Furnaces provide heat for boilers

[vipm23]

As an engineer I have some technical but also logical concerns:

1) I would like to see the new "boiler" more as a "heat exchanger" and NOT as a furnace which consumes coal!
2) furnaces could have reactor-like hot parts which connected to "heat exchangers" aka boiler to heat water to steam
3) it should be possible to burn everything in furnace or have different devices for different fuels just like the reactor is a furnace for uranium
4) making furnaces, which emit flue gases, pipe-connectable could create possibilities to use flue gases for filtration or water preheating like an economizer or maybe even burning of unburned gases like carbonmonoxide as a result of too compact furnace setups (no enough oxygen)

That should be a fairly easy thing to add in a mod(adding what you describe and removing vanilla bits) once the heat pipe stuff has been added to the game. I'm personally a fan of some simplification at the expense of some realism to keep the early-mid game from becoming a bit tedious.

-A fellow IRL Engineer

That should be a fairly easy thing to add in a mod

I get that alot, maybe devs make up there mind. Because I dont have the time to make a mod
I am just most bothered that someone would shove coal into a heat exchanger and not the furnace

I would like to present this idea from Gertibrumm as a formal suggestion for Wube:that boilers no longer burn fuel by themselves, but use furnaces as fireboxes with the new heat pipe system.

This would introduce the heat pipe system early on instead of having it be a one-off for the nuclear reactor system.

Personal thoughts:
1 Stone furnace would power 1 boiler. Just hook up the furnace directly and you're done.
1 Steel furnace would power 2 boilers. This would require the heat pipe system to use to full potentiol, letting players figure out the heat pipe system before designing one for a nuclear reactor.
1 Electric furnace would also power 2 boilers, but this would be an exercise in futility unless incorrectly balanced(power strip loop + ?? = infinite power anyone?) or heat storage is available.

[Mendel]

makes sense especially for the reason of introducing heat pipes stuff earlier

[Gertibrumm]

Haha one could use the electric furnace for a perpetuum mobile
but the heat storage in watertanks could be an idea -> use solar at day and water with turbine at night
I once read that tanks can store immense energy

I added the paper because it fits

factorio_powerplant_suggestion.jpg (748.36 KiB) Viewed 6216 times

[vipm23]

Haha one could use the electric furnace for a perpetuum mobile
but the heat storage in watertanks could be an idea -> use solar at day and water with turbine at night
I once read that tanks can store immense energy

Well, that's what I meant by incorrectly balanced: if the power you get out of boiling water in electric furnaces exceeds the cost in electricity, you have an over-unity machine.
Though boilers only get 50% of the energy into the water...so in theory one electric furnace can only boil enough water for half an electric furnace, assuming no modules. This gives a lot of leeway for balancing.

Ingame tanks or real life? Molten salt is used as a heat storage medium for solar thermal plants, and the ingame tanks can store 99 degree water indefinitely.

[Gertibrumm]

Yes I meant ingame, IRL hot water storage would be too expensive. Ill have to read more about these molten salt tanks though!!

[ssilk]

I don't understand the picture. As I understood this suggestion we could use a furnace to heat the heat exchanger.
So where in that pic is that "connection"?

Besides that I think this is worth thinking about much deeper, cause that goes a lot into direction of more modular machines in a fascinating new way. It brings in a lot of new gameplay by low to moderate rise complexity.

I just think to a combination of furnace complex and water heater. Maybe you can increase the efficiency of a furnace by small amount of cooling... there are a lot of ideas that pops out from this suggestion.

[steinio]

But the furnace needs the heat to smelt the ore.
How should this work with the laws of physics to reroute the heat to boil water.

This would just mean the furnace needs more fuel to heat both - ore and water - which makes them inefficent.

I'm looking forward to the beginners questions like - Why does my furnace not work anymore? - because the steam output is nowhere connected o_O

[Klonan]

I don't really see what this all offers gameplay wise,
It would just add additional complexity to the current smelting arrangements, without much improvement in its mechanics

With the new heat system, people will be able to add heat powered things, such as heat furnaces, heat refineries... mostly anything you'd like,
But sacrificing the simplicity of the current smelting system isn't worth it for some added dimension of realism

[Gertibrumm]

The furnaces obviously couldn't be used for smelting anymore.
It would just remove the need for special heat devices and give the boiler a definit logical function.
Gameplay wise nothing changes, except that you have to consider a furnace to power boilers.

I am fine with the proposed heat elements like seen on the reactors, this mechanic just should be used early on.

[MeduSalem]

Well... I've thought about the general idea and I have some things to say:

It would work better like Klonan said... building upon the Heat-Transfer-Concept (which is like an abstraction of the closed-water-cycle). That said I'm not entirely happy of just turning the old boiler into a Boiler-Heat-Exchanger-Hybrid.

