Friday Facts #167 - Reactors Operational

[MeduSalem]

I am a bit disappointed by the "reactors", since there is no uranium. For me, making a "nuclear reactor" only based on water doesn't make sense.

There's going to be Uranium or whatever the Devs chose to use as radioactive fuel... you see the long-handed inserter below the reactor? I'd assume it's there to input the fuel material.

[Cordylus]

I very like the reactor concept, but we need one thing: Better pipes building.

[jorgenRe]

I very like the reactor concept, but we need one thing: Better pipes building.

You mean like a dropdown a robot that places pipes to the desired location kind of robot ?

[Vinnie_NL]

I very like the reactor concept, but we need one thing: Better pipes building.

Yes! Having an option to disable the autoconnect so you can have parallel pipes next to each other without messing around with underground pipes would be nice.

But I'm really looking forward to all of this. Exploring will be so much more fun with the new terrain and I'm looking forward to designing the new power plant layouts.
My friends and family are all about Christmas and New Years Eve, but the real holidays start when 0.15 is out

I'm wondering, is it really that much of a problem with the changed boiler size for people with steam powered factories?
Even if you need lot's of power, I assume it won't take very long to think of a new expandable layout, create blueprint and you have a new big power plant in a minute. And I'm sure people are sharing new efficient layouts on this forum and reddit on the first day already. I'm probably missing something but I'm curious what it will be.

[FlyHigh]

Finally a solution for the terrain that has been broken since the introduction of stone&concrete paving! I very much like that. I've been away from these recent versions of Factorio, still playing 0.12 mostly because I din't like the new polished aesthetics (mainly trains). This new terrain may very well change my mind yet again. That was a great terrain render indeed.

[Nematrec]

Now that we're getting large boilers, will it be possible to finally pipe liquid fuels into them rather than making solid fuel?

[Rhamphoryncus]

Glad to see the boiler size got reworked. Figuring out build patterns will require more thought.. perhaps running the belt between boiler pairs in the bank in a perpendicular direction, rather than the traditional parallel..

(Replying to myself, weee!)

I've found several unique, functional layouts so far, a good sign for the new boiler sizes! This one's my favourite:


The only potential "gotcha" is some of the layouts use pairs of boilers (one on each side of a belt), so if the ratio was an odd number of boilers like 1:5:10 you'd end up with two full sets and a mismatched half set. However, if the pipe throughput limit was high enough I could just double up the boilers and it would work out fine. Here's what I mean by pairs:

[Gertibrumm]

As an engineer I have some technical but also logical concerns:

1) I would like to see the new "boiler" more as a "heat exchanger" and NOT as a furnace which consumes coal!
2) furnaces could have reactor-like hot parts which connected to "heat exchangers" aka boiler to heat water to steam
3) it should be possible to burn everything in furnace or have different devices for different fuels just like the reactor is a furnace for uranium
4) making furnaces, which emit flue gases, pipe-connectable could create possibilities to use flue gases for filtration or water preheating like an economizer or maybe even burning of unburned gases like carbonmonoxide as a result of too compact furnace setups (no enough oxygen)

[Malachite]

Yaaaaaas i love the new biome stuff. it'll be nice to see a new nauvis.

[delus]

As an engineer I have some technical but also logical concerns:

1) I would like to see the new "boiler" more as a "heat exchanger" and NOT as a furnace which consumes coal!
2) furnaces could have reactor-like hot parts which connected to "heat exchangers" aka boiler to heat water to steam
3) it should be possible to burn everything in furnace or have different devices for different fuels just like the reactor is a furnace for uranium
4) making furnaces, which emit flue gases, pipe-connectable could create possibilities to use flue gases for filtration or water preheating like an economizer or maybe even burning of unburned gases like carbonmonoxide as a result of too compact furnace setups (no enough oxygen)

That should be a fairly easy thing to add in a mod(adding what you describe and removing vanilla bits) once the heat pipe stuff has been added to the game. I'm personally a fan of some simplification at the expense of some realism to keep the early-mid game from becoming a bit tedious.

-A fellow IRL Engineer

[Gertibrumm]

That should be a fairly easy thing to add in a mod

I get that alot, maybe devs make up there mind. Because I dont have the time to make a mod
I am just most bothered that someone would shove coal into a heat exchanger and not the furnace

[Vatharian]

Albert.... Wow. Stunning!

I'm all for larger boilers, for it will reduce number of inserters required for line of boilers.
I'm very, very, very disappointed on 3x2... why not 2x2 or 3x3?

