Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[Astrella]

I do like the idea of each oil fraction having a unique product it's used for.

[jim lee]

Burn it in engines, use it up lubricating machines.

I read somewhere, someone was going on about steam trains (coal/wood & water) Diesel (heavy oil for burning & light oil for lubrication) Would be fun.

-jim lee

[Adamo]

Burn it in engines, use it up lubricating machines.

I read somewhere, someone was going on about steam trains (coal/wood & water) Diesel (heavy oil for burning & light oil for lubrication) Would be fun.

-jim lee

For the record, diesel is most efficiently made from light oil, with heavy oil for lubrication. I mean, in reality.

[icarus86]

Burn it in engines, use it up lubricating machines.

I read somewhere, someone was going on about steam trains (coal/wood & water) Diesel (heavy oil for burning & light oil for lubrication) Would be fun.

-jim lee

Sorry if my previous post sounded a bit harsh or like a rant.
Didn't mean to offend the devs or anyone else, but I just think that Factorio should be complex full-stop.

OTOH, the above suggestion... oh my... oh my... a 2nd type of locomotive using LO & HO, being fueled by pumps at train stops? OH MY.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, as long as we're repeating the same suggestions forever and ever, allow me to "contribute" with one suggestion that hasn't been reposted in a while :

BOP : (Crude) Oil => (Solid) Sulfur + Petroleum Gas
(and perhaps no Sulfur from Petroleum Gas or make that recipe very inefficient)

Pre-0.17.60, the main issue was having to learn pipeworks in addition to the multiple fluid outputs backing up - a multiple 1 fluid + 1 item output seems like it might be the right complexity at that point ?

[jodokus31]

Well, as long as we're repeating the same suggestions forever and ever, allow me to "contribute" with one suggestion that hasn't been reposted in a while :

BOP : (Crude) Oil => (Solid) Sulfur + Petroleum Gas
(and perhaps no Sulfur from Petroleum Gas or make that recipe very inefficient)

Pre-0.17.60, the main issue was having to learn pipeworks in addition to the multiple fluid outputs backing up - a multiple 1 fluid + 1 item output seems like it might be the right complexity at that point ?

That could work.
I also thought, maybe BOP could output a tiny bit of heavy oil to be able to get bots sooner.
Or Lubricant research could add a second BOP with additional heavy oil.

However, if blockage must be avoided at all costs while BOP, it won't happen.

[BlueTemplar]

We're seriously suggesting adding new science packs?

Where does this "smoothing out" stop? When all of freeplay is one big tutorial for beginners?

Well, yes, Factorio being a "freeplay game" (even if devs add a great campaign), this is the only way ?
If you're an experienced player, why would you be even interested in default settings ? (Except for speedrunning or other similar challenges like lazy bastard or post-endgame stuff, around which the game obviously can't be balanced...)

Edit: To me it seems that the closest that one can get to satisfying everyone is to offer as many configuration options as possible so players can tweak the difficulty the way they want. Mods help with this, but are negatively impacted when features that they take advantage of (see mining hardness) are removed

I do like this options, though i've been warn it's unlikely, the problem it raises is the balancing, not as much as right now, but for every other little change later, you'd need to plan their consequences on each different setup that the game propose as a tickbox, contrary to a mod, that puts the task on the modders , or the end user to setup more precisely what is needed/wanted.

For those reasons i do not have much hope in this :viewtopic.php?f=6&t=73768 ( suggestion for a new " complex" mode aside from the "expensive" )

Maybe the closer to version 1, the more realistic it would seems, since there might not be much change planned afterwards making it possible to introduce many different starting setups/receipes with less consequences for balance, but who knows.

Yeah, I doubt that adding yet another mode is viable, extending Marathon/Expensive to also have recipes with different components and a different tech tree seems to be the way to go ?

----

[...]
Unfortunately, I don't have a selection of Factorio noobs available to me to run experiments upon, so I cannot provide a direct example myself.
[...]

