[0.17.x] Bob's Mods: General Discussion

[Nix77]

Could someone give me a short briefing on liquid fuel power generation?

I've been comparing the two options, fluid generator and oil boiler. They use different method of consuming the liquid fuel, but should probably be producing comparable results? Fluid generator however seems to behave differently: the fluid usage per tick remains the same across all tiers, but the power generated seems to rise when you upgrade the tier.

This seems a bit odd to me, shouldn't the generator burn more fuel to achieve higher power generation? That's at least how the boilers seem to behave, right? The fuel fluid usage per second isn't visible on those though. Also what's the maths behind the hydrazine generator? The idea seems to revolve somehow around having a lower fuel value liquid fueling the generator?

I'd really appreciate if someone has a simple example to explain how FLUID_USAGE_PER_TICK, MAX_POWER_OUTPUT, SCALE_FLUID_USAGE and EFFECTIVITY affect the generator/boiler behaviour in relation to the fuel value of liquid being burned, and if the liquid's fuel value is directly comparable to solid fuels.

Thanks!

EDIT:
Ok, seems I had some faults in my testing grounds previously
The fluid generators seem to burn fuel in proportion to the load they are supporting. Is it possible to get the fluid generators to show the actual fluid usage more accurately, like the boiler does? What effect does the FLUID_USAGE_PER_TICK have, if the consumption depends on the fuel value any way?

[bobingabout]

Could someone give me a short briefing on liquid fuel power generation?

I've been comparing the two options, fluid generator and oil boiler. They use different method of consuming the liquid fuel, but should probably be producing comparable results? Fluid generator however seems to behave differently: the fluid usage per tick remains the same across all tiers, but the power generated seems to rise when you upgrade the tier.

This seems a bit odd to me, shouldn't the generator burn more fuel to achieve higher power generation? That's at least how the boilers seem to behave, right? The fuel fluid usage per second isn't visible on those though. Also what's the maths behind the hydrazine generator? The idea seems to revolve somehow around having a lower fuel value liquid fueling the generator?

I'd really appreciate if someone has a simple example to explain how FLUID_USAGE_PER_TICK, MAX_POWER_OUTPUT, SCALE_FLUID_USAGE and EFFECTIVITY affect the generator/boiler behaviour in relation to the fuel value of liquid being burned, and if the liquid's fuel value is directly comparable to solid fuels.

Thanks!

Fluid usage indicates the maximum fluid usage of the generator, because scale fluid usage is set, max power output is the maximum power the generator can produce. In game, these 2 can change depending on the fuel value of the fluid being consumed.
Efficiency reduces the amount of energy generated from the fluid to this percentage, EG, a 1MJ fluid with 75% efficiency will give 750kJ per unit of fluid consumed.

Hydrazine generators can consume more fluid, but specifically need hydrazine.

Oil boilers on the other hand always have 100% efficiency, this wasn't originally going to be the case, but then the base game changed boilers from 50% to 100% efficiency, I had to adapt around that.

the Fluid generators kind of need a bit of a rework because of this efficiency change... because if you're at all concerned about fuel efficiency, you want oil boilers, no contest.

[Nix77]

Could someone give me a short briefing on liquid fuel power generation?

I've been comparing the two options, fluid generator and oil boiler. They use different method of consuming the liquid fuel, but should probably be producing comparable results? Fluid generator however seems to behave differently: the fluid usage per tick remains the same across all tiers, but the power generated seems to rise when you upgrade the tier.

This seems a bit odd to me, shouldn't the generator burn more fuel to achieve higher power generation? That's at least how the boilers seem to behave, right? The fuel fluid usage per second isn't visible on those though. Also what's the maths behind the hydrazine generator? The idea seems to revolve somehow around having a lower fuel value liquid fueling the generator?

I'd really appreciate if someone has a simple example to explain how FLUID_USAGE_PER_TICK, MAX_POWER_OUTPUT, SCALE_FLUID_USAGE and EFFECTIVITY affect the generator/boiler behaviour in relation to the fuel value of liquid being burned, and if the liquid's fuel value is directly comparable to solid fuels.

Thanks!

Fluid usage indicates the maximum fluid usage of the generator, because scale fluid usage is set, max power output is the maximum power the generator can produce. In game, these 2 can change depending on the fuel value of the fluid being consumed.
Efficiency reduces the amount of energy generated from the fluid to this percentage, EG, a 1MJ fluid with 75% efficiency will give 750kJ per unit of fluid consumed.

