Oil Expansion

[e298f622]

Hi,

To start off I am a oil and gas engineer. My wife always laughs at me when I play this game because she says I come home to work!

Anyway, there are some things that I think oil could be expanded on in the game which would make it more fun

Most of all is the lack of pressure! The game is based around quantity, which is fine, but the reality is that a fluid process is also dependent on pressure. Without pressure the quantity simply will not go anywhere! The refinery pushing to the tanks make sense. Refinery have pumps which push fluid to the tanks. However tanks have no ability to push fluid to chemical process. I would propose that booster pumps be added to the game mechanics that must be located close to tanks. The fluid leaves the tanks, go to the booster pumps and then into pipes for process. The pressure generated by the pumps should decrease with distance, and thusly lengthen the rate that fluid is delivered. This will drive additional tanks and pumps for poor factory design, which is an increase in electricity usage.

Medium and Heavy oil tanks should require electricity. This is because the viscosity of the fluid requires heat to make it usable in process. Likewise piping that handles medium and heavy oils should require energy also.

I would like to see the refinery overhauled. Currently how it works is you first research a simple refinery, then another independent advanced refinery. This has very little basis on reality. A way that I would suggest is to start with a simple refinery, which would produce lots of pollution and take a loong time to process with alot of waste (called a coke, a new resource with no use in the game which could be burned but with an additional pollution multiplier). Then additional components(units) could be researched which would increase efficiency and reduce pollution. These expansions would require to be assembled on the refinary increasing its footprint. Examples: Unicracker Unit (waste reduction), Vacuum Unit (speed), alkylation unit (process speed), Coker unit (waste reduction), advanced distillation (pollution reduction), Reformer (pollution reduction). Note: These units are not intended to make the refinery produce more faster, I would suggest this stuff be required to research/assemble to reach current refining capability.

Lastly I would add the produced resource of diesel, which would come with diesel burning generators. These generators will produce electricity faster then steam but with more pollution. They could be used in remote locations or to replace steam alltogether. Diesel burners could be added also. The idea would be to drive a demand for diesel to remote locations and within the factory. This will drive tank cars on the train and more of an emphasis on oil then currently in the game.


I will still play the game anyway but I thought I would throw this out there. the idea's struck me on a large factory Im working on with extensive amounts of piping.

[Kayser]

Great to have a proper oil and gas engineer on the crew!

I think the above is probably more realistic than what we have in the current vanilla. However, I think it would only be more fun if you are a player that like added complexity. As it stands, it's probably best packaged as an oil realism mod. You just need to find a modder to work with.

[RedScourge]

I would be happy with just the diesel generator, really. Or perhaps a burner overhaul, perhaps with the burners producing less pollution with solid fuel, or producing more heat, so that you need fewer burners per steam engine (sort of acting like an efficiency and productivity module).

All that stuff sounds cool, but does it really add to the gameplay? If anything, it would seem to me that it just makes it harder to start out with oil, which is probably going to unbalance the game, because you need oil for a while before you start to get the good offensive capabilities, and with these changes, the moment you start using oil, you'd be getting swarmed with biters. It might not unbalance the game so much if oil wells defaulted to having a far slower deplention rate perhaps.

[Kayser]

I would be happy with just the diesel generator, really.

Check out https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 93&t=15094

[RedScourge]

That's pretty cool! Is it actually realistic that generators are less energy efficient than steam plants though? What I envision is some sort of structure which has a higher power density than burners and steam engines, and hopefully produces less pollution, but only works with the oils or something.

[bobucles]

However tanks have no ability to push fluid to chemical process.

Never heard of a water tower?

Pipes and tanks have a flow rate dependent on how full they are. Full pipes behave as though they have more pressure.

[e298f622]

That's pretty cool! Is it actually realistic that generators are less energy efficient than steam plants though? What I envision is some sort of structure which has a higher power density than burners and steam engines, and hopefully produces less pollution, but only works with the oils or something.

All sizable power generation comes from steam generation. The only that I can think of off hand that do not use steam would be wind and tidal. The efficiency would be the same as a coal fired plant to a natural gas plant. The natural gas plant is more efficient with less pollution.

[e298f622]

However tanks have no ability to push fluid to chemical process.

Never heard of a water tower?

Pipes and tanks have a flow rate dependent on how full they are. Full pipes behave as though they have more pressure.

Pressure in the pipes is a product of the height of fluid in the tank, however that energy is wasted with friction on the walls of pipes and thusly diminishes over distance. A tank with 2m of oil is not going to push oil to far by itself at any process usable rate.

[ssilk]

I think I can say some things about it.

