Well, I feel like by now the discussion is just running in circles. It boils down to whether or not you see the enforced side products as a problem or not.
I will reiterate that personally have ways of dealing with it. So thanks for all the suggestions but I'm fine. I was just pointing out that I thought this shouldn't be a thing in the first place. Some agree, some don't.
It comes down to what the devs think on this.
But just one last time, I want to mention something:
netmand wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:42 pm
If the option of making lubricant out of anything else is added, then they might as well remove Heavy Oil from the game because really it has no other use.
Perhaps that was just poor wording, but it does make it seem like you missed what my end goal was all along. I asked if it wouldn't be better to add a second recipe that was worse to use than heavy oil. I never stated that we should get rid of it.
ssilk wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:28 am
And then it gets simple:
- more tanks (simple strategy: build tank, fill it, destruct it, repeat)
- use more oil products, simplest way by burning solid fuel. Or just storing it, because you will need plenty later. Or see above if that’s still working.
- the more advanced strategies: use circuit network and pumps to control the flow. Basically: do not use all heavy oil and convert the heavy -> light -> petro only when there is too much of one, never all.
Literally all of these points already came up in the discussion before. Which is also why I kinda wanna call the discussion quits and just leave it to the devs as I'm just stuck repeating myself to people making the same suggestions but one last time:
- (tanks:) this is manual interaction which kinda goes against the point of automating everything. It's obviously the quickest and easiest solution otherwise.
- (use products:) as mentioned before, it just seems odd that lubricant be the only one forcing this on you. And you still have to keep on manually adding storage if you can't use up the side products fast enough
- (circuit network:) Completely irrelevant. If one of your tanks for light oil or petroleum is full you can't produce new heavy oil. No matter how smart your circuit condition, if you're out of heavy oil and full on one of the others that's it.
Oktokolo wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 5:36 am
But there is Flare Stack, wich exists since 0.13 and includes a flare stack for burning fluids and an incinerators for burning solids.
Oh, I was wondering if a thing like this existed. Thanks for linking it.
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I agree that factorio has (and should remain to have) a puzzle element to it. But saying you can't produce lubricant because you are somehow not burning all the solid fuel you're creating or wasting enough plastic doesn't seem to be a good answer to me.
Factorio wouldn't be "solved" by providing an alternative
in addition to the heavy oil recipe. Just something to provide a loop / fallback like all the other oil products (see first post).
The existence of recipes like 20 petroleum for solid fuel and 20 heavy oil for solid fuel (in addition to the more efficient 10 light oil for solid fuel) leads me to believe that the devs generally share this notion that side products shouldn't be enforced.
Heavy Oil to solid fuel especially is a completely redundant recipe as you could just crack it and use light oil instead which would give you +10 solid fuel more than if you had converted it directly. Now you might say "That's part of factorios charm. You gotta figure out the best way to go about it" And... I 100% agree... but I do hope that all who thought along the lines of what I just wrote would be hypocritical to say an alternate recipe for lubrication would remove the puzzle aspect or somehow break the otherwise perfect oil-balance.
From where I stand, the inflexibility and potential deadlock of lubricant and the redundancy of 2 recipes for solid fuel are things that stand in direct contrast to each other. You can't sing praise for both.
All the people who advocate that lubricant is the way it is to make the game more challenging / add a puzzle element should also be the ones up in arms to get rid of the additional two recipes for solid fuel.
Please do realize that this entire discussion could be used verbatim in a scenario in which solid fuel from petroleum didn't exist and you could only use light oil:
"Add more tanks or destroy some of the old ones to replace them"
"If you can't produce light/heavy oil because your petroleum tank is full, just make more plastic/sulfur. You're gonna need it later anyway."
"Use circuit conditions to only crack your light oil into petroleum if you have enough of it"
THIS People, this is my main concern here. I might not even had brought this up if not for the 3 different solid fuel recipes setting a precedent.
So please, PLEASE. If you want to continue this discussion, stop bringing up points on how to deal with the excess products. I get it. We get it. But this was never about how to deal with them in the first place.