Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
I think tweaking coal liquefaction to produce power is a different issue from the heavy oil to solid fuel recipe. Also it is not really a balance issue so much as it is a suggestion, because there's is nothing unbalanced with the purpose of coal liquefaction being a way to supplement crude oil rather than being a way to produce steam power. Finally it is not a change that would make balancing heavy to solid unnecessary as even when considering power it is much better to pay the power cost for cracking heavy.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Add some productivity modules into that mix, along with one or two speed beacons and watch that third approach a full 100%. But I'd avoid using a finite resource (coal) for fuel generation. Coal is a requirement for plastic, unless you have a huge surplus of the stuff, it's better served dumping it there.bobucles wrote:Isn't that nice? We nearly break even while making heaps of useful petrol, or we can process a third more energy out of our coal by sacrificing the petrol output. That kind of positive outcome makes me want to build more factory.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
A post game prod3 speed beacon build is strong? Alert the presses! But how true is that REALLY? Refineries are energy hungry beasts, and so are beacons. If you're pouring in thousands of resources to squeak some more energy out of your oil production, those resources aren't going into solar or research or anything else. But let's play that game for a minute.Add some productivity modules into that mix, along with one or two speed beacons and watch that third approach a full 100%.
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Let's take a refinery with 5 speed3 beacons. Let's also use the boosted cracking recipe (+5H +5L)
The refinery burns 2898kW and the beacons burn 2400kW to give 1.3x production at 3.05 speed.
The prod3 bonus boosts the modified 40H 20L 20P to => 52H 26L 26P
The previous setup produced 3.125 light fuel + 1 optional petrol fuel
The prod3 setup produces 4.625 light fuel + 1.3 optional petrol fuel.
That is an increase from 78.1MJ + 25MJ => 115.6MJ + 32.5MJ.
The boosted coal refinery had to burn 4880MJ of coal power per recipe.
The prod3 refinery has to burn 17370MJ per recipe.
It costs 12500MJ to get 37.5MJ, a profit of 1.0 solid fuel or roughly 30%.
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600 solar is 25MW of energy.
A plain boosted coal cracker turns 2 coal/sec into 7.8MW + 2.5MW - 480kW.
This is a loss of .68MW to start, but a profit of 1.8MW if we burn the precious petrol.
The prod3 beacon coal cracker turns 6.1 coal/sec into 35.3MW light + 9.9MW petrol - 5.7MW drain
The extra production bonus amounts to a total free energy yield of 5.2MW(baseline with upkeep) + 7.4MW(burning petrol).
So. I'm not seeing the balance issue here. I buffed the coal. I speed beaconed the coal. I am putting a LOT of effort into this coal and what do I get? A gigantic waste of time. I'm better off building solar.
I can also get 40% more power with no effort just by placing prod3 on nuclear fuel. I can also produce a third of a rocket out of thin air with prod3 modules. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know which setup is going to get more value out of your factory. There's absolutely no reason to be worried about coal cracking producing slightly more oil energy than doing nothing, and there's no reason to worry about prod3 producing more energy out of "nothing". It's not like a steam boiler energy supply can handle a multi GW beacon base, anyway.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Well, to be honest, if you want an extremely efficient non-solar power setup, you're better off going nuclear anyway. Huge investment but once you get that going... I've not run the math but I think we're in the order of several dozen, if not hundreds of megajoules per uranium mined. I was merely pointing out how to squeeze every last joule out of the proposed coal-cracking-to-solid/rocket-fuel design. When you do solar tho you do need to take accumulator production into consideration as well - along with nightfall, solar panels are ~2/3rds effective (so count 40MW per panel). Still, it'd probably be cheaper to go solar material wise, if you have the spare room somewhere.
And steam power theoretically could handle a multi-GW base, but you'd need... a metric crapton of steamengines (and an imperial crapton of boilers too). It's just inefficient to do it that way. I've gone nuclear in my own plant and am now backpeddling to solar - the UPS penalty of a huge 20+ megawatt nuclear plant is just too severe.