The devs explained somewhere, what they removed due to gameplay. As far as I remember it was, that the fluid needs to be heated (you know, oil can still be heated as water and you can use it as a replacement for hot water and the steam engines produce electric water out of it and put steam smokes from it into the air?). The pressure vs. height or level is one thing, that was needed. There is currently now way to implement real flow of fluids, with real friction, especially real pressure vs. volume. It needs too much cpu-power. And AFAIK the devs have made the fluid simulation to run more or less stable, but it is not perfect. Try to built an "8" with pipes. Put a small pump into the center and power it. One of the arms (even if equal length) is more streaming than the other.

[Klonan]

I would be happy with just the diesel generator, really.

That's pretty cool! Is it actually realistic that generators are less energy efficient than steam plants though? What I envision is some sort of structure which has a higher power density than burners and steam engines, and hopefully produces less pollution, but only works with the oils or something.

Reading your comments pushed me to finish off a mod i was playing with in my mind
Diesel Generator

I hope this is somewhat like what you were looking for

[bobucles]

Pressure in the pipes is a product of the height of fluid in the tank, however that energy is wasted with friction on the walls of pipes and thusly diminishes over distance.

This already happens in game. The further down a pipe you go, there is less liquid pushing from behind and thus the "pressure" in the line is lower. Make a pipe too long and you will have a lot of trouble moving liquid through it!

Factorio does a pretty decent liquid model for how simple it is.

[RedScourge]

Excellent work Klonan! I was always thinking that some other power source was missing, and it took me a while to put my finger on it, but this totally takes care of it!

Now all we need is a more visible way to tell when we are beginning to run low on crude oil, so that if someone decides to forgo steam altogether, they don't suddenly find themselves completely out of power at some point. I'm not entirely sure what that might look like, but that's a problem for another time.

[bobingabout]

Preasure is kind of already in the game. though it is heavilly quantity oriented, if you have a pipe long enough, there comes a point when it won't flow anymore, so you need to use the pumps to make it flow further.

this could be implemented better though, because currently everything has the same flow. it would be better if gasses had a higher flow, and heavier fluids like crude and heavy oil had less flow. unfortunately, what you currently have is the highest flow the game can handle without an unstable simulation.


Building upgrades is an interesting concept, but there is currently no method of implementing that in the game short of replacing the building with a different one entirely.

[TuckJohn]

I vote against pipes and tanks requiring electricity, for the same gameplay reason that belts dont require electricity.

I really like the idea of having a separate refinery for advanced oil processing, perhaps keeping the current one for advanced and making a new one for "normal" oil processing.

I like the idea of modular oil production even more, something like how building expansion works in SimCity. Various "slots" where you can put buildings next to the oil refinery. Not moduals, because (in my opinion) they are kinda boring.

[hitzu]

There is one idea that looks really well - heating liquids before processing. This would make boilers more common and useful.

[bobingabout]

I vote against pipes and tanks requiring electricity, for the same gameplay reason that belts dont require electricity.

Yeah... to be fair, that's what the "Small pump" is for. want more flow? Put a pump in. In 0.12.x it even acts as a valve, because you can connect it to the logistic wire network (the other end possibly connected to a tank) so it will pump only under certain conditions.

[morse]

Somehow I thought that "oil expansion" deals more with the use of oil, not of the refinery and production.

I think that oil as a resource is terribly underrepresented in the production chains. There is petroleum gas, which is useful for plastics and sulfur and... that's pretty much it. The lubricant is almost not needed (only for bots) and the solid fuel has no clear advantage over coal, which is much easier to obtain.

How exactly are you able to construct a car, a tank, and a freaking locomotive without a single drop of lubricant is beyond me. So I think the lubricant must be much more well-presented. Also, I think you should consider rubber as a part of some production chains. And finally, the liquid fuel gas, the petrol, the diesel, may be kerosene (which is a much better candidate for rocket fuel because... well... it is one) - all should be present and should be easy to use as energy sources. Coal should be one of the most ineffective energy sources, yet right now it's the most commonly used one.

[Zeblote]

I vote against pipes and tanks requiring electricity, for the same gameplay reason that belts dont require electricity.

Yeah... to be fair, that's what the "Small pump" is for. want more flow? Put a pump in. In 0.12.x it even acts as a switch, because you can connect it to the logistic wire network (the other end possibly connected to a tank) so it will pump only under certain conditions.

A small pump also limits the flow, though. Maybe there should be a 'big pump' that requires more energy and pushes the maximum a pipe can handle?

[bobingabout]

Also... making plastic out of gas is silly... Plastic is usually made out of the heavier oils, while lighter oils and gasses are used for fuels. Other products like lubricants are usually made from Light oils, unless you're talking about grease, then again that's heavy.

Sulphur is also an unwanted byproduct, not the reason why you're producing the gas.


so if I were redesigning the oil chain:
Heavy oil would produce Plastic
Light oil would produce Lubricant, and flamethrower fuel.
Sulphur would be obtained during the processing phase. (Likely instead of gas, because gas would become useless, unless it was used for a fuel when fluid fuels are introduced)