[1.0] Sea Block Pack 0.4.10

[Trainwreck]

Sea block pack 0.3.3 has been released. Check first post for download link.

Update 2019-4-11, version 0.3.3:

• Scripting bugfixes. Use add_research to set starting tech, check valid_for_read on item stacks.

[rakcom]

I have found a bug in the Mineral Sludge making process.

My set up is:
Sulphur -> Sulphur Dioxide (Chemical Plant) -> Sulphur Acid (Chemical Plant) -> Slag Slurry (Liquifier) -> Mineral Sludge (Filtration Unit)

I am then extracting sulphur from the Sulfuric Waste Water
Sulfuric Waste Water -> Sulphur (Hydro Plant)

The problem is that by my calculations I should be getting back 64 Sulphur for every 75 that I put in and yet my Hydro Plant seems to be filling up with Sulphur.

To check that what I am seeing is correct, I have disconnected the Chemical Plant that is making sulphur from the loop and as expected it was not adding any.

What I am running:
Factorio 0.17.23
SeaBlock 0.3.2

[Octoshape]

The problem is that by my calculations I should be getting back 64 Sulphur for every 75 that I put in and yet my Hydro Plant seems to be filling up with Sulphur.

That is indeed the problem. Your calculations are off

• 15 sulfuric acid -> 50 slag slurry
• 50 slag slurry -> 40 sulfuric waste water
• 40 sulfuric waste water -> 0.4 sulfur
• 0.4 sulfur -> 24 sulfur dioxide gas (0.4 * 60)
• 24 sulfur dioxide gas -> 16 sulfuric acid (24 / 3 * 2, since 90 dioxide goes to 60 acid)

That means for 15 sulfuric acid you get 16 sulfuric acid back. So the loop is sulfur positive, hence your hydro plant is filling up with sulfur.

If any of the steps above are unclear, let me know

[randomdude]

To add to Octoshape's answer, the way you got it with the overflow valve is the right way to handle it, but I would remove the limit on the chest as you will need all that sulfur later on. And you will run into problems with the washing plant, as you are not giving the sulfur from that any priority, so the washing plant is backing up. You need an overflow valve for that pipe with a flare stack

[rakcom]

Thanks Octoshape,
I have redone the calculation and realized that I have doubled up on a multiplier when I was inputting it into my calculator

Thanks randomdude,
I have made the adjustments that you have suggested and also upgraded the chest to a steel chest

[mrvn]

Note that you need sulfuric waste water for blue algae. My setup has an overflow walve for sulfuric waste water into a tank. The washing plant has 2 inserter putting sulfur into a warehouse. One is set to enable when sulfur < 200. The other is connected to the sulfuric waste water tank and set to sulfurci waste water > 20k. The sulfur dioxide plant takes sulfur from the warehouse.

That way up to 200 sulfur will collect in the warehouse. Then the washing plant blocks. Sulfuric waste water will gather and fill the tank.Only when that gets full sulfur is allowed to be dumped into the warehouse again. This ensures that there is always sulfur in the loop but allows sulfuric waster water to be removed from the loop for blue algae.

You can also remove sulfur from the warehouse or use an overflow walve on the sulfuric acid for uses elsewhere. Just be carefull to never drain all the sulfur out of the loop and I would give the sulfuric waste water priority. Only way to make blue algae while other sulfuric acid uses (e.g. with copper anodes) are optional.

[minno]

After trying a few "hard" settings I think I like doing 100x science cost but not expensive recipes. It makes research slower than marathon, but doesn't increase the cost of building, so it makes building big both easier and more necessary. You should add automation to the starting techs, though. The 1000 packs you need to research it take more than two hours of consecutive hand-crafting, on top of the time to get the materials and make fuel. Once you have that it's simple to expand algae farming for power and mineralized water for metals.

[NeuralParity]

After trying a few "hard" settings I think I like doing 100x science cost but not expensive recipes. It makes research slower than marathon, but doesn't increase the cost of building, so it makes building big both easier and more necessary.

I actually quite liked the stupidly expensive steel cost of mk2 building in (default) marathon settings. It makes it a meaningful choice between getting the landfill together to go wide with mk1 buildings, or paying the extra to go up with mk2+.

[mooncow1]

I believe there may be a balance problem with the (significantly) reduced fuel oil / enriched fuel block fuel values, coupled with change in naptha to produce wood instead of wood planks.


Problem 1:

With 20 fuel oil (500kJ/u) required to make 1 enriched fuel block (10MJ), there is no net gain in energy by completing this process without modules, and these are unlocked by pretty late-game tech. That's probably OK - they are more versatile, and are 16% more efficient than converting to solid fuel. However, solid fuel provides 3x as much energy per stack relative to the enriched fuel blocks. (600MJ vs 200MJ). This pretty much limits their use to powering vehicles for greater acceleration.

It also kind of does not make contextual sense that enriched fuel blocks have less energy than solid fuel per unit. Increasing both the cost and energy density of enriched fuel blocks by like 5x would improve this I think.