Hydrazine generators can consume more fluid, but specifically need hydrazine.

Oil boilers on the other hand always have 100% efficiency, this wasn't originally going to be the case, but then the base game changed boilers from 50% to 100% efficiency, I had to adapt around that.

the Fluid generators kind of need a bit of a rework because of this efficiency change... because if you're at all concerned about fuel efficiency, you want oil boilers, no contest.

Thanks for the quick reply, Bob! Big fan of your mods, thank you for all the work you've done for Factorio

A quick question still since I don't fully understand how the calculation works: Liquid Fuel has fuel value of 2.3MJ. Fluid generators FUPT is 6/60 (does this mean 6 per second?). Max power for the generator is 2MW, efficiency is 60%. Load is 1.2MW. How do I calculate the fuel usage from these figures? Oil boiler will use 1.2MW/2.3MJ=0.52/s, that's simple, but the fluid generator I'm not sure about

EDIT: once again figured out something a bit late, FUPT is apparently the maximum fluid usage, so the fluid generator in question would work at full efficiency with 2MW / 0.6 / 6/s = 0.555MJ fuel? If the fuel value is lower, the fluid usage caps to 6/s and you start losing fuel, am I right?

EDIT2: I'm not sure if the efficiency figure actually works, currently following an oil boiler (100% EFF) and a fluid generator (supposedly 60% EFF), and they both burn the same amount of liquid fuel with 1.2MW load...

[bobingabout]

EDIT: once again figured out something a bit late, FUPT is apparently the maximum fluid usage, so the fluid generator in question would work at full efficiency with 2MW / 0.6 / 6/s = 0.555MJ fuel? If the fuel value is lower, the fluid usage caps to 6/s and you start losing fuel, am I right?

EDIT2: I'm not sure if the efficiency figure actually works, currently following an oil boiler (100% EFF) and a fluid generator (supposedly 60% EFF), and they both burn the same amount of liquid fuel with 1.2MW load...

Last time I did tests, efficiency did have an effect on the generator. However, the game might not be reporting things correctly on the generator. I went around and fixed most of the issues with my source access, however, some of the bugs with the generator that only effect modded generators were proving difficult to fix without messing up vanilla.

[jgb]

Since we're on the subject of power generation, is there any reason to upgrade to different tiers of steam power other than to save space? Based on the numbers, it seems that 1 steam 2 array = 2 steam 1 arrays, 1 steam 3 array = 3 steam 1 arrays, etc.

[Nix77]

EDIT: once again figured out something a bit late, FUPT is apparently the maximum fluid usage, so the fluid generator in question would work at full efficiency with 2MW / 0.6 / 6/s = 0.555MJ fuel? If the fuel value is lower, the fluid usage caps to 6/s and you start losing fuel, am I right?

EDIT2: I'm not sure if the efficiency figure actually works, currently following an oil boiler (100% EFF) and a fluid generator (supposedly 60% EFF), and they both burn the same amount of liquid fuel with 1.2MW load...

Last time I did tests, efficiency did have an effect on the generator. However, the game might not be reporting things correctly on the generator. I went around and fixed most of the issues with my source access, however, some of the bugs with the generator that only effect modded generators were proving difficult to fix without messing up vanilla.

Did some more testing: I was testing first at 1.2MW load, which happened to be exactly 60% of the fluid gen max power, and at this load both boiler and generator consumed the same amount of fluid. If the load was raised, fluid gen started using more fluid, but if it was lowered, the fluid gen actually used less fuel, and was more fuel efficient! So the EFFICIENCY number seems to actually be the sweet spot for the generator load, where it's fuel efficiency is still 100%. I might be wrong once again, but that's how it seemed. With 0.3MW load, the 60% EFF generator used way less fuel than a boiler.

[bobingabout]

EDIT: once again figured out something a bit late, FUPT is apparently the maximum fluid usage, so the fluid generator in question would work at full efficiency with 2MW / 0.6 / 6/s = 0.555MJ fuel? If the fuel value is lower, the fluid usage caps to 6/s and you start losing fuel, am I right?

EDIT2: I'm not sure if the efficiency figure actually works, currently following an oil boiler (100% EFF) and a fluid generator (supposedly 60% EFF), and they both burn the same amount of liquid fuel with 1.2MW load...

