Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

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Lav
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Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Lav »

There have been suggestions to make water limited, which I personally do not support.

This suggestion is different: keep water infinite, but limit how much is produced by an offshore pump depending on the amount of water tiles in it's vicinity. I would suggest a flood-fill from the pump, limited by a certain distance, and if the resulting number of water tiles is below a certain quota, reduce pump output appropriately.

This will prevent draining millions of water units from single-tile puddles.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Tekky »

I like your idea.

However, there remains the question of whether pumps should influence each other, i.e. should nearby pumps diminish the water output of a pump? Let's say there is a small lake that is just big enough to have enough room for 5 pumps. Should 1 pump be sufficient to extract the maximum amount of water from the lake or should it be necessary to build all 5 pumps to extract the maximum amount of water?

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Lav »

Frankly, I don't think tracking other pumps would be a good idea. This line of thinking quickly runs into issues with pumps that are currently inactive, or only partially active, and calculating all that is probably ok for computer, but would make planning hell.

So if a lake is just enough to fully satisfy one pump and a hundred pumps are feeding from it, IMHO let them.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by M-Michael »

I appreciate this idea, however nearby other pumps should be tracked. I don't think this would make things complicated because I usually need only one or two offshore pumps at one place. They could show a radius in which they affect each other.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Jap2.0 »

M-Michael wrote:I appreciate this idea, however nearby other pumps should be tracked. I don't think this would make things complicated because I usually need only one or two offshore pumps at one place. They could show a radius in which they affect each other.
What you usually do is largely irrelevant. What if other people do it?
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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Hedning1390 »

I'm fine with this. For most lake sizes the 1200/s should still be the limit though, you shouldn't need a massive lake to get it.

As for looking at nearby pumps that doesn't really make sense unless there is a narrow passage somewhere close or it's really shallow water. That's not how it works in real life. 2x pumps are pretty much 2x the water.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by LukeM »

If you have a limit on water output, wouldn't it make sense for it to be a limit for the whole lake instead of per pump?
Imagine you had a 4x4 lake, you would be able to pump 16 units of water from it. If you then added a second pump and it didn't take into account other pumps, then you would now be pumping 32 units of water from the same small lake, and if the pumps were instead in 2 separate 2x4 lakes then you would only be pumping 16 units of water. This doesn't make sense to me, the same area of water should always have the same limit IMO...

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Tongs »

I think this adds unnecessary complexity. If water should be limited, then have an offshore pump simply produce less water. More pumps would be needed, limited by availability of space along the shoreline.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by thereaverofdarkness »

I'll agree that offshore pumps and your ability to collect large volumes of water is too easy, but I think this solution sounds like something that belongs in a mod. Here's a suggestion: reduce how much the offshore pump takes in, so that the player wants an array of pumps to keep their steam engines watered. Thus there is a logistical task of setting up enough offshore pumps, one which will not be possible if your puddle of mud is too small. Also, extend the length of the pump so that it reaches out into deeper water, further limiting how many pumps can fit in one puddle.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by steinio »

What a nonsense.

I waterfill a 2x2 square, put an offshore pump in and supply my 26 boiler array.
And that should stay so.
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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by bobucles »

I waterfill a 2x2 square, put an offshore pump in and supply my 26 boiler array.
And that should stay so.
Uh. Waterfill is a mod. How can you keep something in the vanilla game if it isn't in the vanilla game?

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by steinio »

bobucles wrote:
I waterfill a 2x2 square, put an offshore pump in and supply my 26 boiler array.
And that should stay so.
Uh. Waterfill is a mod. How can you keep something in the vanilla game if it isn't in the vanilla game?
So landfill it until the lake is 2x2...
Still nonsense.

How much water should a well (over-landfilled offshore pump) produce?
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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by bobucles »

How much water should a well (over-landfilled offshore pump) produce?
A fair question. The idea probably can't work with the current terrain system. Another method of calculating water flow rate would be needed.

One idea I've been tossing around is the concept of "blastable water" terrain. It would be a form of marshland or aquifer that can be freely converted between land or water. So landfill would cover over the water, and blasting dynamite would restore it to water. With blastable water the number of "true water" tiles stays constant. This means water pumps will always have the same output whether it's a full lake or a landfilled lake. I'm not saying whether the original idea is good or bad, but I am saying that blastable water keeps the OP's idea feasible.

In addition it solves an unrelated side balance issue of invincible water moats. The number of true water tiles are only determined by map generation (being a random selection of aquifer/marsh/water tiles) and there is no way to add or remove them. So if you want to create more water or restore it to land you can, but the amount of land that can be transformed into water is limited by the map generator.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Maddhawk »

Lav wrote:Frankly, I don't think tracking other pumps would be a good idea. This line of thinking quickly runs into issues with pumps that are currently inactive, or only partially active, and calculating all that is probably ok for computer, but would make planning hell.

