Post
by RoddyVR » Fri Nov 27, 2015 11:30 am
It seems to me that most of the setups here posted(including the seemingly elaborate setup of the OP), never consider the possibility of overflowing petrolium gas that stops production of heavy and light oil which stops production of lubricant (and solid fuel in some cases).
I think any "automatic control of liquid levels" needs to answer these questions, before it can be relied upon.
What will happen in this system when:
1. i stop all production in my factory except liquids, will all 3 (or 5 if you're tracking acid and lub also) tanks fill up, or will some remain sub 2500 because others have already filled up and the refineries stopped.
2. only petrol is being consumed (most setups answer this with cracking)
3. only light oil is being consumed (most will stop refining when petrol tanks fill up)
4. only heavy oil is being consumed (same as 3).
5. if the crude oil runs out (you could add subquestions here of "and condition of questions 2-4")
I suspect in most cases the "last drops" of crude will not be devided by your system the way you would want it to if you were carefully watching and managing the system yourself (some will have reserves of heavy and light, but run out of petrol, others will convert everything into petrol and have no fuel from light to make electricity to power the machines using the petrol).
Every one has different priorities for their systems, but it seems to me that many of us design our systems to meet our priorities in only the one circumstance of "factory running". and we make assumptions that something wont happen ever (most assume there's never TOO MUCH petrol being made by the refineries)
I'm trying to come up with a set of rules for the pumps going to cracking that will make the system behave same way as if a person was conrolling it.
Considering that all of our production is a one way street, (you cant uncrack or unproduce anything in the vanila game), i think it really becomes a question of prioratizing the end products.
*for my conditions below i would convert "=empty" into something like "<100" in the game and "=full" into ">2400" for liquids, just so that fringe cases of "cant use up last drop cause there's less left in system then recipie requires" and the like dont screw up your logic.
If you consider just Heavy light and Petrol, i think this simple system will work for prety much everyone.
Crack heavy when Light < Heavy
Crack light when Petrol < Light
produce solid fuel from petrol (or into a steamengine) when petrol = full and (light = empty or heavy = empty) - this is in case there's no petrol use, to fill up the other 2 tanks
In most cases i think Petrol and Lubricant > Light > Heavy which just changes the rules for heavy cracking:
Crack heavy when Light < Heavy AND Lubricant > Light (set 2 pumps one after the other with these conditions to get the "and" effect)
If your priority is Petrol > Lubricant
then add a second route between the Heavy tank and cracking set with pump:
Crack heavy when Petrol < Light (same condition as for light cracking)
and put a pump between heavy tank and lubricant plant set with:
Produce lubricant when Petrol > Lubricant
If you want to include solid fuel production in the pumps system logic, then:
If you want to produce solid fuel (mostly) from Light oil:
Crack light into petrol only when (solid fuel storage or light oil tank) is full - (either condition works, which one is better depends on if your solid fuel production can keep up with light oil producion)
Produce Solid fuel from petrol when (solid fuel storage or light oil tank) is nearly empty
If petrol usage is more important then solid fuel production (you have backup fuel generation in coal, but cant run out of petrol), then add a pump between petrol and solid fuel with:
Petrol = full.
I'm going to build this all into my current factory, and will post picks when its up. hope i helped more then just myself in figuring this all out here, instead of while building it in game.