Friday Facts #428 - Reactor & Logistics circuit control

[Terrahertz]

I don't get the point of circuits in nuclear reactors. Uranium is plentiful, I didn't even go through 1/2 a mine in my 5k megabase, what would be the point of throttling nuclear power if resources are so abundant with koverex?

For once, it's a nice puzzle to solve and that's part of the game.
The other part is, that in Space Age Enriched Uranium is needed for space science, so I don't know how quickly you now burn through ore patches.
Also you might have reactors on other planets where you need to import the fuel, so not using any cells when you don't need them saves you logistic costs.

"in Space Age Enriched Uranium is needed for space science" -- oh! Where did you see this, I'd like to learn more.

FFF-381 That's where they explain the basics of space travel in game.

[JigSaW]

If the numbers in the wiki are correct I highly doubt that it's the case. A Nuclear Reactor can store up to 5GJ of heat energy, the fuel cell has 8GJ of energy, multipled with the neighbour bonus, so in a 2x2 setup it has 24GJ. Heat exchangers and heat pipes have 1/10 of the heat capacity of the reactor per entity. So to be lossless you need A LOT of those, if you want to steer the thing entirely by the heat signal at least.

But as I said if you calculate the thermal capacity of your powerplant you can now have either less steam storage or you can better account for the powerplant heating up.

Yeah if that's the case it ain't worth the hassle then tbh. If heat battery was possible without the need for steam battery then sure it'd as good, but if you have to account for both heat and steam then I'll just stick to a setup that only uses steam as a condition.

[Terrahertz]

If the numbers in the wiki are correct I highly doubt that it's the case. A Nuclear Reactor can store up to 5GJ of heat energy, the fuel cell has 8GJ of energy, multipled with the neighbour bonus, so in a 2x2 setup it has 24GJ. Heat exchangers and heat pipes have 1/10 of the heat capacity of the reactor per entity. So to be lossless you need A LOT of those, if you want to steer the thing entirely by the heat signal at least.

But as I said if you calculate the thermal capacity of your powerplant you can now have either less steam storage or you can better account for the powerplant heating up.

Yeah if that's the case it ain't worth the hassle then tbh. If heat battery was possible without the need for steam battery then sure it'd as good, but if you have to account for both heat and steam then I'll just stick to a setup that only uses steam as a condition.

You might find this usefull, heat pipes are twice as space efficient as steam storage IF you can use their full range of 500-1000°c, which might not be the case.

Just so we have a complete picture now

[Abarel]

But gun turrets either require a requester chest each or a large belt with some fancy circuit conditions if you want to avoid just having a full belt of "backup" amo... and of course they require electricity too, for the inserters.

Before counting many funny mods possibilities (like Hauler from AAI, or Caravan from Pyanodon), you have other vanilla options to deliver ammo for a section of your perimeter defenses. You could use a single (or a few) requester chests plus some inserters to feed a short belt. Or you could try different options, like the fun from trains instead of bots. Even you could try something like this to avoid even electricity (you can send better ammo later when you can produce it, as well as better fuel like solid fuel).

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[Rebmes]

very, very exciting!!!

[morsk]

Disabled chests had better not be included in logistics totals. It's already terrible that buffers are counted in totals, and ruins all my logic. If disabled chests are counted, they will interfere with circuits trying to count how many items need to be made.

I like to use buffer chests for construction. This could replace the desire for ghost-reading if it was better.

The option to tell a buffer chest not to supply, only request, is helpful. I hope this works. I currently use a requester chest, and fast-replace it with a buffer when I want it to build. Being able to configure the buffer chest for both tasks, without replacing the item, is convenient. I still need script to count blueprints, and to configure matching chests & combinators. (I can't configure the chests from the combinators, because then I wouldn't be able to read them.)

[spacedog]

If the numbers in the wiki are correct I highly doubt that it's the case. A Nuclear Reactor can store up to 5GJ of heat energy, the fuel cell has 8GJ of energy, multipled with the neighbour bonus, so in a 2x2 setup it has 24GJ. Heat exchangers and heat pipes have 1/10 of the heat capacity of the reactor per entity. So to be lossless you need A LOT of those, if you want to steer the thing entirely by the heat signal at least.

But as I said if you calculate the thermal capacity of your powerplant you can now have either less steam storage or you can better account for the powerplant heating up.

Yeah if that's the case it ain't worth the hassle then tbh. If heat battery was possible without the need for steam battery then sure it'd as good, but if you have to account for both heat and steam then I'll just stick to a setup that only uses steam as a condition.

You might find this usefull, heat pipes are twice as space efficient as steam storage IF you can use their full range of 500-1000°c, which might not be the case.

Just so we have a complete picture now

This is all completely ignoring the fact that the steam storage is a very small fraction of the total footprint of a large nuclear power plant.

Take a 1 GW setup for example. The steam tanks to store all the output make up maybe 10% of the total space needed. The heat exchangers and turbines needed to produce 1 GW of power far outsize the steam storage.

IMO it's still going to be easier to keep triggering off steam levels for large reactors. Being able to trigger off the stored heat is likely only useful for really small setups, like 1 or 2 reactors, where you care more about footprint than total output. Basically space platforms, which benefit from not wasting fuel cells since it's harder to resupply them.

The subtle thing I think people missed was the hint about how this would matter for the last planet. I'm taking that to mean there will be some incentive to ensure the reactor's heat stays within a specific range. Right now the only reason you'd care is if you have a reactor over 900 C that gets destroyed, since it turns into a nuke, but that's pretty trivial to avoid in 1.0. Now I'm wondering if there's something about the mechanics of the last planet that will make this much more of a danger in 2.0.

