Factorio Forums

With advanced oil processing the refineries produce so much more light oil than heavy. And since heavy oil is actually useful (for lubricant which is in a lot of late-game items), should i ever really wasting my heavy oil by cracking some of it into light when all light oil can do is produce more petroleum or fuel?

I crack almost all my heavy oil to light oil and then petroleum gas. I just don't need that much lubricant.

DaveMcW wrote:I crack almost all my heavy oil to light oil and then petroleum gas. I just don't need that much lubricant.

BUT ROBOTS!

Even still, you don't need that much lube.

Heavy oil is nuisance. I used to make lubricant and solid fuel of it. It sucks when your petroleum runs out and you don't see that for long time and all because lubricant had just filled all the tanks or solid fuel had filled all the chests, while you don't use solid fuel. I don't need lots of express belts as I use logistic robots almost everywhere making my factory compact. Just believe me - you don't need more than 500 robots throughout most game and thus ~1000 units of lubricant. So there's no point in keeping heavy oil.

Yes.

Even if you don't make much heavy oil due to advanced oil processing, the only thing heavy oil is used for is lubricant, which is only used to make electric engines, and express belts. and to make 1 engine only takes a fraction of a unit of lubricant, in contract batteries take a fair bit of sulfuric acid, so your petrolium gas will be drained pretty heavily.

if you want to make fuel blocks from heavy oil, you'll get more blocks per oil unit by cracking it to light oil first (though I don't know if this is more or less energy efficient, I'm guessing less).

So, Personally, I set up a large storage area for each type of fluid, including heavy oil and lubricant. and monitor the levels manually, if the storage tanks for heavy oil is significantly higher than the levels of light oil, I crack it down.

i have a setup where removing 1 pipe will disconnect that fluid from the cracking factory, with no fluid, the factories stop producing, and stop using power.

when the heavy oil fills up again, reconnect. With a large storage area (25 tanks+) you only need to check it every game week or so.



If you're using mods however, they could add things that use heavy oil, or lubricant in their recipies, at which point it might not be a good idea to crack it to light oil.

My solutions has been simple.

I have 1 tank for each liquid. It'll fill exactly that much.

I then have everything crack down to petrol. It's the only thing I actually need to produce. If I have full light or heavy oil..but not enough petrol..they'll get cracked appropriately..too much petrol and it just gets used up, while heavy/light wait to go down.

I do have a lube maker as well. But well I don't need a ton of it..


I've just found it works nice and simple that way.