Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[Reika]

I went with 600kJ (relative to coal's 4MJ).

I think that's a good guess, if it was a guess. If it's from a source, please share, because I couldn't find one. I'm glad you went very low with it. I think that's right. That's less than wood, right?

I could not find a direct source, so I did some f#$%ery with electronegativity ratios.

Wood is 2MJ, half of coal.

[Adamo]

I could not find a direct source, so I did some f#$%ery with electronegativity ratios.

Nice one.

[Reika]

I could not find a direct source, so I did some f#$%ery with electronegativity ratios.

Nice one.

grinning noises

[Adamo]

grinning noises

You mod changes too much for me at the moment (although I'm using some others of yours), but I decided to implement burnable sulfur too and I wanted to note I am also reducing the acceleration to 0.5 or maybe lower.

[Reika]

You mod changes too much for me at the moment (although I'm using some others of yours), but I decided to implement burnable sulfur too and I wanted to note I am also reducing the acceleration to 0.5 or maybe lower.

I will do that too.

By the way, the mod has a setting to change what changes it makes; the defaults are the most dramatic.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, this is offtopic because :

One key difference, here, though, is that the efficiency is "in the background", not part of the recipe. New players wouldn't typically be aware that their energy is being used more and less efficiently here or there, and they're certainly not aware of modules.

But anyway :

If we simplify it down to the key factors: steel furnaces use half as much energy (unbeaconed), and that ratio only improves toward steel furnaces with modules on the electric furnace, so we use the worst case of the steel furnace being twice as efficient.

Why would you even consider electric furnaces (blue science) without modules (green science)?

We consider U-238 to be a waste product, so don't worry about its number in any recipes, and the solid fuel is accountable for 10% of the energy in the nuclear fuel. This results in U-238 having an 8 GJ energy value as an electric producer and about 900MJ as a chemical energy producer, so we'll call that 1/8.

You're assuming 100% efficiency, for a 1-reactor nuclear plant design.
But while it's expensive to get double, triple efficiency with 2, 4 reactor designs early, it's still pretty viable...
(Assuming typical, "unlimited" Uranium, I'm wondering how long does it take for that increased efficiency to pay off in terms of energy and pollution to extract and process that Uranium ?)

Also, Nuclear fuel requires Kovarex, a late-game tech that also changes the math on U238 being waste...

[Koub]

[Koub] Reminder : please people, stay on topic. There is a modding discussion subforum for your mod balance discussions.

[meganothing]

I figured both sides should be represented equally in the "useless arguments" category.

No really TBH I was just sick of the complaining and had to complain myself. I lurked for weeks watching people freaking out and I reached my limit.

Never fear I'll go back to silent mode now that I've let off the steam.

I take offense to that. There were excellent ideas all through those two weeks. Well thought out tweaks and alternatives, many. The conversation didn't even begin to get overrun with people who didn't read the backlog and repeated the same old tired arguments until week 2.

There was fruitful discussion of excellent ideas AND there was freaking out. One doesn't exclude the other. And freaking out doesn't mean repeating old arguments. It means ... wild accusations, conspiracy theories, blackmail, emotional doom declarations, ...

Well, that's history now. Emotions have cooled down and the discussion stayed.

[mcdjfp]

At this point, the only way to actually heal the rift as opposed to having it simmer below the surface is to give both sides what they want. The only way I see of doing that is a pregame setting for a simplified fluids mode where buildings will "flare" or otherwise dispose of fluids in blocked outputs until all outputs are full. This also has the advantage of not requiring recipe/technology changes.

Look at what can be done to biters in the map settings. They can be turned off, and without biters what exactly does the pollution mechanic do other than "kill" trees?
Unlinking petroleum gas from the other oil outputs simplifies the game for everyone (Once you have enough Heavy/Light Oil you can ramp up petroleum gas without having to deal with the other outputs, yes twice the pumpjacks, but far fewer other buildings).

Considering the number of pregame options, why not give everyone what they want?

An "easy" preset could come with the simple fluids already selected along with anything else felt appropriate.

[DanGio]

At this point, the only way to actually heal the rift as opposed to having it simmer below the surface is to give both sides what they want. The only way I see of doing that is a pregame setting for a simplified fluids mode where buildings will "flare" or otherwise dispose of fluids in blocked outputs until all outputs are full. This also has the advantage of not requiring recipe/technology changes.

Look at what can be done to biters in the map settings. They can be turned off, and without biters what exactly does the pollution mechanic do other than "kill" trees?
Unlinking petroleum gas from the other oil outputs simplifies the game for everyone (Once you have enough Heavy/Light Oil you can ramp up petroleum gas without having to deal with the other outputs, yes twice the pumpjacks, but far fewer other buildings).

