(0.15.10+) Water and Steam, what's the plan?

[shihsaikwok]

Where, anywhere in this whole thread, did I say, or even hint at, that the recipe should not require steam (= water above 100°)?!

I did not!

What I did say though, frequently, and what everyone is outright ignoring, is the fact that it should not be necessary to have a separate fluid for that!
The game lacks the means (damn it, I must be typing these exact same words at least the 5th time in this thread, as no one cares to read anything before posting -.-)...
The game lacks the means to fully utilize the information available, displaying water as steam when it's above 100° should be all that is needed, yet, it was apparently not possible to make this temperature based distinction in a recipe.
Therefore, making steam a separate fluid, whereas the only actual difference (ingame, mind you!) is the temperature, is a bad thing, as it is a workaround for not being able to correctly make use of the heat property, instead of fixing that.

Finally I think you make your thought more clear, Did i make you crazy? but i really appreciate your explanation to almost each of us.

Let me try to repeat what you think in my words: you are suggesting steam and water shall be put as the same ITEM in the game, say just name it as H2O.
But the Coal liquefaction shall not accept cold H2O, and it need to pass the boiler to become hot H2O, so that the Coal liquefaction will start.
And you are also suggesting the hot H2O and cold H2O can mix in the game by pipes / containers, but may be the temperature will drop below 100C and cannot start the Coal liquefaction.

Did I misunderstanding anything?

[Taipion]

Where, anywhere in this whole thread, did I say, or even hint at, that the recipe should not require steam (= water above 100°)?!

I did not!

What I did say though, frequently, and what everyone is outright ignoring, is the fact that it should not be necessary to have a separate fluid for that!
The game lacks the means (damn it, I must be typing these exact same words at least the 5th time in this thread, as no one cares to read anything before posting -.-)...
The game lacks the means to fully utilize the information available, displaying water as steam when it's above 100° should be all that is needed, yet, it was apparently not possible to make this temperature based distinction in a recipe.
Therefore, making steam a separate fluid, whereas the only actual difference (ingame, mind you!) is the temperature, is a bad thing, as it is a workaround for not being able to correctly make use of the heat property, instead of fixing that.

Finally I think you make your thought more clear, Did i make you crazy? but i really appreciate your explanation to almost each of us.

Let me try to repeat what you think in my words: you are suggesting steam and water shall be put as the same ITEM in the game, say just name it as H2O.
But the Coal liquefaction shall not accept cold H2O, and it need to pass the boiler to become hot H2O, so that the Coal liquefaction will start.
And you are also suggesting the hot H2O and cold H2O can mix in the game by pipes / containers, but may be the temperature will drop below 100C and cannot start the Coal liquefaction.

Did I misunderstanding anything?

Not excatly, the way it used to be was almost good.

- You have water as fluid internally, this does not change.
- Depending on heat levels, it is displayed as either water or steam.
- Make use of the Heat property correctly, as it is there already, to make a recipe require steam (=water above 100°), instead of the workaround of making it an entirely different object internally.
- This would, for coal liquification, also open a little fine-tuning in only proving slightly above 100° water/steam instead of plain 165°, which provides another little puzzle to solve, yet is entirely not required for it to work, only would provide a small saving in energy.

- Hot and cold water used to be able to mix, while preserving energy (averaging out temperature) and changing from being displayed as steam or water depending on that, this all worked fine, until they needed to pull off this workaround.
- This also allowed to not only feed heat exchangers with water of any temperature, it also allowed for designs where pre-heating them was an option that could be turned on/off seamlessly by just feeding the boilers or not.

[shihsaikwok]

Where, anywhere in this whole thread, did I say, or even hint at, that the recipe should not require steam (= water above 100°)?!

I did not!

What I did say though, frequently, and what everyone is outright ignoring, is the fact that it should not be necessary to have a separate fluid for that!
The game lacks the means (damn it, I must be typing these exact same words at least the 5th time in this thread, as no one cares to read anything before posting -.-)...
The game lacks the means to fully utilize the information available, displaying water as steam when it's above 100° should be all that is needed, yet, it was apparently not possible to make this temperature based distinction in a recipe.
Therefore, making steam a separate fluid, whereas the only actual difference (ingame, mind you!) is the temperature, is a bad thing, as it is a workaround for not being able to correctly make use of the heat property, instead of fixing that.

