[MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

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undarl
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[MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

Type: Mod
Name: Fission and Fusion
Description: Adds portable fission generators, radioisotope thermoelectric generators, and factory-level fusion power.
License: GPL-3.0
Version: 0.4.2
Release: 2018-03-06
Tested-With-Factorio-Version: 0.16.28
Category: SimpleExtension
Download: Mod Portal

Long Description
Available at the GitHub readme or the mod portal page.
Version history
Last edited by undarl on Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:46 am, edited 6 times in total.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by Optera »

Funny how I found this mod just as I was thinking on adding realistic RTG myself.

It needs to be balanced though:
  • Percentages of Radioisotopes are set incorrectly. You have over 100% total for both recipes producing them.
  • Fusion reactors burn through deuterium too fast to be more energy efficient than base reactors.
  • Portable fusion reactor should require materials like deuterium to build.
  • RTG should be made into non-rechargeable batteries/accumulators so they burn out after a while.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

Heya, Optera.

Thanks for the feedback!
Optera wrote: Percentages of Radioisotopes are set incorrectly. You have over 100% total for both recipes producing them.
Is this a reference to the results having both a probability and an amount, or to something else? If the former it may be redundant, but it seems to do the job. I just ran 20 batches of portable uranium cell reprocessing as a test. The recipe has a 75% chance of 1 U-238, a 50% chance of 1 radioisotopes, and (because I have Nuclear Fuel loaded) a 25% chance of 1 plutonium. The results from 20 runs were 14 U-238, 9 radioisotopes, and 3 plutonium, which fits the expected percentages reasonably. Runs of the other recipes that can return radioisotopes have similar results.
Fusion reactors burn through deuterium too fast to be more energy efficient than base reactors.
I didn't try to balance them against base reactors for efficiency, but rather against the fact that they don't have to use any non-infinite consumables other than electricity to create their fuel once the the reactor and fuel chain infrastructure has been built. I'm open to discussion about it, though.
Portable fusion reactor should require materials like deuterium to build.
Okay. I didn't actually touch the base game recipe for those, just the tech and the item description. What's your rationale for the change? Closer realism? Requiring more automation in their production? Something else? Having a portable fusion reactor made of nothing but processing units does seem odd to me -- I just didn't have any better ideas.
RTG should be made into non-rechargeable batteries/accumulators so they burn out after a while.
Hmmm. This is an interesting idea. I guess I'd need to create a number of different entity-item pairings to either save the depletion state (kind of like Factorissimo does it) or to represent percentage drops in capacity, so that mining an RTG wouldn't reset it. I'll play around with that.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by Optera »

Is this a reference to the results having both a probability and an amount, or to something else? If the former it may be redundant, but it seems to do the job. I just ran 20 batches of portable uranium cell reprocessing as a test. The recipe has a 75% chance of 1 U-238, a 50% chance of 1 radioisotopes, and (because I have Nuclear Fuel loaded) a 25% chance of 1 plutonium. The results from 20 runs were 14 U-238, 9 radioisotopes, and 3 plutonium, which fits the expected percentages reasonably. Runs of the other recipes that can return radioisotopes have similar results.
No recipe can output over 100%.
If you have a 75% chance of U238 that leaves 25% chance for anything else.
I didn't try to balance them against base reactors for efficiency, but rather against the fact that they don't have to use any non-infinite consumables other than electricity to create their fuel once the the reactor and fuel chain infrastructure has been built. I'm open to discussion about it, though.
Even as basically free energy source with only costs in setup, maintenance and preprocessing they have to compete against base game Reactors.
In an endless map you can just hook up the next uranium field and run a 3GW plant for several more days.
Fusion reactors have the same energy output/area as Fission Reactors. The only difference is they use a static infinite source while uranium mines have to move a bit every couple of days/weeks.
Okay. I didn't actually touch the base game recipe for those, just the tech and the item description. What's your rationale for the change? Closer realism? Requiring more automation in their production? Something else? Having a portable fusion reactor made of nothing but processing units does seem odd to me -- I just didn't have any better ideas.
I always viewed the portable fusion generator as a placeholder for a more realistic energy source with more gameplay value. With RTG you should probably just delete it or replace it with an RTG.
Fusion reactors would be massive structures, not some kitchen appliance you slap on your car and go back to the future.
RTG should be made into non-rechargeable batteries/accumulators so they burn out after a while.
The reason why I initially wanted RTG to burn up was so they didn't become a free energy source like the fusion reactor.

