Factorio Forums

Eyy guys i have a problem i have soo much light oil and petroleum gas i already am turing the majority of it into solid fuel and sulfur but it's stopping my production of lubricant and i have no idea what to do with it i already have 22 tanks of light oil and 12 of petroleum gas can someone tell me what to do with the rest i have. Thx

If you arent using gas, you may want to switch to basic oil processing, so you make less of gas and light oil to begin with.

It's really a context-sensitive problem.

As Rockstar said, are you using regular or advanced oil processing? Are you cracking everything as fast as you can make it or only when you need it? (I'm guessing it's both.)

I've never had too much petroleum. I've always needed more.

well i was using advanced processing and only cracking when needed

It's remarkable that you've got so much of the goods that I'm always short on....
Anyways, you can burn the excess oil in a steam engine, but that still leaves you with the extra gas.
I've just started playing Bob's mod and I noticed there's a gas-vent pump in one of his packs. You could solve it that way..

What'd I do if I were you is install black market. It allows you to sell resources you produce too much of for ingame currency (U) that you can then buy other things with using special tanks and chests for items/liquids, making factorio a HELLUVA LOT SIMPLER...... Like seriously..... with bob's mods when you get into this game black market is pretty much required if you don't wanna have to have a storage planet instead of a factory.....

For oil cracking getting a little bit into combinators really pays off. Using a 3 combinator RS latch controlling pumps for h.oil => l.oil cracking while h.oil => lubricant is always on works just fine.
Light oil to solid fuel vs light oil to petroleum takes a bit more rules to keep it balanced regardless of plastic drain.

Alternatively you can get rid of any fluid by pumping it into steam engines. I'd heat it up with boilers (fed by solid fuel ofc) first to get energy from burning excess oil products.

it would be a lot easier if i could use mods but i can't so i guess im shit outa luck

SpaceMuffins wrote:it would be a lot easier if i could use mods but i can't so i guess im shit outa luck

Why not?

It really pays off to be able to use mods and multiplayer.
(see what I did there?)

Most petroleum gas should be turned into plastic and then advanced circuits.

HAHA i ran out of gas and when i need it the most.......... god this games hates me

SpaceMuffins wrote:HAHA i ran out of gas and when i need it the most.......... god this games hates me

but the problem is solved

Between plastic and sulfuric acid, it doesn't take long to get through petroleum =P

The low tech solution for getting rid of fluids which are loaded up in tanks is to simply pickup up a full tank and put it back down -- this will remove the fluid.

Mr. Tact wrote:The low tech solution for getting rid of fluids which are loaded up in tanks is to simply pickup up a full tank and put it back down -- this will remove the fluid.

Better solution is to heat it up and use it in steam engines.

Better? Depends on what you want/need to accomplish. However for fast simple removal of fluids, picking up the tanks is hard to beat as a low tech solution.

You can always turn PG into solid fuel, at least it's somewhat useful.

I normally have a single tank of each type for measuring amounts and then set up processing to do something like:

Crack heavy -> light IF heavy > 2000. This will happen unless you're using a lot of lube
Crack light > PG if light > 2000. This will happen unless you use a lot of solid fuel, e.g. for rockets
Turn PG -> Solid if PG > 2000. This should normally not happen unless you use a *lot* of fuel compared to plastic/sulphur.

That way, processing always continues and usage is always most efficient, e.g. solid is preferentially made from light oil.

If all you are doing is research/expansion and you have coal or solar power, you don't use light at all so all light should go to PG and almost all heavy should go to light (and then PG)

If all you are doing is launching rockets you need 1:1:1 of all rocket parts, meaning 10 solid fuel for 14 plastic + 0.5 sulphuric acid. Ignoring productivity modules, this means you need about twice more PG than light oil, so normally PG should always be in more demand than light, and since oil processing produces almost 1:1 light:PG (after cracking heavy) this means you should normally always be cracking light -> PG, and never 'burning off' PG into solid fuel.

If for some weird reason you need enormous amounts of lube and no plastic/sulphur, you can switch to basic processing and process light and heavy to solid fuel.

Produce solid fuel with the excess to burn in your power station, if youre into this.

Alien_Squasher wrote:What'd I do if I were you is install black market. It allows you to sell resources you produce too much of for ingame currency (U) that you can then buy other things with using special tanks and chests for items/liquids, making factorio a HELLUVA LOT SIMPLER...... Like seriously..... with bob's mods when you get into this game black market is pretty much required if you don't wanna have to have a storage planet instead of a factory.....

Why would you need a ton of storage with bob's mods? The only things that behave really oddly that I know of are sulfur, for which you need a couple tanks for a sulfur product so you can wire them up to the circuit network and switch between the "lots of sulfur" refining option and a low or no-sulfur cracking when you've got plenty, and sodium hydroxide, which you will simply have far too much of. Anything else, and it's a tradeoff between complexity vs efficiency... e.g. advanced copper processing and the cobalt byproduct you won't need much of; going after the more complex route is your choice, and how you deal with the complexity (whether through clever use of circuits or just slapping down tons of chests to store the byproducts) is up to you.


Angel's mods are another story.