Acceleration bonus power creep

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Optera
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Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Optera »

Please get rid of the power creep in fuel acceleration.
Each new fuel seems to be set to vastly outperform earlier fuels in acceleration for no good reason.

Currently fuel stats and effects on trains are:

Coal:
fuel value/stack: 40MJ
acceleration: 100%
top speed: 100%
Train for comparison 1 Locomotive, 2 cargo wagons

Solid fuel:
fuel value/stack: 1250MJ
acceleration: 120%
top speed: 105%
Similar acceleration as baseline with 3 wagons

Rocket fuel:
fuel value/stack: 2250MJ
acceleration: 180%
top speed: 115%
Similar acceleration as baseline with 6 wagons

Nuclear fuel:
fuel value/stack: 1210MJ
acceleration: 250%
top speed: 115%
Similar acceleration as baseline with 10 wagons

Adding acceleration boosts equal to 4 additional locomotives makes no sense.
It also makes creating mods with upgrades for vehicles impossible to balance.
Vehicle upgrade mods have to strip fuels of their bonuses so upgraded vehicles feel like a real upgrades again and we don't end up with totally insane accelerations and top speeds (600kmph trains).

Having refined fuels provide higher fuel value per stack is enough incentive to use them.
Acceleration and top speed bonus should either be stripped from fuel entirely or reduced to a maximum of 120%.
Last edited by Optera on Mon Jan 01, 2018 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by eradicator »

Optera wrote: Nuclear fuel:
fuel value/stack: 1210MJ
acceleration: 250%
top speed: 115%
Similar acceleration as baseline with 10 wagons
Does nuclear actually have less top speed than rocket or is that a typo? If it's not a typo it looks like a pretty good balance for short-distance (nuclear) vs long-distance (rocket) trains.
Optera wrote: Having refined fuels provide higher fuel value per stack is enough incentive to use them.
Not at all. A train only needs to store enough fuel to make one round-trip. For most people this is probably less than a stack of coal (and a train can already store 3 stacks) so any higher per-stack capacity is completely irrelevant.
Optera wrote: Acceleration and top speed bonus should either be stripped from fuel entirely or reduced to a maximum of 120%.
Acceleration is THE main incentive to use better fuel (in combination with break power). Top speed is a very nice side effect. And the relative acceleration bonus seems to be diminishing again for nuclear. Solid gives +20% acceleration, rocket +50% and nuclear +39%.

As i can't currently test this myself it would be nice to have better info on actual effects of these numbers in-game. I.e. how long does a typical 2-4 train with each fuel type take to travel a distance of 1000 tiles (with stops at each end and max break power research), and what is the electrical power/resource cost per MJ of each fuel. Because the actual numbers don't really say that much imho.
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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Optera »

eradicator wrote: Does nuclear actually have less top speed than rocket or is that a typo? If it's not a typo it looks like a pretty good balance for short-distance (nuclear) vs long-distance (rocket) trains.
That was a typo speed bonus is 115% for rocket and nuclear.
eradicator wrote: Acceleration is THE main incentive to use better fuel (in combination with break power). Top speed is a very nice side effect. And the relative acceleration bonus seems to be diminishing again for nuclear. Solid gives +20% acceleration, rocket +50% and nuclear +39%.
These numbers say little about in game performance. What matters is how many locomotives are required to accelerate n wagons and how energy efficient they are.
1 600kw loco on nuclear fuel pulls 10 wagons as well as 5 600kw locos on coal. The difference is that the 5 locos will burn through the coal 5*600kW while the nuclear fuel is consumed only at 1*600kW rate. This means acceleration bonus provided 2400kW free energy.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by eradicator »

Optera wrote: 1 600kw loco on nuclear fuel pulls 10 wagons as well as 5 600kw locos on coal. The difference is that the 5 locos will burn through the coal 5*600kW while the nuclear fuel is consumed only at 1*600kW rate. This means acceleration bonus provided 2400kW free energy.
Without any mentioning of what usage pattern you refer to those numbers don't mean anything to me. E.g. on a 1000 (or even 10000) tile track the train spends most of the time at full speed and thus the acceleration bonus is significantly less important than for a 100 tile track. Also you forgot to include the significantly higer production cost (material and energy) of higher fuels into your "2400kW of free energy".
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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Optera »

eradicator wrote:
Optera wrote: 1 600kw loco on nuclear fuel pulls 10 wagons as well as 5 600kw locos on coal. The difference is that the 5 locos will burn through the coal 5*600kW while the nuclear fuel is consumed only at 1*600kW rate. This means acceleration bonus provided 2400kW free energy.
Without any mentioning of what usage pattern you refer to those numbers don't mean anything to me. E.g. on a 1000 (or even 10000) tile track the train spends most of the time at full speed and thus the acceleration bonus is significantly less important than for a 100 tile track. Also you forgot to include the significantly higer production cost (material and energy) of higher fuels into your "2400kW of free energy".
Accelerating or not makes no difference to fuel consumption. Trains always consume the power displayed in the tooltip which is power*efficiency.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