Problem 2:

By converting naptha to charcoal pellets, you can (without modules) get up to 2.4MJ from EACH unit of naptha (4.8x as much as fuel oil). Naptha was not previously able to be used in this way, and this pretty much makes fuel oil useless in comparison. Additionally, charcoal pellets provide 3000MJ per stack.

10 Naptha --> 2 wood (4MJ) --> 8 cellulose fiber (8MJ) --> 4/3 wood pellets (16MJ) --> 2/3 wood bricks --> 8 charcoal (20MJ) --> 1.6 charcoal pellet (24MJ)

Furthermore, using 308 fuel oil with MK1 oil burning boilers (and 0.1 Cu+Fe), you can produce 100 naptha via the syngas process. In effect, this converts 154MJ into 240MJ, a 56% increase.

Let's not even get started on the NaOH / cellulose paste power plants.

Basically the naptha and cellulose paste recipes both NEED to be changed back to wooden boards, these are major balancing issues.

[rain9441]

I'd also like to recommend the power situation be looked at with a little bit more scrutiny. The (inadvertant?) changes to charcoal give green algae more power which (IMO) is a nice addition as the old system. The 0.16 green algae was very much a joyless grind for typical players. It still has the challenge of making a loop and supporting itself. Arboretums are currently the only real option for power beyond green algae. Charcoal was buffed so arboretums also got buffed. Fuel oil was nerfed (from 900kj/u to 500kj/u) which makes early farm based power no longer a reasonable option. Charcoal is twice as effective, oil is near half as effective; this created a 4x discrepancy from previous version balance.

Enriched fuel blocks are nerfed so hard that they are also not even a viable option to produce. I don't really see why this happened. It is the only early'ish power source that requires blue science and gave way for using beacons - it also gave farms an upgrade path.

Rocket boosters are currently the #1 choice for early game power, but it is questionable because Arboretums do just fine without any of the complexity.

Without the farm -> enriched fuel blocks from 0.16, the only real solution is to get nuclear early and IMHO it doesn't seem right to basically require nuclear power in the early-to-mid game.

There are, as the above post pointed out, at least two ways to produce insane amounts of power from recipes that don't have any business making power. Those should also be revisited.

Nuclear is still #1 in the end, but since it requires purple science to support I don't see how a casual seablock player will stay sane moving into the midgame. I'm sure a lot of people go the solar route, but that is likely the reason they spend 500+ hours playing seablock instead of 200 hours (It's just soooo not economical).

I'd be happy to give more details on what values might make sense for the various types of power, but for this post I wanted to keep the plea more high level.

[PiggyWhiskey]

New Seablock player, just installed v0.3.3
Current mods:
Base: 0.17.32
Sea Block Config: 0.3.0
Angels Bio: 0.6.1
Angels Petro: 0.8.2
Angels Refining: 0.10.8
Angels Smelting: 0.5.4
Bobs Electronics: 0.17.2
Bobs Library 0.17.0
KS Power: 0.3.5
Landfill Painting: 0.3.0
Science Cost Tweaker: 0.17.9
Sea Block: 0.3.3
SpaceX: 0.4.2

On load the game fails with Sea Block data-updates.lua trying to access nil values.
Line 645: hydrogen is now gas-hydrogen
Line 682: liquid-fuel is now liquid-fuel-oil
Line 691: enriched-fuel isn't listed in any file except Sea Block


So I seem to have missed something.
Am I using the wrong files?
Incorrect mods?
Missing pre-requisite?

[vjbone]

So I seem to have missed something.
Am I using the wrong files?
Incorrect mods?
Missing pre-requisite?

just download zip from first post

[PiggyWhiskey]

snip

just download zip from first post

Just saw that.
Shouldn't the Mod Portal version have proper dependencies to stop this?
So far the Dependency chain gave the list above.

The SeaBlock config at least should have it

[vjbone]

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Trainwre ... ckMetaPack

[boran_blok]

So, I am almost at a point in my seablock playtough I am starting to think about moving to trains and a city block approach.

Does anyone have any recommendations about city block sizing? For the standard roboports and radars a 3x3 chunk is fine, but I dont know bobs enough to make any decision there.

I am currently thinking about 4x4 blocks with the railways in a dedicated block
(so a standalone block would be 5x5, but two next to eachother would be 9x5 as they share the rail part)

Ideas, suggestions?

[Trainwreck]

I'd also like to recommend the power situation be looked at with a little bit more scrutiny. The (inadvertant?) changes to charcoal give green algae more power which (IMO) is a nice addition as the old system. The 0.16 green algae was very much a joyless grind for typical players. It still has the challenge of making a loop and supporting itself. Arboretums are currently the only real option for power beyond green algae. Charcoal was buffed so arboretums also got buffed. Fuel oil was nerfed (from 900kj/u to 500kj/u) which makes early farm based power no longer a reasonable option. Charcoal is twice as effective, oil is near half as effective; this created a 4x discrepancy from previous version balance.

Enriched fuel blocks are nerfed so hard that they are also not even a viable option to produce. I don't really see why this happened. It is the only early'ish power source that requires blue science and gave way for using beacons - it also gave farms an upgrade path.

