Lubricant: The only Flaw in the Fluid System.

[planetmaker]

But I still think this Lubricant issue is a recipes design problem.

On the contrary, I feel that it is a good feature, not a problem of the game / recipe design. It is one thing which needs different solutions than most other building / ressource problems in factorio. As variety adds to the attraction of a game, this is a good feature. Arguably, it is a more difficult challenge than most other items, but that's not bad design either.

So IMHO it boils down to "does the game need to follow one concept for every product or allow for additional concepts.

There currently are three methods of production (excluding manual, and ignore exact amount of input items) afaik:
method 1 (all stuff except space science and oil): input Y1 ... Y6. Output A, stop when A is in excess
method 2 (space science): Input Y1 ... Y6. Output A, but just waste A when it is in excess
method 3 (oil): Input Y1 ... Y6, Output A, B and C, and stop when any output is in excess.

Arguably there is missing the intermediate step between (1) and (3) which might act as a teaching aid (though I don't think it's needed):
method 4: Input Y1 ... Y6, Output A, B, and C and just waste when any of A, B, C is in excess
and maybe
method 5: Input Y1 ... Y6, Ouptut A, B, and C, and stop when all outputs are in excess

Consistency with only one principle of production in the eintire game would, yes, make it easier, but also reduce the game's appeal and variety to people who like to puzzle and solve problems. The latter is probably a HUGE part of factorio's player base. A game need to be able to play-through on first take without 2nd thought once you understood one principle. It's ok and appealing (and far from appalling) to stumble over oil, take a step back and wonder what you need to do to solve this issue.

[conn11]

The OP described a very specific circumstance, where there is indeed a dead end regarding lubricant production.
Where I disagree is his suggestion for solving the problem. Another recipe for lubricant, wich has to be more inefficient than the original, if the proposition is to keep the original one, would be useless in most cases. Only blue belts consume lubricant and no other petrochemical products. Anything else examplaratory flying robot frames and express splitter use petroleum gas in some form. Ergo an alternate recipe would almost only be useful in the very specific usecase the OP described. By implementing lube from PG or LO, heavy oil would become effectively optional. Not the greatest scenario, considering that with coal liquifaction a heavy oil shortage is rather unlikely. And turning on research (wich isn’t wasting anything) is an quick and easy fix. Not to mention circuited designs turning on solid fuel fired steam engines, if storage tanks are overflowing or using steam from burning LO/PG for coal liquifaction.

[leadraven]

The OP described a very specific circumstance, where there is indeed a dead end regarding lubricant production.
Where I disagree is his suggestion for solving the problem. Another recipe for lubricant, wich has to be more inefficient than the original, if the proposition is to keep the original one, would be useless in most cases. Only blue belts consume lubricant and no other petrochemical products. Anything else examplaratory flying robot frames and express splitter use petroleum gas in some form. Ergo an alternate recipe would almost only be useful in the very specific usecase the OP described. By implementing lube from PG or LO, heavy oil would become effectively optional. Not the greatest scenario, considering that with coal liquifaction a heavy oil shortage is rather unlikely. And turning on research (wich isn’t wasting anything) is an quick and easy fix. Not to mention circuited designs turning on solid fuel fired steam engines, if storage tanks are overflowing or using steam from burning LO/PG for coal liquifaction.

Let's look at Solid Fuel production :
1) LO. Main, most efficient recipe.
2) PG. Inefficient alternative that allows to balance production and prevent deadlocks.
3) HO. Absolutely useless since Basic Oil Processing redesign.

[conn11]

The OP described a very specific circumstance, where there is indeed a dead end regarding lubricant production.
Where I disagree is his suggestion for solving the problem. Another recipe for lubricant, wich has to be more inefficient than the original, if the proposition is to keep the original one, would be useless in most cases. Only blue belts consume lubricant and no other petrochemical products. Anything else examplaratory flying robot frames and express splitter use petroleum gas in some form. Ergo an alternate recipe would almost only be useful in the very specific usecase the OP described. By implementing lube from PG or LO, heavy oil would become effectively optional. Not the greatest scenario, considering that with coal liquifaction a heavy oil shortage is rather unlikely. And turning on research (wich isn’t wasting anything) is an quick and easy fix. Not to mention circuited designs turning on solid fuel fired steam engines, if storage tanks are overflowing or using steam from burning LO/PG for coal liquifaction.

Let's look at Solid Fuel production :
1) LO. Main, most efficient recipe.
2) PG. Inefficient alternative that allows to balance production and prevent deadlocks.
3) HO. Absolutely useless since Basic Oil Processing redesign.

