Split Steam into "Low Temp" and "High Temp" steam entities

[MeduSalem]

This may actually turn into a controversial subject... but that's what I'm known for on the forum already anyways... so here I go:

Split Steam into two seperate Liquid entities

Namely:

• "Low Temperature Steam" (165°C from Boilers)
• "High Temperature Steam" (500°C from Heat Exchangers)

... and drop the useless temperature mechanic stuff entirely since there is no real point in it anymore ever since the Boilers/Heat Exchangers produce Steam at a fixed temperature and since there is absolutely no benefit from mixing them.

The main advantages about that are:

• It would make things easier to understand for new players since classic Steam Engines would use Low Temperature Steam and Nuclear stuff would use High Temperature Steam and they can't mix them up by mistake.
• It would finally allow Steam to be barreled like other liquids since the different temperature Steams would be seperate entities.
• It would also make circuit network conditions for handling the two Steam entities distinctive/easier.

The game doesn't really make any use of the temperature mechanic elsewhere anyways since nothing else needs to be heated so just get rid of the legacy mechanic for the sake of simplification and unification and call it a day.



I wrote it's controversial... because I know there are probably several mods out there which still depend on the temperature stuff... but honestly I think the base game has been rendered a mess when it comes to fluid handling ever since the introduction of fixed-temperature output and ever since water and steam are already seperate entities.

[Engimage]

I totally agree about this.
Mixing steams makes no sense.
Using Steam Engines instead of Steam Turbines makes no sense and vice versa.
I would definitely sacrifice the physics to clarity here.

[JohnyDL]

I always thought it might be interesting to be able to combine 2 pipes of water with 1 pipe of steam from a reactor and see if you could get a cheaper build at the cost of some performance, but maybe temperature could be used to effect recipes like cracking and their yields or be used for oil too

[Marcus Aseth]

putting steam into a barrel seems much more confusing...when it cool down doesn't turn into water?! Or is just a magic entity steam, like a ghost?! I don't like it :\

[Jap2.0]

Interesting idea. I'm not sure if I'm for or against it at the moment, but perhaps if it happens barreling low temp steam would turn it into water and barreling high temp steam would turn it into low temp steam?

[Marcus Aseth]

Interesting idea. I'm not sure if I'm for or against it at the moment, but perhaps if it happens barreling low temp steam would turn it into water and barreling high temp steam would turn it into low temp steam?

Maybe has a timer, after tot seconds it decay into lower tier (though that add a lot of checks? o_O not sure). So this test the speed of your delivery network, if it is not fast enough, then you end up with barrels filled with cold water xD

[MeduSalem]

putting steam into a barrel seems much more confusing...when it cool down doesn't turn into water?! Or is just a magic entity steam, like a ghost?! I don't like it :\

Honestly I think it wouldn't be too bad to step back from realism in this case. One can store 500°C Steam in Storage Tanks forever without it cooling down whatsoever... so why not in barrels too?


Don't get me wrong... Normally I'm all for realism and so on... but ever since the major changes around Water/Steam and Boilers/Heat Exchangers I'm pretty much annoyed that there are half-baken special solutions when it comes to heating fluids and that it doesn't really work universally anymore like it used to before. The handling of it just feels awkward... like the devs made the decisions on-the-go and then didn't really implement it all the way through.

• That one can't barrel Steam annoys me from a usabibilty side because I tried to barrel it just to find out I can't.
• That one can't properly use Circuit Network Conditions on Steam since there are 2 different working temperatures that may be present in one network... annoys me because I'm using both Nuclear Power and Fossil Power as a conditional backup and one has to convert the signal from one of the both steam temperatures to another signal so they don't mess with one another when being put on the same circuit network.
• That there is no point in the temperature system anymore in the first place ever since there are only 2 fixed temperatures Steam can be at which are produced by 2 seperate entities that have nothing to do with one another anyways... and other fluids than cold water not even being accepted by Boilers and Heat Exchangers anymore... simply shows how superfluous the temperature mechanic is when the usage possibilities of the items/fluids are limited this way.
• And like PacifyerGrey wrote... since it doesn't really make any sense to use Steam Engines instead of Steam turbines and vice versa I really question myself why it has to be the same damn fluid entity in the first place.