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Optera wrote: Accelerating or not makes no difference to fuel consumption. Trains always consume the power displayed in the tooltip which is power*efficiency.
As long as it's moving yes. But acceleration reduces the total time a train moves. Unless you have a train setup unfamiliar to me where trains do not tend to be waiting in stations for most of the time.
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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Optera »

eradicator wrote:
Optera wrote: Accelerating or not makes no difference to fuel consumption. Trains always consume the power displayed in the tooltip which is power*efficiency.
As long as it's moving yes. But acceleration reduces the total time a train moves. Unless you have a train setup unfamiliar to me where trains do not tend to be waiting in stations for most of the time.
Being stopped makes no difference. Trains know only two fuel consumption states, 100% and 0.
Direct fuel efficiency Comparison
In this test i put a coal fueled 4L-10C against a nuclear fueled 1L-10Cl.
Even though the coal feed 4L pulls ahead early on the higher top speed allows the nuclear fuel powered train to catch up in the end. If the test track was longer the nuclear fueled single loco would be faster.
2018-01-03-16-41-34-4354376.jpg
2018-01-03-16-41-34-4354376.jpg (124.63 KiB) Viewed 7370 times
The modded nuclear fuel has the same fuel value and stack size as coal for direct efficiency comparison.
Both trains start with 160MJ fuel. one has 5 stack of coal spread over 4 locos, one 20 stack nuclear fuel in a single loco.
After 2 laps the coal train runs out of fuel having consumed all 160MJ.
The Nuclear fuel train still has ~14,75 nuclear fuel or ~118MJ left, having consumed only ~42MJ.
after 2 laps
after 2 laps
2018-01-03-16-45-10-3397866.jpg (366.2 KiB) Viewed 7370 times
Conclusion:
Acceleration bonus of 250% + Top speed bonus of 115% together produced a fuel efficiency of 381%
Attachments
testFuel_0.1.0.zip
(809 Bytes) Downloaded 110 times
_Train Test Track 0.16 - Fuel efficiency.zip
(5.2 MiB) Downloaded 110 times

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by eradicator »

I did an estimate of the total processing costs per one nuclear fuel and it ended up being only about 70MWs (=70MJ). (Excluding drain, oil conversion or any kinds of beacons/modules). Which means that the total energy capacity of nuclear fuel might actually be a bit too high :P.
Estimate of processing costs

Your test track looks to be about ~180 tiles long, which is still on the short end and favors high acceleration. Also you didn't give any times. (Also i don't think players actually change their trian layout when they gain higher fuel tiers.)

Would you mind timing the track for a 2L-4C though? As you've already build it ^^.
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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Gnark »

Who cares about train fuel efficiency ?

For train it is all about how many train you can put on a line and what is the output of a station. Acceleration is the only way to go. If a train arrive full speed on a shared line it will slow down less the train already on the line. With acceleration train will move out and arrive faster on a station that will improve how goods you move on time.

They can upgrade the cost of nuclear and make them require 10 rocket cells I will still go for it.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Optera »

eradicator wrote:I did an estimate of the total processing costs per one nuclear fuel and it ended up being only about 70MW. (Excluding drain, oil conversion or any kinds of beacons/modules). Which means that the total energy capacity of nuclear fuel might actually be a bit too high :P.
If you do a full beaconed prod3 setup wherever possible energy cost/item will actually decrease even further.
eradicator wrote: Your test track looks to be about ~180 tiles long, which is still on the short end and favors high acceleration. Also you didn't give any times. (Also i don't think players actually change their trian layout when they gain higher fuel tiers.)

Would you mind timing the track for a 2L-4C though? As you've already build it ^^.
My above post contains the test track and the mod i used for fuel comparison.
Gnark wrote:Who cares about train fuel efficiency ?

For train it is all about how many train you can put on a line and what is the output of a station. Acceleration is the only way to go. If a train arrive full speed on a shared line it will slow down less the train already on the line. With acceleration train will move out and arrive faster on a station that will improve how goods you move on time.

