Friday Facts #304 - Small bugs; Big changes

[Illiander42]

I still don't quite understand why do so many people think the oil change simplifies/dumbs down the game in any way. Sure, it makes the start of oil simpler

Read what I quoted again.

And then realise that they are just pushing the big step farther up the staircase (and making it taller) rather than splitting it into smaller steps.

[Selvek]

Possible alternative to simplifying the oil processing recipe:

Add an "overflow oil burner" (flare stack, but for fluid). It should have an circuit connection to enable/disable.

1) Solves the need to constantly store extra light/heavy oil before cracking is researched
2) Lets the other oil-using recipes stay unchanged (lubricant->robots, flamethrower fuel...)
3) Provides extra flexibility for late game (e.g. allows you to skimp on cracking while knowing that even if heavy/light usage goes down the system won't back up
4) Forces a very simple use of the circuit network (which many players probably wont have touched by this point)

Bonus points: The oil burner generates power (boiler added fluidbox input for fuel oil...?)

[Yandersen]

[...]change the chemical science recipe to solid fuel, electric engine, and something like red logic wire to maintain the copper price (possibly inspiring people to play with logic wires, no less--bots may make them free, but if they were automated, they'd see much earlier experimentation...).

• Advanced oil would be optional, yet well worth solving the 3-output-problem, just like learning a(n also-optional) solution: Circuit logic.
• Basic oil and blue science would be simple--no water, no cracking (unless you're clever: one step of cracking is more efficient for solid).
• Incentivizes the production of gas/red circuits/batteries through chemical science unlocking all kinds of toys built with them, so that they will be familiar and automated for production / high tech science, whichever the player chooses to go for next.

It fits well with the theme of productivity vs. high tech being a choice. New players get some breathing room to explore at their own pace and ultimately bump into something making them focus on one or the other. In the meantime, tanks, power armor, robots, nuclear power...--all the really fun chemical science unlocks require gas and red circuits, so they're going to prioritize them anyway!

An amazing idea! Just wish to add that perfection of it I see in case the red wire will be made out of copper wire and plastic bar. In this case all three blue science pack ingredients will use all three oil products. Refinery outputs should be adjusted as well to give 1:1 ratio assumed that solid fuel made from light oil.

[Yandersen]

My favored solution is still to have cracking early and have refineries only produce heavy oil. That makes it so that understanding fluid backup is the key to efficiency, not the key to progression. Maybe it doesn't reflect what an actual refinery does. But lots of things in the game don't. And it's close enough to not be ridiculous.

"understanding fluid backup is the key to efficiency, not the key to progression" - well put, good point. Though I see the solution differently. How about this: make all 3 outputs somewhat independent of each other: whenever at least one of the outputs reaches 0, then refinery takes another portion of inputs and processes all three products. Whichever is not taken out - get lost to void. Just like if you destroy the tank - the same thing that can be made manually. This way we eliminate fluid backup problem completely - the player is free to use a single output and nothing is broken. But, of course, this way he will loose potential product, reducing the efficiency. So the proper setup with cracking and everything else will just become an option to increase efficiency. Beginners happy, experienced players unaffected. Everyone happy. Yes?

[FuryoftheStars]

don't really care about getting solid fuel until it's strictly required, and always struggled with my base dying when light & heavy oil backed up since it has exactly 0 use to me before blue science)

Emphasis mine - this is perhaps part of the reason why you're struggling so much. Solid fuel was given as an unlock with oil processing for a reason.

Add an "overflow oil burner" (flare stack, but for fluid). It should have an circuit connection to enable/disable.

1) Solves the need to constantly store extra light/heavy oil before cracking is researched

Isn't this essentially what making solid fuel out of the excess and feeding it to your boilers, smelters, and trains does?

[Omnifarious]

"understanding fluid backup is the key to efficiency, not the key to progression" - well put, good point. Though I see the solution differently. How about this: make all 3 outputs somewhat independent of each other: whenever at least one of the outputs reaches 0, then refinery takes another portion of inputs and processes all three products. Whichever is not taken out - get lost to void. Just like if you destroy the tank - the same thing that can be made manually. This way we eliminate fluid backup problem completely - the player is free to use a single output and nothing is broken. But, of course, this way he will loose potential product, reducing the efficiency. So the proper setup with cracking and everything else will just become an option to increase efficiency. Beginners happy, experienced players unaffected. Everyone happy. Yes?

