pY Coal Processing - Discussion

[Baughn]

I guess I am blessed with ears that do not hear the high pitched noise, though I wonder if that's really a blessing or rather a curse...

The post processing one does sound very muffled though. My sound card driver let's me setup EQ-profiles, perhaps setting up a specific profile for Factorio might be a solution?

Mine doesn't, so not really.

I agree that it's muffled -- this is what I came up with in ~two minutes, after all; it's for demonstration purposes only. I could do better, but I only had the .ogg files to go off, and that means every such change will degrade overall quality...

Ideally Pyanodon will chime in. At a minimum, they should have the original WAV files.

[Emerassi]

I'd like to add a +1 on the DDC making some awful noises. I can barely hear them but my spouse can hear them from across the room and they hate it! So I get yelled at whenever I stand next to a running DDC. It's entirely the high-pitched bit that causes the irritation so if you changed it I would definitely appreciate it.

[Crixomix]

So back to the whole "glassworks takes 27MW" discussion. I'm really trying to have an open mind here, but I just don't understand how this is a good thing. I've played through the py early game many times (back before glassworks building & the liquid fuel stuff) and this new method is such a MASSIVE timewall that it's kinda silly. You need 65-100ish raw coal PER red science pack in the beginning of the game when you don't have any tech (depending on how well you can use all the coalgas and tar and resulting coal). How can this be correct?

I am aware that there are much more "efficient" ways to power glassworks past the simple coal gas and tar, but even so, holy cow 27 megawatts is intense. The amount of resource sink that is powering glassworks dwarfs anything else you do for a long time in the game.

[immortal_sniper1]

So back to the whole "glassworks takes 27MW" discussion. I'm really trying to have an open mind here, but I just don't understand how this is a good thing. I've played through the py early game many times (back before glassworks building & the liquid fuel stuff) and this new method is such a MASSIVE timewall that it's kinda silly. You need 65-100ish raw coal PER red science pack in the beginning of the game when you don't have any tech (depending on how well you can use all the coalgas and tar and resulting coal). How can this be correct?

I am aware that there are much more "efficient" ways to power glassworks past the simple coal gas and tar, but even so, holy cow 27 megawatts is intense. The amount of resource sink that is powering glassworks dwarfs anything else you do for a long time in the game.

it is a thing that would force you to think about fuel ( since all other ores require some special solvent or liquid at some point)
also i made is high to prevent people from using water>H2 as a source of fuel all the time (and tholens in the past , since it was a easy was to get fuel from pure power )

also as a small note the higher you go in the recipe tree the faster the recipes become ( so u use less fuel )
and in the past mot recipes used coal gas or some other fuel in the recipe directly (no longer thee case tho some recipes still do later on )

also aren t crude oil , natural gas also options ? not to mention fuel oil

also it is high since atm most liquids have relatively high fuel values per unit

here is a example from the past:

crushed quartz had 200 or so col gas in recipe so 200*0.2= 40mw worth of power ( + there was electric power involved)

[immortal_sniper1]

so in a sense now u need less fuel you can pick it
also coalgas >syngas is a X2 in fuel value straight up not to mention u can loop the tar back so it is lore like a X2.5 or so in terms of fuel value from the same resources

[TwentyEighty]

You didn't need to use those expensive coal gas recipes in the early game, now you need glass works for glassware and petri dishes, that's the difference. He's taking about early game and you're talking about high tier buildings

[Crixomix]

You didn't need to use those expensive coal gas recipes in the early game, now you need glass works for glassware and petri dishes, that's the difference. He's taking about early game and you're talking about high tier buildings

Exactly. I addressed what you're talking about in my post. I know the high tier glass recipes were also pretty crazy inefficient and I didn't use them! And my major point here is that in the early game, it's absurdly punishing. I don't mind having an inefficient recipe. But having to collect 100ish raw coal simply to supply your glassworks with POWER for ONE red science pack is pretty crazy, no matter how much more efficient it gets later in the game. And why does glassworks have to be balanced against endgame liquid fuels? Most buildings take a modest amount of power (400kw, 800kw, etc) and that's it. Why should glassworks take absurd amounts? Even if you look at regular syngas, you need 67.5 syngas PER SECOND to run a tier 1 glassworks full time.

