[0.15.x] Bob's Mods: General Discussion

[PiggyWhiskey]

Just did some googling and found this. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... eneration/

TL;DR Net loss unless you use Productivity Modules.
+5.11MJ/Coal w/3x Prod3 in Light->Solid Fuel.
+6.3MJ/Coal w/3x Prod3 in Light->Solid Fuel and 4x Prod3 in Solid Fuel->Rocket Fuel

+7.16MJ or +8.96MJ if you use 3x Prod3 in the Liquifaction Refineries too.

Potentially 112% net gain in energy potential, not sure about actual energy gain.

[bobingabout]

Electrolyser recipe. Build time for Mk1 is 5s while the others are built in 10s. Maybe make all the recipes in line with the chemical plant? Also, Electrolyser Mk1 and Mk2 have both stone pipe in their recipe, based on the progression maybe steel pipe is more appropriate?

I'll take a look. I knew there was a couple of things in situations like this I needed to look at, but couldn't remember what, and my scans didn't find them.

Ferric chloride recipe takes only Hydrogen Chloride (the gas) and ore (presumably hematite) as input. Usually the Hydrogen Chloride is used in a aqueous solution, as Hydrochloric Acid, thus maybe the recipe should take another input of water?

I'll consider it.

Modules recipes. Usage of module contacts is not quite consistent. While most of modules do have the contacts as ingredients, there are some that don't, tier 3 ones. Not sure what is so special about them, it might be an oversight.

The module contact was used as a filler/drop for intregient count. if you notice, in those recipes that don't have module contacts, such as 3, they're in a step where the number of ingrediants could potentially step down after them, rather than increasing at every step.

If it ends up costing too much to make the fuel blocks with the new system, let me know.

My current starter setup for solid fuel has 23 Electrolysers and 4 chemical plants converting 73 coal into 73 solid fuel per minute.
Coal is 8MJ and solid fuel is 25MJ giving a net gain of 17MJ per unit converted, multiplied by 73 per minute giving me 1020MJ gain per minute.

The entire operation consumes 4.2MW when running. That's 252MJ per minute cost for converting coal to solid fuel.

This provides a net gain of 768MJ/min, but more notably, it also means that I spend 252 to get 1020 in return. That is 24.7% of the gains spent on fuel to produce those gains.

This isn't bad, really. It feels about right. I actually thought it was somewhat less efficient, with fully half of the new gains spent on the conversion. But no... a quarter of the gains feels fairly good and definitely justifies the complexity of setting up such a conversion system. Nobody should be powering their boilers with coal after they've researched solid fuel. These new 0.15 boilers really chew through the coal!! It's startling how fast they'll burn it up. The solid fuel conversion is pretty important because it's going to be quite a wait before you can get solar and nuclear going.

This is With the new Pure Water requirement?
If so, then I think it's good as is. The main reason why I went with the coal+ hydrogen -> solid fuel setup in the first place is basically just to avoid getting more energy out than you put in from hydrogen. With the coal upgrade system instead, you're basically making "More efficient coal", a little more realistic than the seemingly "energy from nothing" hydrogen burning. Besides, if there's a net loss in this instance, it's not really worth converting coal to solid fuel

[nagapito]

If it ends up costing too much to make the fuel blocks with the new system, let me know.

My current starter setup for solid fuel has 23 Electrolysers and 4 chemical plants converting 73 coal into 73 solid fuel per minute.
Coal is 8MJ and solid fuel is 25MJ giving a net gain of 17MJ per unit converted, multiplied by 73 per minute giving me 1020MJ gain per minute.

The entire operation consumes 4.2MW when running. That's 252MJ per minute cost for converting coal to solid fuel.

This provides a net gain of 768MJ/min, but more notably, it also means that I spend 252 to get 1020 in return. That is 24.7% of the gains spent on fuel to produce those gains.

This isn't bad, really. It feels about right. I actually thought it was somewhat less efficient, with fully half of the new gains spent on the conversion. But no... a quarter of the gains feels fairly good and definitely justifies the complexity of setting up such a conversion system. Nobody should be powering their boilers with coal after they've researched solid fuel. These new 0.15 boilers really chew through the coal!! It's startling how fast they'll burn it up. The solid fuel conversion is pretty important because it's going to be quite a wait before you can get solar and nuclear going.

All your math seems is a little off.

You converted (8*73)584MJ into (25*73)1825 MJ, gaining 1241 MJ in the process. If you used 252 MJ to do the conversion, then your gain is 1241-252= 989MJ.