Agreed. Leaving HO only as basis for lube production. Implementing an alternate pathway to that, would make HO effectively a byproduct to be mainly cracked into LO and PG.

[JackTheSpades]

Well, I feel like by now the discussion is just running in circles. It boils down to whether or not you see the enforced side products as a problem or not.
I will reiterate that personally have ways of dealing with it. So thanks for all the suggestions but I'm fine. I was just pointing out that I thought this shouldn't be a thing in the first place. Some agree, some don't.

It comes down to what the devs think on this.

But just one last time, I want to mention something:

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.

Perhaps that was just poor wording, but it does make it seem like you missed what my end goal was all along. I asked if it wouldn't be better to add a second recipe that was worse to use than heavy oil. I never stated that we should get rid of it.

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.

Literally all of these points already came up in the discussion before. Which is also why I kinda wanna call the discussion quits and just leave it to the devs as I'm just stuck repeating myself to people making the same suggestions but one last time:
- (tanks:) this is manual interaction which kinda goes against the point of automating everything. It's obviously the quickest and easiest solution otherwise.
- (use products:) as mentioned before, it just seems odd that lubricant be the only one forcing this on you. And you still have to keep on manually adding storage if you can't use up the side products fast enough
- (circuit network:) Completely irrelevant. If one of your tanks for light oil or petroleum is full you can't produce new heavy oil. No matter how smart your circuit condition, if you're out of heavy oil and full on one of the others that's it.

But there is Flare Stack, wich exists since 0.13 and includes a flare stack for burning fluids and an incinerators for burning solids.

Oh, I was wondering if a thing like this existed. Thanks for linking it.

---

I agree that factorio has (and should remain to have) a puzzle element to it. But saying you can't produce lubricant because you are somehow not burning all the solid fuel you're creating or wasting enough plastic doesn't seem to be a good answer to me.
Factorio wouldn't be "solved" by providing an alternative in addition to the heavy oil recipe. Just something to provide a loop / fallback like all the other oil products (see first post).
The existence of recipes like 20 petroleum for solid fuel and 20 heavy oil for solid fuel (in addition to the more efficient 10 light oil for solid fuel) leads me to believe that the devs generally share this notion that side products shouldn't be enforced.

Heavy Oil to solid fuel especially is a completely redundant recipe as you could just crack it and use light oil instead which would give you +10 solid fuel more than if you had converted it directly. Now you might say "That's part of factorios charm. You gotta figure out the best way to go about it" And... I 100% agree... but I do hope that all who thought along the lines of what I just wrote would be hypocritical to say an alternate recipe for lubrication would remove the puzzle aspect or somehow break the otherwise perfect oil-balance.
From where I stand, the inflexibility and potential deadlock of lubricant and the redundancy of 2 recipes for solid fuel are things that stand in direct contrast to each other. You can't sing praise for both.

All the people who advocate that lubricant is the way it is to make the game more challenging / add a puzzle element should also be the ones up in arms to get rid of the additional two recipes for solid fuel.
Please do realize that this entire discussion could be used verbatim in a scenario in which solid fuel from petroleum didn't exist and you could only use light oil:
"Add more tanks or destroy some of the old ones to replace them"
"If you can't produce light/heavy oil because your petroleum tank is full, just make more plastic/sulfur. You're gonna need it later anyway."
"Use circuit conditions to only crack your light oil into petroleum if you have enough of it"

THIS People, this is my main concern here. I might not even had brought this up if not for the 3 different solid fuel recipes setting a precedent.
So please, PLEASE. If you want to continue this discussion, stop bringing up points on how to deal with the excess products. I get it. We get it. But this was never about how to deal with them in the first place.

[JackTheSpades]

(I hadn't realized there was already a 3rd page on the thread, sorry for the double post but I wanna reply to these as well).

Let's look at Solid Fuel production :
1) LO. Main, most efficient recipe.
2) PG. Inefficient alternative that allows to balance production and prevent deadlocks.
3) HO. Absolutely useless since Basic Oil Processing redesign.

Agreed. Leaving HO only as basis for lube production. Implementing an alternate pathway to that, would make HO effectively a byproduct to be mainly cracked into LO and PG.

as well as:

By implementing lube from PG or LO, heavy oil would become effectively optional.

