Version 0.15.11

[malventano]

Edit: My lack of understanding, part 2: If I connect two reactors and only one of them to pipes, the connected one heat only to 999degC. The -1degree rule act on reactors too? But this is only 5 pipes, I'm not taking energy, reactor still has only 999degC.

Yeah, same applies to just a single reactor. Under load it appears to drop 1C before showing its temp. It may just be some rounding down / truncating the value down to a whole number. I've also noted higher heat transfer to the first pipe as compared with subsequent pipes. Might just be due to the reactors being capable of higher transfer rates than pipes.

[Drac346]

What is the server-id.json used for?

https://wiki.factorio.com/Matchmaking_API

I see Server ID in the API but it is blank. The file has id and secret. I was curious what they did since it was in the patch notes.

[Kelderek]

Regarding the change for heat pipes...

I think that the change to make the heat decrease with distance is good in general, it is reasonable to assume you can't stretch the heat too far from the reactors that generate it. But to my way of thinking I this change goes a bit too far in how much it limits the range of heat pipes. My main concern is that it seems to directly counter the whole concept of the neighbor bonus for reactors. The neighbor bonus seems to encourage lots of reactors grouped together, but the short heat pipe range creates an upper limit on how many heat exchangers you can fit close enough to operate at full efficiency.

Is it your intention to force us to split large reactor groups into separate clusters (losing some of that neighbor bonus along the way)?

[malventano]

Regarding the change for heat pipes...

I think that the change to make the heat decrease with distance is good in general, it is reasonable to assume you can't stretch the heat too far from the reactors that generate it. But to my way of thinking I this change goes a bit too far in how much it limits the range of heat pipes. My main concern is that it seems to directly counter the whole concept of the neighbor bonus for reactors. The neighbor bonus seems to encourage lots of reactors grouped together, but the short heat pipe range creates an upper limit on how many heat exchangers you can fit close enough to operate at full efficiency.

Is it your intention to force us to split large reactor groups into separate clusters (losing some of that neighbor bonus along the way)?

You just have to rethink the setups, keeping heat exchangers closer to the reactors. 480MW is relatively simple. Longer chains are a bit trickier, but still definitely doable.

[againey]

Anybody else notice that under the train station, "read stoppped train" can be checked, assigned a variable, however when you exit/return, it's no longer clicked (however it does appear to still advertise the stopped train)? Is it just me?!

Yup. On loading the panel, it seems to be using the "Read train contents" value to set the checked state for both that checkbox and the new one, "Read stopped train". Sounds like a simple copy-paste error, where most of the copied code was adjusted for the new element, but one little bit was overlooked. Goodness knows I've committed this mistake myself far more times than I like to admit.

[Mathwayb]

Regarding the change for heat pipes...

I think that the change to make the heat decrease with distance is good in general, it is reasonable to assume you can't stretch the heat too far from the reactors that generate it. But to my way of thinking I this change goes a bit too far in how much it limits the range of heat pipes. My main concern is that it seems to directly counter the whole concept of the neighbor bonus for reactors. The neighbor bonus seems to encourage lots of reactors grouped together, but the short heat pipe range creates an upper limit on how many heat exchangers you can fit close enough to operate at full efficiency.

Is it your intention to force us to split large reactor groups into separate clusters (losing some of that neighbor bonus along the way)?

THIS! So much this. This heat pipe change has been, to say the least, infuriating for me, since my base was idling at 1 GW, so all these 480 MW reactor designs are terrible inadequate, and I really didn't want to just find a design and cope paste 6 of them to power my base. So a few days ago I spent a while coming up with a 4.5 GW design using 28 reactors so I wouldn't have to worry about power for a long time. After this change I basically can't use my reactors in a single design because there simple isn't enough room for everything so close to the reactors. I spent all afternoon trying to come up with a column reactor design (because they are the most efficient, at least they used to be), only to find out that you simply can't use columns anymore in large designs. What's the point of having nuclear scale so well for large designs if you can't have large designs anymore because there's not enough room for all the water/steam/heat pipes so close to the reactors? Like I can get the heat exchangers close enough to the reactors, but then there's no room for the water and steam pipes, and if I make room for them then the heat pipes are too long. If someone can figure out how to make a scalable column design that'd be great, because I sure couldn't. Looks like I'm going to have to just copy paste a ton of small reactors which I really hate the idea of.

This has been one of the worse days in Factorio for me.

[malventano]

This has been one of the worse days in Factorio for me.

An 8 reactor setup should still be easily doable if using all space around the reactors. That gives you 1.1GW, and you'd only need a few of those to power your base.

[Mehve]

... What's the point of having nuclear scale so well for large designs if you can't have large designs anymore because there's not enough room for all the water/steam/heat pipes so close to the reactors?

That might be point, I think. Because the scaling IS ridiculous, especially in the early stages from 1 to 2 to 4 reactors. If nuclear fuel was actually expensive and difficult to obtain, it would almost be a punishment to NOT group all your reactors, in fact. So having a soft cap on reactor assemblies due to difficulty in layout is actually a fairly graceful (if frustrating vague) way to counteract that neighbour bonus.