This is a simplified version of the flare stack solution. And I think that might be OK, but I think the discarded products should cause extra pollution as well.

[mmmPI]

"understanding fluid backup is the key to efficiency, not the key to progression" - well put, good point. Though I see the solution differently. How about this: make all 3 outputs somewhat independent of each other: whenever at least one of the outputs reaches 0, then refinery takes another portion of inputs and processes all three products. Whichever is not taken out - get lost to void. Just like if you destroy the tank - the same thing that can be made manually. This way we eliminate fluid backup problem completely - the player is free to use a single output and nothing is broken. But, of course, this way he will loose potential product, reducing the efficiency. So the proper setup with cracking and everything else will just become an option to increase efficiency. Beginners happy, experienced players unaffected. Everyone happy. Yes?

This is a simplified version of the flare stack solution. And I think that might be OK, but I think the discarded products should cause extra pollution as well.

This might make the inefficencies hard to track, even for experienced players, which might not motivate anyone to improve their design as long as it roughly works just add more raw ressources. Pollution is also sadly hard to track for new players, even though the value is written it's not that easy to understand what it represent, the surface you need to absorb it, when the polluting machine pollute ect.

You could explore it this way too : understanding fluid backup is a problem is one step.

solving fluid back up is another step

Effieciently solving fluid back up is again another step.

The flare stack tricks you into thinking fluidbackup is not a problem.

[Yandersen]

"understanding fluid backup is the key to efficiency, not the key to progression" - well put, good point. Though I see the solution differently. How about this: make all 3 outputs somewhat independent of each other: whenever at least one of the outputs reaches 0, then refinery takes another portion of inputs and processes all three products. Whichever is not taken out - get lost to void. Just like if you destroy the tank - the same thing that can be made manually. This way we eliminate fluid backup problem completely - the player is free to use a single output and nothing is broken. But, of course, this way he will loose potential product, reducing the efficiency. So the proper setup with cracking and everything else will just become an option to increase efficiency. Beginners happy, experienced players unaffected. Everyone happy. Yes?

This is a simplified version of the flare stack solution. And I think that might be OK, but I think the discarded products should cause extra pollution as well.

Of course, this mechanic is simply underdeveloped since you can destroy the tank full of oil without any side effects; or the pollution rate dependent on the type of the machine instead of the actual recipe it is working on - counter-intuitive also. But going into proposals in this field will be an off-topic. Which I find hard to avoid now. ^.^

As I see the solution for more realistic pollution handling, each item type must carry an additional property - the amount of pollution it generates if consumed/destroyed. Let's call it the item's "pollution cost", for example. So if the tank or pipe destroyed, then the pollution value released at the destroyed items' storage location will be proportional to the number of items sent to void multiplied by their respective pollution cost.
The similar is with the recipes: the amount of pollution generated by the machine at the moment the inputs got processed into the outputs, is equal to the sum of consumed items' pollution costs minus produced items' pollution costs. Very universal and elegant solution, I think...

[dzaima]

don't really care about getting solid fuel until it's strictly required, and always struggled with my base dying when light & heavy oil backed up since it has exactly 0 use to me before blue science)

Emphasis mine - this is perhaps part of the reason why you're struggling so much. Solid fuel was given as an unlock with oil processing for a reason.

Ok, new players might find a use for it, but hoping people make something potentially useless & easily dismissable just because they're forced to spend a resource isn't good game design. I usually have enough coal to last me until I get solars & electric furnaces (& nuclear fuel for trains further on) for me to not need to bother, and many might feel the same, forgetting the recipe even exists. And replacing coal usage with solid fuel (without breaking things that need just coal) is another bump in the oil setup process that one would need to do before being able to actually get anything out of it.

Another reason why the oil change is bad:

Set up a line of refineries, all next to each other.
Run a solid pipe all along each side of the line. The new recipe encourages this.
Try to change the recipe to advanced refining.