Finally I think you make your thought more clear, Did i make you crazy? but i really appreciate your explanation to almost each of us.

Let me try to repeat what you think in my words: you are suggesting steam and water shall be put as the same ITEM in the game, say just name it as H2O.
But the Coal liquefaction shall not accept cold H2O, and it need to pass the boiler to become hot H2O, so that the Coal liquefaction will start.
And you are also suggesting the hot H2O and cold H2O can mix in the game by pipes / containers, but may be the temperature will drop below 100C and cannot start the Coal liquefaction.

Did I misunderstanding anything?

Not excatly, the way it used to be was almost good.

- You have water as fluid internally, this does not change.
- Depending on heat levels, it is displayed as either water or steam.
- Make use of the Heat property correctly, as it is there already, to make a recipe require steam (=water above 100°), instead of the workaround of making it an entirely different object internally.
- This would, for coal liquification, also open a little fine-tuning in only proving slightly above 100° water/steam instead of plain 165°, which provides another little puzzle to solve, yet is entirely not required for it to work, only would provide a small saving in energy.

- Hot and cold water used to be able to mix, while preserving energy (averaging out temperature) and changing from being displayed as steam or water depending on that, this all worked fine, until they needed to pull off this workaround.
- This also allowed to not only feed heat exchangers with water of any temperature, it also allowed for designs where pre-heating them was an option that could be turned on/off seamlessly by just feeding the boilers or not.

When the discussion go on, you mentioned the steam is wrong and steam and water is the same thing. These 2 statement is stimulating in my view.

I revisit your first post and I can now understand your key points.
You mentioned steam and water occupy both the same space in the game, 1 water -> 1 steam, so actually it should be still the same thing: water.
The water shall only change to steam when it is allowed to expand in volume.
Yes, i think i agree with you for this.

So I think the boiler shall change 1 water -> 2 steam, then introduce a new item called Compressor, which can change 2 steam -> 1 water in 100 degree C.
I remember that in real power plant, there are several stage of heating and compressing to increase the overall efficiency (I forget the details honestly)
May be it will be too complicated for just a game~

[Taipion]

Where, anywhere in this whole thread, did I say, or even hint at, that the recipe should not require steam (= water above 100°)?!

I did not!

What I did say though, frequently, and what everyone is outright ignoring, is the fact that it should not be necessary to have a separate fluid for that!
The game lacks the means (damn it, I must be typing these exact same words at least the 5th time in this thread, as no one cares to read anything before posting -.-)...
The game lacks the means to fully utilize the information available, displaying water as steam when it's above 100° should be all that is needed, yet, it was apparently not possible to make this temperature based distinction in a recipe.
Therefore, making steam a separate fluid, whereas the only actual difference (ingame, mind you!) is the temperature, is a bad thing, as it is a workaround for not being able to correctly make use of the heat property, instead of fixing that.

Finally I think you make your thought more clear, Did i make you crazy? but i really appreciate your explanation to almost each of us.

Let me try to repeat what you think in my words: you are suggesting steam and water shall be put as the same ITEM in the game, say just name it as H2O.
But the Coal liquefaction shall not accept cold H2O, and it need to pass the boiler to become hot H2O, so that the Coal liquefaction will start.
And you are also suggesting the hot H2O and cold H2O can mix in the game by pipes / containers, but may be the temperature will drop below 100C and cannot start the Coal liquefaction.

Did I misunderstanding anything?

Not excatly, the way it used to be was almost good.

- You have water as fluid internally, this does not change.
- Depending on heat levels, it is displayed as either water or steam.
- Make use of the Heat property correctly, as it is there already, to make a recipe require steam (=water above 100°), instead of the workaround of making it an entirely different object internally.
- This would, for coal liquification, also open a little fine-tuning in only proving slightly above 100° water/steam instead of plain 165°, which provides another little puzzle to solve, yet is entirely not required for it to work, only would provide a small saving in energy.

- Hot and cold water used to be able to mix, while preserving energy (averaging out temperature) and changing from being displayed as steam or water depending on that, this all worked fine, until they needed to pull off this workaround.
- This also allowed to not only feed heat exchangers with water of any temperature, it also allowed for designs where pre-heating them was an option that could be turned on/off seamlessly by just feeding the boilers or not.

