Kovarex Enrichment is not fun

[Nasabot]

What Id like to see is something like this:

-Nuclear: Kovarex Process uses up considerable more Uranium 235
-Solar modules very slowly degrade over time and have to be rebuild from time to time. Solar modules require a new crafting component: silicon, which is made out of stone.
-Steam boiler (100°C) get a bonus when using solid fuel and rocket fuel. Solid Fuel: -30% pollution, Rocket fuel: -90% Pollution. Maybe introduce a Mk2 boiler for solid/rocket fuel only to improve UPS.


Introducing any random chance for catastropy is something I heavily oppose. This is medieval game design from the 20th century!

[someone1337]

I actually wanted to disprove someone on reddit, who claimed that it is possible to play without kovarex.

I switched from coal directly to nuclear and it turned out it totally *IS* possible to play without kovarex.
I had like 100 spare fuel-cells used in locomotives (nuclear locomotives mod) and 2*4 reactors AND still had like 100 spare useful uranium (and like 50k useless uranium)
I based my reactor design on this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... tor_setup/
(with a load at minimum of 100 MW, as I switched from 3 coal plants. Later going up to 300MW, when I went for kovarex to go for nukes.)

It turned out, you only need kovarex, if you want nukes (or want to start getting rid of useless-uranium, because your warehouse feels a little filled up)

But as kovarex is far too cheap imho, people wouldnt know/even try to play without.

Therefore I propose the following change:

• increase kovarex science price from 1500 to 3000-5000 each.
• lower cost of nuke science to compensate for kovarex.

[MeduSalem]

I think it's the same as with Basic Oil Processing without cracking... You can do that... but meh... all the useless Heavy Oil stocking up in tanks... just don't want to go that route. So no amount of Science required would keep me from going for Advanced Oil Processing instead...

And so it is with Kovarex Enrichment... I just don't want all the useless U-238. No Research costs will keep me from going for Kovarex instead.

[someone1337]

thats exactly, what I was thinking before trying and thats why I propose the cost increase.

as it turned out you totally dont need kovarex for power generation alone - its not meh, its totally irelevant - as long as you dont want nukes.

6 centrifuges without any mods for uranium ore processing and you are fine. (and a warehouse for the überschüssiges useless-uranium)

[Zool]

Well, I think its not the research of Kovarex thats too cheap, its rather the process itself that makes its usage a total no-brainer.

Something like doubling the consumption of standard-uranium would probably improve its balancing while still keeping it usefull.

[Koub]

What do you suggest that hasn't been suggested in one of these topics ?
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=52051&hilit=kovarex+enrichment
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=48995&hilit=kovarex+enrichment
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=48057&hilit=kovarex+enrichment
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=48482&hilit=kovarex+enrichment

[dognose]

Today, I played Factorio since about 2 months again - And (I think) I found an "Design Flaw" with the Uranium Enrichment Process.
I read some Posts, and people are deploying massive amounts of enrichment-centrifuges - why?

First, it's about maths: The Enrichment-process is an equation, which can be simplified:



And yes - that's true: You can easily turn "3 Uranium-238" into "1 Uranium-235" in 50 Seconds. (or less, using Speed Modules).

So, this actually means:
You'll get an U-235 "chance" of 33%, while the original mining process only has 0.0007% - is that intendet behaviour?

How to do it:
Just build a "loop", sending 40 units of Uranium-235 and 2 units of Uranium-238 back into the centrifuge, only grab the "one" additional Uranium-235 produced per cycle.

Achieving this is quite simple: Use a chest, wired to an fast-insterter (batch-size: 1) which is only enabled if the chest contains more than 40 units of Uranium 235.



It will take some time for the setup to "fill up" - but once every element has stocked up:

- Centrifuge: ~ 85 Uranium-235 (plus 40 in the active cycle)
- Belt: 2 Uranium-235
- Chest: 1 Uranium-235

you'll get one unit of Uranium-235 per 50 seconds (without speed-modules) ...

This totally "out-numbers" the chance of 0.007% to get U-235 in the regular process and really should be "refactored" i'd say...
(unless, this is desired, but the difference in efficency seems "strange"...)

[leitk]

This was pretty clearly the intent.
Also, there have been several posts on how to do this in 'Show your creations - Energy'
They even fixed a bug in it when some one used productivity modules to get even more out of it.

[dognose]

This was pretty clearly the intent.
Also, there have been several posts on how to do this in 'Show your creations - Energy'
They even fixed a bug in it when some one used productivity modules to get even more out of it.

