Factorio Forums

For some reason, my refineries suddenly only produce light oil as you can see from the screenshots. This setup already worked pretty fine, but now it seems to be broken. It is set up to work the following way:

• produce lubricant

• above 24000 lubricant >> crack heavy into light oil and produce solid fuel

• above 1600 solid fuel produce petroleum

I didn't change anything aside from increasing the demand for petroleum.

Are your refineries only producing light oil, or is it just that they're full of light oil?

If they produce all three products but the light oil has nowhere to go, then they'll remain stuck until you can move the light oil somewhere else.

I guess it's not that you produce only light oil, but that you use your heavy oil and your petroleum extremely quickly, but have little use for your light oil, and it starts to back up :
I can see your lubricant is stalled, so all your heavy oil becomes light oil, solid fuel production is halted because the output belt is saturated, so where does your excess light oil go now ? You don't have enough light oil => petroleum cracking to use all the light oil.

At least that's what I think just watching a still image, I might be wrong.

You need almost as many light => petroleum cracking plants as you have refineries to be able to crack everything into petroleum if you have no need for heavy oil, lubricant, or light oil.

Thanks, I think I just misunderstood the visualization of the refinery. I added some extra chemical plants for cracking light oil into petroleum, and watched the pipes coming from the refinery. There was a constant flow of between 0 an 5 (what is it, by the way - m³?) within the pipes. So it seems I'm just using up the petroleum in the instant that it is produced. I'll give it a detailed try later and will report back here.

Quax wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 01, 2024 12:46 pm

(what is it, by the way - m³?)

I reckon it is L (liters), but could be bananas.

So,with the benefit of hindsight, it was obvious from the beginning and I can confirm my earlier post. Problem solved. Well,not really, as I'm still lacking petroleum, but the refinery setup is working. The fact that the refinery shows light oil in the output obviously tells you that this output is FULL. Adding one more chemical plant and speed modules solved this issue.