Lubricant: The only Flaw in the Fluid System.

[leadraven]

IMHO the required balancing of oil consumption is one of the challenges which would reduce the difficulty of the game a lot if they were removed. Probably everyone was at least once in the beginning at a point where s/he found out that refineries ceased to work as there was an overload on one of the oils. But I like it. It's a challenge, not a hassle. It makes oil different in that you cannot simply stamp a blueprint for every product and be done, no matter any ratios of in- and output.

My opinion is, that this "problem" is a certain kind of puzzle, which can be solved by balancing and prioritizing usage of excess by-products.
Not a flaw, but a small example in an not so crucial area of what could be done to make the game more challenging.

Looks like you really don't get the point. Of course everyone loves oil processing puzzle, chemical products balancing, etc. But lubricant shortage isn't a puzzle. It is potentially unavoidable deadlock. Current tools allow to minimize chances of this deadlock, but it is always potentially possible. And we hate it)
My current solution is : convert excess gas into solid fuel, and move it into isolated power plant with useless radar (or beacon) array. Improvisational gas burner.

[mrvn]

I didn't want to replace my electric furnaces with stone ones just so I could burn my solid fuel or something.

So it's not so much that there is no way out but that you simply don't like it.

You can also put solid fuel into boilers to make the power needed for, well, everything. Or use the solid fuel a train fuel.


So I fail to see a problem. There are ways out. Unless you make more solid fuel as waste product of lubricant than you can burn to generate power, which I doubt.

[jodokus31]

Looks like you really don't get the point. Of course everyone loves oil processing puzzle, chemical products balancing, etc. But lubricant shortage isn't a puzzle. It is potentially unavoidable deadlock. Current tools allow to minimize chances of this deadlock, but it is always potentially possible. And we hate it)
My current solution is : convert excess gas into solid fuel, and move it into isolated power plant with useless radar (or beacon) array. Improvisational gas burner.

The deadlock is avoidable, because in the long run, you always consume far more petroleum than heavy oil. That's the design.
Of course, that has to be considered, if you have isolated outputs, which change the balance or if you have time frames, where you only produce blue belts.

[mrvn]

Looks like you really don't get the point. Of course everyone loves oil processing puzzle, chemical products balancing, etc. But lubricant shortage isn't a puzzle. It is potentially unavoidable deadlock. Current tools allow to minimize chances of this deadlock, but it is always potentially possible. And we hate it)
My current solution is : convert excess gas into solid fuel, and move it into isolated power plant with useless radar (or beacon) array. Improvisational gas burner.

The deadlock is avoidable, because in the long run, you always consume far more petroleum than heavy oil. That's the design.
Of course, that has to be considered, if you have isolated outputs, which change the balance or if you have time frames, where you only produce blue belts.

But even then you still need power. And power can consume light oil / petroleum. So still no deadlock.

As I see it the lubricant puzzle is simply bigger than the light oil / petroleum puzzle.

[planetmaker]

Looks like you really don't get the point. Of course everyone loves oil processing puzzle, chemical products balancing, etc. But lubricant shortage isn't a puzzle. It is potentially unavoidable deadlock. Current tools allow to minimize chances of this deadlock, but it is always potentially possible. And we hate it)
My current solution is : convert excess gas into solid fuel, and move it into isolated power plant with useless radar (or beacon) array. Improvisational gas burner.

The deadlock is avoidable, because in the long run, you always consume far more petroleum than heavy oil. That's the design.
Of course, that has to be considered, if you have isolated outputs, which change the balance or if you have time frames, where you only produce blue belts.

But even then you still need power. And power can consume light oil / petroleum. So still no deadlock.

As I see it the lubricant puzzle is simply bigger than the light oil / petroleum puzzle.

Exactly this. Well phrased.

[varundevan]

I didn't want to replace my electric furnaces with stone ones just so I could burn my solid fuel or something.

So it's not so much that there is no way out but that you simply don't like it.

You can also put solid fuel into boilers to make the power needed for, well, everything. Or use the solid fuel a train fuel.


So I fail to see a problem. There are ways out. Unless you make more solid fuel as waste product of lubricant than you can burn to generate power, which I doubt.

There is no problem for the gameplay ,
yes , there are ways to use solid fuel.
but after nuclear fuel , before rocket , with all electric furnace (with only trains consuming fuel) i had to run there many times. to add a tank
as it is my first game , i don't even know what rocket needs, and never looked until i came to that point

There are some people who play to create a build that works efficiently.
so,
whatever the product i use from the fluid system at whatever rate, there should be a way to build (no matter how complex it is) to balance out the by products of refinery.
this is what the requested suggestion is i believe

[planetmaker]

so, whatever the product i use from the fluid system at whatever rate, there should be a way to build (no matter how complex it is) to balance out the by products of refinery.
this is what the requested suggestion is i believe

And exactly that is asking "make refinery usage easier, I don't want to think about a balanced use of its outputs"; in essence it simplifies refinery usage drastically down to the usual no-brainer where you just provide some inputs in whatever quantities and ratios and you get a permanent result (and where you only need to think about ratios when you want to get something more efficient).