That is an 169% gain in energy (989/584). That is a bit too strong!
A more acceptable end value would be something like 120%-130% (700MJ-759MJ). So, the whole process should consume 1825(solid fuel)-584(coal)-750(desired gain) = 491 MJ, almost the double!

[factoriouzr]

You have a good mod Bob, but can you please restore the bottling recipes to assembly machines.

You are disabling functionality part of the base game which is really annoying. This invalidates my oil blueprints from the base game as just one example, and it also invalidates everything else where I bottle or un-bottle something.

If you still want to stay with your pumps design then let both assemblers and your pumps bottle and empty bottles, but don't remove it from the base game.

[bobingabout]

Sneak preview of what's to come. This is my prototype rocket fuel factory. Yes you need all that. The only inputs are (pure) water and air, including a water feedback loop.
I have the pure water option turned on.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n21qsnc1areh3 ... 1.png?dl=0

[Recon777]

This is With the new Pure Water requirement?
If so, then I think it's good as is. The main reason why I went with the coal+ hydrogen -> solid fuel setup in the first place is basically just to avoid getting more energy out than you put in from hydrogen. With the coal upgrade system instead, you're basically making "More efficient coal", a little more realistic than the seemingly "energy from nothing" hydrogen burning. Besides, if there's a net loss in this instance, it's not really worth converting coal to solid fuel

No, I don't have a setup next to a water spot. I don't have anything near a water bore spot. Those are the numbers for regular solid fuel production. Would it be different with a different type of water?

With the coal upgrade system instead, you're basically making "More efficient coal", a little more realistic than the seemingly "energy from nothing" hydrogen burning.

Well, you always have to subtract your loss from your gains to get the net gain. In this case, I just totaled up the cost of electricity to do the conversion and subtracted that from the net gain of the conversion itself. It's still worth doing because you spend 25% of your gains on the upgraded fuel.

But again, I have no idea about any of the pure water requirement. How do you even get pure water from lake water?

[bobingabout]

This is With the new Pure Water requirement?
If so, then I think it's good as is. The main reason why I went with the coal+ hydrogen -> solid fuel setup in the first place is basically just to avoid getting more energy out than you put in from hydrogen. With the coal upgrade system instead, you're basically making "More efficient coal", a little more realistic than the seemingly "energy from nothing" hydrogen burning. Besides, if there's a net loss in this instance, it's not really worth converting coal to solid fuel

No, I don't have a setup next to a water spot. I don't have anything near a water bore spot. Those are the numbers for regular solid fuel production. Would it be different with a different type of water?

But again, I have no idea about any of the pure water requirement. How do you even get pure water from lake water?

Yes. Very.
"water" is free
Pure water can be mined (Like lithia water, except on ground water patches) however, the easiest way to get it is to boil normal water into steam and condense it into pure water, which makes it VERY expensive.
Which is why I requested for calculations on the new system
You have to go into options -> mods and turn on the pure water option first.

[Recon777]

All your math seems is a little off.

You converted (8*73)584MJ into (25*73)1825 MJ, gaining 1241 MJ in the process. If you used 252 MJ to do the conversion, then your gain is 1241-252= 989MJ.

That is an 169% gain in energy (989/584). That is a bit too strong!
A more acceptable end value would be something like 120%-130% (700MJ-759MJ). So, the whole process should consume 1825(solid fuel)-584(coal)-750(desired gain) = 491 MJ, almost the double!

Yep, I accidentally multiplied one of the numbers by 60 instead of 73. Spreadsheet blunder.
However, 120-130% gain is pretty shallow for a total gain considering that burning straight coal is seriously expensive 3 hours or more into the game. Those new boilers absolutely cruise through the coal. The solid fuel is 3.125x the energy per unit than coal. Gaining 69% isn't that much when you consider the initial coal burning setup as terribly inefficient. This is basically just putting a bunch of research and then complexity into having a more efficient power setup. Another way of looking at it is to say that after this is set up, you'll burn through only 100x coal in the same amount of time as before you'd burn through 169 coal. Saving that 69 coal for other things like running your growing furnace farms or just general expansion.

[Recon777]

Yes. Very.
"water" is free
Pure water can be mined, however, the easiest way to get it is to boil normal water into steam and condense it into pure water, which makes it VERY expensive.
Which is why I requested for calculations on the new system
You have to go into options -> mods and turn on the pure water option first.

I can probably run the numbers on that w/o too much trouble as long as I don't have to start a new map. ^_^
Will get back to you when I figure it out.