When the discussion go on, you mentioned the steam is wrong and steam and water is the same thing. These 2 statement is stimulating in my view.

I revisit your first post and I can now understand your key points.
You mentioned steam and water occupy both the same space in the game, 1 water -> 1 steam, so actually it should be still the same thing: water.
The water shall only change to steam when it is allowed to expand in volume.
Yes, i think i agree with you for this.

So I think the boiler shall change 1 water -> 2 steam, then introduce a new item called Compressor, which can change 2 steam -> 1 water in 100 degree C.
I remember that in real power plant, there are several stage of heating and compressing to increase the overall efficiency (I forget the details honestly)
May be it will be too complicated for just a game~

I don*t know why you constantly misread my posts, but I start to think it's intentional.

Water and Steam should be the same basic entity ingame, distinguished by their heat attribute only, just as it was done until 0.15.10, simple as that.
There is no room in Factorio to display or handle compression/decompression, so this again augments the concept of not having different internal entities for water and steam.

Instead of this ugly workaround of making steam a different internal entity, the game should just work with the heat attribute correctly, as it was, for instance, done unitl 0.15.10, where steam and water were the same internal entity, yet displayed differently, entirely based upon the heat level.

The game lacks the means to fully utilize the information available, displaying water as steam when it's above 100° should be all that is needed, yet, it was apparently not possible to make this temperature based distinction in a recipe.
Therefore, making steam a separate fluid, whereas the only actual difference (ingame, mind you!) is the temperature, is a bad thing, as it is a workaround for not being able to correctly make use of the heat property, instead of fixing that.

[Distelzombie]

So I think the boiler shall change 1 water -> 2 steam, then introduce a new item called Compressor, which can change 2 steam -> 1 water in 100 degree C.
I remember that in real power plant, there are several stage of heating and compressing to increase the overall efficiency (I forget the details honestly)
May be it will be too complicated for just a game~

This way supercritical water is achieved. It is neither steam nor fluid. Its another phase.

Instead of this ugly workaround of making steam a different internal entity, the game should just work with the heat attribute correctly, as it was, for instance, done unitl 0.15.10, where steam and water were the same internal entity, yet displayed differently, entirely based upon the heat level.

It is an ENGINEERING game. You need a seperation. Just get over with it already.

[Taipion]

So I think the boiler shall change 1 water -> 2 steam, then introduce a new item called Compressor, which can change 2 steam -> 1 water in 100 degree C.
I remember that in real power plant, there are several stage of heating and compressing to increase the overall efficiency (I forget the details honestly)
May be it will be too complicated for just a game~

This way supercritical water is achieved. It is neither steam nor fluid. Its another phase.

Instead of this ugly workaround of making steam a different internal entity, the game should just work with the heat attribute correctly, as it was, for instance, done unitl 0.15.10, where steam and water were the same internal entity, yet displayed differently, entirely based upon the heat level.

It is an ENGINEERING game. You need a seperation. Just get over with it already.

That might come as a shock to you, but "because I say so" is no valid explanation nor reasoning, and throwing buzzwords like "ENGINEERING" around may impress the common uneducated but buzzwordloving underclass american worker, but to most other people it only makes you look... oh well.

If you don't have anything to say, then don't.
Isn't there a thread or subforum here somewhere, where you can spam just to raise your post count?

[Distelzombie]

So I think the boiler shall change 1 water -> 2 steam, then introduce a new item called Compressor, which can change 2 steam -> 1 water in 100 degree C.
I remember that in real power plant, there are several stage of heating and compressing to increase the overall efficiency (I forget the details honestly)
May be it will be too complicated for just a game~

This way supercritical water is achieved. It is neither steam nor fluid. Its another phase.

Instead of this ugly workaround of making steam a different internal entity, the game should just work with the heat attribute correctly, as it was, for instance, done unitl 0.15.10, where steam and water were the same internal entity, yet displayed differently, entirely based upon the heat level.

It is an ENGINEERING game. You need a seperation. Just get over with it already.

That might come as a shock to you, but "because I say so" is no valid explanation nor reasoning, and throwing buzzwords like "ENGINEERING" around may impress the common uneducated but buzzwordloving underclass american worker, but to most other people it only makes you look... oh well.

If you don't have anything to say, then don't.
Isn't there a thread or subforum here somewhere, where you can spam just to raise your post count?