And steam power theoretically could handle a multi-GW base, but you'd need... a metric crapton of steamengines (and an imperial crapton of boilers too). It's just inefficient to do it that way. I've gone nuclear in my own plant and am now backpeddling to solar - the UPS penalty of a huge 20+ megawatt nuclear plant is just too severe.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
I was kind of taking the long route to explaining that. One of the most important tenants of Factorio is that building more gets you more. Coal cracked fuel is one of the few situations where building more gets you less. That isn't Factorio at all.Well, to be honest, if you want an extremely efficient non-solar power setup, you're better off going nuclear anyway.
The idea behind losing energy from coal may make sense from a thermodynamics standpoint (can't create energy from nothing *coughnukefuelcoughcough*) but in terms of gameplay it is complete nonsense. We have a fairly new recipe that gives a new way to turn coal into energy, except we LOSE energy by using it! That is simply a travesty. This is the kind of game where players are expected to build more. Coal cracking should be energy positive for that reason alone; because it makes players build MOAR.
The proposed buff isn't very different in terms of recipe use, but it makes coal cracking a very tempting option. If I had to pick final numbers I'd say something like:
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Modified yield: +5H +5L -5P
100% faster recipe: 20 coal + 50H + 100 steam x 5sec => 80 H + 40 L + 30 P
Heavy cracking given by default
Heavy oil fuel recipe removed from game
Coal liquefaction blue tier
Advanced oil Gold tier
If solid fuel becomes the primary fuel source after coal than the second problem - I have more light oil than god - stops being a problem.
If the player is no longer burdened with heavy/light oil than their third biggest problem - I NEED advanced oil or I will literally die - stops being a problem.
Coal cracking can never replace advanced oil, but advanced oil can make coal cracking obsolete. The techs get reordered with that in mind.
This setup tries to make a smoother progression that gradually gives the player more options as they need them.
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
I have a feeling that coal-liquefaction is balanced around Productivity3. You do in fact "net energy" when you factor in Prod3 modules.bobucles wrote:I was kind of taking the long route to explaining that. One of the most important tenants of Factorio is that building more gets you more. Coal cracked fuel is one of the few situations where building more gets you less. That isn't Factorio at all.Well, to be honest, if you want an extremely efficient non-solar power setup, you're better off going nuclear anyway.
However, I think I agree with you that coal-liquefaction should be net-energy positive before Prod3 modules. In a standard game (non-megabase, going for one rocket launch), coal liquefaction is simply not worth it. In a mega-base sized game, you'll find more than enough crude oil for your needs (space is infinite. Exploration is now highly automated due to artillery trains). So coal-liquefaction is in a poor state: too expensive for normal games, but not really too useful for mega-bases.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Don't forget that a megabase has nuclear power, which renders coal and solid fuel pretty obsolete. So you don't get coal cracking early enough to use for power, it's not energy positive when it's available, and it's obsolete by the time prod3's finally make it energy positive. Its only current value is to feed more juice into advanced cracking, which I guess was the original intent but still. Not a great tech by any means.
- bobingabout
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
I just have a massive solar farm... and more than enough accumulators to take over when the sun goes down... and a 400MW Hydrazine power plant... and 400MW steam MK4 power plant...bobucles wrote:Don't forget that a megabase has nuclear power, which renders coal and solid fuel pretty obsolete. So you don't get coal cracking early enough to use for power, it's not energy positive when it's available, and it's obsolete by the time prod3's finally make it energy positive. Its only current value is to feed more juice into advanced cracking, which I guess was the original intent but still. Not a great tech by any means.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Well I am not concerned about losing energy on coal cracking. We have to remember that this technology is not here to be effective but it is a bandaid to get oil in case you have none around. And the main purpose of oil is not getting solid fuel at all.
So generally the recipe fulfils its primary role even in its current shape.
However the main culprit is mainly the game tech it requires. It just does not let you replace oil when you really need it - early to mid game.
But this discussion has drifted far away from initial topic.
So generally the recipe fulfils its primary role even in its current shape.
However the main culprit is mainly the game tech it requires. It just does not let you replace oil when you really need it - early to mid game.
