Friday Facts #164 - Nuclear power

[mrvn]

Turns out my intended boiler chaining doesn't work. You can see it on the left here. I need to replace some inserters with power poles but that means I can fuel boilers there, so I replace them with pipes.. which bridge the water side to the steam side.

On the right is the only working chained setup I can think of, which is not very satisfying.

Increasing the boilers to 2x2 would avoid this problem. You could pick up coal from either side, so you could use regular or burner inserters, plus you would naturally have gaps for power poles.

Use 2 tiles separation and bent pipes.

My boilers use burning inserters and have no power poles. Can't convert that to long inserters at all.

[mrvn]

In the latter case it's not just a dangerous technology, it's a potentially quite safe technology that actively rewards you for playing dangerously with it. And I think that fits pretty well into Factorio's themes. Not only do you have the sense of "Am I the bad guy?" but it adds another layer to the "easy to learn, hard to master" side of things as the highest efficiencies also have the least margin for error.

First you build a wall of gun turrets aorund your base to fight of aliens. Then you upgrade to laser turrets. And the ultimate defense is a wall of overheated nuclear reactors around your base. No bitter will ever come close enough to harm you.

[mrvn]

You weren't quite clear about how you want the nuclear reactor to work internally but from the hints I imagine something like this:

1) A simple reactor runs at a safe temperature and adjusts itself automatically to demand. This makes it totally safe but also limits output to X% possible.

2) The reactors reaction can be controlled with circuits. I imagine basically raising and lowering rods. But this has a delayed effect. Lowering the rods will not shut down the heat generation in the next tick but it will gradually fall.

3) Heat is generated in the inside and transported to the outside of the reactor with some internal, closed cooling circuit, where it must be consumed. If it isn't consumed the still hot cooling medium is fed back into the reactor heating it up even more. Take it around a few loops and the reactor overheats and *BOOM* (or it SCRAMs as many people would prefer. Please make that an option).

So with circuits you can keep the internal cooling circuit dangerously hot to get more power output but the downside is that if heat demand stops you can't shut down the reactor fast enough to prevent it overheating. So basically you need some heat storage or accumulators that take away excess heat while you lower the reaction and stop overheating the cooling medium in time.

Is that a fair description?

[operations]

Hi,

i totally agree with the support of everyone here that something new is added to the game, but I am very dissapointed that it is again some retro-thingy. Remember the scenario: SPACE, FUTURE! Someone mentioned Thorium and Fusion, which imo is definetly better.

In the end development as it stands right now isn't really taking the game to any exciting future. Transportation is from 1900, energy is from 1950. Oh yes we do have robots (roboports that can hold 350 bots but can only charge up 4 at a time *cough*) Belts still do not consume energy, no upgrade to trains (mag rails?!) inserters stop the evolution cycle because mechanical things are the best (irony). Did anyone give bionics even one thought? (one little reason to deal with biters to collect bio material to craft bionic muscles for better inserters....). And STILL NO END GAME. No setting up shop for a mining outpost to support Earth or a colony or building a spaceport and build a dome within 100 years 1000x1000 structure to support X amounts of fellow humans that are on the way or WHAT EVER.

Simply put where the hell is your creativity and where the hell is the general scenario that pushed (for sure not only) me to give this game a try. As of now all "upgrades" that you bring to the game only exteeeeennnnnd the mid and late game and only support a feeling of emptiness. Once you "achieved" to send a rocket to space its the same over and over again.

At some point in the past I was convinced that this game can really be very close to a triple A killer. But with zero educational value (electric engines are made out of combustion engines aha) lack of realism (aluminium missing, iron as base ingredient ... seriously?, concrete uses iron ore - oh boy, power poles use copper cable - no not the good ones they use copper PLATES,.... could go on quite a bit but let's leave it at that for now, ah no one more lasers without lenses no glass ... ok done) lack of endgame, and so on so forth make me think that supporting and/or playing this game is a waste of resources.

Just another sandbox failure that would simply wither away without mod-portal, because the modders are the ones keeping this alive (and interesting), big shout out to thousands of unpayed hours for the love of the game (you guys kept me playing this and hoping that vanilla would someday become ... great). SHAME ON THE DEVS!