Last time I did tests, efficiency did have an effect on the generator. However, the game might not be reporting things correctly on the generator. I went around and fixed most of the issues with my source access, however, some of the bugs with the generator that only effect modded generators were proving difficult to fix without messing up vanilla.

Did some more testing: I was testing first at 1.2MW load, which happened to be exactly 60% of the fluid gen max power, and at this load both boiler and generator consumed the same amount of fluid. If the load was raised, fluid gen started using more fluid, but if it was lowered, the fluid gen actually used less fuel, and was more fuel efficient! So the EFFICIENCY number seems to actually be the sweet spot for the generator load, where it's fuel efficiency is still 100%. I might be wrong once again, but that's how it seemed. With 0.3MW load, the 60% EFF generator used way less fuel than a boiler.

what version of the game are you using?

[Nix77]

EDIT: once again figured out something a bit late, FUPT is apparently the maximum fluid usage, so the fluid generator in question would work at full efficiency with 2MW / 0.6 / 6/s = 0.555MJ fuel? If the fuel value is lower, the fluid usage caps to 6/s and you start losing fuel, am I right?

EDIT2: I'm not sure if the efficiency figure actually works, currently following an oil boiler (100% EFF) and a fluid generator (supposedly 60% EFF), and they both burn the same amount of liquid fuel with 1.2MW load...

Last time I did tests, efficiency did have an effect on the generator. However, the game might not be reporting things correctly on the generator. I went around and fixed most of the issues with my source access, however, some of the bugs with the generator that only effect modded generators were proving difficult to fix without messing up vanilla.

Did some more testing: I was testing first at 1.2MW load, which happened to be exactly 60% of the fluid gen max power, and at this load both boiler and generator consumed the same amount of fluid. If the load was raised, fluid gen started using more fluid, but if it was lowered, the fluid gen actually used less fuel, and was more fuel efficient! So the EFFICIENCY number seems to actually be the sweet spot for the generator load, where it's fuel efficiency is still 100%. I might be wrong once again, but that's how it seemed. With 0.3MW load, the 60% EFF generator used way less fuel than a boiler.

what version of the game are you using?

Latest beta, 0.17.66. It's heavily modded though, but nothing should touch oil boilers and fluid gens. It's easy to test, just compare fluid usage with a low load.

[bobingabout]

Latest beta, 0.17.66. It's heavily modded though, but nothing should touch oil boilers and fluid gens. It's easy to test, just compare fluid usage with a low load.

The game's source code for generators doesn't seem to have changed, therefore it should still work the same as last time I tested.

in any case, I'll test this out later.

[Psyramics]

I'm trying out new Burner heat source and Oil burning heat source in my Seablock game. I've got them in a stack like this:

burner_stack.png (638.75 KiB) Viewed 6674 times

When arranged like this, the Oil Burners never fire. The stack ran on Enriched fuel blocks until it hit 500C and started producing steam to convert something else into the Syn Gas I wanted to burn, but the Syn Gas never burned. I would expect it to consume at full speed until it hit max temp like the Burners did, but that never happened.

The attached turbines are running at half capacity at the moment, will they start up when the base is closer to full load?

[ukezi]

When arranged like this, the Oil Burners never fire. The stack ran on Enriched fuel blocks until it hit 500C and started producing steam to convert something else into the Syn Gas I wanted to burn, but the Syn Gas never burned. I would expect it to consume at full speed until it hit max temp like the Burners did, but that never happened.

I don't think Syn Gas has a fuel value attached. Try it with liquid fuel or fuel oil for instance.

[Psyramics]

When arranged like this, the Oil Burners never fire. The stack ran on Enriched fuel blocks until it hit 500C and started producing steam to convert something else into the Syn Gas I wanted to burn, but the Syn Gas never burned. I would expect it to consume at full speed until it hit max temp like the Burners did, but that never happened.

I don't think Syn Gas has a fuel value attached. Try it with liquid fuel or fuel oil for instance.

I see. You can make Solid Fuel with it, so i thought you could burn it as well...

[RocketManChronicles]

I'm trying out new Burner heat source and Oil burning heat source in my Seablock game. I've got them in a stack like this:
burner_stack.png

When arranged like this, the Oil Burners never fire. The stack ran on Enriched fuel blocks until it hit 500C and started producing steam to convert something else into the Syn Gas I wanted to burn, but the Syn Gas never burned. I would expect it to consume at full speed until it hit max temp like the Burners did, but that never happened.