[bobingabout]

Yes. Very.
"water" is free
Pure water can be mined, however, the easiest way to get it is to boil normal water into steam and condense it into pure water, which makes it VERY expensive.
Which is why I requested for calculations on the new system
You have to go into options -> mods and turn on the pure water option first.

I can probably run the numbers on that w/o too much trouble as long as I don't have to start a new map. ^_^
Will get back to you when I figure it out.

Great.
You shouldn't need to start a new map, I'm pretty sure I made all the new recipes just available so you don't need to research anything to unlock them.

If it turns out that the cost of boiling water (With a 2:1 ratio of steam engines to boilers, a burner boiler should be giving you 1 unit of water per tick based off the value of 0.5 units consumed per tick on the steam engine, so that's 60 per second for it's 1.8MW power consumption) is too expensive, I can always figure out another way to purify water, perhaps it could just cost water instead of steam.

[Engimage]

Yes. Very.
"water" is free
Pure water can be mined, however, the easiest way to get it is to boil normal water into steam and condense it into pure water, which makes it VERY expensive.
Which is why I requested for calculations on the new system
You have to go into options -> mods and turn on the pure water option first.

I can probably run the numbers on that w/o too much trouble as long as I don't have to start a new map. ^_^
Will get back to you when I figure it out.

Great.
You shouldn't need to start a new map, I'm pretty sure I made all the new recipes just available so you don't need to research anything to unlock them.

If it turns out that the cost of boiling water (With a 2:1 ratio of steam engines to boilers, a burner boiler should be giving you 1 unit of water per tick based off the value of 0.5 units consumed per tick on the steam engine, so that's 60 per second for it's 1.8MW power consumption) is too expensive, I can always figure out another way to purify water, perhaps it could just cost water instead of steam.

You might still consider filtering water. Maybe consuming coal filters in the process or just coal. As an option consider using chemical furnace if its possible to create both input and output pipes in that one. It makes sense to use fuel in the process of purification.

[nagapito]

All your math seems is a little off.

You converted (8*73)584MJ into (25*73)1825 MJ, gaining 1241 MJ in the process. If you used 252 MJ to do the conversion, then your gain is 1241-252= 989MJ.

That is an 169% gain in energy (989/584). That is a bit too strong!
A more acceptable end value would be something like 120%-130% (700MJ-759MJ). So, the whole process should consume 1825(solid fuel)-584(coal)-750(desired gain) = 491 MJ, almost the double!

Yep, I accidentally multiplied one of the numbers by 60 instead of 73. Spreadsheet blunder.
However, 120-130% gain is pretty shallow for a total gain considering that burning straight coal is seriously expensive 3 hours or more into the game. Those new boilers absolutely cruise through the coal. The solid fuel is 3.125x the energy per unit than coal. Gaining 69% isn't that much when you consider the initial coal burning setup as terribly inefficient. This is basically just putting a bunch of research and then complexity into having a more efficient power setup. Another way of looking at it is to say that after this is set up, you'll burn through only 100x coal in the same amount of time as before you'd burn through 169 coal. Saving that 69 coal for other things like running your growing furnace farms or just general expansion.

You need to take into account that once you start producing solid fuel, you should use this source to fuel the boilers, reducing the amount of coal you spend.
And also take into account the more efficient Bob's boilers. So, yeah, you initially have a kinda mehh positive return but with better tech, you become more efficient at achieving the 30%.

At end game, you are saving 30% coal by using solid fuel, that is a huge number! A normal bonus should be like 10%, so going 30 is already a lot. It might not seem much, but keep in mind that all stacks up.
End game you use less 30% coal to produce energy, you have more efficient machines, that produce faster, so you also use less energy and so on... At the end of everything (better machines, modules, etc), the 30% save in coal will actually be a LOT higher since the amount of energy used per unit produced also reduces drastically.

That is why balancing is so hard, so many variables when looking at the whole picture!

[bobingabout]

And also take into account the more efficient Bob's boilers. So, yeah, you initially have a kinda mehh positive return but with better tech, you become more efficient at achieving the 30%.

You can't really use my new boilers to make pure water though... they may be more efficient (so better at producing power) but they spend more energy to heat the water higher, which, is wasted if you're just going to condense it into pure water.

Condensing it in the chemical boiler, or even boiling steam in the chemical boiler is a valid option... if I update it to have a fluid output.