Then, again, introducing high-temperature steam, and extracting energy from it using steam turbines, then last bit by current 'steam engines' (should be changed to Stirling generators!), which cool water down.

Introducing new mechanic of 'heat flow' is a bad idea, imo.

[EstebanLB]

I thought that the Reactor would be an alternative to the boilers, not to it's fuel. So the reactor would have it's own cold water input, hot water output and steam output, just like the boilers. That would pose a simplified dynamic to merge with the cooling towers and even further, the steam turbine would be an alternative to the steam engine, probably one that only works with the reactors. So, even though the steam engines do work with he steam from the reactor, it would be more space and/cost efficient to use steam turbines with them

[TartarusMkII]

Hey just wanted to offer some quick feed back in regards to the broken decorative train tracks.

I am not so worried about the [why are there so many train tracks already here?], but I fee like individually, specifically, the way the metal rails are bent outward make it look like the whole line was carpet bombed, so much of the rails have been blown and bent outward so often. I feel like it should take considerable force to blast the rails bent so far, rather than simple decay. At least for how often in the example it appears.

That's all!

[Xuerian]

Hey just wanted to offer some quick feed back in regards to the broken decorative train tracks.

I am not so worried about the [why are there so many train tracks already here?], but I fee like individually, specifically, the way the metal rails are bent outward make it look like the whole line was carpet bombed, so much of the rails have been blown and bent outward so often. I feel like it should take considerable force to blast the rails bent so far, rather than simple decay. At least for how often in the example it appears.

That's all!

It seemed to me like it was major biter damage, like, over time from bored biters after they eliminated the last hapless engineer.

Either way, the new tileset looks really, really good! Looking forward to it, and reactors too, even though I'm not the kind to theorycraft them.

[TasteofYesterday]

Great work so far! I can't wait for 0.15!
What would be really cool is if you guys implement some sort of multi-stage refining of nuclear fuel. Like say if you mine some uranium ore and refine it once, you could use the fuel right away (but with a low energy density), or run it through again and refine it more. The idea with that being the more you refine it, the more pure the fuel gets and it the more energy you get out of it per unit.
Perhaps after a great many refinings of the fuel it could become "weapons-grade" and be used in a new arsenal of weapons

[Khaim]

Yes! Having an option to disable the autoconnect so you can have parallel pipes next to each other without messing around with underground pipes would be nice.

If you can't wait, the "FlowControl" mod does this. It allows you to convert between the base "autoconnect" pipes and fixed-shape variants (straight, curve, T). That is, there are instant 1:1 recipes for each fixed shape, and they all deconstruct back to basic pipes.

[-root]

Can't wait for nuclear power... it was suggested so long ago and its finally becoming a reality.

also, that new red desert biome looks like the sex.

[vipm23]

That should be a fairly easy thing to add in a mod(adding what you describe and removing vanilla bits) once the heat pipe stuff has been added to the game. I'm personally a fan of some simplification at the expense of some realism to keep the early-mid game from becoming a bit tedious.

-A fellow IRL Engineer

I respectfully disagree.

There wouldn't be any additional items added that you wouldn't already craft other than heat pipes-just the way you arrange them and the space needed.

The boiler-furnace idea is intuitive(at least to me...)-The boiler needs heat, the heat pipes transfer heat, and the furnaces produce it. That's about as simple as it can get short of what's the case right now.

it's a natural extension of the heat pipes idea, and would introduce that idea early on.(As well as other extensions of the heat pipe system-solar thermal power and molten salt heat storage anyone?)

It mostly needs cosmetic changes to make the connection more obvious. Such as visible heat pipe connectors on the furnaces, that look the same as the ones on the boilers.

The difficulty would be that it would increase the space required for a burner boiler set, and (given the burner furnaces are 2x2) in a somewhat awkward way. That's going to be the main tradeoff Wube will have to consider vs keeping the boiler's burner capabilities.

But I'm neither an engineer nor a game developer.

[EstebanLB]

Yes! Having an option to disable the autoconnect so you can have parallel pipes next to each other without messing around with underground pipes would be nice.

If you can't wait, the "FlowControl" mod does this. It allows you to convert between the base "autoconnect" pipes and fixed-shape variants (straight, curve, T). That is, there are instant 1:1 recipes for each fixed shape, and they all deconstruct back to basic pipes.

Wow , I didn't know someone did that already. Was taht easy?