Factorio Forums

The burner turbine generator breaks accumulators. TL;DR: When burner turbines are part of the network, accumulator charge can not be changed.

Took us a while to figure out what was going on, but while trying to adjust our power generation to test various scenarios, I happened to remove the burner turbines, and everything suddenly started working.
Documented in these screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/XHTfy
Basically, with burner turbines present, accumulators that are not fully charged in a grid that is producing more power than required will drain power at their maximum charge rate forever without ever filling up. At the same time, non-empty accumulators in a grid that is producing less power than required will provide either their max potential output (if required) or just enough to power the base without ever emptying out.
Tested with Factorio version 0.15.30 and AAI industry 0.1.11
It's a problem since burner turbines (or solar panels) are required to restart the steam (and water pumps) if a complete blackout ever occurs, and it would be nice to have your old burner turbines remain relevant as backup power even after steam becomes available.
I'm speculating that this might have something to do with the fact that burner turbines seem to have a miniature accumulator function, able to store 35.8 KJ each it seems. Not sure if that's an intended feature or not.

Workaround: Isolate the emergency restart burner turbine to a separate grid like this: http://imgur.com/a/dcjUC
Shift-click poles to remove all wire connections, then use copper wire to connect only the ones you want. This setup has the steam pumps connected to two powerpoles each, one from the main grid and one connected only to two other poles, the other pump and the burner turbine, with a burner inserter feeding the burner turbine. The turbine can still not be used to supplement the main grid in case of brown outs, but it can kick start the steam again after a complete blackout. A burner inserter to a boiler or adjusting the burner turbine grid to cover a electric inserter going into a boiler is required for fully automatic recovery after such a black out though, if it happened due to lack of fuel.

All mods used: http://imgur.com/a/S2IBr

At some point I pointed out that burner turbines should have a lower priority than regular steam engines due to lower efficiency. My guess is that happened is that it was lowered to the same priority as accumulators meaning the game is perfectly fine splitting power "production" between burner turbines and accumulators. This would likely also result in burner turbines being unable to charge accumulators. I'm not sure both problems can be avoided at the same time without changes to the core game as in adding a new priority level or even make the levels to be marked as ints, hence allowing modders to add more.

As for the workaround, remember that you can add switches. I have set up a tank on the steam part and made the switch turn on when the threshold is higher than X steam in that tank. This means when I have enough power, the steam engines (higher efficiency) provides power to the feeding system (pump and inserters to boilers). With minor shortage, the burner turbine kicks in and assists. If the power drain is so great that the steam drops below the threshold, the switch will disconnect and the feeding system will become an island* and ensure the boilers are fully fed. This seems to work very well and will indeed minimize low power situations.

The next step seems to be setting up switches to both the grid and the burner turbine and make the controls of the switches rely on both steam level and charge level. It seems overly complex though, particularly for something as standard as setting up power production, but we can always make a blueprint string and share it here.


*island is the official term in power production when a powerplant gets disconnected from the grid and it carries on supplying consumers, who have also been disconnected from the grid. While this is most likely to happen on actual islands, which are connected by underwater cables, it doesn't have to be an actual island. Remote areas or mountains can also result in high voltage cables, which supplies one area through a single cable, in which case any error on the cable will either cause blackouts or start some backup system.

I could add switches, but it doesn't solve the problem - the way it is now, accumulators and burner turbines can never be allowed to be on the same grid. Those spikes you want to use the burner turbines for is also exactly what you would want to use the accumulators for, so you can't really solve it by switching them on or off, since they would need to be switched on at the same time. That would result in the "accumulators providing power but not losing charge" case described above.
MAYBE you could add some logic to make the burner connect and the accumulators disconnect when accumulators are empty and steam level is getting low, and reverse that when steam is high again so accumulators can recharge for a 4 level system (Solar > steam > accumulators > burner), but that is still just a (very complicated) work around, not a fix. For me, burner turbines are not relevant enough to really worry about (a single steam engine mk2 provides as much power), having your old ones available as backup generators would be nice, but the vital function is turning pumps in an emergency, so expanding it beyond what I did seems pointless.

You may be right in that both problems can't be solved at once, but if so, this is worse than it used to be. It used to be inefficient, and now it's broken.

I could add a mod setting to change the burner turbine priority. The default would be the inefficient but functional setting?

I think those three priority levels should be understood as:

1st priority: clean electricity generators, such as solar panels. In this group, we get those generators that don't require anything else (besides sunlight) to function.
2nd priority: dirty electricity generators, such as boilers and burners, but also Nuclear Reactors. The ones in this category essentially convert one kind of resource into electricity or into another resource that is then converted into electricity.
3rd priority: passive electricity providers (backup), such as capacitors.

Therefore, burners should really be in the 2nd category, and switching between generators should be done with switches (as already suggested). Maybe a simple, manual kind of switch could be added to the early recipes categories so it can be properly switched (without rewiring).

QuantumProjects wrote:I think those three priority levels should be understood as:

1st priority: clean electricity generators, such as solar panels. In this group, we get those generators that don't require anything else (besides sunlight) to function.
2nd priority: dirty electricity generators, such as boilers and burners, but also Nuclear Reactors. The ones in this category essentially convert one kind of resource into electricity or into another resource that is then converted into electricity.
3rd priority: passive electricity providers (backup), such as capacitors.

