Liquid fuel furnaces (before renewables or nuclear) and fuel changes.

[Milenier]

TL;DR

dislike how you need to fuel your furnaces with solid fuel? let's reinvent fossil fuels!

What ?

This is changed mainly targeted at furnaces, but this change would affect vehicles aswell.

Liquid fuel furnaces (crude oil). very fast and based on fuel eko friendlier (furnace with base speed of 3, but at comparably little pollution). The furnaces are pipes for other next to furnaces (similar to uranium mining).
Solid fuel will be removed and rocket fuel is made directly from flammable chemicals (light oil and heavy oil, light oil, light oil and petroleum gas). vehicles can use barrels of flammables as fuel and would implement gas tank mechanic (even for coal, wood), this would work similarly for trains (train can be refueled using pumps).

Why ?

at current moment the transition from fueled furnaces is directly to electric. which uses double the energy consumption. which in return requires solid power grid expansion. the liquid fuel furnaces could be intermedaite move before upgrading to electric and then to modular electric smelting.
the second being rocket fuel is made out of solid fuel and light oil and i think that could be removed in favor of liquid fuels (this would ulimately remove even nuclear fuel. and vehicle speed benefits based of fuel type but with different liquids).

[ssilk]

I deleted the poll, because it doesn’t make sense for suggestions like this.

I don’t think this gets ever implemented, because I don’t see the extra gameplay-value. And you can see it so: there is already the solid fuel.

Power in Factorio produces pollution and that’s also the point for the electric smelters: they can use clean power. With switching power source from coal to oil, nothing relevant is changed.

[Milenier]

I don’t think this gets ever implemented, because I don’t see the extra gameplay-value. And you can see it so: there is already the solid fuel.

Power in Factorio produces pollution and that’s also the point for the electric smelters: they can use clean power. With switching power source from coal to oil, nothing relevant is changed.

well it may be irelevant to most but i think that fuel being solely solid is a mistake. i think more variety on how to fuel our precious machines can do all the difference. if we consider that boilers could be both liquid and solid fuel, furnaces have their own liquid fuel variety and train having it's own fuel tank (maybe the possibilty of having to pump water into train to run it on coal or wood and then make it run on flammables). it makes honestly much more sense then making a PEPO (PEvný POdpalovač - solid fuel cubes) and shoving it down the fuel filler. even the rocket running on arguably solid fuel and not something like refined Kerosene (rocket fuel which Saturn V rocket used) makes me somewhat uncomfortable (and sad that we don't use all the available mechanics to construct the rocket).
IMO fuel curently in factorio feels rather underwhelming.

well i will think more about it and making a better more thought out suggestion next time.

[DarkShadow44]

IMHO that's a perfect usecase for a mod. is there a reason you think it should be in vanilla specifically?
For me oil is to valuable to burn it, so I'd completely skip those furnaces.

[ssilk]

Well, when you do such a suggestion, keep in mind, that it is quite sure, that the devs have had such thoughts already.

Especially the train running with coal and water - I’m sure that there was some discussion, but useless to search for it.

In the end Factorio is a big compromise and follows strictly the gameplay-value. Is it more fun to run trains with coal and water? Yes! But has it more gameplay-value? No, it just makes things more complicated, but doesn’t add so much gameplay. And here it also doesn’t fit into the picture, for the style of Factorio a steam-loco doesn’t fit.

[Milenier]

indeed the steam locomotive doesn't make in factorio much sense... but that's for the suggestion part. but trains having fuel tank that can use liquid fuel though makes more sense (also when we got the fluid wagon)

[ssilk]

But what is increased in gameplay-value, when you need to pump fluid into a train? You cannot have fluids in your inventory, so if you place a loco, you just need to build a pipe and pump (and power for the pump), before you can jump on and drive.

For furnaces this is similar complex: you cannot use it in the first phase of the game. It has only disadvantages.

[Milenier]

well trains can run on solid fuel. but only on coal or wood which don't have any bonus speed value. also liquid fuel furnaces are available with flammables research. and before you jump back to the "no gameplay value" consider that there is liquid fueling system already in the game. not that it is available before lategame and most of us use.
and this is not suggestion for early game it is for petrochem research (blue and purple research). this is when making modulation or even upgrading power grid for electric is well not really what you want without modules (and i honestly hold onto steel furnaces for a very long time, maybe even till nuclear power grid or rocket flights).
i guess we play the game differently.

well i will be working on making atleast mod of this... some may find it usefull