Rocket boosters are currently the #1 choice for early game power, but it is questionable because Arboretums do just fine without any of the complexity.

Without the farm -> enriched fuel blocks from 0.16, the only real solution is to get nuclear early and IMHO it doesn't seem right to basically require nuclear power in the early-to-mid game.

There are, as the above post pointed out, at least two ways to produce insane amounts of power from recipes that don't have any business making power. Those should also be revisited.

Nuclear is still #1 in the end, but since it requires purple science to support I don't see how a casual seablock player will stay sane moving into the midgame. I'm sure a lot of people go the solar route, but that is likely the reason they spend 500+ hours playing seablock instead of 200 hours (It's just soooo not economical).

I'd be happy to give more details on what values might make sense for the various types of power, but for this post I wanted to keep the plea more high level.

Perhaps the petroleum liquid fuel values could be increased. I base the sea block liquid values on Angel's solid fuel recipes, an example shown on the left in the image below:

solid-fuel.png (80.97 KiB) Viewed 6808 times

The recipe on the right is the base game solid fuel recipe, which is also used in regular (non-angels) Bob's mods.
As you can see, there's quite a difference between these two. The current sea block fuel_value for fuel oil is (12*2 - 2.5 (charcoal)) / 50 = 430, which I round up to 500kJ.
The base game recipe gives 1.2MJ per unit of light oil, both bobpower and KS_Power round this up to 1.5MJ.
Maybe the solid fuel recipe is not a good reference point for fuel balance. If the sea block fuel oil fuel_value was doubled to 1MJ that would bring things closer to 0.16 balance.

The large enriched fuel block fuel_value in 0.16 was a mistake. There was no enriched fuel in 0.14 or 0.15, adding the algae liquefaction recipe in 0.16 made all the oil products including enriched fuel available. I didn't realise right away that the enriched block fuel_value needed to be rebalanced for the sea block fuel values, then decided to just leave it as-is to avoid breaking existing 0.16 saves.
So I'd rather keep the enriched block fuel value close to the same efficiency as solid fuel in 0.17. I guess since it's blue science a small bonus (20%) could be justified, similar to the wood pellets -> charcoal -> charcoal pellets progression.

Current todo list for next release:

• Remove naphtha -> wood recipe
• Remove cellulose fibre -> wood recipe
• Maybe double liquid fuel values, have to think a bit more on this.
• Maybe add tech requirements to rocket boosters. Blue and purple science? Not sure if rocket booster power plants are enough of an exploit to need fixing.

[minno]

Removing the cellulose paste and naphtha recipes for wood would leave arboretums as the only source. Wood is necessary for phenolic boards (adv circuits), polishing wheels (polished gems for modules and science), and protective scaffolding (bio science packs), but not every map has trees to build arboretums. Could you instead re-introduce the wood vs. raw wood split? Make arboretums produce "raw wood" and those other two recipes produce the existing "wood", and then allow only "raw wood" to be turned into cellulose fibers.

Rocket boosters are nice for having early access to high-acceleration train fuel, but solid fuel and enriched fuel blocks are ok alternatives. You could prevent the power plants by increasing the crafting time or decreasing the fuel value until it's no longer power-positive.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about raw wood... (and maybe call it "planks"?)

But really, this seems like it should be a change in Bob/Angel themselves ?

[jodokus31]

Removing the cellulose paste and naphtha recipes for wood would leave arboretums as the only source. Wood is necessary for phenolic boards (adv circuits), polishing wheels (polished gems for modules and science), and protective scaffolding (bio science packs), but not every map has trees to build arboretums. Could you instead re-introduce the wood vs. raw wood split? Make arboretums produce "raw wood" and those other two recipes produce the existing "wood", and then allow only "raw wood" to be turned into cellulose fibers.

Interesting. I wonder, if its really a problem, that angels trees are somewhat limited. I would guess, that you can find enough trees out in the sea. I somehow like this type of constraint, but only, if it works and you don't have to explore to the edge of the map. Or do they only appear in starting area? How much trees are needed for 1kspm with beacons (question to myself)
Sure, the wood split would be safer

Rocket boosters are nice for having early access to high-acceleration train fuel, but solid fuel and enriched fuel blocks are ok alternatives. You could prevent the power plants by increasing the crafting time or decreasing the fuel value until it's no longer power-positive.

+1 I like rocket boosters for trains

But really, this seems like it should be a change in Bob/Angel themselves ?

Angel was contemplating about a fix a while ago
viewtopic.php?f=185&t=19652&start=2900#p414748

[randomdude]

Interesting. I wonder, if its really a problem, that angels trees are somewhat limited. I would guess, that you can find enough trees out in the sea.

Well, I have not updated it for the 0.3.3 pack, which increased the spawn rate a lot, but for the 70k analyzed in 0.3.0 for the speedrun, 53k had no trees in a 5 chunk radius from the start, and 42k had none in a 7 chunk radius. So it's definitely possible to have absolutely no luck

But even in those cases, you can still go the fiber + alginic for boards, and later on search for trees further out.