[2.1] Make Thruster Fuel and Thruster Oxidiser Barrelable

[revilowaldow]

TL;DR

Make Thruster Fuel and Thruster Oxidiser barrel-able to support platform-platform transfers and kickstarting large platforms

What?

Allowing thruster fuel and oxidiser to be barrel-able via removal of the current auto_barrel = false line.

Why?

Since 2.1 introduced platform to platform transfers barrelling oxidiser and fuel has become much more relevant. Kickstarting a large ship, particularly over Nauvis, requires waiting a very long time to collect resources before the ship can start to move. Being able to 'plug in a fuel hose' could make this much faster.
This doesn't reduce gameplay complexity in any way, and using it would actually require technical effort such as having built a dedicated platform that produces excess fuel, oxidiser and barrels.
A new mod has already been created before we're even out of beta that does exactly this: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/barrel-thruster-fluids indicating demand for this process.
I recognise that making these fluids non-barrel-able was intentional as documented by Kovarex on viewtopic.php?p=700173#p700173 however I feel that the introduction of platform to platform transfers materially changes the context and should allow that decision to be reconsidered.

One of the suggestions raised in that thread was that one should transfer ingredients or chunks instead, however for ships that do not pass these products through the hub this is non-preferred and would require significant redesign of ships for 5 minutes of use before that part of the ship is no longer required/optimal. Designing a purpose built drydock/supply ship is much more engaging gameplay. I'm already barrelling in water to kickstart nuclear power when there's insufficient ice around.

From a physics/logical standpoint being unable to barrel and transfer thruster fuel and oxidiser is nonsensical. It's fuel, stored in tanks, for thrusters, that move something through space. The tank being unable to be barrel shaped is illogical.

This is a really quick 'fix', in response to evolving gameplay options, that breaks nothing and improves player experience.

[K4i]

Instead of the liquied you can request the ingredients, similar to one time logistic requests on a planet.
Open a fuel chemical plant, with q pick up the ingredient e.g. iron ore and then rightclick or capslock leftclick to request Ingredients in that slot. It automatically get set as missing construction materials, is requested from palnet or other platforms and after delivers is automatically inserted in the machine. With a buffer/bootstrap platform that has iron, carbon and calcite you can qickly bootstrap a platform without the need of barreling any fluid and dealing with empty barrels etc.

[Hurkyl]

One of the suggestions raised in that thread was that one should transfer ingredients or chunks instead, however for ships that do not pass these products through the hub this is non-preferred and would require significant redesign of ships for 5 minutes of use before that part of the ship is no longer required/optimal.

You can manually make an item request ghost in the relevant buildings, and it will be satisfied from the hub. So for one-off item movement you don't have to do a redesign.

[Levatius]

Came here to make this same suggestion! With 2.1, I would love to make light-hauler platforms that get their ammo and fuel from space stations orbiting each planet.

You could have a whole eco-system of specialised platforms:
- Haulers for moving goods
- Space stations for crafting
- Collectors running routes for asteroids

[Alfonse215]

Came here to make this same suggestion! With 2.1, I would love to make light-hauler platforms that get their ammo and fuel from space stations orbiting each planet.

But you can do that as is. The only difference is that you'd need 3 chemical plants doing fuel production instead of 2 assemblers doing unbarreling. But the effect is basically the same.

There are two principle differences between these two:

1. Unbarrelling is faster than production, so production doesn't scale as well to hungry thruster builds. Even a base quality, unmoduled assembler 3 can unbarrel at a rate of 312.5 fluid per second, fast enough for one machine to feed a legendary thruster at full consumption. It would require a chemical plant with a crafting speed of ~2.1 to achieve the same effect with the advanced recipes. It'd take a crafting speed of 8 for the basic recipe. Note that you can send barreled water to at least take advantage of that.

2. Even with standard propellant recipes, you need fewer stacks of fuel if you send the ingredients compared to barrels. 2 stacks of ore, 2 stacks of carbon, and 1 stack of ice can make enough propellant to fill 16 stacks of barrels. This is even more pronounced with advanced propellant, even if you take into account that you need calcite.

A less important difference is having to produce and discard the barrels, but that's not a huge deal with good steel productivity.

So you can see that these builds aren't all that dissimilar to each other. It can work either way, so even if you can't barrel the propellants, you still get the basic effect of not having to harvest and process chunks. Worst case, you may need a few extra machines.

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Thinking on it more, let's consider a specific build: a legendary 5-thruster build that's basically burning at full speed, that can go between two inner planets in 1 minute. It's late game, so we have advanced propellant, but we also have legendary quality buildings.

1 minute of 300 fluid/s from 5 thrusters is 90,000 fluid.

In the barrel case, you need to store 90,000 fluid of each kind of propellant per trip. So that's 360 stacks of barrels per trip. A legendary assembler 3 with legendary speed module 3s can unbarrel 5'625 barrels per minute. So you could get away with one assembler with some simply sushi pipe stuff and circuit-based switching.

In the production case, you need to store 120 carbon, 120 iron, 120 calcite, and 600 ice. That's 21 stacks. As for production, you need to get a chemical plant to crafting speed 10 to make the propellant. A legendary chemical plant and 3 legendary speed 3s can do that, but you do need two of them. And you need a third chemical plant melting ice at the same speed.

So one assembler vs. 3 chemical plants, but also 360 stacks of storage vs. 21 stacks. Even with legendary cargo bays, that's 6.78 extra cargo bays you need just for fuel, which is much larger than 2 3x3 chemical plants. You can use belt storage instead of cargo bays for those extra stacks. But even with serious belt weaving, I doubt you're going to take up less space with that belt storage than the 2 extra 3x3 machines you'll need.