Therefore, burners should really be in the 2nd category, and switching between generators should be done with switches (as already suggested). Maybe a simple, manual kind of switch could be added to the early recipes categories so it can be properly switched (without rewiring).

Solar gets priority over nuclear, and nuclear over regular steam. There's something more to it than that.
The burner generators do seem to be the only type of generator with a built in accumulator though, with a very small capacity. Maybe that could be the cause?

Earendel wrote:I could add a mod setting to change the burner turbine priority. The default would be the inefficient but functional setting?

That would be an improvement at least. As I mentioned above, there are clearly more than three priority levels though (solar, nuclear, steam and accumulator makes four), so there must be something else that is being missed, and if figured out, might allow fixing it completely?

Hi Earendel, pls pls don't forget about my wish to u for PYCP compatibility viewtopic.php?f=94&t=32272 ,

Hi Earendel
Can ask u to make ur mod compatible for one promising mod PY coal processing - very cool and useful mod, fully based on bob mod's - this mods develops gameplay very much with new ways with processing coal and many other, and it will be compatible with angel mods in future
Forum page - viewtopic.php?f=94&t=32272
Mod portal link - https://mods.factorio.com/mods/pyanodon ... processing

There conflict in medium pole recipe, because ur mod chanigng this recipe and PYCP changing it too
https://yadi.sk/i/xSokUAQy3LBJ9o

I hope for sincere understanding from ur side

ive noticed 2 things, one is that if this mod is not installed that the game crashes when vehicle inventorys try to interact, (ie hauler and mining machine) and that there also seems to be no way to get fast inserters with this mod enabled

Small suggestion for early electricity:
1) Let small wooden pole be opened from start or Let at the crashed rescue capsule there will be one a few copies of wooden or iron electric poles
2) Let at the crashed rescue capsule there will be one copy of burner turbine
I'm asking because i want to play with pyanodon coal's processing mod, but it's machines working only with electricity not on solid fuel bcuz i want to SURVIVE!

I'll try to look at py coal compatibility soon. Now that I'm back there's a long list of stuff to catch up on so it might take a while to get round to.

aklesey1 wrote:Hi Eerendel, there error in electric engine unit recipe - 40 lubricant but not 4 because it must be multiplied on 10 in factorio 0.15

Agree i have this bug in recipe for electric engine too, i think there must be 40 but not 4 lubricant

Hey Earendel,

It seems that productivity modules cant be put into assemblers making motors, both regular and electric.
Is this intended? If not it would be amazing if you could update the mod somehow to allow productivity modules

*Edit*
- Tested with - Bob's productivity modules 1 for regular and electric motors only.
- I just realized there are other places as well, like insulators like stone slabs, should those allow productivity modules as well?

Love the mod!

Hey Ereandel have u any nice news about ur wonderful mod? Is it still in development?

aklesey1 wrote:Hey Ereandel have u any nice news about ur wonderful mod? Is it still in development?

There should be some bugfixes and minor compatibility updates soon. The more interesting news is that I'm working on another mod that will extend from this one with a lot of new gameplay and content.

Earendel wrote:

aklesey1 wrote:Hey Ereandel have u any nice news about ur wonderful mod? Is it still in development?

There should be some bugfixes and minor compatibility updates soon. The more interesting news is that I'm working on another mod that will extend from this one with a lot of new gameplay and content.

Can you give us a hint?

diongham wrote:Can you give us a hint?

Get your magboots ready.

Earendel wrote: The more interesting news is that I'm working on another mod that will extend from this one with a lot of new gameplay and content.

Thank u Earendel, that's sound good and thank for ur work, u making really useful things

In the 0.1.12 update:

Fixed electric engine lubricant requirement.

AAI intermediates can now use productivity modules.

Other mods can now disable the crash sequence. Attached is an example mod where this is done using a mod options setting so you can manually switch it on an off. Mainly this is to show other modders how their mod can force disable the crash sequence if it interferes with the desired starting conditions.
The key code for you to add to your mod is this: If you set allow = false and weight = 2 it will override anything set by a weight = 1.

The Burner Turbine output priority has been set to secondary and the energy efficiency has been increased so it's not so bad if it keeps running.

i found a little glitch in the animation of the offshore pumps. The colorbars of the north animation are off. I fixed it by this here: i also pump the speed up to get the animation running more smooth: Maybe it just looks right on my end and it's still off.

EDIT: a little something i noticed as well, the control-script for removing the output-pump-entity is a bit too greedy. As soon you remove a offshore-pump that's back to back to another the script will remove the output-pump of both.

Thanks for working on this. I'm enjoying integrating it into a configuration I'm experimenting with now. Thanks in particular for the option to disable the crash sequence. I've used that to good effect .

I'd just like to draw attention again to the incompatibility with ScienceCostTweaker. toudi mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I suspect more peoiple may run into this since the SeaBlock buzz has popularized ScienceCostTweaker.

The issue is that you both change the science pack 1 recipe, and if AAI takes effect second and replaces the ScienceCostTweaker version that spoils the theme of the various ScienceCostTweaker recipes by making science pack 1 the odd one out. I think the easiest way for you to resolve the issue would be one of:
- Check the recipe before changing it and don't mess with it if it's not vanilla, or
- Rather than replacing the recipe wholesale, loop through the ingredients and double the quantity of copper plate if it's present.

If you wanted to be even more integrated with ScienceCostTweaker you could also detect and double the copper-based ingredient it uses ("sct-t1-magnet-coils") but I doubt you want to be so intertwined with it.