Major uranium ore sink

[karlh1]

TL;DR

I suggest adding a major uranium sink to the lategame as I consider uranium ore currently being underutilized.

What ?

I suggest adding one or some more uranium based recipes/items to the game. Particularly hi-end or lategame related items which are mass produced and thereby provide a notable sink for uranium ore. Those items should not be mandatory to win the game (as all present available uranium based items are) but offer the player some benefits if they bother with the added complexity of processing and enriching uranium.

One idea I've come up with:
An advanced satellite that uses nuclear fuel cells in its recipe (Wikipedia). Yields 50% more space science packs than the basic satellite when launched. For demonstration purposes I created this simple mod: Advanced satellite mod

Other cool ideas would include vanity items (like beton for example) which can be used in large quantities. Maybe some form of beton that also acts as a small light source.

Why ?

For some time now I've been playing a long running game with a friend of mine. We've launched many rockets and connected (and depleted) many resource patches. All our trains run with nuclear fuel and base power is produced by multiple nuclear reactor blocks. We've set up dedicated (and optimized!) production chains for uranium enrichment. Yet it's a bit sad that those centrifuges barely run because uranium is still only needed in very small amounts. Our new 13M uranium ore deposit (after the starting deposit depleted) will most likely last forever. Of course stockpiling and blowing up the stockpile once in a while would solve the problem, but I would consider this lame.

So I think a real uranium sink would add value to the game, especially for players who are into solving the complexity which is the enrichment process and those who like to build big and scale their production to produce in large quantities.

[Xeanoa]

Same thing was true for stone before the science changes in 0.17. I support the idea to make uranium be used in a science recipe.

[bobucles]

I'm pretty sure the satellite is being phased out as a win condition, so only launching the rocket matters. That means the sat can have all sorts of wacky construction requirements. Uranium is a good thing to add, since nuclear energy cores are a pretty common feature of satellites. At least for the cool ones anyway.

[Chrisi]

Possible sinks could be:
- Uranium artillery shell, which has a modest area of effect. The AoE should be smaller than a nuke imho.
- Uranium battery for power armor. An energy source which is either placed in the power armor inventory and depletes after a while/after certain amount of energy used. This item should then be able to provide more MW per power armor slot than fusion reactor to be useful. Or a consumable item which recharges the batteries in your power armor.

[Goose]

I've had ideas about this in the past, some good and bad.

Uranium fuel cell reprocessing tech should cost more science packs but give some/net+ uranium 235 back, to encourage nuclear power use before Koverex enrichment.

Overall I believe nuclear power is way too resource efficient regarding the amount of uranium it consumes, especially considering the fact that fuel cells is so darn cheap. Combo this with the incredibly efficient "neighbor-bonus" and it starts to make as to sense as to why 10+ centrifuges can supply the power of an entire mega-base.

Increase the u238 count in uranium ammo types (2-3 u238 in uranium rounds and +5u238 in tank shells)

Decrease the science pack count of uranium ammo to make it easier to obtain.

End-game storage chest that costs large amounts of 238 for easier buffering of more uranium 238.


I also think uranium ore patch size, density, and sulfuric acid cost could be nerfed so you don't get nearly as much of it.

[Koub]

Uranium rounds magazines #ohwait

[Goose]

Uranium rounds magazines #ohwait

I understand uranium ammo is balanced in such a way that it "competes" against laser turrets, but the amount of uranium 238 you need for each magazine compared to how much you have is negligible to none.

[karlh1]

Uranium rounds magazines #ohwait

I understand uranium ammo is balanced in such a way that it "competes" against laser turrets, but the amount of uranium 238 you need for each magazine compared to how much you have is negligible to none.

True. Imho the problem with all the uranium military items is that they are not really mass produced. Usually you have a medium sized stockpile of each item and use them now and then. The same would apply to "tactical nuclear artillery", even though I really like the idea

13M uranium ore in one patch is quiet a lot. It's even more when you factor in the productivity bonuses from research and modules. And there are many patches around. And like all other resources they grow in size the farther you move away. So at the moment I think the uranium consumption has to somehow be science-pack related to really matter. And like you said: Nuclear power is dirt cheap. And that' s ok because you should be able to run a small reactor without implementing the enrichment process.

Edit: Severely nerfing the patch size is another option of course. But I'd say that's the least favorable and fun option.

[JimBarracus]

U238 could be used for artillery shells.
the only other use for uranium, except as nuclear fuel is as a heavy material.

If you literally want to burn your uranium stash build massive kovarex facilities and use nuclear fuel for your steam engines.

[bobucles]

Uranium exists to be a supreme energy option and a viable source of permanent power in the post game. If it ran out it would not be a very effective post game resource!

