Factorio Forums

Well, in theory, if you did use only clean energy (wind, solar, etc) then the electric car is cleaner, however, although "Ideal" countries within Europe might derive 75%+ of their energy from renewable sources, most of the rest of the world does not.

For example, Most of England's energy production is still from fossil fuel burning power plants, and most of what isn't is from nuclear, The biggest issue with renewable energy in the UK is that solar is useless, the average day is gloomy and dark, and when it comes to wind, we're a bunch of NIMBYs. (Not In My Back Yard, AKA, find somewhere else to build them, I don't want them near me. I mean, most people find them ugly.)
Also, with these renewable sources, for those of us that aren't NIMBYs, we're instead the type that looks at the electric car, like my above example. the production and maintenance energy costs of a wind turbine is great enough that wind turbines aren't worth bothering with, unless they are strategically placed to be active most of the time, which is one (very small) reason why most of the wind energy plans are off shore.

As someone who actually works in the renewable energy industry in the UK - the biggest drawback isnt "ugliness" or even cost, its intermittancy and lack of storage solutions. Going 100% or even 50% renewables is not a realistic goal even if we had the generating hardware for free - all it would take is one cold, dark, still day and the whole country would suffer from rolling blackouts. This isnt adequately modelled in Factorio.

Accumulators and solar panels in Factorio are unrealistic and as a result unbalanced. IMO solar in factorio needs more downsides - there should be a weather and season system, pollution should decrease solar output, night should be longer (or day shorter), solar panels should need to be coupled with a seperate "inverter" to convert DC pv power to AC to go into your grid, and there should be ongoing panel degradation etc.

In addition accumulators ought to be made a lot less effective, more expensive, or later in the research tree (or all three).

There needs to be a downside to going "all solar/accumulators" mid-late game.

The only thing I hate about electricity in this game is that it requires huge amounts of land. I would like something like 4 times the cost for 4 times the efficiency for starters. Now having to protect them isn't really an argument because lets face it: Plop down 2 laserturrets towards the bases that touch your pollution and they will be save, no walls needed.

The only thing I hate about electricity in this game is that it requires huge amounts of land.

That's not really true. Once the efficiency modules roll in, you can run tight knit bases with very little land required on energy. Players who suffer from "gigantic solar farm syndrome" are the players who run triple layered beacons with Mk.3 productivity modules. You'll use an order of magnitude more energy that way and then some.

bobucles wrote:players who run triple layered beacons with Mk.3 productivity modules.

Except you can't put productivity modules in beacons. You can use speed though.

bobingabout wrote:

bobucles wrote:players who run triple layered beacons with Mk.3 productivity modules.

Except you can't put productivity modules in beacons. You can use speed though.

I think he meant speed beacons with prod modules in factories, which I have in my kilobase, and that thing takes up about 1/50th the area of its own solar farm (not exaggerating).

Why not suggest an early-game power armor while in this mood because you want quick progress?

badminton wrote:I like where they are now. Before the oil update I used to only build 3 or 4 stone and steel furnaces and go straight for electric and then expand with those.
Now I'll go 5-6 hours before I get them or sometimes, like my last 40+ hour factory, I won't bother with them at all if I have a good supply of fuel.

Saying that though, the whole tech tree does need a huge rebalance. Some early techs are earned far too quickly (I've never built a burner inserter in free play) and a lot of early/mid tier 2 techs like laser turrets and mk II armour/equipment should be mid/late tier 3.

Nice solution too btw
Would be more balanced if the smelting speed was a little lower than a regular stone furnace but I guess you're not really going for balance

I actually build burner inserters seldomly especially now when they self-feed. Useful if you move something you not require huge through put and is fuel. In fact it is same reason why I use steel furnaces in vanilla for iron smelting even end game, and for steel slowly go to electric. (just redunadant and you need dismantle already established smeltery). And burner inserters whatever I use them to feed my stone and steel furnaces as well as boilers. They don't run out of power and stop your factory on sudden power failure. And as soon as fuel supply returns they start feeding again.

Drury wrote:It's natural tech-tree progression, stone furnace>steel furnace>>>electric furnace.

*realization hits* It all makes sense now!

"Steel" in "steel furnace" doesn't refer to its purpose but to itself. It's not a furnace to make steel, it's a furnace made of steel!

When I started playing and went through the tech tree for the first time, I thought it was for making steel faster, since it becomes available right after steel. I didn't really see the point, the stone mines could also make steel, so I never built any and went straight (well, after a while) to electric furnaces. Then in multiplayer I see people using them, and they were just putting in any material, which was odd.

Now I get it

just_dont wrote:

GotLag wrote:As the thread title says. I started a new game (my first) and I see I start with coal- and electric-powered versions of inserters and drills and electrical generators already available for construction, and yet and electrical furnace is buried in the tech tree and requires several hundred green science packs to unlock, including oil and plastics research.
I'm curious as to why such a relatively minor upgrade is so horrendously expensive and time-consuming just to unlock. It seems like something you should either start out able to make or be a first-tier research item.

But it's not like that.
1. It isn't "buried in the tech tree". If you're going for it -- it's very easily obtainable without even much automatization (i.e. just plop 2 assemblies feeding 1-2 labs and relying on "manual insertion" for gears/belts/inserters -- and it'll easily get you through some early 50- and 100-potions techs while you're building your early base).
2. The only hassle about electric furnaces when you get to them -- is that you'll need to do some makeshift (as you'd want to rebuild after advanced oil cracking tech) oil industry. However, you'll need to produce only limited amount of plastic, afterwards you can just dismantle everything and go on with your furnaces.

