Factorio Forums

Hi guys,

I read the first couple of search results - as asked in the intro post prior to posting here now - , but nothing as to what i describe here
and forgive me if i didn't post in the correct Forum - essentially because i am not sure if it is a bug or not.

Please Help me understand the statistics tab. I did a test with Map editor. Please see screenshot "fluid statistics"
I was testing for coal liquefaction.

Recipe is:

• -------------IN:-----------------------OUT:
• -------------coal--HO---steam-----HO----LO---Pet
• @5sec--------10----25------50-----90-----20----10
• @1sec---------2------5------10-----18------4------2

I read on the statistics tab for:

Heavy Oil: 780/m = 13/sec.
Petrolium: 120/m = 2/sec.
Light Oil : 240/m = 4/sec.

The Light Oil and Petrolium statistics are correct - 4LO/s and 2PET/s- No problem here,but

Question why does the statistics for fluid production show for Heavy Oil 780/m or 13/sec,
when it should be 1080/m or 18/sec?

I do understand that coal liquefaction consumes 5HO/s and that the value i read of 780/m
is 1080HO/m - 300HO/m (the consumption!), but to me this is wrong.

I should read under Production

Heavy Oil 1080/m = 18/sec (and not 780/m)
Petrolium 120/m = 2/sec.
Light Oil 240/m = 4/sec.

And under Consumption (I see nothing here ?!)
Heavy Oil 300/m = 5/sec.

Consider also that the coal value is also correct with 120/m AND it shows up correctly
under consumption. Coal, steam AND HO get all consumed


I didnt want to stop, and made a follow up test - see screenshot "fluid statistics_part 2" (please ignore lube and solid fuel chem plants)
So i Asked myself: - is it only a statistics/GUI issue or what does the Refinery really produce -
780/m or 1080/m - Ohh Lord?!

Setup: put the Heavy Oil produced form the refinery into barrels and put the barrels and then back again into the Refinery
and see how many barrels are needed/produced to make up with the production/consumption of the Refinery
Well the stats show:
21.6/m barrels produced - A barrel contains 50 Heavy Oil so 21.6x50 = 1080/m - Great!

Summa Summarum:

If I produce 21.6/m barrels a minute which each contain 50 Heavy Oil , then i also produce
1080 Heavy Oil a minute...exactly what i _would_ expect to see under the stats tab and not
those "strange" 780/m

But since the Devs arent stupid as me...
... i'm sure i did something somewhere wrong and you guys will help me understand...thanks

Great game!

That's not a bug. Catalysts aren't included in production statistics, as they aren't really being produced or consumed. There are other reports about it around: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=69934&p=425349&hil ... st#p425349

Thanks for the replay. I'll take due note - And hope that someone will make a note on the official wiki of this concept of "catalyst" - it is confusing/

I respectfully disagree.

1. The introduction of a concept like a "catalyst" just makes factorio unnecessary complicated. Be it Kovarex or Coal liquefaction.
Plain Simple IN-OUT rule.
2.If You really need to introduce a concept like "catalyst" then use it _at least from as i recall form school_ correctly: I don't remember a catalyst
in Chemistry class that was of the exact same nature as the reaction one wants to catalyze. Heavy Oil can't be the catalyst of it self- it should be another substance. That's why its confusing
3.This is exactly the statistics problem... while i agree that a catalyst "does not get consumed" you do get a certain substance _produced_
And Coal Liquefaction process DOES produce 1080 HO/min. -And i don't see that in the stats... You could argue that if you put the 1080/m under the production stats and not 300/m in the consumed stats (because you want to hold on to this rigorous concept of "catalyst" - id say who cares about "rigorous"...its a "factorio catalyst") - you "magically" create more stuff... But then again - the whole reason for that is because the wrong use of the concept of catalyst - Heavy Oil cant be the catalyst of it self.
4.And maybe the most simple reason: I cant see any harm done if you put 1080/m under production and 300/m under consumption.
Whats the big deal? It simply bypasses any necessity of "catalyst" concept and Have the simple IN-OUT rule

I didn't look into any code...but as i would think...any "machine/box" of factorio (be it assembler/chem plant/refinery ect.) the "box" looks at what it gets IN (what it consumes) and what it spits out (what it produces)

Still, great game and Forum community

Cheers

StupidInserter wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 6:05 pm 1. The introduction of a concept like a "catalyst" just makes factorio unnecessary complicated. Be it Kovarex or Coal liquefaction.
Plain Simple IN-OUT rule.

But those are the latest technologies they ought to be somewhat complex !

The simple rule IN-OUT could be written OUT-IN, with the minus sign, not a hyphen. so if you have 90 heavy oil OUT minus 25 IN, it is counted as 65 per cycle being produced by the machine and then multiplied by crafting speed and divided by receipe's time, as if the box was doing the subtraction.

It is helpful to have this method of counting because it is also how the productivity modules are applied. If you have 10% more productivity, you will have 65+6.5 available ressources at the end, and not 90+9. It would be more difficult to predict the overall production that the gui will show if it was going from 90 to 96.5 with a 10% productivity increase due to having part of its ouput consumed as input.


I also think the word "catalyst" does not correspond to the academic scholar definition of a catalyst in the chemistry acceptation of the term but i'm not sure i know a better word in english to describe ,it has some similarities with the catalyst notion and it can be used to represent different things, such as a critical mass necessary for the reaction to occur, or some incomplete reaction from which part of the product who didn't react are reused or in the case of centrifuge, mixing the top of different column and taking the top of the result, or the opposite.

