Does "Quality" Make Fusion Reactors Worse?

[mmmPI]

[Moderated by Koub : response to a since then moderated post]

That's not how power generation is met. You've already said accumulators aren't necessary (I'm obsessed with them apparently.) I would absolutely love to see how you're going to build your power set up that keeps fusion reactors at 100% output while having solar, steam, fission, or whatever supplying the remaining demand... without accumulators.

send blueprint of your posted setup, i will gladly upgrade them to higher quality to show you

[mmmPI]

Can you spot the worst setup ?
Which one is the most efficient ?
Why do you think people are answering you are wrong when you say quality make fusion worse ?

spot the worst setup.jpg (343 KiB) Viewed 2435 times

[spacedog]

The power draw of those are all different.

The question isn’t “how much power does your factory have to use in order to get a specific neighbor bonus”.

The original post is complaining that for any given power draw, different quality reactors result in different neighbor bonuses, which impacts efficiency.

While that’s true, it’s just not what the devs optimized for. They optimized for more power in a smaller footprint. Probably because, like nuclear power, it's so trivial to produce more fuel cells than you can ever use that efficiency just doesn’t matter.

This is starting to remind me of that massive thread about optimizing nuclear reactors so they don’t waste fuel cells. If that’s a fun puzzle to solve then go for it, but it doesn’t have any practical real world applications. It’s more like a contest to achieve the pinnacle of premature optimization.

[mmmPI]

The original post is complaining that for any given power draw, different quality reactors result in different neighbor bonuses, which impacts efficiency.

The original post ask if "quality" make fusion reactor worse , and if something was missed by its author, it's unclear it was posted only to complain, but last time i suggested it was the case you said it wasn't helping much the discussion. ( and was moderated )

The previous setup illustrate probably something that was missed given the other example setup shown.

The question isn’t “how much power does your factory have to use in order to get a specific neighbor bonus”.

Just a reminder that the original post mention a scenario :

If you do encounter a scenario where your max load is greater than your max output, it's by far easier and more efficient (with higher max productivity bonuses) to add more normal quality reactors than it is to add quality reactors.

This is what i showed in my setup.

Edit : i show a setup where max load is greater than max output.
the "far easier and more efficient" is not what i show i'm asking the question

[Orum]

No , they have the same efficiency when they have the same neighbour bonus and same 100% output (and they produce more power for the same footprint ! )

But they won't have the same neighbor bonuses! That's what I've been saying this entire time: for any given power output, as long as it's more than a single normal reactor can provide, you will have higher neighbor bonuses and thus higher efficiency with lower quality reactors.

This is what i showed in my setup.

So you finally agree that lower quality reactors are more efficient?

[mmmPI]

So you finally agree that lower quality reactors are more efficient?

No , they have the same efficiency when they have the same neighbour bonus and same 100% output (and they produce more power for the same footprint ! )

Which part of the quotation make you think i agree with your statement ?

[AndrolGenhald]

I was searching to see if anyone else came up with a way to only turn on fusion reactors when they'll get the full neighbor bonus, and this is the only thread I found
The way I'm doing it is by limiting the fluoroketone. It's pretty simple actually, you just have to connect your cryogenic plant(s) to a hot fluoroketone tank, the only disadvantage is that it seems to be a bit trial and error for what the limit should be. When I build a reactor I've been tweaking it up 10-20 at a time until the generators all have 10 plasma and the reactors just start to fill a tiny bit, the goal is for all generators to be full and all reactors to be empty when the cooling is enabled.

Screenshot_20250104_150439.png (464.61 KiB) Viewed 2164 times

It also doesn't seem to perfectly evenly distribute the fluoroketone between reactors, as in this example all of my plasma is at 2.94M°C, but it's pretty close at least.

[mmmPI]

I was searching to see if anyone else came up with a way to only turn on fusion reactors when they'll get the full neighbor bonus, and this is the only thread I found

Maybe you could post it with a blueprint in show your creation ?

I may be wrong but from what i understand, you realized that reactor would lose their neighbour bonus when they are full, because then some of them stop working and you can't really control how the load is ditristributed in this case.