[Jesperhk]

damn that last comment about the release date got we worried. I already booked 1 week vacation for the release week

[KeithFromCanada]

That is an amazing update! I can't wait until the 21st!

[KeithFromCanada]

I forgot: Will there be permanent signals for generated and stored power on all power networks? That would be fantastic, as, whenever there are brownouts, different parts of your base could automatically shut themselves down in a priority sequence to keep the most important parts running at all times.

Also, when placing a power pole, could you *PLEASE* automatically re-comb adjacent power poles to minimize the number of connections? It is irritating when you place one and nothing connects to it because the other poles in its range already have (multiple!) redundant connections.

Cheers!

[jamaicancastle]

Also, when placing a power pole, could you *PLEASE* automatically re-comb adjacent power poles to minimize the number of connections? It is irritating when you place one and nothing connects to it because the other poles in its range already have (multiple!) redundant connections.

I think in this case they cut to the chase and removed that limit entirely.

That said, as someone who has mined and replaced power poles many times so they make a nice square grid of connections, I'd be 100% down for any improvements in that logic. At least now there won't be a resource requirement if you need to break out the manual adjustments.

[KeithFromCanada]

Since we have a lot of logistic changes, are there any chances of seeing logistic gun turrets?
The main reason why gun turrets fall of in late/post game to me is that supplying them becomes an unjustifiable hassle. Flame throwers just requires pipes and are well worth it. Laser turrets just electricity which is also simple enough

But gun turrets either require a requester chest each or a large belt with some fancy circuit conditions if you want to avoid just having a full belt of "backup" amo... and of course they require electricity too, for the inserters. Which is why they get replaced by laser turrets.

FWIW, the only circuitry needed is a string of connected belts with the first set to 'enable if everything = 0' and the rest to 'read/hold'--I use six for a long pause in between pairs of ammo. I load/unload the belts from/to a chest that has a speaker hooked up to it to warn me when ammo is getting low. (I disable the first belt's condition at first so a full belt of ammo is sent until all of the turrets are full, then turn it back on.) You have a choice of either doubling the belt to bring ammo back or using logibots. (If you *REALLY* want to be safe, you can also add coal/etc. to the belt and then use burner inserters, so you can be sure that your defences will keep running even if you lose power.)

I hope this helps.

[Muche]

I forgot: Will there be permanent signals for generated and stored power on all power networks? That would be fantastic, as, whenever there are brownouts, different parts of your base could automatically shut themselves down in a priority sequence to keep the most important parts running at all times.

Would shutting power down based on the charge of an accumulator solve it for you?
Like, if the charge is less than 30, shut down factory A, if it's less than 20 shut down B, etc.

[scarhoof]

The ability to manufacture items in order to fill ghost requests could be really cool. I hope the devs are able to find a way to implement it without impacting performance.

[robot256]

All you need to auto-craft missing building requests is a row of buffer chests that request at least 1 of everything. If that item gets used by a construction bot, then it will show up as a logistic request.

[GregoriusT]

I forgot: Will there be permanent signals for generated and stored power on all power networks? That would be fantastic, as, whenever there are brownouts, different parts of your base could automatically shut themselves down in a priority sequence to keep the most important parts running at all times.

Would shutting power down based on the charge of an accumulator solve it for you?
Like, if the charge is less than 30, shut down factory A, if it's less than 20 shut down B, etc.

Just to let you know, the Accumulator thing is not as reliable as you might think, you can end up with total blackouts due to the charge rate of the Accumulator sometimes not reacting fast enough. (especially if you dont build enough Accumulators, or no Accumulators at all)

[Sliverious]

I don't get the point of circuits in nuclear reactors. Uranium is plentiful, I didn't even go through 1/2 a mine in my 5k megabase, what would be the point of throttling nuclear power if resources are so abundant with koverex?

Pretty much my experience with nuclear. Maybe other people set uranium to spawn very infrequently but I tend to build over patches since I just don't need it. It could be fun to experiment a bit with circuits and reactors but most probably I'll overbuild fuel cell production and never look at the reactor again.

[Roxor128]

Will there be some easy way to get bots out of the system for upgrades?

Many mods have multiple tiers of construction and logistics bots, and upgrading them is a huge headache.

[CyberCider]

Will there be some easy way to get bots out of the system for upgrades?

Many mods have multiple tiers of construction and logistics bots, and upgrading them is a huge headache.

Roboports will be able to set min/max requests for specific robots inside them. That way you can make one roboport request all lower tier bots into itself, where they can be removed from the network by inserters.
Funnily enough, they already used this exact example when introducing it.

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[gGeorg]

The steam itself was always just an indicator because we could not read the reactor temperature directly. Now the logic is simply insert fuel if reactor fuel is 0 and temperature is <= 500° or something in that range.

But that's not how (smart/lossless) steam battery setup works. It shouldn't restart reactors when they're around 500, it should restart reactors when there's no steam.

Even if your do not consume any power from the setup, the reactors will not reach maximum temperature when fuel is inserted at 500°C and you have anything connected to it (8 heat pipes alone are enough). You can have all the steam capacity you want but reading the steam value is unnecessary and it will be lossless no matter what.

JigSaW is right, but Loewchen is spreading misleading information.
Please check my Perfect Cloverleaf Power plant, it includes all documentation, include thermal capacity table.
This perfect powerplant is always ready to supply MAX or ZERO power while it is always loose-less and wasteless.
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