So what I would do additionally is give anything that creates thermal radiation also a Heat-Connection like Nuclear Reactors are going to have. So Furnaces/Assemblers/ChemPlants/Refineries/etc all have heat connections too... and you can place Heat-Exchangers next to them to profit from their thermal radiation that would otherwise be wasted. It would at least improve the efficiency of how energy is used/re-used.

With that idea you could use your initial furnaces as an additional way to produce energy as a byproduct of the smetling process when they are smelting, something like so:

Heat Exchanger.png (35.56 KiB) Viewed 6164 times

So the Stone/Steel Furnaces could be anything that radiates heat... also Assemblers/ChemPlants/etc.

And yeah, I made the Boiler-Heat-Exchanger thingy 1x3 on purpose... because 2x3 really sucks, especially if you want to use it in tight locations, like in between of Beacons Setups etc. 1x3 is still big enough to fit a Water-Input, a Rest-Water-Output and the Steam-Output boxes.


Here's the Nuclear Reactor with a 6x6 footprint instead:

Heat Exchanger Nuclear.png (16.97 KiB) Viewed 6160 times

With the Heat-Exchanger being 1x3 you can use Long-Handed Inserters for fuel input and exhausted fuel output.

The 6x6 footprint is much better in tandem with the Heat-Exchanger size and also because it allows for several more interesting patterns, which I also posted on the FFF already:

Nuclear Power 1.png (25.2 KiB) Viewed 6160 times

[Gertibrumm]

I looked at Medusalems heat exchanger and thought about this:

factorio_exchanger_suggestion.jpg (846.58 KiB) Viewed 6157 times

[MeduSalem]

I looked at Medusalems heat exchanger and thought about this:

Exactly... that's what I imagine the Exchanger to work like.

[vipm23]

I don't understand the picture. As I understood this suggestion we could use a furnace to heat the heat exchanger.
So where in that pic is that "connection"?

Besides that I think this is worth thinking about much deeper, cause that goes a lot into direction of more modular machines in a fascinating new way. It brings in a lot of new gameplay by low to moderate rise complexity.

I just think to a combination of furnace complex and water heater. Maybe you can increase the efficiency of a furnace by small amount of cooling... there are a lot of ideas that pops out from this suggestion.

But the furnace needs the heat to smelt the ore.
How should this work with the laws of physics to reroute the heat to boil water.

This would just mean the furnace needs more fuel to heat both - ore and water - which makes them inefficent.

I'm looking forward to the beginners questions like - Why does my furnace not work anymore? - because the steam output is nowhere connected o_O

I don't really see what this all offers gameplay wise,
It would just add additional complexity to the current smelting arrangements, without much improvement in its mechanics

With the new heat system, people will be able to add heat powered things, such as heat furnaces, heat refineries... mostly anything you'd like,
But sacrificing the simplicity of the current smelting system isn't worth it for some added dimension of realism

The furnaces obviously couldn't be used for smelting anymore.
It would just remove the need for special heat devices and give the boiler a definit logical function.
Gameplay wise nothing changes, except that you have to consider a furnace to power boilers.

I am fine with the proposed heat elements like seen on the reactors, this mechanic just should be used early on.

My version of the idea wouldn't replace the smelting system. Furnaces would be able to smelt stuff as before if they're not hooked up to a heat pipe.

The only thing that happens to the furnaces is they get a heat pipe connection, and can burn fuel to heat stuff up if it's connected instead of smelt things. It's multipurpose.

Basically what Medusalem's talking about, just a step behind.

Edit: Another thought. Have the boiler be able to output heat out the heat pipe if the temperature of the stuff inside is hotter than the heat pipe.

This would let you make proper heat exchangers without the need for a pass-through pipe. Stuff like geothermal power or molten salt thermal storage becomes possible.(Pipe up some lave or molten salt, run it through a heat exchanger to boil some water, run a turbine off it.)

[Gertibrumm]

EDIT:
Since the devs want these heat elements and dislike pipes into furnaces and reactors,
and heat cannot be effectively conducted through air,
thats where some sort of contact element has to be used.

This is how I imagine the heat connections:
They could be made of copper plates and maybe manually connected like red/green cables or automatically like electricity cables.

Basically they conduct heat, in this case the exhaust heat from the furnaces.
But also from reactors to adjacent boilers/heat exchangers.

asdf.jpg (255.78 KiB) Viewed 6122 times

[steinio]

Just for completeness: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3394#p24833 - especially topic 3c.

[MeduSalem]

This is how I imagine the heat connections:
They could be made of copper plates and maybe manually connected like red/green cables or automatically like electricity cables.

Basically heat pipes like found on CPU/GPU coolers etc, but larger. But that's implementation details and just for visual pleasure so it's not really that important, as long as it works.

Just for completeness: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3394#p24833 - especially topic 3c.

I guess you meant Gertibrumm, but still I feel affected too...

