Tertius, I made tons of more efficient big nuclear power plants with 2*N designs. I never said that a 2x2 design is better for efficiency than a much longer 2xN design. I absolutely know 2x2 is not as efficient and that I give up on the neighboring bonus. ^^Tertius wrote: Thu Jul 31, 2025 8:49 am I don't understand why you ignore efficiency on one place (neighbor bonus, by using 2x2 instead of 2xN you forfeit 33% energy), and at some other place you invest effort and optimize for fast reaction, which might save a few tiny % on very low power condition for the last 5-10 seconds of the burning phase when the temperature might raise up to 1000°C.
Instead, it would be easier to just build some random 2xN without optimization, and still get more energy out of the consumed fuel cells just because of the increased neighbor bonus.
It's like buying the most advanced efficient heating system for your home for a high price, and your home is just a wooden shack with simple uninsulated glass windows, so the heat just vanishes. Instead you can build a solid insulated house and use any small heating system and your energy efficiency is still way better.
If you design something and want to optimize, look for the thing with the most impact. Usually, the impact of this single thing is bigger than the impact of all other things added together. For nuclear reactors, the thing with the most impact is the neighbor bonus, so if you want to optimize a nuclear power plant, optimize for neighbor bonus.
However, when I switched to the 2x2 design there was absolutely no intention for maximum efficiency attached. I changed to 2x2 simply because I wanted to. I wanted to make a nice little design that was different and more aesthetically pleasing than the boring long blocks with endless rows of heat exchangers and steam turbines I used to make purely for efficiency reasons pre-2.0.
I also toyed with the settings for the 2x2 setup only because I wanted to know what its limits are, because it was the first nuclear plant I built with 2.0 using the temperature readout instead of using the empty fuel cell output as a insert-trigger.
I can try explain other reasons why I stopped caring too much about it. Mostly it is because for Space Age Nuclear Power is outdated anyway. Sure, it is there... but it is there in the same odd space with the rest of the outdated Nauvis content where when heading towards the mid-endgame it more and more loses its purpose, just like Nauvis itself loses purpose except for biter eggs and biolabs.
I would keep using more energy efficient designs if it would matter across the board, like if there was still a lot of use in endgame on Nauvis with huge production chains attached, or if we also had to constantly use nuclear on other planets. But instead one moves production away from Nauvis and there is a constant lack of water everywhere but Nauvis & maybe Gleba (even though making rocket fuel is so efficient, I never felt the need to switch to nuclear power) making you resort on other ways to produce power. ^^
So the design is purely to have fun in the midgame on Nauvis during the phase when getting ready for space. Not because I feel like it is the best thing ever. Because if someone would ask me what the most efficient nuclear setup is I would totally refer to making one singular huge 2*N block and make sure it is modular so one can stamp down more of it on either end.
