Balance Barreling + Fluid Transport

[Shokubai]

Currently a full car of barrels is lighter with more capacity than a fluid wagon. Intuitively barrels are space inefficient compared to simple liquid. The fluid wagon may sill be heavier but should have more capacity comparatively.

[vanatteveldt]

Yeah, I think the barrel should hold less fluid (100 instead of 250) and/or have stack size reduced. The advantage of barreling should be easier handling (logistics/belts), not compactness.

[darkfrei]

Yeah, I think the barrel should hold less fluid (100 instead of 250) and/or have stack size reduced.

Barrels must win by huge mega factory, they are must hold not more than 50 liquids, but very large stack size.
Working with barrels must be more complicated, with special coating for aggressive liquids and washing after every using.

[Roxor128]

250 seems like a good size for a barrel. I've seen a fairly large real-life barrel which I was told had a volume of around 250 litres.

If we're going to rebalance a cargo wagon full of barrels versus a fluid wagon, I'm in favour of either reducing the stack size for barrels or increasing the wagon's capacity.

[JohnyDL]

in some ways I see the point but barrels are comparatively expensive

Tanks 75000 fluid with 31 steel and 88 iron
Barrels 1 steel for 250 fluid + 20 steel and 40 iron for every 400 barrels

that's 420 steel and 40 iron for the same amount of moving (costing 10x as much for only a 1/3 gain) and you can't really make barrels much cheaper and sit with your idea

Saying that one is better than another because of pure quantities and so needs balancing is kind of besides the point, 1 barrel is cheap, 1 cargo wagon of barrels is cheap ish late game, but you want to do 100 of those, you can bet I'd rather have 200 fluid wagons for a fraction of the price and just have them deliver more often (and there's additional costs with things like assemblers to turn barrels and fluid into fluid and barrels and vice versa)

[British_Petroleum]

Barrelling should be better because it requires a more complicated setup, and it's more expensive as previously mentioned.

[iceman_1212]

I think barrels are not in need of a nerf. There are factors to consider other than space-efficiency. Let us do a like-for-like cost comparison of the two systems.

I set up a test world with two setups to compare barrels vs. fluid wagons. In the first setup, a 2-4-2 train with fluid wagons delivers water to a 1-20-40 steam setup operating at near full load. In the second setup, a 2-4-2 train uses barrels to deliver water to a similar steam setup. The distance between source and destination for both systems was 1k tiles.

The fluid wagon loading/unloading stations are each made up of 4 storage tanks per wagon and one pump per storage tank. The cost of 4x fluid wagons (243 ore per) + 32 storage tanks (45 ore per)+ 32 pumps (15 ore per) is 2892 iron.

In order to minimize cost of barreling system, I added only the minimum # of barrels to the system in order to keep the steam engines running constantly. I also stick to yellow belt/splitters, blue assemblers, fast/filter inserters (instead of stack/stack-filter), iron chests and only 4 buffer chests per wagon (2 for outgoing barrels, 2 for incoming barrels). The amount of steel required for the barrels alone was higher than the amount of iron required for the entire fluid wagon setup described above. ~3k barrels were needed to keep the system running continuously. So before taking into account the costs of the other items, the barreling setup is more than 5x more expensive.

Moreover, I tested adding a second 1-20-40 steam setup to the fluid wagon system along with a second offshore pump at the loading station - the same fluid wagon setup described above was able to transport twice the amount of water.

Also worth noting is that the fluid wagon system is available at this level of performance after very early red & green tech. In contrast, a barreling system of similar performance would require maximum # of stack and stack filter inserters (maxing out at 6 per wagon per side) and close to max inserter stack size upgrades.

Other factors: barreling has greater power consumption (esp. when upgrading to better inserters/assembler) and is also more complex to set up.

[Optera]

For megabases throughput is all that matters and here barrels either belted or by bots are way too good.
Fluid throughput with pipes is not even close to the level of barrels on yellow belts.

With a barrel capacity of 60 a fully compressed red belt is roughly the same throughput as a 6 piece pipe.
To get a compressed blue belt of barrels down to pipe throughput capacity would have to be only 40.

[Hannu]

I think barrels are not in need of a nerf. There are factors to consider other than space-efficiency. Let us do a like-for-like cost comparison of the two systems.