That was a VERY valid thing to say.
You like defending stuff. But apparently you dont like suggesting it. Why dont you open a feature request instead of this discussion here? Maybe you know deep down it wouldnt do any good for your will.

At this stage it is not necessary to discuss this farther in a thread that is not a feature request but more a nag-about.
The question in your title has been answered well. And preheating never really was a very good thing at all. (No bonus power)

[Taipion]

That was a VERY valid thing to say.
You like defending stuff. But apparently you dont like suggesting it. Why dont you open a feature request instead of this discussion here? Maybe you know deep down it wouldnt do any good for your will.

At this stage it is not necessary to discuss this farther in a thread that is not a feature request but more a nag-about.
The question in your title has been answered well. And preheating never really was a very good thing at all. (No bonus power)

That is again all wrong.
I actually intended to get a dev response to somehow explain or state as to why this was necessary, and not possible in another, more straightforward way,
as the current implementation is a (not so pretty) workaround, ignoring the actual, probably fixable shortcomings that made it necessary.
You, making bold statements without any facts to base on, does not make you look good.
Pre-heating might come back iirc, though with the current implementation it would only be possible to insert either steam or water, not just any water with any temperature as it used to be.
And pre-heating was an actually nice feature that saved a lot of space and material.

[Distelzombie]

That was a VERY valid thing to say.
You like defending stuff. But apparently you dont like suggesting it. Why dont you open a feature request instead of this discussion here? Maybe you know deep down it wouldnt do any good for your will.

At this stage it is not necessary to discuss this farther in a thread that is not a feature request but more a nag-about.
The question in your title has been answered well. And preheating never really was a very good thing at all. (No bonus power)

That is again all wrong.
I actually intended to get a dev response to somehow explain or state as to why this was necessary, and not possible in another, more straightforward way,
as the current implementation is a (not so pretty) workaround, ignoring the actual, probably fixable shortcomings that made it necessary.
You, making bold statements without any facts to base on, does not make you look good.
Pre-heating might come back iirc, though with the current implementation it would only be possible to insert either steam or water, not just any water with any temperature as it used to be.
And pre-heating was an actually nice feature that saved a lot of space and material.

Are you just trying to be toxic for your own cheering, or did you not understand what I wrote at all?
- Everyone gave you an explanation to what the reason is why its now named steam.
- You have made some stupid statement that you're, I guess, too embarressed to step back from completely. ("Steam is not different from water", "If you pressurize steam it gets cold" is another one)
- All you do is suggesting a change. This needs to be a feature request. Thats what the feature-forum is all about. There you will get your response from a dev most likely
- Preheating never produced extra power over the amount a usual second power plant would have created with that steam. I know you didnt mention this exactly, but you said "Its all wrong". Just pointing that out again.
- You even missed that I was giving points in your direction with the supercritical water:

Water and steam are the same thing as long as you don't let the water expand and actually become steam, why oh why would you want to do this differently?

Why do you just dont want another building mixing them together, btw? It would make much sense.

[PuffTheDragon]

I just finished work and...Thats escalate quickly....


Everyone had disussed about the steam, but this discussion gets a little bit steamy (trying my first english joke).
Now we throw bad words and already see nobody discusses anymore, and i dont read the last posts because of nagging.

I think we have two different opinions with 50 shades of gray between them. Lets see...
[Please understand, that english is not my native language, so... perhaps my words arent perfect]

Steam should be removed as entity:
Taipion pointing out, that steam and water should be again the same. This have benefits like:
-You can use water for different recepts like befor
-You can mix the temperature better
-Logik is easier, because you only have to look on the temperature
-you dont need to build two seperate pipes
-"Steam" would be water, which is hotter than 99°C (dont know the Fahrenheit)

This would be a change back, but in the end H2O is H2O and it shouldnt matter which form it has. This arent his actuall words, this is my understanding of it.
This should be seen as a gaming view, not how reality works.

