When asking closed-ended questions, the choice of options provided, how each option is described, the number of response options offered and the order in which options are read can all influence how people respond.
In response to powering the pump via coal being trivial the same could be said for powering the boilers with coal.
Sure people may only use the entity a few times and never use it again when converting to solar, but does that mean it shouldn't be in the game? I can think of a couple other entities used only a few times and never again such as the iron pickax, fish, wooden crates, wooden power poles etc.
In my opinion, Factorio is a game about logistic puzzles that need to be solved...and what better place to put a trivial puzzle to solve than at the beginning of the game?
Re: Suggestion about a water pump.
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 6:13 pm
by <NO_NAME>
@ssilk @OdinYggd
Since this is not a good place to discuss about votes on the forum, I created a new thread. viewtopic.php?f=55&t=33561
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2016 2:48 pm
by Engimage
I think the best way would be some sane progress. Like burner pump - electrical pump - pump station. And they are limited to some value of throughput.
Btw Burner pump makes a lot of sense and fits well into starter steam electricity production as you will feed boilers anyways.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 6:09 am
by Hannu
Why not. If there was a burner pump, it would be relatively easy to feed it with coal at beginning by just branching the line from boilers. Later in the game player could do a separate emergency power unit from a burner pump, a boiler and a steam engine and use it to kickstart the large power plant with suitable circuit conditions and power switches. In my opinion such an automation would fit perfectly in the game like Factorio. If it is too demanding for average player, at least possibility to mod pumps to use energy would be nice (I do not know is it possible now).
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 11:27 am
by Hoeloe
I would suggest to just make the normal offshorepump using electical power. To start off with electical power at T0 you could design some sort of a small offshoreburner/steamengine, which needs to placed offshore and needs coal to work (manually given or with inserters). This burner/engine could provide about 50-100kW or even less, just enough so you can start offshorepumps and inserters of the normal boilers, but are not viable for larger setups.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 11:31 am
by ssilk
So please tell me the difference between:
- Pump with burner
- Electric pump with burner steam-engine
Where is the difference - gameplay-wise?
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 11:54 am
by Hannu
ssilk wrote:So please tell me the difference between:
- Pump with burner
- Electric pump with burner steam-engine
Where is the difference - gameplay-wise?
What is the point of electric pump with steam engine? Some kind of hybrid model maybe?
I think that if pumps will be changed there should be three models.
1. a burner pump with a capacity of maybe 20 units/s for beginning of the game and bootstrapping of power plants in later.
2. an electric pump like current offshore pump.
3. an expensive electric high capacity (300 units/s) pump for very large coal (and nuclear in future versions) powerplants. Maybe there should be higher capacity pipes too.
But pumps is not the first priority problem in my opinion. It would not be a big change in the game in any case. Water is free and unlimited resource and it is easy and cheap to make (or copy if someone is not familiar with combinators and basic logic) logics to start up large powerplants after the blackout. Maybe new pumps could be part of larger fluid dynamics overhaul in some phase.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 12:43 pm
by Alice3173
Hoeloe wrote:I would suggest to just make the normal offshorepump using electical power. To start off with electical power at T0 you could design some sort of a small offshoreburner/steamengine, which needs to placed offshore and needs coal to work (manually given or with inserters). This burner/engine could provide about 50-100kW or even less, just enough so you can start offshorepumps and inserters of the normal boilers, but are not viable for larger setups.
If I'm understanding you correctly I think this is mostly a moot point. Powering burner inserters is pretty easy all things considered. A stack of like 5ish coal powering each inserter should fairly easily be enough for you to get your power supply off the ground long enough for you to replace them with normal inserters.
It would be automated, so no additional player interaction needed like current 'magically' pump, but it would also be a weak pump.
So it could be balanced vs an electrical in matters of needed space and, of course, ability to support boilers and steam engine.
