Acceleration bonus power creep

[eradicator]

Factorio considers 1MWs (one megawattsecond) equal to 1MJ as far as i remember. I'll edit the post to include the missing "s" .

Indeed, a MW · s is a MJ, by definition. You should always show all of the units in your calculations to keep from making silly labeling errors

Factorio internally never uses "per second" notation though. Neither in the prototype definitions, nor in the in-game tooltips. So i kinda skipped that during the calculation.
(Though i remember when i started modding it wasn't immediately obvious to me whether usage is measured "per tick" (no) or "per second / per 60 ticks" (yes).)

[Sniperfuchs]

I was gonna make another topic but since this is sort of related, please give me your input if this should stay here or be moved to its own thread.

So with the huge controversy around logistic bots, I actually thought that maybe train acceleration due to fuel would be a huge contributor to the issue. One of the big reasons they seem so vastly superior is that their downside, which is traveling long-ish distances, is completely negated by trains. The intended way seems to be:
-Long distance: Trains
-Medium distance: Belts
-Short distance: Bots

However, even for somewhat short distances, trains are the ultimate logistics option, therefore complementing bots perfectly. Almost TOO perfect. And this is where I get to acceleration. It makes trains stupidly useful for short distances when it seems very odd und unintuitive. An MK2 for trains or a tech choice for acceleration sounds like it would solve the fuel issue that is discussed by the OP, but in my opinion it leaves the problems in the grand scheme of the game kind of where they are. Making fuel only increase max speed would seem like a decent solution for the intended use (long distance ore gathering etc) while not making trains so damn useful for distances where they basically replace belts with 90% less space used and 1000% (if not more) the throughput.

Again, this is slightly off-topi and just my observation and my take on this but I would love some input.

[bobingabout]

Please get rid of the power creep in fuel acceleration.
Each new fuel seems to be set to vastly outperform earlier fuels in acceleration for no good reason.

Currently fuel stats and effects on trains are:

Coal:
fuel value/stack: 40MJ
acceleration: 100%
top speed: 100%
Train for comparison 1 Locomotive, 2 cargo wagons

Solid fuel:
fuel value/stack: 1250MJ
acceleration: 120%
top speed: 105%
Similar acceleration as baseline with 3 wagons

Rocket fuel:
fuel value/stack: 2250MJ
acceleration: 180%
top speed: 115%
Similar acceleration as baseline with 6 wagons

Nuclear fuel:
fuel value/stack: 1210MJ
acceleration: 250%
top speed: 115%
Similar acceleration as baseline with 10 wagons

Adding acceleration boosts equal to 4 additional locomotives makes no sense.
It also makes creating mods with upgrades for vehicles impossible to balance.
Vehicle upgrade mods have to strip fuels of their bonuses so upgraded vehicles feel like a real upgrades again and we don't end up with totally insane accelerations and top speeds (600kmph trains).

Having refined fuels provide higher fuel value per stack is enough incentive to use them.
Acceleration and top speed bonus should either be stripped from fuel entirely or reduced to a maximum of 120%.

I actually had to go and balance out all the fuels in my mod, I added a new type of fuel block between solid fuel and rocket fuel. Definitely looks like nuclear needs balancing there.

[bobucles]

Uranium fuel is powerful, but it's is also a pretty limited resource. A full train network using hundreds of uranium fueled trains will devour a crazy amount of the rare resource. This can be a serious limitation on low resource settings so I think that's worth taking into consideration as well.

I suspect many players splurge on high resource settings to better build their megabases. When players mess around with nearly unlimited resources, then the entire uranium tier can seem OP. Perhaps the solution is don't play with maxed uranium settings!

[Optera]

I actually had to go and balance out all the fuels in my mod, I added a new type of fuel block between solid fuel and rocket fuel. Definitely looks like nuclear needs balancing there.

Having hit a wall with balancing More Locomotives was the original reason why I started this thread.
For Train Overhaul I too completely reworked fuel bonus to give to upgrading to better locomotives.

Uranium fuel is powerful, but it's is also a pretty limited resource. A full train network using hundreds of uranium fueled trains will devour a crazy amount of the rare resource. This can be a serious limitation on low resource settings so I think that's worth taking into consideration as well.

I suspect many players splurge on high resource settings to better build their megabases. When players mess around with nearly unlimited resources, then the entire uranium tier can seem OP. Perhaps the solution is don't play with maxed uranium settings!

I've been using nuclear fuel-cells in locomotives since 0.15 and didn't run into any uranium shortage.
A tiny patch of uranium powers my ~100 trains for way longer than it takes to mine out everything, except stone, in a region.

[m44v]

Uranium fuel is powerful, but it's is also a pretty limited resource. A full train network using hundreds of uranium fueled trains will devour a crazy amount of the rare resource. This can be a serious limitation on low resource settings so I think that's worth taking into consideration as well.

I suspect many players splurge on high resource settings to better build their megabases. When players mess around with nearly unlimited resources, then the entire uranium tier can seem OP. Perhaps the solution is don't play with maxed uranium settings!

u235 after kovarex is not a rare resource at all, and we shouldn't consider low resource settings, that's not the default game. Besides players in low resource maps would want to deal with the scarcity problem, that's why they are using it!.

[bobingabout]

My efforts of balancing would probably look something like this

Code: Select all

Nuclear fuel:
fuel value/stack: 2420MJ
acceleration: 200% 
top speed: 125% 

Double the stack size, less acceleration, more top speed.

[Optera]

I nerfed nuclear fuel way harder in Train & Fuel Overhaul, but it also was changed to be an upgrade to fuel cells for nuclear locomotives.

Code: Select all

stack size: 5
fuel value: 12GJ
acceleration: 120%