Anyone use barrels?

[blazespinnaker]

Additionally, the scanning feature of radars is useful in another way. Biter expansions are on a global cooldown. But biter expansions can only happen on explored map areas. If you explore a 4x larger area of the map then you would also dilute the probabilities of biter expansions happening near your factory by ~4x

Yeah, though I had to find the oil patch. I tried to be optimal about it, but I cranked resource frequency to zero, so I ended up doing a lot of exploring.

I replied to all the DW marathon related stuff from you, jdokus and Jim in this thread viewtopic.php?p=531222#p531222

[4xel]

Back on topic, I am slowly starting to prepare a default setting speedrun, and I am contemplating the idea of using barrel fed flamethrowers for outpost defense (with the idea of feeding them only once), similar to Blaze's use of them in deathworld.

[SuicideJunkie]

Re: Radar
I like to put Radar+small power pole+solar panel as a standalone unit.
As long as the power is non-zero you can get vision around the radar, and it slowly explores during the day. Night is a problem but the pitch black is pretty short, and the pollution is zero.

I used barrels for all my oil processing in one game where my plan was for maximum cramming and organically grown spaghetti. I'd ended up with not enough room for pipes. So instead I had a belt carrying crude and empty barrels mostly underground through the warren, and mixed product barrels back on a sushi belt with logic wire to control it.

My SpaceEx spaceships also make use of barrels for the storage density. Acid for mines, and soon to come antimatter and coolant.
All the oily fluids are shot into orbit in barrels via cannon as well. Water gets to travel as ice chunks now, but used to be barrelled too.

Anywhere you want to hand-feed fluids on demand also needs to be barrel based.

[bazzi]

Back on topic, I am slowly starting to prepare a default setting speedrun, and I am contemplating the idea of using barrel fed flamethrowers for outpost defense (with the idea of feeding them only once), similar to Blaze's use of them in deathworld.

Just wanted to post that
Feeding Flamethrower Turrets with Barrels workjs very well on remote outposts. Just buffer some in buffer chests there.

[ShyLion]

Barrels can share the same wagon with gun rounds, artillery shells, repair packs, the stuff i have to supply remote outposts with.
So, one wagon for supplies and others for outpost exports (ores, coal, stones, etc.)

I just build barrel unpacking plant with light oil tank right near train station and have my flame throwers fueled up all the time.

[Dr.RichardEvans]

I have just filled thousands of barrels to clear up my first base, which had hundreds of thousands of ‘units’ of fluid (crude oil, petroleum, lubricant, heavy and light oil) stored in tanks. I am now able to use the logistic network and my rail network to ensure these barrels go to new areas with relative ease. This would have been much more difficult and time consuming without barrels.

Best,
R.

[Challenger007]

Barrels can share the same wagon with gun rounds, artillery shells, repair packs, the stuff i have to supply remote outposts with.
So, one wagon for supplies and others for outpost exports (ores, coal, stones, etc.)

I just build barrel unpacking plant with light oil tank right near train station and have my flame throwers fueled up all the time.

Combining fuknktsy in a wagon - it is really convenient, because some start to drag their carts and half-empty on the map - it makes no sense.

[mrsimple]

TL;DR

I want to introduce a new small scale fluid resource requirement for maintaining extra fast belts or remove the barrels.

What ?

I'm trying to pinpoint where it would be the best to use this idea but basically I'm trying to find a good usage for barrels. So far the best, non-workaroundable requirement would be the lubricating of extra fast belts via drones and barreled lubricant to keep them fast. If you don't lubricate them they slow down. It's similar to the function of coal inserters in terms of needing fuel to work but the fuel is barreled lubricant. This doesn't mean that drones would be the only way to feed this resource but it's pretty insane to have a maintenance line next to the transport line.
The exact recipe is that they need one barrel of lubricant as fuel and they produce one epmty barrel.
Previous but workaroundable requirement was the introduction of lubricant as a fuel requirement for late game production facilities but that would just change the recipes and that can be solved by pipes so it has no effect on barrel usage.

Why ?

Barrels are outdated and I tried to find examples in real file where we use barrels. Most of them are small scale examples so they won't fit this game. The only example I could find is rare usage of a certain resource, maintenance-like usage of a resource where you distribute fluids in smaller containers instead of big fluid containers. Even drones could just lubricate themselves in the hub which can be fed by pipes.
There is a big chance that this change would flip the community so I'm not saying that this change would improve the game with absolute certainty. My point is the uselessness of barrels at the moment and the only viable requirement for barreled fluids.

[jodokus31]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91849

[ssilk]

joind with same subject

[Hannu]

Barrels are outdated and I tried to find examples in real file where we use barrels. Most of them are small scale examples so they won't fit this game.

There are couple of uses. Barrels are very practical in machine workshops to produce blue belts and electric motors. They are also good in sulfuric acid delivery to small uranium mines. Barrels are handy for temporary setups, like starting coal liquefaction plant. There are much more needs for small amounts of liquids or bot delivered liquids in modded games and it is easier to make such mods if basic mechanic exist in vanilla game.