I still do not understand how this is balanced against other things. I'd much rather provide 5MW of electric power than 67.5 syngas per second. If you look at ANY other building in tier 1 or tier 2, none of them require that amount of investment simply for the energy. Yes, I get that liquid fuel values are "high", but they're not THAT high. 67.5 syngas per second is WAY harder to provide than a megawatt or two of electric power, which is all the glassworks would cost IF it was electric.

At the end of the day it's just too high, even when considering the fuel values of liquids, and I don't see the hydrogen argument really being that fair. Lower the fuel value of hydrogen if you think that's too good, but don't make tier 1 glassworks 27 megawatts. It's simply oppressive. Again, I understand Pyanodons isn't supposed to be easy and the early game is all about inefficient design and such. But even at 10 megawatts, the glassworks would still require a LOT of coalgas/tar and wouldn't be "easy" by any stretch. But at least you wouldn't need to set up massive syngas factories in the later early game just to power your glassworks.

and as to natural gas being an option... You need 300 units of natural gas to power one second of tier 1 glassworks. Again, that's crazy talk. Like I realize it's nice because you can just burn anything in there and you don't have to refine gasses/etc. But the VOLUME of power it needs is just too much in my opinion.

[AndrewSkier]

I completely agree with Crixomix. Just started a new game and the beginning phase is just horribly slow due to need to fuel your glassworks.
It's a massive step back from the way things functioned previously.
Immortals comments relate to once you get your science going and have syngas or other process or can extract tar, but you have to get there first.
If at least part of the process didn't need glassworks, like before you could go glass in stone furnace, or energy need for glassworks needs to be reduced by at least 3 or 5x in early game.

[the_ave]

Unfortunately I am with the two guys above. I just started a clean new run and... boy is is PAINFUL.

[immortal_sniper1]

I completely agree with Crixomix. Just started a new game and the beginning phase is just horribly slow due to need to fuel your glassworks.
It's a massive step back from the way things functioned previously.
Immortals comments relate to once you get your science going and have syngas or other process or can extract tar, but you have to get there first.
If at least part of the process didn't need glassworks, like before you could go glass in stone furnace, or energy need for glassworks needs to be reduced by at least 3 or 5x in early game.

That would be a good solution but I don't know how to do it or if it is possible at all

Maybe if I ask king to make a script that would x5 energy used lance a certain tech is researched , maybe do it in 2 or 3 steps

Or maybe make some early game recipes that would be super fast( so use very little fuel)

The thing is that lance green ( I think) and you have hoil u can use that and it is sorta easy not to mention syngas from wood
.

Also as of how pyAL is now power is like super easy to make pretty much everything that you build to make biomass is a very positive loop
.

Regarding power usage in other buildings is is low in all ,except PA , and also all burner buildings use trace amounts if someone said he used 2 red belts of coke for all the melting in his base it would not surprise me
.
As a small note electro arc furnace use like x5 x10 more coke then BoF that use coke as fuel , since most arc furnace recipes use graphite rods and that is often much more coke that u use as fuel is BoF

[Crixomix]

I'm still just not sure why glassworks power use can't be cut down to like, 20-40% of what it is now. Why would 10MW be bad? (for tier 1, with same crafting speed, and obviously higher tiers of glassworks scaled accordingly) I don't think it would be "too cheap" and it would help greatly with the massive amounts of coal/gas/liquid you need to divert to them.

[AndrewSkier]

I just modified my local version to be at 5MW and that seems fine for early game. Still need 15 DCC to keep enough glassworks to get less than 1 science/second.

[Crixomix]

I just modified my local version to be at 5MW and that seems fine for early game. Still need 15 DCC to keep enough glassworks to get less than 1 science/second.

Ooh. Can you share how to do that? Is it as simple as editing a file in notepad ++? Or harder than that

I'd love to just cut all of them to 1/4 their original values.

[AndrewSkier]

You just need to unzip content of C:\Users\[YOUR LOCAL USER NAME\\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\mods\pycoalprocessing_1.8.1.zip (or whichever is your latest version).
Find file \pycoalprocessing\prototypes\buildings\glassworks-mk01.lua
Find:
energy_usage = "27MW",
and replace with whatever you feel you want it to be at (on 1.8.1 it's line #97)
Save and put back the file into zip file in the same directory.
Normally I'd view that as "cheating", but it just makes the game more playable at the start of the game for me.
Keep in mind that when the mod gets updated, it will get overwritten.

