Why uranium?

[Grobert]

Here's how I think about power right now.

In the early game I use coal, because it's easy to set up. If I'm planning a short game, like "launch the rocket and be done", I can stick with coal all game and not have too much of a problem.

If I'm planning a longer game, like I'm hunting achievements, then I need to cut down on pollution, so I switch to solar as soon as I can. I make a little factory to make solar cells, a little factory to make accumulators, and a little factory to make efficiency modules for all my mining drills. That seems to work pretty well.

How does nuclear fit into all this? From what I gather, nuclear will make some pollution from mining drills, and it takes longer to set up, and it takes a steady supply of mined uranium. Where's the payoff? What's going to make me say: "these solar cells aren't working for me, I need to switch to uranium even though it will generate pollution and need a bunch of processing?"

[McRib]

Did you try to play on very hard mode? I mean if you stay in you starting area you dont have any need to this kind of power. However if you try to expand and have hugh amounts of biters around you will level them up quickly as you kill there nests. And than you will get issues with power generation when you switch to laser turrets. Also coal is use in mods very heavily like in bob there you need coal in hugh amounts to get you chip production running (and the entire factorio is around 600% bigger than in vanilla so more power need)

Also main advantages will be that uran dont polluted as much als coal and still product a lot of power.

[BenSeidel]

Once you start laying your 100,000th solar panel nuclear seems like a nice alternative.

[kurtulmak]

I'm expecting the tradeoff to be that nuclear is logistically complicated but ultimately quite cheap in terms of materials invested/power compared to solar and much more compact (except over very long timescales when the zero upkeep of solar + accumulators wins out, just like it currently wins out quickly over the initial cheapness of combustion for steam).

Of course they could make nuclear indispensable by making it so that it has realistically valuable byproducts like the oil industry in the game does; I was thinking of RTGs replacing the more magic sci-fi of portable fusion generators, at least until extreme late game.

[Mehve]

Land area is another factor - both steam and solar start to involve some pretty massive acreage when you start ramping up production. The ability to get the same power on less land could definitely be a selling point.

[Frightning]

Land area is another factor - both steam and solar start to involve some pretty massive acreage when you start ramping up production. The ability to get the same power on less land could definitely be a selling point.

This is what I am expect Nuclear to be best at. Power/land area. Steam is most inexpensive and technologically basic. Solar is clean and doesn't need any fuel, but expensive (per MW) and land hungry.

[AndrewIRL]

Nice to give players options rather than the one correct set of steps to follow and complete the game. Gives the devs more options too, they could re-balance coal and solar so those are less viable for the endgame.

[Manron]

Land area is another factor - both steam and solar start to involve some pretty massive acreage when you start ramping up production. The ability to get the same power on less land could definitely be a selling point.

but do we get smaller steam engines, too? the boilers only take about a fifth of the total space needed for a coal power plant, and from what i've seen the nuclear power plants with all those pipes to feed water and drain heat arent exactly tiny. it's not like the nuclear plant creates electricity from uranium, it just generates heat that still has to be turned into electricity by other means.

[kurtulmak]

but do we get smaller steam engines, too?

Yes, there's going to be a "higher level" steam engine (steam turbine) and they've mentioned some revamp of the water->steam cycle that might let us put more energy into a given unit of water (specifically by making steam that can go over 100 degrees). Well, it's not a smaller steam engine, but stuff with more power production per area used.

[Jesperhk]

we could also make a bio farm waste plant, where we can burn dead biters.
then we get power, and soap, soap is needed to keep clean and remove radioactive waste.. (maybe more things)

The biters will be collected by and automated harvester, that drives out and collect the dead aliens (fx. think of red alert 2 harvesters)
Then drives them back and empty into a pile that gets crushed and burned.

That could be a nice way of getting special resources + power (it should give more power than steam and solar, but also give more polution = more biters = more power)

[stenole]

It would make sense that uranium would not only be used to make power. Biproducts of the reactor could be part of the economy. A small reactor could become a requirement to make the more high tech things in the game. Because you are already building all the nuclear infrastructure, increasing uranium production might be more convenient than mass producing solar farms.

A problem could be that solar panels are so convenient to create and operate. Perhaps solar panels should require some maintainance/cleaning to stay efficient. Perhaps weather and seasonal changes could be implemented to make them a little less dependable.

[AndrewIRL]

we could also make a bio farm waste plant, where we can burn dead biters.
then we get power, and soap, soap is needed to keep clean and remove radioactive waste.. (maybe more things)

How about if improperly disposing of the nuclear waste causes the biters to evolve faster with a localized effect so that larger biters can come early from radiation affected nests. Dump radioactive waste near water - affect all the connected water through a diffusion process similar to pollution. Using DU ammo could also spread mild radioactive effects.