Here you go :
https://discordapp.com/channels/1396775 ... 3950477314
(It's not perfectly representative of course, they're still likely to be more competent than your average newbie...)

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
4. Mods are absolutely the solution to more replayability, more complexity and more of everything. Didn't the mining hardness get a supplementary feature like mining groups or how it's called that allows the same functionality?
[...]

[...]
I keep track of the Friday Facts (and sometimes read other posts as well) and the closest thing I ran across was a suggestion to use categories in place of temperature. Anyways, the post where mining hardness was removed declared that mods wouldn't be able to put it back. "So, the internal mechanics for these two things were removed and mods cannot bring them back." according to Bilka. (pickaxe and mining hardness). If the intention was to replace them with a different mechanic, it was not communicated very well.
[...]

I'm pretty sure that he's referring to this thread :
[0.17] Adding Ore Hardness and Pickaxes back in
Where abregado (the developer that pushed for the change) tries to find some solutions for modders to bring back that functionality.

I'm still not aware of a way to :
1.) Have a system where : both drills/pickaxes on one hand and ores on the other hand, have two separate properties : power/hardness and speed,
which can be used by mods to implement "powerful" but slow pickaxes/drills that are better to mine hard ore, but worse to mine soft ore than other, less "powerful" pickaxes/drills.
2.) Re-implementing a durability system for pickaxes/melee weapons and armor (for "survival"-themed mods).
3.) Showing pickaxe/melee weapon damage somewhere (how much damage does pickaxe do now? And after you research "Steel pickaxe" ?
(I've raised these issue the same day that the FFF describing these planned changes dropped.)
Please quote this post if you do !

[Takayomu]

I don't think much of the oil changes. It's been tens of play-hours ago that I learned how to do the oil processing in the campaign level, so I can't really remember what I found most difficult, or what stumbling blocks I fell over.

Oil is interesting, and different, in that it's piped, and you get get 30% heavy oil, 30% light oil, and 40% petroleum (vs just one resource from miners). At first, you're only getting oil for the petroleum, and only to make plastic - a simple intro to oil products, in my opinion. But, one of the startup hints tips you off that all of the output products must have somewhere to go, otherwise production of everything will just stop (not sure exactly where I figured that one out from). So, you have to pipe the heavy and light oil into tanks for now. This gets you used to pipe layout for the 3 outputs, not being able to walk over pipes like conveyors, and how pipes link up differently to conveyors. You can't do anything with heavy or light oil now, but you're storing it up to be used in future, so there's some anticipation there.
So.... pumpjack -> oil refinery -> 2 storage tanks (for the light and heavy oil you can't use yet) and a chem plant making the plastic.

Also, 3 recipes for solid fuel, requiring 10 light oil, or 20 heavy oil or petrol? Once you read the 3 recipes, light oil is obviously the more efficient way to go.

Advanced oil's obvious benefit is its more favorable ratios (10:45:55) and 10 units extra output product, but it's interesting that it's not strictly superior to basic oil because it produces less heavy oil.

[Zaka]

Advanced oil's obvious benefit is its more favorable ratios (10:45:55) and 10 units extra output product, but it's interesting that it's not strictly superior to basic oil because it produces less heavy oil.

The ratios are “more favorable” because 90% of the final/intermediate products can be made from PG. Pre-17.60 the only fluids I was transporting in a 1kspm base was PG and Lubricant. Balancing what oil makes what products and what products are used in each science pack resolves the problem.

[Adamo]

Advanced oil's obvious benefit is its more favorable ratios (10:45:55) and 10 units extra output product, but it's interesting that it's not strictly superior to basic oil because it produces less heavy oil.

The ratios are “more favorable” because 90% of the final/intermediate products can be made from PG. Pre-17.60 the only fluids I was transporting in a 1kspm base was PG and Lubricant. Balancing what oil makes what products and what products are used in each science pack resolves the problem.

It's certainly not more balanced if a player wants to use much solid fuel.

