Factorio Forums

Airat9000 wrote:...
6 mw
60 mw
600 mw
...

I agree a milliwatt range of panels would be realistic. I question the usefullness of the 6 mW version, though.

Hi Bob!

Thanx for an awesome mod!

I got a question for a possible minor tweak.

Many of the new items, but especially the power ones, have the same icon as the base game.
i.e. an mk2 medium pole have the same as the mk1/standard/vanilla pole.

Would it be possible to add a small 2-sign or II-sign or something to that icon?

Especially usefull when you have a robonetwork, and the "you lack something"-icon in the bottom

djnekkid wrote:Hi Bob!

Thanx for an awesome mod!

I got a question for a possible minor tweak.

Many of the new items, but especially the power ones, have the same icon as the base game.
i.e. an mk2 medium pole have the same as the mk1/standard/vanilla pole.

Would it be possible to add a small 2-sign or II-sign or something to that icon?

Especially usefull when you have a robonetwork, and the "you lack something"-icon in the bottom

I support this. +1

It can be a '2', chevrons or whatever.

Some of my icons (I think the water/air pumps in MCI) have a big red number that covers most of the icon, if I were to add an indicator, I'd probably go with that option.

that my friend, sounds like an excellent idea!

Hey, I was wondering if this ratios are still current in the latest version, it seems like you might be able to get away with 1 or 2 more steam engines on each tier, could it be that values got changed?

Thanks a lot for the great mods bob!.

MK2 steam engines may take a little less water than those calculations, allowing you to use upto 15 on a line, but I'm not certain. those numbers should still be consistant with the current mod.

I think the main issue with the numbers is it takes 13.3 MK1 boilers to fully heat a line, so you need to use 14, which sugests you can use one more than you actually can in some places.

These are also based on the flow from an offshore pump, if you were to use a waterbore/pump instead, the numbers will be totally wrong.

I have an idea for an entirely new form of power generation for late game. Nitinol engines. I don't even think it would require that much additional coding (but then I'm not very good at coding so I don't know), as IRL they are powered by hot water so you could jut use normal boilers. Interesting property of nitinol is that when heated, it reverts to a set shape. This means that a loop of nitinol wire which is 'trained' to be straight partially submerged in water causes rotation because it is trying to become straight, which can be used to create power like windmills, with rotating magnets around coils of copper wire.

I'm not sure how well I explained it so here's a video I found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOSqwrBb1I

This could be upscaled and research projects are currently going on to create industrial nitinol generators.

The main advantage of these in game would be that they require far less fuel burned to create energy, as there is only a small amount of water required, which is never lost which only needs to be kept at a constant temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. therefore one boiler could probably power several nitinol generators. You could set up a closed system of water which circulates back through the boiler and it would be very efficient on fuel usage.

Proposed crafting recipes:

-Nitinol Wire:
-1x Nitinol
-1x Copper Wire

-Nitinol Engine
-25x Nitinol Wire (for the loop)
-30x Steel Plate (for the main structure)
-15x Copper Wire (for the copper coil for power generation)
-10x Iron Plate (for magnets)
-1x Small Pump (to circulate water)

Download link seems to be broken.

Edit: It downloaded now

I would like a series of solar water boilers added. Could easily be a small field of dark pipes for lower tier and higher tier could be a large dish that focuses all light into a given point. I would imagine the cheap pipe setup to require a pair of 2x2 or a single 3x3 structure to heat as much water as the basic boiler, and even then it would only function during daylight. The dish version would require more expensive / reflective materials and obviously produce more heat in the same building size as the pipes, but neither would produce as much heat in the same building space as a fuel boiler.

Also is it possible to have the steam generators have an upgrade branch for closed loop? By that I mean allow for a water output connection where the cooled water can be recollected.

seronis wrote:I would like a series of solar water boilers added. Could easily be a small field of dark pipes for lower tier and higher tier could be a large dish that focuses all light into a given point. I would imagine the cheap pipe setup to require a pair of 2x2 or a single 3x3 structure to heat as much water as the basic boiler, and even then it would only function during daylight. The dish version would require more expensive / reflective materials and obviously produce more heat in the same building size as the pipes, but neither would produce as much heat in the same building space as a fuel boiler.

