Nerf barrels and buff liquid tanks!

[tvardero]

2016-10-24.png (244.76 KiB) Viewed 9373 times

Little calculation:

1 liquid tank occupies the same area as 9 steel chest (or 9 logistic storage chest).
1 chest contain 48 stacks.
1 stack of barrel is 10 barrels.
1 barrel keep 25 l of oil.

So:
25 * 10 * 48 * 9 = 108000 l
Forlorn liquid tank can contain only .. 2500 l.

-=-=-=-=-=-
Ways to solve this problem:
1. Reduce stack size of barrels to 1 barrel per stack.
2. Reduce volume of barrel to 20/15/10 l.
3. GIANT BUFF to liquid tanks: 10/15/20/25/30 * 10^3 l.

-=-=-=-=-=-
English is my 4th language.
My first language was a baby gibberish.

[Arch666Angel]

Reducing the stack sizes for the barrels means that no one would use them/they become a pain when transporting stuff in vanilla via trains.

Increasing the size of the storage tanks brings it's own quirks, because the fluid mechanic gets even more wonky the bigger the tank is. Really large tanks are only useable with pumps pushing liquids in/out.

I guess that this issue will be addressed when they get to reworking the fluid system which hopefully opens up more ways to manipulate and handle fluids.

BTW: If you want to break balance even more put barrels into warehouses, its like 200k unit in a 6x6.

[tvardero]

Reducing the stack sizes for the barrels means that no one would use them/they become a pain when transporting stuff in vanilla via trains.

After 0.15 release no one will want to transport via barrels (liquid tank wagon).

So, dev can freely solve this disbalance via 1 and 2 parts of my solution in 0.15 version.
Or fully remove barrels from the game, if they want.

[Frightning]

2016-10-24.png

Little calculation:

1 liquid tank occupies the same area as 9 steel chest (or 9 logistic storage chest).
1 chest contain 48 stacks.
1 stack of barrel is 10 barrels.
1 barrel keep 25 l of oil.

So:
25 * 10 * 48 * 9 = 108000 l
Forlorn liquid tank can contain only .. 2500 l.

-=-=-=-=-=-
Ways to solve this problem:
1. Reduce stack size of barrels to 1 barrel per stack.
2. Reduce volume of barrel to 20/15/10 l.
3. GIANT BUFF to liquid tanks: 10/15/20/25/30 * 10^3 l.

-=-=-=-=-=-
English is my 4th language.
My first language was a baby gibberish.

It's true that barrels in a chest have much greater storage density, but you pay for that storage density in steel plates. A single tank costs 20 iron plates and 5 steel plates, a total of 45 iron plates worth, or 9 steel plates worth of iron ore and stores 2500 fluid. A set of 9 chests with the 480 barrels/chest costs 9*8+480*9=4392 steel plates and stores 25*480*9=108,000 fluid. The cost per unit stored is:

Storage tank: 0.0036 steel plates/fluid
Steel chests containing Steel barrels: 0.040(6)... steel plates/fluid

So the chest-based storage system, while high density, is over 10 times as expensive, not to mention that you need a barreling and unbarreling system to actually make practical use of a barrel-based storage system, which also takes up space and costs resources. In short, fluid tanks have their uses.

[bobingabout]

Point 1. Eww. I thought the stack size was low as it is.
Point 2. I'm all for this, my gas bottles (Actually cylinders) added in my mods only carry 5 units of fluid... but then are cheaper than barrels and stack a lot higher than barrels too.
Point 3. more storage volume in storage tank. I'm okay with this one too.


The main reason why I'm not overly enthused with any option though is because any changes mean I have to completely rebalance my mods to the new base game.

One of the other problems with changing capacity of barrels... well, barrels are only an item, they hold no information such as what is stored in them. Their capacity is as simple as a recipe that says 25 units of oil go in, 25 units of oil come back out. So if you reduce the capacity of a barrel from 25 to 10, you're losing 60% of your oil reserves currently stored in barrels. in contrast, a storage tank does hold information, so if you up the capacity, that's 60% extra free space that can be filled. Unlike the barrels where you lose oil, you gain nothing.