**You won't be allowed to!** You'll get a random message about not allowing fluids to mix instead.

There are many, many times in playing factorio when you have to remove some machinery you've placed down to change something.. Sure, it makes it a little more harder to move to advanced processing, but it shouldn't be free. Come to think of it, adapting the refineries & the pipe mess moving to advanced would be the only difference from current and proposed oil recipes, with the bonus that you're not forced to make potentially pointless solid fuel in the meantime and not having to deal with the pipe mess in the basic phase when there's already enough going on. (but yeah, a better message/a system placing the refinery in an invalid state where you can see the outputs would be helpful)


(and opinion time - flare stacks/anything that just "burns away" unneeded things imo would be dumbing the game down, because that doesn't give any challenge whatsoever and just shows that the game understands that it's given you useless things)

[IronCartographer]

An amazing idea! Just wish to add that perfection of it I see in case the red wire will be made out of copper wire and plastic bar. In this case all three blue science pack ingredients will use all three oil products. Refinery outputs should be adjusted as well to give 1:1 ratio assumed that solid fuel made from light oil.

You cropped out the important context, and the reason why chemical science would be available before any need for gas/plastic/water/cracking! The whole point was making it simpler and giving players the chance to learn at their own pace. Meanwhile, their science continues slowly with basic (only heavy oil required) oil refining.

The idea is that cracking would be available as soon as you start working with oil, but you could ignore it and immediately start blue science--and use it to unlock recipes that motivate cracking / advanced oil / automating oil products like advanced circuits and batteries. Heavy->Light->Gas would be deadlock-free (no need to balance multiple outputs, just like every other vanilla recipe) but upgrading to Advanced Oil processing would offer increased efficiency if the player chooses to tackle it (just like the circuit network and logic conditions are optional in vanilla!).

It shifts the oil industry complexity (everything 'past' heavy oil) mostly beyond chemical science automation, so that oil as a concept can be learned gradually to create blue-gated recipes. When the player truly hits a complexity wall (either production or utility science) they will already have advanced technologies and more options to keep them engaged. On top of that, the complexity hike would be from a choice in science pack, making them more likely to commit to accomplishing it.

Thanks for the enthusiastic response, even so.

[FuryoftheStars]

don't really care about getting solid fuel until it's strictly required, and always struggled with my base dying when light & heavy oil backed up since it has exactly 0 use to me before blue science)

Emphasis mine - this is perhaps part of the reason why you're struggling so much. Solid fuel was given as an unlock with oil processing for a reason.

Ok, new players might find a use for it, but hoping people make something potentially useless & easily dismissable just because they're forced to spend a resource isn't good game design. I usually have enough coal to last me until I get solars & electric furnaces (& nuclear fuel for trains further on) for me to not need to bother, and many might feel the same, forgetting the recipe even exists. And replacing coal usage with solid fuel (without breaking things that need just coal) is another bump in the oil setup process that one would need to do before being able to actually get anything out of it.

When you're setting up oil, grenades are potentially the only thing that you have going that uses only coal. Everything else that uses only coal depends on a successful oil setup/comes later. Supplanting your coal usage with solid fuel for everything that burns it can actually be a boon cause then most of your coal mining can be allowed to shutdown, producing less pollution (part of the reason for going solar), and your trains can go faster. Not something I'd call "potentially useless". The only real potential challenge is working out the logistics of getting the solid fuel there, but that's (imo) half the point of the game.

That said, I do feel as though there should have been more uses for heavy & light oil put into the game, or less so for petroleum gas. The usage of the oil products is very heavily weighted towards PG.

[jodokus31]

Ok, new players might find a use for it, but hoping people make something potentially useless & easily dismissable just because they're forced to spend a resource isn't good game design. I usually have enough coal to last me until I get solars & electric furnaces (& nuclear fuel for trains further on) for me to not need to bother, and many might feel the same, forgetting the recipe even exists. And replacing coal usage with solid fuel (without breaking things that need just coal) is another bump in the oil setup process that one would need to do before being able to actually get anything out of it.

Solid fuel is very useful, if you not have enough coal. Are you using default resource settings?

