Development and Discussion

[crysanja]

Today i tried the production of iron with coolant.
Its a huge mess, coolant recycling is realy no fun at all. you need so much water for little gain. Cant this be much more efficient?
Its possible to recover energy with the produced steam, however if you run into an production surplus you loose the energy.(Maybe less steam and less energy useage?)

I would also like to see an improvement in production speed or recipt size for induction furnaces and strand casting.
Turning steam into water is very slow.

edit: some small issues/bugs:
"Metal catalysts" dont have their production building listed.
Bio processing
"Algae farms" of higher tiers are listed in the wrong order.(mk2 mk1 -> mk1 mk2)
The ore pastes dont have their production building listed.
Oil:
Steam cant be voided.


MISK
Powdered silicon cant be made in a powder mixer.
Powdered copper, iron, crome, steel are not used, but listed.

[kenken244]

I have always felt that the combination smelting for iron and aluminium and such were pretty pointless, as they essentially just convert one ore type to another, but you can already do that much more easily with the combination sorting of the ores themselves. I think that the combination smelting should provide some sort of bonus, considering the huge amount of additional complexity it adds to the smelting process.

[BlakeMW]

The iron/steel alloying recipes are pretty useful actually because iron is needed in very great quantities, if you used straight up combining recipes that restricts you to just two ores to produce iron and the ore consumption will probably be unbalanced. But with the alloying recipes you stretch the iron ore very significantly, the simplest way being mass producing manganese from nodules.

[Termak]

I have always felt that the combination smelting for iron and aluminium and such were pretty pointless, as they essentially just convert one ore type to another, but you can already do that much more easily with the combination sorting of the ores themselves. I think that the combination smelting should provide some sort of bonus, considering the huge amount of additional complexity it adds to the smelting process.

Doubling / tripling productivity isnt enough? Also the combinations are there to get rid of excess other metals or extending your ore supply with manganese (which is basically generated from just water).

[Rue99]

I'm interested in the thinking behind Rubyte refining, which uses Nitric acid.The other acids are trivial to make, whereas Nitric acid requires two different catalysts. I appreciate that this reflects (somewhat) the modern commercial production of it, and it's not insuperable. I can mod this myself (I've a very low yield, high energy approximation to the old Birkeland–Eyde process), but it's probably the one part of Angels refining that puzzles me.

[Nindydar]

I have always felt that the combination smelting for iron and aluminium and such were pretty pointless, as they essentially just convert one ore type to another, but you can already do that much more easily with the combination sorting of the ores themselves. I think that the combination smelting should provide some sort of bonus, considering the huge amount of additional complexity it adds to the smelting process.

Doubling / tripling productivity isnt enough? Also the combinations are there to get rid of excess other metals or extending your ore supply with manganese (which is basically generated from just water).

I never saw the point. Iron ore is much easier to sort for than any of the more advanced ores because it only requires crushed ore and, more importantly, it doesn't require a mineral catalyst to create. Why would I use excess mineral catalysts and higher tier sorting methods to make extra nickel or silicon when I can just build more iron sorting which is way simpler and cheaper. I think this is a bit of a flaw in the way sorting works right now, pure sorting in general is just way too good. Once you hit mid game there really isn't much incentive to keep using mixed ore sorting methods when the pure sorting recipes have perfect efficiency and give you exactly what you need in the exact amount you want. I think I would prefer it if pure sorting was less ore efficient than mixed such that you had to make a choice between control and efficiency.

Of those metals which can be boosted aluminum and tungsten have no role in research, and titanium only an extremely limited role.

Only if you ignore space science. The rocket requires a significant amount of titanium and aluminium as well as a fair amount of tungsten carbide.

[BlakeMW]

You must be using that mod that updates the rocket recipes to use bob's plates and stuff, CMHMod?

[Nindydar]

I was curious so i looked at it. Bob's revamp mod(https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Bobingabout/bobrevamp) changes the rocket to use Aluminium, Titanium, and Plastic for the Low Density structure as well as adding a 4th part for rockets called heat shielding which uses tungsten carbide and Silicon Nitride. This is a mod created by Bobingabout so I consider it part of the core bob's mod group but I guess not everyone uses it? If you aren't using it then yea you don't really have a way to dump aluminium or titanium into science.

[BlakeMW]

Okay, I guess it just doesn't appear as a dependency for any of Angel's mods so it doesn't get pulled in automatically.

[Nindydar]

Ah yea, I guess it's not technically required to play angels/bobs but to me it makes the endgame feel better. Without it titanium and aluminium would pretty much just be "use this to upgrade buildings".

I've been mulling over the idea of attempting to build a base that uses no pure sorting of any kind, just to see if its possible to launch a rocket without pure sorting. I suspect that I will have trouble getting rid of the copper. You need iron in such large quantities that I don't think ill be able to get by without saphirite crushed sorting which gives 2 iron 1 copper but I don't think I'll be able to use that much copper. There are other ways to get iron but it's in much smaller quantities, maybe if I alloy my iron and run it as efficiently as possible and use T1 copper smelting for the whole game to intentionally burn it off it could work though. I think I will be able to alloy most of the other stuff to come up with a usable ratio. IDK it could be fun to try.