[mrvn]

I didn't want to replace my electric furnaces with stone ones just so I could burn my solid fuel or something.

So it's not so much that there is no way out but that you simply don't like it.

You can also put solid fuel into boilers to make the power needed for, well, everything. Or use the solid fuel a train fuel.


So I fail to see a problem. There are ways out. Unless you make more solid fuel as waste product of lubricant than you can burn to generate power, which I doubt.

There is no problem for the gameplay ,
yes , there are ways to use solid fuel.
but after nuclear fuel , before rocket , with all electric furnace (with only trains consuming fuel) i had to run there many times. to add a tank
as it is my first game , i don't even know what rocket needs, and never looked until i came to that point

There are some people who play to create a build that works efficiently.
so,
whatever the product i use from the fluid system at whatever rate, there should be a way to build (no matter how complex it is) to balance out the by products of refinery.
this is what the requested suggestion is i believe

And balancing between solar / nuclear and solid fuel for electricity is the mechanism you can use.

[steinio]

Solid fuel instead of coal for plastic and explosives *cough*

[varundevan]

Solid fuel instead of coal for plastic and explosives *cough*

until now , i did not know that we can use solid fuel for plastic explosives

edit : i think we cannot use solid fuel instead of coal

[varundevan]

so, whatever the product i use from the fluid system at whatever rate, there should be a way to build (no matter how complex it is) to balance out the by products of refinery.
this is what the requested suggestion is i believe

And exactly that is asking "make refinery usage easier, I don't want to think about a balanced use of its outputs"; in essence it simplifies refinery usage drastically down to the usual no-brainer where you just provide some inputs in whatever quantities and ratios and you get a permanent result (and where you only need to think about ratios when you want to get something more efficient).

i agree, may be,
that probably makes it easier a little bit.
but not dead easy. i recently learned about ratios

IMO, it is hard for new gamers to find or learn about these methods, unless they make effort to learn from websites and forums.

[MEOWMI]

It's not an issue while researching as my "excess" petroleum and light oil are used thus making room for the refineries to work again (and thus producing heavy oil) but it IS an issue if my outpost is down and I have to make a new one while no tech can be researched due to said outpost being down.

You'll want to try to ensure that production never stops and the main reasoning for that isn't even the adage "time is money". As far as possible, build new things before tearing old ones down or before old ones run out. If you remove parts of your factory without already having a replacement in place, you risk running into a whole lot of issues, not limited to but including your issue, and starting to lose to biters because replacing ammo production was taking too long (someone told me they had this issue) . Sure a lot of the scenarios are unlikely, and you would be right in saying that, but they are still far far more likely than if you take said precautions.

Usually you're always dumping petroleum gas into science production and from what I understand it should easily be much greater than your consumption of heavy oil. If you really struggle with using up petroleum gas, then coal liquefaction seems like a good way to help get more heavy oil.

[JackTheSpades]

Ok, loooots of replies so I'm not gonna quote everyone. Instead:

just do this or that with your light oil / heavy oil / solid fuel

I am.
I feel like a lot of people here seem to be missing the point. I am not incapable of dealing with the excess products even while not researching. I've converted one of my smelting arrays to use fuel instead of electric where I'm dumping all of my solid fuel. If this is ever not enough, I can just make some rocket fuel in advance.
The problem isn't that I CAN'T do it, the problem (to me) is that I don't WANT TO do it or rather, I feel as though I SHOULDN'T NEED TO. It's annoying to build a smelting array with stone furnaces (without being able to use modules) just to get rid of excess products. I'm not gonna use it for electricity because it's just inferior to nuclear power.

The point, ladies and gentlemen, isn't about whether I or someone else can deal with this. It's that there shouldn't be a need to deal with it.

It's probably an intentional hurdle / puzzle element to oil processing.

See, I disagree with this.
Just because there was an alternate way to produce lubrication wouldn't magically solve oil processing for beginners. Someone brought up (perhaps appealing to nostalgia a bit) how on your first playthrough many of us have memories of the refinery not working because it's filled up on some other fluid. But that's not because lubricant is a super secret formula that I had to figure out. It's because I was a new player and had no idea what I was gonna need later down the road.
The main reason I disagree though is because it is literally the only item in the entire game that comes with this potential deadlock / excess production scenario. If there were others, say if you could only make solid fuel from light oil without the fallback of having it made from petroleum, then there could be a case made for an intentional difficulty.
But with lubricant being the odd one out it just seems like an unintentional hurdle. Nothing else, not in oil processing or even nuclear power requires the management of excess products. Sure, with nuclear stuff you have to dig up a lot at first to get your 40 U-235 but once you have those, you never ever have to worry about getting too much U-238 again.

