My thought on the oil industry

[nicolaasvanwaveren]

As far as I know oil are soon to be implemented in the game, though it might already be to late, here is some ideas I have for oil:

Drill rigs/pumps to extract oil from ground or sea floor.

Pipeline from rig/pump to Crude Oil Storage Tank.

Pipeline from Crude Oil Storage Tank to the Petroleum Distillation Tower.

From the Distillation Tower pipeline to a Fuel Storage Tank, LP Gas Storage Tank and a Petrochemical Storage Tank.

Fuel can be seen as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, but to keep it simple used just as Fuel in the game.
This Fuel can be moved via a pipeline to fuel using equipment such as boilers. Perhaps in an assembler we can use fuel an iron plates to pack fuel in Fuel Barrels and then it can be moved on existing transport belts and inserters just like coal.

The LP Gas can be moved via pipelines to equipment such as boilers using fuel such as boilers.

Petrochemicals should piped to a Chemical Plant and produce items such as Plastic, Lubrication Oil, Commercial Explosives.

The Plastic can be used in the recipes of items to be manufactured.

Think it is an idea to use Lubrication Oil in the recipe when manufacturing Express Transport Belts. (Surely something moving that fast need lubrication)

Commercial Explosives can be sent to Mining Drills to increase the output by 50% or even 100%.


So for now I would like to hear what you guys think on this. There are a lot of petroleum based items that can be made, but need to be kept simple for the game.

[quadrapod]

[Redacted]

[slpwnd]

@nicolaasvanwaveren: Thanks for the sum up of ideas.

Actually now all the technical internals necessary for the oil and chemical industry are (more or less) working and we are busy coming up with the content itself. I have spent all day the day before yesterday reading up about the oil processing and chemicals in general on wikipedia and I am still doubtful about certain things. So I think it is a good idea to do a bit of collective brainstorming

At the moment we are experimenting with the following:

Oil refinery processes crude oil into three products: the fuel, the petrochemicals and the oil residuals. There might be 2-3 different recipes with different ratios of the output.

The fuel can be further packed to canysters and delivered to boilers / car / diesel locomotive / etc. Maybe it also will be usable for the flamethrower ammo / rockets. In the future we will for sure have boilers using the fuel in the liquid form, but not now.

The petrochemicals would be further processed in the chemical plant to something like PVC blocks (the plastic) - that would be an intermediate product for higher level recipes (armor, logistic robots, modules, blue science packs? etc.). Maybe other kinds of plastics in the future?

The oil residuals could be burnt (to get rid of them) or further processed. I like the idea of lubricants to use for the higher level belts (or other things). Other possible product is the synthetic rubber. Also the sulfur comes out from the oil processing as a side-product, so that one could be made out of the residuals as well (or be directly present in the oil refinery after the oil processing) and later on used for making explosive or further refined into sulfuric acid, that would be used for bateries in the accumulators / flying robots.

This setup would bring 3 new machines. The oil refinery, the chemical plant (for processing the petrochemicals, oil residuals) and the incinerator (for burning the unused residual oil). Though there might be just the first 2 in the 0.9 update (limited graphics resources:)).

As I said, all this is now in experimentation and development so feel free to throw ideas

[BurnHard]

As I said, all this is now in experimentation and development so feel free to throw ideas

[Did edit some things over time, please reread my post ]

Hm what about splitting the crude oil -products after the refinery into "light fraction" "medium fraction" and "heavy fraction". Fixed output ratio, but all fractions can be burned if there is an exess (with different joules/barrel).

I would name the "plastics" more correctly als "polymere", als for PVC you need chloride somehow You are just more flexible with later recipies, and as in real life, you can use one sort of fractions for so many things, and it is not determined at the time of the destilling process for what it will be used afterwards. For convenience call the 3 fractions "natural gas" (Methane, Ethane, Propane (Butane))., "light oil" and "heavy oil"

So you can use light and medium fraction für some specific polymere recipe, only the medium one for flame throwers, the heavy one for lubricants. And whatever is needed least can be burned in the boilers

[Glockshna]

@nicolaasvanwaveren: Thanks for the sum up of ideas.

