Factorio Forums

Coming close to 500h spent on the game already, there is an issue, that usually bugs me out, when the factory built becomes more and more complex later in the game. I lurked the forum around and other suggestions where a bit more unspecific\complicated to do, so I decided to make a new post.

Observation: Oil refinery will stop oil processing in case one of the components reaches maximum amount in pipes or Storage Tank. Please, see the screenshot: For me this sometimes causes the following problems:
1.) In a complex constructions, where I can not insert any additional piping\cracking to lighter fractions without having to rebuild a big portion of already constructed base, I have to come and remove and place back the Storage tank manually, since it destroys the excess material inside in the process. Since the game is all about automation, I'd like to automate the process for the times, where rebuilding this particular part is not a current priority and I rather sacrifice Storage tank contents to expand on the other goals.
2.) Second problem comes in place, when I mostly need heavier fractions for processing. For example, a huge amount of Lubricant for Express logistics components without need to worry about the plastic (ex. I have a separate factory to handle it far away). Since processing gives me Light oil and Petroleum gas as well - I have to also put them to use, or my refining and production will be stuck.

0.15 made this much easier with universal barrelling and Fluid wagon, however still, sometimes I'd rather do a Storage tank swap to be quick.

Suggestion: Add a recipe to a Chemical plant, that will allow to burn away any Petroleum gas, Light oil or Heavy oil inserted (1 sec processing time, 50 units is destroyed per 1 execution). No refunds or resource returning, what's destroyed is destroyed as a result of the players decision. Additional pollution might be added to penalize player for being wasteful. Imagine that on screenshot above two chemical plants on petroleum gas and light oil will actually destroy the contents of the corresponding Storage tanks and Lubricant production process wont get stuck.

This will help resolve bottlenecks at a price, so it will still be up to a player whether to:
1.) Rebuild a poor design or add more logistics to resolve bottleneck.
2.) Manually remove\place a Storage tank to resolve bottleneck at the price of constant attention\time for the operation.
3.) Burn away excess materials at a price of materials + additional pollution. Combined with circuit network + pump it will also allow to destroy just a small portion of unneeded products to help maintain the almost full Storage tank.

I hope this will make sense to you, guys and thanks for awesome 0.15!

You can create solid fuel and burn that afterwards... ^^"

If you just want to get rid of a liquid you can pump it into a steam engine. (This worked in 0.14. I don't know if it is still valid for 0.15.)

mattj256 wrote:If you just want to get rid of a liquid you can pump it into a steam engine. (This worked in 0.14. I don't know if it is still valid for 0.15.)

It seems not to work in .15. I've connected a burner and steam engine to the light and heavy oil but it does not heat up at all and burn away. It seems only water can be heated. Perhaps oil will eplode when heated inside a burner. However I agree it would be helpful to have a ventstack or some other way to burn off unwanted fluids, especially early in the game. How difficult is it to change the water color on the fly? Then light or heavy oil can be pumped into lakes and gradually change the water colour.

nemostein wrote:You can create solid fuel and burn that afterwards... ^^"

Yes, it is one option, that I mentioned on possible solution, however sometimes there's not much space to transport it away (i.e. logistics robots are still not there or the production itself is already surrounded by other buildings very tight). It is not that this suggestion resolves any critical problem, I'd say that this is one of the mid-game quality of life improvement, that provides you with an option to choose from

mattj256 wrote:If you just want to get rid of a liquid you can pump it into a steam engine. (This worked in 0.14. I don't know if it is still valid for 0.15.)

Tried this just now, looks like in 0.15 the steam engine only accepts steam. No oil components worked.

If you just want to get rid of it, you can always create a new Tank, and pick it when it's full

Just keep a biter spawner or two, and place a number of flamethrower turrets around it, making sure they cannot attack the spawner itself. Spawner provides you with infinite biters which ensures a constant drain of oil products to burn them away.

To be honest, this seems more of an issue with the wrong type of producer being used...
Heavy oil can be cracked to Light, Light to Petrol. If you only need Heavy Oil for Lube production, use the Coal Liquification method instead. You just need to drag over a barrel of Heavy Oil to get the process started since it needs a bit of heavy oil. Loop back the heavy oil from storage to the chemplant input, it should never run out that way. And you'll only produce heavy oil from Coal, which you shouldn't be short of if you've got an oil surplus
Light and Heavy oil surplus can always be cracked to lighter stuff (for fuel production).

That said, a "Flare stack" or "Gas vent" as is present in many mods would be handy.

Mod called "Flare Stack" adds it (would be nice to see it in vanilla).

Itori wrote:If you just want to get rid of it, you can always create a new Tank, and pick it when it's full

Yep, this is exactly what I want to automate

Lav wrote:Just keep a biter spawner or two, and place a number of flamethrower turrets around it, making sure they cannot attack the spawner itself. Spawner provides you with infinite biters which ensures a constant drain of oil products to burn them away.

