Factorio Forums

This could make development easier while also satisfying the folks asking for burner everything, and could also make upgrading your factory easier when you get power.

The idea is to have all of the early-game facilities and units be able to run on either electric power or fuel, giving the player a choice. The player could start by putting wood or coal in them, and then later hook them up to power. Everything would just be less energy efficient and more polluting when ran with solid fuel--even after considering the energy loss and pollution produced by generating the energy.

Suggested Changes:
Burner Inserters would be combined with regular Inserters.
Long-handed Inserters could run on solid fuel.
Burner Mining Drill and Electric Mining Drill could become Small Mining Drill and Large Mining Drill.
Basic Assembler, Refinery, and Chemical Plant can now all run on solid fuel.
Pumpjacks can run without electricity, by burning some of the crude oil they generate. If they burn 0.1/s then they would become useless without power once the patch has been depleted.
Electric Furnace could become Hybrid Furnace, able to accept either electric power or solid fuel.
Facilities prioritize electric power, but you can put a stack of fuel in them as backup in case of power loss.

There is a problem with this: things that run on actual fuel are fundamentally different from things that run on electricity only.

Also, there is no real reason to NOT have electricity-driven devices rather than fuel-driven. Electricity is much easier to provide to things unlike physical fuel. Electricity is also generally much more efficient to use than fuel too. It could've been justified if we had power loss or limited power throughput, but alas, we don't have it and electricity is an overall better solution. The whole premise of "could also make upgrading your factory easier when you get power" is wrong: it's very easy to upgrade your factory from coal to electricity with some careful planning. Even furnaces don't pose much of a problem if you build your smelter in a specific and careful way so as to enable easy upgrading when you finally get your electric furnaces.

Finally, even if you were to create hybrid devices, there are two things that you should keep in mind:
1) Why is that fuel is more efficient to use in this particular device than electricity? Keep in mind that electricity can be thought of as "pure energy', the product of burning fuel and transmitting the power from it to devices. We ain't going to have power losses any time soon and devs don't think it has any gameplay value so if electricity can be transmitted to unlimited distances without any losses, then fuel doesn't have its only advantage over electricity: is that fuel is basically condensed energy that you don't lose over time and distance. Similarly, power throughput is also unlimited which, once again, beats fuel in that fuel has high energy density. In fact, electricity wins here: fuel has limited energy density whereas wires don't. You can transmit 8000 GW of power to the consumer, whereas even the best fuel in the game -- rocket fuel -- has only 225 MJ of energy in it per unit and you'd need to bring 35556 units of rocket fuel a second... nothing in the game has such high throughput and robots are a waste of energy here.

2) Pollution destroys any remaining value in the idea. Suppose you DO actually have an energy efficient, say, assembler that works on fuel. The thing is that you must logically make it produce pollution and more than electric version of it. If you produce more pollution, over time you will have more enemies attacking your base, which in turn forces you to spend more fuel to make bullets or power laser turrets or pump more oil to power up flamethrowers. This will produce even MORE pollution and even MORE enemies will attack you which creates a vicious circle where your "efficiency" in fact becomes worthless since you overall consume more fuel to protect your base against enemies which makes you spend more fuel overall, making your imaginary "efficiency" a penalty.

3) These devices must be more bulky than their specialized counterparts. Simply because fuel-driven and electricity-driven devices are fundamentally different in nature. If some device is electrical by its nature, you must have some kind of generator inside of it, which takes space, which makes the device take more space. If this device is fuel-driven, then... well, it depends on the device, but you still need some kind of transformer inside the device which again takes more space.
If they take up more space, they efficiency drops sharply and once again it's better to use specialized versions instead of more general ones of them.

Facilities prioritize electric power, but you can put a stack of fuel in them as backup in case of power loss.

If you have power loss, it means two things:
1) You don't have enough generators which is trivial to solve
2) You don't have enough fuel to generate power which in turn means that you shouldn't have enough fuel to power your machinery too. If you have this fuel, you should probably reroute it to the boilers instead.

Pumpjacks can run without electricity, by burning some of the crude oil they generate. If they burn 0.1/s then they would become useless without power once the patch has been depleted.

The only meaningful idea I can see here. But one problem: you are not supposed to use crude oil to generate power lest you could make solid fuel out of it. If you could do that, you should use it to power your generators instead.

This isn't likely to ever happen. The game energy system doesn't support a mixed type plus it would reduce performance having to do all the extra checks every time the game consumes energy.

EditorRUS wrote:Finally, even if you were to create hybrid devices, there are two things that you should keep in mind:
1) Why is that fuel is more efficient to use in this particular device than electricity? Keep in mind that electricity can be thought of as "pure energy', the product of burning fuel and transmitting the power from it to devices. We ain't going to have power losses any time soon

This is an idea for adjusting the early game. I'm not even suggesting altering most of the game play. This is entirely centered around what happens before you get your electrical generators set up. Besides, I said using fuel instead of electricity is less efficient, not more. You're supposed to want to move to electricity.


My idea is basically this: fewer items and less item clutter by combining item types

Rseding91 wrote:The game energy system doesn't support a mixed type

That could be fixed at the code source. Currently it can't be done with mods, which is why I am asking the devs to do something about it. Simply passing the hurdle of allowing it to happen would open up a wide variety of modding opportunities. Too many things in Factorio are locked into specific modes of operation, which restricts modders.

Rseding91 wrote:plus it would reduce performance having to do all the extra checks every time the game consumes energy.

It needs only check when its powered status changes. It shouldn't affect performance unless your power keeps coming on and shutting off all the time.

thereaverofdarkness wrote:

Rseding91 wrote:The game energy system doesn't support a mixed type

That could be fixed at the code source. Currently it can't be done with mods, which is why I am asking the devs to do something about it. Simply passing the hurdle of allowing it to happen would open up a wide variety of modding opportunities. Too many things in Factorio are locked into specific modes of operation, which restricts modders.

I'm well aware how the code works and how the API works having written it

However, the "burner" aspect could be taken out, resulting in standard devices, and just a burner generator. Problem solved, you can have any device powered by whatever you have that produces electricity .

Koub wrote:However, the "burner" aspect could be taken out, resulting in standard devices, and just a burner generator. Problem solved, you can have any device powered by whatever you have that produces electricity .

I think that's an even better idea.