Factorio Forums

Why does it use coal instead of diesel?
Shouldn't you name it Steam Loco?

Steam loco implies it would need both coal and water to run,

Reall it should be burner locomotive... i guess diesel is just a easier way to explain it

It can use any fuel to run.

So, to me, it's just a locomotive.

"Diesel" specifically refers to a particular kind of internal combustion engine. You can't run one on any of the fuels in Factorio, wood, coal, or solid fuel.

The locomotives and "burner" items all need mechanical work, using various Factorio fuels. That means they must have external combustion engines. Steam engines are obvious ones, but there alternatives like Stirling engines. Some use liquid as working medium (like steam engines), some use can use a gas, such as air.

The abstract "engines" used to build locomotives and the car must be external combustion engines, not Otto-cycle internal combustion engines, despite their appearance. What type we don't know, though steam's an obvious candidate. If the locomotives required "engines" and "electric motors," we could deduce that they were probably steam-electric - using heat to produce work, driving a generator to produce electricity, which then drives the electric motors. Much like most modern locomotives, which are diesel-electric.

Diesel locomotive is just strange name, it would be great if we could burn liquid fuels in assemblers/burners/locomotives but it won't come any time soon.
What is more disturbing is crafting electric engine from heat engine, that is not how it works! (well, it probably could but pure electric engines are so much better and efficient!)
I know, it is to make more steps to make electric engine, but since it is one to one ratio it do not introduce any challenge at all.

And it looks like that engine should be Stirling engine, because it can be heated in any way and since it is used to electric engines it could be heated by electricity (since it does not require explosion in chamber)

I thought it was a mister fusion that converts any carbon-based material into energy.
And for the electric ones, there is only a flux-capacitor-thingy added .... You know for the time-stuff...

The locomotives have Mr. Diesel's name stamped on them, so the locomotives are obviously powered by Diesel Engines. I don't want to suggest anything reasonable (such a portable implementation of the Fischer-Tropsch process), so I would encourage everyone to believe that Factorio Diesels are the most powerful in their class (and are somehow able to extract more work from the combustion than is needed to compress the arbitrary solid fuel).

I'm more interested in how those belts keep moving with no power.

Rakshasa wrote:I'm more interested in how those belts keep moving with no power.

Handwavium power cells.
They're made out of the desire to streamline playing factorio, without bogging the player down with excess complexity too early.
(or something along those lines, I forget what the devs said about it exactly)

Belts are powered by the tears of haters. They run on #@$?s given.

But yeah Diesel Locomotives ought to be called Combustion Locomotives. That leaves their actual workings up to interpretation, where diesel implies they run strictly on diesel fuel which they do not.

What bothers me more about them is that when you have multiple coupled to a train, facing different directions, only the ones facing the direction of travel actually contribute and the others are idle.

This never happens IRL because 99.9% of locomotives are perfectly bidirectional and carrying the "rear-facing" (locomotives have no rear or front end, trains do) ones as dead weight is a waste, as we can observe in Factorio.

Factorio Diesel locomotives run on diesel. You need to put coal or other fuel in the locomotive because it will automatically contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles and exchange the given fuel for diesel. It will then consume the diesel to power itself.

So you see, the fuel you put in isn't used as fuel for the locomotive; it's used as a payment.

And no, you can't contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles yourself to do some business because you're neither a sentient train engine nor other vehicle.

Oxyd wrote:Factorio Diesel locomotives run on diesel. You need to put coal or other fuel in the locomotive because it will automatically contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles and exchange the given fuel for diesel. It will then consume the diesel to power itself.

So you see, the fuel you put in isn't used as fuel for the locomotive; it's used as a payment.

And no, you can't contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles yourself to do some business because you're neither a sentient train engine nor other vehicle.

Why isn't it called Intergalactic Meddling Association of Sentient Train and Other Vehicle Engines (IMASTOVE)?

ratchetfreak wrote:

Oxyd wrote:Factorio Diesel locomotives run on diesel. You need to put coal or other fuel in the locomotive because it will automatically contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles and exchange the given fuel for diesel. It will then consume the diesel to power itself.

So you see, the fuel you put in isn't used as fuel for the locomotive; it's used as a payment.

And no, you can't contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles yourself to do some business because you're neither a sentient train engine nor other vehicle.

Why isn't it called Intergalactic Meddling Association of Sentient Train and Other Vehicle Engines (IMASTOVE)?

Excuse you, sentient train engines do not meddle.

Drury wrote:This never happens IRL because 99.9% of locomotives are perfectly bidirectional and carrying the "rear-facing" (locomotives have no rear or front end, trains do) ones as dead weight is a waste, as we can observe in Factorio.

Which means that Factorio is using locomotives belonging to that 0.1%. Simple as that.

Oxyd wrote:

ratchetfreak wrote:

Oxyd wrote:Factorio Diesel locomotives run on diesel. You need to put coal or other fuel in the locomotive because it will automatically contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles and exchange the given fuel for diesel. It will then consume the diesel to power itself.

So you see, the fuel you put in isn't used as fuel for the locomotive; it's used as a payment.

And no, you can't contact the Intergalactic Association of Sentient Train Engines and Other Vehicles yourself to do some business because you're neither a sentient train engine nor other vehicle.

Why isn't it called Intergalactic Meddling Association of Sentient Train and Other Vehicle Engines (IMASTOVE)?

Excuse you, sentient train engines do not meddle.

"Majestic" then

roman566 wrote:

Drury wrote:This never happens IRL because 99.9% of locomotives are perfectly bidirectional and carrying the "rear-facing" (locomotives have no rear or front end, trains do) ones as dead weight is a waste, as we can observe in Factorio.

Which means that Factorio is using locomotives belonging to that 0.1%. Simple as that.

It's using Stephenson's rockets and it's contemporary peers?

No really the issue isn't that it's unrealistic, it's mostly that it's impractical. It just also happens to be impractical IRL too so engineers quickly came up with bidirectional drives.

Just waiting on Factorio to follow suit.

They are bidirectional, YOU can drive it both ways
But the ai can't, because nobody told it how to use the mirrors ,)

Last I checked you could go backwards but only very slowly for some reason.

Also somebody should teach AI to use the mirrors because it's acting in a very stubborn and inefficient way.

i belive that "burner" machines are run by a stirling engine and are completly mecanical.
stirling engines can run of any kind of heat and are very effient, but require extensive cooling