So if a lake is just enough to fully satisfy one pump and a hundred pumps are feeding from it, IMHO let them.
A better way is to do the above as suggested, give each pump an intake water tile count to determine how much of its capacity said water source can supply, but then to give each water tile a replenishment factor. This way you don't have hundreds of pumps pulling from the same ideal sized pond. Then as you add more and more pumps you will have to take into account how fast the lake/pond can refill from the environment to keep your pumps supplied. The larger the lake, the more water tiles, the more the replenishment, the more pumps it can support.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by Hannu »

Maddhawk wrote:A better way is to do the above as suggested, give each pump an intake water tile count to determine how much of its capacity said water source can supply, but then to give each water tile a replenishment factor. This way you don't have hundreds of pumps pulling from the same ideal sized pond. Then as you add more and more pumps you will have to take into account how fast the lake/pond can refill from the environment to keep your pumps supplied. The larger the lake, the more water tiles, the more the replenishment, the more pumps it can support.
Is that a real problem in the game? There is one large water consumer, coal plants. Others is just small amounts of process water for industry. But is it really worth development work and ups decrease if coal plant can not work on any lake (before condenser research)? Even simplest flow mechanism would take significant amount of CPU cycles. Isn't it easy to rolegame if you do not want to put ten pumps on small pond? There are more than enough large lakes in normal maps and I do not see restrictions as interesting game mechanics.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by bobucles »

A better way is to do the above as suggested, give each pump an intake water tile count to determine how much of its capacity said water source can supply, but then to give each water tile a replenishment factor.
You can do it even more simply than that. Count the total number of "water tiles" on the lake. That is now your maximum flow rate, divided between all pumps. To simplify matters If the lake size is above an arbitrary number then the supply is simply "a lot" and can be tapped indefinitely.

Landfill does screw things up because landfill tiles are not "water tiles". There would need to be a separate property so that pumpable water is one thing and walkable terrain is another thing. If water is a separate property then pumps can be placed on any terrain that "has water" and the maximum shared flow rate will be "the aquifer/lake/ocean size".

An aquifer mechanic means that you can build and replace water wells without any game balance issues. You can't build pumps in places where water never existed in the first place, after all. A pump limiting mechanic means that you are basically energy limited by the amount of water you can find. Oil recipes also use water but that demand is an order of magnitude apart from steam energy.

If every tile of aquifer gave a flow rate of 1 water/sec, then a 10x10 lake (100 water/sec) would be worth 3MW of power. That's not nearly enough water for energy but it is enough water for oil processing. If every unit of water transformed into 10 units of steam then the same tiny lake would be worth 30MW of steam power or 97MW of nuclear power. A fairly common 25x20 lake (500 water/sec) would have enough water to supply a 485MW nuclear reactor (2x2's are 480MW). Larger reactors would require bigger water sources or an external logistics system to supply water. Those numbers don't sound too bad on paper.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by mrvn »

Don't forget about shallow and deep water. Surely deep water can be pumped more effectively.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by PyroFire »

What of wells?
Y'know.
The thing that pumps turn into when you pave over them with landfill.

I like this idea, but it is just not practical nor realistic.
Would it increase the enjoyment had in playing factorio?
I believe no. No it would not.

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Re: Limit offshore pump output depending on lake size

Post by bobucles »

Would it increase the enjoyment had in playing factorio?
Has that ever stopped an idea from being suggested before? I believe it would not. :lol:
Anyway this topic is a nice "what if" to see if water can be made into a more interesting mechanic for factorio. Currently the way water works in factorio is this:
- You have water at spawn
- Build a stack of pumps
- Spam them around the lake
- Never worry about water ever again

It's pretty boring, right? You can probably build a 1 GW of nuclear power off of the starting lake, still have enough spare water for oil processing, and still have enough water to launch a rocket.

Well I guess that's not entirely true. There is a real reason to look for water to build monolithic 10GW+ reactors in the post game. Larger nuke plants benefit from special pump locations that only a large body of water can provide. It's not the water itself that's important for nuke power, but the ability to place pumps in convenient spots that matters.

This topic has a lot of potential for enhancing the very simple gameplay behind water, and making a new system where water is ACTUALLY a limited resource (by flow rate, at least). For example what if you are in the desert and only have a few tiny lakes of water? If your water rate is only 50-100/sec then you can't build massive steam or nuclear plants. You may not even have enough water to crack oil. On the other hand deserts have a lot of easy flat land for solar power and desert biomes are a nice place for rich oil supplies. Isn't that convenient? A biome with many small water sources will need to tie a lot of small lakes together in order to gather a large enough supply. A big ocean map will simply have plenty of water and there's more problem finding land than water.

Finally if your water supply is too slow, why not research some mining productivity? That'll get an extra 20% pretty easily. :roll:
Don't forget about shallow and deep water. Surely deep water can be pumped more effectively.
I mean, why not? Ultimately the discussion is about how much water a player needs and if a limited water supply can be reasonably implemented by the map generator. If starting water is throttled to a finite rate, then the player has to expand to increase their supply. If a player has to expand to find more water, that means water has more gameplay behind it.

I don't think a finite "water reserve" will work for Factorio because electricity needs to consume water all the time. But a finite water "flow rate" has some potential.

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