[MOD 0.18.x] Realistic Power

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Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.14.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Yes, i was waiting for nuclear mods to update, and then i kinda forgot about it again. At this point i might as well just update without support for nuclear mods instead of waiting even longer, not that important with vanilla nuclear power anyway, although i'll be kinda busy for another few weeks so not sure when i can squeeze it in. I'm definitely planning to update though.

I'm also still not quite sure how to balance nuclear, been thinking about that before 0.15 already - as it is, once you get to nuclear you're pretty much set for forever, so it kinda defeats the whole idea of this mod. I may dramatically increase the amount of uranium you need or something (on top of reducing the power produced).

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Re: [MOD 0.14.x] Realistic Power

Post by SunTroll »

"Once you get to nuclear you're pretty much set for forever." but isn't this realistic power :) (sorry for the pun.)

Solar is still more performance friendly (at least as far as I know) and takes 0 maintenance (and the acs and few sp are always good for remote bases in case the power gets cut.)

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.14.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Still, solar panels are also what gets nerfed by far the most by my mod - mostly because with a guesstimate for their area and physics there's an obvious limit to how much they should produce. (It's a little harder to make the whole nuclear chain more realistic: neither do i want to have chains of 50 centrifuges which all slightly increase the enrichment because i want to limit the number of new buildings / recipes etc and mostly change the balancing, and it's hard to say "running a nuclear reactor for this long from a uranium deposit this big is realistic". The second point of the mod besides making some things a bit more realistic, notably solar, is making power generally a bit harder to get, which i feel is necessary for nuclear. But nerfing other power sources and nuclear not much isn't an option for balancing anyway)

I already only use nuclear when playing 0.15 because it's so easy to get multiple GWs set up and keep it going. With the Reactors mod there at least was some challenge with setting everything up so it wasn't that bad, but i was still planning to nerf it. Vanilla needs nerfing even more in my opinion. Otherwise solar is just clearly inferior.

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Re: [MOD 0.14.x] Realistic Power

Post by SunTroll »

I always play with mods so that thing with vanilla nuclear didn't even occur to me :)

As far as how much power could the reactor produce. I estimate the reactor is about 5m and while the theoretical limits of how much power you could produce in that space with u235 are probably insanely high you could approach this problem in 2 ways.

The less realistic one is to somehow figure how much u235 is in single fuel cell and how fast the reactor burns it then modify the power by what efficiency you find plausible. (This will probably result in big number since the reactor takes quite short time to burn through fuel cells.

44 million kilowatt-hours of electricity are produced from one tonne of natural uranium
quote from http://www.world-nuclear.org/informatio ... ticleLink5
this is also good https://www.quora.com/How-much-power-is ... of-uranium
and this is probably the best I found http://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-po ... l-reactor/
so about 25tons per year for 3000MWth reactor (1000MWe with current efficiency)



The more realistic one is to realize that the more power you produce the more radiation you get and if the reactor is only 5m in size this means that the shielding can't be larger than 2,5m (but about 1m feels more realistic) and since you can stand next to it for infinite amount of time without any ill effects this should also give you the max amount of radiation that can it can generate and then you could tweak the amount of time it takes to burn single cell (albeit at this point I feel like the cell would last really long unless I'm overestimating how hard it is to block the radiation).Sorry can't give you any value here since this is beyond my capabilities to calculate.

Or you could use real mini reactors as example.

This is my idea how you could address this if realism was 1st priority.

p.s. While I was searching for power outputs of real nuclear reactors I took a look on factorio wiki to see how much the in game reactor produced and I realized how extremely weak the factorio reactors are so I suppose there is no realistic approach since the power density of nuclear reactors is simply on completely different level than solar. Well there are weaker ones but: The French Rubis-class submarines have a 48 MW reactor that needs no refuelling for 30 years. Quote from wiki.

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.14.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Then you still don't know what the mass of one unit of uranium ore is though, or one unit of U-235. Without the mass all these calculations don't get you anywhere. My guess is nuclear would become super-op then but as said i also want power to be more of a challenge so instead of making one fuel last 50 days or something i'll balance it for good gameplay, especially as long as there are no mass values for ores etc to even be able to try and base everything on realistic values.