If you compare production costs to overall production, they are nothing. All production entities are practically free in Factorio. Only few percents of resources goes to building of production stuff, especially if you do not use level 3 modules everywhere.

Especially if you use bot logistics to make barrel handling a trivial task, barrels are so overpowered that there is no other than rolegame reasons to install pipe lines except short manifolds from an unbarreling assembler to production plants and from pumpjacks to a barreling assembler.

[Tev]

These threads are so stupid. Any nerf to barrels would make them unusable now. Just stop it with ignoring setup costs ... Harder-setup stuff is better, so what? You want to nerf trains too?

EDIT: oh and before some smartass will repeat that stupid claim about resource cost: I'm talking about time spent. Harder setup needs payoff with time, and nobody cares that your time is free.

[Shokubai]

These threads are so stupid. Any nerf to barrels would make them unusable now. Just stop it with ignoring setup costs ... Harder-setup stuff is better, so what? You want to nerf trains too?

EDIT: oh and before some smartass will repeat that stupid claim about resource cost: I'm talking about time spent. Harder setup needs payoff with time, and nobody cares that your time is free.

Frankly I'm not sure a nerf to barrels is really the answer. You could easily adjust stack sizes, fluid rail capacity, as a first step.

[JohnyDL]

Changing the stack size is a nerf because your inventory ends up filled with the blasted things if you have to move or change a setup, they are already a hassle to work with compared to fluid wagons.

Incase it was missed Fluid wagons are in effect an Early game thing (even if you can barrel early game too) while bots and barrels need later game tech to get the speed and efficiency to match up (stack inserters and speed modules) to get the same or even close to the same local space usage

As for the whole Mega base - cost doesn't matter argument, mega bases are so late game that the point is mute, if you're playing that long it doesn't matter the cost you'll do what works best for your system (like generally I don't like massive numbers of bots on screen in my base so I use player logistics only) so it doesn't matter about if they're nerfed or not you do what's best for you, the game seems to me mostly balanced for the mid game anyways (between getting into blue science and considering building the rocket) that's the point the game is at it's most interesting and that's where this argument should sit, when you're first setting it up you don't have bots yet (no oil -> no lube -> no bots) is even a few hundred steel at that point the cheaper option, how about the price of belt vs pipe? You're suggesting nerfing something cause it's 'too OP' when your base is also 'OP' to many people. If you're dealing with 32+ lanes of copper and Iron and need to make 10 lanes of plastic to keep up that's cool but remember that's not the only way to play and many people's computers can't handle that even if they wanted to. Setting up production always costs, it costs time as someone else said but also costs resources you're right that compared to science and rockets they're probably only a few % but Science and Rockets are not your base don't really give you bragging rights ("Yeay I got to infinite science 100!" "So what, that's just a number, my base is HUGE, look") they're a resource black hole to justify bigger bases.

[Rseding91]

Fluid barrels are fine as they are now.

• Pipes are the easiest way to transport any fluid - just click and drag and you're done.
• Fluid wagons allow easy setup (1 pump to load 1 pump to unload).
• Barrels offer slightly more capacity but you have to spend steel and barrel/unbarrel + deal with the empty barrels everywhere you want to use them.

[Shokubai]

Barrels offer slightly more capacity but you have to spend steel and barrel/unbarrel + deal with the empty barrels everywhere you want to use them.[/list]

...however unrealistic it might be that a stack of cylindrical objects holds more than a single large container.

[Optera]

Fluid barrels are fine as they are now.

• Pipes are the easiest way to transport any fluid - just click and drag and you're done.
• Fluid wagons allow easy setup (1 pump to load 1 pump to unload).
• Barrels offer slightly more capacity but you have to spend steel and barrel/unbarrel + deal with the empty barrels everywhere you want to use them.

Slightly is a bit of an understatement.
Barrels are magnitudes apart from storage tanks and pipes.

Storage density: 50x more effective:
1 Storage Tank holds 25kL
9 chests hold 1080kL

Throughput: 10x more effective:
Pipe: 1.2kL/s down to 300L/s depending on length.
Blue Belt: 10kL/s

Barrels are not fine and in no way balanced.
The effort for filling and emptying barrels is neglect able compared to how insane their storage density and transport flexibility adds up.

[darkfrei]

Fluid barrels are fine as they are now.

