Because i have seen some Discussions on the Factorio-Forum and over on Reddit, i thought i build a Sample for myself to only Produce Lube.
So, this Setup doesn't need Oil/Pumpjacks at all. It only needs Coal and Water and 10x Heavy Oil Barrels to Kickstart. After filling the System with those Heavy Oil Barrels, it starts immediately and produces Lube as long as the Solid Fuel is wasted for Electricity or used somewhere else.
LubeOnlyProduction.jpg (777.45 KiB) Viewed 21191 times
So, thanks to all you guys in the Forums who come up with those brilliant Ideas!
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 6:32 pm
by MassiveDynamic
I don’t think those beacons are doing anything.
Other than that, nice job.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:10 pm
by Ranakastrasz
The beacons are probably there to cocunonsume power, so as to use up the extra solid fuel. That is my guess at least.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:42 pm
by darkfrei
Why not light oil to solid fuel?
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 8:19 pm
by Ranakastrasz
darkfrei wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:42 pm
Why not light oil to solid fuel?
Same reason as the beacons. Have to waste the non-heavy oil biproducts. You get less solid fuel this way and hence need less power consumption.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 9:31 pm
by mmmPI
nice !
I wonder if the lube-making machine could potentially eat-up all the heavy oil before some of it goes back to the refinery. which would cause a need to add again some barrels.
I tend to add tank+pump in the local loop, and have the pump feed the lube-machine, only if tank is above a minimum threshold to avoid accidentaly starving the system. Maybe it's unecessary with 1 ref for 2 chemplants.
oh and nit-picking all the way, my mind wants to move the inserter feeding coal to the boiler 1 tile in diagonal and rotate it 1/4 turn, to feed it solid fuel instead. But maybe you've consider not doing it as it introduce a risk for the system to get stuck if lube gets full. Then requiring circuits to make sure and would ruin the appealing simplicity of the setup
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 10:08 pm
by MassiveDynamic
That’s what I was afraid of. (Wasting power)
I would rather use the solid fuel and light oil for rocket fuel.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 10:22 pm
by mmmPI
MassiveDynamic wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 10:08 pm
That’s what I was afraid of. (Wasting power)
I would rather use the solid fuel and light oil for rocket fuel.
But then if the rocket fuel backs up, you can't produce anymore blue belts ! that's precisely what this setup was made for in the first place i assume. ( or robot frame ?).
You can think of the "wasted power" as an additional cost in electricity to produce the lube.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 11:12 pm
by Koub
This reminds me the facility I designed some time ago. It's a little longer to kickstart, but it converts one full yellow belt of coal (+ some water) into lube, all other byproducts are consumed on site, so no deadlock.
pic
2020-10-26 00_10_37-Factorio 1.0.0.jpg (609.02 KiB) Viewed 21085 times
@Koub , i see you too don't use pump to give priority to the feedback loop of heavy oil toward the ref vs towards the lube machine. I didn't even try without one you better not consume too much heavy oil with the chemplant .
Also i would give a priority on the splitter to output rocket fuel to the boiler first, and only then to the steam engine. but it may be redundant with your power switch + radar system that read the belt.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:46 am
by Koub
mmmPI wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 11:31 pm
@Koub , i see you too don't use pump to give priority to the feedback loop of heavy oil toward the ref vs towards the lube machine.
You might have missed that one :
2020-10-26 07_44_12-Window.jpg (17.3 KiB) Viewed 21006 times
mmmPI wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 11:31 pm
Also i would give a priority on the splitter to output rocket fuel to the boiler first, and only then to the steam engine. but it may be redundant with your power switch + radar system that read the belt.
I tried with priority to the right, to the left, and came back to "no priority" : I want both at the same time. Steam for my coal liquefaction, and steam for my steam engines.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 1:12 pm
by eradicator
Is there any particular reason why everyone seems to use coal instead of raw oil? Raw oil is infinite in vanilla so to me it seems to be the better candidate.
I made a quick test setup which produces 570 lube/min from a single fully depleted oil patch. Mining Productivity is level 4. With level 3 (pre-space science) it drops to 530 lube/min. I measured the @OPs construct to produce about 600 lube/min. As blue belts cost 20 lube each you get about 300 belts/hour for every 100 lube/min, so that's 1700 belts/hour for mine and 1800 belts/hour for @OP.
