[1.0] Sea Block Pack 0.4.10

[mrvn]

Sea block pack 0.2.3 has been released, check first post of this thread for download. I've also updated all sea block mods on the mod portal.

Only one minor change since the last beta: Add fluid-generator-3 tech prerequisite for diesel generator.
EDIT: Almost forgot, updated a couple of mods to latest versions:
bobpower now includes fluid generators, similar to the ks_power diesel generator.
FNEI_0.1.1 seems to do a better job of hiding unavailable recipes.

I am planning to upgrade from 0.2.2. Is

- making backup of Factorio
- deleting mods
- unpacking 0.2.3 pack
- loading old save

A good method? Is anything missing?

BTW, is there any use for copper or iron powder or any other metal powders? I see way to produce them but not to use them.

Yes it is. Personally I have unziped all my mods and put them in git. That way I can see what changed in the source from version to version and easily migrate my local changes after a mod update.

Copper or iron powder? Do you mean processed copper and iron? They give you 50% more plates eventually, 100% more in combination with anodes.

[ukezi]

no. there are items iron, copper and steel powder. those are dead ends at the moment.

[Krychle]

Anyone else find it slightly easy (since the carbon/coal/charcoal change ? I didn't play Seablock before this update) that It takes CO2 to convert Charcoal (5MJ) into Carbon (6MJ), but then with later research, I can convert 5xCharcoal into Charcoal pellets(30MJ), gaining 5MJ, without needing any other material other than electrical costs?

[live22morrow]

That's just the game's power scaling. It's the same with how the higher tiers of boilers give you more power essentially for "free". Charcoal to carbon isn't a net positive for energy though, after you account for the liquifiers' energy cost. (actually it is, but only by a trivially tiny amount. my experiment found about a .8% increase in energy)

[ukezi]

you are wrong with that but the gain is so minimal, I don't use it. With charcoal to CO2 you need 3.4 Charcoal=17MJ to create 3 carbon=18MJ. to do that you need 4/3 s Liquifier for carbon, 166.66 kJ electric=333.33 Fuel and 0.7s CO2 production 87.5kJ electric =175 kJ Fuel so you get 17.508MJ -> 18MJ.

[Krychle]

So the gain itself is tiny, you don't need CO2, and it's a lot denser on a belt/bot.

[ukezi]

carbon is denser then the charcoal, 6MJ per item compared to 5.

[live22morrow]

True, though I think by the time belt throughput becomes an issue for power production, you should have pellets anyways, which is far denser than charcoal and carbon. Both are ultimately key products for the factory. Charcoal for filtering and eventually solid fuel. Carbon for electronics.

Speaking of which, what would be the most efficient fuel source for power production? Right now, I'm leaning towards vegetable oil fuel from Water1. That seems like one of the simplest paths anyways. Nuclear seems a non-starter, due to the absurd amount of washers you'd need to build in order to get an adequate supply of uranium.

[hendy_]

I downloaded 0.2.3 fresh (clean mod folder)
Enabled all mods
Started a game
When searching what a desert garden does, crashes the whole game on page 4 (like you know, FNEI search garden, click usage, navigate to 4/4)

Since I installed it completely fresh, can someone confirm this? It's pretty annoying tbh

Edit: With my clean install, exchanging FNEI to version 0.1.4 has fixed the issue.

[live22morrow]

EDIT: This issue has been fixed in the latest version of FNEI (0.1.4)
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/FNEI/downloads

[mrvn]

True, though I think by the time belt throughput becomes an issue for power production, you should have pellets anyways, which is far denser than charcoal and carbon. Both are ultimately key products for the factory. Charcoal for filtering and eventually solid fuel. Carbon for electronics.

Speaking of which, what would be the most efficient fuel source for power production? Right now, I'm leaning towards vegetable oil fuel from Water1. That seems like one of the simplest paths anyways. Nuclear seems a non-starter, due to the absurd amount of washers you'd need to build in order to get an adequate supply of uranium.