PS: Personally, I do things this way VERY often, simply because I absolutely hate to rebuild my smelting factories, because of the size shift (electric furnaces are 3x3 instead of 2x2). So I simply go after electric furnaces, laser turrets, and advanced oil cracking without much automation -- and only afterwards I proceed to large-scale automation.

Then you never learned how to space your base furnaces to take into account the larger electrics did you?

This is how you properly space stone/steel furnaces to take into account the larger eletrics that will come later on, no need to rip everything up and relay it out.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =769628266 (for some reason steam wont use the img bbcode.... )

With that spacing it sets your smelting area for the rest of the game, like I run 10 per a side of the belt for a total of 20 then bring it all back around to one belt that then feeds the rest of the base. Do that twice side by side and you got 40 furnaces early game that are set for the rest of the game since all you need to do is upgrade them as techs come online. (NOTE: Yes I have the Electric Furnaces Mod running hence the stone Electric Furnace in the pic).

SirLANsalot wrote:

just_dont wrote:

GotLag wrote:As the thread title says. I started a new game (my first) and I see I start with coal- and electric-powered versions of inserters and drills and electrical generators already available for construction, and yet and electrical furnace is buried in the tech tree and requires several hundred green science packs to unlock, including oil and plastics research.
I'm curious as to why such a relatively minor upgrade is so horrendously expensive and time-consuming just to unlock. It seems like something you should either start out able to make or be a first-tier research item.

But it's not like that.
1. It isn't "buried in the tech tree". If you're going for it -- it's very easily obtainable without even much automatization (i.e. just plop 2 assemblies feeding 1-2 labs and relying on "manual insertion" for gears/belts/inserters -- and it'll easily get you through some early 50- and 100-potions techs while you're building your early base).
2. The only hassle about electric furnaces when you get to them -- is that you'll need to do some makeshift (as you'd want to rebuild after advanced oil cracking tech) oil industry. However, you'll need to produce only limited amount of plastic, afterwards you can just dismantle everything and go on with your furnaces.

PS: Personally, I do things this way VERY often, simply because I absolutely hate to rebuild my smelting factories, because of the size shift (electric furnaces are 3x3 instead of 2x2). So I simply go after electric furnaces, laser turrets, and advanced oil cracking without much automation -- and only afterwards I proceed to large-scale automation.

Then you never learned how to space your base furnaces to take into account the larger electrics did you?

This is how you properly space stone/steel furnaces to take into account the larger eletrics that will come later on, no need to rip everything up and relay it out.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =769628266 (for some reason steam wont use the img bbcode.... )

With that spacing it sets your smelting area for the rest of the game, like I run 10 per a side of the belt for a total of 20 then bring it all back around to one belt that then feeds the rest of the base. Do that twice side by side and you got 40 furnaces early game that are set for the rest of the game since all you need to do is upgrade them as techs come online. (NOTE: Yes I have the Electric Furnaces Mod running hence the stone Electric Furnace in the pic).

Your stone furnaces aren't getting any fuel automatically with the way that is currently setup, but's its one way of doing things, I have a similar but slightly different method. I like to have a central fuel line, and put my iron and copper on opposite sides, using Long-handed Inserters to unload them and (regular) Inserters to load ore on one side, and Burner Inserters on the other side to load fuel. I skip every 3rd space I could put a furnace in that line, and replace the stone w/ steel later on. When the time comes, you can remove the burner inserters and replace the 2x2 furnaces with 3x3 electric. You can even leave the fuel line intact if it's feeding things past your smelter line. Because Boilers have 50% efficient, unless you have over 50% of your power coming from solar, it's actually more Coal efficient to stick w/ steel furnaces, at least until you want to start using modules in furnaces. The earliest that would make sense is with tier 1 Efficiency modules to make smelting more energy efficient than w/ steel furnaces (using speed would make it faster, but it's cheaper both in fixed costs and energy costs to just make more smelters, and for prod modules, while it IS nice to stretch resources will make the whole thing much slower and way less energy efficient, in the case of prod modules you'd probably wanna go w/ a speed beacon line to make it faster and actually more energy efficient per item made and that requires a new layout and beacons and other expensive shit, so that's much more of a late game thing than tier 1 Eff modules are).

steel furnaces should be an ingredent in electric furnaces


bunce.

just_dont wrote:PS: Personally, I do things this way VERY often, simply because I absolutely hate to rebuild my smelting factories, because of the size shift (electric furnaces are 3x3 instead of 2x2). So I simply go after electric furnaces, laser turrets, and advanced oil cracking without much automation -- and only afterwards I proceed to large-scale automation.

There is a trick to that. Use a separate belt for fuel and place it so that you can later destruct the furnaces and belt and replace them with electric furnaces without having to change the ore and plate belts and inserters.

You can also place steel furnaces 1 tile apart and use long handed inserters to offload them inside so you reserve space for electric furnaces.
This is the way to keep the whole layout intact without need to rebuild it from scratch.
However the only problem left here is that you have to dry out furnaces before replacing and you can't do it seamlessly. I would say THIS is the most annoying thing.