Bugs & FAQ

[Light]

I'm going to guess these are an oversight, but the building materials for some structures are inconsistent with everything else.

An example of this would be the ore crusher:
The Mk2 is using stone bricks as opposed to clay bricks.
The Mk3 is using clay bricks as opposed to concrete bricks.

The metallurgy mod also has some inconsistencies with the Mk4 pellet press, strand casting, and sintering oven using reinforced concrete, however the Mk4 of other metallurgy structures just use concrete and still use stone bricks for their Mk2's rather than clay.

I'm at best assuming the intended quality of building materials is meant to be as follows:

Mk1 Building - Stone
Mk2 Building - Clay
Mk3 Building - Concrete
Mk4 Building - Reinforced

That seems to be the overall theme for building material progression, unless these inconsistencies are intentional for these specific buildings. I felt it was worth bringing up either way.

[steinio]

Hey Angel,

did you change something with Bob's Metal Mixing Furnace in your last update?
I can't find the corresponding technology anymore.

Edit: It's called Alloy processing 1. I could only find it, if i click through the technology tree but it's not listed on the left side, even if i search for it.
Note: I've researched it already.

Greetings, steinio.

Alloy processing 1 is set to require Advanced Bronze Smelting 1 as a prerequisite and it's showing up fine in my test environment. Do you have any other mod messing with smelting and or bobplates?

Well it's in the technology tree but not on the left side.
Idon't care because i have researched it already but an other player can't find the blue furnace. So i just wondering if it's hidden somewhere.

Edit: lol i said all this before sorry o_O. I also use AAI Industries.

Greetings, steinio.

What you are seeing is the fact that alloy processing techs are levels of same tech so game will show only last level on the right to research. So you researched lvl 1 and lvl 2 is ready to research now and thats what is shown on right side.
I'm assuming that furnaces can be built without issues?

OK thank you.
Yes all fine with the furnace.

[torne]

Smelting 0.3.6 appears to have broken my early game sorting setup: I was relying on being able to have a sorter output to a bunch of furnaces directly to not need filter inserters, but now that smelting base ores requires a stack of 4, the inserters get stuck holding the wrong item type since they aren't loading the furnaces in multiples of 4.

I realise the change to 4:3 ratio was intentional but did you mean to break this type of setup? Or am I doing something wrong and there's still a way for this to work okay? Or should I just do something else?

If you already have stack size bonus, you can set a stack override on the inserter.

I don't; I use this setup immediately after researching mechanical refining when I've not even started making circuits automatically yet

I'll just have to do something else and take this as collateral damage then; no worries, was just checking before I throw blueprints out :p

[jodokus31]

Smelting 0.3.6 appears to have broken my early game sorting setup: I was relying on being able to have a sorter output to a bunch of furnaces directly to not need filter inserters, but now that smelting base ores requires a stack of 4, the inserters get stuck holding the wrong item type since they aren't loading the furnaces in multiples of 4.

I realise the change to 4:3 ratio was intentional but did you mean to break this type of setup? Or am I doing something wrong and there's still a way for this to work okay? Or should I just do something else?

If you already have stack size bonus, you can set a stack override on the inserter.

I don't; I use this setup immediately after researching mechanical refining when I've not even started making circuits automatically yet

I'll just have to do something else and take this as collateral damage then; no worries, was just checking before I throw blueprints out :p

I once tried this, too. Direct insert from Sorter to normal furnace with normal inserter. It worked somehow, but not very stable.
Later I found out, that its much easier to direct insert to metal mixing furnace, which recipe (f.e. simple iron plate, copper plate) is fixed. The inserter will only insert items that match the recipe of the furnace. I dont know, if you have those yet but shouldnt be very far.
And yet later, I found out, that you dont need sorter at that stage, because you get iron, copper, tin and lead without sorting. Honestly, this is also cleaner, because you dont need to store or crush tons of slag. And you have enough to create basic electronic circuits for filter inserter. (in my current run-through, i even wasnt able to craft sorter, because they need basic electronic circuits. maybe its because of expensive recipes)

[Wexler]

How do people deal with the steam output from cooling towers? The steam doesn't seem to work with a clarifier or flare stack, so I've been feeding steam turbines with it. This works fine, except the steam from the final cooling step isn't hot enough. So i mix all the steam output from the 3 steps, and it ends up at ~110 degrees - which works. However, i've observed the steam turbines stopping, because the steam being fed to it somehow has fallen below 100 degrees, thus blocking everything.

Any good solution?

[templar_thano]

How do people deal with the steam output from cooling towers? The steam doesn't seem to work with a clarifier or flare stack, so I've been feeding steam turbines with it. This works fine, except the steam from the final cooling step isn't hot enough. So i mix all the steam output from the 3 steps, and it ends up at ~110 degrees - which works. However, i've observed the steam turbines stopping, because the steam being fed to it somehow has fallen below 100 degrees, thus blocking everything.