How many washers do you need to sustain a nuclear reactor? I never considered that a problem. Problems I see are:

1) research cost are insane. Certainly impossible to get at the start. You need nuclear and kovarex for sure. Totally an endgame thing if ever.
2) what to do with all the fluorid? I want void chests for that. But you can probably turn it into some liquid or gas and clraify or vent it.

Despite that I'm aiming for nuclear. I bet even with tons of washers it will be far smaller than my current setup with green algae farms and steam engines.

I always start with green algae farms producing charcoal and try to get pellets, boilers mk2 and steam engine mk2 quickly. After that updating the electrolyzer, farms, liquifiers and assembler to mk2 and furnaces to steel furnaces complete my power plant.

Before the gardens I would have said that (pellets from green algae) is the most efficient energy source. But now you made me wonder.

How do you produce energy from gardens? What new chains of energy productions do they open up? With the new liquid fuel burners there should be new ways too. Do you burn vegetable oil directly as fuel?

Note: I would have to say the most efficient fuel is sunlight. Landfill is easy to build and while steel and circuit boards are expensive you only have to pay for solar cells once. After that you get free power. Can't beat that for efficiency.

[Megatron]

True, though I think by the time belt throughput becomes an issue for power production, you should have pellets anyways, which is far denser than charcoal and carbon. Both are ultimately key products for the factory. Charcoal for filtering and eventually solid fuel. Carbon for electronics.

Speaking of which, what would be the most efficient fuel source for power production? Right now, I'm leaning towards vegetable oil fuel from Water1. That seems like one of the simplest paths anyways. Nuclear seems a non-starter, due to the absurd amount of washers you'd need to build in order to get an adequate supply of uranium.

How many washers do you need to sustain a nuclear reactor? I never considered that a problem. Problems I see are:

1) research cost are insane. Certainly impossible to get at the start. You need nuclear and kovarex for sure. Totally an endgame thing if ever.
2) what to do with all the fluorid? I want void chests for that. But you can probably turn it into some liquid or gas and clraify or vent it.

Despite that I'm aiming for nuclear. I bet even with tons of washers it will be far smaller than my current setup with green algae farms and steam engines.

I always start with green algae farms producing charcoal and try to get pellets, boilers mk2 and steam engine mk2 quickly. After that updating the electrolyzer, farms, liquifiers and assembler to mk2 and furnaces to steel furnaces complete my power plant.

Before the gardens I would have said that (pellets from green algae) is the most efficient energy source. But now you made me wonder.

How do you produce energy from gardens? What new chains of energy productions do they open up? With the new liquid fuel burners there should be new ways too. Do you burn vegetable oil directly as fuel?

Note: I would have to say the most efficient fuel is sunlight. Landfill is easy to build and while steel and circuit boards are expensive you only have to pay for solar cells once. After that you get free power. Can't beat that for efficiency.

Temperate Gardens with Quillnoa, converting that to enriched fuel block gives an insane amount of power for the mid game. With only 8 farms I can produce 60MW of power. After the latest mod updates it became a bit more complex because of the fertilizer but still very viable in my opinion.

I do think solar power is the best way to go, but it takes so much space and just isn't as fun to use.

[live22morrow]

I'm not actually at the point where I can shoot for nuclear, but I've been doing experiments with creative and I think I have a slightly better idea now about things.

Crystalizing to Uranium and Flourite is an absurdly bad idea. To get 10 uranium ore (1 U238) per second, you would need around 700 crystalizers (modules will reduce this of course). To get the sludge, you'd end up needing hundreds (or possibly thousands) of electrolyzers and washers.

The best recipe is the pure recipe which gives 3 uranium ore for 6 ore crystals and a hybrid catalyst. This should be doable with a double digit number of electrolyzers or washers.

