Factorio Forums

The secret to burning liquid fuel is to put it in a barrel and give the barrel a fuel value.

bobucles wrote:The secret to burning liquid fuel is to put it in a barrel and give the barrel a fuel value.

Wooden or plastic barrel can be burned without any burning results, steel barrels are need burning result item - empty barrel.

What's the benefit of this other than roleplaying?
Fluids are much more awkward to handle than items and don't even get me started on barreling.
Also the "gap" you "bridge" between solid fuel and coal is a 20% bump on the floor.
This is a pure gimmick.

Hello and thank you for this amazing game. It was quite a long time since I bought a game that engaged me so much

TL;DR

Change generic "solid fuel" for usable liquid fuels

What ?

One think I have observed is the concept of "solid fuel" made by light oil. Personally I find it a bit redundant as a concept, as we already have light oil that (like real life diesel) could be directly used in thermal engines like real life.

Thereby I would like to propose the use of oils as a fuel for power generation, vehicles and trains.

That would require the introduction of a "oil generator" building that can directly use light oil by pipe (maybe add a further technological option for heavy oil too for less production and more pollution, or LPG for less pollution) to produce electricity. Mod existing for a base:

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/KS_Power

That can be applied to cars and tanks to be able to use liquid fuel using the existing liquid fuel storage mechanics (fluid wagon or flamethrower turret).
As vehicles cannot be directly supplied by pipe, you could refuel them using liquid pumps (as filling a fluid train wagon) and enable players to create their own automatic gas stations. Park the car near the pump, make a condition to fill the vehicle.

There is a good mod called Schall oil fuel mod to use oil products barrels as jerrycans for vehicles.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SchallOilFuel

Maybe not allow using wood, coal or crude oil as road vehicle fuels has a good gameplay impact to force players to depend on oil. Also, not allowing to use crude oil as a fuel makes players to deoend on refining.

Why ?

Can make players more oil-dependent for vehicle transportation (not being just able to use any burnable matter as fuel) will require fuel pump stations and outposts to be planned and deployed.

Substitutes a generic "solid fuel" which needs dedicated chemical plants for light oil barrels. Increases use of barelling mechanisms.

Don't allow players to skip or minimise refining by using crude oil directly.

[Koub] Merged several topics requesting for liquid fuel in addition/replacement of solid fuel.
There are also several other topics that request very related things (or mixed with other concepts) :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=57233
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=62781
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4252

Thank you Koub for redirecting me to this other thread. The search button is never used enough

Reading the entire thread, which dates from 2015, I can see that game mechanics back in the day didn't support fluid handling.

Maybe "solid fuel" was a placeholder that just stayed there...

Anyway, I happily join the ranks of people wishing to fill their vehicles with liquid fuel from an automatic pump one day.

kruzesfactorio wrote: ↑

Thu May 07, 2020 8:43 am

As vehicles cannot be directly supplied by pipe, you could refuel them using liquid pumps (as filling a fluid train wagon) and enable players to create their own automatic gas stations. Park the car near the pump, make a condition to fill the vehicle.

Sounds nice in theory, but I can imagine problems with it in a real game. You've got to park your car exactly in the right position so that the pump will connect to it. This is hard to get right with trains, too -- if you're driving manually. In this regard, trains have one big advantage over cars: they run on tracks, so once you've built a station and managed to place the pumps so that they do connect to the fluid wagons, all trains stopping at that station will automatically be in the correct position. If you want to park your car next to some chests and let it be loaded by inserters, that is possible because the inserters have to be able to reach somewhere into the collision box of the entire car. The area they need to hit is much bigger than the tiny spot where a pump will connect to a fluid train -- but nevertheless, you've got to make sure you park your car at the correct position (i.e. without hitting the inserters, and within reach of them).

Solid fuel types (wood, coal, solid fuel, fluid fuel in barrels) are much easier to use than fluid fuel. It's easy to carry solid items around with you, you can use chest --> inserter --> car fuel stations if you driving your car manually. Best of all: You can even use bots to automatically fuel a vehicle! (Shameless plug: Autodrive comes with different sensors; if the fuel sensor is installed, cars will automatically use fuel from their trunk for refueling, and if the logistic network sensor is installed, cars can request items from or provide items to the logistic network.)

Pi-C wrote: ↑

Fri May 08, 2020 7:10 am

kruzesfactorio wrote: ↑

Thu May 07, 2020 8:43 am

As vehicles cannot be directly supplied by pipe, you could refuel them using liquid pumps (as filling a fluid train wagon) and enable players to create their own automatic gas stations. Park the car near the pump, make a condition to fill the vehicle.

Sounds nice in theory, but I can imagine problems with it in a real game. You've got to park your car exactly in the right position so that the pump will connect to it.

Thank you PI-C for the information. I am not used to the mechanics so I was not aware of this.

Maybe the solution could be developing a hypothetical "liquid pump-inserter" that would be combining the in-game properties of a pump and an inserter: like a pump, it handles liquids and it gives a small pressure boost (much smaller pressure and flow than the big pump not to substitute it for other uses) Like the inserter, it can interact with any "hit box" of the car, (like a regular inserter can interact with any hit box of an assembler) to transfer liquid fuel to it. So you can park anywhere near it just being careful not to crash into it.

To work, maybe you have to give vehicles a liquid storage space akin to the one in the flamethrower turret.

Technically wouldnt it be more feasible?

Pi-C wrote: ↑

Fri May 08, 2020 7:10 am

kruzesfactorio wrote: ↑

Thu May 07, 2020 8:43 am

As vehicles cannot be directly supplied by pipe, you could refuel them using liquid pumps (as filling a fluid train wagon) and enable players to create their own automatic gas stations. Park the car near the pump, make a condition to fill the vehicle.

Sounds nice in theory, but I can imagine problems with it in a real game. You've got to park your car exactly in the right position so that the pump will connect to it.

Aren't cars a bit more lenient than trains in that regard (with ~1 tile of leniency, at least for inserters)?

Granted, cars are also impossible to drive precisely.

Jap2.0 wrote: ↑

Fri May 08, 2020 3:52 pm

Aren't cars a bit more lenient than trains in that regard (with ~1 tile of leniency, at least for inserters)?

Granted, cars are also impossible to drive precisely.

Well, in vanilla Factorio, cars are almost impossible to drive precisely, that's why there is demand for mods like "Vehicle Snap" or "Pavement Drive Assistant". On the other hand, manual driving (with PDA or VS) at least gives you a chance to park a car-based vehicle roughly in the position and direction you want it. In my current own game (paused for over a month by now) I've never got around to use the manual driving assistant mods yet, but I'd could place my truck in front of inserters so that they could reach and load it -- because it has a big collision box. With "Autodrive" (and I guess with "AAI Programmable Vehicles" as well) this just isn't possible. They are useful for pathing to far away distances, but the micro-management at the destination is lacking. Therefore, being able to use bots for loading/unloading them is indeed an important feature.

I mention it here, because it’s a relatively new mod:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/dieselTrains

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/fluidTrains

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/steamTrains