For example: 1 windmill = 1-2 steam engines while 1 electric pump = 10 steam engines
This way we could have together with nuclear power a continuous steam upgrade system:
1) windmill, boilers and steam engine
2) electric pump
3) advanced boilers@100°(1 vs 8 boilers maybe?)
4) steam turbine with advanced boilers@400°
5) cooling tower retrieving old steam@80°
6) nuclear reactor@400° (1 vs x advanced boilers)
Even after these thoughts i must admit that 'magic pump' has simply some advantages because it is easy and cannot fail during a brown out or black out.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 4:21 pm
by wolfmanrawrs
Instead of the above options, the pump could just count as gravity fed until power is applied. This would satisfy most sides of the argument and do two things.
- Low volume of water as a kick start without power
- Regular volume once electricity is applied
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 4:52 pm
by mexmer
Hannu wrote:
I think that if pumps will be changed there should be three models.
1. a burner pump with a capacity of maybe 20 units/s for beginning of the game and bootstrapping of power plants in later.
2. an electric pump like current offshore pump.
3. an expensive electric high capacity (300 units/s) pump for very large coal (and nuclear in future versions) powerplants. Maybe there should be higher capacity pipes too.
just fyi offshore pump has 10 unit pipe, and 1 u/s output. so 20/s burner pipe will be highly OP.
mind 1 offshore pump is just enough to feed 10 steam egines, since their consumption is 0.1u/s, because boiler conversion (or effectivity if you want ) is 0.6, you need ~14 boilers to produce enough steam for 10 boilers
if don't mind having 1.5u/s or even 2u/s electrical pump as stage 2 after research.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 5:33 pm
by Hannu
mexmer wrote:
just fyi offshore pump has 10 unit pipe, and 1 u/s output. so 20/s burner pipe will be highly OP.
Offshore pump pumps 60 units per second and steam engine uses 6 units per second. Refineries and chemical plants consume about 1/2 to 1 units per second and you can feed insane number of them from one offshore pump. I think that I have 2 pumps (or maybe 3) to feed 62 refineries and their cracking plants. You can easily verify it with a pump and a tank. Reading increases about 60 units per second.
So, I thought that first burner pump would be about 1/3-1/2 from current offshore pump. First electric pump would have same capacity and the largest pump about 5-10 times more.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 6:01 pm
by mexmer
Hannu wrote:
mexmer wrote:
just fyi offshore pump has 10 unit pipe, and 1 u/s output. so 20/s burner pipe will be highly OP.
Offshore pump pumps 60 units per second and steam engine uses 6 units per second. Refineries and chemical plants consume about 1/2 to 1 units per second and you can feed insane number of them from one offshore pump. I think that I have 2 pumps (or maybe 3) to feed 62 refineries and their cracking plants. You can easily verify it with a pump and a tank. Reading increases about 60 units per second.
So, I thought that first burner pump would be about 1/3-1/2 from current offshore pump. First electric pump would have same capacity and the largest pump about 5-10 times more.
going by data from definition file, tbh. have not measured it.
i don't think burner pump should have lower output than current one, should have same, eg. enough to feed 1 lane with 14 boilers and 10 engines. while electric should be able to pump more (1.5 or 2x), don't think extra large version is necessary, although for megabases, might be .
I would interpret this as 1 unit per 1 game tick. It gives 60 u/s. The factorio wiki also is written that it is 60 u/s.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 4:55 am
by Hannu
mexmer wrote:going by data from definition file, tbh. have not measured it.
Definition files defines things per game time step, which is 1/60 s at normal speed. However, it is more practical to calculate things per second when planning something.
i don't think burner pump should have lower output than current one, should have same, eg. enough to feed 1 lane with 14 boilers and 10 engines. while electric should be able to pump more (1.5 or 2x), don't think extra large version is necessary, although for megabases, might be .