I do feel a bit of the frustration. I'd abandoned reactor design, since I'd basically determined a template that would effortlessly scale into the 10's of GW. Needless to say, that's caput now.

[Mathwayb]

This has been one of the worse days in Factorio for me.

An 8 reactor setup should still be easily doable if using all space around the reactors. That gives you 1.1GW, and you'd only need a few of those to power your base.

I was really hoping I could avoid just making a small reactor design and copy pasting a bunch of them. I just don't see what else I can do, I've tried so many designs but I can't get enough water into it, or the heat pipes are too long. There's just not enough room for all the pipes now. At least I can't get it to work anymore.

[Mehve]

Can we get longer UG pipes now? If we could justify extending the UG belts, surely an extra space or two for the pipes, to let us route underneath two reactors? Trying to work around these heat pipe changes are really rubbing that shortfall in my face, you could say.

[eX_ploit]

So, after this change I rearranged my 4x4 nuclear design to use as little heat pipes as possible, gotta go with the times.

[Aeternus]

Hm seems like the change to heat pipes was significant!

I had 16 central reactors (8x2) and the correct amount of heat exchangers and steam turbines running at 2.4GW before the patch (albeit with pretty long heat pipes)
Even at the most distant parts of the heat pipes the temp did not drop below 800°C

Now after the patch all of a sudden the power dropped to 800MW and the temperature of all remote heat pipes is down to 250 and lower ...

So did they tweak the heat loss over distance too?

This is exactly the same as I experience right now

This is a pretty tough change ... my factory has severe issues right now .. (defense breaking down) ...

I think it is the right call though... Nuclear power was otherwise massively overpowered.

Still is. This just requires a redesign of nuclear plants - the heat exchangers need to be closer to the reactors, with steam being piped to the turbines. I bet this is gonna kill my hybrid chem/nuclear design again though... dammit, I just had it working right

[malventano]

This has been one of the worse days in Factorio for me.

An 8 reactor setup should still be easily doable if using all space around the reactors. That gives you 1.1GW, and you'd only need a few of those to power your base.

I was really hoping I could avoid just making a small reactor design and copy pasting a bunch of them. I just don't see what else I can do, I've tried so many designs but I can't get enough water into it, or the heat pipes are too long. There's just not enough room for all the pipes now. At least I can't get it to work anymore.

You're going to hate me for saying this, but continuous repeating/scaling 2 by x designs *are* possible, you just need to study up a bit on flow mechanics. (things are a bit different in 0.15, but the concepts still apply).

[jonatkins]

All this talk about nuclear power reminds me that the stack sizes for various buildings used could do with some tweaking - 50 reactors in one stack?!

I posted a separate thread with details - viewtopic.php?f=6&t=47594 - but I don't know if the devs are watching things there.

[Taipion]

One question:

Did they fix the water/steam not mixing in this release?

I am running 15.9 and I kind of don't want to update any further without that, I read in the comments of 15.10 that steam and water (now separate fluids, WTF?!?!) don't mix up anymore, some things are just...

[DOSorDIE]

Thanks DEV for the Train ID!
Now i can build my "1 Station for all Trains Storage" and can identfy what train come.

Now i must send the train to a station before i know what id it had.
But can you write the ID to the Info of the Train please

[kovarex]

[*]Tweaked the way heat pipes work, mainly to make it work the same regardless order of build. (44972)

Still broken:(

I connected a reactor and "a sink" (couple pipes, 4 heat exchangesr, 8 turbines) using one, two, or three lines of pipe, ~52 tiles long.

The point was to not make 52 tiles long heat pipe viable, so it is not a bug. You just need to update your designs.

[Aeternus]

Okay, the worldmap zooming change I do not like. It was really handy to be able to, provided that you had radar coverage in the area, be able to oversee a huge part of your factory from the world map. Now with the narrower zoom requirements that handy functionality is gone. I really don't understand why that had to be changed - if some people can't handle the wide area view, make it a configurable option perhaps?
Having to redesign the nukeplant again is annoying, but that's the risk of playing experimental I guess. The heatpipe change does put the final nail in the hybrid power plant design, at least for me... Abandoning that concept in favor of separate chem and nuke plants. You might as well not have the turbines take <500dgr steam anymore.

[MrHick]

I wish there was a little more explanation on heat-pipe changes in the notes.
Took me a while to figure out why the nuclear run at 50% or so.

Changes are expected in alpha and I enjoy re-configuring and designing stuff but just a little more explanation in release notes on things like this that will brake stuff.

Anyway
Thank you on the awesome game.

[Ferlonas]

Achievements are no longer unlocked by playing multiplayer game in which the player spent less than 50% of time online.

I have my doubts about this. I have a headless server running (several weeks now) that is not paused when there are no players on it. Since I've been pretty busy and didn't have a lot of time to play (neither did the others), updating to 0.15.11 will essentially mean I'm not eligible for any achievements any more. I don't know if that's feasible.

Regards,
Ferlonas