It's been bothering me for months already that in this case the devs left the game in this weird intermediate state of "we wanted to simplify things so we split Water and Steam into seperate liquid entities to make it easier to understand and circuit network stuff and transportation easier to implement" but still remaining the damn temperature mechanic without there actually being any further use for it anymore other than making things more complicated than they need to be... and even though they made the change of splitting up Water and Steam into seperate entities that Steam is still being horrible when it comes to handling it in circuit networks or transporting it... so they basically didn't really achieve what they wanted to or only half-way through.

I wouldn't have suggested it if I wouldn't have played around with it lately to the extend that I found out that the way it currently is implemented feels pretty awkward to use... like a legacy feature (the temperature mechanic) co-existing with a newer approach (spltting fluids into dedicated entities for easier handling), but both being crippled because they have to co-exist... just as if the Devs couldn't really decide on what direction they actually wanted to go with that change.

I think it should be either one way or the other but NOT both:

• Either Steam shouldn't be it's own entity and internally just be Water at higher temperature (the way it was before they splitted water into water and steam, but is not likely to return) and the circuit network/barreling stuff being expanded to be able to differentiate for fluids at different temperatures.
  
  - or -
• The temperature physics system should be dropped alltogether and Fluids at different temperature emulated by being different fluid entities for the sake of easier and better integration with the rest of the game mechanics. (Which is what I would favor by now)

It would be a whole lot different if there were more uses for various fluids at different temperatures (like there could be in Oil industry) or if it would make sense to mix liquids at different temperatures etc then a temperature physics system would make sense... but as it is currently there aren't really any uses. Steam can't even be counted as an exception to the rule because of how 165°C Steam and 500°C Steam can't be mixed in any beneficial way... so instead it's just sticking out like a sore thumb in a superfluous way that hinders proper integration of Steam with the rest of the game mechanics like all other Fluids.

[Koub]

I have no real personnal opinion on this, but it totally makes sense (except if the devs are planning to alter the way things work in a future update to take advantage of the temperature mechanisms).

[eradicator]

The game doesn't really make any use of the temperature mechanic elsewhere anyways since nothing else needs to be heated so just get rid of the legacy mechanic for the sake of simplification and unification and call it a day.

I think you have that backwards. The temperature mechanic, like many other mechanics in factorio is not at all "legacy" it is future-proof as it enables modders (e.g. me! ) and wube-devs alike to add additional features in the future without having to invent a completely new system. It's like wind, elevation, loaders, electric energy interfaces, burner type equipment or probability bases recipies. Just another entry on the long list of things that are available for ideas-yet-to-come.

TL;DR:
Don't remove a perfectly good temperature system. I'm not in the mood of scrapping half my mod ideas.

[bobingabout]

If you play with my mods, there are 7 different steam temperatures.

Besides, the point of having multiple types of steam is... effectively not a good idea. what about the coal liquefaction recipe, which type of steam would that use?

[MeduSalem]

(except if the devs are planning to alter the way things work in a future update to take advantage of the temperature mechanisms).

I think you have that backwards. The temperature mechanic, like many other mechanics in factorio is not at all "legacy" it is future-proof as it enables modders (e.g. me! ) and wube-devs alike to add additional features in the future without having to invent a completely new system. It's like wind, elevation, loaders, electric energy interfaces, burner type equipment or probability bases recipies. Just another entry on the long list of things that are available for ideas-yet-to-come..

I highly doubt that they will add additional features using the temperature system in the future with the approach they took.

