Friday Facts #304 - Small bugs; Big changes

[MeduSalem]

You are still required to do advanced oil build to get heavy fraction. It's just postponed to the time when the challenges you face (balancing 3 outputs) can be dealt with proper tools (cracking), rather than buffering them in tanks or overproducing solid fuel.

I highly doubt that most people will do more than maybe that 1 advanced refining plant to get the heavy oil needed for lubricant.

For the rest people will probably start to resort on basic oil refining for Petroleum and then make the Plastic and Solid Fuel necessary for Research out of that, even if it might end up being less efficient resource wise, just for the sake of sparing all the cracking and fluid managment.


The way I see it the change is an axe to the entire oil industry.

[crambaza]

New Oil recipe...

The change just seems weird.

You research Basic Oil, and you can now make Pet Gas.

Then later, you get Advanced Oil, will basically give you Oil by products, most of which will be cracked down to Pet Gas anyway...

It seems like reverse researching. You are researching how to make useless by-products, to make the set up harder, to make your factory less efficient.

I know, I know, solid fuel and lubricant are needed, but the best Advanced Oil set ups include the process of cracking down what you don't need to get that useful Pet Gas.

I really like what the other use suggested as an option. Basic Oil produces Heavy Oil, and now you have to crack down to what you want. Then later when you get Advanced Oil, you can make what you want easier and better, which makes scaling to more Oil Refineries meaningful too.

Just my 2 cents.

[BlueTemplar]

I have ~800 hours in Factorio, more with non-steam versions, and have been playing for about 3.5 years now. First off, to make a major oil change like this so late into 'early access' makes little sense to me. If anything, I think they should have done what mcdjfp is suggesting and put heavy/light oil cracking in basic oil processing, or in a linked (red+green) science tech before advanced oil processing.

Uh, haven't you seen all the changes from 0.16 to 0.17 !?


Yep, Hexicube's suggestion of Heavy Oil + Cracking for Basic Oil Processing is growing up on me !
But then, so as to keep Basic Processing not too crowded, and Advanced Processing more interesting, the Solid Fuel recipes should probably be moved to Advanced Oil processing, and Blue Science rolled back to not require Solid Fuel (as in 0.16) ?

[BlueTemplar]

Quick question, because I don't remember start a new map very frequently, I saw that Gun turret damage research disappeared.
As the wiki is stated it as been archived : https://wiki.factorio.com/Gun_turret_damage_(research)

Question : since which version ? can't find it ...

In 0.17 they have been merged into Physical Projectile Damage upgrade research :
https://wiki.factorio.com/Physical_proj ... (research)
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275

[justarandomgeek]

I have ~800 hours in Factorio, more with non-steam versions, and have been playing for about 3.5 years now. First off, to make a major oil change like this so late into 'early access' makes little sense to me. If anything, I think they should have done what mcdjfp is suggesting and put heavy/light oil cracking in basic oil processing, or in a linked (red+green) science tech before advanced oil processing.

Uh, haven't you seen all the changes from 0.16 to 0.17 !?


Yep, Hexicube's suggestion of Heavy Oil + Cracking for Basic Oil Processing is growing up on me !
But then, so as to keep Basic Processing not too crowded, and Advanced Processing more interesting, the Solid Fuel recipes should probably be moved to Advanced Oil processing, and Blue Science rolled back to not require Solid Fuel (as in 0.16) ?

If you're going to do that, you might as well get rid of heavy->sf entirely, and maybe pg->sf too, since they're no longer needed to give an option for pre-cracking balance!

[_Attila_]

I think the best way to solve the stopped refinery problem is to introduce a research step for Cracking that needs only red and green science.
Keep everything else exactly as it is now. No need to move robots back, no change to flamethrowers.

Newbies will see that their refineries stopped and they will research cracking and implement it. When they research Advanced oil processing, they already have everything except water. Hook that up and they are good to go.

The proposed changes to oil processing seem very awkward and not befitting what the rest of Factorio is.

[morsk]

Construction Bots are in green science for a reason, and this shouldn't change. Least of all as a mere side-effect of trying to make oil easier.