Considering the number of pregame options, why not give everyone what they want?

An "easy" preset could come with the simple fluids already selected along with anything else felt appropriate.

I definitely don't want to run down suggestions just for the sake of it, even less is those try to satisfy both sides.

But look how complex it would become :
If you enable "simple" oil setting, you can't get bots before blue science.
If you enable "hard" multi output oil setting, you expect to get bots at green science.

If you enable "simple" multi output oil setting, you have to craft Chemical Science Pack with Sulfur.
If you enable "hard" multi output oil setting, you would prefer to craft it with Solid Fuel, like it was balanced before. Otherwise, the Heavy & Light backup issues will be greater than before, because of the Chemical Pack consuming even more PG.

The thing is you can't get both ways implemented without maintaining 2 tech trees & 2 recipe sets, or rethinking completely the whole thing to get them compatible with both complex & simple mode. I think that's just too much work.

[FuryoftheStars]

I'm not nitpicking the analogy. I'm nitpicking the very idea of being so emotionally devastated over a change in a software product that you feel personally injured.

I use a hundred or more software products in any given week, from OSes to little scripts. I can count on one hand the ones that were given as much thought an love that Factorio has been given. Actually, I can count them on 2 fingers.

One is a software product that costs $1,000 per license. The other is Factorio.

No where in there did I try making a comparison of the level of the emotional attachment (just that there is one).
No where in there did I say anything about the first person not being heard.
No where in there was I attempting to assign fault or attempt to say only the first person was hurt.

All I was saying is that there is an emotional attachment and that when something happens that potentially hurts the person, it’s stupid and rude to say “you were warned” as if this completely negates their feelings and right to voice them.

[crambaza]

I have devised a new Oil method that is better than all the rest, except for the ones it's not better than.

Change the Refinery to only 1 output, get rid of all the multiple output stuff.

Change the name of "Basic Oil Processing" to "Initial Oil Processing".

Change the recipe to:
IN: Crude AND Steel Barrel
OUT: Pet Gas AND Steel Barrel filled with "Sludge" or call it some other product. (Has to be in a barrel, because it's thick and gross)

THEN, Move the Recipe for "Advanced Oil Processing" to the Chem Station, and also change it to:
IN: 2 Steel Barrels filled with "Sludge" (and add in water, because you know, water)
OUT: 1 Light Oil Barrel and 1 Heavy Oil Barrel (Or for fun, output straight liquid, and also the empty Steel Barrels which just begs the efficiency of moving the empty barrels back to the refinery. Both methods seem fun)

It has the Benefits of:
It moves away from the "dumbing down" aspect of Basic Oil including free flare stacks that just evaporate(?) the other oil products.
New player sees right away that their Oil isn't working because it's got barrels clogging the output. (Like any other machine with the output clogged)
Refineries don't have to ever be rebuilt, because they just do this one thing.
Barrels become useful again.
New puzzle, work with: a Pipe and belt materials IN, and Pipe and belt materials OUT.

I declare this idea fully fleshed out, and ready to implement in 0.17.61

Hmm, I have read the criticisms and I think I agree, but it's okay, because I have the fix for my fix. FIXED FIX!

Okay, instead of outputting "sludge" at the refinery, you could just output the Light Oil and Heavy Oil directly.

Then, as was mentioned, you can simply make the large fluid storage containers, they are cheap to build and easy to hook up.

So to summarize, change the Oil tech to output Pet Gas, Light Oil and Heavy Oil, then you don't have to deal with the barrels at all!

You could even change the name of the Recipe to "Basic Oil Processing".

It has the Benefits of:
It moves away from the "dumbing down" aspect of the "0.17.60 Basic Oil" including free flare stacks that just evaporate(?) the other oil products.
New player sees right away that their Oil isn't working because it's got a clogged output. (Like any other machine with the output clogged)
Refineries don't have to ever be rebuilt, because they are already prepared for 3 fluids.
Barrels become useless again, who needs them!
New puzzle to work with: a Pipe IN, and Multiple Pipes OUT.

I love it!

Ready to implement in 0.17.61

[zenos14]

I claim "you're making me redo all that" is going to happen at most as much as with anything else in the game. Players doesn't know what is coming at any stage, so they don't know at what scale they need to build anything (and build in small scale). It's pretty hard to come up with some organized system like bus in the first playthrough, because it is solution to a problem players don't know exists.
Using inefficient BOP instead of AOP, is not problem as much as not using electric furnaces is not a problem. If player has enough oil, they won't mind using BOP, if they are short on oil, AOP can help them solve that problem.

