how many chem plants would you use...?

Don't know how to use a machine? Looking for efficient setups? Stuck in a mission?
Post Reply
llVIU
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2019 9:19 pm
Contact:

how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by llVIU »

I'm making some blueprints, one has 38 oil rafineries with speed module 3 which is the max possible from one single oil pipe input.

I'm wondering what kind of ratio do you guys use when setting up the chem plants that convert heavy oil to light oil and light oil to petrolium gas.

It's not really something that you can calculate by ratio. To give you an idea, I'd generally just use lots of petrolium gas on plastic bars (red cards and lightweight material), sulphur for blue pots and batteries (don't generally mine uranium). Heavy oil only for blue belts and electric engines. Light oil and (if high quantity) petrolium gas for solid fuel, which helps to make rocket fuel for rockets, for science packs.

tl;dr: for each 10 oil rafineries, 5 ish chem plants turning heavy oil to light, and another 5 turning light into petrolium gas. With pumps to turn on and off automatically as required, of course.

Serenity
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 1000
Joined: Fri Apr 15, 2016 6:16 am
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by Serenity »

llVIU wrote:
Fri Aug 30, 2019 4:02 pm
I'm making some blueprints, one has 38 oil rafineries with speed module 3
You should use productivity modules in the refineries and chem plants and speed beacons around them
It's not really something that you can calculate by ratio.
There are tools that calculate it for you. For example 4 blue belts of plastics and 1 chem plant for lube:
https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... ricant:f:1

Also depends on which game version you're using

It might also not be a bad idea to make independent plants for plastics and rocket fuel. That way they don't compete with each other for resources.

llVIU
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2019 9:19 pm
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by llVIU »

no because those things fluctuate too much, one game I might be using lots of red cards, in another game I might not.

It might be better to use beacons and efficiency modules but I don't see crude oil being THAT valuable. Those are generally for higher end products that have costed a lot of resources along the way like lightweight material, rocket module, blue cards. Call it a personal preference.

Serenity
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 1000
Joined: Fri Apr 15, 2016 6:16 am
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by Serenity »

llVIU wrote:
Fri Aug 30, 2019 4:21 pm
no because those things fluctuate too much, one game I might be using lots of red cards, in another game I might not.
Then you adjust the factors size depending on your needs. What a pointless line of thought

llVIU
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2019 9:19 pm
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by llVIU »

and I'm asking *in general* what ratio would you use. Do you use 1 oil rafinery for each 1000000000000000000000 chem plants or do you use 10000000000000000000000000 oil rafineries for 1 chem plants? Or you're new to the game so you're not sure? If you aren't sure then it's ok, no need to reply, thanks anyway.

astroshak
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 597
Joined: Thu May 10, 2018 9:59 am
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by astroshak »

Honestly? I try to do the math.

AOP : 5 HO/sec, 9 LO/sec, 11 PG/sec. Cracking HO->LO is 20 HO/sec for 15 LO/sec. Cracking LO->PG is 15 LO/sec for 10 PG/sec.

Since cracking to LO is 20 HO/sec, and AOP only provides 5 HO/sec, you need one machine cracking HO->LO for every four AOP refineries.

Since cracking LO to PG takes 15/sec, you need 3 machines for every five AOP refineries, with an additional one machine for each machine cracking HO to LO.

All that assumes that the machines have a crafting speed of 1. Or, rather, that they are all the same crafting speed. And no Productivity modules in play. PM’s would throw that math off, regardless of how many Speed Beacons you used.

Since you call for 38 Refineries, you are looking at 9.5 (really, 10) HO->LO cracking machines. 3/5 of 38 is a little under 24, so you may bet by with 33 LO->PG machines, though a 34th would not be a bad thing to have. Of course, to keep up with the refineries, all of the chem plants need exactly as many SM3’s as the refineries themselves have.

If you don’t want to use SM3’s with the chem plants, you’ll need 1.5, 2, or 2.5 times the chem plants depending on how many SM3’s you have in the refineries on average.

If you want to see what you’d need for using PM3’s in the machines instead of SM3’s, simply multiply every machine’s output by 1.3 (aka 130%). YOu’d need a roughly 30% increase in the number of cracking machines to keep up with the increase in AOP refinery output, as well.

Pandrosos
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Aug 12, 2019 1:38 am
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by Pandrosos »

The most reliable approach is to provide sufficient cracking to turn all the heavy and light oil into gas, and control the cracking with the circuit network. This means that provided there is some demand for gas the refinery will not stop due to blocked outputs, and for realistic demand levels it probably won't even slow down. If you don't like circuits you might get good results using pipes and pumps to passively prioritise some uses over others.

The above gives the ratios.

llVIU
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2019 9:19 pm
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by llVIU »

I never wanted to go anywhere near oil cracking, but I admit that I've had several games where I wish I had made some blueprints ahead of time. We were low on oil but had plenty of coal. Depends on map. So would you say that it would be a good idea for me to use several advanced oil processing plants and a few backup ones that do oil cracking when they detect raw oil is low?

Astroshak thanks for the input, I did a little bit of testing and to give a very rough idea, it sounds like what you said. No modules, 40 ish oil rafineries, 10 heavy oil to light oil, 30 light oil to petrolium gas.

I'll still do some testing but honestly, the numbers seem very big. And honestly, I have to admit that this consumes far more oil than I would normally be able to provide on most maps.

I'm thinking of redesigning from scratch the blueprints and see how 3x3 productivity modules with max number of beacons would work, something like 12ish per oil rafinery, is this a good idea or would I be wasting time on something impractical?

astroshak
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 597
Joined: Thu May 10, 2018 9:59 am
Contact:

Re: how many chem plants would you use...?

Post by astroshak »

BOP takes 100 Crude Oil and returns 45 Petroleum Gas.

AOP takes that same 100 Crude Oil and returns 25 Heavy Oil, 45 Light Oil, and 55 Petroleum Gas.

It is almost a given that you will run out of need for HO (Lube) and LO (Solid Fuel) before you run out of need for PG (Sulfur, Sulfuric Acid, Plastic). Therefore, you will need to get involved in Cracking oils down towards PG.

The only real question is, does your map have more Oil or more Coal on it? Can you get by with just the Pumpjacks supplying Crude, to be turned into other oil-based materials, or do you need to supplement the Crude Oil with Coal Liquifaction?

Post Reply

Return to “Gameplay Help”