It wouldn't transform every input into useful output in real life, but the waste from mining represent a massive volume that is not used, it would not be fun gameplay for automation to keep adding storage chest all the time but it would be too easy to just void the waste, there is an intermiate solution in the middle

Overall the production statistics are not the most reliable as they aggregate data from every places . Counting the barrels on a test setup is the still the best method to make sure your math will apply on the game

Coal Liquifaction takes 25 Heavy Oil in, and spits out 90. IF you keep the Heavy Oil input and output separate (which is not realistic because the process is your most readily available source of Heavy Oil for the next cycle) then it looks very strange, as the normal cycles spit out 90 Heavy Oil, 20 Light Oil, 10 Petroleum Gas, while the bonus cycle spits out 65 HO, 20 LO, 10 PG.

That 65 HO is the expected gain as it is expected that you cycle the HO back to the input to continue the process. If, for some reason, you don’t, then the HO output with Productivity figured in looks weirdly off.

In other words, figure that Coal Liquifaction produces 65 HO after the “overhead” of 25 is accounted for. 65 HO / 5 sec = 13 / sec output.

This simplifies things for mathing it out. Instead of ((90 HO / 5 sec) * Productivity) - 25 HO / 5 sec upkeep, they made it (90 HO / 5 sec - 25 HO / 5 sec upkeep) * Productivity.

The first option (which now that I think about it I’m glad they DIDN’T do) would have had greater HO gains than LO or PG. 30% Productivity, would have resulted in this : (90 * 1.3 = 117) thus 117 HO / 5 sec - 25 HO / 5 sec upkeep = 92 HO / 5 sec = 18.4 HO / sec. That is (5.4 / 13 =) 41.5% productivity compared to the expected 30% that the other two fluids see.

They avoided that issue by changing where the ( ) went in the calculation … resulting in something simpler to calculate.

catalysts allow to "cheat"

Putting 90 HO out gives you a lot of free HO when you use production modules.
Thats also the reason why production modules are disabled for Covarex.

Its also annoying that you need to bring a barrel of HO to jumpstart a new coal liquification plant.

I would also really want a way to somehow skip oil and to start with coal straight away.

JimBarracus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:01 am Thats also the reason why production modules are disabled for Covarex.

Kovarex process can use productivity modules again since 0.17.0 (see https://wiki.factorio.com/Kovarex_enric ... ss#History) and is the reason the catalyst system was introduced.

Again Thanks for all the replays.

This simplifies things for mathing it out. Instead of ((90 HO / 5 sec) * Productivity) - 25 HO / 5 sec upkeep, they made it (90 HO / 5 sec - 25 HO / 5 sec upkeep) * Productivity.

It is helpful to have this method of counting because it is also how the productivity modules are applied. If you have 10% more productivity, you will have 65+6.5 available ressources at the end, and not 90+9. It would be more difficult to predict the overall production that the gui will show if it was going from 90 to 96.5 with a 10% productivity increase due to having part of its ouput consumed as input.

You are for sure correct if you want to say that: a*x-b*x is the same as (a-b)*x - no novelty here. But (a*x)-b is not the same as (a-b)*x. Its not "simplifing" - its changing the math! Its oranges and apples

So Let math it out: i simplify:
line1:90HO-25HO=65HO
line2:99HO-27.5HO=71.5HO
the only difference between the 2 lines is that the second one has added 10% - Too me this is very logical: you add productivity module you will have 90+9 production BUT you will also have 25+2.5 consumption. The end result is always the same: 65 HO without and 71.5 (6.5 increase) with productivity module

I admit that i didn't think of productivity modules, but that the "boost" is 6.5 and not 9 is very logical - see above 71.5-65 = 6.5

Well, i think we can agree on that the gui/statistics makes tradeoffs: I'd rather see 90 on the production , simply because 90 are produced and 25 on the consumption. that "strangness" of seeing 6.5 increase coming from a 10% production module - is not really strange if you can wrap your head around the idea that the coal liquefaction also needs more "catalyst" if you use a PM.

Its a gui problem and the Devs simply made the exception that for Coal Liquefaction in the stats i see the net result. A game shouldn't have too many unexpected exceptions. The only "rational" i understand of not doing it the simple way (production-consumption) is because of a "strangness" of seeing 6.5 instead of 9 in the stats when using productivity modules.

Kovarex process can use productivity modules again since 0.17.0 (see https://wiki.factorio.com/Kovarex_enric ... ss#History) and is the reason the catalyst system was introduced.

At the end of the day...it has nothing to do with a "catalyst" concept, but only to nerf the productivity modules when using coal liquefaction or Kovarex...which i have no problem whatsoever... But i don't see any logical reason as to why to show "funny" infos in the stats gui. If the devs need to balance the game, so be it! but leave the stats alone

As always, thanks for your kind replays and these conversations are really just a testimony of how great this game is.

Actually, if you set up a test, where you take a Refinery (with 3 PM3’s), hook steam up to it, put an Assembly Machine to it set to Unbarrel Heavy Oil, and then put two Storage Tanks down directly fed by the Refinery to capture the Heavy Oil and Light Oil, and then give the Assembpy Machine 2 Barrels of Heavy Oil… you’ll see that you get the results of four base cycles of output, plus one Productivity-inspired bonus output.

The Light Oil and Petroleum Gas are as expected - 100 and 50 respectively. The Heavy Oil output is not what you may expect, as the bonus output is only 65 and not 90.

For all (normal) intents and purposes, Coal Liquifaction can be considered to have 65 Heavy Oil output and not the 90 cited. That’s assuming a normal setup where you feed the Heavy Oil back into the input as well as wherever you want it to go.