Development and Discussion

[Kryzeth]

About my previous concern... I just got up to the oil point of my playthrough (one without angel refining) and realized that a similar type of overproduction game is played with oil processing, although in oil's case, it seems a bit easier to manage, partly because fluids are just so much easier to work with (at least compared to items on a belt ), but also because you can turn one of the outputs into another (it only goes one way, but still). So like in early game, usually you make too much heavy and light, so when you get to cracking, you can just crack the unused heavy into light, and the unused light into petroleum, and you can use the circuit network and pumps to enable or disable cracking as needed.

If it were possible to turn some of the byproducts of refining into more iron or copper respectively on demand... might make it easier to work with. But that's just a random suggestion, probably not feasible in any way.

In any case, if I try using angel refining again, I'll probably use this new Belt Sorter mod (https://mods.factorio.com/mods/judos/be ... ussion/525) It looks like exactly what angel refining needs. I can just imagine the input of random things from multiple sorters being sorted (heh) to their proper places, without using smart inserters. It -does- require red circuits (or electronic circuit boards) to craft, so it's pretty far into green science... but I'll probably just change the recipe myself I mean the tech only requires red science anyways... next time!

[safan]

Slag and crushed stone can be reformed in any ore. So what byproducts do you mean?
Atm i'm using only crushing and sorting. The aluminum i make from slag. i'm now about halfway all blue techs, and starting to prepare for a second base focussed on launching rockets. Before that i will probably have to make a new ore producing base.

but yeah i use active chests to bring the excess to my storehouses, they take about 100 bots permanently.

[Kryzeth]

Slag and crushed stone can be reformed in any ore. So what byproducts do you mean?
..
but yeah i use active chests to bring the excess to my storehouses, they take about 100 bots permanently.

To reclarify, I was playing more vanilla (uranium power ores only, no bob ores), so the crushing and sorting of the different ores results in a lot of one ore, and a small byproduct of the opposite ore (in addition to the usual slag/crushed stone). The slag and crushed stone I could deal with (bufferbufferbuffer) but when I produced too much copper, for example, I could no longer produce iron (because the "byproduct" copper was halting production). That's the basic problem. I could probably solve it with just adding more buffers (I was also looking at that warehouses mod.. didn't think I would really need it, lol) but I never really liked that solution.

Hmm, if you've been able to get to blue science with bobs and angel refining, then it might be easier to deal with there. Next playthrough, I'll try it out :3

[safan]

you have to keep one of two a priority.
in my case i prefer the dark blue ore to run permanently and the light blue to only run when the copper from the dark ore is not enough.

you can do this pretty lowlevel by sideloading the copper ore from the light blue sorting on the belt that comes from the dark ore sorting. That way the copper ore from the dark ore will always run. I do the same with the iron from the light sorting. That way the ore as byproduct is always used before the ore as main product.
It could only deadlock if the ore as byproduct is still way more then you currently need.
Then you need to setup either a buffer (raw ore) or a buffer in finished products that you might need later like rails to consume iron. (stone is abudant) Since there are no products that use copper alone that is often the raw ore. Trying to make more electronics will often tax your wood, tin and lead production.

The slag is then transported to a storehouse where it will be used for aluminium production
The crushed stone is stored as rails, concrete, walls, bricks, landfill or just normal stone. Those take a lot less space.

[Kryzeth]

Hmm... I never thought about sideloading like that.. I always just merged outputs with a splitter, but that actually makes a lot of sense. *thinks to self* So full iron would always run, producing minimal copper, and full copper would run if the minimal was not enough.. but if there were too much iron, wouldn't that stop full copper from running as well? Since that would also produce an iron byproduct that would get backed up by too much iron, and thus stop full copper from running, just flipping the problem?

But, I think with some circuit magic, buffers and sideloading, I might be able to visualize a solution; thank you very much for the idea! I will implement this on next run!

[Arch666Angel]

Slurp slurp

[pyanodon]

Slurp slurp

Do want!

[Arch666Angel]

Will be in the next refining update as a kind of early chem-plant, working title is the liquefier, all the dissolution recipes will be made in there (3x3 size, fluidboxes: 1in, 1out).

So you have some kind of tiered chem plants:
-early (3x3, 1in, 1out) -> refining
-base (3x3, 2in, 2out) -> base game
-advanced (5x5, 3in, 3out) -> petrochems

Will change the slag and stone dissolution to require sulfuric acid and the filtration recipes to require water and output waste water, similar to the water cycle for the floatation process.

[Sedar]

Slurp slurp

Do want!