Any good solution?

Use the steam for Cracking, I don't believe its temperature sensitive

[Arch666Angel]

I'm going to guess these are an oversight, but the building materials for some structures are inconsistent with everything else.

An example of this would be the ore crusher:
The Mk2 is using stone bricks as opposed to clay bricks.
The Mk3 is using clay bricks as opposed to concrete bricks.

The metallurgy mod also has some inconsistencies with the Mk4 pellet press, strand casting, and sintering oven using reinforced concrete, however the Mk4 of other metallurgy structures just use concrete and still use stone bricks for their Mk2's rather than clay.

I'm at best assuming the intended quality of building materials is meant to be as follows:

Mk1 Building - Stone
Mk2 Building - Clay
Mk3 Building - Concrete
Mk4 Building - Reinforced

That seems to be the overall theme for building material progression, unless these inconsistencies are intentional for these specific buildings. I felt it was worth bringing up either way.

Strating recipes are dependent on the tech level that unlocks the building, so mk1 in red tech has a lower material requirement as mk1 unlocked in green tech

How do people deal with the steam output from cooling towers? The steam doesn't seem to work with a clarifier or flare stack, so I've been feeding steam turbines with it. This works fine, except the steam from the final cooling step isn't hot enough. So i mix all the steam output from the 3 steps, and it ends up at ~110 degrees - which works. However, i've observed the steam turbines stopping, because the steam being fed to it somehow has fallen below 100 degrees, thus blocking everything.

Any good solution?

I'll increase the temp for the steam a bit

[Light]

I'm going to guess these are an oversight, but the building materials for some structures are inconsistent with everything else.

An example of this would be the ore crusher:
The Mk2 is using stone bricks as opposed to clay bricks.
The Mk3 is using clay bricks as opposed to concrete bricks.

The metallurgy mod also has some inconsistencies with the Mk4 pellet press, strand casting, and sintering oven using reinforced concrete, however the Mk4 of other metallurgy structures just use concrete and still use stone bricks for their Mk2's rather than clay.

I'm at best assuming the intended quality of building materials is meant to be as follows:

Mk1 Building - Stone
Mk2 Building - Clay
Mk3 Building - Concrete
Mk4 Building - Reinforced

That seems to be the overall theme for building material progression, unless these inconsistencies are intentional for these specific buildings. I felt it was worth bringing up either way.

Strating recipes are dependent on the tech level that unlocks the building, so mk1 in red tech has a lower material requirement as mk1 unlocked in green tech

It was unusual to me considering aluminium used in Mk3 buildings is a green science, but so are cement bricks. Titanium is a blue science, but so are reinforced concrete bricks. That meant to me that they were to be researched together, which would prevent any issue.

This is evident in the Mk4 liquifier which uses titanium + reinforced, yet the Mk3 gas refinery uses titanium + concrete. It's the Mk4 gas refinery that uses tungsten + reinforced brick, which seems to imply it's based on the building tier and not the tech tree cost. The Mk4 liquifier technically should be using concrete since it's the same as the Mk3 gas refinery in the tech tree.

The Mk2 electrolyser and Mk2 ore crusher are both green science which aren't deep in the tech tree at all, yet while both of them require steel plate it's the electrolyser which uses clay bricks and not the crusher, when both should be using the same brick material.

I could list more examples of tech that's unlocked in the same level which share the same plates and electronics yet use different bricks, but I think you get the idea.

[torne]

I once tried this, too. Direct insert from Sorter to normal furnace with normal inserter. It worked somehow, but not very stable.

I'm not sure what you mean by "somehow" or "not very stable" - the inserter will pick an arbitrary item from the sorter that is "allowed" to be inserted into a furnace (i.e. iron ore or copper ore, but not slag), and if the furnace already has the opposite type of ore in its input stack the inserter will just wait until the furnace finishes consuming the input stack before dropping it. The furnace will still run 100% of the time (since it removes the item from the input stack *before* its crafting time runs, so the inserter has plenty of time to put a new item in the input before the crafting is done), so the waiting inserters won't affect total throughput at all. This is just normal inserter rules for inserting into inventories.

As I said already, this worked when the only tech you had was mechanical refining; there's a number of ways to fix it by researching more tech (such as the metal mixing furnace you point out), but at that point it probably isn't a speedup over just making filter inserters. I know how to play, I'm just no longer able to use a trick I used to speed up the early game (you get more plates by sorting, so starting sorting earlier is faster than waiting until it's actually required).

