Friday facts #151 - The plans for 0.14

[Mooncat]

You guys are never going to mention FFF#120 concrete ever again are you?
No plan for that to be part of that HD upgrade?

Maybe it will be in 0.14. There was no word mentioning it would be in 0.13.

[Machine Medic]

The main thing I would like to see with the introduction of atomic energy is the addition of a high power steam turbine. Steam engines work fine for the beginning of the game, but the ratio of steam engines to electric furnaces means that it takes 120+ steam engines to fill up four red belts with iron plates and still have a good capacity to spare. Being able to consolidate power generation to a handful of very expensive 4-30MW steam turbines would break the tedium of spamming more steam engines and boilers on a regular basis. Steam turbines may require rotor or blade assemblies that wear slowly over time.

As far as the nuclear side of things, definitely go with a reactor that outputs fluid heat, rather than electricity.

Reactors should utilize fuel that is enriched to varying degrees. Maximum capable heat-energy output should be proportional to the level of fuel enrichment. Fuel assembly (or reactor core) temperature should be inversely proportional to the coolant input flow rate and temperature, directly proportional to the fuel enrichment level and power setting, and should factor the thermal mass of the reactor. Reactors should either utilize 0-255 or 0-1 output power control schemes via GUI and/or circuit network. Exceeding the maximum safe fuel assembly/core temperature should present a proportionate chance per second of meltdown or explosion.

Enriched fuel should be producible in 4-6 levels. Enriched fuel assemblies should last for some time (2-60 minutes) under maximum safe load depending on level of enrichment. The enrichment process should require a fixed quantity (100-1500 units) of raw ores per level, but consume increasing quantities of time and electricity per level. Enriched fuel should be combined with iron and copper to form cladding and produce finished Fuel Assemblies. All levels of Fuel Assemblies should degenerate into Spent Fuel Assemblies after their respective useful lifespan. A recycling recipe should disassemble Fuel Assemblies and produce enriched fuel at one level lower than the recycled fuel assembly (except spent assemblies, which may only produce sub-critical/level 1 enriched fuel).


*BROWNIE POINTS: Reactors produce Irradiated Water or use NaK instead of water as coolant. This will necessitate the use of a heat exchanger, and the formation of primary/secondary coolant loops.

Would be visually appealing if the steam turbines mentioned above would utilize low-rpm salient pole synchronous alternators as part of the visuals. Other examples of similar machines for visual/artistic reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfI6lzjKasA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cj1x8hcoc4

A very good example of fun nuclear energy mechanics for reference: https://esa21.kennesaw.edu/activities/n ... y/nuke.htm

[psihius]

I hope there will be "Depleted Uranium Shotgun Shells" - we need something to kill those pesky behemoth biters, this can be the prime candidate for a major shotgun/machine gun buff. And probably not that easy to get

[mattj256]

Some thoughts on nuclear power.

Provide an item that goes in your power armor that offers some protection against radiation. (There could be a few tiers of this item.)
The later tiers should be difficult or impossible to produce without a working nuclear power plant. (Add another tier after Processing Units that requires nuclear power.)

The player shouldn't be able to hold or transport nuclear waste in large quantities unless they have enough shielding in their armor. Maybe they shouldn't be able to hold or transport it at all.
Nuclear waste is indestructible. Shooting a chest with nuclear waste destroys the chest and speads the nuclear waste in the immediate area.

Nuclear radiation damages player / aliens / trees.
Nuclear waste is either a solid object that can be put into chests, or a liquid that can be put into barrels.
Nuclear waste emits radiation (which causes pollution and harms the player and the environment.) Putting nuclear waste near other nuclear waste greatly increases the amount of radiation generated.
(When the nuclear industry is starting waste can be stored on the ground, but this is not a feasible long-term solution.)
Nuclear waste can be safely stored in a certain building which can only be built on a certain terrain type. (Buried deep underground, or in a mountain.)
This terrain type should be rare and far from the starting area so trains are necessary. The nuclear waste is never destroyed, only stored, and the storage buildings have a finite capacity so storing it is a challenge.
With increasing tech you can increase the nuclear storage capacity of each building, or relax the restrictions for building this type of building.

Mechanic to change nuclear waste into something less harmful (but still radioactive).

New chest type that can hold nuclear waste and only leaks nuclear radiation when the chest is opened.
(When items are put in or taken out.) This is a strong incentive to only interact with nuclear waste using upgraded stack inserters.
Regular chests can be used as well, but then the player has to deal with the consequences of the radiation.

New barrel type that reduces (but does not eliminate) nuclear radiation. There could be a few tiers here.

Nuclear power generation should come in two or three tiers. (Others have already posted about enrichment.)

In all the nuclear power games I've played, the challenge is to keep the water at the right temperature. Too low and the fission reaction can't sustain itself. Too high and there's a nuclear meltdown.
This is best left to the circuit network, and a power outage here should be potentially catastrophic. (Water temperature keeps rising until the plant explodes.)