Okay, if it happens on "purpose", then there isn't a problem i'd say.

I just was very confused by the "efficency" that can be achieved with a SINGLE Enrichment-Centrifuge,
while reading posts / (highly rated) howtos, where people are arranging 8-10 Enrichment-Centrifuges in order to get the required "U235".

[leitk]

people are arranging 8-10 Enrichment-Centrifuges in order to get the required "U235".

That's massive overkill for power setups. It may be more useful for Atomic bomb mass production however.

[Koub]

[Koub] Massive merging spree (Just realized there were 5 topics about "Kovarex enrichment is unbalanced").

[Frightning]

I too have felt like something's off w/ Uranium and Kovarex as it stands currently. A lot of my thoughts were articulated in one form or another already, but I thought I'd try and summarize them to give a picture of what it's like now, and how perhaps it can be improved. I think the progression with uranium tech can be effectively compared with the situation with oil to some extent, too. I admittedly haven't done too much with it (just got my 40+ U-235 ready for Kovarex and have used some of the considerable U-238 I got in the process to make uranium ammo recently, will make cannon shells soon; 2 full steel chests worth, though I could've stopped with the 2nd chest about half filled if I had so desired), but I can see how things will probably go for the rest of the situation and others have confirmed some of my suspicions about that as well.

Uranium in the early days:
Can be mined as soon as you can make and supply Sulfuric acid to mining drills. This requires oil tech as well as Sulfur (which are all SP1&2 techs). Uranium ore, has no use at this point. Oil can be used as soon as it is researched to make Lubricant and Solid fuel (though realistically, you don't typically want to use PG for the latter because it has better uses later), also, the techs that give PG its preferred uses are immediately available to research after researching basic oil processing (and require the same SPs to research). Nuclear Power research gives Uranium ore it's first uses, but requires SP3s in addition to SP1s&2s. It can be refined in Centrifuges and the resulting U-235 and U-238 can be both be used to make Uranium fuel cells, however, U-235 is rarer compared to U-238 than the 1-19 ratio needed here, so this is where you start to have a growing excess of U-238 needing to be stored. This too, is not unlike oil, particularly Heavy oil prior to Advanced oil processing is researched (which does require SP3s in addition to SP1s&2s). The extent to which the excess U-238 can accumulate is, imo, much steeper than the analogous situation with HO excess (and the option at least exists to burn off that excess by turning it directly into Solid fuel). U-238 has no such analogous sink option at this stage, which I think it part of the reason people have expressed dissatisfaction with the U-235 v U-238 situation early on. You're kind forced to be stuck with a buildup of excess U-238 with which you can do nothing but store for later use. Theoretically, Uranium ammo offers that sink, but it is gated by M and H SP in addition to SPs1-3, so it's generally not readily available as a sink, and even once researched, isn't as good of a sink because of the limited demand for the resulting items (Solid fuel demand, at least in principle, can get very large, particularly if you use it to power your base; ammo demand, not so much). Uranium fuel reprocessing is available at the same tech-level as Nuclear power, but only helps you improve the efficiency of U-238 usage (which is the thing we already have too much of early on), and thus it feels pretty useless until much later when you finally get Kovarex. All of this said, it's certainly possible to mine enough Uranium ore and refine it all to get enough U-235 to power a decent sized base (indeed people in this thread have proven it is doable), the main pain point of doing this is the lack of solutions to U-238 buildup (building storage is, ultimately, a temporary solution, even if it can easily be built large enough to be functionally a quasi-permanent solution).

Getting Kovarex, and life afterwards:
Just as Advanced oil processing gives access to cracking, and thus the ability to alleviate any excess HO and LO problems. So too does Kovarex give access to Kovarex enrichment and means to solve the imbalance of U-235 to U-238. However, while cracking is pretty straightforward to implement once researched (and not TOO much harder to research, requiring only SP3 in addition to requirements of basic oil research), Kovarex is gated by a steep entry fee of 40 U-235, which if you didn't bother to try and stockpile that ahead of time, can be a long, tedious wait. Yet, once you have the 40 U-235 required to get it started, you will practically be inundated with more U-235 than you know what to do with (the main use being atomic bomb manufacturing; which is a fairly limited demand item). This is because the Kovarex recipe is really mostly the catalyst, which consists of 40 U-235 and 2 U-238. The remaining 3 U-238 is converted into 1 U-235, so in effect, ignoring the catalyst, Kovarex converts U-238 into U-235 at a 3-to-1 ratio, which is honestly pretty damned efficient considering overall demand for U-235 is still generally less than demand for U-238 even if you are using Atomic bombs. The pain point here being the obvious difficulty in obtaining the 40 U-235 required to get this started (this pain is exacerbated by how advanced the research is, the lack of alternate solutions to excess U-238). A second, less obvious issue is that once you do have it up and running, U-235 is almost too easy to get in as large of quantities as you desire.