------------
Now that we have steam, the other side is: We want our steam
Some men and women point out, that steam is a good addition to the fluids we have. Its is easier to understand that water and steam are two differen things, which will be used seperated.
-Steam adds more varitiy to the recipes
-By adding a gas/fluid you open the door for more
-steam will be used by more recipes in the future
-steam and water shouldnt be mixed in reality and so not in the game, too (realistic approache)
-Temperature dont determine the state of a element, so water > 100°C isnt steam per definition ( example: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/wh ... oot-105511 )

----------
This are only a few points, which i see in this discussion.
I dont complete this list, because i want to hear what you think. I will add things, but dont try to be redundant. If i didnt write it well, tell me, and i will gladly correct myself. But dont be a A**hole. I read many things here, and somewhere the discussion when over board.
----------
Lastly i would like to point out, that this game isnt an engineer game. Its a game which capture a factory pretty well. But we dont see steel anywhere, which would be realistic. We can harvest a tank of steam... which is an interisting approach to reality Nothing is perfect. But it is a hell of fun, and many here like it.

[PuffTheDragon]

(how do i delete posts?)

[PuffTheDragon]

I think this post from viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47963 benefits this discussion:
I underline what is great.

Boilers in real life are not 100% efficient.

Real life boilers have the following efficiencies:

"Stoker" fired, commonly seen on locomotives and historic boilers: 50-70% depending on fireman skill, boiler condition, and fuel quality.
"Package boiler", modern automatic-controlled boilers typically using oil or gas fuels: 70-95%. Automated fire controls and modernized designs allow improved efficiency if the boiler is maintained properly.

Electric boilers are not 100% efficient. It is close to 100%, but they always lose some energy to their surroundings even when wrapped in insulation to minimize this loss.

If you ignore heat dissipation and losses in electrical systems, electric boilers are 100% efficient. Both is currently not implemented in Factorio, which is a reasonable design choice.

I would love to see a mod for factorio that actually implements realistic efficiency for steam and nuclear power. But given how disruptive to the game balance that such a configuration would be, it would probably have to be a mod and cannot be part of the vanilla game.

People are already used to how Factorio works right now, leading to upset if too much changed. I don't know the developers opinion on this. Hope-givingly, they reworked the boiler system already which was a breaking change. The game is after all still labeled an Alpha by the developers.

Too much realism takes all the fun out of it for people who just want to play the game.

I agree. Too much of anything is bad. Especially in a game like Factorio. We like it because it does not agree with reality everywhere. Still, we like it also because it agrees in some aspects with reality.

What aspects of reality should be implemented? I consider that to be a difficult question. But realism can add intuitive depth, and games profit heavily on intuitive depth. This thread is not about that, though, but just about a rather confined and comprehensible change.

It's about making steam engines inefficient while making boilers virtually ideal, thusly allowing electric boilers and other fun stuff without needing to rebalance the game too much.

[PuffTheDragon]

I think this post from viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47963 benefits this discussion:
I underline what is great.

Boilers in real life are not 100% efficient.

Real life boilers have the following efficiencies:

"Stoker" fired, commonly seen on locomotives and historic boilers: 50-70% depending on fireman skill, boiler condition, and fuel quality.
"Package boiler", modern automatic-controlled boilers typically using oil or gas fuels: 70-95%. Automated fire controls and modernized designs allow improved efficiency if the boiler is maintained properly.

Electric boilers are not 100% efficient. It is close to 100%, but they always lose some energy to their surroundings even when wrapped in insulation to minimize this loss.

If you ignore heat dissipation and losses in electrical systems, electric boilers are 100% efficient. Both is currently not implemented in Factorio, which is a reasonable design choice.

I would love to see a mod for factorio that actually implements realistic efficiency for steam and nuclear power. But given how disruptive to the game balance that such a configuration would be, it would probably have to be a mod and cannot be part of the vanilla game.

People are already used to how Factorio works right now, leading to upset if too much changed. I don't know the developers opinion on this. Hope-givingly, they reworked the boiler system already which was a breaking change. The game is after all still labeled an Alpha by the developers.

Too much realism takes all the fun out of it for people who just want to play the game.

I agree. Too much of anything is bad. Especially in a game like Factorio. We like it because it does not agree with reality everywhere. Still, we like it also because it agrees in some aspects with reality.

What aspects of reality should be implemented? I consider that to be a difficult question. But realism can add intuitive depth, and games profit heavily on intuitive depth. This thread is not about that, though, but just about a rather confined and comprehensible change.

It's about making steam engines inefficient while making boilers virtually ideal, thusly allowing electric boilers and other fun stuff without needing to rebalance the game too much.

[/quote]

[Taipion]

Are you just trying to be toxic for your own cheering, or did you not understand what I wrote at all?

