Solar is BORING, here is why you should switch to steam!!

[AboutTime]

Lately, I have grown very fond of steam powered factories.. Laying down solar panels is uninteresting and lacks any sort of challenge, where as steam power introduces an entire new set of logistical challenges! This caused me to wonder "just how efficient is solid fuel?.. And how much more worth it is it to use solid fuel over solar?"

I have posted a much more in depth look at the math behind these stats on reddit here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... _stats_to/.
(These forums and reddit use different formatting, so it is difficult for me to bring the entire post over here )


Here are some interesting stats about why you should consider solid fuel to power your steam engines over solar:

using a depleted oil well:

• For a single depleted pump jack (at 10% yield) and converting all of the oils/gas produced via. basic oil processing to solid fuel, we can get approximately 1.47 Mega Joules of energy per second. This is enough power to run 10 assembly 2 machines! Can you imagine the possibilities if you had 10, 20, even 40 depleted oil wells?!
• Using solar power, to match a single depleted pump jack we need 24 solar panels, and even more (combined with accumulators) to power the 10 assembly machines at night..

using a 100% yield oil well:

• For a single 100% yield pump jack, converting all of the oils/gas produced via. basic oil processing to solid fuel, we can get approximately 15.5 Mega Joules of energy per second. This is enough power to run 103 assembly 2 machines!
• Using solar power, to match a single 100% yield pump jack we need 258 solar panels, and even more (combined with accumulators) to power the 103 assembly machines at night.

If youre interested in a more in depth analysis, check out my reddit post! I hope this helps convince some of you to switch from pure solar, to either a combined set, or pure steam power setups!

Thanks!

[tonsrd]

steam = smoke = bad ups.

ppl use solar coz its less entites on map

<-- I use uranium power and youki for more power

[Tami]

1000 Steamengines = 1400 boilers + 1400 Inserters, that need to be calculated per tick while Solar panels count as one entitiy and massivly improve performance.
It might change if the game support multicore cpu, but actually you can reach the limit really fast.

[Gergely]

Steam all the way
Win the game without using a solar panel.

[Frightning]

Steam versus solar is always an interesting question:

From a strictly theoretical perspective, Solar is superior because there are no 'operating' costs. It consumes no fuel to produce the energy (i.e. its 'free' energy). That said, per MW, the fixed costs are MUCH higher than steam (and use non-trivial amounts of copper and Sulfuric Acid, so there's oil demand there too). So the real practical question is: Do you have enough fuel available to forgo solar completely? Note that any Solid fuel you make precludes cracking the used oil products into Petroleum gas for use in making oil derived products (Plastic bars, and Sulfur). Also any Heavy oil cracked to Light oil for Solid fuel is Heavy oil not converted into Lubricant or used to make Flamethrower ammo. So you don't want to use Solid fuel if you're in any way facing possible oil shortage. Coal however is another option, as it's only used in Plastic bars, Grenades (and the derivative Cluster grenades), Poison capsules, and Slowdown capsules. So Coal too can be a no-go if you don't have much of it to work with. You could also use Raw wood, but that's not automatable, and hence won't scale well (it can be a good way to burn off excess Raw wood though).

Taking the above into account, the questions to ask imo are: Is oil plentiful, or at least Coal? Are Iron ore and Copper ore plentiful? If the answer to the first is no, then you should seriously consider going all Solar panels and Basic accumulators, especially if you have plenty of Iron ore and Copper ore. If there is plenty of fuel, but not plenty of ore, then Solar should be avoided and Steam is the way to go. When both are viable options, then it's more about how you wanna do things than anything else.

[ChoMar]

I use both methods
Solar scales better, imho. If you need Energy, just place a blueprint for solar/accumulator.
The "challenge" of setting up a new steam engine array gets boring after a while.
On the other hand, Steam is much cheaper to set up and consumes less space. But it requires ressources to run.