There is certainly other ways too to make same things without barrels but in my opinion many optional routes to same objective makes the game much more interesting and long lasting.

It is difference between Factorio and for example Dyson Sphere Program. DSP is a nice game too but at least I have difficult to decide what would be a new interesting thing to try in my third game. On the other hand, I have played about 20 games longer than 100 hours in Factorio with different mods and different sets of my own rules.

[DaRealTriTi]

I don't :/
I think that barrels are a waste and are a memory of before the fluid wagon (and it takes iron).
Just use fluid wagons

[jodokus31]

I don't :/
I think that barrels are a waste and are a memory of before the fluid wagon (and it takes iron).
Just use fluid wagons

I really don't understand the notion: "If something is useless for me, it must be useless for everyone".
Especially, if there are 4 pages of this topic, where quite a big part says, that it is useful for them.
Fluid wagons can not replace every use case.

[ssilk]

I use barrels in a logistic network to supply those kinds of low usage fluids, like heavy oil, lubricant and sulfuric acid for the mines. Spares a lot of pipes.

[nr2117]

I did think about it, barrels are fun, but IRL for long distances pipelines require less logistics. Just have a pipe, pumps every certain distance, and monitor for pressure drops.

But in game? pipelines are still a bit confusing. I do put pumps in them at random, never really got a good feel of "I've done x undergrounds and y pipe segments, therefore I need a pump here."

I'm just always wondering why I have far more barrels then what I need. To the point I've had active provider chests fullof the damn things.

Uderground count the same as pipe (so 2 for a pair of undies).

You can find most of the answers here:
https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system#Pipelines

If you need such a throughput over such a distance that it warrants pumps though, the reaonable alternative is fluid wagon, not barrel.

Hey, I know this is an old post but I just saw the reply now. That's useful, thanks.

[netmand]

I use barrels where pipes and fluid carts are not desired:
- In my end-game balancing fluids are easier for me when they are barreled up. It is much easier building production and cracking clusters using barrels (employing logistic bots) then trying to balance fluid levels by elegantly designed production and cracking over pipe and tank networking.
- My frontier outposts are as small and tight as possible, so the supply delivery must only be one cart. I can deliver oil, ammo, bots, and various other replacement parts for the outpost in one cargo cart, keeping the train at only 1 locomotive + 1 cargo cart.
- My uranium mine train is only one cargo cart, delivering sulfuric acid by barrel rather than making the train longer by adding a fluid cart for such a small reason.

However, Using barrels is definitely not efficient. I tried watering a nuclear setup with barrels; it's not good. Also, Barrels take up chest storage space meaning that if carelessly implemented, empty barrels can quickly overwhelm your factory storage system versus storage tanks that just fill up and stop.

[Toasterbomb]

Best use I've found is to load up the car with light oil barrels to supply flame turrets at distant borders. Especially when doing the "no lasers" achievement.

[petrus4]

The problem with barrels is that you pay a double handling cost. Once to send them to your consumers, and then again for the return trip. They can theoretically let you build extremely flexible, non-linear setups with bots; but they don't scale because you're doubling your bots' flight time, as mentioned. The one thing I would use barrels for, is pressure regulation over minimal distance. They don't store in chests anywhere near as efficiently as fluid tanks, but your fluid level will often be more consistent if you empty 100 barrels directly into a consumer, rather than using pipes.

[Tertius]

I use barrels for supplying a "portable" artillery outpost with flamethrower turrets. I use this outpost for bulk clearing areas without the need to provide stationary infrastructure except rail tracks and electricity, which need to be built anyway.

That outpost is built in enemy territory as near as possible to nests. It's built from my spidertron's inventory and will call a train as soon as the rail tracks and the station is finished. The train has 3 artillery wagons that immediately start to fire. While the enemies gather, supply is unloaded from a regular wagon and the outpost is finished, in case some component was missing from the spidertron inventory. Some amount of oil barrels are unloaded as well, and they supply 8 flamethrower turrets that destroy the bulk of attackers. The rest is finished by laser turrets. Laser turrets alone without flamethrower turrets is not enough, if all 3 artillery wagons fire continuously and attract a huge amount of enemies, especially for the later game when behemoths appear.

This way I don't need to also supply an oil pipeline. Just rail tracks + power. The rail tracks later become the rail grid all over cleared land. After no enemy base is left within the automatic artillery range, I deconstruct the outpost, continue with regular tracks and build the next outpost when I hit the next enemy nest.
Not much manual work, just have to wait until the artillery cleared the area.

[000]

In most games, kick-starting coal liquefaction is the only thing I use barrels for.

However, I'm playing through a mod (Lunar Landings) in which:

Rockets are reached at blue science
Rocket fuel is a liquid, not an item

I didn't want to deal with long pipes, and wasn't ready to set up trains yet, so I just put a long belt each way and barreled the rocket fuel.

I expected this to cause throughput issues later on, but I'm currently at yellow science and four rocket silos and the rocket fuel barrels are always backed up on the belt, so I think this is a viable solution for this particular mod. At least, pre-megabase. I'm not sure how far it would scale.