[jerocom]

I'm sorry, if I posted this to wrong thread, but here is my suggestion.
Is it possible to make new type of logistic chest (and/or warehouse) which can both accept and send materials (like having both requesting slots and auto-trash slots)?
example: I have a warehouse with iron input, but that input is not constant and I do not want it to be full, that would mean my system will stop, but I still want stable amount of iron in there (so I set logistic request: 300 iron ore, auto trash: 400 iron ore and if there is more than 400 robots will take it away (to storage chest or warehouse) and less than 300 iron -> robots will bring it back from storage space)
I think this would be a good addition to warehouse mod, and I'm sorry if my English is horrible (it is not my first language)
Thank you
jerocom

[foodfactorio]

maybe this is a Super Lab, which can only actually generate research progress, IF several other related Labs are all running at the same time?
a bit like the other labs are trying to find dark matter or anti protons, and if all are running, and finding the right thing, the main Lab can run one research cycle

actually something like this might be quite hard to do, but some may like the challenge of finding a way to make all the small labs run at full belt operations in order to unlock some new super technology?

it also looks like it is currently capable of Warp 9.6

[mrvn]

I'm sorry, if I posted this to wrong thread, but here is my suggestion.
Is it possible to make new type of logistic chest (and/or warehouse) which can both accept and send materials (like having both requesting slots and auto-trash slots)?
example: I have a warehouse with iron input, but that input is not constant and I do not want it to be full, that would mean my system will stop, but I still want stable amount of iron in there (so I set logistic request: 300 iron ore, auto trash: 400 iron ore and if there is more than 400 robots will take it away (to storage chest or warehouse) and less than 300 iron -> robots will bring it back from storage space)
I think this would be a good addition to warehouse mod, and I'm sorry if my English is horrible (it is not my first language)
Thank you
jerocom

Not until that exists as chest, which is coming in 0.16 I believe.

[aklesey1]

Waiting for any updates for angel's, lol, may be will be a Christmas present

[Sperwer]

Angel Logistics Crawler

Would it be possible to add logistic (trash) slots to a vehicle so it can request / dump items?
Also the crawler stops working and sends all bots into the regular network when leaving the vehicle while the bots are on their way. Would it be possible to change that?

I didn't try the train but I guess it works the same.

[mrvn]

Angel Logistics Crawler

Would it be possible to add logistic (trash) slots to a vehicle so it can request / dump items?
Also the crawler stops working and sends all bots into the regular network when leaving the vehicle while the bots are on their way. Would it be possible to change that?

I didn't try the train but I guess it works the same.

A "Leave if all bots present" train schedule option?

[luckyd11]

Hello.
Question about what I'd simply call the 'Basic Hydrogen Loop'
I haven't found that being asked before. Sorry if it has, and I missed it.

Context : I'm playing with the SeaBlock mod pack.

Solar panels produce Electric Energy
Electrolyser : Raw Sea Water + Electric energy > H2 + O2 + Slag (no slag if purified water is used instead of raw water)
(so far so good, electric energy used to get the separated H2 and O2)
But then, for O2 and H2 ...
Chemical Plant : Burns H2 and O2 together to get Purified water - errhhmmm, what about all the energy that this combustion produces ?
I mean, it's fundamental : 2 H2 + O2 > 2H2O + ENERGY (lots of energy, as heat ; enough to launch a rocket to space)

You can get rid of H2 in a Flare Stack, using free atmospheric Oxygen to burn H2 and wasting the energy to the atmosphere; that's fine.
You can get rid of O2 the same way, or well, kind of the same way; formally just releasing the O2 would do, but fine.
Conceptually, it's correct: the flare stack gets it out (the burning part is silly, but whatever; O2 is out).

But, in the Chemical Plant, H2 + O2 > Purified water
Sorry, but no! That's a big issue! There is ENERGY, and lots of it. It cannot vanish. It cannot go to void.
The purified water should be in the form of Extremely high temperature water steam.
It bugs me immensely to see that energy being voided like that.

Alternatively, what would be nice is to have a special "boiler machine" that would use H2 as fuel.
H2 (with or without O2, since O2 is there naturally in the atmosphere) "burned" to produce usable hot water for generators.
H2 acting as fuel in the context of that boiler.
Efficiency could vary depending if O2 comes from atmosphere or as an explicit ingredient or with improved variants of that new boiler.
And some of the energy is recycled instead of being voided.

Thanks, luckyd11

[kenken244]

unfortunately, using raw hydrogen to generate power can't be done, because that would allow for the creation of infinite energy loops with efficiency modules and such. that would be an even more egregious violation of thermodynamics. just assume the chemical plant is not capable of extracting the power from the reaction. though perhaps it could afford to be faster and take almost no energy.

[luckyd11]

Well, it could be prevented to create such a loop. Such a burner could have low efficiency and no modules allowed, thus not violating thermodynamics too severely.
As I said in my first post, it's the blatant absolute void of all thermal energy coming out of the H2 + O2 to purified water that is annoying me a lot - that is quite a blow to thermodynamics ...
Anyway, it 's a wish ... -l

[foodfactorio]

hi, maybe one way to do it, could just be to have 2 ways of running that building?

for example, method 1:
It runs as per usual, but still requires its base electricity cost

and method 2:
the player can use up a few more tiles of floor space (to essentially build a few extra pipe items, to take an outflow of steam, and running it through a mini-cooling tower back into water) and this method could have a vastly reduced electricity running cost. (the extra pipes and things could still require an upfront cost in terms of some materials like iron or something but those would pay for themselves by making it a closed unit)

pycoal used some steam processing in a lot of buildings, but maybe something like this could simply be "implied" by way of joining some steam output and inputs into the recipe instead?