[nagapito]

And also take into account the more efficient Bob's boilers. So, yeah, you initially have a kinda mehh positive return but with better tech, you become more efficient at achieving the 30%.

You can't really use my new boilers to make pure water though... they may be more efficient (so better at producing power) but they spend more energy to heat the water higher, which, is wasted if you're just going to condense it into pure water.

Condensing it in the chemical boiler, or even boiling steam in the chemical boiler is a valid option... if I update it to have a fluid output.

I think we are having a different discussion

I am talking about the positive net of transforming coal into solid fuel. With the current setup, you have a positive net around 69% when you spend 73 coal to produce 73 solid fuel since it only requires 252 MJ to produce the solid fuel. I said that the profit should be more balanced, around 30%, so requiring to use 491 MJ of energy (or maybe instead of 73 solid fuel, receive only half of the solid fuel).

He argued that 30% is too low because the waste that boilers cause burning coal and that is why I say that at end game, better boilers are more efficient producing energy, so he will also use less coal/solid fuel to produce the required energy for the coal->solid fuel system. The whole system needs to be taken into account and just because early game the return is too low is not a reason to improve the stats, its instead an even bigger reason for the player to tech up and upgrade the system

[Recon777]

By end game, you should be completely off coal power anyway, so that doesn't matter.

I'm currently doing the math for all of this USING the pure water requirement. It's very expensive. I'm not finished yet with the math, but here's what my setup looks like which produces exactly 100 solid fuel per minute.

Question: Does "drain" always occur even when a machine is running? These electrolysers have a drain of 6kW but a consumption of 180kW when running. So is that 186kW total when running or just the 180?
I'm doing both a practical measurement and a theoretical calculation for the entire chain.

[bobingabout]

I think drain is only counted when the machine isn't running, so it's either 6kw or 180kw.

[Recon777]

Um... why don't the boilers say how much steam they produce when you hover over them?
I see 1.8MW energy consumption, but I need to know how many units of steam that buys me.

[bobingabout]

Um... why don't the boilers say how much steam they produce when you hover over them?
I see 1.8MW energy consumption, but I need to know how many units of steam that buys me.

It's 1 per tick.
The information is geared for use with steam engines, we're using them in a non-standard way.

The reason you can come to 1 per tick is by examining the code and doing calculations. You could work out 1 per tick yourself just looking at the boiler itself and plugging in values about water, however we are flat out told that 1 boiler provides for 2 steam engines, so it's easier to look to the steam engine which states that it consumes 0.5 units of water per tick. So, 1 per tick, and since it's 60 ticks a second, 60 units of water per second.

[Recon777]

Bob, please read to the end. I finished the calculations for the solid fuel conversions and compared the figures WITH and WITHOUT the pure water requirement.

All your math seems is a little off.

You converted (8*73)584MJ into (25*73)1825 MJ, gaining 1241 MJ in the process. If you used 252 MJ to do the conversion, then your gain is 1241-252= 989MJ.

That is an 169% gain in energy (989/584). That is a bit too strong!
A more acceptable end value would be something like 120%-130% (700MJ-759MJ). So, the whole process should consume 1825(solid fuel)-584(coal)-750(desired gain) = 491 MJ, almost the double!

When coming up with the 1.69 gain, I think we've all screwed up on the math here.

You pointed out that this is from 989/584 right?
But 989 is the net gain and 584 was the original value of the coal.
It doesn't make sense to divide the net gain by the original value.
To determine your increase ratio over the process, you have to take the total end value and divide it by the total amount spent (what you give up to get the end product).

So in the previous example, that would be 1825/(584+252) = 2.18x
This is also time limited based on how many machines you have working on the conversion. It is also not recursive since you can't run solid fuel back into the system to perpetuate this gain (this is good).

This means that (with time) you can convert your coal to a more efficient fuel by getting 2.18x (as measured roughly) the energy output from the new fuel, accounting for conversion costs.
And this is when electrolysers use NORMAL water.

However... I have new calculations for when electrolysers require PURE water. It is not nearly as rosy. But it is still somewhat good.
The TL;DR of this is that by requiring pure water, your NET GAINS are cut pretty much in half.

My calculations are for converting 100 coal into solid fuel inside one minute.

Four chemical plants will do this.
A chemical plant has a crafting speed of 1.25
The solid fuel recipe is 3 seconds and requires 1 coal and 250 hydrogen.
That means 1/3 solid fuel per second or 1 1/3 solid fuel with four machines.
That's 80 per minute.
Multiply this by the crafting speed to get 100 per minute.
The total hydrogen requirement would be 25000 per minute.

