Factorio Forums

Nuclear Locomotives

A simple mod, adds nuclear locomotives which run on nuclear fuel:


Nuclear locomotives weigh twice as much but are also twice as powerful. This means that a nuclear locomotive with no cargo wagons will accelerate slower than a locomotive running solid fuel, but a nuclear locomotive pulling four fluid wagons will accelerate faster than a locomotive running rocket fuel. Nuclear locomotives also have a 25% increase to their top speed (solid fuel gives a 5% bonus, rocket fuel 15%).

As of 1.1.2, the inserter issue preventing removal of spent fuel has been fixed. Locomotives now use normal uranium fuel cells again, and I have removed the custom fuel from the mod. Any existing stocks you have (including in locomoitves) will automatically be converted to uranium fuel cells. Note that this update requires Factorio 0.15.7.

Nuclear locomotives technology is available when both Nuclear power and Railway have been researched.

Crafting Recipe

• 20 electric engine units
• 30 steel plates
• 10 advanced circuits
• 10 copper plates

Known Issues
Inserters currently do not recognise spent fuel inventories as outputs to take items from, so spent fuel must be manually removed. This is a Factorio problem, not something I can fix.

Version History

• 1.1.3 - 2017/12/15 - Updated to Factorio 0.16
• 1.1.2 - 2017/05/05 - Inserter issue resolved, removed now-unnecessary custom fuel
• 1.1.1 - 2017/05/03 - Increased top speed 25%
• 1.1.0 - 2017/04/30 - Added custom fuel as inserters can't remove spent fuel from vehicles
• 1.0.2 - 2017/04/26 - Adjusted locomotive power and weight
• 1.0.1 - 2017/04/25 - Remembered to remove smoke
• 1.0.0 - 2017/04/25 - Initial release

My filtered inserters cannot seem to grab the spent fuel containers from the locomotive. Any thoughts?

It's got me stumped, reported it as a likely Factorio bug.

I like this idea... but I think the locomotive should be more expensive and should be more powerfull than a locomotive running on rocket fuel.

Justderpingalong wrote:I like this idea... but I think the locomotive should be more expensive and should be more powerfull than a locomotive running on rocket fuel.

Perhaps add in a few turbines into the recipe. After all, it's a literal power plant on wheels

The fuel is expensive.

I've updated the mod to use a custom fuel type that produces no waste items, due to the above-mentioned issue with inserters.

The issue is that inserters don't recognise spent fuel inventories as a valid output to take items from, except in the single case of the nuclear reactor, which has been hard-coded to define its spent fuel inventory as its output. This means that no custom entity (be it building or vehicle) can have spent nuclear fuel removed by inserters. I'm hoping this is fixed eventually.

I really like the idea behind this mod but I have a question, is there a possibility of allowing your custom fuel to produce a waste product that can be reprocessed similar to the spent nuclear cells?

locke019 wrote:I really like the idea behind this mod but I have a question, is there a possibility of allowing your custom fuel to produce a waste product that can be reprocessed similar to the spent nuclear cells?

Not without it clogging stuff up in the train. Problem is, the game doesn't really support having trains have fuel with waste products. It might be doable with some scripting but don't quote me on that.

It looks nice on paper but rocket fuel is more useful atm.
You should consider adding acceleration bonus to nuclear fuel - currently locos are much slower with it vs rocket fuel and a bit slower vs solid fuel.

Have you tested with cargo/fluid wagons, and not on empty trains?

I'm using very short trains so there is no big difference and vanilla loco on rocket fuel with cargo wagon and tanker works well. And still easily reaches almost 300kph on decent distance so long range haul is faster.

GotLag wrote:Have you tested with cargo/fluid wagons, and not on empty trains?

We did a test loop of the nuke train vs the rocket train, and they are the same speed without load.

I assume you mean that the two have the same max speed, but underload the nuke can accelerate faster? How would it compare having two rocket trains pulling 4 cars vs 1 nuke train pulling 5 cars? Would the nuke still win that?

Liquid5n0w wrote:

GotLag wrote:Have you tested with cargo/fluid wagons, and not on empty trains?

We did a test loop of the nuke train vs the rocket train, and they are the same speed without load.

I assume you mean that the two have the same max speed, but underload the nuke can accelerate faster? How would it compare having two rocket trains pulling 4 cars vs 1 nuke train pulling 5 cars? Would the nuke still win that?

Did you get nuke train to 300kph? For me it gets to 260kph and thats the max. Tested that on single loco only.
Normal locomotive with rocket fuel gets to almost 300kph.

That'll teach me to test on longer tracks. Updated to give nuclear locos a 25% boost to top speed.

hoho wrote:

locke019 wrote:I really like the idea behind this mod but I have a question, is there a possibility of allowing your custom fuel to produce a waste product that can be reprocessed similar to the spent nuclear cells?

Not without it clogging stuff up in the train. Problem is, the game doesn't really support having trains have fuel with waste products. It might be doable with some scripting but don't quote me on that.

Happily, it's fixed in 0.15.7:

Inserters will no longer take fuel from locomotives and instead will take the burnt result items if the locomotive fuel uses that system.

I've updated Nuclear Locomotives to use regular nuclear fuel again.

Cool
If I could.. pester for one more thing:
Will you consider making bob mods compatible version of your locos (with multiple marks of loco and new materials) after bob's mod set is released fully?

Possibly. I don't use bob's mods myself, but reply here when it's released and I'll take a look.

Yeah also give a suggested recipe too for bobs that will help a lot.

Hey! Where is the Nuclear powered tanks