Translated your result to other point of view :SoShootMe wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 7:12 am 1k SPM "load",
Electric energy interface: 1916
Solar panels/Accumulators (19x 8000 panels and 6720 accumulators): 1938
Nuclear (3x blueprint below, stacked): 979
nuclear power resulted in a 50% reduction in UPS.
No need for translation - I wrote a direct equivalent already. But being "worst case" leads to an important caveat you have glossed over (emphasis added):gGeorg wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 3:12 pm Translated your result to other point of view :
1k SPM powered by Nuclear or 2K SPM powered by solar with the same UPS.
For example:SoShootMe wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 7:12 am That is, solar could let you build up to twice as big before UPS starts to drop, but most likely significantly less than that.
This is ~19% higher SPM for the same UPS, rather than ~98% higher.coppercoil wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 9:58 am I took my real 430 SPM factory and replaced 3.8 GW nuclear power to electric energy interface.
Nuclear: 320 UPS.
Electric interface: 380 UPS.
Your post is perfect answear of the OP.SoShootMe wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 5:10 pmNo need for translation - I wrote a direct equivalent already. But being "worst case" leads to an important caveat you have glossed over (emphasis added):gGeorg wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 3:12 pm Translated your result to other point of view :
1k SPM powered by Nuclear or 2K SPM powered by solar with the same UPS.
For example:SoShootMe wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 7:12 am That is, solar could let you build up to twice as big before UPS starts to drop, but most likely significantly less than that.
This is ~19% higher SPM for the same UPS, rather than ~98% higher.coppercoil wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 9:58 am I took my real 430 SPM factory and replaced 3.8 GW nuclear power to electric energy interface.
Nuclear: 320 UPS.
Electric interface: 380 UPS.
What I've written is far from perfectgGeorg wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 2:54 am Your post is perfect answear of the OP.
The Nuclear cost has range, from ~19% to ~98% SPM compared to solar on the same UPS.
. There's a range, but it depends on how UPS-optimised both production and power are. For the former, I think it's pretty unlikely any "real" game (...today) will be better than Stevetrov's 1k SPM cell supplied by infinity chests/pipes (I expect belting/piping in from surrounding sources would be similar, but not terribly practical) - that's why I chose it to get a "worst case" figure. But I write "worst case" in quotes because it's obvious nuclear power can be less UPS-optimised than the relatively simple 2N design I used. I chose that design because I had it to hand, it is appropriate for large scale nuclear power, and I figured that scale requirement points towards similar designs that won't have a huge range of UPS at a given output (that may be a bad assumption).I tried, but output oscillated until I added an EEI to consume excess power - yielding a result with 14x 480MW of 745 UPS. However, UPS comparison between nuclear designs is probably best done in isolation, like the save from the original post.Would you add to compare my Cloverleaf plant powering 1k SPM optimised base ?
viewtopic.php?f=208&t=96233
you'd be surprised how much UPS those infinity items consume.SoShootMe wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 7:41 am I think it's pretty unlikely any "real" game (...today) will be better than Stevetrov's 1k SPM cell supplied by infinity chests/pipes
That is well known, has always surprised me, and is a valid point, but doesn't change what I wrote. Do you think there are "real" games with better SPM per UPS?
If you ask me, and this is only my personal opinion: Questions about UPS come up, because the computer Factorio is running on isn't powerful enough to provide 60 ups. This is a shortcoming of the player's equipment, not the shortcoming of some factory design. Because of this, I (personally) don't deem UPS something worth discussing. I'm interested in solutions that solve challenges from within Factorio, not challenges because I have a too slow computer. This is the completely opposite opinion compared to the opinion expressed in the OP. His name of the game is UPS, my name of the game is "solve factory challenges".brakes59 wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 4:22 pm I find it interesting that most commenters here completely missed the point of the original post, yet were so passionate about their preconcieved ideas.
