Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[DanGio]

But how will the player manage a blocked output of sludge barrels before Advanced oil processing ? (apart from shooting a chest full of barrels)

[crambaza]

But how will the player manage a blocked output of sludge barrels before Advanced oil processing ? (apart from shooting a chest full of barrels)

Exactly that way.

Same thing I did when I was new, but with my seemingly unlimited supply of starting guns.

Or, they can see that the sludge is useful somewhere else, and save it

[Ranger_Aurelien]

IN: 2 Steel Barrels filled with "Sludge" (and add in water, because you know, water)

I think the idea of a completely barrel-based refinery system is a nice option (mod?), however adding the Barrel Factor (tm) as mandatory is yet another network system to manage. I think having "sludge" output could be workable, but perhaps combining other ideas of excess piped sludge "lost" creating, say, 10x pollution (and some drooling animation out front). That way to start a player could hook up crude>gas, go away a bit, then come back and pipe your sludge + water into a chem plant and get out the other two oils. (A planning player would pipe the Sludge into silos).

[SuicideJunkie]

I've read through the thread just now, and there are still some things I don't understand:

1) Why do the devs feel that using Advanced oil processing in your refinery intended to be REQUIRED to launch a rocket?

Electric smelters aren't under that same opinion, but are the same type of efficiency upgrade (before the update removing the outputs made it an absolute hard requirement).

1) If you mean after the change,I think it's because it's considered the only puzzle left sort of, as the basic would be a learning step. If you mean before, it wasn't 'required' per say since you had to solve the puzzle earlier with the basic . (but it meant there was this potentially useless tech behind all you needed was cracking and basic).I think there would be (legitimate) complain if the only 3output process were to be optionnal. So i think it's how it unfold, with a mandadory advanced, and a simple basic.

What I mean, is that the dev posts all seemed to imply that "Thou must use AOP" was being treated as a requirement.

Up until yesterday, It was always optional, but a notable efficiency improvement. And thus an "upgrade me for a bonus, but if you're busy, no problem" type of thing.


Oh, and the other point I forgot to mention:
When it comes to realism vs gameplay, it isn't necessarily about accurate education, although that's good. It is also about expectations based on reality.
Oil processing isn't an everyday thing, but splitting black goo into a bunch of different products is pretty elementary refinery trivia.

[Ranger_Aurelien]

Newer idea!

Have the new BOP be a Chem Plant recipe (Just Crude>Gas), and only AOP be a refinery recipe. We already have the precedence of smaller lower tech smelters replaced with larger ones...

[BlueTemplar]

I have devised a new Oil method that is better than all the rest, except for the ones it's not better than.

Change the Refinery to only 1 output, get rid of all the multiple output stuff.

Change the name of "Basic Oil Processing" to "Initial Oil Processing".

Change the recipe to:
IN: Crude AND Steel Barrel
OUT: Pet Gas AND Steel Barrel filled with "Sludge" or call it some other product. (Has to be in a barrel, because it's thick and gross)

THEN, Move the Recipe for "Advanced Oil Processing" to the Chem Station, and also change it to:
IN: 2 Steel Barrels filled with "Sludge" (and add in water, because you know, water)
OUT: 1 Light Oil Barrel and 1 Heavy Oil Barrel (Or for fun, output straight liquid, and also the empty Steel Barrels which just begs the efficiency of moving the empty barrels back to the refinery. Both methods seem fun)

It has the Benefits of:
It moves away from the "dumbing down" aspect of Basic Oil including free flare stacks that just evaporate(?) the other oil products.
New player sees right away that their Oil isn't working because it's got barrels clogging the output. (Like any other machine with the output clogged)
Refineries don't have to ever be rebuilt, because they just do this one thing.
Barrels become useful again.
New puzzle, work with: a Pipe and belt materials IN, and Pipe and belt materials OUT.

I declare this idea fully fleshed out, and ready to implement in 0.17.61

Sounds really interesting (at least for the "Initial" = barrels part), as I'd guess that new players will have an easier time to figure out barrels than dealing with pipes !
Plus, the game already has the (hand-carried barrels) => car-carried barrels => train-carried barrels => fluid-wagon progression !

However, to have a snowball's chance in hell of being noticed amongst all the other propositions, it pretty much needs a showcase mod :

In case anyone wants it:

Pre 0.17.60 Oil



And in case anyone wanted to test other suggested alternatives that the devs decided weren't better than the path they went:

Heavy Oil and Gas from Basic Oil
Sulfur Production from Oils
Adamo Carbon
Light Oil Only
Heavy Oil Chemical Science

[jodokus31]

I have devised a new Oil method that is better than all the rest, except for the ones it's not better than.

Change the Refinery to only 1 output, get rid of all the multiple output stuff.

Change the name of "Basic Oil Processing" to "Initial Oil Processing".