Blue science is large, as is the infrastructure to support it. Building it after bots vs. before is a big difference. Players who want to rush the bots and build with the bots should have this option. The game is about automation.

[Voxera]

Some discussions on the Discord server led to an idea for dealing with the new player issues with oil that I think would work a lot better here. Original credit for the idea goes to Hexicube.

The idea is based on the following assumptions:

* The fundamental problem is that it is difficult for players to discover how to deal with multiple outputs without clogging the system.
* The change as proposed only delays the problem.
* The change to the flamethrower ammo further limits the already limited utility of even having heavy and light oil.
* Locking construction bots behind blue science further increases the mid game "hump".

So, how can we introduce new players to the tools to handle the multiple outputs of advanced processing while not needing to make changes to bots or flamethrower ammo or over simplfying the first refinery?

Make basic only output heavy oil, and make cracking available with basic oil processing!

This makes access to plastic require cracking plants allowing players to familiarize themselves with the recipes used to balanced advanced oil processing before they are required to prevent complete blockages. It avoids simply delaying the problem by having the player use all of the tools required to solve the problem in a safer context with linear and simple progression before they must be used in a more complex scenario!

I hope that you agree!

I like this proposal, or the one where you have a flare to burn of excess.

I think both are better than the FFF suggestion.

And for blockage, just introduce some graphics to display it and if you open the refinery it should tell you exactly what the problem is.

"The output for heavy oil/light oil/petroleum is full, use a flare to burn of the excess or a chemical plant to crack it to light oil/petroleum."

That way the game helps the player to advance.

[Skeletpiece]

I wonder why people always use the red color for the laser beam.

Idea: Laser beam color should change according to player color

[Voxera]

I'm unsure about the oil changes. I've read (or at least skimmed) most of the posts above, and I think there are some good ideas that might be considered.

My first thought was "yay, I always seem to run short on petroleum at some point". But then thinking about that some more, this need for petroleum is a problem that develops as I begin to progress, so it seems backwards for the game to provide the solution up front. I like the idea of making it simpler than having to get cracking properly set up, but this seems too easy.

My second thought was about the flamethrower ammo, along the same lines as what has already been expressed by several others. While I don't know anything about real flamethrowers, the mental picture I have is something squirting out a stream of viscous liquid that sticks to everything and makes puddles of fire. Making ammo out of light or heavy oil is consistent with that mental picture. Making ammo out of petroleum gas is not. The "blowtorch" comparison does seem appropriate, and actually the flame turret on the tank seems to match that quite well. Maybe we should add LPG cylinders that can be used to power vehicles or as blowtorch ammo. Maybe there could be some other ingredient (gelatin? fish? tree sap?) used in combination with petroleum to make flamethrower ammo.

A side thought, which I'm sure would be well out of scope for 0.17, and probably anything else prior to at least 1.0 - what about farming corn (or other biomass) for biofuel? Maybe the biters would take a liking to it.

Anyhow, back on topic - I like the idea of "basic" processing being less efficient. Maybe there should be inefficient basic recipes for all three products individually (and flaring off the rest, as suggested by others), and advanced recipes that are efficient and for different ratios of all three at once. That lets us get up and running with whatever oil we need quickly, but at a cost. It also eliminates the need to delay worker robots or change the flamethrower ammo recipe. When our needs shift, we will still feel the pain of having to retool the refinery setup, and be motivated to optimize with the advanced recipes and cracking with proper automation to keep things balanced. If we are stubborn and persist in using single-item recipes, we will also feel the pain of an oil shortage much sooner.

This is also a good proposal.

Need all three, build 3 refineries set to different outputs.

Once Advanced is researched, stop burning of the excess.

All other recipes can stay, but advanced players will want to go with the advanced setup for less loss and less refineries required.

[mmmPI]

Some discussions on the Discord server led to an idea for dealing with the new player issues with oil that I think would work a lot better here. Original credit for the idea goes to Hexicube.

The idea is based on the following assumptions:

* The fundamental problem is that it is difficult for players to discover how to deal with multiple outputs without clogging the system.
* The change as proposed only delays the problem.
* The change to the flamethrower ammo further limits the already limited utility of even having heavy and light oil.
* Locking construction bots behind blue science further increases the mid game "hump".

