Factorio Forums

Fusion power has been fragile for quite a while which makes it off-putting to me as a late game tech. After experimenting a bit, I found that right now it's more of fluid behavior problem than update-order problem. Specifically, plasma and coolant are not evenly distributed between interconnected reactors, but power demand is evenly distributed between the generators when scaling down. This results in all sorts of problems:

- Newly added reactors can be starved of coolant despite there being enough in the reactor network.
- Generators can be starved of plasma despite there being a path to provide it.
- Suboptimal neighbor bonus from assigning a large share of the demand to a single reactor. In fact, I observe it always being suboptimal with any reactor-to-reactor plasma connection.
- Ugly visuals due to uneven and / or flickering reactor light-up patterns.

It's possible to work around the coolant problem with oversupply / independent fluid networks. There doesn't seem to be a way to work around the plasma issue right now.

I suggest to make the plasma network (and maybe fluid networks) distribute fluid as evenly as possible between entities connected over in/out connections, like the current behavior for storage tanks. This should also remove any lingering update-order dependency.

h.q.droid wrote: Wed Jun 25, 2025 1:44 amIt's possible to work around the coolant problem with oversupply / independent fluid networks. There doesn't seem to be a way to work around the plasma issue right now.

Plasma IS a liquid like everything else; it is the Generators input/output ports (and no Pipes) that cause issues.

Using only a single “Pathway” for all of the Plasma connections works well at balancing the Fluid between Generators - once there is enough available to satisfy all of their Buffers. You have to take care not to introduce any Loops in the Fluid network from Generators’ output ports, which is tricky in Vanilla. I usually just use the Plasma Duct to make a piped-plasma Square layout, which is boring but easy to expand.

I guess I just didn’t find the “asymmetry” puzzle part of Fusion to be fun. And they don’t blow up like proper Fission reactors!