[FuryoftheStars]

Shameless plug, but check my sig. I'm maintaining the Diesel Locomotive mod now that allows for locos to have fluid fuel input. Still working on some changes adaptations, etc.

Also working on another mod that is attempting to make the normal loco a steam loco, as well as giving them all a heavier feel to them.



But back on topic...

IMO, the rail planner sequence is an additional proof of their dedication. They implemented an nice feature, removed it for good reasons, and then reimplemented it as several players said they missed it. The lazy, easy-money path would have been "let it just be in an unfinished state, people are used to it like it is anyway".

It was removed because they felt it was useless. This is not a “good reason”.

Actually something being useless is a very valid reason fot it to be removed. Less code maintenance is always a good thing.
The issue with that was that it was not as useless as the devs thought, and the advantages restoring it outweighted the potential drawbacks (from the devs' point of view).

As someone who does programming (albeit small time, and no, not talking about modding), a piece of code that you're not going back into and making corrections/updates no longer has a maintenance overhead (unless you're talking about something huge that takes a lot of disk space and/or compile time). They removed it because they wanted to add different functionality to the rail planner's binding keys. They could have just as easily put it to a different binding key from the start. They only restored it because we kept asking about it, not because they realized any advantages with it. *shrug*

[Zaka]

Advanced oil's obvious benefit is its more favorable ratios (10:45:55) and 10 units extra output product, but it's interesting that it's not strictly superior to basic oil because it produces less heavy oil.

The ratios are “more favorable” because 90% of the final/intermediate products can be made from PG. Pre-17.60 the only fluids I was transporting in a 1kspm base was PG and Lubricant. Balancing what oil makes what products and what products are used in each science pack resolves the problem.

It's certainly not more balanced if a player wants to use much solid fuel.

Pre-17.60 Science:

Chemical (Bule) – Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG)

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Lubricant	SolidFuel	Plastic		Sulfer
Heavy Oil	10 to 10	20 to 1		0		0
Light Oil	0		10 to 1		0		0
Pet Gas		0		20 to 1		20 to 2		30 to 2

It appears that we only need 2 refined oil products. Light Oil is completely useless.
Yes, I know it’s more efficient for Solid Fuel, but is it completely unnecessary.

Post-17.60 Science

Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG), Light Oil (LO)

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Lubricant	SolidFuel	Plastic		Sulfer		Rocket Fuel
Heavy Oil	10 to 10	20 to 1		0		0		0
Light Oil	0		10 to 1		0		0		10 to 1
Pet Gas		0		20 to 1		20 to 2		30 to 2		0

So what does this tell us?
Light Oil finally has a use in white science.

Suggestions:

Basic Refining with 3 recipes:

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Unique		SolidFuel	Sulfer
Heavy Oil	Lubicant	0		10 to 1
Light Oil	RocketFuel	10 to 1		20 to 1
Pet Gas		Plastic		20 to 1		0

Resulting in New Science (based on 17.60):
Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (HO/LO) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Solid Fuel (LO/PG), Rocket Fuel (LO)

-

Create a balanced use for the oil fractions, then balance the refinery outputs.
Please remember that oil cracking is a one-way process.

As far as "a lot of" solid fuels goes, the coal liquefaction process that supplies nuclear fuel to my trains works great.

Factorio is a game of options, there is no "correct" way to do things. The change to basic oil processing REMOVED some of those options and that is what we are arguing about.

Resolving the issue by providing 3 basic oil refinery recipes and distributing the ratio of the final products used in the science packs goes a long way toward resolving the "oil wall".
The 3 basic oil refinery recipes also provides the same ability to build Construction Bots pre-Blue Science that makes the game more user friendly.

[Takayomu]

Advanced oil's obvious benefit is its more favorable ratios (10:45:55) and 10 units extra output product, but it's interesting that it's not strictly superior to basic oil because it produces less heavy oil.

The ratios are “more favorable” because 90% of the final/intermediate products can be made from PG. Pre-17.60 the only fluids I was transporting in a 1kspm base was PG and Lubricant. Balancing what oil makes what products and what products are used in each science pack resolves the problem.