[vanatteveldt]

Oil is fun, and if you set coal to very low and oil to very high it's also quite practical. With speed modules (in pumpjack), beacons (affecting multiple pumps) and productivity/efficiency modules (in refinery) you can get even more watt per well.

Another fun alternative is the nucular mod, much more compact but logistically challenging because the process is complicated (refining, reprocessing, etc)

[Hannu]

In my opinion accumulators are boring things. Without accumulators I can get the "benefits" of both systems, the steam power with coal logistics, pollution and real smoky industry feeling, and massive solar areas and their resource greedy production facilities. I have clamped number of accumulators equal to the number of laser turrets in my last games and have been quite happy. They last few seconds if there are no other power source in my base but filter high current peaks of shooting lasers. Bob's mod have fast accumulators with limited capacity and high output power which are even better in this purpose. I would like to have some kind of weather and seasonal effects to make variations less predictable and force me to store coal and control power with circuits. I tried some mod but it seems to have couple of discrete weather types and fast transitions between them. It has also far too short period of fluctuations to be really interesting (and it makes screen dark during rain, which is annoying because in real life my eyes can easily adapt if light level of rainy day is less than 10 % of level of sunny day.).

I do not see advantage of oil as an energy source. With normal settings there are practically enough both stuff, but at least I experience building of oil outposts much more laborious and annoying than building of coal outpost which give the same amount of power. However, I use solid fuel as locomotive fuel to imitate more realistic diesel fuel.

[Ranakastrasz]

Generally, I go steam until I get rid of most of the mountain of coal I build up over the early game. Then I go for Solar panels, until it covers most everything. Then I go and use my steam generators, using solid fuel or coal as a backup using circuits.


I use both. I prefer steam power over solar, due to it's density, and the fact that you end up with truely staggering amounts of coal which otherwise would take up dozens or hundreds of boxes (depending on whether or not you use mod storage)

Filling 20+ 6x6 Warehouses with coal might give you an idea of how much coal I am talking about here....



I need my oil deposits for oil based components. I only convert some of it to fuel early on if the tanks would fill up, and I prefer adding more tanks instead. And that is until I get cracking working.

[Hannu]

Filling 20+ 6x6 Warehouses with coal might give you an idea of how much coal I am talking about here....

Do you have some kind of mod which gives coal as side product? Or why do you mine such a huge amount of coal if you do not need it?

[Jürgen Erhard]

Filling 20+ 6x6 Warehouses with coal might give you an idea of how much coal I am talking about here....

Do you have some kind of mod which gives coal as side product? Or why do you mine such a huge amount of coal if you do not need it?

I mine everything, always, and I hate building on top of ores. So, depending on map settings (everything highest, for example...), you get *TONS* of the stuff.

Wish I could do more with coal, but later on, you really don't need that much.

Note to self: check out that coal to oil mod.

[Hannu]

I mine everything, always, and I hate building on top of ores. So, depending on map settings (everything highest, for example...), you get *TONS* of the stuff.

I know that problem. It is very annoying to have ore on clean concrete floor. My solution is to use commands to delete ores under my base when I begin to build an "official" base obeying my all aesthetic obsessions.

[Ranakastrasz]

Filling 20+ 6x6 Warehouses with coal might give you an idea of how much coal I am talking about here....

Do you have some kind of mod which gives coal as side product? Or why do you mine such a huge amount of coal if you do not need it?

I mine everything, always, and I hate building on top of ores. So, depending on map settings (everything highest, for example...), you get *TONS* of the stuff.

Wish I could do more with coal, but later on, you really don't need that much.

Note to self: check out that coal to oil mod.

I always mine all the ores in an area, before building. I hate wasting anything, so I can't stand building on top of ores.

I also use a Coal to Oil Mod. And even then I need more oil. XD

[Jürgen Erhard]

I actually *hate* being able to pave (stones and concrete both) over ores. Wish there were a setting or mod that prohibited it. Mod might be too difficult/impossible.