Kovarex doesn't exist in seablock (nuclear fuel mod). Instead there's a more complex process involving reprocessing used fuel cells into plutonium. The plutonium can be converted directly back into more uranium fuel cells, but this has diminishing returns, roughly halving the amount of fuel cells each cycle. Instead, the plutonium can be turned into plutonium fuel cells, which can be reprocessed into more plutonium. This loop is positive, and will roughly double your plutonium each time. It also produces some extra u235 for uranium fuel cells. Using uranium fuel cells is more efficient for production, as it has double the fuel value of plutonium, while only costing half as much u238 (both recipes cost one plutonium). Which is relevant since u238 is actually pretty difficult to get in seablock.

Presumably then, the best strategy would be to keep your plutonium only at the levels you need to sustain the loop, and put the rest into uranium fuel cells along with the u235. Of course, the plutonium cycle itself will be generating a huge amount of power. It's somewhat difficult to calculate the actual gain from this though, since helmod can't get used fuel cells for calculations.

I think nuclear has the potential to be more efficient than farming, but it's likely even more complicated, with the circuit conditions you'd need to control the plutonium cycle, not to mention the fairly complicated path to get from geodes to uranium. Also, the most efficient turbine (around 2.7x base) takes 750C steam, so you'll need to keep a tighter control on your insertion to avoid wasting heat. With the reactors neighbor bonus, you'd also only see the true benefits with a factory of at least 2GW.

Edit: Uranium ore ends up having a "fuel value" of around 210 MJ when used to make plutonium fuel cells, around 421 MJ when used for uranium fuel cells from u235, and around 889 MJ when used for uranium fuel cells from plutonium. This is just the base value though, so when used in a 2xN reactor array, you'll get 3-4 times the energy.

[fiery_salmon]

you are wrong with that but the gain is so minimal, I don't use it. With charcoal to CO2 you need 3.4 Charcoal=17MJ to create 3 carbon=18MJ. to do that you need 4/3 s Liquifier for carbon, 166.66 kJ electric=333.33 Fuel and 0.7s CO2 production 87.5kJ electric =175 kJ Fuel so you get 17.508MJ -> 18MJ.

For me main benefit is that CO2 may be produced by limestone -> lime - it is a nice boost in an early game when energy problems are still present (main drawback are entire chest of useless lime without use for it).

Crystalizing to Uranium and Flourite is an absurdly bad idea. To get 10 uranium ore (1 U238) per second, you would need around 700 crystalizers

Why would you need 10 Uranium/second? If you need absurd amount of uranium you need absurd amount of crystalizers, I am not sure what is surprising here.

[live22morrow]

Why would you need 10 Uranium/second? If you need absurd amount of uranium you need absurd amount of crystalizers, I am not sure what is surprising here.

10 per second is probably around the level you'd need to support a large megabase. Regardless, the amount you need doesn't change the fact that crystalizing to flourite requires at least 10x as much sludge as the other recipes. Its only real advantage is the simplicity of the recipe, which could make it a good early game way to get your first u235. By the time you want to power a megabase though, you should already have plenty infrastructure for making crystals and catalysts.

[MurkyOwl]

Hi,

We had an issue with FNEI crashing the server on our Seablock Multiplayer map.


Replicated on single player also

[mrvn]

Why would you need 10 Uranium/second? If you need absurd amount of uranium you need absurd amount of crystalizers, I am not sure what is surprising here.

10 per second is probably around the level you'd need to support a large megabase. Regardless, the amount you need doesn't change the fact that crystalizing to flourite requires at least 10x as much sludge as the other recipes. Its only real advantage is the simplicity of the recipe, which could make it a good early game way to get your first u235. By the time you want to power a megabase though, you should already have plenty infrastructure for making crystals and catalysts.

Note: I have no experience with the nuclear mod. I'm still long way from researching all the nuclear stuff in my seablock game so my math might be off.

Lets say we build a 2x2 reactor. That gives 480MW with 4 fuel cells every 200 seconds.