Well I can sum up the reasons for my suggestion of why to make the Nuclear Reactor footprints 6x6 and the Boiler-Heat-Exchanger 1x3... because the proposed sizes in the FFF of 5x5 and 3x2 totally suck... and by that I mean they are really the worst footprints imaginable because of how nothing really matches up the way the devs intend them to. It took me only one look to realize that the proposed sizes are a nightmare and that the dev who built the prototype plant had to mess around needlessly to make all the pipe connections... and that's only with ONE reactor... and they intend to make it so that you can attach multiple reactors to one another to improve efficiency which only leads to more spectacular mess.

I spent the entire weekend trying to figure out various multi-reactor layouts using the proposed 5x5 and 3x2 footprints and they all turned out to be friggin ugly... like a total pipe mess with zig-zag pipes and underground pipes and whatnot... It's just not bearable. Either that or it turns out that a layout simply doesn't work at all because the Heat-Points don't match up or you can't place the heat exchangers or the water/steam pipes don't match up, or you can't place the inserters for fuel insertion. So let's just say with the proposed sizes there's not going to be a fractal-miracle like is written in the FFF.

So the devs really need to change the proposed footprints because they already lead to various problems I encountered in only 2 days of theorycrafting and I'm sure more people will complain about these problems on the day of the release if they are not changed and if the Devs insist on implementing it with 5x5 and 3x2.

So my suggestion of the 6x6 Nuclear Reactor and 1x3 Heat-Exchanger is only for the greater good of the game because I've found them to work reliable. Layouts using my proposed footprints are much easier to be extended in endless patterns.

Also as of now nothing is set in stone yet (like graphics etc) which is the perfect time to make these kind improvements and suggestions because otherwise the devs might have to scrap everything again in the future just because they didn't plan ahead, which would be unfortunate.


Apart from that the suggestion that other items like Furnaces/Assemblers etc could give of thermal radiation as well is just a bonus and would serve as an extension to the existing systems that players aren't required to do but can do if they wanted to optimize their Factory.

[vipm23]

Just for completeness: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3394#p24833 - especially topic 3c.

One of my reasons for proposing this was elaborated on earlier-it lets us mess with the heat pipe system earlier, and figure out how to use it before figuring out nuclear plants.

The other is that separating out the boiler and the firebox both makes the system more intuitive and visual(why does the boiler have a heatpipe connection AND a slot for fuel? It looks like it ought to output heat, not steam. VS OK, I have a boiler-but it doesn't have a fuel slot-but it has this weird pipe thing-which matches this pipe thing on the furnace-what if I hook these two together?)

[Gertibrumm]

The old boiler deserves its name because it essentially makes water boil.
It has fuel slots and is intuitive.

The dev proposed boiler has double functionality:
- same as old boiler just with steam let off pipe
- extra heat element thingy for extra fun

my question:
how did the devs intend to handle the water flowing through the proposed boilers?
simply standing still water that spreads heat? or flowing water which produces extremly high density steam which requires 2!! offshore pumps per reactor core?? (thats pretty intense throughput, no simple turbine will be able to handle full offshore pump throughput)
a quick answer from a dev would be really nice

understanding that might be essential on understanding their plans on why they want heat transfer with heat-pipes when it would be simpler to just put water into reactors and get steam out, just like the old boiler but bigger and more nuclear...

[bobingabout]

Consider the fact that the new nuke power plant basically has a heat output terminal that connects to a boiler to provide heat to boil water....
It might be possible to modify the reactor to look more like a regular furnace, and burn coal, or other normal fuels to perform the same job.

The one thing I can agree on here though, 2x1 boilers! you really don't need a 3x2 as proposed in the recent Friday facts. Though personally... let the base game do what it wants, as long as I can mod in a 2x2 or 2x1 boiler

Something I have been considering for a while now though... I really like the throughput configuration of boilers and steam engines. I've been considering modifying (Or creating alternate versions of) chemical plants and my electrolysers to allow the same thing to be possible. Buffer them side to side with a water input to allow the fluid to flow through them from a single feed.

[MeduSalem]

Though personally... let the base game do what it wants, as long as I can mod in a 2x2 or 2x1 boiler

I don't think that the base game should use arbitrary footprint sizes because that renders setting up power plants an absolute nightmare for vanilla players. Not everyone is going to use mods... and I dislike the argument whenever it is brought up as a solution to something that should have been done better in the base game so that everyone can profit, avoiding to have to come up with mods to fix certain problems in the first place.

It's like "yeah whatever, make it whatever random size" and then 3 months later "crap, why did we make it that way?"

... just that the chance for re-doing everything from scratch will shrink with every passing week because of how there's not going to be time to redesign everything from square one (especially graphics which take the most time and can't be changed that easily after a footprint is set in stone). And then we have to live with that mess for years to come and personally I have to say that with every feature that somehow gets screwed up thanks to arbitrary choices I have less motivation to play the game because somehow I don't feel like having to deal with a streak of bad design choices that lead to other bad choices and problems and I don't like the thought of having to fix all that mess with mods because the base game would otherwise be unplayable or at least unenjoyable.

Bottom line: Mods shouldn't be used as band-aid argument to encourage bad design choices.