After reading into RTGs and their performance I think modeling them as infinite energy source is fine for a game that doesn't span decades.
nearly all RTG use Pu238 and constantly drop in power output over time. The voyager probes lost 16.6% power output in 23 years. This can't really be modeled in Factorio right now.
If you where to use U235 with it's half life of 703.8 million years, you'd get RTG that will practically run forever without noticeable power drop.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

Optera wrote: No recipe can output over 100%.
If you have a 75% chance of U238 that leaves 25% chance for anything else.
Aha. I see where you're going with that now, and after looking at the uranium processing recipe again I understand your point. That recipe is written as though all result probabilities are tallied and only one roll made to choose one output. I assumed for my recipes that each probability was rolled for separately. I went to submit a bug report to find out whether my assumption was a bug (since it seems to be working in 15.10), but at least one person had beaten me to it. According to that thread, all result probability rolls are made independently of one another. It is thus possible for my previous example recipe to output all three items, or nothing at all, or anything in between.
Even as basically free energy source with only costs in setup, maintenance and preprocessing they have to compete against base game Reactors.
In an endless map you can just hook up the next uranium field and run a 3GW plant for several more days.
Fusion reactors have the same energy output/area as Fission Reactors. The only difference is they use a static infinite source while uranium mines have to move a bit every couple of days/weeks.
Fair enough. I don't tend to build megabases, and thus probably have the wrong mindset there. Any thoughts as to what combinations of power and efficiency changes might be most attractive would be welcome.
I always viewed the portable fusion generator as a placeholder for a more realistic energy source with more gameplay value. With RTG you should probably just delete it or replace it with an RTG.
Fusion reactors would be massive structures, not some kitchen appliance you slap on your car and go back to the future.
The same sort of size/power logic applies to RTGs as well, though. They are extremely power-inefficient for their size compared to other generation technologies, trading that off for longevity and lack of maintenance. The values I have for them currently are a bit of a cheat that implies some future-tech combination of more efficient heat-to-electric conversion and/or higher energy density radioisotopes.

The original impetus for the fusion line, as expressed in the thread started by Roxor128, was to give the small and effectively free portable fusion generator some sort of predecessors.
After reading into RTGs and their performance I think modeling them as infinite energy source is fine for a game that doesn't span decades.
Yeah, I was basically modeling the Plutonium-238/Strontium-90 kind of RTG with long half-lives and no meaningful decline within the span of a game. That said, something more along the Polonium-210 line (but faster decay) which would lose percentages of its output over game-time days might make for more interesting gameplay.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by Optera »

undarl wrote:]Aha. I see where you're going with that now, and after looking at the uranium processing recipe again I understand your point. That recipe is written as though all result probabilities are tallied and only one roll made to choose one output. I assumed for my recipes that each probability was rolled for separately. I went to submit a bug report to find out whether my assumption was a bug (since it seems to be working in 15.10), but at least one person had beaten me to it. According to that thread, all result probability rolls are made independently of one another. It is thus possible for my previous example recipe to output all three items, or nothing at all, or anything in between.
Oh I didn't know factorio used a faulty % calculation to begin with.
Even as basically free energy source with only costs in setup, maintenance and preprocessing they have to compete against base game Reactors.
In an endless map you can just hook up the next uranium field and run a 3GW plant for several more days.
Fusion reactors have the same energy output/area as Fission Reactors. The only difference is they use a static infinite source while uranium mines have to move a bit every couple of days/weeks.
Fair enough. I don't tend to build megabases, and thus probably have the wrong mindset there. Any thoughts as to what combinations of power and efficiency changes might be most attractive would be welcome.
From the concept Fusion seems like something only feasible to long running megabases.
Fusion would become an upgrade for me when the energy cost for producing deuterium is lower or at least equal to uran mining. Energy costs come mostly from miners and probably sulfuric acid production. The actual processing is pretty cheap using Efficiency Modules.

I always viewed the portable fusion generator as a placeholder for a more realistic energy source with more gameplay value. With RTG you should probably just delete it or replace it with an RTG.
Fusion reactors would be massive structures, not some kitchen appliance you slap on your car and go back to the future.
The same sort of size/power logic applies to RTGs as well, though. They are extremely power-inefficient for their size compared to other generation technologies, trading that off for longevity and lack of maintenance. The values I have for them currently are a bit of a cheat that implies some future-tech combination of more efficient heat-to-electric conversion and/or higher energy density radioisotopes.

