Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

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Jackalope_Gaming
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Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by Jackalope_Gaming »

While doing calculations (or rather, having Helmod do them for me) I noticed that 1 chemical plant making sulfuric acid is enough to feed 100 processing unit assemblers. The very large difference has me curious on the balancing part of it all since I would have expected something more along the lines of 1 chem plant can feed 10 processing unit assemblers. More infrastructure needed for the more complex items and 1 to 100 is getting into the territory of "why even bother having that as an ingredient?"

For batteries the ratio is 1 sulfuric acid chemical plant to 12.5 battery chemical plants. That too seems strange but it's manageable.

Aside from those two items, the only thing that sulfuric acid is used with is mining uranium ore. It's 10 sulfuric acid per 10 ore or just to make it easy I'll go 1:1. 1 electric drill with no modules or beacons mines 1 uranium ore in .2625 seconds, or if we flip it around it takes about 3.81 seconds per ore. At that rate it takes about 51 miners to fully saturate a yellow belt with uranium ore, so let's go with needing to supply those miners.

Since the ratio is 1:1 sulfuric acid to ore and a yellow belt handles 13.33 items per second, that means 13.33 sulfuric acid per second. 1 chemical plant producing sulfuric acid churns out 62.5 sulfuric acid per second. 62.5/13.33 = 4.6875 A single chemical plant running full speed supplies enough acid for miners to create a little over 4 and a half full yellow belts or nearly 2 full blue belts of uranium ore. 4.6875 * 51 = ~239 mining drills that can be fully supplied with sulfuric acid from a single chemical plant.

So far it looks like sulfuric acid production is quite huge compared to what we actually need, especially for processing units. Shouldn't we need to have more chemical infrastructure to be making these things?

Slayn25
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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by Slayn25 »

So are you suggesting that chemical plants make sulfuric acid slower or that demands for sulfuric acid be increased?

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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by iceman_1212 »

In my experience the challenge associated with sulfuric acid lies not in the logistics of transporting it to where it needs to be but, rather, in (1) creating compact builds for items which use sulfuric acid, namely, processing units which benefit greatly from productivity modules + speed beacons and which also eat up a lot of green circuits and (2) supplying enough water to manufacture quantities necessary for late game play.

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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by AileTheAlien »

iceman_1212 wrote:In my experience the challenge associated with sulfuric acid lies not in the logistics of transporting it to where it needs to be but, rather, in (1) creating compact builds
This part seems pretty true - having pipes, and conveyor belts for ingredients and outputs, and inserters for the blue circuit recipe is pretty challenging. It's hard to fit all of those things around your assembly machine.
iceman_1212 wrote:supplying enough water to manufacture quantities necessary for late game play
If what the OP says is true about sulfuric acid being easily produced, then this would seem to not be the case. i.e. You don't need very much water to make acid, since you make so much acid so easily.

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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by Lav »

Jackalope wrote:So far it looks like sulfuric acid production is quite huge compared to what we actually need, especially for processing units. Shouldn't we need to have more chemical infrastructure to be making these things?
No, why?

It's the same story with a single cable assembler being enough to provide for 6 (8 in 0.14) red circuit assemblers.

There are processes with high productivity, there are processes with low productivity. Combining and balancing them is what makes Factorio.

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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by Jackalope_Gaming »

AileTheAlien wrote:
iceman_1212 wrote:In my experience the challenge associated with sulfuric acid lies not in the logistics of transporting it to where it needs to be but, rather, in (1) creating compact builds
This part seems pretty true - having pipes, and conveyor belts for ingredients and outputs, and inserters for the blue circuit recipe is pretty challenging. It's hard to fit all of those things around your assembly machine.
iceman_1212 wrote:supplying enough water to manufacture quantities necessary for late game play
If what the OP says is true about sulfuric acid being easily produced, then this would seem to not be the case. i.e. You don't need very much water to make acid, since you make so much acid so easily.
Water is easily provided to the full sulfuric acid setup. It's 5 sulfur plants to 2 sulfuric acid plants. Sulfur takes 30 water per cycle times 5 = 150 water a cycle. Sulfuric acid takes 100 water a cycle, times 2 for 200. 150+200 = 350. Since the cycle is 1.25 times per second, that's 1.25*350 = 437.5 water a second. A single offshore pump provides 1200 water per second, so that one offshore pump can supply nearly 3 of those builds with water. Here's an easy setup for that: http://i.imgur.com/ffto5Wn.jpg

And thankfully it only takes 1 line of pipes to fully supply enough acid to 10 yellow assemblers making blue circuits. That's in comparison to needing nearly 2 full yellow belts of green circuits to fully supply those 10 yellow assemblers.

