"Big power" options, low UPS hit

[quyxkh]

Reminds me of minecraft TPPI where you could craft creative power/mana/whatever-sources for the "appropriate" cost. I happen to have made a mod that makes eei craftable, but there was never much interest.

Heh. Yah, I figure anybody going that big is a bit beyond crafting anyway, multi-GW plants are a pretty deep dive into logistics territory, no?

Lovely 1.1G plant btw. Every time i tried something similar i ended up with insuffucient heat pipe capacity and had to double/triple them. Maybe my measurements were flawed.

Thanks! I honestly don't know how much of a time investment that layout is, I know there was at least one full Sunday given over to the to stare-tweak-wait cycle. If you take the webbing off the reactor taps, so there are no heat-pipe junctions at all, you still get 1.0GW, but I figure those thirty-odd entities are the cheapest 100MW supply on offer so they stay.

[eradicator]

Lovely 1.1G plant btw. Every time i tried something similar i ended up with insuffucient heat pipe capacity and had to double/triple them. Maybe my measurements were flawed.

Thanks! I honestly don't know how much of a time investment that layout is, I know there was at least one full Sunday given over to the to stare-tweak-wait cycle. If you take the webbing off the reactor taps, so there are no heat-pipe junctions at all, you still get 1.0GW, but I figure those thirty-odd entities are the cheapest 100MW supply on offer so they stay.

I always thought that "loops" on pipes (also heat-pipes) were the main UPS problem in reactors, but yea, those tiny corners are probably cheaper. I guess one could measure 10 full setups with corners, vs 11 without. ;).
Btw, what black magick ritual do those 4 unconnected steam tanks serve?

[quyxkh]

Btw, what black magick ritual do those 4 unconnected steam tanks serve?

They're just kinda there, steam on tap if I ever want it. Just saw this guy's post, he's got a better use for the space. I think he's using bad math for his pure-pumps-is-better argument tho, he's got the economies of scale right but his actual flow isn't at that scale, so he's not really getting the amortization benefits, I'm going to try to adapt mine to shift the turbines around like that, it's nifty.

[zOldBulldog]

If an efficient nuc design isn't low-overhead enough to serve, and solar's too bulky, I think the only option left is

Code: Select all

/c game.player.insert'electric-energy-interface'

and sacrifice whatever resources you think appropriate to the gods in exchange.

Reminds me of minecraft TPPI where you could craft creative power/mana/whatever-sources for the "appropriate" cost. I happen to have made a mod that makes eei craftable, but there was never much interest.

Lovely 1.1G plant btw. Every time i tried something similar i ended up with insuffucient heat pipe capacity and had to double/triple them. Maybe my measurements were flawed.

I saw that mod when I was looking for options. But 750Kw for the cost of making one... is just not worth using it. If it generated a few hundred MW... maybe.

But spending that many resources and then have to place about 500 of them to match a 4-reactor power plant... well, LOL.

---

So far, the only good options seem to be the mods that make advanced solar panels (some more worth it than others). But I'm hoping to find something better (400-500MW at a reasonable cost and compact) that doesn't hurt UPS before my base gets so power-hungry that Nuclear starts to hurt my game.

[eradicator]

Btw, what black magick ritual do those 4 unconnected steam tanks serve?

They're just kinda there, steam on tap if I ever want it. Just saw this guy's post, he's got a better use for the space. I think he's using bad math for his pure-pumps-is-better argument tho, he's got the economies of scale right but his actual flow isn't at that scale, so he's not really getting the amortization benefits, I'm going to try to adapt mine to shift the turbines around like that, it's nifty.

The one-sided water intake looks nice. The pump-spam is ugly, but according to my cheat-sheet you do actually lose almost half the flow even with only two undergrounds between pumps. Also it's so squashed that it'd be a pain to walk inside ^^. Also why does he even bother to pump the water at all. If he's already using waterfill he can just put the pumps inside the plant? Or find a sufficiently large lake that can be straightened to fit the input side.

[darkfrei]

So far, the only good options seem to be the mods that make advanced solar panels (some more worth it than others). But I'm hoping to find something better (400-500MW at a reasonable cost and compact) that doesn't hurt UPS before my base gets so power-hungry that Nuclear starts to hurt my game.

Here was my old KMG-mod, that adds "kilo-", "Mega-" and "Giga-" prefixes to the entities. So, if one solar-panel has 60 kW, then one kilo-solar-panel has 60 MW, than mega-solar-panel has 60 GW and giga-solar-panel has 60 TW. In this way only three new tiers is enough for almost all games.

[quyxkh]

giga-solar-panel has 60 TW.

enough for almost all games.

I suffered a moment of fear, there. Tell us that's a Brit humor. (sorry: humour). Please? Fear is contagious, I don't want to infect the house.

[zOldBulldog]

So far, the only good options seem to be the mods that make advanced solar panels (some more worth it than others). But I'm hoping to find something better (400-500MW at a reasonable cost and compact) that doesn't hurt UPS before my base gets so power-hungry that Nuclear starts to hurt my game.

Here was my old KMG-mod, that adds "kilo-", "Mega-" and "Giga-" prefixes to the entities. So, if one solar-panel has 60 kW, then one kilo-solar-panel has 60 MW, than mega-solar-panel has 60 GW and giga-solar-panel has 60 TW. In this way only three new tiers is enough for almost all games.

Nice concept but the mod says it is for coal and has no description. I also looked it up on Factorio mods and could not find it. Is it a dead mod?

[quyxkh]

but

I think it'd be helpful if you show your current power plant designs, how many GW you're producing, how many you want, maybe even a save, anything concrete to work with. Right now it's kinda like everybody shooting in the dark at a target nobody but you can see.

[zOldBulldog]

but

I think it'd be helpful if you show your current power plant designs, how many GW you're producing, how many you want, maybe even a save, anything concrete to work with. Right now it's kinda like everybody shooting in the dark at a target nobody but you can see.

That has been mostly covered through the thread. But I will summarize here.

Currently I consume about 3GW baseline and can spike to 4GW during a build binge. As the base grows it might go to 10 or 20 GW or more. The limit will be UPS. UPS is still steady 60.

Currently alll nuclear. When I need more I add a 4 reactor blueprint that builds in less than a minute and gives me about 450MW more. I think I have 9 such plants built so far (so, a little excess capacity until the next power hungry beaconed build).

I will not even consider vanilla solar, I have too much water to landfill and I find building vanilla solar even with blueprints and bots mindblowingly boring

So, as I said in earlier posts, I am looking for an alternative that is as compact and painless as nuclear but without the UPS problems. Nothing more, nothing less. I am totally willing to use mods that can achieve that.

So far, the only thing that I found that *might* achieve that goal is a few Advanced Solar mods that look promising.

[quyxkh]

But that's the thing, you don't say what specifically you regard as a problem.

Here, let me give an example of specific: I made nine of that design I posted, it's easy to make it ploppable, and built 10GW worth of beacons, I'm getting 2.25ms updates, that'd be 13% of 60FPS spent on power generation for a 10GW map, I'd call that KSPM territory. I look at that and shrug and say "what problem?".

[zOldBulldog]

But that's the thing, you don't say what specifically you regard as a problem.

Here, let me give an example of specific: I made nine of that design I posted, it's easy to make it ploppable, and built 10GW worth of beacons, I'm getting 2.25ms updates, that'd be 13% of 60FPS spent on power generation for a 10GW map, I'd call that KSPM territory. I look at that and shrug and say "what problem?".

I am not sure I understand what "my current power setup" has to do with what I am asking for.

At 3-4 GW there is no problem with nuclear. None, zero, nada, zilch. It is absolutely great and I love it. Compact, has a reasonable cost, generates a good amount of power, supplies build automatically before I need them while using a negligible footprint, and I can plop my next expansion and have it operational in seconds or about a minute at the most.

But it is well known that nuclear doesn"t scale and that it will eventually cause the UPS death of any base if you use too much of it (even admitted by the devs) and that the recommendation is to use solar since it doesn't have the fluid mechanics dependency design flaw.

But solar is extremely tedious to setup and use, even with bots because you have to landfill and place blueprint after blueprint over a huge amount of space. If it were the only option I would quit Factorio before I was forced to go that route again.

The obvious answer is to find and use "the right mod" to generate power in a way that is similar in complexity and amount of manual work per GW as nuclear and that does not cause a hit to UPS when you start looking at 10, 20 or 100 GW. It might be one of the Advanced Solar mods (to reduce the size and manual setup annoyance of solar}, recursive blueprints plus a landfill mod, or something else entirely.

The answer *should* be already well known and easy to name for experienced players, but so far nobody has given it.

[eradicator]

@quyxkh:

I fiddled around with your design and meh. Every tiny change i tried on it made it worse. The main problem is that the maximum distance you can carry heat away from a reactor seems to be pretty much exactly the size of that design. If i add a tiny bit of spacing between the turbines power output drops immediately. Water transfer is rather trivial, much more so than i expected (feared) from your original design. With a handful of landfill and a medium sized lake i get this:

(Ignore the extra boilers at the water input, they're a remnant of design iteration. The whole facility should be shifted one row to the left.)

1120mw_nuclear.png (3.32 MiB) Viewed 3983 times

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

Copy blueprint

[quyxkh]

But it is well known that nuclear doesn"t scale [...]

The answer *should* be already well known and easy to name for experienced players

That's what I'm trying to get at: I see you and lots of people repeating the _claim_ that nucs aren't good enough, and I certainly see lots of designs that'll eat any rig like it's going out of style, but when I try for a scalable-enough design that'll handle a modest megabase, it seems to work. It's where I'm going after I get my new launch base gizmos all worked out, that's for sure. And maybe goose the train-routing circuitry, see if I can't find the LTN-in-vanilla grail. And and and.

Anyway, i'm pretty far from the sharpest nuc plant designer in the shed, I look at what rad and that guy on reddit posted and think "why couldn't I see that?", but even with my setup I get ~200µs/GW, tested just now, 0.3ms with nothing but an eei and 20K beacons, 2.2ms with the nuc plants and the beacons, more than I thought but not much.

