[1.5] Thoughts after about 20 hours of play (and a .gif!)

[DaveKap]

So here are some quick thoughts about where I feel like the game still needs some shuffling.

Firstly, nuclear power tech is monolithic. It costs a lot and gives a lot. However, I don't really feel like monolithic tech fits in well with Factorio. I don't know if this is something you did on purpose and want to keep but if you're up for some flexibility, I could see the tech being split up into 3 techs.
One tech would be the Steam Turbine. This is obviously an upgrade to the Steam Engine already but due to how it handles heat and gives electricity, it is useless without the nuclear power. As such, I think you should simply let it do its job with lower levels of steam heat so that it is a natural upgrade over the Steam Turbine but at the cost of more steam. In other words, make it less efficient (but at least usable) than a Steam Engine at lower heat levels but at higher heat levels it reaches the efficiency it already has with nuclear power.
Another tech would be the ability to mine and refine uranium. This unlocks the mining equipment and the centrifuge. This allows you to get a head start on building up fuel cells while also being a pre-cursor to the final of the three techs.
The last tech would obviously be the reactor itself and the heat exchanger with it. The other two techs should be a direct requirement to unlock this tech but I think they are parallel in importance. Thus you still have some choice on your way towards nuclear power without forcing it to be such a monolithic task that unlocks so much at once.

Secondly, I feel like there's entirely too much time between the first and second power generation source for your power armor. The tiny solar panels just don't cut it when you've already got the tech for exoskeletons, personal roboports, and laser defense. I think a good halfway point needs to be made. Either a second tier of personal solar panels or maybe some way to plug yourself into your vast electrical network to charge your batteries. Otherwise I find myself having to cut my construction plans short when my roboports can't charge my construction bots anymore.

Thirdly, it feels a little weird that I can put super-heated steam into a silo and it keeps its heat forever. Is that intentional? Makes for a neat backup system if the nuke ever shuts down, though I have no idea for how long it would last because....

Fourth, steam is missing from the fluid production chart. It should be on there, right?

Finally, I was so happy to be able to do this!

I felt like a king being ushered by minions. Thanks for adding ghost-deconstruction of trees! (Someone in chat said this was new to .15 and I had honestly never tried before.)

[hoho]

I kind of agree with the power thingy. I'm currently generating some 700MW with regular coal boilers and have been pushing back going nuclear because I might waste some power it can output. If instead I could use the new and fancy turbines with coal boilers with some sort of increase in output (even if just, say, 30%), it'd be a sort of alternative before going full nuclear.

Fourth, steam is missing from the fluid production chart. It should be on there, right?

One of the devs told me in some thread that steam is just a variant of water and is counted as water being spent in the production chart.

Finally, I was so happy to be able to do this!

Indeed, this was awesome.

[DaveKap]

Oh one more thing I'd love to exist in the vanilla game:
The ability to insta-upgrade things w/o having to put down blueprints or rebuild. AKA: I want to tell my robots that when I'm in range of a lower-tier object and I have higher-tier versions in my inventory, I want the robots to just go out and upgrade them automatically. Belts, splitters, assemblers, you name it.

[leoch]

I can't dig this mod enough for personal power: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/DaCyclop ... hargePacks
It should probably just replace that personal-fusion-reactor-magical-thingy.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Umm...

So if you use a steam turbine with normal boiler, it will work, but the turbine will have a poor efficiency.

So you can already use Turbines with regular Coal boilers?

I kind of agree with the power thingy. I'm currently generating some 700MW with regular coal boilers and have been pushing back going nuclear because I might waste some power it can output.

It's been shown that a standard starting-area deposit of Uranium can power a decent factory for some 1500-2000 hours. You do have to put a bit of Sulphuric Acid into it but in terms of raw resource it's MUCH cheaper than coal burners, even if you do "waste" some energy. If you're really that worried about lost energy, set up a bunch of storage tanks to catch any surplus steam, you can then even link up the input to the reactor to not provide fuel when you're full on steam (you will need to use pumps to manage flow) but honestly this isn't necessary.

And 700MW? Jeez, I went through a large coal deposit in about two hours generating just 50MW, and you're worried about wasting resource? Take a look at the big picture lol.

[hoho]

It's been shown that a standard starting-area deposit of Uranium can power a decent factory for some 1500-2000 hours

That's probably with enrichment process. When I cleare out my in-base uranium deposit, I got around 140 U235 in total. I also didn't want to spend it all since I was waiting for enrichment process and if I wanted to start it with two centrifuges, that would have required more than half of that 140 U235.

Doing basic napkin math, that would have been ~600 fuel cells (140-80 times 10), each lasting for 200s in a reactor. In 2x2 reactor setup, those 600 fuel cells would have lasted around 8h. Not really as bad as I originally imagined, mostly because I didn't notice that 1xU235 gives 10 fuel cells

And 700MW? Jeez, I went through a large coal deposit in about two hours generating just 50MW, and you're worried about wasting resource? Take a look at the big picture lol.

I was playing on marathon/train map with 4x research cost multiplier and with RSO. I got two relatively big coal deposits (couple of million) quite near my base but next closest uranium was waaaay off. I had the coal to burn.

[Deadly-Bagel]

You would wait for the first 40 U-235 and use that for one centrifuge to give you enough for the second. Makes no sense to wait for 80 before starting. Also a single enrichment Centrifuge spits out three U-238 every 200 seconds, which is enough for 30 fuel cells. Since each fuel cell burns for 200 seconds, you could constantly power 30 nuclear plants even if you only ever got U-238 from that point on. For the purpose of generating any sensible amount of power, a second centrifuge is superfluous.

Also my calculations say 5 million coal burns for just under 16 hours at 700MW which is longer than I thought, guess we both underestimated. Must have been using more on plastic and science than I realised, still coming to grips with actually needing stone and coal lol.