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The reason why we should have this is because it can be a better source of power by using oil instead of just steam power though out the whole game. But it makes way more pollution. A idea is it could have 2 parts a combustion engine and a generator in front of the combustion engine outputting the power.

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Good proposal, two comments on it:

1. I'd make "diesel oil" produced at chemical plants like lubricant, not the oil directly. It may also be used to power trains.

2. To be reliable power source oil derricks should deplete at much slower rate. also current input speed from all derricks should be somewhat more obvious, so you don't catch a sudden outage. My proposal about giving average tube flow during last 1-10 minutes in numbers on every tube is possibly a way.

3. You may feed steam engine and furnaces with solid fuel produced out of oil components. So it's sorta already implemented.

If you were to put what we have in game at the moment down compared to that, you'd have the "boiler" as everything between air intake and combustion chamber (Except simplified, because, you know, it's coal boiling water) and then the turbine, generator and transformer are built in as one unit. Oil storage tanks already exist, so we can ignore that part.

To move over from a steam engine to a combustion engine, well, you could either do an oil burning engine and simply replace the boiler, or go with the combustion engine, in which case you'd probably have to remake the whole thing.

Which brings us back to the idea of mechanical power (Like the good old days of factories being powered by a giant water wheel)
You'd have the mechanical energy transmission system link the combustion engine to the generator, and could also split the existing steam engine into a steam engine, and generator. that way there'd be a little cross over with generators. Mechanical transmission could be used for a lot more than just powering a generator too, I mean, it could power a stage of mining drill between burner and electric, or even things like assembling machines.

Basically, I'd want to see this entire list implemented, or at the very least, the ability to burn oil directly as an oil powered boiler, and a single fuel engine power generator unit. Mechanical energy would be a bonus.


On another point though... does anything like this even exist in real life? As far as I know, all power plants in the UK are steam powered. Either Gas burning, Coal burning or Nuclear, (possibly also oil burning in some rare cases) they all boil water to create steam, to be pumped through a turbine.

Well yes. Best way to convert something combustible (temperature energy) is via turbine or steam engine by heating water. So overally this would come to some sort of oil boiler which has tubes instead of belts. That may also be generalized to oil furnace. But we already have that through solid fuel blocks, so it seems kinda redundant... Why people would like this idea - is simple. It's much easier to put a long tube than to put a long belt. First it occupies less space, secondly it does not waste that many resources along its length. If we dig down to this - the reason is even funnier. Underground tube can span like 12 tiles long while underground belt only 5. So... probably it's time to put a rant for much longer underground belts? On the other hand having most belts underground will remove a lot of eye candy from the game with all that stuff moving back, forward, splitting, etc... On the third side - this may be available and higher tiers of belts, and when oil appear when you don't care that much for belts fun and getting logistic network set up.

So the overall proposal that alliviates most of these issues - every next tier of belts (red, blue) should have their underground counterparts span 2 tiles longer than previous one. That means 7 tiles for red underground belt (and you finally may cross assembly machine with other belts and inserters). And blue underground belt should be able to 9 tiles long. Graphics for entry/exit points should be made more open, so that items on belt are clearly seen, and direction of belt is clearly seen. Probably add some semi-transparent visualization of items flowing underground.

As for original question - having underground belts with long portions (like pipes) will make it feasible to send solid fuel to current burner boilers.