A nuclear power plant heats water. Once the water is hot it can be fed into a plain old regular steam engine.
There should be a mechanic to cool the water (by drawing water from a lake with an offshore pump).
There could also be a mechanic where lakes and oceans gradually heat up as the water is used so you can't spam nuclear power plants the way you spam solar panels.
(The water cools off over time but only if you don't use too much water.)

Logistic or construction robots should be able to clean up nuclear waste (after suitable upgrades).

[Liquius]

In all the nuclear power games I've played, the challenge is to keep the water at the right temperature. Too low and the fission reaction can't sustain itself. Too high and there's a nuclear meltdown.
This is best left to the circuit network, and a power outage here should be potentially catastrophic. (Water temperature keeps rising until the plant explodes.)

Temperature doesn't play much of a role in the rate of fission. It's not like a normal chemical reaction. If anything hotter water would slow down the rate of fission.

[SiC]

I want to have a chance to do an accidental Chernobyl when nuclear power gets added. Imagine that stuff blowing up if not cooled properly (risk/reward), and when it goes the radiation cloud can mutate the biters into whatever freakish mutations you can dream up that should be a pain to deal with

[Machine Medic]

The thing that most people don't understand is that cooling is not the biggest problem in a nuclear power plant. Heat is automatically depleted in the process of generating electric power via bohr's law. The only reason you actually *need* cooling towers for a nuclear plant is to reduce the turbine exhaust temperature enough to either be efficiently re-used or to be discharged into the environment without bringing your lakes and rivers to a near boil.

Rate-of-Fission control is the biggest concern in a reactor. In order to produce lots of power, you need to get the core hot. In order to get the core hot, you need a high rate of fission. The problem with a high rate of fission at a high temperature though, is that neutron flux tends to change multiplicatively instead of additively. A small upset in the factor of Neutron Multiplication can create an exponential feedback loop, resulting in an overheat in minutes, seconds, or -in extreme cases- fractions of a second.

[ZombieMooose]

add nuclear missiles that "launch" like a rocket silo and can be targeted like Orbital Ion Canon!

also also flying enemies and planes maybe? at least add modding support for changing graphics to be above other graphics.

[TheUnknown007]

Of all things about enrichment and how to go about nuclear power, this comment seems to be the only one that gives both nice gameplay and is implementable within this year.
Also, we need uranium/plutonium bullets for dealing with behemonths.

[Machine Medic]

add nuclear missiles that "launch" like a rocket silo and can be targeted like Orbital Ion Canon!

Actually a good idea.

Use maximum-tier enriched fuel to create a fission warhead to be installed in a rocket in the Rocket Silo. Implement a target control system to select a target location and wipe out a whole bunch of biters. This is one possible solution to the issue of not being able to effectively explore beyond a certain radius in this game without disabling alien spawns or enabling peaceful mode.

[Fatmice]

I want to have a chance to do an accidental Chernobyl when nuclear power gets added. Imagine that stuff blowing up if not cooled properly (risk/reward), and when it goes the radiation cloud can mutate the biters into whatever freakish mutations you can dream up that should be a pain to deal with

Reactors do not blow up in the way your mind is envisioning it. This is a common misconception/misunderstanding from the numerous amounts of disinformation out there.

In all the nuclear power games I've played, the challenge is to keep the water at the right temperature. Too low and the fission reaction can't sustain itself. Too high and there's a nuclear meltdown.
This is best left to the circuit network, and a power outage here should be potentially catastrophic. (Water temperature keeps rising until the plant explodes.)

Temperature doesn't play much of a role in the rate of fission. It's not like a normal chemical reaction. If anything hotter water would slow down the rate of fission.

Without getting into the weeds of nuclear physics, hotter water can slow down the nuclear reaction. However, it really depends on how the reactor is designed and the type of reactor. If the water is phase changing into a gas, more voids will form and less of the water will be in a phase where it can act as a good moderator and a heat carrier. So coolant temperature can effect the nuclear reaction rate, but again it depends on the reactor type and design.

[neurofish]

If you introduce a possibility to change recipe of assemblers by easy automatic means you will ruin the game. Think, why.

[TheUnknown007]

If you introduce a possibility to change recipe of assemblers by easy automatic means you will ruin the game. Think, why.

I thought why [that would ruin the game]. How, exactly, would this ruin the game?

[Zeblote]

If you introduce a possibility to change recipe of assemblers by easy automatic means you will ruin the game. Think, why.

I can't see how that would ruin the game. It might be completely useless though because you'd have to build something insanely complex to really make use of it.

[ssilk]

Some info from moderator sight.

There are hundreds of ideas around nuclear energy.

Take alone this search: search.php?keywords=nuclear&terms=all&a ... mit=Search
48 matches/threads so far.
And this thread viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5 Electric Energy
contains 96 matches with the word "nuclear". ( search.php?keywords=nuclear&t=5&sf=msgonly )

I know most of the threads and what continuously comes is this:

- Nuclear energy needs a somehow complex process to get the "fuel". Something which heats the water. Uranium processing. More ores. See also viewtopic.php?f=80&t=189 New Types of Resources (Gold and Diamond...) / New Ores

- More realistic kind of water heating: Changing the aggregate (Water -> Steam), such stuff.