Also is it possible to have the steam generators have an upgrade branch for closed loop? By that I mean allow for a water output connection where the cooled water can be recollected.

Although pretty much everything is theoretically possible with scripting, everything you have sugested is beyond the scope of modding without scripts. (Bob's mods is in part a challenge to see what can be made without using scripts at all, the clock is the only exception so far, and was originally written by a friend.)

One of the fairly large debates around the place has been... how come you get more power out of a steam power system than indicated on the fuel?

Well... one of the things I have been working on today is a method of editing steam power in the mod config, it currently looks like this (Not released yet!)

bobmods.config.power.boiler1.energy_consumption = "390kW"
bobmods.config.power.boiler2.energy_consumption = "520kW"
bobmods.config.power.boiler3.energy_consumption = "700kW"
bobmods.config.power.boiler4.energy_consumption = "1.1MW"

bobmods.config.power.boiler1.effectivity = 0.5
bobmods.config.power.boiler2.effectivity = 0.75
bobmods.config.power.boiler3.effectivity = 1
bobmods.config.power.boiler4.effectivity = 1.5

bobmods.config.power.steamengine1.effectivity = 1
bobmods.config.power.steamengine2.effectivity = 2
bobmods.config.power.steamengine3.effectivity = 4

bobmods.config.power.steamengine1.fluid_usage_per_tick = 0.1
bobmods.config.power.steamengine2.fluid_usage_per_tick = 0.075
bobmods.config.power.steamengine3.fluid_usage_per_tick = 0.05

And now for what they mean.

Boiler's effectivity tag.
This is 0.5 for the base game boiler, it means that the fuel efficiency is 50%. so a 25MJ fuel block will give 12.5MJ of energy into the water.

Boiler's energy_consumption tag.
This is "390kW" for the base game boiler, meaning that it will inject 390kJ of energy into the water per second(not tick), it will consume twice this much power from the fuel to do it with it's 50% efficiency

Steam engine's effectivity tag.
This is basically the same thing as the boilers, whatever value of energy is in the water consumed is turned into power, multiplied by this value.

Steam engine's fluid_usage_per_tick tag.
How much fluid is consumed per tick. The 2 values are multiplied by each other, and the power within the water to give you power produced.


Now, knowing that water flowing from an offshore pump holds 5100kW of energy, you can calculate how many boilers it will take to reach 100 degrees.
Given that "offshore-pump" has "pumping_speed = 1" (1 unit of water per tick), here is some maths to prove this value.

water = 100(max_temperature) - 15(default_temperature) = 85(Temperature range).
85(Temperature range) * 1kJ(heat_capacity) per degree = 85kJ per 1 unit of water.
85kJ * 60(Ticks) = 5100kW

This also shows that, with a value of fluid_usage_per_tick = 0.1 on the base game steam engine power generator, 1 pump can support upto 10 steam engines.
Also, knowing the values of the steam engine, you can put these values through another formula.

generator = 5100kW * 1(effectivity) * 0.1(fluid_usage_per_tick) = 510kW

This combined with the fact that the game tells us that it produces 510kW of electricity, the maths is proven.



you can also multiply the effectivity values of the boiler with the steam engine, which tells you that both MK1 gives you 50% efficiency, but a MK4 boiler with a MK3 steam engine gives 600% efficiency. Try it out in game (Charge accumulators from a single steam engine of your choice, powered by a single boiler of your choice, containing 1 fuel block), and the results show that MK1s give 12.5kJ of energy (50% of 25MJ) and Max MKs give 150MJ. And this is why people have been complaining about my steam power being impossible.