It's certainly not more balanced if a player wants to use much solid fuel.

-snip-

Create a balanced use for the oil fractions, then balance the refinery outputs.
Please remember that oil cracking is a one-way process.

As far as "a lot of" solid fuels goes, the coal liquefaction process that supplies nuclear fuel to my trains works great.

Factorio is a game of options, there is no "correct" way to do things. The change to basic oil processing REMOVED some of those options and that is what we are arguing about.

Resolving the issue by providing 3 basic oil refinery recipes and distributing the ratio of the final products used in the science packs goes a long way toward resolving the "oil wall".
The 3 basic oil refinery recipes also provides the same ability to build Construction Bots pre-Blue Science that makes the game more user friendly.

Huh? The interesting thing about oil is that you don't get exactly what you want, and the ratios at which you want oil products changes over the course of the game. With basic oil processing, your only choice is to send light and heavy oil to tanks (or start making solid fuel out of them to power your factory), while you use the petrol for plastic. Later, you have more choices: advanced oil, cracking, and coal liquefaction. It's not up to the game to match the ratios of what you need with the ratios of what you get before cracking. Cracking at least lets you use whatever you've got too much of.

Am I missing something? You need 10k solid fuel for the rocket, so 100k light oil. Sure, with advanced oil, you'll get more than 100k light oil as a side effect of refining the almost 200k petrol you need, so that's just a hint to crack some light oil to get more petrol.

Aside, what _exactly_ is the "oil wall"? Couple of pumpjacks, a refinery, couple of fluid tanks, a chem plant, and you've got your first oil setup, right? Kindof like miner + furnace + assembler, except the excess light and heavy oil have to go somewhere.

If anything, I thought there was more of a wall _after_ blue/grey science. My first iron patch ran out, so I had to train it in from farther away. Oil deposit was also a few seconds drive away, so now I'm running 3 separated bases, and I'm tired of repairing the turrets, while the biters and spitters are getting stronger. So, sulfur, sulfuric acid, batteries > laser turrets. Now I need more power, and would like to do it with less pollution since that seems to attract the biters and drive up evolution. So, solar+accumulators (didn't notice at first that I could already make a useful-sized accumulator array with the extra batteries on hand). Coal patch ran out earlier too, so good thing I can make solid fuel out of the light oil, while I take in coal by car for the grenade line, for the grey science. Got nuclear power after this to put an end to the brownouts and let me switch to less polluting electric furnaces, which I just put next to the new copper patch and half-depleted iron patch instead of demolishing my current steel furnace line.
Then I move on to a purple/yellow science line.

Also, am I missing something, or is this new oil system going to require you to have your oil factory supplied with oil AND water, since blue science now needs sulfur, and sulfur needs water and petrol?

[mcdjfp]

That is the worst part of the game for me. There comes a time as I move into the midgame where I spend 90% of my time running from one side of my base to the other repairing/rebuilding my defenses (Or taking a train/car from one outpost to another). Sometimes 3-4 repair jobs will be chained in a row before I can get back to actual building. Once production starts building and I can afford to overbuild defenses at all these locations it gets better, but the only solution I have found are construction bots with repair packs. The oil fix only makes the situation worse by delaying the true solution to this.

It feels like they had an idea that they knew was going to be controversial and decided to circle the wagons.


Also, Has anything actually been put into the game to help mods with the removal of mining hardness? The thread linked to earlier was locked before anything was decided other than that mining categories couldn't fully restore the functionality (at least not with more work).

Edit: Before someone suggests turning biters off, I like to have them on because they keep me honest. They are both necessary for the pollution mechanic to have meaning, and they also serve as a penalty if I run out of a raw material. Otherwise I could simply find a nearby patch and hand-->burner mine to get enough of what I ran out of to get going again. (Simply a time penalty)

[5thHorseman]

Also, am I missing something, or is this new oil system going to require you to have your oil factory supplied with oil AND water, since blue science now needs sulfur, and sulfur needs water and petrol?