But this discussion has drifted far away from initial topic.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Hey it's all oil, it's all good.But this discussion has drifted far away from initial topic.
Heavy fuel, as a recipe, doesn't need to exist in Factorio. It can be completely removed from the game by providing heavy cracking right away. Heavy cracking is the weaker of the two cracking techs because light oil only has two places to go- fire(turrets) and fire(boilers). As an unlock heavy cracking does not open any major options other than getting a bit more efficiency from your fire. Players need PETROL, not light oil, so the tech can be given away with little serious consequence.
This is really the damning problem with coal cracking. It's supposed to save a base that's lacking on oil, right? The problem is it takes too much oil to research it! If you have the kind of oil needed to research coal cracking, then you don't have serious oil problems any more. The coal cracking tier already has enough oil on hand to tech up and kill biters to find more.However the main culprit is mainly the game tech it requires. It just does not let you replace oil when you really need it - early to mid game.
The second problem with coal cracking is that there's not much incentive to set it up naturally. There is practically no reason to use coal cracking as a source of light oil (and by extension, heavy oil) because you flat out LOSE by doing it. It simply doesn't give enough fuel to justify the loss of coal. There's no reason to integrate coal cracking into your energy supply so players lose out on a huge potential progress chain- upgrading your coal into better fuel. That's just sad.
The only justifiable reason to get coal cracking is to get more petroleum. Well. That's the entire point of advanced oil, to get more petroleum. Factorio doesn't really need TWO techs to fulfill the exact same purpose. Tragically this means cracked coal is only useful if you are already at the game stage where you have a surplus petroleum supply from advanced cracking. It's largely redundant at that point.
There is a way to make coal cracking and advanced oil both equally valuable techs. The first step is to make coal cracking just a tiiiiny bit better. If it's just a little bit energy positive (even if you need to burn petrol to have positive energy), then every base can benefit from a cracking rig regardless of consequence. The second step is to do a little tech tree swicharoo. Coal cracking is a nice early unlock to upgrade fuel and give a bit more petrol, but advanced oil is still the ultimate tech that upgrades everything to petrol. It also softens the fairly high oil difficulty curve because the player already has a strong coal supply at the green/blue tier but their oil supply is just starting from scratch. It improves the tech progression, it softens the blue tech wall, and it gives players moar factory. Win/win.
- bobingabout
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
but cars in this game run off solid fuels, not fluids.bobucles wrote:Players need PETROL
My mod adds liquid fuel, that's basically supposed to be petrol, but the use case is limited, it's only really useful in a fluid generator, or an intermediate.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
You could always set jerrycans of Liquid Fuel as a fuel source for vehicles. For those who feel roleplay-y.bobingabout wrote:but cars in this game run off solid fuels, not fluids.bobucles wrote:Players need PETROL
My mod adds liquid fuel, that's basically supposed to be petrol, but the use case is limited, it's only really useful in a fluid generator, or an intermediate.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Personal vehicles don't use enough fuel to be a significant drain. Trains and turrets are not a significant consumer either, even in the most insane of megabases. Add all those drains together and there is still a need to crack light excess light oil so that full light oil storage doesn't clog your petroleum gas output.but cars in this game run off solid fuels, not fluids.
There is only one way to use enough light oil that it won't clog up your storage. Use it as boiler fuel. Any excess petroleum gas can be easily burnt as fuel, though it is better off used for acid and plastic. Unfortunately coal cracking doesn't want players using light oil.
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Rocket Fuel is the #1 use of light oil in my experience. Infinite science requires space science, which requires a lot of rocket fuel.bobucles wrote:Personal vehicles don't use enough fuel to be a significant drain. Trains and turrets are not a significant consumer either, even in the most insane of megabases. Add all those drains together and there is still a need to crack light excess light oil so that full light oil storage doesn't clog your petroleum gas output.but cars in this game run off solid fuels, not fluids.
There is only one way to use enough light oil that it won't clog up your storage. Use it as boiler fuel. Any excess petroleum gas can be easily burnt as fuel, though it is better off used for acid and plastic. Unfortunately coal cracking doesn't want players using light oil.