- Water circulation: The water as medium for energy transport is not wasted in the steam engines. Instead it can be cooled and reused and you spare some energy. This kind of technique is useful in the time before nuclear power, too. I think to a turbine.

- To built this all up you need a very high advantage compared to steam/solar. Otherwise you won't built this. Why is there no need to do this? The current best idea above this is some entity, which needs more and more electric power, about 100-1000 time more, than a current "standard" factory. Impossible to built this with solar. The new technique - that needs so much power - spans from energy for the space platform or rocket to energy for underground mining (which makes new ores also much more interesting), complex ore processing and much more.

- Many want, that running a nuclear power plant is not very stable process (like steam and solar), cause they want to have explosions. Either explosions of the pipe network (dangerous handling such a hot fluid and pressure) or dangerous handling of the kettle with the nuclear stuff in it. Which has a high chance of pollution of course.

- Which leads to the last point (which is more or less my own idea): Running a nuclear power plant can be "optimized" / being made really safe by using circuits. It works of course. But to get out the last 10-20% you need to check things automatically, control pumps and valves, beeing alarmed and so on.

[Zeno]

Well I wrote up a nice piece explaining why 'Combinators are necessary for Nuclear' to achieve the stated goal of AVOIDING "Some kind of 'mine uranium -> put it into boiler' wouldn't be a proper use of the potential at all" but my internet apparently ate the thing when i hit "preview" (sigh) so I'll simply summarize that post by saying:
- Please realise that at the moment, there is no requirement for using combinators anywhere in your factory; Just like there's no requirement to use trains. It's just a choice at the moment... However, many players may be (and are) missing out on a critical aspect of Factorio automation, management, and logistics. (I know I am, I've NEVER used combinators in my 250+ hours) Nuclear seems like it would be so complex and unique that it would require an equally complex and unique solution for the puzzle it could present the player with. Combinators offer that by staying true to what Factorio is about; getting a machine to do the work for you. Especially paired with the soon-to-be updates for combinators.

I strongly suggest that any nuclear reactor gameplay should require constant management, management that could be automated by combinators.

This can by done by having the reactor constantly damage itself while it's active, and not be able to effect repair unless it's shut down... but would take even more damage when it's not being run within an optimal band of resource flow; If the reactor hits a "red zone" then it should take damage rapidly, until it implodes.
... Unless a combinator is standing on sentry duty, ready to hit the "Shut Down" button for you.

[Extended]

I think that relating the nuclear power management with the circuit network would be a really great idea, causing difficulties for non-programmer people though.

To my mind, the nuclear power should not emit any pollution but in disasters - it would be a regress comparing to solar panels otherwise. But sending the wastes thanks to rockets would make them useful.

[Requia]

A response to pretty much everyone everyone nuclear is not particularly complex or unique outside of the fuel processing and handling compared to anything else in the game. yes nuclear power plants require constant monitoring, so do coal gas and solar plants (if only because you need to know exactly when to turn on the coal because clouds are moving in). There is no call for new game mechanics, even the radiation isn't unique, a coal power plant produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant. Yes, meltdowns are a concern, but compare the worst nuclear accidents to the worst chemical accidents.

Actual suggestions: a complicated fuel processing and maybe reprocessing setup for actually making nuclear fuel. And get the fuel rations into the right order of magnitude compared to coal and oil.

I'm very excited about the nuclear power. I hope you will succeed in making it an interesting alternative with its own unique mechanics.

Some ideas that I can instantly think of:

• one should be careful with nuclear energy - if we overload steam/solar, everything works slower or doesn't work at all but that's it. Stressing nuclear generators could overload them so player would have to pay attention to have some 'reserves'. Or solve this via circuit network through backup sources.

Nuclear plants don't work that way, they'll run at 100% until the fuel is poisoned, problems actually come when throttling them *down* (which can poison fuel prematurely if the reactor isn't specifically designed for it). I've been hashing this out on a nuclear engineering forum (unrelated reasons) and the consensus seems to be that the run it at 100% all the time model is used almost universally, except in France because they have a 100% green grid so throttling simply has to be done. A better model would be for nuclear fuel to run out regardless of whether or not you actually used the electricity. This would mean that overbuilding wastes fuel, (actually running out of uranium shouldn't be a problem but you might need new rail or extra fuel processing).

[Zeno]

causing difficulties for non-programmer people though.

Tutorial map for combinators.

[SagaciousZed]

The Highlights of nuclear power could come from other parts of the process
- Enrichment
- Reprocessing

Reprocessing may introduce interesting logistical considerations because this is something different from other fuel sources, by forming a cycle. Instead of just burn and forget.

On a side node, I would really like to see you deal with all that coal ash....