To be clear, I don't want the second/new recipe to involve PG or LO as I think that would be too convenient as well as making HO obsolete.
In all my previous examples I used crude oil as an example to use. Seeing as the inability to produce HO implies and abundance of either PG or LO you might as well repurpose the previous stage.
But adding a second pathway isn't automatically gonna make the path clear. New players will still have to puzzle this out. When I started out, blue belts and lubricant were the least of my concerns but I still couldn't get my refinery to keep on running because I was always full on that nasty HO and LO as I was only using PG for plastic even though cracking would have been an option.
Maybe that's just me but I don't think alternatives are gonna make life too easy for new players. Rather it gives them more stuff to play around with.

[conn11]

(I hadn't realized there was already a 3rd page on the thread, sorry for the double post but I wanna reply to these as well).

Let's look at Solid Fuel production :
1) LO. Main, most efficient recipe.
2) PG. Inefficient alternative that allows to balance production and prevent deadlocks.
3) HO. Absolutely useless since Basic Oil Processing redesign.

Agreed. Leaving HO only as basis for lube production. Implementing an alternate pathway to that, would make HO effectively a byproduct to be mainly cracked into LO and PG.

as well as:

By implementing lube from PG or LO, heavy oil would become effectively optional.

To be clear, I don't want the second/new recipe to involve PG or LO as I think that would be too convenient as well as making HO obsolete.
In all my previous examples I used crude oil as an example to use. Seeing as the inability to produce HO implies and abundance of either PG or LO you might as well repurpose the previous stage.
But adding a second pathway isn't automatically gonna make the path clear. New players will still have to puzzle this out. When I started out, blue belts and lubricant were the least of my concerns but I still couldn't get my refinery to keep on running because I was always full on that nasty HO and LO as I was only using PG for plastic even though cracking would have been an option.
Maybe that's just me but I don't think alternatives are gonna make life too easy for new players. Rather it gives them more stuff to play around with.

Using crude oil (CO) wouldn’t change the main issue. PG is used for most products, LO for solid fuel and rocket fuel. You can easily power a base with nuclear or even more UPS-friendly solar, so balancing LO, only needed for space science is quite easy. Giving any recipe to Lubricant not including HO is making HO completely bypassable and in consequence as demonstrated above LO effectively too.
With infinite oil, easy to becon and Module up pump jacks the CO-> Lube would be pretty convenient, even if it was made massively inefficient. Furthermore the need for balancing setups, a minuscule amount LO excluded, would largely vanquish because cracking would be that much easier.
Same for coal liquefaction, why build a more or less complicated setup if one can get lubricant that much easier from CO?

With new BOP only yielding PG new players would extract lubricant from crude rather than messing around with the complicated AOP. Steam can be generated easily enough with coal, so AOP would practically be this awkward thing only to generate rocket fuel, with cracking the majority of products to PG.

IMO not worth the imbalance. Your example is way to specific for that.
And as written before, I don’t see anything wrong with rebalancing petrochemicals with research. You could even automate this, by auto-launching rockets if LO or PG storage becomes two crowded.

[coppercoil]

The existence of recipes like 20 petroleum for solid fuel and 20 heavy oil for solid fuel (in addition to the more efficient 10 light oil for solid fuel) leads me to believe that the devs generally share this notion that side products shouldn't be enforced.

I think you made a guess about multiple solid fuel recipes and started to extrapolate it, and went way too far. I think those recipes were just copypasted twice (just because they could) without any philosophy. The fact redundant recipes exist doesn't mean there are hidden intentions arround it.

So you took assumptions and built some expectations on it. I say assumptions were wrong and you are dissapointed now.

[ssilk]

- (circuit network:) Completely irrelevant. If one of your tanks for light oil or petroleum is full you can't produce new heavy oil. No matter how smart your circuit condition, if you're out of heavy oil and full on one of the others that's it.
...
So please, PLEASE. If you want to continue this discussion, stop bringing up points on how to deal with the excess products. I get it. We get it. But this was never about how to deal with them in the first place.

But that’s exactly the point: if you regulate the flow of heavy/light oil cracking it’s not possible that heavy oil goes out. You will produce always much more heavy oil than you could use.
Otherwise you need to fix this by hand: add a tank, produce solid fuel... Puzzle not solved.
But is that really such a problem? I know that it took me three games on how to control the flow, but even then was far from perfection. Nowadays this is a no-brainer: two pumps, two tanks, two circuits, conditions set. No more quest anymore...

As I understood the problem for you is, that it feels like broken game. But if Factorio would give you a hint in this situation (condition for example: enough crude, no heavy oil, no lubricant, lubricant-dependent production goes down), how you can fix this now and in future, would that be enough?