You try to be toxic, or trolling, or you only do this for the sake of arguing and you can't accept that your ..."reasoning" won't go anywhere.

- Everyone gave you an explanation to what the reason is why its now named steam.

Some people did, trying to argue with realism and real life examples which is about as realistic as carrying 2k factories with you in your pocket.
No one who "tried to provide an explanation" actually read what I said, especially not you, that it is a technical decision between using the existing attribute and modeling a completely different entity, whereas the latter is an ugly workaround, nothing else.

- You have made some stupid statement

You make exclusively stupid posts, only aimed at harassing me, not providing anything of substance to this discussion, all your posts are entirely filled with personal opinions and assumptions, void of any facts or proof.

[...]

You, trying to pretend you misunderstood me, to then claim I said and meant things that I did not, all for the sake of bashing it then and derailing this thread, those are well known trolling techniques, but you are bad at it because your intentions are obvious, and you lack any sensitivity to actually make it work, bad for you, now please go and troll somewhere else, this is getting really boring.

[Taipion]

I think this post from viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47963 benefits this discussion:
I underline what is great.

Boilers in real life are not 100% efficient.

Real life boilers have the following efficiencies:

"Stoker" fired, commonly seen on locomotives and historic boilers: 50-70% depending on fireman skill, boiler condition, and fuel quality.
"Package boiler", modern automatic-controlled boilers typically using oil or gas fuels: 70-95%. Automated fire controls and modernized designs allow improved efficiency if the boiler is maintained properly.

Electric boilers are not 100% efficient. It is close to 100%, but they always lose some energy to their surroundings even when wrapped in insulation to minimize this loss.

If you ignore heat dissipation and losses in electrical systems, electric boilers are 100% efficient. Both is currently not implemented in Factorio, which is a reasonable design choice.

I would love to see a mod for factorio that actually implements realistic efficiency for steam and nuclear power. But given how disruptive to the game balance that such a configuration would be, it would probably have to be a mod and cannot be part of the vanilla game.

People are already used to how Factorio works right now, leading to upset if too much changed. I don't know the developers opinion on this. Hope-givingly, they reworked the boiler system already which was a breaking change. The game is after all still labeled an Alpha by the developers.

Too much realism takes all the fun out of it for people who just want to play the game.

I agree. Too much of anything is bad. Especially in a game like Factorio. We like it because it does not agree with reality everywhere. Still, we like it also because it agrees in some aspects with reality.

What aspects of reality should be implemented? I consider that to be a difficult question. But realism can add intuitive depth, and games profit heavily on intuitive depth. This thread is not about that, though, but just about a rather confined and comprehensible change.

It's about making steam engines inefficient while making boilers virtually ideal, thusly allowing electric boilers and other fun stuff without needing to rebalance the game too much.

IIRC boilers in Factorio have 50% efficiency, but I may be wrong on that one.

[PuffTheDragon]

I think this post from viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47963 benefits this discussion:
I underline what is great.

Boilers in real life are not 100% efficient.

Real life boilers have the following efficiencies:

"Stoker" fired, commonly seen on locomotives and historic boilers: 50-70% depending on fireman skill, boiler condition, and fuel quality.
"Package boiler", modern automatic-controlled boilers typically using oil or gas fuels: 70-95%. Automated fire controls and modernized designs allow improved efficiency if the boiler is maintained properly.

Electric boilers are not 100% efficient. It is close to 100%, but they always lose some energy to their surroundings even when wrapped in insulation to minimize this loss.

If you ignore heat dissipation and losses in electrical systems, electric boilers are 100% efficient. Both is currently not implemented in Factorio, which is a reasonable design choice.

I would love to see a mod for factorio that actually implements realistic efficiency for steam and nuclear power. But given how disruptive to the game balance that such a configuration would be, it would probably have to be a mod and cannot be part of the vanilla game.

People are already used to how Factorio works right now, leading to upset if too much changed. I don't know the developers opinion on this. Hope-givingly, they reworked the boiler system already which was a breaking change. The game is after all still labeled an Alpha by the developers.

Too much realism takes all the fun out of it for people who just want to play the game.

I agree. Too much of anything is bad. Especially in a game like Factorio. We like it because it does not agree with reality everywhere. Still, we like it also because it agrees in some aspects with reality.