Sorry for this wall of text, I simply had to write away the anger that has been piled up over time.
Sorry for bad english.
Sorry if someone feels offended.

[Grimakar]

Hi,

i totally agree with the support of everyone here that something new is added to the game, but I am very dissapointed that it is again some retro-thingy. Remember the scenario: SPACE, FUTURE! Someone mentioned Thorium and Fusion, which imo is definetly better.

In the end development as it stands right now isn't really taking the game to any exciting future. Transportation is from 1900, energy is from 1950. Oh yes we do have robots (roboports that can hold 350 bots but can only charge up 4 at a time *cough*) Belts still do not consume energy, no upgrade to trains (mag rails?!) inserters stop the evolution cycle because mechanical things are the best (irony). Did anyone give bionics even one thought? (one little reason to deal with biters to collect bio material to craft bionic muscles for better inserters....). And STILL NO END GAME. No setting up shop for a mining outpost to support Earth or a colony or building a spaceport and build a dome within 100 years 1000x1000 structure to support X amounts of fellow humans that are on the way or WHAT EVER.

Simply put where the hell is your creativity and where the hell is the general scenario that pushed (for sure not only) me to give this game a try. As of now all "upgrades" that you bring to the game only exteeeeennnnnd the mid and late game and only support a feeling of emptiness. Once you "achieved" to send a rocket to space its the same over and over again.

At some point in the past I was convinced that this game can really be very close to a triple A killer. But with zero educational value (electric engines are made out of combustion engines aha) lack of realism (aluminium missing, iron as base ingredient ... seriously?, concrete uses iron ore - oh boy, power poles use copper cable - no not the good ones they use copper PLATES,.... could go on quite a bit but let's leave it at that for now, ah no one more lasers without lenses no glass ... ok done) lack of endgame, and so on so forth make me think that supporting and/or playing this game is a waste of resources.

Just another sandbox failure that would simply wither away without mod-portal, because the modders are the ones keeping this alive (and interesting), big shout out to thousands of unpayed hours for the love of the game (you guys kept me playing this and hoping that vanilla would someday become ... great). SHAME ON THE DEVS!

Sorry for this wall of text, I simply had to write away the anger that has been piled up over time.
Sorry for bad english.
Sorry if someone feels offended.

They say that haters gonna hate.

[MeduSalem]

They say that haters gonna hate.

Well... tastes are subjective (especially the complaint about the theme)... so I wouldn't outright say that he/she is a hater.

That said some things like the lack of endgame have been already acknowledged by the devs but they won't have the time to fix that issue before going 1.0 and afterwards they will take a well deserved break before addressing the endgame.

[Hertzila]

I'm adding my support to the "Nuclear reactor explosion trope needs to die" group. I'd much rather have SCRAMs that prevent meltdowns, proper meltdowns into a pile of radioactive slag and steam explosions from damaged reactors causing an insane pollution / radioactivity spike, rather than the ever-present "the reactor is actually a nuclear bomb that is yet to explode" trope.

I'd much rather have meltdowns that reduce the reactor to a molten puddle of slag that is basically inaccessible without proper cleanup tech coupled with a massive pollution penalty that slowly fades off, or steam explosions that basically cause the same thing but even worse. With both of them only caused by overstressed, biter-attacked reactors failing spectacularly. Or if the reactors take damage from overheat, have damaged reactors leak fallout that builds up and is slow to fade, culminating with the reactor melting down into slag. No big boom, maybe not even any damage to surrounding building and creatures, just a massive beacon for basically all the biters in the map to concentrate towards.