[Oktokolo]

But that’s exactly the point: if you regulate the flow of heavy/light oil cracking it’s not possible that heavy oil goes out.

As i understand the problem, there is no science going on (maybe waiting for rocket science being build), power production is already post burner tech, and either upgrading the main bus or new projects demand a huge amount of blue belts.
As there is almost no demand for solid fuel and only a tiny demand for plastics, cracking already stopped completely, but heavy oil still runs out because the blue belts need shittons of lubricant.
It can happen. Multiple players wrote over the years that it happened to them.
It still isn't a big deal because you can always build some solid-fuel-based smelting (everything needs iron plates) and prioritize it if heavy oil runs low. Or use the flare stacks mod. Or fill chests with solid fuel and nuke them...

But i too feel, that the game misses waste management. And i too see that as a flaw (although it is one that is easily fixed by mods and also becomes real obvious only if playing with mods introducing more byproducts).

[coppercoil]

As there is almost no demand for solid fuel and only a tiny demand for plastics, cracking already stopped completely, but heavy oil still runs out because the blue belts need shittons of lubricant.

Why don't you produce science bottles? There always are some tech to boost.
If you don't want to produce something, that means your plans do not meet Factorio complexity. Players are forced to solve various puzzles, and this is why I love Factorio.
If you want to reduce difficulty, there are mods for every taste. Vanilla shouldn't be easy, you are not allowed to do everything you want, unless you accommodate. You wrote "It can happen". Challenges will happen, this is by desing.

By the way, if you know you will need lots of blue belt, start producing it in advace once Logistic 3 has researched. I have stockpiled approx hundred chests full of belts. There also are other items I produce in advance because I know I will need them later. I have learned from previous games.

[JackTheSpades]

I think you made a guess about multiple solid fuel recipes and started to extrapolate it, and went way too far. I think those recipes were just copypasted twice (just because they could) without any philosophy.

Sure, I might be wrong about their entire thought process... but your suggestion also implies that no real thought went into it either so why are we even having this balancing discussion if recipes are added willy-nilly.

As I understood the problem for you is, that it feels like broken game.

Ah. No. I wouldn't call it broken by a long shot. It's more a... questionable choice. Hence I'm here... questioning it.
My point is that it's possible to only use lubricant from your oil processing for a while by focusing on blue belts. Maybe that's a niche case but most games undergo testing to avoid even the most niche of deadlocks.
If you know about it, it's easy enough to avoid really. I get that. I just thought it was a bit odd, perhaps an unintentional mistake or oversight, that you can run out of lubricant with no fallback mechanism other than using up some PG or LO to free up production of HO again.

[ptx0]

I think you made a guess about multiple solid fuel recipes and started to extrapolate it, and went way too far. I think those recipes were just copypasted twice (just because they could) without any philosophy.

Sure, I might be wrong about their entire thought process... but your suggestion also implies that no real thought went into it either so why are we even having this balancing discussion if recipes are added willy-nilly.

As I understood the problem for you is, that it feels like broken game.

Ah. No. I wouldn't call it broken by a long shot. It's more a... questionable choice. Hence I'm here... questioning it.
My point is that it's possible to only use lubricant from your oil processing for a while by focusing on blue belts. Maybe that's a niche case but most games undergo testing to avoid even the most niche of deadlocks.
If you know about it, it's easy enough to avoid really. I get that. I just thought it was a bit odd, perhaps an unintentional mistake or oversight, that you can run out of lubricant with no fallback mechanism other than using up some PG or LO to free up production of HO again.

naw, yellow (utility) science uses robot frames and electric engines, which require lubricant. you should download some megabase save files and see how they handle lubricant production, because it's really an end-game requirement.

[Freddie Chopin]

Why don't you produce science bottles? There always are some tech to boost.

Maybe science production is not ready because... completing it needs more belts? Please don't suggest stockpiling science bottles in boxes...

I don't get it - the change proposed by the OP is really simple and it has an existing precedent in the game (multiple recipes for solid fuel). Almost everyone tries to argue that adding yet another recipe for lubricant would almost break the game completely in who-knows-how-many-ways. People also argue that you don't need that much lubricant anyway, but in this case I would say that ~50% of craftable items can be just deleted, because they are used so rarely.