Yes water is required for blue science now, as it's in the sulfur recipe. It doesn't have to go to your refinery area per se but I don't see any particularly good reasons not to do it that way.

[Hiladdar]

...

If anything, I thought there was more of a wall _after_ blue/grey science. My first iron patch ran out, so I had to train it in from farther away. Oil deposit was also a few seconds drive away, so now I'm running 3 separated bases, and I'm tired of repairing the turrets, while the biters and spitters are getting stronger. So, sulfur, sulfuric acid, batteries > laser turrets. Now I need more power, and would like to do it with less pollution since that seems to attract the biters and drive up evolution. So, solar+accumulators (didn't notice at first that I could already make a useful-sized accumulator array with the extra batteries on hand). Coal patch ran out earlier too, so good thing I can make solid fuel out of the light oil, while I take in coal by car for the grenade line, for the grey science. Got nuclear power after this to put an end to the brownouts and let me switch to less polluting electric furnaces, which I just put next to the new copper patch and half-depleted iron patch instead of demolishing my current steel furnace line.
Then I move on to a purple/yellow science line.

...

Takayomu Thank you for your post based on your experience. It is an excellent example of mid-game challenges players face juggling multiple critical problems at the same time, both pre-60 and post-60 Factorio.

Hiladdar

[Tricorius]

I have also uninstalled the game after more than 2500 hours and playing almost every day. The shot has been that my 11-year-old daughter has literally told me: "Now that is super easy," and now prefers to play the "Oxygen not included."

A pity that has stopped listening to the players that we have pushed many others to play and support and decisions are made thinking about players that do not yet exist.

Sorry for my english.

LOL.

I did the exact same thing! I loaded up Oxygen Not Included for the first time, called my world "Factorio Oil Change Sux", and started. I was happy to play a game that challenged me. Even complicated steps involving a bunch of machines. I didn't quit it, I kept playing.

It's so funny you said this!

I’m highly impressed with your daughter (and you also, crambaza)...the only Factorio that actually challenges me anymore is Death World Marathon...but ONI obliterates me. Like...I cry by the end of an attempted play through. :p

[Tricorius]

So, my opinion hasn’t changed much after a post .60 run each of default Rail World and Death World Marathon games. Generated, didn’t preview, went in blind for a “core” experience.

The *actual* oil changes don’t really bother me. The only difference is that instead of building a multi-stage refinery (that can adapt from basic oil to advanced oil) I build two sets of refineries.

I build a basic one that just pumps out petroleum. All of my petroleum comes from this early refinery and I just give it more and more oil and burn through the inefficiencies (oil is plentiful so with enough oil—a couple speed moduled oil fields and production moduled basic oil—refineries provide plenty for a decent pre-megabase build...the inefficiency of the basic oil recipe really doesn’t matter when you flood it with an essentially-unlimited resource). In fact, I used to ship crude by rail in my old games, now I refine on site and ship petroleum by rail. (I didn’t check the math, but I believe this means I transport 40% less fluid by letting the refineries void or compress or whatever they do to the unusable portion of the crude.)

The second one (after unlocking advanced oil—which is now necessary to “beeline” if you want to continue expanding your science, let alone construction bots) simply handles everything else and only functions when it needs to. (I don’t even crack down to petroleum anymore.)

My old refinery used some pretty fun logic to balance the entire oil chain. (I know fun is a relative term when it comes to combinators.) The new one is essentially a giant petroleum monster and a separate, smaller rocket fuel line (I affectionately call them Sully and Mike). I do have the advanced refinery setup to drop solid fuel out when needed, but the window where it is useful is now significantly reduced. (By the time it is even useful to setup now it is better to just over-produce rocket fuel for my trains. And eventually turn that to nuclear fuel.)

And in both games I felt the distinct lack of construction robots. In the Death World Marathon I got to choose between “bigger factory and run around and repair a LOT” or “smaller factory and sit around a LOT” while waiting for my major military milestones.