• Pipes are the easiest way to transport any fluid - just click and drag and you're done.
• Fluid wagons allow easy setup (1 pump to load 1 pump to unload).
• Barrels offer slightly more capacity but you have to spend steel and barrel/unbarrel + deal with the empty barrels everywhere you want to use them.

Using of logistic bots+barrels must me less productive then one single pipe. How about to decrease volume of barrels for example in 5 times, and increase stack size in 5 times too?

[iceman_1212]

I cannot even think of any megabase designs that would involve exploiting the "OP" nature of compressed blue belts of barrels... I think this is along the same lines as creating "super dense" belts by placing cars on belts. It has limited practical applications. I would love to see a case of a base "abusing" the imbalance of barreling - then I can be convinced.

As for pipes being eclipsed by a yellow belt full of barrels - ofc that is the case, the yellow belt full of barrels costs ~35x more.

Using of logistic bots+barrels must me less productive then one single pipe. How about to decrease volume of barrels for example in 5 times, and increase stack size in 5 times too?

Why? Pipe is much cheaper and is literally one of the few things that is available to player at start of game. Meanwhile, logistic system needs high tech science... I'm no fan of logistic bots based bases anyways, but I don't see why it's not okay for bots + barrels to perform better than pipes.

[JohnyDL]

Fluid barrels are fine as they are now.

• Pipes are the easiest way to transport any fluid - just click and drag and you're done.
• Fluid wagons allow easy setup (1 pump to load 1 pump to unload).
• Barrels offer slightly more capacity but you have to spend steel and barrel/unbarrel + deal with the empty barrels everywhere you want to use them.

Slightly is a bit of an understatement.
Barrels are magnitudes apart from storage tanks and pipes.

Storage density: 50x more effective:
1 Storage Tank holds 25kL
9 chests hold 1080kL

Who wants litres of oil lying around doing nothing, 1 chest is 120k 5 times the storage of 1 tank, so what why do you need more than 25k of storage in any one place (except stations)

Throughput: 10x more effective:
Pipe: 1.2kL/s down to 300L/s depending on length.
Blue Belt: 10kL/s

Except it's not you have to send the barrels back which halves that, and you have to redistribute the barrels which can be a pain and I've had the problem of everything stops flowing because I'm using absolute max capacity and it locks up, there's plenty of oil barrels but there's nowhere to put the empty ones from the assemblers and that backs up the whole line and nothing moves at all, so saying that 10kL per blue belt of barrels is actually more like 10kL per 3 blue belts of barrels so that you never get those lock ups and don't have to perfectly calibrate how many barrels are in the system.

Barrels are not fine and in no way balanced.
The effort for filling and emptying barrels is neglect able compared to how insane their storage density and transport flexibility adds up.

and again they're OP to you but they're only if they're in an OP setup, 99% of setups you can't utilise the efficiency gain by this method, you need bot and/or inserter stack bonuses to get them this efficient which makes them a late game upgrade, next you'll be telling me that because of the amount of power a Nuclear reactor can output it should be 1 uranium-235 per fuelcell not per 10. The whole suggestion will only really serve to lag out games anyway as people try to continue using barrel setups following a nerf and where's the fun in that. More bots in the air getting in the way, no thanks.

Never nerf games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsC8io4w1sY

[Rseding91]

Barrels are not fine and in no way balanced.
The effort for filling and emptying barrels is neglect able compared to how insane their storage density and transport flexibility adds up.

To you, they're not fine. To use (the developers) they're fine.

If every option in the game was exactly balanced to every other option there would be no reason to ever use one thing over the other.

Pipes are by far the easiest way to move fluids. You don't need to move express belts of barreled fluid in any normal game so the fact that it's so much faster doesn't matter. The ease of use being able to just drag a pipe (or series of underground pipes) means they almost always win over barreling.

Fluid wagons are the same way - it's much easier to just put down a few pumps than it is to setup a wagon with barrels, loading and unloading (at both ends).

Storing fluids is mostly pointless since all fluids are generated from infinite sources.

[Nasabot]

I agree. The fluid transportation is not well balanced.

Both fluid wagon and transportation by barrles need to be turned down drastically. A singles full fluid wagon can easily handle a big oil field, you only have to consider how long it takes to gather 75k Oil and compare it with ore transportation. Completly out of line.

Fluid wagons capacity should get reduced to 1/3. (and also barrels)