What aspects of reality should be implemented? I consider that to be a difficult question. But realism can add intuitive depth, and games profit heavily on intuitive depth. This thread is not about that, though, but just about a rather confined and comprehensible change.

It's about making steam engines inefficient while making boilers virtually ideal, thusly allowing electric boilers and other fun stuff without needing to rebalance the game too much.

IIRC boilers in Factorio have 50% efficiency, but I may be wrong on that one.

They discuss this in the thread. What is reality conform and what is better.

[Taipion]

I think this post from viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47963 benefits this discussion:
I underline what is great.

Boilers in real life are not 100% efficient.

Real life boilers have the following efficiencies:

"Stoker" fired, commonly seen on locomotives and historic boilers: 50-70% depending on fireman skill, boiler condition, and fuel quality.
"Package boiler", modern automatic-controlled boilers typically using oil or gas fuels: 70-95%. Automated fire controls and modernized designs allow improved efficiency if the boiler is maintained properly.

Electric boilers are not 100% efficient. It is close to 100%, but they always lose some energy to their surroundings even when wrapped in insulation to minimize this loss.

If you ignore heat dissipation and losses in electrical systems, electric boilers are 100% efficient. Both is currently not implemented in Factorio, which is a reasonable design choice.

I would love to see a mod for factorio that actually implements realistic efficiency for steam and nuclear power. But given how disruptive to the game balance that such a configuration would be, it would probably have to be a mod and cannot be part of the vanilla game.

People are already used to how Factorio works right now, leading to upset if too much changed. I don't know the developers opinion on this. Hope-givingly, they reworked the boiler system already which was a breaking change. The game is after all still labeled an Alpha by the developers.

Too much realism takes all the fun out of it for people who just want to play the game.

I agree. Too much of anything is bad. Especially in a game like Factorio. We like it because it does not agree with reality everywhere. Still, we like it also because it agrees in some aspects with reality.

What aspects of reality should be implemented? I consider that to be a difficult question. But realism can add intuitive depth, and games profit heavily on intuitive depth. This thread is not about that, though, but just about a rather confined and comprehensible change.

It's about making steam engines inefficient while making boilers virtually ideal, thusly allowing electric boilers and other fun stuff without needing to rebalance the game too much.

IIRC boilers in Factorio have 50% efficiency, but I may be wrong on that one.

They discuss this in the thread. What is reality conform and what is better.

I think I read somewhere that they actually have currently 50% efficiency, so they use up twice as much energy from fuel as they output, but I say it again I am not sure here.
This should be easy to test actually, as the energy value is stated on all fuels, and for a reactor for instance, this is correct, it takes 200 seconds to use up the 8GJ fuel as a reactor has 40 MW by default, neighbouring bonus is added on top of that, not from the fuel.

[edit:] I was right!
A piece of rocket fuel has 225 MJ, so a 1.8 MW boiler should take 125 seconds to burn it, but it's half of that, so it's only running at 50% fuel efficiency.

[edit2:] I see what you want to do with this quote, but that is actually just a side aspect, at least for me, it is mainly the thing that the current "steam is now modeled as a different entity" is an ugly workaround for the problem, that they can't use the existing properties of the game right, like, have "water" as input for coal liquification, but ...150+° water (displayed as steam), so instead of fixing what does not work in the game, they do this workaround, which, for me as a programmer... oh well.

[PuffTheDragon]

[edit2:] I see what you want to do with this quote, but that is actually just a side aspect, at least for me, it is mainly the thing that the current "steam is now modeled as a different entity" is an ugly workaround for the problem, that they can't use the existing properties of the game right, like, have "water" as input for coal liquification, but ...150+° water (displayed as steam), so instead of fixing what does not work in the game, they do this workaround, which, for me as a programmer... oh well.

For you as a programmer. For me it is ideal. Our steamnetwork at work hates water. Or... hates H2O which condensate. Because: it will destroy the facility. Even when there is rust in the steam ... its harmfull.

Perhaps the different viewpoint is the problem. It may be easier to see water as a elemant with a temperature. But in reality you dont even want to mix steam with 220°C and 340°C because.. your 220°C will be damaged or you build it a way expensiver.

[OdinYggd]

Yes, currently boilers are 50% efficient. So 50% of the fuel energy added makes it into the steam.

