There's actually some degree of overlap, as far as I understand it. Some of the advanced chemical plant reactions produce a complicated reaction mixture that would have to be fractionally distilled (to actually separate all those output fluids!Therax wrote:At least to me, fractional distillation feels qualitatively different from the other chemical processes. There isn't much in the way of reactions going on or the same sort of tightly controlled pressure/temperature. I'd personally be okay with the Integrated Chem Plant not being able to handle the Distillation Column's recipes, and having fractional distillation performed in a "one off" facility.Unfortunately, the Integrated Chemical Plant is the direct upgrade to the Fractional Distillation Column too and as such needs to be able to handle the oil recipes.
), so it needs to include the distillation. This also enables it to act as the higher-speed upgrade of the simple distillation column, so I don't have to add another entity there. One of my preferences for XM is to add different, integrated, interesting machines to fulfill the goal of speed upgrades, instead of just long lists of "machine x 1, 2, 3, 4, ...".
Anyway, at this point it looks like these are my main focus points, in rough order of priority:
I'm also very curious about the loader for train cars that doesn't kill performance, I really like that idea and how it corresponds to real loading of bulk materials in rail hopper cars. I'll definitely look into incorporating that, or maybe listing it as a strongly recommended companion.