The attached turbines are running at half capacity at the moment, will they start up when the base is closer to full load?

I was going to start messing with these later tonight, to see what they can provide, but my curiosity is to go either Liquid Fuel or Enriched Fuel from Liquid Fuel in terms of efficiency. Would I consume the same amount of Liquid Fuel as it is or as it being Enriched Fuel?

[ukezi]

I was going to start messing with these later tonight, to see what they can provide, but my curiosity is to go either Liquid Fuel or Enriched Fuel from Liquid Fuel in terms of efficiency. Would I consume the same amount of Liquid Fuel as it is or as it being Enriched Fuel?

At least in my seablocks game fuel oil and liquid fuel has 1MJ per unit and 20 units make a 24MJ block. I think you lose about halve the bonus for the processing. however liquid fuel sources are convenient.

[bobingabout]

I was going to start messing with these later tonight, to see what they can provide, but my curiosity is to go either Liquid Fuel or Enriched Fuel from Liquid Fuel in terms of efficiency. Would I consume the same amount of Liquid Fuel as it is or as it being Enriched Fuel?

At least in my seablocks game fuel oil and liquid fuel has 1MJ per unit and 20 units make a 24MJ block. I think you lose about halve the bonus for the processing. however liquid fuel sources are convenient.

and in bob's mods, most things that burn liquids produce less pollution than those that burn solids.

[Psyramics]

I'm trying out new Burner heat source and Oil burning heat source in my Seablock game. I've got them in a stack like this:
burner_stack.png

When arranged like this, the Oil Burners never fire. The stack ran on Enriched fuel blocks until it hit 500C and started producing steam to convert something else into the Syn Gas I wanted to burn, but the Syn Gas never burned. I would expect it to consume at full speed until it hit max temp like the Burners did, but that never happened.

The attached turbines are running at half capacity at the moment, will they start up when the base is closer to full load?

I was going to start messing with these later tonight, to see what they can provide, but my curiosity is to go either Liquid Fuel or Enriched Fuel from Liquid Fuel in terms of efficiency. Would I consume the same amount of Liquid Fuel as it is or as it being Enriched Fuel?

Biggest advantage of Liquid Fuel is that the Oil burner heat sources can be arranged in a square, rather than a stack of 2 like nuclear reactors. I was jury-rigging a setup that already produced Enriched Fuel and had left over Mineral Oil to convert to Syn Gas, and tried to burn both with Heat sources, figuring that I wouldn't be able to use two different liquids in the same block.

[bobingabout]

I'm trying out new Burner heat source and Oil burning heat source in my Seablock game. I've got them in a stack like this:
burner_stack.png

When arranged like this, the Oil Burners never fire. The stack ran on Enriched fuel blocks until it hit 500C and started producing steam to convert something else into the Syn Gas I wanted to burn, but the Syn Gas never burned. I would expect it to consume at full speed until it hit max temp like the Burners did, but that never happened.

The attached turbines are running at half capacity at the moment, will they start up when the base is closer to full load?

I was going to start messing with these later tonight, to see what they can provide, but my curiosity is to go either Liquid Fuel or Enriched Fuel from Liquid Fuel in terms of efficiency. Would I consume the same amount of Liquid Fuel as it is or as it being Enriched Fuel?

Biggest advantage of Liquid Fuel is that the Oil burner heat sources can be arranged in a square, rather than a stack of 2 like nuclear reactors. I was jury-rigging a setup that already produced Enriched Fuel and had left over Mineral Oil to convert to Syn Gas, and tried to burn both with Heat sources, figuring that I wouldn't be able to use two different liquids in the same block.

You can't use 2 different liquids in the same block in 0.17. and yes, you can just create a solid field of oil burning heat sources, no need for holes to put your inserters and chests.

[alercah]

If memory serves from discussions on Discord, the way fluid generators work is as follows:

fluid_usage_per_tick sets the maximum amount of fluid that the generator burns each tick. If scale_fluid_usage is false, then this is always consumed regardless of power output. If scale_fluid_usage is true, then only the amount needed to actually generate energy is consumed. max_power_output sets a hard limit on the total energy that the machine can output, even if the fluid's energy density would allow it to produce more fuel. effectivity sets how much of a fuel's energy is actually accessible to the machine.

