Factorio Forums

Numbers
prerequisites: Advanced material processing
tiles: 2x2
cost: 10 steel plates, 10 stone bricks, 5 pipes

upgrades over standard boiler:
efficiency: 0.5 -> 0.75
pollution: 6 -> 3

Reasoning
So I once again drifted into balance section of the forums, and found people are still arguing about solar panels. To be frank I am not big fan of "solars are simply superior" theory (I think accumulators are, thus empowering otherwise well balanced solars), but as I skimmed through the latest "solars are OP" thread I found one convincing argument:

siggboy wrote:Each GW [of electricity] requires 15.000 coal per minute.

That's a lot. I don't think it's necessarily bad that you need to be supplying such amount of materials for such a base, but it could use some boost. And especially as everything else in the game gets some upgrades with research, boilers are kind of left behind. Increased efficiency of some advanced boiler would also naturally mean reduced pollution of such boiler, reducing another big problem with steam powered bases in later game.

As I think about it I can't escape conclusion that this is very natural and very easy addition to the game. Btw if you know some mod that does just this, post it here as well

Please take a deep look into viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5
Or search around for "nuclear" etc.

What you point to here is the top of an iceberg.

ssilk wrote:What you point to here is the top of an iceberg.

Actually that is the point.

No need to think about some deep complex solutions that don't get implemented anyway because there isn't time to do everything. Just add to the game one simple item that should have been there already, which helps with some issues experience today.

Yeah, but boilers are really, really easy to be modded. That is not the problem.

You can ask: "Then why did they don't add it yet, when it is so easy?"

To finish that you need to have a concept. Ideas. Sketches. You need rendered graphics. And so on. It makes no sense to implement just new boilers, without the knowledge for what they should be used then. It makes no sense to make them just bigger, cause that is just lame (mods can do that, even you will be able to do that), it adds no new content, cause the player can just use more boilers instead.

Right direction, but there must be a sense, a target, a concept before doing this. "Just more of xxx" is ok from the sight of the gamers, but not from the sight of game-development.

These could be called 'steel boilers', to mirror upgrading stone furnaces to steel furnaces.

ssilk wrote:Yeah, but boilers are really, really easy to be modded. That is not the problem.

You can ask: "Then why did they don't add it yet, when it is so easy?"

To finish that you need to have a concept. Ideas. Sketches. You need rendered graphics. And so on. It makes no sense to implement just new boilers, without the knowledge for what they should be used then. It makes no sense to make them just bigger, cause that is just lame (mods can do that, even you will be able to do that), it adds no new content, cause the player can just use more boilers instead.

Right direction, but there must be a sense, a target, a concept before doing this. "Just more of xxx" is ok from the sight of the gamers, but not from the sight of game-development.

I actually agree a lot with this. And generally I would advise the same in most situations.

But I don't think you really need some advanced concept or vision for direction in this case, because boilers (steam engines) are the same from minute 1 to hour 300, in a game that allows upgrades for almost everything . .. it's more like missing feature. That should have been there, it just likely got omitted because of work overload.

And current situation does need at least some tweaks, and not wait another 2-3 years for some big ideas to materialize. Besides tweaks to accus'/solar panels' costs this is the easiest and most natural.

MagoNorte: good idea

Just increasing numbers on new boilers makes literally no sense for the game. Well maybe really little. With furnaces it made more sense as those require much more space but burners require inly a single tile.

But related to your idea may come a few ideas from Balancing forum. One of them directly related to your idea is in this post
The key difference with your idea is making use of modules. And that is the key reason I propose to use 3x3 size of a building so you can actually see the modules inserted in it as 1x1 tile will not fit them for display in Alt mode. Modules can effectively make a quality change for the game and using them for tons of 1-tile burners even if they are twice as effective as current ones - is a really costly investment so again 3x3 makes more sense.

PacifyerGrey wrote:Just increasing numbers on new boilers makes literally no sense for the game.

Piercing ammunition. Fast inserter. Fast belt. Half of the research tree. Yeah there are no precedents for that in the game, so it makes no sense at all.