They can upgrade the cost of nuclear and make them require 10 rocket cells I will still go for it.
Higher acceleration should be achieved by upgraded locomotives with more power (and correctly calculated higher power consumption), not by a bonus on fuel items which provides the additional power as free energy.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by bobucles »

Higher acceleration should be achieved by upgraded locomotives with more power (and correctly calculated higher power consumption), not by a bonus on fuel items which provides the additional power as free energy.
I disagree. I think the idea of Mk2 and Mk3 trains is the very definition of item bloat and is pretty dumb. The biggest issue is that once you research and build the upgraded locomotive then every single train on the track has to be manually found and upgraded. Those trains are moving and shutting them down can be a real disaster for your network. It's boring, it's a chore, and all of that is bad for Factorio.

Fuel upgrades are a nice solution to the "better train" problem. Once a fuel is upgraded the player only needs to worry about bringing the new fuel into their stations. Eventually the old fuel will die out and new fuel will take over with no intervention required. Players can also choose to speed up the process by automating the old fuel out of trains to make way for new fuel. The end result remains the same- players get faster trains.

Placing the speed bonus on fuel also means MORE automation. Currently you can upgrade the entire fuel line starting from coal cracking all the way to nuclear fuel. That means building a fuel factory which is always working to keep your trains happy. When the game encourages you to build more factory it means Factorio is doing it right.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Optera »

bobucles wrote:I think the idea of Mk2 and Mk3 trains is the very definition of item bloat and is pretty dumb. The biggest issue is that once you research and build the upgraded locomotive then every single train on the track has to be manually found and upgraded. Those trains are moving and shutting them down can be a real disaster for your network. It's boring, it's a chore, and all of that is bad for Factorio.
By that logic we also should only have one type of furnace and assembling machine only upgradable by modules.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by bobucles »

Optera wrote:By that logic we also should only have one type of furnace and assembling machine only upgradable by modules.
Could you please explain what you mean by this? I'm not sure how that argument somehow causes a multi tiered locomotive to add meaningful game value.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Zavian »

Optera wrote:By that logic we also should only have one type of furnace and assembling machine only upgradable by modules.
You can fast replace stone to steel furnaces, and you can drop a blueprint and let your bots build electric furnace smelting. (Then let your bot deconstruct the old stone/steel furnaces). So both upgrades are (or at least can be) relatively painless. Upgrading trains would be much more manual work. If locomotive upgrades were a stock feature, then I agree with Bobucles. I'd probably want to research and build the top end locomotives before I built more than a couple of trains, just to save the work I'd otherwise spend upgrading all my existing trains. (I've never played with LTN, that might make it painless).

So since multiple classes of locomotives don't fit stock, the best alternative is a way of upgrading existing locomotives. The brake research and fuel upgrades do exactly that, without making people manually setup new trains to replace their existing trains. Now if a mod wants to introduce new more powerful locomotives, and doesn't like the fuel upgrades (because they make their new locomotive pointless), then maybe that mod could also nerf the fuel upgrades, and/or nerf the early model locomotives, and/or restrict which fuels the early model locomotives can use. (Not sure whether the last is possible atm. But if it isn't, then it might be a reasonable request that the devs could implement).

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Optera »

While LTN can significantly reduce the amount of trains, my megabase still has over 100 trains that I manually upgraded twice during testing of Train Overhaul.
It changes Trains and fuels to the progression I suggested here.

Upgrading trains doesn't feel any more of a chore than pre bot arly game gameplay.
However currently there are mods that automatically place trains from chest on track and also back into the chest.
Should it become a base feature bots should be expanded to mine and blueprint trains.

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Zavian »

Well as I said, my reaction to that type of manual work would be "Lets just research the top tier train, before we build more than a couple of trains". The gameplay aspects of running around the map, trying to find all the low lvl trains, and upgrading them just doesn't appeal. Hence I don't think multiple tiers of trains belongs in vanilla, and that the vanilla solution of researching better fuels is a better way to handle this in vanilla. (And I'd be surprised if the devs adopted bots building trains into vanilla).

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by eradicator »

Well. If you already made a mod that implements your prefered flavor of balancing i'm not sure what you're even requesting anymore. The base game does not have more than one locomotive, so it needs to implement transport speed progression some other way. And it does this by fuel progression which requires the player to build more factory, which is exactly what the base game should encourage... (and as a nice benefit has a low cost of implementation, as opposed to new models for higher tier trains).

Making base game trains slower just so that your modded trains feel better is just wrong as base game must be balanced and fun without considering any outside mods. So...if you're suggesting that base game should solve the "train progression" differently that's a different thing.

Can locomotive/cargo-wagon prototypes be fast-replaced btw? That's a suggestions i could support as a first step.