[Carl]

It's true that barrels in a chest have much greater storage density, but you pay for that storage density in steel plates. A single tank costs 20 iron plates and 5 steel plates, a total of 45 iron plates worth, or 9 steel plates worth of iron ore and stores 2500 fluid. A set of 9 chests with the 480 barrels/chest costs 9*8+480*9=4392 steel plates and stores 25*480*9=108,000 fluid. The cost per unit stored is:

Storage tank: 0.0036 steel plates/fluid
Steel chests containing Steel barrels: 0.040(6)... steel plates/fluid

So the chest-based storage system, while high density, is over 10 times as expensive, not to mention that you need a barreling and un-barreling system to actually make practical use of a barrel-based storage system, which also takes up space and costs resources. In short, fluid tanks have their uses.

Not really, storing a useful amount of fluid in fluid tanks is second only to accumulator + solar power systems in land area consumed. It takes up waaaay too much space to store useful amounts of the stuff. I personally think tanks need a major storage capacity buff.

Conversely steel is the one resource i never have issues generating so long as my iron ore supply is good. SO the higher cost of barreling isn't really an issue. And the power and space costs are fairly negligible. Relatively speaking.

[bobucles]

It's not viable to store any decent amount of water. It gets filled up and cycled through far too quickly.

Storage tanks are pretty good for the amount of oil players handle. You might need a dozen or so for a beefy factory but that's nothing in the grand scheme.

Storage chests quite simply have total hax storage. It's been that way since day one. When a gigantic train cargo car holds less stuff than a small metal box, it's clear that storage systems weren't meant to hold realistic quantities of goods.

[Carl]

Storage tanks are pretty good for the amount of oil players handle. You might need a dozen or so for a beefy factory but that's nothing in the grand scheme.

hahaha. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

Ignoring oil uses besides battery or red chip, (via plastics), production, your still going to be chugging down hundreds to a grand plus of oil a minute, (it takes 120 oil a minute to produce 36 red chips or batteries a minute). Throw in lubricant and fuel block production and i'd be shocked if a modest factory can get away with less than the grand, beefy is somwhere up in the several grand range. I admit i've never got an oil industry that intense setup yet, mostly because i was trying to do it without tweaking the map gen to give me stupid numbers of oil patches.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Where are you getting 120 oil from? It takes 216 petroleum (~247 crude oil including cracking) to make 36 Advanced Circuits but it's basically accurate for batteries.

If your oil processing doesn't handle that supply then doesn't matter what your stocks are, they are going to run out eventually. I completed both the advanced circuit and processing unit production achievements with a single tank of oil for each type. Actually I might have had two tanks for petroleum for lulz. As long as you have the supply, you don't need a huge buffer.

[Carl]

Where are you getting 120 oil from? It takes 216 petroleum (~247 crude oil including cracking) to make 36 Advanced Circuits but it's basically accurate for batteries.

If your oil processing doesn't handle that supply then doesn't matter what your stocks are, they are going to run out eventually. I completed both the advanced circuit and processing unit production achievements with a single tank of oil for each type. Actually I might have had two tanks for petroleum for lulz. As long as you have the supply, you don't need a huge buffer.

Let me back work it for you as i just posted a number in the oil richness thread.

Advanced oil cracking produces 1 heavy oil, 4.5 light oil, and 5.5 petroleum.

Heavy oil cracks at a rate of 4 tio 3, that averages out at 0.75 light oil per oil refinery op.

Light oil cracks at 3 to 2, including cracked heavy oil we have a total of 5.25 light, so that cracks down to 3.5 petroleum.

Thus we get a total of 9 petroleum generated.

Both plastics and Sulfur are produced at a ratio of 2 per 3 petroleum.

It takes 2 plastic to make one chip. Hence 3 chips per op.