Uranium ammo is a nice way to burn through uranium, but the biggest problem is it becomes obsolete against artillery shells. So why don't artillery shells use uranium? I see two major approaches for this solution. One is to simply change the current recipe to use uranium shells. EZPZ. The other approach is to create two tiers of artillery ammo. The "short range" variant uses the current recipe, and may need a range reduction. The uranium shell adds uranium to the mix, and gains bonus range (+100% or so).

That's not to say that a long range shell renders short range completely obsolete. There are valid game performance reasons to favor short range shells and megabase reasons to desire even more lethal shelling ranges. Players have no problem lobbing thousands of artillery shells in the post game, so it is a resource drain for whatever the shell costs.

A bunch of small resource drains will eventually add up into a large resource drain. So simply adding uranium to more recipes will do the trick.

[Chao]

I'd quite like to see a high-level technology that allows nuclear artillery. In the late game, clearing out biters is a huge pain even with artillery, and at that point you're generally not doing it manually so the atomic bombs are a bit useless. Currently I'm using an artillery outpost creep to expand and it's getting tedious more than anything. Something like an artillery shell + 2 atomic bombs. Or even a unique recipe that isn't so heavy on rocket control units but needs a mix of both isotopes of uranium.

I'd probably also make it so that they can only be deployed with a trigger to save them being wasted on lone worms. This also means you'd still need a mix of normal artillery to deal with biter expansion and some laser/gun/flame turrets to deal with the smaller counter attack but it would vastly simplify expansion while also being a good sink for uranium.

[karlh1]

Regarding the nuclear artillery:
Over the course of the game we currently play (>200h, rail-world preset + slowly expanding enemy) we produced around 40k artillery shells. If shells cost us an additional hi-grade uranium each, those 40k shells would've consumed around 1.2M uranium ore. If you'd add an atomic bomb to the recipe instead it's around 35M uranium consumed. That's quite good until you realize you'd only need a fraction of the shells to cause the same destruction with nuclear artillery. So it's most likely much less in practice. On top of that it's likely zero shells (and uranium magazines) for people playing in peaceful mode or without biters. Because of that I'd rather wish for another uranium sink available to all playstyles and map settings.

Uranium exists to be a supreme energy option and a viable source of permanent power in the post game. If it ran out it would not be a very effective post game resource!

[..]

True. Because of that the uranium sink should be completely optional. It's meant only for those players who want to optimize/scale the enrichment process.

[..]

If you literally want to burn your uranium stash build massive kovarex facilities and use nuclear fuel for your steam engines.

While that works, to me it would feel much like just blowing up the stockpile. It's not very rewarding when you set up the kovarex process with beacons, productivity modules and stuff just to waste everything afterwards when there are better options available for power generation.

[Chao]

Regarding the nuclear artillery:
Over the course of the game we currently play (>200h, rail-world preset + slowly expanding enemy) we produced around 40k artillery shells. If shells cost us an additional hi-grade uranium each, those 40k shells would've consumed around 1.2M uranium ore. If you'd add an atomic bomb to the recipe instead it's around 35M uranium consumed. That's quite good until you realize you'd only need a fraction of the shells to cause the same destruction with nuclear artillery. So it's most likely much less in practice. On top of that it's likely zero shells (and uranium magazines) for people playing in peaceful mode or without biters. Because of that I'd rather wish for another uranium sink available to all playstyles and map settings.

I'll give you it's not a major sink and I'd rather see it in addition to other uses. But it does solve a major late game pain point and still gives more uses for uranium, which leads to having to thread it through more parts of the factory.

Not a simple solution for now, but if there was a good use found for something like a space probe then nuclear batteries instead of solar panels would be a good fit. But it seems we'd have to wait till an expansion after 1.0 for new additions at that level.

[adam_bise]

I believe the only real solution would be to add it to the science recipe tree, somewhere. I don't know hardly anything about uranium, so can't really suggest where it would be viable as an ingredient.

Even so, I would like to see it more utilized late game, as for me, uranium ore consumption is a fraction of the other ores.

[Chao]

I generally agree but the problem is where a lot of the nuclear stuff sits in the tree already it can't really be an input into any of the packs without a MAJOR reshuffle. That's why I was thinking nuclear batteries for space probs to be launched on rockets as another end-game sink. I wouldn't like to mess with the current satellite recipe though.

I feel that after 1.0 hits there'll be work on expansion of ideas, it's a bit late right now for major changes, that will be a good time to bring in Uranium sinks.

[Vaaz]

Uranium Ore needs more of a drain. You can completely ignore uranium ore the entire game, skipping Nuclear power. Its a unique process to mine requiring sulfuric acid and its one of the more interesting things. And with the new world generator, Uranium ore is plentiful. So I think we should add another science pack, except for it to only be used along side of space science(infinite science research), and maybe some of the very high researches that are not critical to launch a rocket (like the last worker cargo, worker speed, mining productivity). This way it does not change the core of the game at all. Not something you ever need to worry about until after you launch a rocket. Late game mega bases will have to finally search out uranium to be used in science, and that is the important part. If its not used in science then it does not have to be utilized. The base game only having 5 Patches of materials (Iron, Copper, Coal, Stone, and Uranium) it seems like a huge waste and missed opportunity to not have that added that into science. Having 8 science packs really does not cause a problem with getting them into labs, 7 is practically the same as 8 as far as belts go.