The original impetus for the fusion line, as expressed in the thread started by Roxor128, was to give the small and effectively free portable fusion generator some sort of predecessors.
Taking up a more grid space than other energy sources seems like a great balance idea.
But what do we have in base to balance against the ludicrously cheap to build free energy 4x4 fusion reactor and the pathetically under powered 11x1 0kW solar panels.
Well calling them under powered is wrong. It's just the energy numbers for equipment that are totally wrong. There is no portable solar panel capable of producing 10kW, it should more likely be in the range of 100W. So you can take the liberty and increasing any real world RTG output by 100 to match factorios messed up equipment power levels.

Real world RTG range between 1W and 100W, with two exceptions, the US SNAP (600W) and the Russian Bes-5 (3kW).

After reading into RTGs and their performance I think modeling them as infinite energy source is fine for a game that doesn't span decades.
Yeah, I was basically modeling the Plutonium-238/Strontium-90 kind of RTG with long half-lives and no meaningful decline within the span of a game. That said, something more along the Polonium-210 line (but faster decay) which would lose percentages of its output over game-time days might make for more interesting gameplay.
Since we have U-235 in the base game I'd model stationary RTG after the 385kg heavy Bes-5 mentioned above.
3kW free energy from something as big as an accumulator seems kinda ok.
I'd certainly use it backup power system slowly charging some accumulators, maybe even dedicated combinator power supply.

If you where to make RTG attachable to heat pipes though, man those things would be op. RTG output only 2-3% of their energy as electricity the rest is heat.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by Ranakastrasz »

For the RTG, you could have to insert a RTI pellet into it which decays as durability. Kinda like tools or science packs.
Production and decay is proportional to remaining percent


Main issue with that is you would need to have it unstacakble to avoid percent manipulations. Is stacking.
Also might need a script for recycling it based on remaining durability. Or at 10% transform it into a "near depleted" version that can be reprocessed.


That said, it could just remain a weak, sun independent power source better than solar panels
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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by HAMMERFALL314 »

as a note the radioisotope thermoelectric generators research overrides the crafting system for copper cables breaking inventory crafting Image

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

HAMMERFALL314 wrote:as a note the radioisotope thermoelectric generators research overrides the crafting system for copper cables breaking inventory crafting
Bizarre.
Could you get me a list of the mods you're using? I'll look into it.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by HAMMERFALL314 »

Additional Turrets, Air Filtering, Bio Industries, Bridge Railways, Bucket Wheel Excavators, Cnc's Sulfur Mod, Concrete and Stone, Data Raw Prototypes, Detached Gun Sounds, Electric Furnaces, Factorissimo2, Fission and Fusion, Flare Stack, Flow Control, Launch Control, Loader Redux, Logistics Research Fix, Nuclear Fuel, Off Grid Effects, Orbital Ion Cannon, Orphan Finder, Prospector, Quarry, Robot Charging Stations, Scattergun Turrets, Side Inserters, Smarter Trains, The Drilling Pumpjack, Turbine Priority, Warehousing Mod, Waterwell, Yokai Industries-Railways, [VF] extended. we had to disable the radioisotopes to fix the problem it apparently overrides the autocrafting of copper cable somewhere it only happened when the thermo generators finished reasearching :?:

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

HAMMERFALL314 wrote:as a note the radioisotope thermoelectric generators research overrides the crafting system for copper cables breaking inventory crafting
Apparently there's an issue with recycling-type recipes that run on the same machine as normal production recipes, leading to the issue you ran into (which was with the Fast RTG recycling recipe).

I've shifted fast RTG recycling to chemplants by default, with a setting option to use centrifuges instead. Version 0.4.1 has been pushed to the mod portal.

Thanks for the report, and please let me know if you run into any other issues.

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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by numgun »

Bumping this to request an update of this mod for version 0.16.X of Factorio.
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Re: [MOD 0.15] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

numgun wrote:Bumping this to request an update of this mod for version 0.16.X of Factorio.
Nice to know folks are still using it. Apologies for not having done so yet -- new job and limited time. A kind fellow Factorian has submitted a pull request with 0.16 tweaks, and I will endeavor to get that merged and tested and a new version uploaded this evening (GMT-5 time).

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Re: [MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

The tests look good, and version 0.4.2 has been uploaded to the mod portal.

Many thanks to vctgross for the edits!

Please ping me here if you run into any problems.