[Ranger_Aurelien]

The blue science is really behind a really big barrier

I normally save and step away from Factorio when confronted with the Blue Science barrier as I know it will take some time and running around to set up the pipes, usually coming back at it the next day:

pumpjacks>(crude)>refineries
offshorepumps>(water)>refineries (and for acid) (going Advanced Refining asap)
refineries>(heavy)>(lubricant)> silos>base (belt3, engine2)
refineries>(light)>cubes>boxes>belt to base
refineries>(gas)>to near coal for plastic >belt to MainBelt.
refineries>(gas)>sulfur>acid>silos>pipe to base (and set up some battery prod)

That said, it is a bridge that needs to be crossed at some point to open the products behind it, and it's more or less an all-or-nothing deal to set up petroleum as you need to send all three byproducts somewhere.

Optionally, I'm sure there's a mod for a box that takes any fluid and gives off pollution so you don't have to worry about one refinery pipe backing up and stopping the other two...

[crazybeard79]

Hey Guys, new here... Was the Oil change cancelled? Holding a playthrough just before the red science start to avoid rework

[Koub]

Hey Guys, new here... Was the Oil change cancelled? Holding a playthrough just before the red science start to avoid rework

We have no news yet. The pro/con discussion continues for now.

[Adamo]

That said, I do feel as though there should have been more uses for heavy & light oil put into the game, or less so for petroleum gas. The usage of the oil products is very heavily weighted towards PG.

Sulfur concentration is typically proportional to the mass of the hydrocarbons in the oil. I mean, in real life. So perhaps making this more realistic would also address what you're saying... that is, either pulling sulfur only from or making it more efficient to pull sulfur from the heavier oils, rather than PG (which really would have a very small concentration of sulfur).

Ok, new players might find a use for it, but hoping people make something potentially useless & easily dismissable just because they're forced to spend a resource isn't good game design. I usually have enough coal to last me until I get solars & electric furnaces (& nuclear fuel for trains further on) for me to not need to bother, and many might feel the same, forgetting the recipe even exists. And replacing coal usage with solid fuel (without breaking things that need just coal) is another bump in the oil setup process that one would need to do before being able to actually get anything out of it.

Solid fuel is very useful. Coal should be saved for products you need later, like plastic and explosives. Notice solid fuel has, what, about 4 times as much energy as coal does, right? Whereas you need the coal to make bulk products. So I'll tell you what I tell any of the new players on my network: you're being a bit silly if you're still burning that coal for power.

Hey Guys, new here... Was the Oil change cancelled? Holding a playthrough just before the red science start to avoid rework

If you want to play, you can still design your factory... you just need to keep in mind which line is doing what, and that it's possible given some time that one of those lines will get turned off, but, I'm hoping that it won't end up happening at all. So just use the refinery as is, and note what you're doing with your petroleum, maybe be sure to turn on petroleum solid fuel in case they decide to change the recipe, but, in the earliest part of the game, you would probably end up making solid fuel from all your oil types, anyway. Good luck!

[FuryoftheStars]

That said, I do feel as though there should have been more uses for heavy & light oil put into the game, or less so for petroleum gas. The usage of the oil products is very heavily weighted towards PG.

Sulfur concentration is typically proportional to the mass of the hydrocarbons in the oil. I mean, in real life. So perhaps making this more realistic would also address what you're saying... that is, either pulling sulfur only from or making it more efficient to pull sulfur from the heavier oils, rather than PG (which really would have a very small concentration of sulfur).

Yeah, I had considered this and thought of doing a mod for it, so did some research on it (winding up at hydrodesulfurization) and saw that typically this appears (?) to be done during the refining process. So our refinery would give us the current 3 products plus sulfur. While I'm pretty sure there's a way to do this with sulfur still being locked behind Sulfur Processing (essentially have two versions of BOP: one with no sulfur output, then one with that replaces the other on research. Could use control.lua to look for and swap all the BOP recipes in use upon unlock, and then AOP just always gives sulfur), this then puts us in a situation where we're now outputting 4 items, at different rates, and it'd all be a nightmare to balance, I think.

My thoughts on if the sulfur process was moved from PG to the oils, then it should probably use both of the oils, but then I think we'd still want water input, too (? At least in the hydrodesulfurization process, Hydrogen is needed, which we could theoretically get from water), but I don't think we have anything that takes 3 liquid inputs.

So the other option I see offhand is have two different sulfur processes, one HO/water and one LO/water (this way the player can choose which one to draw down on). EDIT: And actually, maybe still leave a PG version, but have the output highest with HO -> LO -> PG lowest? Though I feel like I'm contributing to bloat, now.