Advanced ore refining 3:
3 Sapharite crystals + 3 Crotinium crystals + 3 Bobmonium crystals + Hybrid Catalyst = 3 Uranium ore

Nuclear power:
10 Uranium ore = 0.993 Uranium-238 + 0.007 Uranium-235
19 Uranium-238 + 1 Uranium-235 + 10 Iron plate = 10 Uranium fuel cells

Let get this up to nice round numbers:
20000 Uranium ore = 1986 Uranium-238 + 14 Uranium-235
266 Uranium-238 + 14 Uranium-235 + 140 Iron plate = 140 Uranium fuel cells

140 Uranium fuel cells lasts 7000 seconds. So we need 2.857 uranium ore per second, let round this up to 3. So 9 ore/s(450 crystal slurry) + 2 catalysts/s (25 crystal slurry) or 475 crystal slurry/s = 95 crystal dust/s. A washing plant gives 1.35 crystal dust per second (6 geodes in 5s / speed 2.25) so rounding up 71 (+18 for the mud water) washing plants mk2 are needed. But what to do with all the excess Uranium-238?

Nuclear fuel reprocessing:
5 Used uranium fuel cells = 3 Uranium-238 + 0.2 Plutonium
19 Uranium-238 + 1 Plutonium + 10 Iron plate = 10 Putonium fuel cells
5 Used plutonium fuel cells = 2 Plutonium + 0.5 Uranium-235

The plutonium loop is positive, doubling the plutonium every loop. That greatly reduces the amount of Uranium-238 we need. But half the fuel value means twice the cells needed.
20000 Uranium ore = 1986 Uranium-238 + 14 Uranium-235
1900 Uranium-238 + 100 Plutonium = 1000 Plutonium fuel cells

1000 Plutonium fuel cells last 25000 seconds. So we need only 0.8 uranium ore per second (less actually since there is uranium left for the old cycle which I'm ignoring) or 20 (+5 for the mud ware) washing plats mk2.

MOX fuel:
9 Uranium-238 + 1 Plutonium + 10 Iron plate = 10 Plutonium fuel cells

Half the Uranium-238 needed. So only 10 (+2.5 for the mud water) washing plants mk2 needed for a 480MW power station. That seems like a bargain.

Only problem long term is what to do with all the plutonium. The reactor produces 0.0125 plutonium/s or one every 80 seconds. Or one nuke every 400 seconds, which seem to be the only other use for plutonium. Can you manage to fire off a nuke every 400 seconds on average to keep the reactor going? Or burn down a warehouse full of plutonium every 141.666 days of game time.

Note: I rounded up, ignored the uranium-235 and recycled uranium. So it might actually just be 8+2 washing plants when you feed everything back and switch fuel depending on uranium/plutonium fuel cell availability.

[innesm]

>as for wind, there can't be fluctuation because there is no wind at all in factorio.

The cloud shadows are always moving, so in fact there is always wind in Factorio.

[mrvn]

>as for wind, there can't be fluctuation because there is no wind at all in factorio.

The cloud shadows are always moving, so in fact there is always wind in Factorio.

That's just the planet rotating under the unmoving sky shell with clouds painted on.

[mrvn]

Yesterday I've tried to build different power plants. The goal is to build something that is self contained. Needs no items from the outside and needs nothing taken out to keep running. Throwing some things into a clarifier or flare stack is acceptable (if not downright necessary) but the less the better. I also tried to stick to red/green science.

One thing I tried was to make crude oil and solid fuel from blue algae. But there is a problem: Blue algae need sulfuric waste water. And while the processing of the blue algae produces sulfuric waste water it doesn't produce enough to sustain a self contained power plant. And there doesn't seem to be any good way to produce sulfuric waste water. It's only produced in much more expensive processes like ore refining. A lot of the time they are loops too with little excess.

Is there some process that generates tons of sulfuric waste water for little cost that I'm missing or are blue algae (and therefore solid fuel) just totally unsuitable for a power plant?