The most funny argument is that adding another recipe for lubricant would make heavy oil completely useless. Well - I hope that people just don't read what the OP clearly stated and jump to conclusions too quickly... I don't think that a recipe which would increase the "raw cost" of lubricant - say - tenfold would be so interesting to just skip heavy oil altogether. If 10x cost increase is still too little, make it a hundred. Or a thousand. Or maybe a very costly "inverse cracking" process, which would allow turning PG into LO and LO into HO.

[coppercoil]

Maybe science production is not ready because... completing it needs more belts? Please don't suggest stockpiling science bottles in boxes...

Then complete it in red belts. Please don't say red belts are not cool enough.

You can find so many solutions here. The problem is you don't want to solve your challenges. You want another Factorio recipe to solve them for you.

I guess this is because you don't think HO issue is a fun challenge. Once Vanila looks not so good for you, why don't you get some mods?

[ptx0]

Maybe science production is not ready because... completing it needs more belts? Please don't suggest stockpiling science bottles in boxes...

Then complete it in red belts. Please don't say red belts are not cool enough.

You can find so many solutions here. The problem is you don't want to solve your challenges. You want another Factorio recipe to solve them for you.

I guess this is because you don't think HO issue is a fun challenge. Once Vanila looks not so good for you, why don't you get some mods?

yeah i think an experience with Angels Bioprocessing and Angels Petrochemicals should be mandatory for anyone complaining about base game oil mechanics.

[ptx0]

this whole problem initially came to my attention because one of my (early and small) outposts had exhausted it's resources so I moved it and made a new, way bigger one

there's the rub, really. you built too big, too fast. in real life this has caused companies and countries to fall.

perhaps you should have just moved it.

[JackTheSpades]

naw, yellow (utility) science uses robot frames and electric engines, which require lubricant. you should download some megabase save files and see how they handle lubricant production, because it's really an end-game requirement.

Utility Science also requires plastic (for red circuits and low density structures) as well as sulfur for blue circuits. A.k.a. PG products thus freeing up space for your refineries to work again.

You can find so many solutions here. The problem is you don't want to solve your challenges. You want another Factorio recipe to solve them for you.
I guess this is because you don't think HO issue is a fun challenge. Once Vanila looks not so good for you, why don't you get some mods?

Yes. YES. There are TONS of solutions. And people keep on telling me more solutions which I don't need. I solved this about 10 minutes after realizing I had a problem. Me managing my lubricant production is not what this entire post is about.
And after solving my problem I pondered for a moment. "Hm.. how come this is the only one with no fallback? How come this is the only one where I can't loop other oil productions around to make up for the shortcomings. Is this intentional? Maybe I should bring it up in the suggestion thread."

But no.
People just keep on hamping on about what I should do. "Just make extra solid fuel" or whatever. When finding a solution was never what this thread was suppose to be about.
A lot of people say it's an intentional puzzle design and all I wanna ask is "Is it though?". I have fun designing these kind of perfectly balanced systems that use more or less exactly the number of assembly machines and modules needed to meet my requirements. Oil processing is a fun topic in and for itself to tackle.

My entire thought process behind this thread is just "Hey, lubricant is kinda odd compared to all the other recipes. Is this intentional? If not maybe fix it with a second recipe."
Mods aren't the answer because if there is a "flaw" in the game you don't rely on third party add ons to fix those, do you?
Now if the devs come out and say "No, this is a totally intentional design bottleneck. You gotta figure it out". Than that's that. End of discussion. Who am I to tell them what's right or not. I'm just here bringing it to attention because it might have been an oversight. Because to me it feels like one.

Yes, my case on how to run out of lubricant is very niche... but that shouldn't be the deciding factor on whether it's a problem or not. If you are hired to test a game and get it to crash under very specific circumstances that "probably" won't happen in a normal playthrough... the game developers still probably want to know about that and fix it.

[ptx0]

Now if the devs come out and say "No, this is a totally intentional design bottleneck. You gotta figure it out". Than that's that. End of discussion. Who am I to tell them what's right or not. I'm just here bringing it to attention because it might have been an oversight. Because to me it feels like one.

they have it in the game, don't they? isn't that the answer? they added advanced oil processing fairly late in the game; assume they knew they wanted this.

[jodokus31]

My entire thought process behind this thread is just "Hey, lubricant is kinda odd compared to all the other recipes. Is this intentional? If not maybe fix it with a second recipe."

While following the FFF Threads for the Oil change happened in 17.60 i remember, that the lubricant "issue" is known and accepted by the devs. Before the oil change, there were several other ways to get a deadlock. The removal of this difficulty was very controversial and so would be this one. Maybe you can search those topics for answers...