It takes 5 sulfur to produce 5 sulfuric acid, hence 1 sulfur per sulfuric acid ratio. or a total of 6 sulfuric acid per op.

it takes 2 sulfuric acid to produce 1 battery so 3 batteries per op.

1 op takes 5 seconds, hence both battery and chip production runs at 0.6 units per second, and 0.6 x 60 = 36.



Also the whole point of having storage isn't for the lulz, it's to cover downturns in production whilst you up production via new raw material sites. For Oil given how rapidly it can go from full to nothing i like quite a bit of spare oil, i'd really want an hour of runtime, given what i'd expect in terms of oil usage that's several tens of tanks just for the oil.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Ah, forgot to account for the extra bar of plastic produced. Sleep deprivation ._. yay

One tank of heavy, light and petroleum is equal to 5,416 petroleum, and each tank of crude oil boils down to 2,250 petroleum, so one tank of each is 7,666 petroleum just at base. Then you need at least one tank per oil outpost as a buffer for train loading, plus the contents of the train and any buffer chests and pipes.

My factory uses some 28 Advanced Circuits assemblers, so 168 advanced circuits per minute, and I sustain this easily with a single two-wagon train which doesn't even run all the time. This is 504 petroleum per minute, so at maximum production it'll take 13 minutes for just the oil in my base to dry up. If I'm likely to be running full pelt for long I'll have two petroleum and crude oil tanks which puts me over 20 minutes. With three oil outposts each with a single tank, that's almost 40 minutes of production assuming they're all full (19,166 petroleum equivalent). Also as I use productivity modules in all chem plants and refineries this is extended even further.

The only reason you should need more storage is if you're tied up with other important things for very long periods of time and can't get to building a new outpost, while at the same time your production is running solidly. Perhaps running an overhaul mod you might need this but in vanilla? An experienced player should have no trouble with one or two tanks of each type.

[Carl]

No worries i know the sleep issue .

The problem with your example is your not going to just be producing those chips, you'll want a fair amount of battery production, for that matter you'll want some lubricant and fuel production. Thats going to raise your oil usage significantly. I'd be shocked if that much production lasted 15 minutes i the real world. And as noted i prefer a fairly large buffer. Based on your chip productions refinery requirements and assuming a similar battery setup plus some fuel and lubricant production your probably going to have 8 refineries running, that's 16 oils a second or 57600 an hour. Thats 23 tanks to properly buffer the crude oil side. (i like to have some buffer on the oil types as well as my sulphuric acid production, but the primary buffer is allways on the raw inputs side). And i'd consider your red chip production very modest myself, it's usually, (along with batteries unless i eschew solar, but then i need more fuel blocks), my biggest limitation on further work so i tend to build that up quite a bit.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Well productivity chips help a lot (just crude oil > petroleum > plastic gives 144% yield), and I've never needed a lot of batteries. Four to six chem plants is more than enough for me even when slamming out accumulators and research. Lubricant isn't a big deal, biggest user is blue belts which only needs 1 per belt, and I don't use solid fuel (can't seem to even get through all the wood I end up with let alone coal).

There's also the pumpjacks already working and (true to the OP) the train holds a ludicrous amount of oil in barrels. As long as you keep an eye on your supply, which will hopefully be easier in 0.15 with the addition of an alert machine, there isn't a problem.

IMO chests just need to be nerfed, they're too strong. Wooden chests should start at one slot and gain one additional slot per upgrade, and when you place chests next to each other they would create a shared storage (similar to Minecraft). There has never been a situation I've only had a single tile and needed to store 8,000 electronic circuits in it.

[Carl]

Since we seem to have a couple of oil related discussions going covering the same ground i'll keep it here for now.

I think there's several points to address. First the fact that your not particularly strapped for fuel suggest to me a strong and early push towards solar and either a lot of non-shotgun forest clearing or a fairly small factory. Woods pretty inefficient as fuel so if you're getting so much you can spare that much from power pole production to fuel yourself it doesn't sound like your running anything especially large.

