<1.3GW fusion setup optimized for underutilized case (e.g. ships)
Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2025 7:37 am
by h.q.droid
This is a compact fusion setup optimized for efficiency. It gets a consistent +245% neighborhood bonus on average for vastly underutilized load (tested on a ~20MW drain). The catch is that it can't generate the full 1.4GW reliably. This is achieved by buffering plasma with over-built generators while shutting down the reactors intermittently by denying coolant. It's compatible with space platforms. Only tested in editor for now.
Fuel cells are expected on the green belt. The assembler must be bootstrapped with *exactly* 4 barrels of coolant, after loading fuel for every reactor. Any more coolant it will cease to be efficient, any less it could brown out.
Re: <1.3GW fusion setup optimized for underutilized case (e.g. ships)
Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2025 5:05 pm
by Tertius
How about moving the storage tank into the hot fluoroketone pipe, geting rid of the pumps, the combinator, and controlling the amount of cold fluoroketone by activating the cryogenic plant only if there is a certain surplus of hot fluoroketone.
You need to calibrate the amount of hot fluroketone to find out how much is "certain surplus". For 3 reactors, you need 7-10 barrels of cold fluroketone and the threshold is 100-110. For 4 reactors, it's probably a bit more.
Example with non-quality, 3 reactors and max. 900 MW:
The neighbor bonus is applied consistently and plasma balance is kept even after hours of runtime with dynamic 100-300 MW load.
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Re: <1.3GW fusion setup optimized for underutilized case (e.g. ships)
Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2025 6:47 pm
by h.q.droid
Tertius wrote: Tue Aug 26, 2025 5:05 pm
How about moving the storage tank into the hot fluoroketone pipe, geting rid of the pumps, the combinator, and controlling the amount of cold fluoroketone by activating the cryogenic plant only if there is a certain surplus of hot fluoroketone.
You need to calibrate the amount of hot fluroketone to find out how much is "certain surplus". For 3 reactors, you need 7-10 barrels of cold fluroketone and the threshold is 100-110. For 4 reactors, it's probably a bit more.
Example with non-quality, 3 reactors and max. 900 MW:
The neighbor bonus is applied consistently and plasma balance is kept even after hours of runtime with dynamic 100-300 MW load.
After a quick test in editor with 7 barrels at 20MW load, the neighborhood bonus quickly decreased to +10%. How do you avoid "output full" without a big plasma buffer?
Re: <1.3GW fusion setup optimized for underutilized case (e.g. ships)
Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2025 7:29 pm
by Tertius
Probably you didn't finish the calibration. At the beginning there must be a bit more cold fluoroketone to get some amount of hot fluoroketone in the buffer.
The startup/calibrating works like this. Build the thing. Add 7 barrels of fluoroketone. Wait until all cold fluoroketone has been processed and there is nothing left in the reactors. May be this is what you didn't wait out. Neither cold fluoroketone nor plasma must exist any more in the reactors. You need some power load to actually consume plasma. The less you have, the longer the process.
The moment no reactor has any buffered cold fluoroketone any more, check the hot fluoroketone level in the cryogenic plant and the plasma level in the generators. All generators must have some plasma. It's ideal if most are at 10 but not all of them.
If you use my blueprint 1:1, the hot fluoroketone level in the cryogenic plant is now 95. You see the cryogenic plant will activate if the level reaches 100. If it activates, 20 cold fluoroketone will be created and reach the reactors. Since they are all empty, they're running all at the same time for half a second at full load with full neighbor bonus. And this is it. They pause until enough hot fluoroketone accumulated in the cryogenic plant, then recycled, then the reactors run again.
It may be that at high power load the flow into the cryogenic plant is too slow, so the hot fluoroketone level needs to be higher. Don't remember if 7, 8 or 9 barrels was the optimum. Add another barrel and slightly increase the activation threshold in the cryogenic plant. Its value is balanced with the fill state of the generators. If some generators start to have less than 10 plasma, the threshold must kick in and the cryogenic plant must activate. If some generators went down to 0 plasma, the threshold is too high.
Make it so that the reactors don't accumulate plasma. At lower power consumption this is always reached, however near maximum it's not perfectly efficient any more - it's a flaw in the Factorio engine to not equally distribute fluorokotone into the reactors.
At full load, the activation level in the cryogenic plant is reached more or less immediately after the current crafting cycle ends, so it's continuously recycling. If the plant isn't filling fast enough, you need to add slightly more barrels and increase the threshold, so the flow rate is higher.
The idea is from some post here in the forum. Unfortunately I didn't kept a link, and I'm unable to find it again.
Re: <1.3GW fusion setup optimized for underutilized case (e.g. ships)
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2025 3:45 am
by h.q.droid
Wow! It worked after the calibration! Thanks for the idea!
This is indeed a much more elegant process, controlling the cryogenic plant seems to distribute fluid more evenly than pumps and the infrastructure is much simpler.