Actually now all the technical internals necessary for the oil and chemical industry are (more or less) working and we are busy coming up with the content itself. I have spent all day the day before yesterday reading up about the oil processing and chemicals in general on wikipedia and I am still doubtful about certain things. So I think it is a good idea to do a bit of collective brainstorming

At the moment we are experimenting with the following:

Oil refinery processes crude oil into three products: the fuel, the petrochemicals and the oil residuals. There might be 2-3 different recipes with different ratios of the output.

The fuel can be further packed to canysters and delivered to boilers / car / diesel locomotive / etc. Maybe it also will be usable for the flamethrower ammo / rockets. In the future we will for sure have boilers using the fuel in the liquid form, but not now.

The petrochemicals would be further processed in the chemical plant to something like PVC blocks (the plastic) - that would be an intermediate product for higher level recipes (armor, logistic robots, modules, blue science packs? etc.). Maybe other kinds of plastics in the future?

The oil residuals could be burnt (to get rid of them) or further processed. I like the idea of lubricants to use for the higher level belts (or other things). Other possible product is the synthetic rubber. Also the sulfur comes out from the oil processing as a side-product, so that one could be made out of the residuals as well (or be directly present in the oil refinery after the oil processing) and later on used for making explosive or further refined into sulfuric acid, that would be used for bateries in the accumulators / flying robots.

This setup would bring 3 new machines. The oil refinery, the chemical plant (for processing the petrochemicals, oil residuals) and the incinerator (for burning the unused residual oil). Though there might be just the first 2 in the 0.9 update (limited graphics resources:)).

As I said, all this is now in experimentation and development so feel free to throw ideas

This is very exciting stuff!

[Garm]

let me try at brainstorming as well:

Fuel

- Canisters are bad idea imho: You are making this extensive new machinery for oil and then turn around and transform fuel into "Coal Mk2" item. Fuel should shine at what coal cannot be - being a liquid fuel.
- New fuel boilers, that accept 2 types of pipes (fuel and cold water) and output water.
- New liquid "inserter" machinery designed to move liquid from one liquid storage to another (Water crane for example)
- Use new "inserter" to fuel trains, cars, tank carts.
- New train cart - Tank cart

Petrochemicals

- Coolants - can be used to speed up certain machinery,
- Lubricants
- Solvents - Paint?
- PVC
- Resins
- Polyethylene -> Packaging
- Propylene glycol -> Polyester - fibers

Oil residuals

- Diesel fuel
- Fuel for ships?

[BurnHard]

...
- New Defensive structure - Flamethrower turret - uses fuel pipeline and power to burn biters. Weak armour, little health, close range, significant damage.
...

Well I think for such cases fuel in barrels would be better than pipelines. These barrels can be distributed by logistic robots to the towers. Otherwise you could build the towers only on very restricted areas. I have not tested yet, are the logistic robots delivering ammo to the turrets? or do you have to build requester chests and inserters near every turret?

[Garm]

But the point here is to set foot into completely new type of infrastructure.

We have turrets that use power - they need solid power network to support them.
We have turrets that use items - they need logistical network.

This is just 1st level turret, that uses completely new network. The point here is not to add another turret, or another defence system - point here is to add uses for fuel in particular and liquid pipes in general.

Another reason why I suggested pipes instead of barrels is to diminish possible use of such turrets in offense. It would be very easy for a player to drop such turrets surround it with walls and dump fuel from inventory.

[ssilk]

Sorry, that would provide to place pipes all over the borders of your factory. I already hate to set up the belts for the gun turrets in early game, why should placing pipes all over be better? That's not a good game.

And what should that be? A pipe is used to transport tons of liquid, not some liters for a flamethrower.

[Garm]

That's the point - this turret is designed not to be spammed everywhere, but placed at critical points. The infrastructure for said turret will be bulky, but this would allow it to have comparable strength.

Also - this wont be 1x1 or 1x2 structure, more like 3x3 with comparable flame output.


Again no one forces you to spam pipes across entire perimeter just to areas of immense biter onslaught.

[ssilk]

It doesn't matter if I have to place lines of pipes for one flamethrower or for many, the work is the same.

And what are critical points? They change, depended on your development or how fast you dig the ores.

And when you look at flamethrowers: they burn everything, even the critical points.

[Garm]

Fine I removed it from my suggestion list, no flamethrower turrets.

[Balthazar]

What about liquid train cars? How do we extract the oil? Is oil a finite resource?