Let's see how many assemblers a single pipeline of sulfuric acid can handle: If a pipe can handle 1200 fluid units a second then we need enough plants to make 1200 acid a second. Each plant makes it at 62.5 acid a second, so 1200 / 62.5 = 19.2. Hang on, if it's 1 sulfuric acid plant to 100 yellow assemblers for blue circuits, then those 19.2 plants make enough acid for 1,920 yellow assemblers. And all that fluid fits into a single pipe, compared to how a red belt can barely handle the 25 green circuits per second needed for direct insertion into just 10 yellow assemblers making blue circuits. And that belt requires inserter infrastructure too while the pipes directly hook up to the assemblers.

There is a monumental difference in the resources and infrastructure required for the blue circuit's different ingredients. In hindsight I suppose I should have just started off with "blue circuits should require at least twice as much sulfuric acid because the current balance is incredibly generous."
Lav wrote:
Jackalope wrote:So far it looks like sulfuric acid production is quite huge compared to what we actually need, especially for processing units. Shouldn't we need to have more chemical infrastructure to be making these things?
No, why?

It's the same story with a single cable assembler being enough to provide for 6 (8 in 0.14) red circuit assemblers.

There are processes with high productivity, there are processes with low productivity. Combining and balancing them is what makes Factorio.
6 is more than a magnitude smaller than 100. It is a huge difference, especially when looked at from the pipe point of view.

The place where I'd personally put a limit is the gear assembler to engine assembler ratio, which is 1 to 20. One possible setup for making engines is this: http://i.imgur.com/P3LwdTO.jpg That puts things in perspective for batteries which are 2 sulfuric acid plants to 25 battery plants, or merely a 1 to 12.5 ratio.

Sure, there are some things with high production and some with low production. The sulfuric acid recipe is crazy high production. If we can provide 100 assemblers with enough of an ingredient using just 1 other assembler then that's getting into the territory of "this ingredient's inclusion is next to useless and barely adds meaningful gameplay. It only seems to be there to add complexity for the sake of complexity."

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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by Lav »

Jackalope wrote:6 is more than a magnitude smaller than 100. It is a huge difference, especially when looked at from the pipe point of view.

The place where I'd personally put a limit is the gear assembler to engine assembler ratio, which is 1 to 20. One possible setup for making engines is this: http://i.imgur.com/P3LwdTO.jpg That puts things in perspective for batteries which are 2 sulfuric acid plants to 25 battery plants, or merely a 1 to 12.5 ratio.
Gear/engine productivity ratio is 20:1.

Frame/bot productivity ratio is 1:40.

No matter what you do, some workflow will be the "worst offender" anyway. I see no reason why acid-to-CPU workflow cannot be the one. :-)
Jackalope wrote:Sure, there are some things with high production and some with low production. The sulfuric acid recipe is crazy high production. If we can provide 100 assemblers with enough of an ingredient using just 1 other assembler then that's getting into the territory of "this ingredient's inclusion is next to useless and barely adds meaningful gameplay. It only seems to be there to add complexity for the sake of complexity."
Or maybe it's an opportunity to stuff a bunch of speed modules into your processing unit assembly without having to expand your liquid handling setup.

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Tev
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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by Tev »

Majority of players does not care about ratios tbh.

And since h2so4 and plastics are kind of mass produced general-purpose-oil-product, their ratios are even less important.

Or do you care about ratios of steel furnaces to anything?

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Re: Odd sulfuric acid ratios for processing units and batteries

Post by Jackalope_Gaming »

Yes, I do actually care about the ratio of steel furnaces to certain things. In some cases it can be easier to smelt iron to steel inside of a build than belting it in. Why bother putting in a whole belt of steel when you just need 1 bar every once in a while.

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