Fluid handling (water, oils)

[Festmester]

Hey guys. Just made an account so I could post on the forum of my favorite game!

I love the idea of controlling stuff. You can control most stuff in Factorio as it's a game about making things go YOUR way. But I feel on the subject of fluids; water and oil, most things are out of your control. Even the pipes can't be forced in one direction and will merge with one next to it, requiring you to waste either space (building around) or resources (make underground pipes consisting of 10 pipes in order to not snap onto nearby pipes).

So on top of being able to force pipes to go in a direction and not automatically snap onto any other pipe near it, I was also thinking of the idea of temperature fluid controls. I like the idea of steam accumulation (steam in a tank). Here is a collection of my ideas for fluid handling which may or may not be balanced, realistic or fun.

- Temperature controlled pumps/valves. Which allows fluids at a certain temperature to pass. Knowing you have only 80ºC water or warmer in a tank will allow you to get a better feel of how many boilers it will take to reach 100C. Likewise it will allow a system that keeps cold water in a heating system until it's warm enough to go to the final boilers. This prevents what I myself describe as 'flushing', where cold water reaches the steam engines, unless you have an immaculate setup of boilers, water pumps, pressure pumps, tanks, and so on. Simplifying this through the sorting of water temperatures allows a simpler setup that won't fill up half your base, or frustrate you to the point of removing it all and going all in on solar power instead because that's much easier.

- Electric fluid heater. That would go well with the temperature controls described before. Preferrably adjustable, from a scale from 15ºC to 100ºC, maybe in 5ºC increments. Now this may sound a little counter-intuitive but think about it like this: There is always an abundance of power during the day thanks to solar panels. So why not USE some of that power to preheat some water for the night, so you can in fact use a fluid tank full of 100ºC water as an alternative, or additional source of energy. Energy on tap in the form of, not electricity, but water, that can be made into electricity at any time and no cost (steam engines require no power or components to run and makes no pollution at all - green energy!). Obviously by laws of thermodynamics and game balance, heating water electrically would result in a net loss of energy if you were to feed it directly into a steam engine. At the current state of the game, I don't know if boiling water runs faster in pipes. Since it's steam (expanded water), I think the increased pressure should make it move faster, if it already isn't.

- To have extra usage of a system like the electric fluid heater, it would not only heat water, but also oil. Oil changes viscosity when it's warm, so why not make the viscous oil run faster after preheating it in a fluid heater?

Weird suggestion for fun: Since the game sort of allows multiple types of oil products in a longer pipe (only one type per unit of pipe), a valve/fluid sorter could sort the oil by its temperature. You know warmer liquids will usually seek to the top and the colder to the bottom, that could partially explain the mechanism of any kind of oil sorting, if you choose to mix it into the same pipe. It could be a recipe in the chemical plant, for sorting liquids from each other if they are fed into the same pipe. Maybe balanced by a slower throughput, it would ease production for initial/early oil processing, which to me is a nightmare every time.

Consistency problem: Why is it I can feed hot oil into the steam engine and it disappears?

Inspired by that: What of a producable liquid that is designed to run steam engines instead of water. Maybe it's special in a way that it either only loses a portion of the fluid when it's consumed by steam engines, and/or loses a portion of it's temperature, allowing to be reheated. Reason: supplying enough water can sometimes be a hassle with a high power need. I think end-game steam needs more, smarter options. If you can supersize a solar panel+accumulator setup, I want to do the same but with steam.

I have so many weird ideas, and I'm just blurting them out here. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
I just really like the game, and look forward to any update!

- Fest

[ssilk]

A bit difficult to decide for me, but I added it to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=31440 Ideas Around Energy Production: Solar, Wind, Water, Nuclear, Fusion ...

You may also have a look into the developer proposals about energy: Many similar ideas.