You're more knowledgeable than me on this subject... do you have any input?

[Adamo]

My thoughts on if the sulfur process was moved from PG to the oils, then it should probably use both of the oils, but then I think we'd still want water input, too (? At least in the hydrodesulfurization process, Hydrogen is needed, which we could theoretically get from water), but I don't think we have anything that takes 3 liquid inputs.

So the other option I see offhand is have two different sulfur processes, one HO/water and one LO/water (this way the player can choose which one to draw down on).

You're more knowledgeable than me on this subject... do you have any input?

My first advice is to not try to over-complicate the final product, of course. You are definitely on the right track. In real life, sulfur is mostly obtained by extracting it in the form of hydrogen sulfide from "sour" natural gas, and also from refined petroleum (but not typically from petroleum gas), but there it's mostly just a waste product that needs to be removed and hopefully the refinery can make a little cash on it. This is done by hydrodesulfurization, and so I agree this is the process to model in the game: this is the process of removing hydrogen sulfide from the petroleum (or natural gas or whatever). In the real world, there is then another process (called the Claus Process) to turn the hydrogen sulfide into elemental sulfur, and I think that's the part we should ignore in the game. So, to me, we're on the same path, here. For hydrodesulfurization, the heavier oils should be more "fertile", if you take my meaning, and it sounds like we think the same, there, too. We don't actually need *water* for hydrodesulfurization, though: what we need is hydrogen gas and heat. However, for simplification, in all of the chemical reactions I've added to the game in my chemistry mod that call for either hydrogen gas or oxygen gas, I just use water or steam and imagine the chemical plant is capable of producing the hydrogen/oxygen gasses from the water.

This is a long-winded way of saying that I agree with you, yes.

[dzaima]

Ok, new players might find a use for it, but hoping people make something potentially useless & easily dismissable just because they're forced to spend a resource isn't good game design. I usually have enough coal to last me until I get solars & electric furnaces (& nuclear fuel for trains further on) for me to not need to bother, and many might feel the same, forgetting the recipe even exists. And replacing coal usage with solid fuel (without breaking things that need just coal) is another bump in the oil setup process that one would need to do before being able to actually get anything out of it.

Solid fuel is very useful. Coal should be saved for products you need later, like plastic and explosives. Notice solid fuel has, what, about 4 times as much energy as coal does, right? Whereas you need the coal to make bulk products. So I'll tell you what I tell any of the new players on my network: you're being a bit silly if you're still burning that coal for power.

My point was that the time from making solid fuel to not needing burnable fuel at all is too small to benefit from setting it up (in factorio's scales; at least for me, setting up a new coal patch later is simpler than extending oil & its processing sooner), and, as it stands, in the tech tree it looks like a byproduct or something optional rather than being the solution to light & heavy oil (in my experience). If it were more emphasized somehow (honestly, before this FFF I hadn't actually considered making solid fuel early, only having built it when my coal started running out, but then again, setting that up would be another wall in getting oil working as if there weren't enough) maybe it'd be more of a solution.
Also, burnable fuel backs up very quickly if there isn't a lot using it, making some scales of oil production still back up (haven't tested what those are however).

[Adamo]

My point was that the time from making solid fuel to not needing burnable fuel at all is too small to benefit from setting it up (in factorio's scales; at least for me, setting up a new coal patch later is simpler than extending oil & its processing sooner), and, as it stands, in the tech tree it looks like a byproduct or something optional rather than being the solution to light & heavy oil (in my experience). If it were more emphasized somehow (honestly, before this FFF I hadn't actually considered making solid fuel early, only having built it when my coal started running out, but then again, setting that up would be another wall in getting oil working as if there weren't enough) maybe it'd be more of a solution.
Also, burnable fuel backs up very quickly if there isn't a lot using it, making some scales of oil production still back up.

I get your point, but I think you're ignoring that it is much more efficient to burn solid fuel instead of coal for power. Plus the fact that solid fuel is technically infinite, since oil is infinite. That is supposed to be a big hint, and maybe you're demonstrating for us that some players don't really make that connection, which is an important point. I am suggesting to you now to rethink this! Use the solid fuel. And perhaps part of the solution to this needs to be to help players come to this conclusion.