PacifyerGrey wrote:Well maybe really little. With furnaces it made more sense as those require much more space but burners require inly a single tile.

Yeah you missed that . . . to add variety and make it more than just plug-in upgrade I made it bigger. As you can see above someone dislikes it already, so that's debatable.

PacifyerGrey wrote:But related to your idea may come a few ideas from Balancing forum. One of them directly related to your idea is in this post
The key difference with your idea is making use of modules. And that is the key reason I propose to use 3x3 size of a building so you can actually see the modules inserted in it as 1x1 tile will not fit them for display in Alt mode. Modules can effectively make a quality change for the game and using them for tons of 1-tile burners even if they are twice as effective as current ones - is a really costly investment so again 3x3 makes more sense.

I did think about modules, and they just don't make sense for boilers.
First off - speed and productivity don't make any sense. Especially as currently the big problems with boilers are 1) big coal consumption 2) pollution.
Increased effectivity for better boilers makes a lot of sense, but not as a "module", but as a built-in better insulation/piping and whatever. And you could have only one module anyway, because otherwise you'd get hardly believable perpetum mobile . . . boilers just burn stuff, fancy upgrades are neither needed nor desirable.

Of course as complex super advanced boilers would be best nuclear reactors, but I still see it as something that's too far into the future, so I proposed simple, logical and quick upgrade.

Tev wrote:

PacifyerGrey wrote:Just increasing numbers on new boilers makes literally no sense for the game.

Piercing ammunition. Fast inserter. Fast belt. Half of the research tree. Yeah there are no precedents for that in the game, so it makes no sense at all.

PacifyerGrey wrote:Well maybe really little. With furnaces it made more sense as those require much more space but burners require inly a single tile.

Yeah you missed that . . . to add variety and make it more than just plug-in upgrade I made it bigger. As you can see above someone dislikes it already, so that's debatable.

PacifyerGrey wrote:But related to your idea may come a few ideas from Balancing forum. One of them directly related to your idea is in this post
The key difference with your idea is making use of modules. And that is the key reason I propose to use 3x3 size of a building so you can actually see the modules inserted in it as 1x1 tile will not fit them for display in Alt mode. Modules can effectively make a quality change for the game and using them for tons of 1-tile burners even if they are twice as effective as current ones - is a really costly investment so again 3x3 makes more sense.

I did think about modules, and they just don't make sense for boilers.
First off - speed and productivity don't make any sense. Especially as currently the big problems with boilers are 1) big coal consumption 2) pollution.
Increased effectivity for better boilers makes a lot of sense, but not as a "module", but as a built-in better insulation/piping and whatever. And you could have only one module anyway, because otherwise you'd get hardly believable perpetum mobile . . . boilers just burn stuff, fancy upgrades are neither needed nor desirable.

Of course as complex super advanced boilers would be best nuclear reactors, but I still see it as something that's too far into the future, so I proposed simple, logical and quick upgrade.

About modules

Efficiency modules - reduced pollution, reduced fuel consumption. Values might be off (reducing fuel consumption by 80% is surely overkill)
Speed modules - increased fuel consumption and increased heat production, increased pollution
Productivity - not applicable

Can't see any guidelines to perpetum mobile

To summerize: not very useful in my opinion.

I think we are missing two major point here: pipes have a troughput limit and boilers don't chew up much coal in the first place.

For example a pipe system with:
(3 offshore pumps)->(28 boilers)->(21 steam engines) is "pretty close" to the pipe troughput limit (the exact number is not important),
for sure there's a point at which you add a boiler and it won't be used, add an engine and it won't be supplied.

My point is that adding a "steel boiler" would change the design to this:
(3 offshore pumps)-->("14?" steel boilers)->(21 steam engines) while the pipe is still at it's troughput limit.
And that's it. Nothing has changed, you just saved 5-10% of space at best.

Of course, you could just make it more fuel-efficient, but since Coal is not used to do much more other stuff (Plastic), doesn't seem really necessary.
Besides, boilers don't need that much coal, I think an Electric Mining Drill should be able to sustain (3-4?) of them at once.
Doesn't seem such a bad deal to me.