of heavy oil:

When you crack the heavy oil, and THEN make solid fuel you actually can create 3 units of solid fuel from 4 units heavy oil instead of only 2 solid fuel when making it directly. (I hope you understand what I mean^^)

I propose to change the recipe ingredient amount for solid fuel for all 3 types to the same nominal value.

[Calico]

But involving the cracking makes you pay double the energy for the Heavy to Light Fuel Blocks... so why not leave it as it is.

[BurnHard]

Could you post your math for this please? Can't really believe it. My math: three solid fuels inherit 24*3=72 MJ, cracking 4 units heavy oil to 3 units light oil takes without any modules 210kW *3s : 1,25/crafting speed) = 504 kJ = nearly half a Megajoule.

So the cracking costs less than one percent of the energy of the resulting solid fuels

[Calico]

I was talking about the production cost, that is higher then the regular heavy oil->Fuel Block costs, not the fuel values. Okay, granted it's not double, but still it involves constructing another chem plant plus all the pipes to connect it to the light production line. To crack heavy you further need Advanced oil processing, so the ability to turn heavy to fuel blocks still serves a purpose in case you have an early overflow of heavy oil. I admit your math is flawless, with Advanced processing winning out later in-game.

As a sidenote, as far as i know the cracking was introduced to help against an overflow of heavy and light oil, which was hampering the production of petroleum gas. Maybe even just as a measure until more recipes involving heavy/light oil are in place, the Devs will know. Playing with 0.9.1 for a full freeplay it seems it worked nicely, no longer several storage tanks of heavy/light or 50K Fuel Blocks in chests that clunk up the base.

[CherryKiss]

plus the fact that you HAD to make solid fuel unless you just wasted oil in a steam engine... meant you needed to plan on having stuff that burned solid fuel, leading to a more polluting factory than you might otherwise make. I imagine they'll change the heavy/fuel formula at some point, and it was just an oversight that currently you can crack it to light and use the light to make more fuel.

Personally, as soon as the cracking recipes came out, I stopped burning solid fuel and went to solar panels and electric furnaces with effectivity modules immediantly, and just turned all my oil into petrol instead

[slpwnd]

I was aware of the fact that solid fuel can be created in a cheaper way from the heavy oil via the "cracking path". As Calico says there are other not-easily measurable costs in doing this (making the setup for cracking, waiting till it is researched, the energy, etc.). As usual the recipes are not written in stone, so thanks for bringing this conversation up. The formula for the solid fuel from heavy oil can be changed in the future. I have moved this to the balancing section as it is not a bug.