I'd also ask that, either built-in into the basic reactor tech tree or as a separate tech tree, there'd be safety systems for the reactor. Start with the basic auto-SCRAM that shuts down the overstressed reactor until a player comes back and kicks it back into working order, next research a way to start the power production at a lower capacity sooner and build it up slowly into the intended capacity, maybe include a way to reinforce a reactor so that a biter attack / overstressed heat management won't cause fallout or a meltdown to happen as quickly. Basically Hiddencamper's idea:

So maybe one way to implement this, is a tech upgrade for reactors for an improved Reactor Protection System (Actual system in a nuclear plant), which instead of having an explosion, it causes the reactor to shut down for some extended period of time. This would mimic xenon poisoning that some reactors get after a SCRAM, where they cannot restart until the xenon has decayed away. Another possible upgrade would be for higher fuel enrichment, allowing the reactor to restart sooner after a SCRAM, but very slowly, again mimicing plants which have "Xenon Override Capability" where we use higher energy fuel and are able to restart anytime, but we have more problematic core limits because of the xenon poisoning.

This way, mismanaged or underprotected nuclear power production still causes complications but in the form of power outages and, if badly enough mismanaged to cause fallout or a meltdown, a massive biter retaliation. Those who would wish to push the reactors into unsafe territory would still need to balance the fact that if they push them too far, they'll be left without most of their power production, potentially with a big biter wave incoming.

[RobertTerwilliger]

Another reason for circuits & explosion possibility:
Yes, IRL "nu-clear" power plants explode extremely rarely, exactly because they DO have heavy automation, that we also should make to work it properly.
As proverb says, nuclear reactor is a super-high-tech water boiler... ; ) So we probably should use some knowledge and skill to make it cool, right?)

[Deadly-Bagel]

...
And STILL NO END GAME. No setting up shop for a mining outpost to support Earth or a colony or building a spaceport and build a dome within 100 years 1000x1000 structure to support X amounts of fellow humans that are on the way or WHAT EVER.
...

The response from the devs on this topic is that whatever they implement as an endgame, eventually everyone will reach a level of skill with the game that it still feels like the mid game. They can put in whatever requirements whoever wants but as an open-ended expansion game it's not that simple. I mean you can reach a point where you can basically blueprint your entire base and copy it over and over, hook them all up to trains and have them all producing rockets. Same with computational requirements, heck look at multiplayer, the more players they supported the more players joined and it was an endless cycle of optimisation.

This is why they have such good modding support, you can have space exploration or production challenges or whatever you want. Game too simple and non-realistic for you? Give Bob's Mods a try, the recipes are much more realistic. There are mods for better and more realistic trains, probably the offshore pump too, dunno about belts (though how would you have them work without totally breaking the game?) or bionic inserters but you could always mod them yourself.

Personally I was a bit disappointed they went for the traditional approach to nuclear but it's a game, I'm not looking for something that resembles reality (or not), I'm looking for challenges and to have fun. Make sure that the details you get caught up in are the fiddly optimisations and not lore

[Grimakar]

They say that haters gonna hate.

Well... tastes are subjective (especially the complaint about the theme)... so I wouldn't outright say that he/she is a hater.

That said some things like the lack of endgame have been already acknowledged by the devs but they won't have the time to fix that issue before going 1.0 and afterwards they will take a well deserved break before addressing the endgame.

Of course tastes are subjective and there are things that are not perfect and other things I would like to have in this game. But this guy is writing a wall of rage. And it is not about the games mechanics, it is about details. He his sending this game to hell, because concrete is made of iron ore... and btw. in our world there is something called reinforced concrete that make that iron ore thing not so crazy.

I really was thinking argueing against his points, but it is just a waste of time, because "haters gonna hate" and "potatoes gonna potate"

[Mroczny_Pasterz]

Hello

I had a little thought recently, as we have nuclear energy, what about nuclear warfare ?

Two ideas:
1: Depleted uranium shells - great for stopping big creatures, maybe used in artillery train.
2: Nukes - we have rocket fuel, we have control modules, we have some plutonium or whatever. All we need is shell from steel and enrichment plant. After each use of nuke are becomes ultra polluted so MarkII suit is needed to withstand radiation, building built in region experience damage from radiation and evolution factor jumps by 1%.

I would like to know what You think about this

[Rockstar04]

Another reason for circuits & explosion possibility:
Yes, IRL "nu-clear" power plants explode extremely rarely, exactly because they DO have heavy automation, that we also should make to work it properly.
As proverb says, nuclear reactor is a super-high-tech water boiler... ; ) So we probably should use some knowledge and skill to make it cool, right?)