So, how can we introduce new players to the tools to handle the multiple outputs of advanced processing while not needing to make changes to bots or flamethrower ammo or over simplfying the first refinery?

Make basic only output heavy oil, and make cracking available with basic oil processing!

This makes access to plastic require cracking plants allowing players to familiarize themselves with the recipes used to balanced advanced oil processing before they are required to prevent complete blockages. It avoids simply delaying the problem by having the player use all of the tools required to solve the problem in a safer context with linear and simple progression before they must be used in a more complex scenario!

I hope that you agree!

I do agree with the 4 assumptions.

One side effect of the proposition is that water is desirable next to the basic refining, since you would also have cracking available, you will want to make your first setup near water, for now you don't care as much as you can transform any excess fluid from the initial oil setup to solid fuel and dump it into science/power, and when you need more plastic reaching advanced oil processing, you make another setup with water and cracking, reaching coal liquefaction, you have a way to make lubricant in huge quantity without worrying about using enough petroleum/light oil to provide with the heavy oil.


The "basic refining" could output, heavy AND light oil. (teaching the lesson of "multiple-output-building can clog your factory" earlier but with 2 instead of 3)
And with that a "basic cracking", inefficient, without water. ( to keep it simple just build your first oil setup near oil crack it there).

The idea that make the more sense to me is to get the rough product first, it's intuitive to refine them.

And you could make it so you realise it means dealing with 2 different "byproduct" you can only transform 1 into the other, so you need to setup a simple priority.

Then you get more researchs that makes sense :
if you want to get only heavy oil for mass lube => coal liquefaction
and for plastic => the advanced cracking that requires (much) water is an easy step to scale up that hint you at not moving the water but rather the crude
And => advanced oil processing as the final step.

But really those changes won't affect me too much, i think it's more for the new players, i usually plan for the latest available setup because i know they exist and what they are, trying to make the minimum intermediate setup.

[Tekky]

I would argue against +25% PG output. I would keep it as it was before and simply loose the old light/heavy oil output. This should be very inefficient compared to advanced processing to justify the extra complexity.

I agree.

[Adamo]

Hi All,

I'd like to suggest an adjustment to the proposed oil refinement changes. (Edit) The introduction of the recipe that produces only petroleum gas from crude oil raises the question: why use the refinery at all? A closer look at the chemistry revealed that perhaps we shouldn't be for the petroleum chain. First I'll go over a couple of chemical engineering points, and then propose how to apply them.

In chemical engineering, crude petroleum is the raw or crude fluid of mixed hydrocarbons of various molecular weights. A refinery separates those hydrocarbons using fractional distillation. The refinery in the game puts out a fluid called "petroleum gas", but petroleum gas is really a mixture of a subset of the hydrocarbons found in crude petroleum. Petroleum gas is often just propane or butane, and it definitely isn't where the sulfur is concentrated. The sulfur would have a higher concentration in the crude petroleum, or in the raffinate left behind after distilling off the petroleum gas.

The plastic in the game appears likened to polyethylene, by far the most common form of plastic, which is made of a subset of hydrocarbons not typically found in high concentrations in petroleum gas, either. The precursors to polyethylene are alpha-olefins which would also be distilled through the refinery from crude petroleum, but not in the form of petroleum gas.

Note also that the petroleum gas icon is the molecular structure for ethylene. Ethylene is only found in small concentrations in petroleum gas. It is also not found in terribly high concentrations in crude petroleum, but rather has to be produced by heating ethane and other hydrocarbons to about 800 degrees C. However, ethylene is one major example of an alpha-olefin precursor for polyethylene plastic.

I propose eliminating the need to use the refinery at all to create petroleum by instead harvesting "crude petroleum" (note the lack of "gas") straight from the ground in pumpjacks. This crude petroleum would be suitable to produce sulfur and fuel, directly in the chemical plant, without a need for intermediate fractional distillation. Note that crude petroleum has a yellow-black-with-some-purple color, not far from the current color for petroleum gas.