A lot of light-oil still turns into petroleum gas / plastic. But endgame certainly has uses for oodles and oodles of light oil -> rocket fuel -> space science -> infinity.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
The rocket indeed uses a good chunk of light oil. But if it used ALL the light oil then bases wouldn't have huge cracking arrays, would they?Rocket Fuel is the #1 use of light oil in my experience. Infinite science requires space science, which requires a lot of rocket fuel.
Despite every other light oil demand put together the player absolutely needs petrol cracking or they will overflow on light oil. Only boiler fuel has the high scaling demand demand to stem the tide.
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
you missed my dig.bobucles wrote:Personal vehicles don't use enough fuel to be a significant drain. Trains and turrets are not a significant consumer either, even in the most insane of megabases. Add all those drains together and there is still a need to crack light excess light oil so that full light oil storage doesn't clog your petroleum gas output.but cars in this game run off solid fuels, not fluids.
There is only one way to use enough light oil that it won't clog up your storage. Use it as boiler fuel. Any excess petroleum gas can be easily burnt as fuel, though it is better off used for acid and plastic. Unfortunately coal cracking doesn't want players using light oil.
you said players need "PETROL", over here, Petrol is the petroleum fuel used to power cars that Americans call Gasoline. The Petroleum Gas you were referring to, we just call Gas. to note, Gas as a fuel is any petroleum based gas, like propane, butane etc. as a fuel for hybrid, or non-petrol cars, it is often refereed to as LPG, and this is what I see "Petroleum Gas" in Factorio as being, Liquid Petroleum Gas (Since it is named Petroleum gas and categorised as a fluid.)
Kinda ironic that translated into British, Gas and Petrol mean the opposite things.
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
You make an excellent point. However I think the solution, contrary to common sense, is to lock advanced oil processing behind other techs which require blue science. When you only need that tiny 75 blue science to unlock it, you can easily delude yourself into thinking you are wasting time, energy, and oil by not researching it before you setup your oil. I used to play that way until I tried resting on a full pre-advanced oil setup and found it more than acceptable; I honestly had no immediate drive to upgrade to advanced oil processing.Koub wrote:Honestly, the more I think, the more I'd like there wasn't an "advanced poil processing" tech, and that basic and advanced were all unlocked with the same green research. I am able to pinpoint where I lose the pleasure to play in my new games, and it's usually when I have researched most of the green science, and I *have* no other choice but to start automating the blue science. And at that moment, the tedium of having to do basic oil processing just to make 75 blue science packs, I do most of it by hand feeding assembling machines, and once I have my 75 science packs, I feed them in my labs, and there is always one single research I do with basic oil processing when I start blue research : advanced oil processing. I hate having to buffer unused oil byproducts until I can process them.
So, to get back to topic, I'd prefer leaving the solid fuel recipes as is, but merge the Advanced oil processing tech into the Oil processing tech. That way, you have all the options from start, and can start doing whatever pleases you with your crude oil.
There are some problems with basic oil processing which lead to players finding it sub-optimal, more than anything the fact that advanced oil processing gives you more total oil, but also that use for heavy and light oil is so limited you find yourself buffering it up indefinitely, making solid fuel that you may or may not be using, or destroying the oil. I purposely used a setup which relied on the high income of solid fuel, but to really make pre-advanced viable, I would suggest the following changes:
1.) Advanced should make LESS total oil than basic. It will still provide more petroleum gas post-cracking than basic will, and with less space and energy required to do it. There is already a substantial loss in cracking oil to lighter varieties, so it makes sense for advanced oil processing to also give slightly less total oil than basic. That way a player will not read the numbers and decide they are losing oil every second they run basic oil processing.
2.) There should be more uses for light and heavy oil. Heavy oil is primarily used for lubricant, but only in electric engine units or express transport belts. Firstly, the player probably isn't using these at green science level, secondly they might never want to use a lot of these as it depends a lot on playstyle. I never use much lubricant in any playthrough. Flamethrower turrets would be a great way to use excess oil, except that they use too little oil. Their extremely potent damage burns through oil actually slower than the flamethrower weapon, 20 times slower to be precise. I think the flamethrower's oil use is fine and I use that weapon all the time. So I would at minimum raise the flamethrower turrets' fluid consumption rate 100x as high; even still it would be much more damage efficient than the flamethrower weapon. But finally it would be useful as a way to dump whatever oil you have too much of. You should even be able to setup a circuit condition to switch which oil the turret is using based on available supplies.