This is exactly my thought. WE are responsible for the automation that would automatically SCRAM a reactor to prevent a disaster.

[SHiRKiT]

Please no explosions.

[Deadly-Bagel]

They said there will be safe and easy setups if you don't want to get very technical with it.

A thought I just had, you're going to need to reword the achievements! =P "Steam Power All The Way" will either need to be changed to something to reflect it's just not solar, or the details need to exclude nuclear power as well.

[Andrzejef]

Another reason for circuits & explosion possibility:
Yes, IRL "nu-clear" power plants explode extremely rarely, exactly because they DO have heavy automation, that we also should make to work it properly.
As proverb says, nuclear reactor is a super-high-tech water boiler... ; ) So we probably should use some knowledge and skill to make it cool, right?)

This is exactly my thought. WE are responsible for the automation that would automatically SCRAM a reactor to prevent a disaster.

Or maybe make basic version that HAS TO be controlled externally, and special research path that would EVENTUALLY allow the secure-reactor, that doesn't require additional wiring (that requires more place and input than basic reactor, but takes less place than reactor and combinators) for basic fail-safe switch.
I think that will satisfy circiut-theory enthusiasts and laymen (such as me ) alike.

[rubafix]

hello

there is many type of reactor, And it is possible to let the player build his own reactor, he has to control him to not blast

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueous_h ... us_reactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fl ... um_reactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_me ... ed_reactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor

[DeathMers]

everybody discuss explosions, yes or no, circuit network, yes or no.... i'm just glad there is going to be a new and more powerful source of energy that can take care of my present "little rocket fuel demanding" layout. Worth the risk and circuit optimising.

little rocket fuel demanding

Screenshot 2016-11-13 13.53.56.png (4.13 MiB) Viewed 9136 times

[albatrosv13]

''so trying it shut down too late might not be enough to prevent overheating and explosion ... a big one.''

So... do we have an example anywhere in history for that? I mean, explosion.

[SHiRKiT]

They said there will be safe and easy setups if you don't want to get very technical with it.

A thought I just had, you're going to need to reword the achievements! =P "Steam Power All The Way" will either need to be changed to something to reflect it's just not solar, or the details need to exclude nuclear power as well.

I do not think this should happen at all. Factorio is a game that penalizes inefficiency in a way that makes the user DESIRE to solve their efficiency issues. By allowing new players to explode their base is a bad concept idea.

Take a look at Industrial Craft 2 from Minecraft, their nuclear reactor, although many people thought they were fun, but JUST because they COULD explode and destroy their base, the MAJORITY of the people felt really UNHAPPY when things went BOOM and half of their base gets destroyed. The frustration is beyond any level.

You want to penalize the player? Make it in a way the player can reverse it's situation, but please, do not put explosions. That is a REALLY POOR design choice IMO.

I've ALWAYS endorsed ALL the changes the devs have put this far, but EXPLODING Nuclear Reactors is one I will not endorse, now or never. I ask the devs to RETHINK this if they still can.

[MF-]

@ Boilers
Seeing the fire in the boiler box is a nice feature.
If somebody figured out a sprite that would still allow for displaying the flames...
Please?

@ Power overhaul
OH YEEEAAAAAH!
I haven't been this excited for an update for a long time.

@ Nuclear
+1 for ThePhoenixian and the alternative nuclear drawbacks "a wave of heat, huge pollution, occasional small fires"

The direction "simple automatic SCRAM + long fix+restart time" would also be fine, but indeed less cool.
I would favor a simple SCRAM logic built-in even in the very first reactor model.
Of course, this simple logic would come at a cost of having big "failsafe" security margins.

Actually, some non-hostile glow-bugs eye-candy in "radiated" area is something I dig

Catch one of these non-hostile glow-bugs and put it in a jar for light without electricity. Maybe cost a fish every once in a while... Almost as good as using a fire fly.

Or go even further and add a "glowing bug" branch of the industry.
I mean - cross-breeding those bugs to change their food-input and light-output properties,
affecting both food consumption and efficiency of their metabolism.

Who knows, maybe you'll be able to make them so good, that they could power solar panels?