So in other words:

• Multiply the fluid's fuel value by the effectivity to get the generator's effective energy per unit of fluid.
• To get the power output, multiply the effective fuel value times fluid_usage_per_tick to get J/tick. Multiply by 60 to get W. If max_power_output is set, then it caps the power output.
• If scale_fluid_usage is set, then fluid consumption is based on only the fluid actually needed to produce power. If it's not set, then fluid will be consumed at fluid_usage_per_tick regardless of max_power_output or load, and excess energy is wasted.

[Imperio]

A few ideas (maybe already listed) for Bob's Power:

Wind power. I think there's a separate mod for that, but I'm not seeing why there couldn't be a Bob's implmentation as well. There aren't that many ways of making energy without pollution, and I think this is quite obvious choice in respect to reality.
The other mod simply makes the wind mills produce a random amount of energy, but I think there should be some deeper mechanics. My ideas:
- Make a hidden variable "wind_speed", which changes periodically, reaching higher values with less frequency
- Make 3 tiers of windmills: small (~500kW), medium (~1MW), large (~3MW)
- Each windmill operates at a certain wind speed area
- Cut-in speed: the wind speed at which the blades of the mill start to turn, producing any energy at all
- Rating speed: the wind speed at which the wind mill produces maximum (rated) power
- Cut-off speed: the speed at which the mill is passively turned off, to prevent too high mechanical stress on the blades
- The larger the mill, the larger each of these values is. Below the cut-in rating, the mill doesn't generate anything. The increase in output between cut-in and rating can probably be linear. Output between rating and cut-off remains constant. At speeds above cut-off, the production drops quickly to zero.
- The wind_speed variable can probably be global (the wind speed is the same in the entire region), unless you'd like to model e.g. each chunk independently
- The joke: wind mills require a lot of space. I'm thinking the small could be something like 3x3, medium 5x5 and large 7x7, to compensate for "free" electricity
This functionality would reflect the real world pretty well while being fairly straightforward to implement.

Hydrogen burners / Fuel cells. Currently I tend to vent hydrogen right in the atmosphere to make more room for oxygen production, while in the real world, hydrogen is very valuable. The reason for this is that hydrogen has a high heating value, and burns clean (burning only produces H2O). But also because hydrogen can be used in fuel cells to produce electricity directly, again with only H2O produced. However they are expensive and require a lot of hydrogen.

In general, I think Electrolysis should be much more energy intensive, and oxygen should be made primarily with separation from air. Late game deuterium reactors could be remade into producing H2 in heat exchangers, which would enable a hydrogen-based economy, again mirroring real life.

Methane / natural gas. This could be generated in worldgen in patches like crude oil. The gas would be pumped with gas pumps as natura gas, go through some processing to produce methane (CH4), which could be used in liquid burners, or specifically made gas turbines. Gas turbines require some initial electricity to compress the input air, after which gas is injected and burned. The hot, high-pressure flue gas stream is then directed into a turbine, producing net energy from the setup. Gas turbines produce less pollution for the same amount of energy produced compared to oil and coal.

The full benefit comes however, if used in a combined cycle. In the real world, the flue gases exiting the turbine have temperatures well over 1000 K. This excess energy is used in a waste heat recovery cycle, with normal steam turbines. I think in the terms of Factorio, this could be mimiced with a heat exchanger.

Methane is also used in industrial hydrogen production, giving synergy to the previous point.

t. Energy engineer

[bobingabout]

Wind power.

I was looking into how wind currently works in the base game.
Each surface does actually have a wind direction and a wind speed... and although the direction changes, the speed is constant and never changes.
It is possible that mods could change the wind speed, but, it was at this point I basically decided that wind power was pointless.

Hydrogen burners / Fuel cells.

Anything "oil powered" can already burn hydrogen. Oil might be an ill-named thing, because it's just any "Fluid with fuel value" AKA Combustible fluids that power these entities.

I was however considering (but haven't implemented yet) a new set of fuel items, that are basically burnable barrels/canisters that return the empty container after being burned. would mostly be used in alternate versions of vehicles.

Methane / natural gas.

the revamp mod adds sour gas as an intermediate phase to oil processing to get petroleum gas. In theory, I could add a node where you can mine gasses such as sour gas (as close to natural gas that I'd go), but I don't really want to add Methane or natural gas as a new fluid.