Suggestion about a water pump.

[Shokubai]

WHAT? pumps are powered by wave action. Everybody knows this!

...and belt systems are powered by the local gerbil population who happen to feed happily on bits of iron coal and copper.

[mexmer]

WHAT? pumps are powered by wave action. Everybody knows this!

...and belt systems are powered by the local gerbil population who happen to feed happily on bits of iron coal and copper.

albeit, there is no wave action without moon

[Shokubai]

WHAT? pumps are powered by wave action. Everybody knows this!

...and belt systems are powered by the local gerbil population who happen to feed happily on bits of iron coal and copper.

albeit, there is no wave action without moon

It's seismically generated

[Lav]

I do not want even true technical realism, because planning of small factory takes thousands of engineer work hours and planning and building of production chain able to launch rockets to orbit takes resources of big country. But I want to have consistent and as realistic game as practically possible. I would like also to have possibility to fail, if I make wrong decisions.

You seem to be missing a very important point. Creation of initial power generation system is a difficult job for any new player. Making it a "cursed circle" (where you need power to get water to get steam to get power), and then demanding that the player resorts to specific tricks to "break the circle" will destroy the experience of many new players and turn them away from the game.

That is worth more than any useless realism you're talking about.

Moving to power generation is a critical step for early factory. It is already more complex than anything a player does before that - effectively the player's very first attempt at automation. It must be straightforward.

[Roxor128]

I'm just going to say that I like the idea of the offshore pump becoming just an inlet that serves as a perpetually-full storage tank, and which requires a pump on land to draw on its contents (I think this was mentioned a few pages back).

Initially, this pump can be a burner one, which you might want to keep around as a blackout-resistant means of supplying water to your boilers, and which can later be taken over by the existing electric pump.

This could be done entirely with code. The burner pump could just be a palette swap of the existing one by changing the tint colour.

I don't know if it could be done as a mod, though. I haven't looked into the Lua files regarding these entities yet. If so, maybe it's worth testing out.

[Hannu]

You seem to be missing a very important point. Creation of initial power generation system is a difficult job for any new player.

I disagree. Current power system is very simple and straightforward and beginner, even schoolkid, can easily make working system by trial and error. My 11 year old daughters had no problems even they are not specially technically talented. If it is really difficult to understand that pump pumps water to boiler (despite if it needs energy or not), which takes also coal to make steam which goes to steam engine through pipe, I would recommend watching videos instead of gaming games.

Of course it can be hard, if you want to have exact ratios for every belt, boiler and inserter, but in my opinion such special play styles should be difficult. Basic setup, water and coal to boiler and steam to engines is trivial even for small kids.

Making it a "cursed circle" (where you need power to get water to get steam to get power), and then demanding that the player resorts to specific tricks to "break the circle" will destroy the experience of many new players and turn them away from the game.

That is worth more than any useless realism you're talking about.

There could be simple solutions, like small powered burner pump. I understand that there may be economic reasons to make game super simple and easy but I would say that whining about complexity of couple of more entities or feeding coal to pumps is as futile as whining about "useless" realism.

Moving to power generation is a critical step for early factory. It is already more complex than anything a player does before that - effectively the player's very first attempt at automation. It must be straightforward.

World is filled with simple straightforward games. There are tens of thousands of them and hundreds of new games are programmed during every year, and all are certainly simple and easy. I hope that there would be room for couple of hard and interesting games too. Unfortunately many promising games will be destroyed when they get more popular. Factorio, Kerbal space program etc. Of course Factorio is a great game and I am happy that devs get also economic prize for their hard work to realize an ingenious idea, but I hope that they would give a possibility to mod things to far too complex, difficult and realistic for most players.

I have said that I could take voluntary part of programming of non commercial supernerdy game for engineers and university level tech students, which does not even want to be popular. But it is far too large project for one man (at least me). I have tried, but I like only to program physical models and mathematical algorithms and do not have the patience to program sane user interfaces and make even crappy graphics. It also destroys gaming experience if I have programmed or modded the game. I think always how to make code or mod better instead of immersion to the game world.