The next question would be what to do with the plastic. Technically, polyethylene would be polymerized only from a subset of the available hydrocarbons in the petroleum. It would be more accurate to create some sort of intermediate fluid here that is fractionally distilled in a refinery from the crude petroleum into "alpha-olefin precursors" or something like that, but I think this is probably an unneeded complication. I propose the best choice here also be that plastic is made directly in the chemical plant from the crude petroleum.

Then, in line with your move to make heavy and light oil more-advanced products, one would need to use fractional distillation in the refinery on the crude petroleum to make heavy and light petroleum. This is in fact how it is done in real life. It could also give sulfur as a byproduct, thus supplying light oil, heavy oil, and sulfuric acid. It would also be accurate to call these distilled products "heavy petroleum" and "light petroleum", and perhaps these names clear up why there isn't a third fluid byproduct of any "left-over petroleum": it's all in the light and heavy stuff. This also means that the most-efficient production chain for making fuel is gated behind advanced-oil-processing, which seems to make sense (edit), and that it has to be balanced against one's sulfur production.

Finally, this proposal results in the elimination of the petroleum gas fluid and the creation of the crude petroleum fluid. So, I also propose using another icon for the crude petroleum rather than ethylene, perhaps a dark "drop" icon similar to the crude oil icon used now.

Thanks for considering this request. It's not perfectly accurate, but I think it would add scientific sense to the chemical production chain without unnecessarily complicating the lives of factorio players. Let me know what you think or if I can answer any questions.

[Achmed]

Some discussions on the Discord server led to an idea for dealing with the new player issues with oil that I think would work a lot better here. Original credit for the idea goes to Hexicube.

The idea is based on the following assumptions:

* The fundamental problem is that it is difficult for players to discover how to deal with multiple outputs without clogging the system.
* The change as proposed only delays the problem.
* The change to the flamethrower ammo further limits the already limited utility of even having heavy and light oil.
* Locking construction bots behind blue science further increases the mid game "hump".

So, how can we introduce new players to the tools to handle the multiple outputs of advanced processing while not needing to make changes to bots or flamethrower ammo or over simplfying the first refinery?

Make basic only output heavy oil, and make cracking available with basic oil processing!

This makes access to plastic require cracking plants allowing players to familiarize themselves with the recipes used to balanced advanced oil processing before they are required to prevent complete blockages. It avoids simply delaying the problem by having the player use all of the tools required to solve the problem in a safer context with linear and simple progression before they must be used in a more complex scenario!

I hope that you agree!

Im not a fan of the devs implementation of basic oil producing petroleum gas only as a lot of players simply crack down all products into petroleum gas anyway, this idea makes more sense to me, but i think that going from 1 output to 3 outputs would confuse new players more than it helps them...the above is the best idea ive seen for a alteration to the current issue so far though. Loving the game as always rapidly approaching 1000 hours but i think this needs looking at a bit more.

[BlueTemplar]

The solution we chose to apply is to move worker robots behind chemical science pack. This change does delay how quickly you are able to get worker robots, but the difference should not be too drastic as in order to get robots operational you already need to set up a complete refinery, advanced circuits and 2 upgrades of engines - which is already most of the science pack done.
[...]
Technologies which newly received chemical science pack now require less science packs to research them so the total resource price is not too far off either.

So, how feasible would it be to hand-craft the blue science required for construction robots (and pre-requisites) ?

[BattleFluffy]

Hi Devs, thankyou for this latest round of fixes. I'm particularly happy to be able to lay rails around objects again with the planner, and also about the laser turret glow :D

Regarding the oil changes, I do not think this change is good, it definitely feels like a dumbing-down. While it might make things slightly easier for new players, it does so at the cost of gutting the oil system of much of its complexity. Standard Oil Processing becomes by far the best option for Oil Processing - there is no longer any advantage of Advanced Oil Processing beyond getting enough heavy oil to start liquefaction. And only a tiny liquefaction plant is needed for lubricant.

Megabase architecture will reflect this change by having a large refinery for making petrol products, this will use Standard Oil Processing. And a 2nd refinery using Liquefaction to produce lubricant and solid fuel. Advanced Oil Processing becomes useless..