Can't speak for others, but I took a bit of time to browse through the tech tree when I first noticed it in game, so I had somewhat of an idea of what came ahead even on my first play through, mind you I mostly focused my attention on higher tier assemblers, belts, and inserters cause they seemed the most relevant to planning stuff out, but that still gave me somewhat of an idea how big of an area to set aside for each, but I also like designing for what I don't have yet in this (and other similar games), still some things caught me off guard, I know having to mass rebuild huge chunks of my preexisting factory to account for electric furnaces (and beacons for that matter) turned me off on using them for a long time, I still don't like using beacons for anything just off of my initial gut reaction to them. While it's not something I've harped on about (being in the camp the main problem with this change is it pushes bots back too far and will just make the wall that much steeper when the player does finally hit multioutput oil), I do worry about the player having to rebuild oil after AOP because it comes at the stage where even a newish player probably has somewhat of a good enough idea of how they want their factory to be layed out and probably has started scaling up, which can be quite frustrating when you suddenly realize something might take a LOT more space, ...and if they're not good at pipe bussing (and given without the three outputs on oil they've had no real reason to be) they could suddenly find themselves needing about double space for the added pipes

Also, isn't comparing AOP with electric furnaces something of a false equivalent now? You don't need to build electric furnaces to complete the game, you will need AOP with the new changes. Talking about something before the changes and you might have had a point, now it just seem like a bad example to be honest

At this point, the only way to actually heal the rift as opposed to having it simmer below the surface is to give both sides what they want. The only way I see of doing that is a pregame setting for a simplified fluids mode where buildings will "flare" or otherwise dispose of fluids in blocked outputs until all outputs are full. This also has the advantage of not requiring recipe/technology changes.

While it might seem appealing on the surface, several techs would have to be changed by this setting, making it a bit impractical

[FuryoftheStars]

My friend, in jest, but there's some seriousness to it, suggested I put a big red "2X" over the light fuel oil recipe icon.

This was something I thought about and attempted to do with my sulfur mod and think they should do with solid fuel in the base game.

Make the recipe of the most efficient one consume twice as much, but output double the product. In this way, as a player is looking at the recipes, they’ll see right at the top “2x Solid Fuel” vs the others just saying “Solid Fuel”.

[mcdjfp]

None of your scenarios happen because with petroleum gas, light oil, and heavy oil all available there is no need to change recipes at all. The 17.60 recipe changes were forced because of the delay in acquiring light and heavy oil. Since all 3 would be available from the beginning, none of these changes would be necessary. Since all three fluids would be available at the same time in both modes, there would be no need for 2 different recipe sets.

The only thing the setting would do is allow a building such as the refinery to continue running until all of its outputs are full (deleting the excess output), instead of stopping. This is proposed as an alternative to the 17.60 oil changes. Both modes would use the same techs as they were before 17.60. Both basic and advanced oil processing in both modes would produce all 3 outputs. The tech progression for both settings would be identical to the pre-17.60 progression. Since all 3 fluids are available all of the recipes would work without any changes.

As the tech progression and recipes are the same in both modes. Any future changes would work just fine. Recipes could be balanced for the standard mode, and simple mode would just work, because only the building output behavior is modified.

In other words:
(17.60) Basic oil processing always flares everything but the petroleum gas, thus requiring multiple tech changes to deal with the lack of light and heavy oil.

(Simple Fluids Setting): Both modes use the same recipes unchanged from before 17.60. The flaring off of excess only happens as needed to keep the building operating until all outputs are blocked. All three oil outputs would be available from the beginning in both modes, if the player messed up the balance, things would keep on running (in the simple mode or "easy mode") instead of stopping (in the standard or "hard mode").

All the option would do is allow players to ignore the output balancing if they want to (for whatever reason), while at the same time permitting the players who enjoy the challenge to keep the old way.

[jodokus31]

Excellent idea

[crambaza]

Excellent idea

Thanks. I can't take all the credit though, it took a lot of community input to arrive at a perfect solution.

[mmmPI]

Ready to implement in 0.17.61

I am unsure to notice the differences between what you propose and 17.59. Which seems overall a good choice. That was working really well for me. but maybe this new 17.60 will work the same for me and better for others !

So far i am trying to build a starter base for 2 science per second ( 10 red science assembly really ), including all the scaled blue science, before the first robots, on a 128 tile horizontal ribbon without ennemy, despite the not smart approach, i think i can make it under 15 hours for the rocket it's not done at all but i allow myself to reload the save a few time trying different stuff.