[cellular]

Mmm... Tasty tasty complexity...

[StormTAG]

I'm having a blast with all this compexity. I'm still maybe 1/3 of the way through the green science and just now looking at hydro-refining.

I just wanted to say thanks! Also, curious to know if there's anything I could do to help with the new petrochem mod or anything else. I'm pretty handy with vim and comfortable using git.

[orzelek]

Did you consider adding some of the processing recipes to productivity limitations for bob's modules?

[Arch666Angel]

Did you consider adding some of the processing recipes to productivity limitations for bob's modules?

I did, but what if bobmods isn't installed? I removed the ability to put productivity in from most of the machines in the refining mod (it should keep the 1:1 ratio of the ores all the way through), but I need to check if I caught really all of them. I will probably do this for the yield incresing machines in all the other resource generating/processing mods.

I'm having a blast with all this compexity. I'm still maybe 1/3 of the way through the green science and just now looking at hydro-refining.

I just wanted to say thanks! Also, curious to know if there's anything I could do to help with the new petrochem mod or anything else. I'm pretty handy with vim and comfortable using git.

Makes me happy to hear that, are you playing with bobs or vanilla?

Not really aside from testing and helping with bug, since the biggest amount of time goes into creating icons and gfx. Also I always have a plan what a processing line should look like, but the details are decided on while doing it

[aklesey1]

Slurp slurp

What this machine does?

[Rysith]

Great mod - really enjoying the added complexity that all the refining produces.

However, I'm having a real problem getting iron production to any reasonable level[1]. I just got thermal refining and have what seems like the right setup there (two floatation cells -> two leeching plants -> one thermal plant), but it seems like thanks to the Saphirite yield (approximately 2 iron per 3 ore) and the speed of the cells (1 ore/second) I've been stuck at 4-600 iron plates per minute (which, of course, limits production of more belts/inserters/processing facilities). Am I doing something wrong there, or do I just need to seize a giant desert somewhere and cover it in belts?

[1] Only Uranium Power, so no bob's ores

[orzelek]

From what I found out to make a lot of iron or copper you need to go different route.
One would be using recipes which combine more types of crushed ores to get only product you are interested in (with catalyst or without if you disable them in config).
Second which I'm mostly using atm is to have separate line that only crushes and sorts materials without further procesing for mass production. So you us jivolite or saphiritie in this way for iron for example.

It seems for me that while sorting of processed ores has a lot of flexibility it's also very inefficient for mass production. You get 2-3 iron ore from 8-9 input processed ore. But with direct sorting of crushed ore you get 2 iron ore out of 4 for example.

[Rysith]

One would be using recipes which combine more types of crushed ores to get only product you are interested in (with catalyst or without if you disable them in config).
Second which I'm mostly using atm is to have separate line that only crushes and sorts materials without further procesing for mass production. So you us jivolite or saphiritie in this way for iron for example.

It looks like the vanilla ores don't have focused recipes (at least, I only see focused atomic power ore recipes at advanced ore refining 3), so I may have to fall back to just crushing them. At least I have plenty of slag processing now...

[StormTAG]

Makes me happy to hear that, are you playing with bobs or vanilla?

Bobs, yours, RSO, Marathon, Misanthrope... A few assorted others. Based on the Farlands mod pack. Marathon plus everything else makes it feel like I'm playing a completely different game.

Not really aside from testing and helping with bug, since the biggest amount of time goes into creating icons and gfx. Also I always have a plan what a processing line should look like, but the details are decided on while doing it

Fair enough. Please hit me up if you need any testers.

[makapse]

Great mod - really enjoying the added complexity that all the refining produces.

However, I'm having a real problem getting iron production to any reasonable level[1]. I just got thermal refining and have what seems like the right setup there (two floatation cells -> two leeching plants -> one thermal plant), but it seems like thanks to the Saphirite yield (approximately 2 iron per 3 ore) and the speed of the cells (1 ore/second) I've been stuck at 4-600 iron plates per minute (which, of course, limits production of more belts/inserters/processing facilities). Am I doing something wrong there, or do I just need to seize a giant desert somewhere and cover it in belts?