I'm wondering if this change is a temporary deliberately bum move in order to generate a lot of discussion about this subject? :> If so, it sure has worked... at this rate even bots vs belts debate may be eclipsed by OilGate. :P

[Adamo]

TL;DR

Proposed modification to the new oil refining recipes that will increase scientific sense without creating unneeded complication.

Why ?

The recent change to the early-game oil production raises the question: why are we running the crude oil through the refinery at all, when it is only producing petroleum gas? An analysis of the chemical engineering basics around crude petroleum, the precipitation of sulfur, and the production of polyethylene plastics suggests a simplification that also increases scientific sense in the production chain, resulting in this proposal.

What ?

Hi All,

I made this proposal in the FF #304 thread, but I thought it best to reproduce the proposal in this forum, as well.

I'd like to suggest an adjustment to the proposed oil refinement changes. First I'll go over a couple of chemical engineering points, and then propose how to apply them. I tried to split the proposal up into sections, so we could pick out parts that work, or whatever.

In chemical engineering, crude petroleum is the raw or crude fluid of mixed hydrocarbons of various molecular weights. A refinery separates those hydrocarbons using fractional distillation. The refinery in the game puts out a fluid called "petroleum gas", but petroleum gas is really a mixture of a subset of the hydrocarbons found in crude petroleum. Petroleum gas is often just propane or butane, and it definitely isn't where the sulfur is concentrated. The sulfur would have a higher concentration in the crude petroleum, or in the raffinate left behind after distilling off the petroleum gas. In all but low-sulfur crude petroleum, sulfur has to be removed from petroleum by hydrogenation in the form of hydrogen sulfide before the oil is refined. Hydrogen sulfide is used to make elemental sulfur, so we have the choice of producing either sulfuric acid or elemental sulfur as a byproduct of the refining process. A crude petroleum with 4% sulfur by weight would be considered high-sulfur crude, and anything below 1% would be considered low-sulfur crude.

The plastic in the game appears likened to polyethylene, by far the most common form of plastic, which is made of a subset of hydrocarbons not typically found in high concentrations in petroleum gas, either. The precursors to polyethylene are alpha-olefins which would also be distilled through the refinery from crude petroleum, but not in the form of petroleum gas.

Note also that the petroleum gas icon is the molecular structure for ethylene. Ethylene is only found in small concentrations in petroleum gas. It is also not found in terribly high concentrations in crude petroleum, but rather has to be produced by heating ethane and other hydrocarbons to about 800 degrees C. However, ethylene is one major example of an alpha-olefin precursor for polyethylene plastic.

I propose eliminating the need to use the refinery at all to create petroleum by instead harvesting "crude petroleum" (note the lack of "gas") straight from the ground in pumpjacks. This crude petroleum would be suitable to produce sulfur and fuel, directly in the chemical plant, without a need for intermediate fractional distillation. Note that crude petroleum has a yellow-black-with-some-purple color, not far from the current color for petroleum gas.

The next question would be what to do with the plastic. Technically, polyethylene would be polymerized only from a subset of the available hydrocarbons in the petroleum. It would be more accurate to create some sort of intermediate fluid here that is fractionally distilled in a refinery from the crude petroleum into "alpha-olefin precursors" or something like that, but I think this is probably an unneeded complication. I propose the best choice here also be that plastic is made directly in the chemical plant from the crude petroleum.

Then, in line with your move to make heavy and light oil more-advanced products, one would need to use fractional distillation in the refinery on the crude petroleum to make heavy and light petroleum. This is in fact how it is done in real life. It could also give sulfur as a byproduct, thus supplying light oil, heavy oil, and sulfuric acid. It would also be accurate to call these distillate products "heavy petroleum" and "light petroleum", and perhaps these names clear up why there isn't a third fluid byproduct of any "left-over petroleum": it's all in the light and heavy stuff. This also means that the most-efficient production chain for making fuel is gated behind advanced-oil-processing, which seems to make sense, and that it has to be balanced against one's sulfur production. The real world percentage of sulfur was somewhere between 1-4%, which maybe gives a reasonable place to start to find the right output ratio to balance with the heavy and light petroleum products.