So you throttled the fluoroketone, to make sure they are kept working all at the same time and rate when they are ?

[lyrabold]

I was searching to see if anyone else came up with a way to only turn on fusion reactors when they'll get the full neighbor bonus, and this is the only thread I found
The way I'm doing it is by limiting the fluoroketone.

I would be interested in seeing a blueprint of this. This was similarly the only thread I could find on the topic while trying to figure out how to best utilize neighbor bonus. It has not been of very much help due to some of the repeat and incessant misunderstandings / snark such as "this must be in the gameplay help forum because you made a bad reactor setup". If anyone has found similar but more level-headed threads I would appreciate a link to look at those, as well.

[Mr Wednesday]

I was searching to see if anyone else came up with a way to only turn on fusion reactors when they'll get the full neighbor bonus, and this is the only thread I found
The way I'm doing it is by limiting the fluoroketone.

I would be interested in seeing a blueprint of this. This was similarly the only thread I could find on the topic while trying to figure out how to best utilize neighbor bonus. It has not been of very much help due to some of the repeat and incessant misunderstandings / snark such as "this must be in the gameplay help forum because you made a bad reactor setup". If anyone has found similar but more level-headed threads I would appreciate a link to look at those, as well.

There is an interesting thread on reddit which throttles the coolant by routing it through a barrel/unbarrel combo. Link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... blueprint/

[Shulmeister]

I may be wrong but from what i understand, you realized that reactor would lose their neighbour bonus when they are full, because then some of them stop working and you can't really control how the load is ditristributed in this case.

So you throttled the fluoroketone, to make sure they are kept working all at the same time and rate when they are ?

That interestingly seem to be the method used in the linked reddit thread

[lyrabold]

I was searching to see if anyone else came up with a way to only turn on fusion reactors when they'll get the full neighbor bonus, and this is the only thread I found
The way I'm doing it is by limiting the fluoroketone.

I would be interested in seeing a blueprint of this. This was similarly the only thread I could find on the topic while trying to figure out how to best utilize neighbor bonus. It has not been of very much help due to some of the repeat and incessant misunderstandings / snark such as "this must be in the gameplay help forum because you made a bad reactor setup". If anyone has found similar but more level-headed threads I would appreciate a link to look at those, as well.

There is an interesting thread on reddit which throttles the coolant by routing it through a barrel/unbarrel combo. Link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... blueprint/

Thank you! This is a good thread for sure.

[mmmPI]

That interestingly seem to be the method used in the linked reddit thread

That's what is generally advised when the question is "how can i use properly the fusion power plant ?" but it didn't seemed to me the topic of this thread which was eventually put in gameplay help where it belongs imo given the difficulty players mentions. You can't really help people that just want to complain with some explanations about the game though

[someone1337]

Nice flame war there... Anyway... without wanting to restarting it... did i understand correctly that ...?

You always want to run the fusion power plant at 100% or not at all - so unlike nuclear, where your smart NPP would just insert nuclear cells when you are getting low on steam, with fusion you dont care, but need a rs-flip-flop to charge a huge array of accumulators and then slowly let it discharge, to achieve maximal fusion cell efficiency?
So basically the steam-tank is now an accumulator and instead of throwing a cell into the nuclear reactor and buffering steam and heat and make sure to not get to 1000°C, you just enable an rs flip-flop to to charge a huge array of accumulators at max output/input?

With my 1.1 GW fusion power plant, that would mean to build 3667 accumulators somewhere to make sure i get the most out of my fusion fuel cell?
(1.1*1000*1000/300 = 3666.6666...; Or scale accordingly, if my base has already 500mw drain -> less accumulators)

And finally: adding quality requires you to increase the drain, as quality increases the total power output?
Improving the quality of the fusion reactors, without increasing (the generators and) the accumulator-field would actually make the fuel cell efficiency go down?
When maxing the output of the improved power plant, you then get more electricity out of one fusion cell?