But there should be more uses still. Tons of things could have lubricant added to their production cost. KS Power's oil boiler and diesel generator ought to be added to the base game, providing more usage for solid fuel or light oil as a fuel source. Any player with excess heavy or light oil should feel there is always at least one option fitting their gameplay style to use as much of the oil as they can produce.
Here's some tentative numbers:
Basic Oil Processing: 30 heavy, 30 light, 40 petroleum gas (100 total)(cracked=75 petroleum gas)
unchanged
Advanced Oil Processing: 10 heavy, 30 light, 55 petroleum gas (95 total)(cracked=80 petroleum gas)
only light oil output reduced
And then I'd add some late-game unlocks for lazy people:
Heavy Oil Processing: 90 heavy oil
Light Oil Processing: 80 light oil
Petroleum Gas Processing: 70 petroleum gas
These recipes would be useful if you want to maintain a compact setup and only want one oil type at a time. If you use heavy or light oil processing, you can get more total heavy or light oil than would have been possible with standard processing. Petroleum gas processing yields less petroleum gas than advanced+cracking, but takes far less space and energy. The most important benefit of the specialized processing is that you never have to deal with the bottleneck of having an unused product build up.
So will this make the game stay fun into blue science production? It depends on the amount of patience you have for such a task, but I think it will make great strides in that direction. Rather than stress about your oil, you can relax and enjoy it, leaving blue tech a faint glimmer on the horizon if you don't feel like pursuing it yet. Then later, when you feel like tackling blue tech, you might already have such a strong plastic and battery production chain going that it winds up being pretty easy to setup. Maybe far down the road you'll be launching rockets and placing facilities using blueprints and robots, and you'll stumble across your old oil setup, still using basic oil processing, still providing for your factory. And you'll think...heh...and move on, unperturbed.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
Advanced oil isn't great because of the improved refinery recipe. Advanced oil is great because it completes your oil system.When you only need that tiny 75 blue science to unlock it, you can easily delude yourself into thinking you are wasting time, energy, and oil by not researching it before you setup your oil
Basic oil has a huge difficulty managing outputs and preventing a refinery stall. Any excess material has to be burnt as solid fuel, as it's the only factory demand high enough to balance the system. Unfortunately solid fuel is weaker than coal, so you're better off trying not to use light oil and instead use all the excess coal.
The only resource that oil never has enough of is petroleum. Every drop of crude is precious, especially on higher difficulties where oil is difficult to secure. Basic oil processing leaves you with a limited ability to produce petrol. Advanced processing retroactively lets you use all the other stashed heavy/light oil to make more petrol, doubling the supply or more. It's a huge swing in petrol which is simply too important to ignore.
Please do some sanity checking on your own suggestions. That's 300 oil per second, or 3000% oil yield to feed one single turret.So I would at minimum raise the flamethrower turrets' fluid consumption rate 100x as high;
But why? Oil cracking already solves the issue of prioritizing H L P. If you need more heavy oil, use the basic recipe a little bit longer. This is rarely useful in a real game however.And then I'd add some late-game unlocks for lazy people:
Heavy Oil Processing: 90 heavy oil
Light Oil Processing: 80 light oil
Petroleum Gas Processing: 70 petroleum gas
These recipes would be useful if you want to maintain a compact setup and only want one oil type at a time.
But that's not important because the primary demand already leans towards never having enough petrol. The oil cracking recipes already balance the system by taking the excess heavy/light and transforming it into the scarce petrol.The most important benefit of the specialized processing is that you never have to deal with the bottleneck of having an unused product build up.
Your oil suggestion will create the following meta:
- Bases have 1 or 2 Heavy oil and never build any more ever again
- Bases have a hand full of light oil processing
- Everything else is mountains of petrol processing.