[Exasperation]

As I said already, this worked when the only tech you had was mechanical refining; there's a number of ways to fix it by researching more tech (such as the metal mixing furnace you point out), but at that point it probably isn't a speedup over just making filter inserters. I know how to play, I'm just no longer able to use a trick I used to speed up the early game (you get more plates by sorting, so starting sorting earlier is faster than waiting until it's actually required).

You no longer get more plates by sorting until you start using angel's metallurgy. Crushed -> furnace gives 2/3 ppo (plates per ore). Crushed -> sorting -> furnace gives 3/4 * 3/4 = 9/16 ppo, plus 1/4 slag per ore. 2/3 - 9/16 = 5/48, or roughly .1 extra ppo from not sorting. If 1 plate is more valuable to you than 2.4 slag, it's better to skip sorting until you get to the tier 1 metallurgy (at which point it's 3/4 - 2/3 = 1/12, or about .08 ppo in favor of sorting).

[torne]

Thanks! I'd forgotten about the 3/4 effect of the sorting as well when looking at this setup after the most recent change, so yeah, it's no longer worth doing early sorting at all, so it doesn't really matter that the simplest blueprint for that no longer works.

[jodokus31]

I once tried this, too. Direct insert from Sorter to normal furnace with normal inserter. It worked somehow, but not very stable.

I'm not sure what you mean by "somehow" or "not very stable" - the inserter will pick an arbitrary item from the sorter that is "allowed" to be inserted into a furnace (i.e. iron ore or copper ore, but not slag), and if the furnace already has the opposite type of ore in its input stack the inserter will just wait until the furnace finishes consuming the input stack before dropping it. The furnace will still run 100% of the time (since it removes the item from the input stack *before* its crafting time runs, so the inserter has plenty of time to put a new item in the input before the crafting is done), so the waiting inserters won't affect total throughput at all. This is just normal inserter rules for inserting into inventories.

As I said already, this worked when the only tech you had was mechanical refining; there's a number of ways to fix it by researching more tech (such as the metal mixing furnace you point out), but at that point it probably isn't a speedup over just making filter inserters. I know how to play, I'm just no longer able to use a trick I used to speed up the early game (you get more plates by sorting, so starting sorting earlier is faster than waiting until it's actually required).

With "not very stable" I meant, that the furnace most of the time created the desired type of plate, but after some time, the furnace switched to the other ore. This would require sorting afterwards, but how?
I know, that there was a big gap between crafting a metal mixing furnace and a filter inserter, because the later needs basic electronic board und mmf only red science and stone bricks. Maybe its usefull for someone.
Anyway, i then used the crushed smelting only, and thats my solution for early game.
I also checked the Ore Sorting Facility Mk1 recipe and it only needs basic circuit board strange thing, I could swear, it was using basic electronic boards when I was in early game

[Wexler]

My MK2 electric poles are all showing as "materials not available" in my crafting pane, even though i do have the required materials on hand. The problem seems to be the tinned copper wire. If I craft some tinned copper wire, I'm then able to craft the electric poles - but they won't automatically craft the tinned copper wire or see that it's possible to make from components.

Edit: this is after upgrading to angels smelting 0.3.9

Edit2: Oh, and when crafting tinned copper wire manually, it's using the copper wire coils in my inventory, whilst handcrafting copper wire now uses copper plate again, as indicated by the changelog.

[iamwyza]

How do people deal with the steam output from cooling towers? The steam doesn't seem to work with a clarifier or flare stack, so I've been feeding steam turbines with it. This works fine, except the steam from the final cooling step isn't hot enough. So i mix all the steam output from the 3 steps, and it ends up at ~110 degrees - which works. However, i've observed the steam turbines stopping, because the steam being fed to it somehow has fallen below 100 degrees, thus blocking everything.

Any good solution?

I'll increase the temp for the steam a bit

Can we have an option to use the cooling tower to take steam and convert it to purified water at the cost of energy? (a condenser)

[mexmer]

How do people deal with the steam output from cooling towers? The steam doesn't seem to work with a clarifier or flare stack, so I've been feeding steam turbines with it. This works fine, except the steam from the final cooling step isn't hot enough. So i mix all the steam output from the 3 steps, and it ends up at ~110 degrees - which works. However, i've observed the steam turbines stopping, because the steam being fed to it somehow has fallen below 100 degrees, thus blocking everything.

Any good solution?

I'll increase the temp for the steam a bit

Can we have an option to use the cooling tower to take steam and convert it to purified water at the cost of energy? (a condenser)

are you making steam from purified water?
cooling to water makes sense, to purified water doesn't, there is no purification involved in cooling process

[Zombiee]

My magic 8-ball tells me that condensed water might be a thing in the future. Washing plants will use it instead of regular water.