There are many players and playstyles. I think that there should be large variety of stuff and if someone think that he do not need or do not like something he just do not use them. These values was fast guesses. Of course there are many other ways to choose them. I thought that the burner pump would be temporary and emergence pump only, as other burner things in my playstyle. But it would be also OK to decide that burner era should last longer and give more burner things. For example, burner assemblers comparable to gray ones and burner labs able to research only red science would probably work well and give more interesting beginning phase where you should earn basic electric stuff by making small burner powered factory first.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:43 am
by mexmer
Hannu wrote:
mexmer wrote:going by data from definition file, tbh. have not measured it.
Definition files defines things per game time step, which is 1/60 s at normal speed. However, it is more practical to calculate things per second when planning something.
ah right, my bad, definitions are per tick, not per sec, totallly forgot about that. thanks
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 12:18 pm
by Hoeloe
ssilk wrote:So please tell me the difference between:
- Pump with burner
- Electric pump with burner steam-engine
Where is the difference - gameplay-wise?
To keep a factory running you need several offshorepumps not only for all the steamengines. That's why I don't like the burnerpump since you need to bring coal to every pump which ends up in a mess. For this reason I would prefer that the known offshorepump should use electic power to work (that would actually makes sence). But ingame thats a problem since you can't get electric power with T0 and without a running offshorepump.
And then there comes my suggestion: Offshorecoalboilersteamturbine (lolz)
It's a structure close to the water, where water could flow into a pool which is above a burner (boiler). Obviously it needs coal for burning. The produced steam would propel a turbine above which is connected to a generator. Tha's how we generate power!
Like allready noted, it should not generate a lot of power, maybe 50-100kW. Just enough to start off with electrical power so you can use them to power youre offshorepumps. This way it's not viable to build multible offshorecoalboilersteamturbine and run the whole factory with it. And it's absolutley no waterpump, it's a small powerplant.
Made a little scheme with my unbelievable drawing skills!
Offshorecoalboilersteamturbine
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 1:11 pm
by ssilk
Hoeloe wrote:Offshorecoalboilersteamturbine (lolz)
It's a structure close to the water, where water could flow into a pool which is above a burner (boiler). Obviously it needs coal for burning. The produced steam would propel a turbine above which is connected to a generator. Tha's how we generate power!
Burner Offshore-pump
It's a structure close to the water, where water could flow into a pool which is above a burner (boiler). Obviously it needs coal for burning. The produced steam would propel a turbine above which is connected to a pump. That's how we generate warm water.
See? That's why I ask the question about game-value and so on. Your suggestion makes things just more complex, without any value for the game.
See search.php?keywords=game+value&t=27087&sf=msgonly
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 2:37 pm
by Hoeloe
ssilk wrote:See? That's why I ask the question about game-value and so on. Your suggestion makes things just more complex, without any value for the game.
See search.php?keywords=game+value&t=27087&sf=msgonly
Important note: The reason for my suggestion is your poll. I voted for "Maybe another solution..." Is there a game-value? No. It make things more complex. But I still don't like the fact that offshorepumps don't need power (Why should any engine run without power?). So I made a suggestion for: Folks want to have a "somehow powered offshorepump". And if so, there are only solutions that make the game more complex anyway, because everey addition makes a game more complex. But I think mine is verry easy and would make the game the least more complex. It would be a easy way to get power in early game.
If you go for burnerpumps, it would make it way more complex since you need to deliver coal to every pump you use.
Re: Poll: Offshore Pump Should Need Energy
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 2:46 pm
by Hannu
Hoeloe wrote:If you go for burnerpumps, it would make it way more complex since you need to deliver coal to every pump you use.
Water pumps are used only for boilers at the beginning. Boilers need fuel in any case. It would not be very complicated task to branch fuel to pump too. When player needs water for chemical plants he certainly have ability to use electric pumps.
What it gives to play. Factorio is the game of complex logistics and production chains. Powering of pumps would give more it in all phases of game. First they would need simple fuel belts and later they would need combinator logic (or some other systems) to make automatically booting large powerplants. In my opinion that would fit very naturally in Factorio as one detail, although it would not be game changing thing at all.