[slpwnd]

- Canisters are bad idea imho: You are making this extensive new machinery for oil and then turn around and transform fuel into "Coal Mk2" item. Fuel should shine at what coal cannot be - being a liquid fuel.

I was thinking about this one na bit and I still think the canisters with fuel do have sense. Couple of reasons:
1) We don't have the graphics for the big boilers that can run on the fuel yet.
2) The packaging needs to be done which costs energy (and probabaly some resources too - like an iron plate or something).
3) If necessary we can furhter balance the "Packaged fuel" (in the cannisters) to have lower heat value than the same amount of the fuel fed directly into the boiler.

So basically player would have the (non-obvious choice). Do the packaging (needs the machine, energy and resources) and use a simpler infrastructure or feed the fuel directly to the boiler.

- New fuel boilers, that accept 2 types of pipes (fuel and cold water) and output water.
- New liquid "inserter" machinery designed to move liquid from one liquid storage to another (Water crane for example)
- Use new "inserter" to fuel trains, cars, tank carts.
- New train cart - Tank cart

All these things are planned (except for maybe water crane between two storages). However they will come later due to the limited graphical resources

How do we extract the oil? Is oil a finite resource?

Oil is just another resource (so yes it will be finite). There will be oil fields which contain (sparse) oil spills. An oil mining drill - pumpjack - can be built on top of the spill and it will output the crude-oil via a pipe.

[Balthazar]

Oil is just another resource (so yes it will be finite)

Never been a fan of this; resources for construction should be finite because they never really go away; what you build with them stays around in another form, but its never lost; or it's used to achieve something, like destroying a biter town. With fuel, once you've eaten it, it's gone and you have nothing to show for it. This MIGHT be less of a problem once solar power gets rebalanced but right now i can't see myself using it for fuel, it just seems really silly.

Also what's guaranteed to happen is someone making a mod that adds biofuel to the game, like forestry for minecraft, and once that's in oil becomes effectively worthless because you have a no use for a spike in a resource that's consumed very steadily. Granted, you have no reason to balance your game around mods, but you want to have some kind of guarantee that your trains will keep running and your power wont go out. I already have a stockpile with millions of coal in it because i barely use any.

There will be oil fields which contain (sparse) oil spills. An oil mining drill - pumpjack - can be built on top of the spill and it will output the crude-oil via a pipe.

One of the things i noticed trying to build a coal power plant is that water is quite the bitch to acquire in large enough quantities because there are limited spots you can gather it from, and its extracted pretty slowly. Would you consider making oil work like vespene gas in starcraft I (Fast extraction for a set quantity of oil, then once that's gone the pumpjack still outputs oil but at a much slower rate)? The problem with finite fuel is that your income for it remains relatively stable throughout the game, but your need for it continues to grow every time you expand (More fuel to move things further, more machines to feed) If you have a steady income you can maintain your power and trains, but you wont have excess to use for materials, unless you have a lot of oil spills available to you.

Eg. you have 3 spills available at first, connected to a field with 30000 oil in it. (Pretend numbers) They extract the oil at a rate of 1 per second until the 30000 are gone, then they drop to 0.1 per second. If you have a train running that hauls the oil back and forth between the oil field and your refinery, train eats 1 oil every 5 seconds it's active. Train is easily covered while the field is not depleted, with a large surplus of oil, but once it's depleted the train will eat 2/3rds of the oil that's being produced. You have to expand to new oilfields to support plastic production and larger infrastructure, but you can still run a little infrastructure of the depleted jacks.

[quadrapod]

Oil is just another resource (so yes it will be finite)

Never been a fan of this; resources for construction should be finite because they never really go away; what you build with them stays around in another form, but its never lost; or it's used to achieve something, like destroying a biter town. With fuel, once you've eaten it, it's gone and you have nothing to show for it. This MIGHT be less of a problem once solar power gets rebalanced but right now i can't see myself using it for fuel, it just seems really silly.

Also what's guaranteed to happen is someone making a mod that adds biofuel to the game, like forestry for minecraft, and once that's in oil becomes effectively worthless because you have a no use for a spike in a resource that's consumed very steadily. Granted, you have no reason to balance your game around mods, but you want to have some kind of guarantee that your trains will keep running and your power wont go out. I already have a stockpile with millions of coal in it because i barely use any.