That said quite aside from that your missing a few points. First lubricant is actually used in producing electric engines as well which are used most notably by bots. or that matter bot production also chews up batteries. As a result even without express splitters using advanced chips or stack inserters your going to consume a fair amount of oil resources getting your transport economy upto high tier standards.

Equally whilst you may or may not have immediate use for fuel block, you will need quite a lot of them for the rocket in the end and power production via solar will chew up another 70 batteries per megawatt. Thats a lot of batteries unless you routinely stretch your games out to immense degrees.

And even without that electric furnaces, modules, and high end assemblers go through their own share of advanced chips as well.


On top of all that there's an unfortunate reality that unless you firmly overbuild that any significant expansion of your own final output stages requires an expansion of every preceding stage and that means that a minor final output expansion can actually consume quite a lot of raw resources and nearly every high tier final product requires oil dependent items and usually a fair wad of power that outside of steam power with very abundant coal is not easy to sustain without oil also. SImply put the more you expand at high tier productivity the more oil becomes a blocker to further progress or at least slows down your progress as you wait for necessary items to be produced.

[Deadly-Bagel]

My 'laptop' doesn't do so well with rows and rows of steam engines lol I had to disable smoke for the no solar achievement. But even then, when I had some 200 steam engines, I didn't get close to using even half of a coal deposit that had spawned in a convenient place so I left it as dedicated fuel. True that wasn't a huge factory, was mostly about finishing the game but even still I think I'd just add a coal train (never needed one before) instead of using valuable oil as fuel.

In my bigger factories I have about 2,000 logistics bots (added slowly as they are required) and I think 200 construction bots. It's a fair amount of petroleum but over the course of maybe 20 hours it's nothing. Same deal for accumulators, there are a lot of them but they aren't all produced at once.

We talked about advanced chip production, even if everything were to halt suddenly while advanced chips were solidly at max output I'd be fine for about 20-30 mins with a single tank of oil and each oil product, and an additional tank of oil at each outpost with a single two-carriage train for transport.

Overbuilding is indeed what I do but I overbuild supply. Basically at any point I ensure that I have enough potential oil supply it can sustain my factory at maximum output twice over. Thus, I have little need for excessive storage. If your strategy is excessive storage instead then that's fine, go right ahead, but I think doing so should require a fair amount of space. Thus, in my mind, fluid tanks are nicely balanced.

The rocket is a task that requires preparation. Would you start a rocket right as your copper and/or iron deposits are running dry? Of course not, you'd ensure you have adequate supply. Same deal with oil, I'd ensure I've got a fresh oil field pumping before I started a rocket, probably adjust my cracking conditions and maybe add up to four crude oil tanks if I'm intending on a very fast build (this holds enough crude oil for almost half the light oil needed for a rocket). In previous games I set up a chemical plant early, while my oil consumption was low, and circuited it to make 10,000 solid fuel (bonus: only while there is a large stock of light oil), thus it was already done by the time I wanted a rocket.

[Hares]

As of 1.1, barrels became twice as effective compared to when the post was written. ONE steel chest can now store 24k units of fluid, almost an entire 3x3 entity! What I see should be done, is to reduce the size of the normal fluid tank (to smth like 2x2), and introduce the BIG fluid tank of size 3x3 or 4x4. Yes, the small fluid tank would still be less effective as barreled fluid, but it won't require any barreling assemblers so it's ok.

[FuryoftheStars]

The way I see it, the real problem is the fact that chests are essentially like bag-of-holdings....

[AileTheAlien]

I actually don't even understand why barrels are in the game - they do the same thing as fluid-wagons or pipes and they're also overpowered.

[steinio]

I actually don't even understand why barrels are in the game - they do the same thing as fluid-wagons or pipes and they're also overpowered.

They are from a time when the fluid wagon wasn't a thing.

[wobbycarly]

I actually don't even understand why barrels are in the game - they do the same thing as fluid-wagons or pipes and they're also overpowered.

Bots can't move fluids but they can move barrels.