joe_da_cro wrote:based on the real world and seemingly how it works in this game. Fueled Energy generation comes from boiling water then the steam turning the steam engines. This of course discounts solar energy.
When you have a system like Solar in the game, coupled with accumulators there is really less importance on the Steam engine. basically why invest in the infrastructure on uranium ore (for a new Power type) when you can build a solar array with accumulators which do the same job albeit with a larger amount of space used. Although if like coal there is more than one purpose for the uranium like suggested nuclear weaponry would make implementing it just for the added industry for the weapons alone.
Space is the largest consideration. Back when I was a Field Engineer for GE, I worked on one of the largest solar farms in the world. Over 500 MW of generation takes up a ridiculous amount of space. Around 8 square miles if I remember correctly. I haven't taken the time to do the math if it is modeled correctly in the game or not, but it seems right.
Imagine when building a new base, far away from your home base power grid, to be able to take a few pieces of uranium to fuel a reactor that could output 100 MW of clean energy. That is the impact that a
nuclear reactor could have. Granted this wouldn't matter if playing in peaceful mode, but when trying to keep those external bases small and defensible, having a near endless source of energy could be wonderful.
I'm only about 40 hours new to factorio, and haven't played with the mods to see how accurate
Nuclear energy is in those, but as a prior
nuclear operator in our Navy on a submarine, I would love to see
nuclear make the vanilla game. We had a 165 MW reactor and that size would be just about perfect for most bases.
Those reactors were built to last 15 years without needing to refuel. I'm not sure if they would want that exact same realism in the game. Either way, I'd love to see it as a clean energy source with no pollution, as it is in real life. Sure, a
nuclear reactor does have some radioactive waste involved with its routine operation, but instead of just keeping it there at the site, you could output it in cubes or something that the train could take back to your main base for processing and burial in a concrete bunker that gives off maybe small level of pollution for the bugs to hone in on.
A
nuclear reactor is a pain to operate in real life, with many support systems that could be added for realism. Or they could make the actual building of the reactor similar to the refining process instead of being just a block building. The game already has piping and pumps and tanks. A
nuclear reactor is just a hot rock that makes steam inside an enclosed loop with a heat exchanger to transfer heat to the secondary side without the water mixing. From there, that hot water just makes turbine generators go spinny spinny. I guess the game could use the same steam engines it already uses, but I'd love to see some more modern, powerful turbine generators.
That could be a lot for them to do though, and I know that there are already some good mods that make
nuclear power.
I currently operate part of the power grid in real life, and the transmission lines bother me. In real life, you must pay careful attention to loading so that you don't exceed capacity of the line. I wonder how difficult it would be for them to implement something like that in game. I'm not talking about monitoring frequency, amperage, real and reactive power, but just something simple like loading. The game already knows the power loading for each machine that uses power. Just put some logic in there to trace it all back to the source by using some simple math.
Actually, it isn't simple at all when you get into multiple lines connected together in a grid. Determining how much power flows on each line could cause major programming headaches, and I wouldn't want that. Anyway, those are my thoughts. I love the game and will be happy with any improvements.