You're right, of course. I started with coal liquefaction because I thought that I would waste less resources, and I was hoping I would easily consume the byproducts (light oil & petroleum) to power the facility and produce the needed steam. Alas, I still had to add a bunch of radars to consume the excess.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:21 pm
by MassiveDynamic
Maybe I'm missing the deeper meaning here, but I just train the rocket fuel to my rocket silos. I never have trouble consuming it there.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:38 pm
by jodokus31
MassiveDynamic wrote: ↑Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:21 pm
Maybe I'm missing the deeper meaning here, but I just train the rocket fuel to my rocket silos. I never have trouble consuming it there.
It seems, that most people stop researching, stop producing modules and stop doing anything, except producing blue belts.
So it's very important to have a possibility to produce lube without any by-products, no matter how useful they would be.
Without sarcasm: Sometimes it's important to have a product line, that produces a product without dependencies. In vanilla, lube is such a candidate and because flare-stack is not a thing, you are stuck otherwise
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:31 pm
by mmmPI
jodokus31 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:38 pm
It seems, that most people stop researching, stop producing modules and stop doing anything, except producing blue belts.
So it's very important to have a possibility to produce lube without any by-products, no matter how useful they would be.
that's when you have finished all research except infinity one, and you prepare your next base, which requires tons of belts.
Or you want to increase your robot count, for the next step, but you have no research available.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:38 pm
by SackCFix
Hi guys, thanks for your Replies!
The Setup i've shown was more a conceptual Thing rather than a solid workin' Automation-Line But the Concept will be used later in my Game and get beaconed like hell for my Roboframes (Automating Research, not Bots )!
mmmPI wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 9:31 pm
I wonder if the lube-making machine could potentially eat-up all the heavy oil before some of it goes back to the refinery. which would cause a need to add again some barrels.
So i tested it and you can run 1 Refinery (no Modules) and 2 Chemplants (3xT3 Speedmodules) and it would still work but wont increase your Lube Production at all. I tried the same with 3 Chemplants and then the Heavy Oil gets sucked out immediately!
eradicator wrote: ↑Mon Oct 26, 2020 1:12 pm
Is there any particular reason why everyone seems to use coal instead of raw oil? Raw oil is infinite in vanilla so to me it seems to be the better candidate.
Dude, your Setup with that single Oil Pump? That is such a smart Move i can't believe it! If there's Oil around i would definitely stick with your Design but if not, the Possibility to use Coal and Water to produce Lube on site is a pretty nice Alternative.
eradicator wrote: ↑Mon Oct 26, 2020 1:12 pm
I made a quick test setup which produces 570 lube/min from a single fully depleted oil patch. Mining Productivity is level 4. With level 3 (pre-space science) it drops to 530 lube/min. I measured the @OPs construct to produce about 600 lube/min. As blue belts cost 20 lube each you get about 300 belts/hour for every 100 lube/min, so that's 1700 belts/hour for mine and 1800 belts/hour for @OP.
Thanks for the Numbers, i didn't had the Time to go deeper into that
jodokus31 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:38 pm
It seems, that most people stop researching, stop producing modules and stop doing anything, except producing blue belts.
So it's very important to have a possibility to produce lube without any by-products, no matter how useful they would be.
that's when you have finished all research except infinity one, and you prepare your next base, which requires tons of belts.
Or you want to increase your robot count, for the next step, but you have no research available.
Maybe there are lots of people who also don't produce much modules for this next base, which would suck up so much petroleum gas and light oil for cracking.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 10:14 am
by foamy
My own preference is to reserve oil purely for petroleum gas and rocket fuel, and make lubricant from coal (which is the least-used ore on the map once you transition away from boiler power). Excess LO/petroleum gas from the lubricant chain is then fed back into the boilers for the liquefication. Excess goes to, in order, train fuel, then for rockets, then dumped into a very large array of backup boiler power hooked into the rest of the plant, and if all that's full, is used to power itself. Since if you're consuming lubricant, you're using power somewhere, this prevents a total lockup.
Single-product refineries are significantly easier to balance out than multi-product ones, and easier to tile, generally.
Re: Lube-Only-Production
Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 6:34 pm
by NotRexButCaesar
Could you try using the boilers to power it? Make it only need coal and not power?
But the Concept will be used later in my Game and get beaconed like hell for my Roboframes (Automating Research, not Bots 
)!
If there's Oil around i would definitely stick with your Design but if not, the Possibility to use Coal and Water to produce Lube on site is a pretty nice Alternative.