There will be oil fields which contain (sparse) oil spills. An oil mining drill - pumpjack - can be built on top of the spill and it will output the crude-oil via a pipe.

One of the things i noticed trying to build a coal power plant is that water is quite the bitch to acquire in large enough quantities because there are limited spots you can gather it from, and its extracted pretty slowly. Would you consider making oil work like vespene gas in starcraft I (Fast extraction for a set quantity of oil, then once that's gone the pumpjack still outputs oil but at a much slower rate)? The problem with finite fuel is that your income for it remains relatively stable throughout the game, but your need for it continues to grow every time you expand (More fuel to move things further, more machines to feed) If you have a steady income you can maintain your power and trains, but you wont have excess to use for materials, unless you have a lot of oil spills available to you.

Eg. you have 3 spills available at first, connected to a field with 30000 oil in it. (Pretend numbers) They extract the oil at a rate of 1 per second until the 30000 are gone, then they drop to 0.1 per second. If you have a train running that hauls the oil back and forth between the oil field and your refinery, train eats 1 oil every 5 seconds it's active. Train is easily covered while the field is not depleted, with a large surplus of oil, but once it's depleted the train will eat 2/3rds of the oil that's being produced. You have to expand to new oilfields to support plastic production and larger infrastructure, but you can still run a little infrastructure of the depleted jacks.

Keep in mind every world is different. My worlds have for the most part been around lakes, and stone has always been incredibly sparse, which I imagine is very different from your experiences. I think what we need right now are more options, so that instead of it feeling like we can't progress because we didn't find a huge lake or something, it feels like we had to progress in a slightly different way because of our limitations.

Map

If you really feel it's limiting, just change the world gen options on your next playthrough.

[BurnHard]

Would you consider making oil work like vespene gas in starcraft I (Fast extraction for a set quantity of oil, then once that's gone the pumpjack still outputs oil but at a much slower rate)?

I wanted to make this suggestion myself, I really would hate to complete rebuild all my pipework just because of that. In all games I like to see even after hours of gameply the structures of how my factory started.

Generally speaking: It would be awesome if all resourcefields would work that way Stay at the same place, with gradually lower output (so that you have to get new locations), but never stopping output completely. Imagine the awesome factories this would create , giant structures of producing and mining, always growing, always needing more energy, always expanding borders.

Now if a resourcefield is empty and every machinery deconstructed it looks really naked somehow

[quadrapod]

Would you consider making oil work like vespene gas in starcraft I (Fast extraction for a set quantity of oil, then once that's gone the pumpjack still outputs oil but at a much slower rate)?

I wanted to make this suggestion myself, I really would hate to complete rebuild all my pipework just because of that. In all games I like to see even after hours of gameply the structures of how my factory started.

Generally speaking: It would be awesome if all resourcefields would work that way Stay at the same place, with gradually lower output (so that you have to get new locations), but never stopping output completely. Imagine the awesome factories this would create , giant structures of producing and mining, always growing, always needing more energy, always expanding borders.

Now if a resourcefield is empty and every machinery deconstructed it looks really naked somehow

It's not a full release yet... No offense but I'd hate to see the developers restrain themselves feature-wise just so they don't upset your world or development. Part of what you have to accept when playing an alpha is that it's going to change, and you might lose everything.

[BurnHard]

It's not a full release yet... No offense but I'd hate to see the developers restrain themselves feature-wise just so they don't upset your world or development. Part of what you have to accept when playing an alpha is that it's going to change, and you might lose everything.

Yes but part of the alpha is also that you can throw in a bunch of suggestions (things the dev thereself maybe wouldn't think of), and at the end the developers can test, discuss and balance what they think gameplay-wise would make most sense. I am not really demanding anything, just trying to show some viewpoints (as a lot of other users do)

[quadrapod]

It's not a full release yet... No offense but I'd hate to see the developers restrain themselves feature-wise just so they don't upset your world or development. Part of what you have to accept when playing an alpha is that it's going to change, and you might lose everything.

Yes but part of the alpha is also that you can throw in a bunch of suggestions (things the dev thereself maybe wouldn't think of), and at the end the developers can test, discuss and balance what they think gameplay-wise would make most sense.

Indeed, suggestions are encouraged, that's what the ideas and suggestions forum is for. But you shouldn't justify a suggestion with how much it upsets your world.