Nuclear Science Pack, I'm not sure what the science pack should take, but it needs a pretty big draw to require actually drain of these patches that are quite big.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older suggestion topic about the same issue.

[Festmester]

The current uses are nukes, shells, projectiles, fuel cells. (did i miss any )

I think it fits in the role of research, both because it's cool, and a lot of real life physics research is based on atomic particles and/or radioactivity. It also sounds like something that will go fast, so maybe nuclear driven trains? Inserters? Science mk 2? Miner mk 2?

Looking at the science packs, there are 7 types of research, not enough to fill both sides of 4 belts. So why not grab that last one, make it a bit utility like military? Or all-purpose for the roleplaying idea that everything is better because its now radioactive There is potential for more intermediate products including some kind of nuclear content. Currently, all uranium based entities are either the centrifuge, the reactor, fuels and ammunition.

Specially crafted trains that require end-game levels of materials, that also run (HUNGRILY, and exclusively) on Nuclear Fuel could be a fun way to have a U235 sink. Sophisticated trains requiring a large amount of blue circuits, perhaps even level 3 green modules?! And they would consume a lot of power, making frequent fueling a good idea, but their new speed would be worth the cost of rapid refueling.

For nuclear power, it takes only one U235 to make 10 fuel cells, which is 80GJ of power. One U235 is valuable before the Kovarex process. Does this mean the process is simply too good? From there on out, it's simply a matter of getting enough U238 for your shenanigans, which is kind of backwards. I think the mid/endgame would be a little more interesting if it wasn't so trivialized by the immense power of the nuclear system. First immense power, then it flatlines because suddenly you are bathing in power and 'rare' materials such as U235, that it doesn't really matter anymore. Meanwhile you still struggle to source enough iron and copper to feed your rising need for blue circuits and other early/mid level resources to keep launching rockets.

I would rather scale up an intricate network of ore shufflers so I could make more and more U235 over time, so I would feel like I actually accomplished something, instead of the instant power win that nuclear feels like currently. I think the problem is the massive influx of 235 from the kovarex process, so it's not so much an issue of not having a sink, but simply one of having too much from the very start

[DragonMudd]

Resurrecting this old thread, as I was about to start a new one but searched first.

Now that 0.17 is stable, I think we can all agree that Uranium needs more uses. In my current base I have placed 349 miners on Uranium ore*; currently I have consumed 2.5 million Space Science and I have exhausted only 2 of those original 349 miners. Once upon a time Uranium had more utility because of the need for nukes in clearing large numbers of bases, but artillery has reduced the nuke consumption to only a fraction of its former value.

I like a lot of the ideas about using it in weapons and in science packs. I have another suggestion to add:

Give us another way to use Nuclear Fuel. At the moment, I use nuclear fuel in all my trains, and I even run some coal liquefaction with it (but oh lord trying to get any significant amount of energy from Boilers and Steam Engines is miserable by that stage of the game), but I still only consume like 4-5 per minute. I would love to see something that consumes nuclear fuel more. I'd been thinking of some sort of energy source (Flux Capacitor!) that consumes only nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is obviously less efficient (in terms of Joules per Uranium) than full on Reactors, so this system could perhaps be something that is easier to set up (i.e. doesn't require lots of complicated pieces and dedicated water supply).

Alternatively, some aspect of using Nuclear Fuel in a new weapon or a new science pack works as well.

Anyone have other ideas for more uses of Nuclear Fuel? I think it could be a great source of Uranium sink while also expanding usage of an item that doesn't get used in much quantity.

*Edit: I just did some math. I have miners on four ore patches (the first four that I reached with my factory). There are about a dozen or so additional patches within my factory that I can reach. Counting the total amount of ore just in those four patches, adding my mining production bonus, and then seeing the total amount of ore I've ever consumed in this game... I have only consumed about 1% of the ore just from those four patches, which would suggest about a quarter of 1% of all the Uranium ore within the boundaries of my factory.

[nosports]

So i do a shameless plug...

I am currently working on a mod to make Uranium more utlized in terms of play..
viewtopic.php?f=190&t=72596

Generall i find the uranium branch of the game just too easy and just only little different from the other ores.
When i think of the Manhattan project, what an effort this was.....

I have generated a nuclear-science-pack and will change nuclear fuel usage and processing.
I try to make radiation a thing so you will need to make a after ward nuclear processing chain.

I now there are some good nuclear mods, but they did not fit me well and so far as i have seen they all don't make the usage of uranium difficultier.