Change the recipe to:
IN: Crude AND Steel Barrel
OUT: Pet Gas AND Steel Barrel filled with "Sludge" or call it some other product. (Has to be in a barrel, because it's thick and gross)

THEN, Move the Recipe for "Advanced Oil Processing" to the Chem Station, and also change it to:
IN: 2 Steel Barrels filled with "Sludge" (and add in water, because you know, water)
OUT: 1 Light Oil Barrel and 1 Heavy Oil Barrel (Or for fun, output straight liquid, and also the empty Steel Barrels which just begs the efficiency of moving the empty barrels back to the refinery. Both methods seem fun)

It has the Benefits of:
It moves away from the "dumbing down" aspect of Basic Oil including free flare stacks that just evaporate(?) the other oil products.
New player sees right away that their Oil isn't working because it's got barrels clogging the output. (Like any other machine with the output clogged)
Refineries don't have to ever be rebuilt, because they just do this one thing.
Barrels become useful again.
New puzzle, work with: a Pipe and belt materials IN, and Pipe and belt materials OUT.

I declare this idea fully fleshed out, and ready to implement in 0.17.61

I think the dev's intention is to provide an absolutely blocking free method for the phase, until you use AOP.
This phase can be very, very long while you explore all stuff in red&green science and now also the stuff from blue science.
I could collect everything now, what might be possible during this phase....
That's not exactly my opinion, but I can get it.

Actually, this method is a bit more problematic than oldBOP in some aspects:
- steel for barrels in very expensive in the start.
- additional recipes.

There was an idea that BOP produces a solid condensate item, which can be melted down to the other oils (or just solid fuel). This would be similar, but you don't need barrels...

Then I can only recommend that you apply your good strategy to blue science as well. When building blue science, build only 4 machines. These 4 will get your 350 Chemical packs - for bots - in less than 25 minutes. During this time, build robot ingredients as they unlock. Batteries 1st as they're already unlocked, then electric engines & finally robot frames. When robots are here, duplicate your initial blue science setup.

I'm not saying we can play the exact same way than before and all will be the same. But I think that it's now possible to get bots with less single placements of entities [not including "drag" for belts & pipes], so, in my view, less tedium.

I think, that is a nice thing to explore, because blue science is a bit faster to get now.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, it's 1 steel for 50L, filling a car is 800 steel = 4,000 ore for 40kL
(while the car is 149 ore...),

while 2 storage tanks are 90 ore for 50kL
(and pipes 1 ore per tile, and underground pipes at best 1.36.. ore per tile)

(and 2 wagons are 306 ore for 50kL,plus 355 ore per locomotive
and 1.625 ore per rail tile)...

But then maybe barrels could be made cheaper ? They seem both much more expensive and worse than pipes/fluid wagons (except UPS-wise, but this shouldn't be the main balance reason).

The main issue is that the fluid blockage is a lot less clear than an item blockage.

[posila]

A new player seeing this for the first time (and those are the only people who would potentially struggle here), would just run two pipes directly attached to the refineries. He would also put the consumers much too close to the first refineries.

This means, as soon as he sees the new recipe he has to redo the whole arrangement.

This concern comes up a lot and I think it won't be big problem. There is not much incentive to switch the setup the player just finished to Advanced oil immediately, because from player's perspective problem of blue science automation is solved. I believe players will likely leave their initial BOP setup as is while experimenting with new things blue science unlocks, building separate rafineries for heavy and light oil production.
The "can't mix fluids" error message when player tries to switch recipe needs to be improved, though.

[FuryoftheStars]

Ok, it hurts both sides, but that still doesn’t diminish the point I’m trying to make. I’m only discussing it from the first person’s side. They’re still hurt, regardless of the warning given before, and it’s stupid and wrong to say they don’t have a right to feel hurt because they were warned before.

Well, the allegory breaks somewhat here. Except if you want to convert it into a mormon marriage, with one man and 2 million wifes.

Is it reasonable to expect to be the only wife the man listens to after someone told you there would be 2 million wifes?

How...? That’s not even what I’m saying. You’re trying to go too detailed while I’m talking broadly.

What I’m saying is that we have a perfect right to feel hurt and express those opinions, whether there is an EA warning or not. And for people to come in here and go “Why u mad? EA” is akin to telling someone who is going through a rough spot in a relationship “you were warned”. It’s stupid and insensitive.

[Theikkru]

This concern comes up a lot and I think it won't be big problem. There is not much incentive to switch the setup the player just finished to Advanced oil immediately, because from player's perspective problem of blue science automation is solved. I believe players will likely leave their initial BOP setup as is while experimenting with new things blue science unlocks, building separate rafineries for heavy and light oil production.
The "can't mix fluids" error message when player tries to switch recipe needs to be improved, though.

The problem, though, is not one of immediacy. It doesn't matter if the player spends 3 hours or 3 days shuffling through the chemical sciences, at some point he/she will encounter the advanced recipe and say "Really? You're making me redo all that?" and possibly "I wish I could have just fixed this right from the start." (or more likely, something more emotional and less reasonable.) It's not something they could (reasonably) be expected to have seen coming, nor is it something they could avoid. Even if such a player builds an advanced refinery somewhere else, not only is this forcing players to redo a system they may have put considerable design time and effort into making, there is pretty strong pressure to get rid of the old setup anyways to not waste crude on the old, far less efficient (by about a factor of 2) recipe. For an analog, consider electric furnaces, which some people don't even bother with as a matter of course. In that case, there is, again, a higher tier of building that breaks previous setups unexpectedly due to spacing if not known about beforehand, and it similarly draws the ire of players as a result. The big difference, though, is that players have the option of simply not switching to electric furnaces if it bothers them enough, with no great loss. Not so with oil.