If they would then they wouldn't have crippled themselves already by splitting Water into Water and Steam in the first place and wouldn't have made the Boiler and Heat Exchanger work the way they do now and would rather have left the old system as it was the way a lot of people, including myself, also suggested back then.

From my perspective they were stuck between two choices:

• Make Transportation/Circuit Network code more complex to handle liquids at different temperatures.
  
  - OR -
• Split up the water liquid into two seperate entities because that's easier to do and doesn't require a whole lot more code, just an additional entity definition.

They've gone with the later because easy short cut to a problem... but then didn't finish up the job of replacing the old system entirely like they should have so it was only a matter of time until someone brought up the still existing problems with their approach.

Back when they made the announcement that they splitted Water into dedicated Water and Steam entities I really hated it. I liked the previous system better and wish they would have implemented better Circuit Network / Transportation handling for fluids at different temperatures... but they didn't. So I accepted it.

So all I'm doing now is asking them to finish the job they've begun because the change of splitting up the Liquids into seperate entities was their idea, not mine and ironically they actually didn't meet the goal/reason behind why they did it in the first place... Because Circuit Network handling is still problematic for Steam at different temperatures and one can't barrel it either for the same reason and it being the only fluid needing that exception because they took the shortcut. So from my perspective they shot themselves in their own foot with this one.



Also as Rseding wrote a while ago in one of the threads dealing with the weird fluid mechanic that they consider changing the fluid mechanic so that entities add fluid to a pool (which is formed by the pipes connecting the entities) and others draw from it... without actually simulating the real flow because it would solve all the awkward problems with the current fluid mechanic. So when they would really do that (which I'm also in favor for because I hate the current fluid mechanic and would welcome any improvment)... then how do people expect that temperature would be simulated when entities just add/draw from a pool? Average temperature of the entire pool?

If you play with my mods, there are 7 different steam temperatures.

Besides, the point of having multiple types of steam is... effectively not a good idea. what about the coal liquefaction recipe, which type of steam would that use?

Well I usually don't play with mods (until a game is finished that is)... but I'd rather find it ugly if I had to deal with 7 different steam temperatures anyways. What the hell are you using 7 different temperatures of the same fluid for? xD

The coal liquefication recipe? Come on.. even though I like it and was among the people to suggest to integrate the Bergius Mod into the main game it is barely used by most people because it comes too late in the research tree when people don't need it anymore. That recipe didn't even use Steam before they decided to split water into water and steam. As if that recipe couldn't use just Low Temperature Steam and be done about it. There's no benefit about feeding the Coal Liquefication hotter steam already... It's not like one gets a better recipe ratio because of it or something. (Would be interesting if it did though, but then again I'm only using Coal Liquification if I'm short on Crude Oil for some reason, so don't know if it would be worth the trouble)


But as I already said, it's controversial... because of modders... I knew that already in advance. I also expect that things will be left as they are anyways because of how many modders would start a rampage.

[eradicator]

then how do people expect that temperature would be simulated when entities just add/draw from a pool? Average temperature of the entire pool?

Exactly how it works right now. Temperature is a just a function of energy contained in a liquid. Making the flow speed essentially infinite doesn't change that.

Well I usually don't play with mods (until a game is finished that is)... but I'd rather find it ugly if I had to deal with 7 different steam temperatures anyways. What the hell are you using 7 different temperatures of the same fluid for? xD

Sounds like pretty much the same as the old boiler mechanic tho. Where you had to deal with arbitrary amounts of different temperature water. And you just said you liked that.

But as I already said, it's controversial... because of modders... I knew that already in advance. I also expect that things will be left as they are anyways because of how many modders would start a rampage.

At the moment you're the one who started the rampage

[Engimage]

Actually I am strongly against of the method devs picked for the current implementation.
IMO it would be much more convenient if both Steam Engines and Steam Turbines could extract the power from steam but at a different rates. There might be some limitations for sure but not as it is now.