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Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
That's my point, really. You don't need advanced oil processing, but you feel like you're being punished for using basic. My suggestion makes basic feel acceptable. Advanced will still usually feel optimal once you have it, but if uses for heavy and light oil are increased, there may be some situations in which you prefer basic.bobucles wrote:Basic oil has a huge difficulty managing outputs and preventing a refinery stall. Any excess material has to be burnt as solid fuel, as it's the only factory demand high enough to balance the system. Unfortunately solid fuel is weaker than coal, so you're better off trying not to use light oil and instead use all the excess coal.
The only resource that oil never has enough of is petroleum. Every drop of crude is precious, especially on higher difficulties where oil is difficult to secure. Basic oil processing leaves you with a limited ability to produce petrol. Advanced processing retroactively lets you use all the other stashed heavy/light oil to make more petrol, doubling the supply or more. It's a huge swing in petrol which is simply too important to ignore.
Also I disagree with you about solid fuel. Coal runs out pretty fast, it's oil that takes forever to deplete. I generally prefer solid fuel over coal. I save coal for grenades and plastic where it's really needed. If you really have so much coal left over you can turn it into oil with the coal liquefaction process.
Double-checking, I was a little off. The handheld flamethrower uses 60 fluid per second, I was right about that, but I incorrectly recalled that the turret is far stronger. The turret has the same direct damage and 50% higher area damage. 100 fluid per second sounds good. But 300 per second isn't that high--a single pipe could run more turrets than you ever need running at once for a single biter attack, and a heavily-attacked base could still run on the excess light oil you generate just mining for petroleum gas. If the amount isn't drastically increased from its current pathetically low amount, the turret will continue to fire essentially for free, and will not be viable as an oil sink.bobucles wrote:Please do some sanity checking on your own suggestions. That's 300 oil per second, or 3000% oil yield to feed one single turret.
Not likely. The petroleum processing nets you less total; you'll get more from advanced processing + cracking. My numbers may need tweaking, but the idea behind it is for the meticulous player to prefer cracking for petroleum gas, while the lazy player prefers petroleum gas processing. I myself would make a cracking setup on a large oil field which fueled my main production, while I might occasionally make a quick outpost and use direct processing just there.bobucles wrote:Your oil suggestion will create the following meta:
- Bases have 1 or 2 Heavy oil and never build any more ever again
- Bases have a hand full of light oil processing
- Everything else is mountains of petrol processing.
The heavy and light oil processing fill three roles:
1.) Just to be thorough, if we're adding petroleum gas processing, these should also be added.
2.) It gets around the problem that it's not possible to crack downward, esp. useful if new uses for heavy/light are added.
3.) You can use these to make oil product separating easier--while you lose oil doing it on your main setup, it's not game-ruining.
Re: Remove or tweak heavy oil to solid fuel recipe.
It really really REALLY is. 300 light oil per second requires over 6000% of crude yield to keep loaded. 300 light oil per second is 375MW of potential power, or over a hundred unupgraded laser turrets. You may as well call them griefer turrets because trolls will build 1 and wipe out the entire team's oil supply.But 300 <oil> per second isn't that high
There is perhaps an argument for saying that flame turrets are a bit too efficient, but we're talking about a slight change to 4-10 oil/sec. Not 300. That's absurd. Seriously. Wow.
It's not a punishment, it's a fact of resource management. Early game oil is starved for gas and crude in general because, well, because it's early game. Advanced oil doubles the gas supply. It only makes sense to double the resource you need and transform the resources you don't need. Using heavy/light oil isn't a great idea because it is far more useful to transform it into gas. The meta exists because advanced oil exists.That's my point, really. You don't need advanced oil processing, but you feel like you're being punished for using basic.
Coal cracking offers an escape for the current meta because it transforms coal into more oil. Clearing out heavy/light oil becomes an easy choice because it's an extension of your fuel supply (which is coming from coal) which is already used in large quantity. The 3 fluids naturally balance out on their own since petrol is still the choke point and it's a simple matter of burning whatever is surplus.