TL;DR:
Sure, OTTD level of train variety/easy of management would be fun to have, but that's not going to happen any time soon. And until then we need some other form of train progression.
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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

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I had not previously payed much attention to energy consumption of trains, but I think the OP raises some good issues. How you might feel about things depends on how realistic you think the simulation should be, but I happen to think that getting effectively free energy is not cool. I also agree that the steep improvement in acceleration with "better" fuels seems pretty dramatic and perhaps is excessive.

I don't really like that train energy consumption is an on/off thing. I would much prefer to see the power required at any given time be connected to the speed at which the train is moving as well as any acceleration/deceleration. But I also understand that on/off is convenient simplification and the devs might have other things they would rather work on to make the game better. Still, I would at least like to see some plausible explanation for the difference in performance between fuels. So here are a few of my thoughts, which may or may not be useful depending on how one approaches the problem:
  • It would be reasonable for trains to achieve different efficiencies in extracting energy from different fuels, but that should be explicit if used.
  • It would be reasonable for trains to have different maximum power available for different fuels, rather than a set 600 kW, with the rate of actual fuel consumption varying accordingly (and also considering the relevant efficiencies).
  • I am not against the idea of multiple tiers of locomotive in the vanilla game, although I agree that careful consideration would be required so as not to make such a feature un-fun.
  • Higher tiers of locomotive could have better stats as well as additional features (such as regenerative braking) to reduce the overall energy consumption needed to move items from one place to another.
  • Players should be rewarded for building more efficient rail systems (e.g., better signaling or more tracks allowing smoother movement of trains rather than constant stop-and-go) by having less energy consumed by trains. That way, more trains leading to more congestion might yield higher cargo throughput, but at an even higher increase in cost.
  • If the steepness of the bonus from better fuels were to be reduced, I would prefer to see the bottom end of performance be increased rather than the top end be decreased so that it isn't a nerf.
Lastly, I want to point out to eradicator that it appears you have calculated energy consumption for one case of nuclear fuel production, but you have labeled your result in MW (power) rather than MJ (energy).

Also, can we have a hyperloop with underground track option? :D

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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by eradicator »

Vxsote wrote:... but I happen to think that getting effectively free energy is not cool...
That's the only point so far that i could agree with (thus the calculation) that the energy gain by processing is too high, even tho there should be some energy gain simply to reward the effort of automating the production.
Vxsote wrote: I don't really like that train energy consumption is an on/off thing. I would much prefer to see the power required at any given time be connected to the speed at which the train is moving as well as any acceleration/deceleration.
That would likely decrease the overall consumption, because the most energy is required during acceleration and not during full-speed movement (basic physics). Although it would penalize train systems that require a lot of stop-and-go (a good thing). But game-design wise the performance cost vs fun gained ratio on that is really bad, so it's not going to happen.
Vxsote wrote: Still, I would at least like to see some plausible explanation for the difference in performance between fuels.
Higher quality fuels burn at higher temperatures/efficiency, releasing more energy per unit burned. The numbers aren't realistic here ofc, because it's a game :p.
Vxsote wrote: I am not against the idea of multiple tiers of locomotive in the vanilla game, although I agree that careful consideration would be required so as not to make such a feature un-fun.
I'm not as-such against multiple tiered trains (i love OTTD) i just think that for factorio the (creative) effort to make such a feature well ingetrated into the base game would be ludicrous.
Vxsote wrote: Lastly, I want to point out to eradicator that it appears you have calculated energy consumption for one case of nuclear fuel production, but you have labeled your result in MW (power) rather than MJ (energy).
Factorio considers 1MWs (one megawattsecond) equal to 1MJ as far as i remember. I'll edit the post to include the missing "s" :P.
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Re: Acceleration bonus power creep

Post by Vxsote »

eradicator wrote:That would likely decrease the overall consumption, because the most energy is required during acceleration and not during full-speed movement (basic physics). Although it would penalize train systems that require a lot of stop-and-go (a good thing). But game-design wise the performance cost vs fun gained ratio on that is really bad, so it's not going to happen.
Perhaps the net result would be to decrease consumption, but that could be tweaked somewhat by picking a different efficiency, train mass, drag coefficient, etc. As far as computational cost, I think you have jumped to a conclusion prematurely. The trains already calculate acceleration and speed and fuel consumption frequently (every tick?). I'm really only talking about a few additional multiplications during that calculation, and we're talking about trains - on the order of hundreds in a "mega base", not thousands of bots, inserters, factories, etc.
eradicator wrote:Factorio considers 1MWs (one megawattsecond) equal to 1MJ as far as i remember. I'll edit the post to include the missing "s" :P.
Indeed, a MW · s is a MJ, by definition. You should always show all of the units in your calculations to keep from making silly labeling errors :)

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