Coal or Solid Fuel

[What Im doing]

I'm not sure If I should use coal or solid fuel. Since this is my first time playing. Is it more efficient to use coal or solid fuel?

[darkfrei]

If you have too much crude oil, then use solid fuel.

[Oktokolo]

As soon as you can, switch to solid fuel and after that transition to rocket fuel. Both burn increasingly longer and support higher vehicle maximum speeds.
For the base, you also have the option to go full solar or nuclear to drastically reduce polution output. But if the natives are no problem, just keep burning solid or rocket fuel in your boilers and furnaces. If oil gets scarce, go exploring for more oil.

[quyxkh]

I keep using coal for ore trains at least through rocket launch, it's there, it gets the job done. Convert to solid fuel and then rocket fuel on routes where you're fighting congestion at intersections or just need to goose the interarrival times from your stackers. Once you've got productivity modules a P3'd liquefaction chain to rocket fuel more than doubles the energy you get from coal anyway, along with the acceleration boost, so for late game just go with that.

[evopwr]

I don't tend to make solid fuel until I need it.
When I need it, its for making Rocket Fuel.
And typically by the time I have Rocket Fuel, I also have U235.
So I normally jump straight from Coal, to Nuclear Fuel.

But I think ultimately its up to you. Everyone does things differently, and it really comes down to whatever suits your playing style.
If you enjoy trains, or want them to go faster, or are having bottlenecks with trains, then better fuel may be the way you go.

Others may be more interested in expanding their factories, or increasing their science/research, or killing biters, etc - and come back to better fuel later.

All approaches are valid.

[Oktokolo]

If you enjoy trains, or want them to go faster, or are having bottlenecks with trains, then better fuel may be the way you go.

Going for solid fuel ASAP can reduce coal usage so much, that you do not have to search for new coal fields until late game while the first oil deposit often lasts a long time and has enough throughput to power all the smelters and plants in addition to the petrochem.
So your coal field will last longer and the old yellow fuel belts will be able to feed larger smelting arrays and steam plants.
That gives you more time and resources for kicking the damn biter hippies from your ore fields.

Also, trains (including trains you ride) and other vehicles run faster.

[mrudat]

Apparently coal cracking --productivity-> solid fuel yields more energy than burning coal directly.

I'm reasonably sure there's a post where someone's shown the math, but I don't have a link at hand.

[zOldBulldog]

Use solid fuel as early as possible.

This is why:

- Solid fuel is better for trains than coal (just like electric is better than anything else for furnaces, especially when you produce electricity with solar or nuclear).

- You should always research Oil and Advanced Oil as soon as possible. Many important things depend on oil.

- Oil processing will stall if you don't have a safety valve for overproduction of one thing VS another. You typically turn all of your Petroleum Gas into useful things like Plastic and Sulfuric Acid, and Heavy Oil into lubricant or Crack it to Light Oil. But light Oil must go somewhere, and even cracking it to Petroleum Gas will leave you with too much... So the best way to deal with the excess is to turn it into Solid Fuel.

- The result is that Solid Fuel will pile up. Eventually you will turn it into rocket fuel for launches and making nuclear fuel, but there will be quite some time where you will not know what to do with all the excess Solid Fuel.

- So... You might as well start using that solid fuel early.

And of course you will eventually notice that you are not using much of the coal deposits because plastics and military don't consume that much coal, and at that point you will send the excess coal into Coal Liquefaction... just in time to deal with oil wells running dry.

[Hannu]

- Oil processing will stall if you don't have a safety valve for overproduction of one thing VS another. You typically turn all of your Petroleum Gas into useful things like Plastic and Sulfuric Acid, and Heavy Oil into lubricant or Crack it to Light Oil. But light Oil must go somewhere, and even cracking it to Petroleum Gas will leave you with too much... So the best way to deal with the excess is to turn it into Solid Fuel.

I do not see the actual problem. It is always possible to build more light oil crackers and convert it to petroleum gas, if you prefer it instead of solid fuel.