[BlackKnight]

You seem to be missing a very important point. Creation of initial power generation system is a difficult job for any new player.

I disagree. Current power system is very simple and straightforward and beginner, even schoolkid, can easily make working system by trial and error. My 11 year old daughters had no problems even they are not specially technically talented. If it is really difficult to understand that pump pumps water to boiler (despite if it needs energy or not), which takes also coal to make steam which goes to steam engine through pipe, I would recommend watching videos instead of gaming games.

Of course it can be hard, if you want to have exact ratios for every belt, boiler and inserter, but in my opinion such special play styles should be difficult. Basic setup, water and coal to boiler and steam to engines is trivial even for small kids.

Making it a "cursed circle" (where you need power to get water to get steam to get power), and then demanding that the player resorts to specific tricks to "break the circle" will destroy the experience of many new players and turn them away from the game.

That is worth more than any useless realism you're talking about.

There could be simple solutions, like small powered burner pump. I understand that there may be economic reasons to make game super simple and easy but I would say that whining about complexity of couple of more entities or feeding coal to pumps is as futile as whining about "useless" realism.

Moving to power generation is a critical step for early factory. It is already more complex than anything a player does before that - effectively the player's very first attempt at automation. It must be straightforward.

World is filled with simple straightforward games. There are tens of thousands of them and hundreds of new games are programmed during every year, and all are certainly simple and easy. I hope that there would be room for couple of hard and interesting games too. Unfortunately many promising games will be destroyed when they get more popular. Factorio, Kerbal space program etc. Of course Factorio is a great game and I am happy that devs get also economic prize for their hard work to realize an ingenious idea, but I hope that they would give a possibility to mod things to far too complex, difficult and realistic for most players.

I have said that I could take voluntary part of programming of non commercial supernerdy game for engineers and university level tech students, which does not even want to be popular. But it is far too large project for one man (at least me). I have tried, but I like only to program physical models and mathematical algorithms and do not have the patience to program sane user interfaces and make even crappy graphics. It also destroys gaming experience if I have programmed or modded the game. I think always how to make code or mod better instead of immersion to the game world.

Great opinion Hannu. I appreciate your input. Certainly the complexity could be increased a bit in a few areas with minimal impact on the overall learning curve.

An offshore pump requiring an additional burner pump wouldn't be too much to ask for the early game I feel.. its far from rocket science and much more logical to me than just placing an energy-free pump. Once available, an electric pump could be researched and replace it. Plus, I would recommend a few basic tutorials for first timers be created who may have a hard time becoming comfortable with the game.. and the placement of how to built an electric generating setup would be one of these - which would cover the concern anyone has (assuming youtube isn't already the goto ref for everyone).

[Factorie]

Shouldn't add that much complexity. Once you get electricity it'll be negligible.

[bobingabout]

I think one of the biggest issues I have with this (secondary to the whole "you need water to make power, but you need power to make water" "chicken and the egg" scenario) is the situation you find yourself in after a power shortage.

right now, when you get low power, your miners slow down their mining speed, which results in a fuel shortage, so the power generation reduces, so your drills mine even slower, and eventually you completely run out of power. and from this point, getting things kick-started again becomes quite difficult, you have to cut power to your base, yet keep your miners running, which could be difficult depending on wiring, and keep it like that until you resolve the low power issue.

If water pumps are powered by electricity, you could end up in the same situation.

However, if the water pump was set to a primary energy source (which I think is currently only used for a few things like laser turrets right now) then the situation would be improved.

[mexmer]

I think one of the biggest issues I have with this (secondary to the whole "you need water to make power, but you need power to make water" "chicken and the egg" scenario) is the situation you find yourself in after a power shortage.

right now, when you get low power, your miners slow down their mining speed, which results in a fuel shortage, so the power generation reduces, so your drills mine even slower, and eventually you completely run out of power. and from this point, getting things kick-started again becomes quite difficult, you have to cut power to your base, yet keep your miners running, which could be difficult depending on wiring, and keep it like that until you resolve the low power issue.