Fun fact: to keep a vanilla reactor running for 30 years you'd need 4.7 million fuel cells, or 2000 steel chests full of them. So yeah to make that somewhat realistic you'd need to make fuel last something like at least 100 times longer.

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.14.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Sorry things took a bit longer than intended, things got in the way.

Anyway, new version supports 0.15 and has a few balance changes regarding nuclear, namely the Nuclear Reactor technology now also needs production and high-tech science and is more expensive, as is kovarex enrichment process, so you're forced to rely on other power sources for longer and can't just take the easy way out with nuclear from the start. Nuclear fuel is also consumed more quickly.

Instead of changing all boilers and steam engine etc i also just nerfed the fuel value of all fuels, so you will now actually have to worry about providing enough coal for smelters, on top of needing quite a number of belts if you want to go full steam instead of solar. All the ratios are still the same so no need to develop new designs, except for solar. Plus this change means a single steam engine or nuclear reactor is effectively worth 2, so it may even help ups some.

I still got to the megabase stage in a test game and like how things are, feel free let me know what you think of the changes.

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.15.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Update for 0.16 out.

Accumulator drain is no longer proportional to energy stored due to optimizations in 0.16. By default the drain is now half of what used to be the max possible drain

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

New version 0.1.1: quick bugfix for a compatibility issue with Yuoki Industries

HadesSupreme
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by HadesSupreme »

Love the mod, especially the solar changes. However the production cost changes combine poorly with other mods/settings that are already increasing the cost. For example, with Bobs+Angels+Marathon Steam Engines cost 640 iron plate, which requires 3200 mined ore before power can come online. Can the cost changes become configurable?

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Thanks for the feedback!
New version with setting to toggle the steam engine cost increase out. Should reduce the cost by a factor of 4 if you enable it.

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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by HadesSupreme »

Works excellently. Minor issue: The option tooltip is labeled as increasing the cost of steam engines when it should say decreasing.

Tekero
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Tekero »

Hi. Using factorio v 0.16.22 and getting "Attempt to index field ? (a nil value)"
Attachments
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Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

I can't replicate the error with a clean install. If you use other mods as well, try to find which one causes the problem or list the mods you're using, but without knowing which mod causes the problem i can't do anything.

Tekero
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Tekero »

Indeed. It was Ingo's RealisticReactors https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RealisticReactors. I'll very appreciate if you can fix it. If no, I'll just remove reactors :D. Thanks.

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Fixed in new version

kadusu
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by kadusu »

Hello Kenira,

Thank u for this great mod. This makes me playing again.
I do have a question, are u planning to make Pycoal Processing work with your mod?
That mod is really good too and i would love to see them working together.
But u can make a gasfabric in there and it is not nerfed now so its very unbalanced when i use your mod with it.

Greetz Kadusu

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

Glad you like it :)
Could you be a bit more specific what exactly is wrong? I am in the early stages of a pycoal game myself but don't know yet what you mean.

kadusu
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by kadusu »

U can make for example a combustion turbine where u can make energy out of syngas.
This process is pretty easy but in my game only one of this give 4 mw power and it doesnt need so much.
The only thing is that it gives more pollution. But its too easy energy probably already in the normal game without Realistic Power.
So with your nerfes of the use of energy for buildings and stuff this one is now way unbalanced.
I am already trying to change some things in the pyanodon lua files but i dont know if it will work for the rest of the balance.
But maybe there are more energy making things in Pycoal, i dont know yet, just have couple hours in.

Kenira
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by Kenira »

The turbines are nerfed in the new version, including the one for Py Fusion. Fusion technology also requires high-tech science now and is more expensive. I only tested it a bit in creative mode though, feel free to give me some feedback if i nerfed it too hard. And thanks for bringing this issue up

kadusu
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Re: [MOD 0.16.x] Realistic Power

Post by kadusu »

Ow ok will check it oy later. Still playing 0.15 because not all mods i play are updated.
Will let u know when i will go for 0.16.

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