[iamwyza]

How do people deal with the steam output from cooling towers? The steam doesn't seem to work with a clarifier or flare stack, so I've been feeding steam turbines with it. This works fine, except the steam from the final cooling step isn't hot enough. So i mix all the steam output from the 3 steps, and it ends up at ~110 degrees - which works. However, i've observed the steam turbines stopping, because the steam being fed to it somehow has fallen below 100 degrees, thus blocking everything.

Any good solution?

I'll increase the temp for the steam a bit

Can we have an option to use the cooling tower to take steam and convert it to purified water at the cost of energy? (a condenser)

are you making steam from purified water?
cooling to water makes sense, to purified water doesn't, there is no purification involved in cooling process

Actually steam distillation is one of the most basic ways to purify water. http://www.opus.net/technologies/steam-distillation/ If we're doing real world modeling, it looks like a reasonable steam distilation process would require (in factorio), steam + filter (coal or ceramic) + electricity and output purified water + used filter. It should be energy intensive, but it is totally reasonable.

[mexmer]

are you making steam from purified water?
cooling to water makes sense, to purified water doesn't, there is no purification involved in cooling process

Actually steam distillation is one of the most basic ways to purify water. http://www.opus.net/technologies/steam-distillation/ If we're doing real world modeling, it looks like a reasonable steam distilation process would require (in factorio), steam + filter (coal or ceramic) + electricity and output purified water + used filter. It should be energy intensive, but it is totally reasonable.

yes, but you wanted it from cooling process (mind you make steam from normal water, not from purified one, so impurities will not cease to exist just by heating and cooling water). there are many ways to get impurities out of water, either in liquid, gas or even solid form.

[iamwyza]

are you making steam from purified water?
cooling to water makes sense, to purified water doesn't, there is no purification involved in cooling process

Actually steam distillation is one of the most basic ways to purify water. http://www.opus.net/technologies/steam-distillation/ If we're doing real world modeling, it looks like a reasonable steam distilation process would require (in factorio), steam + filter (coal or ceramic) + electricity and output purified water + used filter. It should be energy intensive, but it is totally reasonable.

yes, but you wanted it from cooling process (mind you make steam from normal water, not from purified one, so impurities will not cease to exist just by heating and cooling water). there are many ways to get impurities out of water, either in liquid, gas or even solid form.

No, I want a method to take steam and convert it to pure water using a filter. So yes, the impurities still exist, which is why it's being filtered (heck you could even opt to output slag if balance is an issue). As the link i posted point out, you can take water, convert it to steam, filter the gas, and condense it and it results in purified water. It's not efficient like a RO membrane and that's ok. It's just something that can be done if there is an excess of steam that doesn't have any other purpose. Either that, or let us vent it through the flare stack. There has to be some way to deal with excess. I was hoping we could use the excess for something rather than just storing it.

Even if we just condensed it back to regular non-purified water, that'd be ok too. Yes I know, not real life, but huge amounts of Angel's processing is based in no small part on real life chemicals, reactions, processes, etc. Not all of it, obviously, but I'm not way out in left field with this one.

[mexmer]

are you making steam from purified water?
cooling to water makes sense, to purified water doesn't, there is no purification involved in cooling process

Actually steam distillation is one of the most basic ways to purify water. http://www.opus.net/technologies/steam-distillation/ If we're doing real world modeling, it looks like a reasonable steam distilation process would require (in factorio), steam + filter (coal or ceramic) + electricity and output purified water + used filter. It should be energy intensive, but it is totally reasonable.

yes, but you wanted it from cooling process (mind you make steam from normal water, not from purified one, so impurities will not cease to exist just by heating and cooling water). there are many ways to get impurities out of water, either in liquid, gas or even solid form.

No, I want a method to take steam and convert it to pure water using a filter. So yes, the impurities still exist, which is why it's being filtered (heck you could even opt to output slag if balance is an issue). As the link i posted point out, you can take water, convert it to steam, filter the gas, and condense it and it results in purified water. It's not efficient like a RO membrane and that's ok. It's just something that can be done if there is an excess of steam that doesn't have any other purpose. Either that, or let us vent it through the flare stack. There has to be some way to deal with excess. I was hoping we could use the excess for something rather than just storing it.

Even if we just condensed it back to regular non-purified water, that'd be ok too. Yes I know, not real life, but huge amounts of Angel's processing is based in no small part on real life chemicals, reactions, processes, etc. Not all of it, obviously, but I'm not way out in left field with this one.

which is what i said, cooling will give "back" water (which was on input anyway), then if you put it back to system (eg. make steam again from it) or run it trough water treatment facilities, it's up to you.
of course, it's not lossless process but that can be tuned.