Thats actually a good idea, but since I can not spawn the spawners it might get a little complicated. But I like your way of solving this

Aeternus wrote:use the Coal Liquification method instead

I'm enjoying 0.15 pretty slowly with a new map, starting from scratch, so I'm not with Coal Liquification process yet. From research tree it seems more like it produces all three components from coal and heavy oil, but I might be wrong.

zabszk wrote:Mod called "Flare Stack" adds it (would be nice to see it in vanilla).

Thanks, I'll check it. Somehow I missed it. Still would be nice to have it in vanilla, but that's obviously up to devs to decide.

I think devs will add it, because the mod has about 9.500 downloads and it's very easy to do.

This is why you set up circuit controlled automated oil cracking. If petro < light oil, crack light oil to petro. If light oil < heavy oil, crack heavy to light.

Ambaire wrote:This is why you set up circuit controlled automated oil cracking. If petro < light oil, crack light oil to petro. If light oil < heavy oil, crack heavy to light.

Notice how the first post shows petrol as full? Can't crack petrol down, and if you're in a spot where you can't use the excess petrol then it clogs everything up. Yes, there's the possibility to use solid fuel, but it's not always possible to set that all up so some sort of flare stack to just burn it off (preferably with some sort of way to get electricity or other resource from it) would be nice.

Jackalope wrote:

Ambaire wrote:This is why you set up circuit controlled automated oil cracking. If petro < light oil, crack light oil to petro. If light oil < heavy oil, crack heavy to light.

Notice how the first post shows petrol as full? Can't crack petrol down, and if you're in a spot where you can't use the excess petrol then it clogs everything up. Yes, there's the possibility to use solid fuel, but it's not always possible to set that all up so some sort of flare stack to just burn it off (preferably with some sort of way to get electricity or other resource from it) would be nice.

Since I play factorio I never runned into the problem, that petroleum is full, or that full petroleum is a problem. Normally it's light or heavy oil that is running full since the most usage you have is for petroloeum. I wire up a pump from the light and heavy tanks to a pump, to prevent cracking, if there is not enough heavy/light oil. That way also the production of lube and other stuff is steady. If you need (for whatever reason) more heavy/light oil than petroleum, you should consider to work with basic oilprocessing instead of advanced oilprocessing. Also it's definitely by design that you have to use the 3 products to do more oilprocessing. So just workaround with cracking the light oil and produce some plastic or go directly for soild fuel to power your trains. For me personally it makes no sence to setup a oilprocessing factory only for lube. Thats how my setup usualy looks like:

You can destroy all liquids with the steam engine.

Hoeloe wrote:Since I play factorio I never runned into the problem, that petroleum is full, or that full petroleum is a problem.

It is not typical situation in vanilla game. I have ran out of heavy oil when I had a small starter base and then I began to build large main base with massive blue belt buses and forgot to keep research on. However, lack of heavy oil is common problem with Bob's mods but that gives ways to increase heavy oil production.

If you fill few steel chest with red circuits, you can consume excess petroleum gas. Red circuits are easy to use later, you will need at least many tens of thousands of them.

AlienRaven wrote:2.) Second problem comes in place, when I mostly need heavier fractions for processing. For example, a huge amount of Lubricant for Express logistics components without need to worry about the plastic (ex. I have a separate factory to handle it far away). Since processing gives me Light oil and Petroleum gas as well - I have to also put them to use, or my refining and production will be stuck.

Your problem inspired me to start work on my first mod for Factorio. Here it is: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Roxor128 ... ndensation

Two new recipes for condensing lighter oil fractions to heavier ones with a bit of coal, both unlocked along with Advanced Oil Processing.

Have fun!

What I do is simple:

I automate the cracking of heavy => light => petroleum in a way, that they only work when their respective amount is above petroleum.

So I build for example 20 x petroleum tank, 2 x light tank, 2 x heavy tank.
I connect 1 tank of each type into the logistic network.
For cracking heavy to light oil, the condition of a pump providing them is simply (Heavy oil > light oil)
For cracking light oil to petroleum, the condition is (Light oil > petroleum)

With this simple setup, the whole factory automatically adjusts the fluids to the point where the different fluids all have the same percentage of tank full. Only in case you manage to use really all the petroleum, the other fluids gt drain aswell. As the ratios are being set by the single tanks with the network connection, a ratio of 20:2:2 tanks translates to 10:1:1 fluid ratio. You can easily adjust the number of tanks or connected tanks to the ratio you prefer.

If you simply connect all tanks to the network, you probably need some mathematic combinators to adjust the ratios in a useful way.

I think this will not be changed, cause it is part of the oil-puzzle.
There are mods that enables reconversion of petro to ligh-oil etc.