100 solid fuel has 2500MJ. This is the total gain per minute.
Now we have to break down the total MJ cost per minute.

First, we have an 800MJ loss due to the coal being converted.
Chemical plants use 210kW of power.
0.21MJ per second (x60) for four machines = 50.4MJ per minute for the chemical plants.

Next, we work out the cost of the hydrogen. We know it requires 25,000 total, and the recipe produces 20.
That's 1250 recipes crafted per minute.
The electrolyser's crafting speed is 0.8 so each recipe takes 1.25 seconds.
The electrolyser's energy use is 180kW and if run for 1.25 seconds that's 0.225MJ per recipe.
Total hydrogen cost is then 281.25MJ to operate the electrolysers.

Next up is the pure water assembler cost. The hydrogen recipe requires 10 pure water to make 20 hydrogen.
So 25000 hydrogen needs 12500 pure water.
Pure water is crafted 100 at a time. That means there are 125 recipes run.
The blue assemblers have a crafting speed of 0.75 which means 1.333 seconds per recipe.
Blue assemblers use 135kW of power to run, so that is 0.18MJ per recipe.
125 recipes x 0.18MJ = 22.5MJ per minute total.

Lastly, we have to calculate the cost of the steam.
Boilers presumably produce 60 steam per second.
Boilers use 1.8MW to run, which means 1.8MJ is consumed to produce 60 steam.
12500 steam (total) divided by 60 = 208 one-second "recipes" of steam.
1.8MJ per recipe = 375MJ per minute total.

This means the Grand Total cost per minute for this operation is:
800 (for the coal lost)
50.4 (to run the chemical plants)
281.25 (to run the electrolysers)
22.5 (to run the assemblers)
375 (to run the boilers)
= 1529.15 total cost.
The gain, again, is 2500MJ.
The final calculation, then, is to take the total gain (2500) divided by the total loss (1529.15).
This comes to 1.63x
Compare this to the method NOT requiring pure water, which was a 2.18x (as measured roughly).

Now, I'll argue strongly (again) that this should NOT be any less than that. Mostly because of the massive coal cost for operating a coal-fired setup for many hours as opposed to a solid fuel setup. The new boilers use a LOT more coal than they used to, and it's going to chew through that initial coal patch fairly quickly. Allowing the player to give themselves a 63% increase (not 163%) by running their coal through this rather complex (for the early game) setup, is not overpowered in my opinion. Also remember it requires several green-science technologies to be researched before you can achieve it.

When running the actual numbers for the OLD system (not needing pure water), you can remove 397.5MJ from the cost. That produces 2500MJ at a cost of 1131.65MJ.
Interestingly, this means the gain is 2.21x mathematically, which is VERY close to my measured 2.18x

Considering 2.21x increase WITHOUT pure water and comparing it to 1.63x WITH pure water, we can conclude the following:
This is a 121% increase compared to 63% increase.
That means the NET GAIN is 1.92x MORE without the pure water requirement. Nearly double.
So requiring pure water HALVES the advantage of this system. A pretty serious hit. Survivable? Sure. Annoying? Definitely.

My recommendations? Well, through the magic of spreadsheets, we can actually adjust the HYDROGEN requirement for your solid fuel recipe. Currently, it's 250.
But if we require pure water, that puts the net gain at 63%.
I propose forcing the net gain to be 100%. To do this, all you would have to do is adjust the hydrogen cost of solid fuel to 147 per recipe instead of 250.
With 147 hydrogen per solid fuel, and requiring pure water in the electrolysis, you have a precise (2.0008x) doubling of your total MJ by running your coal through this process. And again, because the boilers eat coal so quickly, I think it's a fair goal to give the player a doubling of their efficiency by setting up this process, thus easing off the demand on the coal patch after a few hours of play. Considering how long it'll be before solars come, I think that's a fair deal.

Or likely more preferable (for round numbers) would be 150 hydrogen per recipe, which still gives you 1.987x gains.

[nagapito]

Your math gives you how much you gain compared with how much you invest, in common language, you are using the total value of sales without any expense compared to the total amount of expenses you will have.
That is a flawed methodology. You invest 100, received 120, gained 20. 120/100 = 1.2. You didnt had 120% of profit

Return of investment (ROI) is done by comparing the total profit (sells - expenses) against expenses. You spend 100, you make 120, you profited 20 and you have a return investment of 20/100 of 20%, that is, you gained 20% from what you had