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Re: [MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by numgun »

Woo! Thank you :D
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Re: [MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by Durabys »

The Portable Fission Reactor (PFissR) is more powerful than the vanilla Portable Fusion Reactor (PFussR):

The PFissR has 3×3 (9) slots and 500 kW: 500 ÷ 9 = 55.55555 kW per slot.
The PFussR has 4×4 (16) slots and 750 kW: 750 ÷ 16 = 46.875 Kw per slot.

PFissR is so space and power efficient as to completely forgo using PFussR's in any game with this mod on.

Either modify and boost vanilla PFussRs, or make a second tier of PFussR's with better energy values or nerf PFissRs.

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Re: [MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

Tomik wrote:The Portable Fission Reactor (PFissR) is more powerful than the vanilla Portable Fusion Reactor (PFussR):

The PFissR has 3×3 (9) slots and 500 kW: 500 ÷ 9 = 55.55555 kW per slot.
The PFussR has 4×4 (16) slots and 750 kW: 750 ÷ 16 = 46.875 Kw per slot.

PFissR is so space and power efficient as to completely forgo using PFussR's in any game with this mod on.

Either modify and boost vanilla PFussRs, or make a second tier of PFussR's with better energy values or nerf PFissRs.
I see your point, and can look into doing this -- probably via more mod settings with different defaults. What are your thoughts about new output values for the reactors?

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Re: [MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by Durabys »

undarl wrote:
Tomik wrote:The Portable Fission Reactor (PFissR) is more powerful than the vanilla Portable Fusion Reactor (PFussR):

The PFissR has 3×3 (9) slots and 500 kW: 500 ÷ 9 = 55.55555 kW per slot.
The PFussR has 4×4 (16) slots and 750 kW: 750 ÷ 16 = 46.875 Kw per slot.

PFissR is so space and power efficient as to completely forgo using PFussR's in any game with this mod on.

Either modify and boost vanilla PFussRs, or make a second tier of PFussR's with better energy values or nerf PFissRs.
I see your point, and can look into doing this -- probably via more mod settings with different defaults. What are your thoughts about new output values for the reactors?
Did you update the mod? When?

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Re: [MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by undarl »

Tomik wrote: Did you update the mod? When?
No, I have not updated it since the 0.16 fixes.

You provided me with calculations to back up your argument about why either the portable fission reactor or portable fusion reactor should be changed, then asked for "better energy values". I invited your thoughts about new numbers -- you did not reply.

Currently I am very busy, and also am not actively playing Factorio. I am willing to respond to bug or update needs as quickly as I'm able, but I'm unlikely to add any new content to the mod on my own until I'm playing the game again. However, I'm willing to discuss and potentially implement smaller changes that are suggested to me. I do need something a bit more concrete than "buff", "nerf", or "make better" though. :)

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Re: [MOD 0.15/0.16] Fission and Fusion

Post by Durabys »

undarl wrote:
Tomik wrote: Did you update the mod? When?
No, I have not updated it since the 0.16 fixes.

You provided me with calculations to back up your argument about why either the portable fission reactor or portable fusion reactor should be changed, then asked for "better energy values". I invited your thoughts about new numbers -- you did not reply.

Currently I am very busy, and also am not actively playing Factorio. I am willing to respond to bug or update needs as quickly as I'm able, but I'm unlikely to add any new content to the mod on my own until I'm playing the game again. However, I'm willing to discuss and potentially implement smaller changes that are suggested to me. I do need something a bit more concrete than "buff", "nerf", or "make better" though. :)
If you do not have time to create new content, like (option 1) e.g. a qualitatively better (a 3×3 slot, produces more energy than the PFissR but less than the PFussR Mk.1) Portable Fusion Generator based on the tech of the "Magnetic Conversion Fusion Generators"...which means it would also do not need to be refueled like the Mk.1 because it would be filtering deuterium atoms out of the water vapor in the air. Like the Iron Man suit from the Marvel comics (not the movies)...

...the other alternative (option 2) is either buffing normal PFussR (more difficult, more coding work to modify and paste-over an already existing Factorio entity) or temporarily (Option 3, till you find more time in the future to do Options 1 and 2) nerf PFissR. I do not know how much because I do not recall all the fuel and energy values for the RTG's types. It should be higher than them. Higher than 32 kW per slot it should also not come close to 400 kW as the whole piece. Option 3 is easiest for you to implement right now because you would be changing one or two values.

When you have the time needed you would completely discard Option 3 by returning the current energy value and buff vanilla PFussR AND add an even more "energy per slot" powerful Portable Fusion Generators.

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