[Crixomix]

You just need to unzip content of C:\Users\[YOUR LOCAL USER NAME\\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\mods\pycoalprocessing_1.8.1.zip (or whichever is your latest version).
Find file \pycoalprocessing\prototypes\buildings\glassworks-mk01.lua
Find:
energy_usage = "27MW",
and replace with whatever you feel you want it to be at (on 1.8.1 it's line #97)
Save and put back the file into zip file in the same directory.
Normally I'd view that as "cheating", but it just makes the game more playable at the start of the game for me.
Keep in mind that when the mod gets updated, it will get overwritten.

Thanks! I'll need to change all four since I want them to stay balanced relative to each other.

[immortal_sniper1]

No need to rear arhive since folder has priority over archive

[Blokus]

So back to the whole "glassworks takes 27MW" discussion. I'm really trying to have an open mind here, but I just don't understand how this is a good thing. I've played through the py early game many times (back before glassworks building & the liquid fuel stuff) and this new method is such a MASSIVE timewall that it's kinda silly. You need 65-100ish raw coal PER red science pack in the beginning of the game when you don't have any tech (depending on how well you can use all the coalgas and tar and resulting coal). How can this be correct?

I am aware that there are much more "efficient" ways to power glassworks past the simple coal gas and tar, but even so, holy cow 27 megawatts is intense. The amount of resource sink that is powering glassworks dwarfs anything else you do for a long time in the game.

It got a little bit easier with the buff to raw coal fluid outputs, but yes, you don't really have an alternative besides just waiting around. You sort of have an alternative in the form of wood. However, with PyAL wood automation is locked behind almost as much science as raw coal 01 is, so you're left with clearing forests. This isn't so bad with PyQuickStart, but you do start to run out of wood quite quickly. (Incidentally just in general I don't think I will play py without PyQuickStart again. The burner miner grind is no fun, and the bots don't actually do all that much for you.)

Syngas helps some when you get there, but that's a decent ways off too.

[Crixomix]

Yeah. I manually changed my tier1 glassworks to take 10MW (and divided the others by 2.7 as well), and it still took quite a long time to get to syngas. That was with 2 DDCs running constantly on raw coal, the coal ddc running from the produced coal, and then the coke DDC running as well. And I would alternate between using the tar and using the coalgas.

Once you have syngas it's quite a bit better since you can also turn tar into more coalgas so you don't have to worry about two fluids. However, it's still a lot of work at just 10MW. I can't imagine needing 2.7x more than what I'm using just to power my buildings. Generally powering buildings isn't that much work. So I really LIKE the idea of needing to power buildings differently, it's really creative and fun! But the 27MW is too punishing IMO. Makes you frustrated the thing doesn't use electricity, rather than excited for the opportunity to power buildings differently.

[kalashn1k0v]

Guys, is it really a problem that glassworks takes 27MW?
I was really busy with other staff like figuring out how to build and organize moss/trees/auogs/others and other staff in the early game. Yeah, science was made slowly, few flasks per min or less, and it was enough.
I made a loop trees->coal/coalgas/tar->coke/coalgas/tar-> syngas and I didn't need raw coal at all.
Also I switched to syngas as soon as it was available and also processed byproduct tar into coalgas.
If you ask whether glassworks worked smoothly, no they didn't, and the bottleneck was fuel, yes.
But I didn't have problems with glass at all. Usually it was something else.
BTW, later you'll have a really nice way to process tar into diesel and tall oil, which are 0.9MJ and 1.0MJ.
I'm going for a blue science at the moment, so I don't think that early game glassworks was so terrible

[razahin]

I'm going to echo some of the concerns here that a fresh map is really rough. I'm just coming back after an extend break and decided to restart from an older map where I had reached blue science with the entire Py-suite.

Overall, I really like the addition of the glassworks but boy is it oppressive when you have no tech at the start. With all the changes from my older game I need to fuel at least 4 glassworks for

Molten Glass
Glass Sheets
Empty Petri Dishes
Glassware

and with no tech and at 27MW a piece its really really rough. Instead of changing the game files I did a little searching and decided it didn't feel too much like cheating to use the console to give myself the recipes for small oil derrick mk01 and the crude to fuel oil to get through this part.

Since the glassworks are balanced around later fuel values, and these recipes are unlocked by relatively early red techs it doesn't feel overpowered. I will still need to setup a syngas build and convert it over since I will need my oil for rubber and natural gas after the early techs are done. It also feels good because I get to make choices around fuel.

So making the "crude-to-fuel-oil" and "oil-derrick-mk01" available at the start if the player has PyPH, would be a good option.