[1] Only Uranium Power, so no bob's ores

Lets suppose a mining location has 3 lvl4 ore sorters(total speed is 6) and is sufficiently supplied(4 ore crushers lvl3).then this will need 16 flotation cells and the rest plants(this is useful cause it needs 6 hydro plants to filter the waste water and 2 to purify base water and a clarifier on purified water if the liquid requirement must be balanced. If you use the white ore and process it till thermal you get 8.6 iron per 9 ore or even 9/9 if you purify it further. You get a 25% bonus iron if you process the raw ore before smelting and a questionable 20% on that(for a total of 50% bonus) if you smelt it to ingots. I assume we dont smelt the ingots cause it creates a huge belt requirement and effort(60% more effort for 20% bonus)

At this rate we get 27iron ore/sec hence 27*60=1620/min. Add the 25% extra for processing and we 2025 iron plates/min from 1 mining location and about a 100 plates/min are used to create the sulfuric acid for this production.So there should be a 1800 plates/min at least.

The other ores are around either 1/3 iron or 2/3 iron and rest copper.

As i see it you have not adapted to this mod which requires huge bases(size) and the ore for it mainly comes from the infinite ones.This is the most common mistake new people max, trying to keep the base sizes at vanilla sizes.

Playing this mod with Bobs is harder cause there are so many different types of resources and there is a loss of 1 ore when sorting(x crushed ore gives x-1 total ores + 1 slag) unless it has gone though thermal where there is no slag.

In bobs, i am barely reaching 150plates/min from 1 base(2 bases total) after 10 hours and am just starting to automate the lvl2 circuits and the blue science techs(got only 2) cause the max we can get of 1 ore type from the flotation cells onwards is 2/6,3/8 and 3/9 respectively or use the 2ore1 +2ore2 + catalyst =4 specific ores we need.

[BlakeMW]

I'm playing a "bobangel" game at the moment.

One thing I've noticed is that slag processing can yield really respectable amounts of metals needed (at least for bootstrapping purposes) only in small quantities - like nickel, aluminium, zinc, cobalt, gold, titanium and tungsten. You want to get Iron, Copper, Lead and Tin from primary sources (and Nickel can be hard to avoid), but you can use a short processing chain, ending at grinding, with or without sorting, and use the vast quantities of slag created to extract the other 6 types.

Sorting is useful, other refining steps maybe not so useful:

• No Sorting: 3 crushed ore -> 2 plate (= 2 ore usually)
• Sorting: 4 crushed ore -> 2 primary ores, +1 secondary ore, 0.16 "free choice" ores
• Flotation: 6 Crushed Ore -> 2 primary ores, +1 secondary ore, +2 byores, 0.16 "free choice" ores
• Leaching: 8 Crushed Ore -> 3 primary ores, +1 secondary ore, +3 byores, 0.16 "free choice" ores
• Refining: 9 Crushed Ore -> 3 primary ores, +2 secondary ore, +4 byores

Numbers by 1 ore mined:

• No Sorting: 1 ore = 0.666 primary plates
• Sorting: 1 ore = 0.5 primary ores, 0.25 secondary ores, 0.04 "free choice" ores
• Flotation: 1 ore = 0.333 primary ores, 0.16 secondary ores, 0.33 byores, 0.026 "free choice" ores
• Leaching: 1 ore = 0.375 primary ores, 0.125 secondary ores, 0.375 byores, 0.02 "free choice" ores
• Refining: 1 ore = 0.333 primary ores, 0.222 secondary ores, 0.444 byores

If you consider the primary and secondary plates (i.e. iron and copper or vice-verca) most important than sorting alone is by far the best stage (0.75), the next best is no sorting (0.666), Refining (at 0.55) and then Leaching (at 0.5). If you're genuinely interested in large quantities of the advanced ores then each more advanced step is better than the previous (although flotation is particularly weak). Otoh if you only want small quantities of specific advanced ores, then you're much better served sticking with sorting to maximize slag.

What this basically means is for bootstrapping purposes - requiring large quantities of iron, copper, lead and tin and only trace amounts of advanced metals, you are far better off making large crushing/sorting setups with slag processing, and entirely ignoring the advanced refining stages perhaps until the end game when you may want greater quantities of titanium and tungsten and such. In some cases you might even prefer to skip sorting to maximize the yield of a particular ore type - for example to get only lead without nickel.

EDIT:
Should also be mentioned, the "ore combining" recipes with brown catalyst produce primary ores (iron, copper, lead and tin) at a 1 ore = 1 ore ratio, and are the best way to get primary ores - however the mineral slurry requirements for catalyst are quite steep, the 4 crushed ore will only come with 2 crushed stone, which is only good for making 0.32 brown catalyst. Mineral slurry is more effective turned into catalyst than being crystallized into iron/copper/lead/tin - so prefer to make brown catalyst than crystallize iron/copper, but the combining recipe do need to be subsidized by other refining chains to get enough catalyst. Considering the lost titanium, tungsten and such it's probably a poor deal to combine to get iron/copper.