Factorio Forums

TL;DR

There are generators that generate electricity from items (burner) or fluids, but none can generate electricity directly from heat.

WHY?

I'm making a mod where I have a thermoelectric generator, but I can't just make it generate electricity from heat, because the game does not support it. My current solution is an assembling machine powered by heat called "Heat Adapter". It has a fixed recipe making 22k of a fluid called "Heat Joule" ten times per second. This fluid is then consumed by a fluid powered generator called "Thermoelectric Generator".

With this setup, there are two main problems. First of all, it is needlessly complex and confusing. Secondly, I need to prevent players from transporting the heat fluid via pipes. I've addressed the second problem by making the fluid units incredibly small. This way, pipes don't have enough throughput to allow using them for transporting it. Both the adapter and generator have big enough fluidboxes, so there is no throughput limit. This solution kinda works, but it's very janky and it overpowers fluid consumption graphs with millions or even billions of Heat Joules per minute.

It makes no sense why would generators only be limited to items and fluids. Assemblers, for instance, allow all energy source types.

Villfuk02 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:26 am With this setup, there are two main problems. First of all, it is needlessly complex and confusing. Secondly, I need to prevent players from transporting the heat fluid via pipes. I've addressed the second problem by making the fluid units incredibly small. This way, pipes don't have enough throughput to allow using them for transporting it. Both the adapter and generator have big enough fluidboxes, so there is no throughput limit. This solution kinda works, but it's very janky and it overpowers fluid consumption graphs with millions or even billions of Heat Joules per minute.

For the transportation via fluid pipes, have you looked at composite entities? (placing multiple in the same place by script)

For the production graphs, I believe there is a way to hide recipes: the vanilla barrels use this to stay out of production graphs.

NotRexButCaesar wrote: ↑Wed Sep 15, 2021 2:50 pm For the production graphs, I believe there is a way to hide recipes: the vanilla barrels use this to stay out of production graphs.

But how do you hide the generator's consumption?