As a technician i could rate my own designs by their output on my tool, the better rated giving the more SPM, ( or the most SPM/ real time taken to make the factory ) , if i improve my design, with the same given tool, i will produce more science, or get faster to the desired SPM, it is even more important if i have a poor tool to choose amongst my design the one that uses the least amount of computing power for said task, be it energy production, or material transformationTertius wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 7:37 pm If you want to achieve something as a technician, you need the proper tool. If you don't have the proper tool, it gets tedious and you achieve less. In terms of Factorio UPS and the person playing Factorio, the proper tool for a bigger factory is a better computer Factorio is running on, not tedious work to design strange factory designs just because of computer+engine performance. This is not a challenge worth doing, because the next computer generation or Factorio release is obsoleting that research.
brakes59 wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 4:22 pm I personally find the question posed by the original poster very interesting and I would really like to see a more thorough analysis of ups cost resulting from nuclear power usage.
I believe in your case the shortcoming is the scale of your factory. If you ever get to 5k SPM, UPS will become an issue no matter how powerful your computer.Tertius wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 7:37 pmIf you ask me, and this is only my personal opinion: Questions about UPS come up, because the computer Factorio is running on isn't powerful enough to provide 60 ups. This is a shortcoming of the player's equipment, not the shortcoming of some factory design.brakes59 wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 4:22 pm I find it interesting that most commenters here completely missed the point of the original post, yet were so passionate about their preconcieved ideas.
It just happens that I'm building such a megabase, and my old PC with a Core i7-6700K went just under 60 ups when I got near completion. I bought a new PC with a Core i5-13600k half a year ago, and ups isn't a thing with it yet. The new CPU has about 4 times the performance according to benchmarks, and Factorio ups roughly doubled. Fps suffers if I zoom out too much (zoom mod installed), but regular zoom is 60 fps / 60 ups.brakes59 wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 8:50 pmI believe in your case the shortcoming is the scale of your factory. If you ever get to 5k SPM, UPS will become an issue no matter how powerful your computer.Tertius wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 7:37 pmIf you ask me, and this is only my personal opinion: Questions about UPS come up, because the computer Factorio is running on isn't powerful enough to provide 60 ups. This is a shortcoming of the player's equipment, not the shortcoming of some factory design.brakes59 wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 4:22 pm I find it interesting that most commenters here completely missed the point of the original post, yet were so passionate about their preconcieved ideas.
This is an (important IMO) implication of my earlier conclusion. UPS will definitely start to drop at a lower SPM if you scale up power with nuclear rather than with solar, but unless you have highly UPS-optimised science production, there is a good chance there are bigger potential gains with changing science production than power generation.Tertius wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:51 pm As far as I see it, there are other pieces of a factory that have much bigger impact on UPS than the nuclear power plant, so dealing with these seems more promising.
Maybe you are correct on where the bigger gains lies , however the original post is also 160GW in nuclear power, and it takes a lot of time for the update ( 12 ms ), so you must have a more UPS-friendly nuclear plant, or a faster computer that the one whose spec are shown. ( in the op 2 ms are taken by "heat manager" which you don't need without nuclear, and you only have 16 ms before it start dropping under 60 UPS, so that's a significant amount ( 12.5% ), and that's not counting the entities themselves, just the heat manager otherwise 12ms/16ms is 75% just for the power source :/Tertius wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:51 pm I tried to evaluate the impact of a multi GW nuclear power plant by stamping some 160 GW tiled setup on the megabase map, but impact was almost negligible compared to the time used by factory inserters and assembling machines. As far as I see it, there are other pieces of a factory that have much bigger impact on UPS than the nuclear power plant, so dealing with these seems more promising.
I somewhat agree with your conclusion upon seeing the results. Your computer only need 6ms to produce 160 GW in game with the blueprint you used. For the mentionned factory that produce 5K SPM, you only use 13 GW of nuclear power, during peak.Tertius wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2023 2:00 pm Ah, and revisiting the debugging values, I now remember why I said: "negligible". This is the entity timing info of the whole 5k SPM base:
Boiler and Generator 0.148 ms and 0.182 ms - that's really negligible in comparison to the other components. In my opinion.
This is the whole timing of the base:
