Make Nuclear power easier on UPS

[Whataguy]

The title says it all.
I would rather nuclear than solar.
And make the fuel cells harder to make. I modded so that 1 uranium makes 3 fuel cells instead of the 10.

[Koub]

The devs have already announced they were working on fluid physics optimization (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-260), which will make nuclear more ups-friendly (even if I think that nothing will ever be as UPS friendly as solar, because solar has no impact on UPS).
Concerning the second think you ask for, it's a balancing issue. You should make a separate topic, in the appropriate subforum.

[Rseding91]

The title says it all.
I would rather nuclear than solar.

Performance improvements are always done if possible and we have time.

And make the fuel cells harder to make. I modded so that 1 uranium makes 3 fuel cells instead of the 10.

No.

[ggrnd0]

Reactors consume fuel in const speed while have a fuel.

Optimization is very simple.
For any nuclear plant calculate their max power production.
and after all turbine have max heat possible:
- Reactors are fully operable,
- produce const power
- have zero polution

so, after all turbine have max heat it is just VERY BIG solar panel!!!
it is better than solar panel!!!
it do not need any calculations yet... until fuel gone....

and as is heat up very slow it do not need calculations on every tick...

[Koub]

Optimization is very simple.

Maybe this is a little presomptuous. Maybe.
What's not UPS friendly with Nuclear is not the reactor itself, but the fluid physics used by the heatpipes to spread heat and carry it to the heat exchangers& turbines.

[JimBarracus]

it do not need any calculations yet... until fuel gone....

wrong, the game has to calculate the fluids constantly
all the water going in and all the steam going to the turbines
it can't be simpler than solar because solar does not scale in complexity
sunlight is one calculation
power output is one calculation
every panel makes the same power at a certain time
they all just add up
it doesnt matter of you have 100 panels or 1 million, the calculation is always the same.

[ggrnd0]

wrong, the game has to calculate the fluids constantly
all the water going in and all the steam going to the turbines

Just. Calculate. Max. Power.
It do not needed fluid calculations.
What is changed by tick?
MaxPower?
pipes count or length?
fluid consumption?
What?
No one actually need that fluid simulation in Nuclear...

In Oil production, oil & sub-products can have deviations in flows.
Nuclear plants. Do. Not. Ever...

The issue is fuel only...
1) On plant launch - calculate max power.
2) simulate heat up.
3) since got max power - stop all calculations
4) if fuel gone - simulate heat down.
5) wait for fuel & go to (2)

'm I right?

If you want some dynamic to show you can simulate it with lesser calculations...

[darkfrei]

It's possible to make new factorissimo style entity with ups optimized power generation. It can be much, much better than the vanilla nuclear power plant.

[JimBarracus]

Just. Calculate. Max. Power.
It do not needed fluid calculations.
What is changed by tick?
MaxPower?
pipes count or length?
fluid consumption?
What?
No one actually need that fluid simulation in Nuclear...

In Oil production, oil & sub-products can have deviations in flows.
Nuclear plants. Do. Not. Ever...

The issue is fuel only...
1) On plant launch - calculate max power.
2) simulate heat up.
3) since got max power - stop all calculations
4) if fuel gone - simulate heat down.
5) wait for fuel & go to (2)

'm I right?

If you want some dynamic to show you can simulate it with lesser calculations...

most of the nuclear setup is about feeding enough water to the heat exchanger
the steam part is often less complex
fluid movement needs quite a lot ups.
anyway the setup needs more calculations the bigger it gets

and if it was so simple I bet the devs would have already done it.

[Darinth]

My most recent nuclear setup (which is actually a fairly typical setup from what I understand) relies on fluid dynamics. The reactor itself only runs for a tiny portion of the time my setup generates power. While the reactors run & transfer heat to the exchangers, they generate steam but I store most of that steam in tanks. The turbines then use the steam to generate electricity on-demand and the reactors don't turn back on until my power runs low.

It *might* be possible to create some convoluted mess that simulates how all of this works and then be able to reduce UPS costs by skipping the simulation and just imposing the pre-calculated effects of it... but there are dozens (depending on how you want to look at it, hundreds or thousands) of different ways to setup your nuclear plant. Trying to take into account all of the bizarre things players will try and experiment in some form of pre-calculating system I don't think is anywhere near as easy as you make it sound.

Even when I think something can be done, I'm not so arrogant as to believe it's 'simple'. Seriously dude, chill. I doubt this is as easy as it initially seems to you.

[Aeternus]

Calculating max power is just not possible because it assumes all power generation to be on a single bus, which for nuclear plants isn't true. Nuclear even has 3 separate "fluid" systems. First you have "heat" flowing from reactor to heat exchangers. You also have water flowing from pump to heat exchangers. Last you've got steam flowing from heat exhangers to turbines, quite often with tanks inbetween (if the reactors are switched to preserve fuel). Since the water and steam systems are not part of a single bus, and in case of multiple reactor clusters, the heat system may also not be at a single bus, running all calculations simultaneously isn't going to work. Plus you would have the problem with flow rates ('though honestly, a more rapid flow on the heatpipes would be a good thing, the transfer rate is a bit on the low end for a large reactor cluster).

Fluids through pipes are being worked on, and I suspect the devs will have performance in consideration. On megaplants, fluid mechanics are the biggest pain in the neck to deal with, which is why you tend to see excessively beaconed refinery setups. They have to be or your UPS goes down the drain.

[ggrnd0]

Fluids...
that does not matter there MaxPower always can be calculated. Always!

Your nuclears do not run every time, do it? go past. You have no UPS issue...

damn...

flows is not issue. devs, did you see my proposal? What do you think?

[Zavian]

Fluids...
that does not matter there MaxPower always can be calculated. Always!

Your nuclears do not run every time, do it? go past. You have no UPS issue...

damn...

flows is not issue. devs, did you see my proposal? What do you think?

Whilst you can probably calculate the maximum power output from a reactor running at steady state, in reality many design are not steady state designs.

eg I design my reactor with excess reactors that only run part of the time, and store the generated heat in heat pipes and as steam. When the steam drops I feed the reactors one fuel. I don't know how you would go about calculating that (and respecting heating rates and heat transfer rates and fluid flow rates) without building actually simulating it.

So whilst you could design a nuclear system that simply required you to build x reactors, y heat exchangers and z turbines, and connect everything together with fluid pipe and heat to produce a known amount of power, that is not the sort of nuclear system the devs choose for factorio.

Should the devs backtrack and change it? Well I think the current system is a more interesting design and optimisation challenge. (Here I talking about optimisation of in game resources, not UPS optimisation). Unfortunately that doesn't scale well for large megabases, with 10GW+ power requirements.

Unfortunately I don't think you can keep the interesting design possibilities of the current system, and get something that scales to 10GW+ at a low UPS cost without converting to something more akin to solar. (Build it and calculate power output at build time, then just add that much power every tick). But we already have that with solar. Unfortunately current solar takes a lot of manually placed blueprint to build 10GW+ of power.

Perhaps the best way to solve this is to add something like space based solar power satellites that beam power down to ground stations. Expensive to build and launch, but compact in space requirement, and increasing power production could be fully automated. (No need to manually place 100s of solar power blueprints). I'm pretty sure that this could be modded in, and in a UPS efficient manner.

[Jap2.0]

Fluids...
that does not matter there MaxPower always can be calculated. Always!

Your nuclears do not run every time, do it? go past. You have no UPS issue...

damn...

flows is not issue. devs, did you see my proposal? What do you think?

Short (hypothetical) question: how do you calculate the max. power if you use trains to move water and steam?

[darkfrei]

Short (hypothetical) question: how do you calculate the max. power if you use trains to move water and steam?

Make new surface with water and build here your nuclear reactor with all pipes and turbines.
When it stable, calculate how often are you need to supply it with the nuclear cells. Stop whole surface, place energy interface and take one nuclear fuel cell every precalculated period.
If fuel is not enough, then enable this surface back.

[bobucles]

It's wonderful that players want and need more factory and will destroy any obstacle on their way to industrialization, even if the obstacle is the very physics of the game itself.

[ggrnd0]

Short (hypothetical) question: how do you calculate the max. power if you use trains to move water and steam?

I am use trains to move fuel to water... Do you have more than 100 reactors? or may be > 1000?

Oh...
Reactors will affects UPS only in very big plants...
So, if you need 1000 reactors, you must bulid them on water and ensure supply of fuel will not stops.
Alarm if fuel cells < 10k in storage? Yes. You. Will. Make. It.

They will active all time...

UPS will affected only on heat up & heat down.
Water is not issue.
Any fluids is not issue.

Issue is fuel only.
You have fuel? You have not any problems...