The question is... how do you ballance this out so that the maximum efficiency is 100%, and still give a viable improvement in power?
You could say to reduce all effectivity values to base game... that makes the boilers a space saver, and the steam engines.... well, a DOWNGRADE. So, to compensate, instead of decreasing the fluid consumption, you increase it, it then effectively also just becomes a space saver, since the pipe actually supports fewer steam engines, not more.
The 100% efficiency of the base game steam engine doesn't give you much to work with there, so either you instantly enter the land of impossible values, or you're reduced to nothing but a space saver.

Anyway, there will be config options for you to play with in the future.

After reading Accumulator / Solar panel ratio thread I did some Bob's Power mod related math and come up with this layout. It uses standard 3x3 solar panels and high capacity accumulators. But it could be also build with mk2 or mk3 version of panels and accumulators.

I presume that's MK1 roboport and substations too. I'm sure you could make a far larger blueprint if you used higher tier versions of those, but it does look well thought out.

Power 0.12.7:
* Added config options for boiler and steam engine power values. (use config mod to change them)

It doesn't sound like a lot of changes, but it can have a big impact if you use the new config mod to change values.
Yes, it allows you to change the base game item's values, these are set to the defaults.

it has a rather ballanced (in my opinion) set of default values programmed in.
This is an extract from my config mod.

bobmods.config.power.boiler1 = {burner = {effectivity = 0.5}, energy_consumption = "390kW"}
bobmods.config.power.boiler2 = {burner = {effectivity = 0.6}, energy_consumption = "520kW"}
bobmods.config.power.boiler3 = {burner = {effectivity = 0.7}, energy_consumption = "700kW"}
bobmods.config.power.boiler4 = {burner = {effectivity = 0.8}, energy_consumption = "1.1MW"}

bobmods.config.power.steamengine1 = {effectivity = 1, fluid_usage_per_tick = 0.1}
bobmods.config.power.steamengine2 = {effectivity = 1.1, fluid_usage_per_tick = 0.15}
bobmods.config.power.steamengine3 = {effectivity = 1.2, fluid_usage_per_tick = 0.2}


The settings make use of a new library function table_merge, it is still in it's basic form right now and can't merge many tables, but it does allow these values, and many others from their respective entities to be edited in the config file, simply by adding them in (correctly) to these tags.


If enabled, the main changes are:
new boilers will eat through fuel a lot faster than the ones enabled by default in this mod, able to heat up water faster, or with less boilers, and a MK4 is 60% more efficienct than a MK1.
new steam engines will consume more steam to produce more power, instead of being insanely more efficient each step and using less steam, so instead of being able to support 20 MK3 on a line, now it's only 5, but these 5 will still produce 20% more power than 10 MK1s.

Seems like heavy nerf to steam engines - and it heavily changes the ratio downard so will be tricky to upgrade
I guess solar will be only good way again. Those a op steam engines made steam power actually useful. Maybe they were to op - might need to figure out some more tame stats for my own config.

orzelek wrote:Seems like heavy nerf to steam engines - and it heavily changes the ratio downard so will be tricky to upgrade
I guess solar will be only good way again. Those a op steam engines made steam power actually useful. Maybe they were to op - might need to figure out some more tame stats for my own config.

At least these changes arn't turned on by default. The only actual change in this mod is that it allows the config mod to overide the stats, so not only do you need config mod, but you need to turn on the option to change to these stats.

After updating to 0.12.7 the game removed all my boiler-2 and steam-engine-2 entities and items. I also can't find any technologies related to these items in the tech-tree.

Tindrith wrote:After updating to 0.12.7 the game removed all my boiler-2 and steam-engine-2 entities and items. I also can't find any technologies related to these items in the tech-tree.

Are you sure the mod is actually loaded? it sounds more like you don't have the mod installed.

So I figured out the new numbers for the revised values. They seem a lot more reasonable now. Per 1 offshore pump (60 water/sec), this is what you need to maximise energy production;

Boilers
Mk1: 14
Mk2: 10
Mk3: 8
Mk4: 5

Steam Engines
Mk1: 10 (5.1MW)
Mk2: 7 (5.6MW)
Mk3: 5 (6.1MW)

And unlike before, these will mix and match without having to recalculate for every combination.