So I think nuclear does scale, if you're conservative with the design. Could you point at what you're looking at that says different, give something concrete to work with?

[zOldBulldog]

But it is well known that nuclear doesn"t scale [...]

The answer *should* be already well known and easy to name for experienced players

...
scalable-enough design that'll handle a modest megabase, it seems to work.
...
So I think nuclear does scale, if you're conservative with the design. Could you point at what you're looking at that says different, give something concrete to work with?

No I can't point to anything *yet*, I have not reached that size... *yet*. But I do expect to reach it, as I am NOT doing a traditional megabase.

Heck, I am not doing a megabase at all. My science production is probably around 400 science per minute (when appropriately supplied with materials) and will probably stay there forever. What I am building though is a "permanent" map that will continue to grow over time, as I absolutely hate the earlier stages drudgework of Factorio and much prefer focusing on designing stuff.

So, I expect my power demands to continue growing forever as I add design after design. And as this might be my last Factorio map, the longer I avoid UPS death, the longer I get to continue playing it Since even the developers say "stay away from nuclear for megabases"... well, heck... I want to shift to that alternative long in advance of the problem.

Basically, I am not one of those people that prefer to wait until things blow up in their face before they do preventive maintenance.

Of course, maybe the developers will fix that nuclear UPS problem in 0.17 and make the whole issue moot, or maybe the horse will sing...

[quyxkh]

@quyxkh:

I fiddled around with your design and meh. Every tiny change i tried on it made it worse. The main problem is that the maximum distance you can carry heat away from a reactor seems to be pretty much exactly the size of that design. If i add a tiny bit of spacing between the turbines power output drops immediately.

Heh. You see what I see. The last heat pipe is 501℃.

Water transfer is rather trivial, much more so than i expected (feared) from your original design. With a handful of landfill and a medium sized lake i get

I had to build that. I'm looking at nine of it feeding a Big Beacon Drain and I'm a little bemused at the results: a 2.6ms update cycle with the single-sided water feed even under ideal conditions. I don't understand that, my cycle-counting little soul is usually looking at me with this "toldyaso" look on its face but it's as befuddled as I am. I mean, seriously, how is that _slower_?

Maybe it's just some kind of map noise interfering with the results, anyway, I'm taking this as reason to just go with my ploppable design and not have to struggle with the draconic supply constraints on that singlesided layout. Anyway, now I've got a big-power low-UPS nuc, so I'm happy.

... oh. I've got a guess, anyway: I built this north-to-south where I built the other west-to-east, so build order for adjacent items is different? Don't want to wade through sorting it out. With the differences down in the noise and fluid flow revisited in 0.17 I'm'a just leave this alone for a while. We'll have to see how the kerfluffle pans out.

[eradicator]

I had to build that. I'm looking at nine of it feeding a Big Beacon Drain and I'm a little bemused at the results: a 2.6ms update cycle with the single-sided water feed even under ideal conditions. I don't understand that, my cycle-counting little soul is usually looking at me with this "toldyaso" look on its face but it's as befuddled as I am. I mean, seriously, how is that _slower_?

Just the water input? Not any of the additional things like robots, chests, accumulators?
Not sure what's so "draconic" about it. According to $math the whole plant needs less than 12000l/s. I.e. less than one full pump of input speed. So i thought: Ok, so if i have 4 input pipes they only need 3000l/s each, which is mighty slow so it should easily work. And it did :). Maybe your RAM was hotter that day, or you didn't wait long enough for the background chunk generation to finish. Or maybe fluids really are just weird. ^^. Not that i particularly care. I'm probably just gonna make that "ups friendly reactor" mod if i ever run into problems, which just fakes the whole plant into one ot three entites.

Also it's weird that with all the people talking about UPS in so many threads, nobody seems to have made a standartised automatic blueprint-benchmarking scenario yet. Someone should do that.

[zOldBulldog]

Can I ask we move the "best design for a nuclear power reactor" discussion to a different thread?

The whole point of this thread is to look for alternatives to nuclear power that have similar characteristics.

[quyxkh]

Just the water input? Not any of the additional things like robots, chests, accumulators?

The ones I built were identical to my original except the turbine/exchanger placement difference and the water supply. The "draconic" part is just that I couldn't put even a single underneathie pair or corner in the supply route to the outer lanes, with the other any 4×12 stretch of water anywhere reasonably close will do. The single-sided design needs to be right at a 9×34 or two well placed smaller ones..


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@zb, there doesn't seem to be anything out there, there's nucs that'll serve perfectly well in 10GW maps, there's the electric energy interface that costs whatever you think's fair and produces whatever you think's right, but that got met with silence, bob's mods add a bunch of tiers to the vanilla solar panels, but those are also somehow not good enough. How would anyone trying to help know what would be good enough?

[xfir01]

Can I ask we move the "best design for a nuclear power reactor" discussion to a different thread?

The whole point of this thread is to look for alternatives to nuclear power that have similar characteristics.

You've got 3 options: Steam engines, solar, and nuclear.

You don't like solar, and you're crossing off nuclear, and I'm not sure steam would be compact enough nor scale for your needs.

So that leaves mods: https://mods.factorio.com/tag/power-production