The point is that for an intentional puzzle element it's too odd to be the only one. Literally the only one of it's kind in the game.

[netmand]

The point is that for an intentional puzzle element it's too odd to be the only one. Literally the only one of it's kind in the game.

Complaining that you have an over-abundance of petroleum gas and light oil because you're trying to make a large quantity of express belts is poor planning to me.

My point is not one of what to do at the time you have excess whatever; it's that you need to plan your factory's item production. If you are going express item heavy; You need to account for the by-products. This is the game, this is Factorio. It's not flawless, but I'm not convinced by your arguments that lubricant is flawed.

If the option of making lubricant out of anything else is added, then they might as well remove Heavy Oil from the game because really it has no other use. There are a cadre of people here that watch oil development and jump out of the woodwork whenever they simplify it. Changes to oil production and recipes needs to be tread very carefully lest we have another 17.60 revolt.

Some people like unique parts of the game, like puzzles with many unique elements. I don't know, but I don't think your observation of it being odd sufficiently supports your idea to change the game.

[ptx0]

It is potentially unavoidable

potentially unavoidable translates into "entirely avoidable".

[ptx0]

I didn't want to replace my electric furnaces with stone ones just so I could burn my solid fuel or something.

So it's not so much that there is no way out but that you simply don't like it.

You can also put solid fuel into boilers to make the power needed for, well, everything. Or use the solid fuel a train fuel.


So I fail to see a problem. There are ways out. Unless you make more solid fuel as waste product of lubricant than you can burn to generate power, which I doubt.

more speed mods and less prod/efficiency mods and i'm sure you'll never run out of excuses because you'll need more power than you create.

[varundevan]

I didn't want to replace my electric furnaces with stone ones just so I could burn my solid fuel or something.

So it's not so much that there is no way out but that you simply don't like it.

You can also put solid fuel into boilers to make the power needed for, well, everything. Or use the solid fuel a train fuel.


So I fail to see a problem. There are ways out. Unless you make more solid fuel as waste product of lubricant than you can burn to generate power, which I doubt.

There is no problem for the gameplay ,
yes , there are ways to use solid fuel.
but after nuclear fuel , before rocket , with all electric furnace (with only trains consuming fuel) i had to run there many times. to add a tank
as it is my first game , i don't even know what rocket needs, and never looked until i came to that point

There are some people who play to create a build that works efficiently.
so,
whatever the product i use from the fluid system at whatever rate, there should be a way to build (no matter how complex it is) to balance out the by products of refinery.
this is what the requested suggestion is i believe

And balancing between solar / nuclear and solid fuel for electricity is the mechanism you can use.

can you share any methods / examples for that, if possible

[Oktokolo]

As nobody seems to have mentioned it already: Humans traditionally solved the unused byproduct problem by just burning or dumping the undesired "waste" products.
Factorio devs seem to not like the concept of wasting stuff (apart from pumping ammunition into biters to make both magically disappear).
But there is Flare Stack, wich exists since 0.13 and includes a flare stack for burning fluids and an incinerators for burning solids.

[ssilk]

I don’t know if this still works, but since 0.15 the steam engine could use any fluid for making power. That was the preferred way to get rid of petro.

I also don’t see the problem here. It’s definitely a puzzle: how can I get enough lubricant? You soon come to the point that you need to keep the refineries running to get enough.

And then it gets simple:
- more tanks (simple strategy: build tank, fill it, destruct it, repeat)
- use more oil products, simplest way by burning solid fuel. Or just storing it, because you will need plenty later. Or see above if that’s still working.
- the more advanced strategies: use circuit network and pumps to control the flow. Basically: do not use all heavy oil and convert the heavy -> light -> petro only when there is too much of one, never all.

There is really no deadlock, just players own limitation.

[leadraven]

As nobody seems to have mentioned it already: Humans traditionally solved the unused byproduct problem by just burning or dumping the undesired "waste" products.
Factorio devs seem to not like the concept of wasting stuff (apart from pumping ammunition into biters to make both magically disappear).
But there is Flare Stack, wich exists since 0.13 and includes a flare stack for burning fluids and an incinerators for burning solids.

As I already mentioned, isolated Power Plant with radar array can burn excess fuel.
But I still think this Lubricant issue is a recipes design problem.