This would be comparable to a real world boiler that has some scale buildup from bad water being fired without the attention to detail necessary for good combustion efficiency. Such a boiler would likely be belching smoke, and would be a safety concern because a dirty boiler may experience local overheating that can cause a rupture and explosion.

Quoting the other part of my post in the other thread that didnt get copied here yet, regarding engine efficiency:

Engines on the other hand, Factorio's engines are laughably impossible.

Real life steam engines are really bad for efficiency.

Single expansion (Locomotive, small stationary engines): 5-10%. Most of the energy in the steam is lost to under-expansion, the steam is released while still at a significant pressure. This is why the blastpipe is so effective at inducing boiler draft, and why steam locomotives chug the way they do.

Compound expansion (Stationary and marine engines): 10-30%. Too complex and large to be reliable in a locomotive, this type was commonly found in factories and ships where the improved efficiency more than made up for the increased complexity and the added weight was of little concern. Even when run with a condenser so that the steam is in fact expanded all the way to a vaccum, there is still a significant energy loss in the latent energy needed to change the water to steam that cannot be recovered by any known engine.

Turbines: Up to 40% efficient. Like the compound engine, a turbine is able to expand the steam all the way to vaccum if designed to do so. But unlike piston engines, turbines are only efficient in a narrow envelope of inlet conditions and RPM. Stray too far from this envelope and your efficiency goes up the cooling tower that condenses the exhaust to be fed back to the boiler.

I would love to see a mod for factorio that actually implements realistic efficiency for steam and nuclear power. But given how disruptive to the game balance that such a configuration would be, it would probably have to be a mod and cannot be part of the vanilla game. Too much realism takes all the fun out of it for people who just want to play the game.

There were engines that could push the envelope- for instance a single expansion Corliss valve was significantly more efficient than the standard slide valve and piston valve arrangements, and compound corliss valve engines were well known for their fuel economy.

Factorio's engine layout suggests a triple compound design similar to what might have been found in a ship or large factory. Such an engine should be able to exceed 20% efficiency at part load, but without a condenser it will have underexpansion losses at full load. The devs talked about making a closed-loop steam system and including condensers and such, but ultimately decided against doing so for a variety of reasons. Shame too, a closed loop steam solution would make it possible to put the power station close to the fuel supply and bring make-up water to it by railcar instead of forcing power stations to be built on lakeshores.

So armed with some information of typical real world values, lets see how those numbers would look in Factorio.

1 coal = 8MJ.
Boiler efficiency, 50%
8MJ coal + water => 4MJ saturated steam
Engine efficiency 25%, make the math easy.
4MJ saturated steam => 1MJ electricity.

But in addition, changing the engines to 25% efficiency also means that each engine consumes 900KW in steam while only producing 225KW of electrical power.

So the 1:20:40 power station we were introduced to in 0.15, which currently produces 36MW theoretical power and I've tested to 35.3-35.8MW sustained, would now only produce 9MW of power.

End result is that players would need 4 times the power station capacity to produce the same power, and would consume 8 times the coal to produce that power.

If we were going to actually implement such a drastic change, I think it would be necessary to re-think the numbers across the entire system. For instance the following:

All fuel values x4. Coal would be 32MJ like so instead of 8MJ. Like so the consumption rate would only increase to 2x the present value.

Steam engines consume 4x the steam they currently do, but produce the same amount of electrical power. This would give an efficiency of 25%, but due to pipe flow limits power stations would be reduced to 9MW instead of 36MW.

Boiler steaming capacity stays the same.

The result would be a ratio of 1:20:10, which kind of echoes the pre-0.15 ratio if you think about it, and would have a 9MW theoretical output.

Similarly though, you could make the steam engines consume 8x the steam and produce 2x the power, and raise the boiler steaming capacity by 2 to make up the difference. The ratio would then become 1:10:5, still producing 9MW but taking up half the space. Savvy players would build these as 18MW pairs, in much the same way pre-0.15 power stations could be constructed by making pairs of 1:14:10 sets.

Either way, traditional steam power in stationary and marine applications had 2 or more boilers per engine. Large ships like Titanic had upwards of 30 boilers to power its 2 engines and turbine.

Factorio has been unrealistic for some time in the overall scale of boiler needs to engine size, in no small part due to the engines having 100% efficiency instead of 25%.

[Distelzombie]

-Obvious incitements-

Im not going to fall for that. Bye