I’m not sure what the changes do for newcomers, but for veterans I feel they give you a choice: “deal with increased tedium” or “rely on some early game QoL mods”. (Not everyone likes that choice.)

P.S. Regardless of whether it was intended or not, the new basic oil recipe functions exactly the same as manually hooking up two flare stacks to burn off light and heavy (assuming we were using old basic oil and had flare stacks available).

Yes, new players won’t know this, but I find it an interesting point in this discussion. The only logistical difference between *only* outputting xx PG or outputting xx PG, yy LO, zz HO (and flaring the LO and HO off) is that the player doesn’t know they are losing it when it happens intrinsically inside the recipe itself. And it doesn’t prepare them for the eventuality that that big ol’ refinery building is going to become a lot more complex once they catch up with the can they kicked down the road.

[rhynex]

Advanced oil's obvious benefit is its more favorable ratios (10:45:55) and 10 units extra output product, but it's interesting that it's not strictly superior to basic oil because it produces less heavy oil.

The ratios are “more favorable” because 90% of the final/intermediate products can be made from PG. Pre-17.60 the only fluids I was transporting in a 1kspm base was PG and Lubricant. Balancing what oil makes what products and what products are used in each science pack resolves the problem.

It's certainly not more balanced if a player wants to use much solid fuel.

Pre-17.60 Science:

Chemical (Bule) – Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG)

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Lubricant	SolidFuel	Plastic		Sulfer
Heavy Oil	10 to 10	20 to 1		0		0
Light Oil	0		10 to 1		0		0
Pet Gas		0		20 to 1		20 to 2		30 to 2

It appears that we only need 2 refined oil products. Light Oil is completely useless.
Yes, I know it’s more efficient for Solid Fuel, but is it completely unnecessary.

Post-17.60 Science

Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (PG) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (PG), Solid Fuel (HO/LO/PG), Light Oil (LO)

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Lubricant	SolidFuel	Plastic		Sulfer		Rocket Fuel
Heavy Oil	10 to 10	20 to 1		0		0		0
Light Oil	0		10 to 1		0		0		10 to 1
Pet Gas		0		20 to 1		20 to 2		30 to 2		0

So what does this tell us?
Light Oil finally has a use in white science.

Suggestions:

Basic Refining with 3 recipes:

Code: Select all

Oil Fraction	Unique		SolidFuel	Sulfer
Heavy Oil	Lubicant	0		10 to 1
Light Oil	RocketFuel	10 to 1		20 to 1
Pet Gas		Plastic		20 to 1		0

Resulting in New Science (based on 17.60):
Chemical (Bule) – Sulfur (HO/LO) and Plastic (PG)
Production (Purple) – Plastic (PG)
Utility (Yellow) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Lubricant (HO)
Space (White) – Plastic (PG), Sulfur (HO/LO), Solid Fuel (LO/PG), Rocket Fuel (LO)

-

Create a balanced use for the oil fractions, then balance the refinery outputs.
Please remember that oil cracking is a one-way process.

As far as "a lot of" solid fuels goes, the coal liquefaction process that supplies nuclear fuel to my trains works great.

Factorio is a game of options, there is no "correct" way to do things. The change to basic oil processing REMOVED some of those options and that is what we are arguing about.

Resolving the issue by providing 3 basic oil refinery recipes and distributing the ratio of the final products used in the science packs goes a long way toward resolving the "oil wall".
The 3 basic oil refinery recipes also provides the same ability to build Construction Bots pre-Blue Science that makes the game more user friendly.

I like the last suggestion but I have an addition. I am trying to make my own oil processing mod and saw the below article
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-scientist ... ulfur.html
also
https://phys.org/news/2016-01-plastics- ... -good.html
I am not chemical expert so I cannot comment on the usability or details of above article but title is enough for me to use in my mod. it can be considered like early cracking. I believe a recipe from sulfur to plastic might solve a lot of issues with addition of sulfur from HO/LO recipes. in this case we would not need PG to sulfur recipe of course, it would be swapped with HO/LO.