Placing the refinery on the oil patch and ship only the petroleum seems a non-solution to me( i read about it and considered it in my game), it was my first train, so i could make it any size i want, you don't really pay attention at first, the crafty part is setting up the rail and loco, once it's done it's a matter of a few seconds to make it a simple or double or multiple tanker/train. ( and what's the chance all your oil patch are near water ? planning in advance for AOP).

Other aspect is i don't want to bring tons of material far away, i built 10 refs (using some spacing for AOP ), with space to build 10 more, ( not smart but hey why would i math things when i know i can overkill as long as I get 2 science per second ) this amount of frenetic click click, i'd rather do it near where i have pipes, pumps, and those things available.

Usually i set 1 refinery coupled with 4 chemplants to have a constant source of solid fuel for train very fast. This is simplified, but it "feels" too inefficient for me to use the receipe at larger scale for my 40 50MW of coal-powered steam engine.

It took me 3hours to get there, not even setting military science. I would advise going for 1 science per second ,really, for less tedious, and just a bootstrap blue science rather than the 24 asembly you need for 2 science per second, i had finished allmost all my green and red science research at this point (playing with research queue 15 labs, and buffer chest for science, switching between "slow" and "fast" tech) , only 4 plastic factory are needed to run the science, it really feels WAY too much to have 10 refineries at this point.

Belting the sulfur is a bit weird, one of the rule of thumb i had was direct insertion for those since you need a lot for acid, but for science it feels very little, the 3 circuits of the receipe, even if it gives 2 pack, are THE thing that clearly is too much if you try manually build for 2 science per second.

Not so for the the 18 assembly for the red circuit themselves or the 24 for science ( and you need 20 for engine ), but for the additionnal furnaces required to make the green circuits and all that iron. With default settings for ressources it is now time for me to get additionnal ressources, not because the initials one are depleted ( 220K/377K iron or so) but because i can't place enough miner to get the throughput so expanding the rail network( which i might get sidetracked doing).

Overall , i underestimated what blue science is now, it's still quite some work that it makes going for 2 science per second tedious at hand( still a drop in complexity since no oil puzzle at this stage), but it doesn't really feel "chemical", i think i did the whole setup with less than 300 pipes, it feels more like adding furnaces array, that's roughly 33% of the footprint of my base at this point and i'm about to double that to get enough material on belt for all machines. BOP => AOP will probably be my first science reseached in this peaceful ribbon. Can't tell yet for the late-game.

[nafira]

Excellent idea

Thanks. I can't take all the credit though, it took a lot of community input to arrive at a perfect solution.

Still, you must have hours of thinking behind you. Anyone isn't able to think of that !

Back to reality : 2 output will already be great to mix between "wall of dumbness" and "wall of complexity" that is presented to us.

EDIT : should I smash my F5 key for the FFF-306 ? ^^

[zenos14]

...but it doesn't really feel "chemical", i think i did the whole setup with less than 300 pipes, it feels more like adding furnaces array, that's roughly 33% of the footprint of my base at this point and i'm about to double that to get enough material on belt for all machines.

The more I play with the new BOP the less good it feels, I've complained about the lack of bots in red/green and about how much I dislike not having Heavy/Light oil at BOP to keep my furnaces/boilers fed with solid fuel (It's why BOP appealed to me in my first playthrough, it just felt "right" to burn solid fuel instead of coal) but as I try it out, I find a whole bunch of little things that bother me about the new as well, Oil to just Petroleum just feels inefficient, I need quite a bit more oil to make up for the loss of heavy/light=>Fuel unless I just ignore it's use or rush AOP and never look back on BOP, I'm back to having that same gut reaction I had in my first few playthroughs when I built my first refinery of "Why building 5x5?" and it's missing the instant realization of "Oh, there's a lotta pipes in it" that makes it go away and leaves the refinery feeling like a waste of space and just a massive smelter and this is without getting into how bad it feels to belt in sulfur when so little of it gets used compared to the production of sulfuric acid, which I typically have right there alongside my sulfur production because it takes so much of it and it makes sense to keep chemical production together to me.

All in all, having the oil change reverted is still number 1 on my wishlist, but if it must stick around, could the Devs possibly consider any of the following changes
2) Make con bots not need lubricant somehow
3) Make Petroleum=>Solid Fuel far more efficient (I hate to suggest this, as it pretty much makes light oil worthless, but I dislike not having Heavy/Light oil to turn into fuel more so I think it'd go good with the .17.60 changes)
4) Use sulfuric acid instead of sulfur for blue science, makes more sense as the chemical science packet, and piping in it would feel better than belting in sulfur
5) Smaller refineries, or at least do basic oil production in chemical plants, BOP refineries just looks weird now