I use typically solid fuel in trains when I build first oil refineries. I think it is diesel fuel. It is somewhat strange that locomotive looks and works as diesel but runs with coal. But I do not use solid fuel (or modern advanced fuels) in furnaces or steam boilers.

With Bob's and Angel's mods I sometimes process part of the coal of the powerplant to solid fuel and coke pellets to get enough sulfur at certain period in midgame. After some point ore processing produces excess sulfur and I begin to void it.

[zOldBulldog]

- Oil processing will stall if you don't have a safety valve for overproduction of one thing VS another. You typically turn all of your Petroleum Gas into useful things like Plastic and Sulfuric Acid, and Heavy Oil into lubricant or Crack it to Light Oil. But light Oil must go somewhere, and even cracking it to Petroleum Gas will leave you with too much... So the best way to deal with the excess is to turn it into Solid Fuel.

I do not see the actual problem. It is always possible to build more light oil crackers and convert it to petroleum gas, if you prefer it instead of solid fuel.


I use typically solid fuel in trains when I build first oil refineries. I think it is diesel fuel. It is somewhat strange that locomotive looks and works as diesel but runs with coal. But I do not use solid fuel (or modern advanced fuels) in furnaces or steam boilers.

With Bob's and Angel's mods I sometimes process part of the coal of the powerplant to solid fuel and coke pellets to get enough sulfur at certain period in midgame. After some point ore processing produces excess sulfur and I begin to void it.

That is what I said.

You convert Light Oil to Petroleum Gas, for the amount you can use. The quantities you can't consume you convert from Light Oil to Solid Fuel.

Simple conditions on the various pumps of your refinery let you do it automatically so that you don't have to choose, the volumes accumulating in various tanks determine how much gets converted to what.

[Hannu]

You convert Light Oil to Petroleum Gas, for the amount you can use. The quantities you can't consume you convert from Light Oil to Solid Fuel.

OK, I let tanks fill and refineries shut down if do not consume all gas. I have read that someone must keep production on to get enough heavy oil (lubricant) but I have never had such problem in vanilla game. Sometimes I had to change part of refineries temporarily from advanced to basic recipe to get more heavy oil.

Simple conditions on the various pumps of your refinery let you do it automatically so that you don't have to choose, the volumes accumulating in various tanks determine how much gets converted to what.

I have fully automated circuit controlled cracking system too, but different programming.

[zOldBulldog]

You convert Light Oil to Petroleum Gas, for the amount you can use. The quantities you can't consume you convert from Light Oil to Solid Fuel.

OK, I let tanks fill and refineries shut down if do not consume all gas. I have read that someone must keep production on to get enough heavy oil (lubricant) but I have never had such problem in vanilla game. Sometimes I had to change part of refineries temporarily from advanced to basic recipe to get more heavy oil.

Simple conditions on the various pumps of your refinery let you do it automatically so that you don't have to choose, the volumes accumulating in various tanks determine how much gets converted to what.

I have fully automated circuit controlled cracking system too, but different programming.

Having a refinery shut down due to a full tank of one fluid, and because of it be unable to get other fluids happen.

An easy way to cause lubricant starvation and refineries shut down through overproduction of the other fluid is by switching to Electric furnances early and powering them by solar fields constructed through a rapidly growing bot population. In that mode your lubricant consumption vastly outpaces your plastic consumption... causing the problem.

Another way to cause refinery shutdown due to overfilling of tanks is when you focus on other construction instead of the typical beeline for science.

Circuit-controlled refinery complexes and solid fuel stockpiling are usually the answer. Although of course you could temporarily lay out a bunch of fluid tanks too.

[Hannu]

I'm not sure If I should use coal or solid fuel. Since this is my first time playing. Is it more efficient to use coal or solid fuel?

There is no practical difference if you make reasonable sized factory and have default settings. You should have plenty of coal and oil in any case. You can choose what you can get more easily or what you like to build.