Finally, this proposal results in the elimination of the petroleum gas fluid and the creation of the crude petroleum fluid. So, I also propose using another icon for the crude petroleum rather than ethylene, perhaps a dark "drop" icon similar to the crude oil icon used now.

Thanks for considering this request. It's not perfectly accurate, but I think it would add scientific sense to the chemical production chain without unnecessarily complicating the lives of factorio players. Let me know what you think or if I can answer any questions.

[Koub] Merged into the FFF discussion from standalone trhead.

[AmbulatoryCortex]

I do not like the oil changes, particularly moving conbots later.

[bman212121]

I'll toss in my two cents as well, just as another person stating the same thing over again.

The proposed oil changes does not make a lot of sense. As others have stated where's the desire to even do advanced oil processing? If you're already giving the players the end game result from the beginning, there is no need to even bother.

I really like the comment about making basic output heavy oil. That makes a lot more sense because heavy is the start of the cracking chain, not the end of it. If you unlock basic oil processing, you get one product. You can start using that product, and in order to progress you need to learn about cracking first. Research should be basic -> Cracking & coal liquification -> advanced processing. That's a more natural progression to learn about other options before you go to the advanced method. If you keep the flamethrower ammo the way it was, that makes for a natural point of saying "I have heavy oil, but now I need to get light oil to get this flamethrower. Let me see what step I need to do to make light oil." It helps give the player a reason to setup cracking, and then they learn to deal with the buffering of fluids and also requires them to bring water into their fluid area. Once they go to advanced, then they should already have the pieces in place to deal with multiple fluids and have water available to tap into for their advanced processing.

I will add one more thought to this as well. I can understand that there's likely a concern that you'll make a really long chain for a player to have to setup to get petroleum gas, because you'd have to setup heavy -> light, then light -> p gas. The best solution is to simply allow heavy to be cracked straight to light oil, but the overall efficiency is lower than if you did the intermediate step. This is exactly how Angel's handles their production chains. You can get from A to B, but each time you add an additional intermediate step, you get a production bonus from taking the time to set it up. This allows newbie players to quickly setup basic oil processing, put down one cracking that goes directly to p gas, and then continue what they are doing. Later on if they start paying attention, they would then be able to figure out it's actually more efficient to add that middle step, but they don't need to understand that from the beginning. Kind of like how you don't realize at first which fluid is best for making solid fuel. It doesn't stop you from doing it, but later one you'll learn you can do it better than you did the first time.

Other notes:

Please don't bury the bots even farther in the chain, they are a useful item early on for automatic construction, so this would make it that much harder to unlock them.

I do like the train rail avoidance addition. I'm not sure if I'll use it that often but it's a nice feature to have in the game for certain cases.

[BlueTemplar]

Petroleum gas is often just propane or butane

[...]

The plastic in the game appears likened to polyethylene, by far the most common form of plastic, which is made of a subset of hydrocarbons not typically found in high concentrations in petroleum gas, either. The precursors to polyethylene are alpha-olefins which would also be distilled through the refinery from crude petroleum, but not in the form of petroleum gas.

Note also that the petroleum gas icon is the molecular structure for ethylene. Ethylene is only found in small concentrations in petroleum gas. It is also not found in terribly high concentrations in crude petroleum, but rather has to be produced by heating ethane and other hydrocarbons to about 800 degrees C. However, ethylene is one major example of an alpha-olefin precursor for polyethylene plastic.

[...]

The next question would be what to do with the plastic. Technically, polyethylene would be polymerized only from a subset of the available hydrocarbons in the petroleum. It would be more accurate to create some sort of intermediate fluid here that is fractionally distilled in a refinery from the crude petroleum into "alpha-olefin precursors" or something like that, but I think this is probably an unneeded complication. I propose the best choice here also be that plastic is made directly in the chemical plant from the crude petroleum.

But what that ethane (C2) is itself typically made from ? Not from the lighter distilled hydrocarbons - propane (C3) & butane (C4) ?