Edit: This reminds me of those stereotypical office job situations where you spend weeks pouring heart and soul into a proposal or project for something, only to have it summarily rejected upon completion because "management" suddenly came up with new specifications or guidelines that either serve no practical purpose but must be implemented immediately because reasons, or should obviously have been known about and included in the task from the start.

[5thHorseman]

What I’m saying is that we have a perfect right to feel hurt and express those opinions, whether there is an EA warning or not. And for people to come in here and go “Why u mad? EA” is akin to telling someone who is going through a rough spot in a relationship “you were warned”. It’s stupid and insensitive.

I cannot fathom having such strong feelings toward a software product that I would have toward most any human, in a relationship with me or not. It's like saying "If you were dropped off a ship in the middle of the ocean you'd be pretty freaked out. So telling someone not to be afraid of the water in their sink is stupid and insensitive."

[FuryoftheStars]

Y’all are nitpicking at an anology in the most stupidest of ways.

[5thHorseman]

I'm not nitpicking the analogy. I'm nitpicking the very idea of being so emotionally devastated over a change in a software product that you feel personally injured.

I use a hundred or more software products in any given week, from OSes to little scripts. I can count on one hand the ones that were given as much thought an love that Factorio has been given. Actually, I can count them on 2 fingers.

One is a software product that costs $1,000 per license. The other is Factorio.

[Adamo]

I'm not nitpicking the analogy. I'm nitpicking the very idea of being so emotionally devastated over a change in a software product that you feel personally injured.

I use a hundred or more software products in any given week, from OSes to little scripts. I can count on one hand the ones that were given as much thought an love that Factorio has been given. Actually, I can count them on 2 fingers.

One is a software product that costs $1,000 per license. The other is Factorio.

So maybe he cares about it differently. How is attacking this part of his argument useful?

[5thHorseman]

So maybe he cares about it differently. How is attacking this part of his argument useful?

I figured both sides should be represented equally in the "useless arguments" category.

No really TBH I was just sick of the complaining and had to complain myself. I lurked for weeks watching people freaking out and I reached my limit.

Never fear I'll go back to silent mode now that I've let off the steam.

[Adamo]

So maybe he cares about it differently. How is attacking this part of his argument useful?

I figured both sides should be represented equally in the "useless arguments" category.

No really TBH I was just sick of the complaining and had to complain myself. I lurked for weeks watching people freaking out and I reached my limit.

Never fear I'll go back to silent mode now that I've let off the steam.

I take offense to that. There were excellent ideas all through those two weeks. Well thought out tweaks and alternatives, many. The conversation didn't even begin to get overrun with people who didn't read the backlog and repeated the same old tired arguments until week 2.

[mcdjfp]

One last idea. Instead of the 17.60 changes have a option at the start of the game for simplified fluids. It would cause any building with multiple fluid outputs to automatically flare full outputs until all of the outputs are full.

It would still be possible to do it right (and by doing it right you would be able to more efficiently use resources), but if a player is confused, overwhelmed, or prefers it that way they can just let the excesses be lost. Players who want a challenge can leave the option off.

Not my first choice as it still feels like it miss-teaches the players like 17.60's basic oil processing.

Yes, it would simplify the fluid puzzle when the option is on, but 17.60 already simplifies the oil puzzle by allowed unlimited petroleum gas production without having to worry about the other two outputs. 17.60's basic oil processing makes it much easier to scale up petroleum gas production (since a player will not have to deal with cracking down or using the other 2 products), and results a simplification of the oil puzzle.

[Reika]

I have mostly abandoned this thread, but I am coming back to post one thing.

One of the issues people raised with the sulfur-as-a-byproduct-from-heavy-oil idea was "what if your sulfur production exceeds your consumption, and so you end up with a mountain of sulfur you cannot use".

Well, while developing my oil redesign mod, I found a solution to this, and one based on reality at that: Sulfur is flammable. In other words, you can make it a (crappy energy density, high pollution) fuel, and the player will never have too much of it.

[Adamo]

I have mostly abandoned this thread, but I am coming back to post one thing.

One of the issues people raised with the sulfur-as-a-byproduct-from-heavy-oil idea was "what if your sulfur production exceeds your consumption, and so you end up with a mountain of sulfur you cannot use".

Well, while developing my oil redesign mod, I found a solution to this, and one based on reality at that: Sulfur is flammable. In other words, you can make it a (crappy energy density, high pollution) fuel, and the player will never have too much of it.

Maybe turn up the emissions on that one. (Yes, that's an option parallel to fuel_value, you probably already know that). Sulfur dioxide (the product of burning sulfur) is nasty stuff.

There's another thing companies do to get rid of their excess sulfur that isn't so polluting (because in real life all of these processes leave us with *far* too much sulfur than we need): make concrete out of it.