Some stolen fusion pp blueprint+rs-flip-flop+accu-array on gleba:

screen_20251230_020847.png (3.6 MiB) Viewed 154 times

[mmmPI]

Nice flame war there... Anyway... without wanting to restarting it... did i understand correctly that ...?
You always want to run the fusion power plant at 100% or not at all - so unlike nuclear, where your smart NPP would just insert nuclear cells when you are getting low on steam, with fusion you dont care, but need a rs-flip-flop to charge a huge array of accumulators and then slowly let it discharge, to achieve maximal fusion cell efficiency?

Lol , no you don't need all that, main point of fusion energy is compact generation, so adding large array of accumulators to save on fusion cell is not something you want. Only for the sake of pretending to be efficient on fusion cell, which is just a gimmick, and even for that gimmick it's not the smartest option as you just need to have a base that consume more electricity than your fusion reactor produce and then you don't need to store any excess power it could produce.

Sure if you decrease the max load, you loose on efficency if you plan on using adjacency bonuses, unless you make sure all cores are still working at the same time, there are couple methods other than accumulators to deal with this, pump on fluoroketone input comes to mind, or controlling the unbarreling. ( for the gimmick of efficency without losing on "compact setup" ).

But this happens wether you tile copies of the same reactor of low quality which would increase you max power production and thus lower the load on the infrastructure and take some footprint or if you achieve the same result by increasing quality, you increase the max power production and thus you decrease the load in % , same but better, because lower footprint, less entity used , better UPS longterm.

And finally: adding quality requires you to increase the drain, as quality increases the total power output?

That's pretty backward you don't build a base for the sake of increasing the energy consumption x), you build one reactor, and when your base grow at some point you consume enough that you can just upgrade in quality with the same efficiency, whatever the throttle/storage method you used if any. Increasing your electric consumption require you to upgrade to a better quality reactor, or more low quality reactor

[Tertius]

So basically the steam-tank is now an accumulator and instead of throwing a cell into the nuclear reactor and buffering steam and heat and make sure to not get to 1000°C, you just enable an rs flip-flop to to charge a huge array of accumulators at max output/input?

It seems you didn't follow the whole thread. There was an extremely simple solution posted some posts above: limiting cold fluoroketone, so reactors either work all at the same time or none at all. The energy buffer is hot plasma in the generators.

The reasoning and the solution is:

• full neighbor bonus in fusion reactors is only given if the reactor and all of its neighbors are working
• a reactor is only working if it has cold fluoroketone and its plasma output is not full

So the solution must provide this:

• to enable/disable reactors, control cold fluoroketone supply
• keep the plasma output of the reactors empty, so if there is cold fluoroketone supply enabled, the reactors will start immediately

The crucial point is the fluoroktone and plasma flow. There must be enough plasma to fill all fusion generators (10 plasma each) but not more, so the reactor's outputs aren't full. Now, if cold fluoroketone is being supplied, all reactors will work at once and at the same time, so you get full neighbor bonus.

So just fill enough cold fluoroketone into the reactors until all the fusion generators are full but the reactors are empty again. To control how much you fill in, use barrels. Never directly connect to your main fluoroketone supply. A fusion power plant with 3 reactors and 18 generators and need 7 barrels of cold fluoroketone (7*50=350 fluoroketone). Every generator has 10 plasma, 180 plasma. The rest of 350-180=170 accumulates as hot fluoroketone in the cryogenic plant. Add a fluid tank to measure the hot fluoroketone level. Wire the tank to the cryogenic plant and enable the plant if the level is > 100. The exact number depends on the amount of pipes and how many barrels you added - if you added more, the level might be higher. The level must be calibrated in a way that the cryogenic plant starts working if the fusion generator's plasma level lowers, but before one of them get empty completely.

Real working fusion power plant:

• In the popup on the right, look at the generator plasma level (always between ~5 and 10),
• the reactor plasma levels (always emptying immediately),
• at the plasma temperature in the generators (2.98 M°C, only achievable with full neighbor bonus),
• how the reactors switch to plasma temperature 3 M °C as soon as they start working (full neighbor bonus)
• and how the cryogenic plant will only run if hot fluoroketone accumulated.

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