Towards a solution:
I think the reason people are expressing dissatisfaction with U-235 v U-238 situation overall is because it goes from being essentially painfully inelegant for a while to being trivially easy once you get past that early inelegance. I think that the Uranium fuel reprocessing recipe was a missed opportunity to give an intermediate solution that at least helps with the situation until you get to Kovarex (instead of helping you save on use of the material that you already have too much of at that time). This would obvious require it's recipe to be changed significantly, right now the recipes are like this:

Uranium fuel cell:
Uses 10 Iron plates, 1 U-235, 19 U-238
Makes 10 Uranium fuel cells

Uranium fuel reprocessing:
Uses 5 Used up uranium fuel cells
Makes 3 U-238
This makes effective cost of Uranium fuel cells 13 U-238 for 10 instead of 19 for 10

Kovarex enrichment:
Uses 40 U-235, 5 U-238
Makes 41 U-235, 2 U-238
For a net of 3 U-238 to 1 U-235

Perhaps Uranium fuel reprocessing should use 50 used up fuel cells, but make 1 U-235 instead (so for every 5 U-235 used, we get 1 back, or a 20% savings on U-235 cost). Kovarex could perhaps also be changed so that U-235 costs more than 3 U-238 (maybe 5 to 1?), and perhaps also lowering the barrier to entry, maybe from 40 down to 20? These are just rough numbers, but with these changes I think it'd feel a lot better than it does now.

Suggested recipes:
Uranium fuel cells: unchanged
Uranium fuel reprocessing: 50 Used up uranium fuel cells -> 1 U-235 (from 5 Used up uranium fuel cells -> 3 U-238)
Kovarex enrichment: 20 U-235 and 10 U-238 -> 21 U-235 and 5 U-238 (from 40 and 5 -> 41 and 2)

[Zavian]

Hmm.

Maybe Kovarex would be more interesting if enrichment took say 4 U-235 + 40 U-238, and returned 4 U-235 + 39 U-238 + a either 0.5% chance of U-235 or 99.5% chance of U-238. Maybe reduce the craft time a bit as well, since you would nee more cycles to make a U-235 on average. (Alternatively we could see a use for massive Kovarex processing arrays). That would reduce the wait for 40 U-235 to start the process, and maybe make things more interesting. (Especially the bit where you can't be sure whether a cycle will produce 4 or 5 U-235).

Just a random idea.

Maybe someone who is interested could turn this idea into a mod that interested people could play with ?

[Koub]

I think Kovarex enrichment was thought mainly for nukes. You totally can live without it if the only thing you want to do with your enriched uranium is power a nuclear power plant.

[Cribbit]

I would like to see Kovarex and other recipes with inputs also in outputs (like coal liquefaction) have the option to "lock" the items both in input/output so that the output only gets the excess.

[Koub]

I would like to see Kovarex and other recipes with inputs also in outputs (like coal liquefaction) have the option to "lock" the items both in input/output so that the output only gets the excess.

That would trivialize the puzzle, don't you think ?

[Zavian]

I think Kovarex enrichment was thought mainly for nukes. You totally can live without it if the only thing you want to do with your enriched uranium is power a nuclear power plant.

Personally, I won't use nuclear power without it. It just take too much uranium to find U-235. I would end up with a huge pile of U-238 sitting around that I would otherwise have no use for. There is a significant risk that I would fill the U-238 storage, uranium processing would stop, and I would run out of U-235, and the base would lose power.

[Koub]

I would end up with a huge pile of U-238 sitting around that I would otherwise have no use for.

Uranium bullets and cannon shells. The bullets are unrivaled in terms of DPS, especially in a turret.

[Engimage]

I would end up with a huge pile of U-238 sitting around that I would otherwise have no use for.

Uranium bullets and cannon shells. The bullets are unrivaled in terms of DPS, especially in a turret.

They are but this is not reliable sink for U238. You can't balance it anyhow.

[Zavian]

I would end up with a huge pile of U-238 sitting around that I would otherwise have no use for.

Uranium bullets and cannon shells. The bullets are unrivaled in terms of DPS, especially in a turret.

Late game I typically just use laser turrets. Less dps, but also less hassle to setup and supply.