If water pumps are powered by electricity, you could end up in the same situation.

However, if the water pump was set to a primary energy source (which I think is currently only used for a few things like laser turrets right now) then the situation would be improved.

spinning circle of death

that's why also like idea, that was posted here few times already (although i myself was for burner offshore pump) that instead offshore pump, will be only water inlet, and there will be burner pump, that actually does the work (eg. fill pipes from inlet). you can easily have paralel burner pump with electric, and you will just stuff it with coal to restart circle.

i myself usually have box with coal near boilers as backup, in case i run out of fuel.

[mp0011]

Maybe reduce regular offshore pump throughput, and add new pump Mk2, that requires electricity?
Anyway, it's probably just a matter of adding accumulator and solar panel, separated from the grid, and "pump electricity problem" is fixed forever...

[Deadly-Bagel]

Maybe reduce regular offshore pump throughput, and add new pump Mk2, that requires electricity?

...Or you could make it possible for the existing electric Pump to extract from water bodies? The crafting window is cluttered with enough junk as it is.

[mrvn]

Has your character ever eaten or drank since you started playing ?

Yes I have. "Eating" fish heals you.

And since there is raw fish why can't I cook it in a furnace?

Also did you notice your space suite? It recycles the air you breath, your sweat and other waste into a nurishing, if not tastey, food paste.

[Hannu]

And since there is raw fish why can't I cook it in a furnace?

I think if you cook fishes in an iron smelting furnace they may become little bit too well done.

[mexmer]

And since there is raw fish why can't I cook it in a furnace?

I think if you cook fishes in an iron smelting furnace they may become little bit too well done.

since smelting furnace can "autotune" for different temperatures (copper ore, iron ore, iron->steel), this should be no issue or just use wood instead of coal, gives less heat.

[Hannu]

since smelting furnace can "autotune" for different temperatures (copper ore, iron ore, iron->steel), this should be no issue or just use wood instead of coal, gives less heat.

I tried once to try insects with normal kitchen owen. Its temperature control was not intended to use below 50 C and it overheated. Fortunately I tried with low value species. I would not expect that smelting furnace intended to operate at 1200-1600 C would work much better at 200 C. But you can always try. It should not take many code lines to make a mod.

[burninghey]

I would prefer 2 working modes for the offshore pump.

1) no electricity. 120 units of water per second. Just enough to jumpstart early power.
2) electricity. standard 1200 units of water per second. Power consumption 900 kW.

or

1) no electricity. 100 units of water per second. Just enough to jumpstart early power.
2) adjusts electricity consumption based of pump speed. 100 additional water per seconds adds 100 kW. Up to maximum pipe throughput.

[darkfrei]

1) no electricity. 120 units of water per second. Just enough to jumpstart early power.
2) electricity. standard 1200 units of water per second. Power consumption 900 kW.

Tier 1: burner offshore pump with 60 fluids per second
Tier 2: electric offshore pump with actual parameters (1200 fluids/s?)

10 fluids for 1 kJ looks good for me. So first tier needs 6 kW burner and 120 kW for second tier. With direct connection and cheatty 12000 fluids/s it takes also 1.2 MW.

[5thHorseman]

Make it so you have to repeatedly click the pump to give it power. Like oh so many mobile games.

No, wait. Don't do that it's terrible.

[mrvn]

I would prefer 2 working modes for the offshore pump.

1) no electricity. 120 units of water per second. Just enough to jumpstart early power.
2) electricity. standard 1200 units of water per second. Power consumption 900 kW.

or

1) no electricity. 100 units of water per second. Just enough to jumpstart early power.
2) adjusts electricity consumption based of pump speed. 100 additional water per seconds adds 100 kW. Up to maximum pipe throughput.

When you place down a burner inserter it has enough initial power to grab some fuel. Same could be used for pumps. When placed they pump some amount of water and then need fuel/electricity to continue. That way when you build your power plant and it gets some water, the boiler turns that into steam, the steam engine makes some electricity and the pump takes off.