[1.1.30] Output power of heat exchanger + steam engine depends on orientation.

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valneq
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[1.1.30] Output power of heat exchanger + steam engine depends on orientation.

Post by valneq »

This is probably a "won't fix", a "minor bug", or "not a bug" – nonetheless I am wondering if I am misinterpreting what I see.

When I use steam engines instead of steam turbines for a nuclear build, the total output power depends on the directionality of the build: north/south or east/west flipping of blueprints gives different results!

Each of these heat exchangers is outputting its steam into a set of steam engines into separated electric networks, their power is consumed by radars:
Bildschirmfoto von 2021-03-27 14-06-02.png
Bildschirmfoto von 2021-03-27 14-06-02.png (7.69 MiB) Viewed 1734 times
As you can see, the number of actively working steam engines is different.
The different electric networks have a power production of 3.6MW, 5.9MW, or 7.5MW, none of them produce enough power to satisfy the radars, and not as much power as the heat exchanger can maximally provide.

However, I expected to see not more than 3.09MW of power produced by any set of steam engines fed by 103 steam/s, each steam engine consuming up to 30 steam/s and producing a maximum of 900kW.

Is this discrepancy caused by fluid flow directionality? Is it caused by the mismatch in temperatures?
What's going on here?

Save game for reproduction:
fluid_directionality.zip
(3.04 MiB) Downloaded 73 times
logfile if anyone cares:
factorio-current.log
(7.12 KiB) Downloaded 63 times
Additional information:
This is a minimal vanilla reproduction of an issue I first saw with bob's boilers and steam engines.

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Re: [1.1.30] Output power of heat exchanger + steam engine depends on orientation.

Post by Loewchen »

Looks like the normal fluid update order issue, see 57865.

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Re: [1.1.30] Output power of heat exchanger + steam engine depends on orientation.

Post by valneq »

Loewchen wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 6:57 pm
Looks like the normal fluid update order issue, see 57865.
I suspected as much, but a factor of 2 in energy output just from a different order of updates? Feels a bit … too much (?)

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Re: [1.1.30] Output power of heat exchanger + steam engine depends on orientation.

Post by valneq »

I figured out where the issue is: the information about "max temperature" is wrong.
Steam engines have no issue processing steam of higher temperature.
max_steam_temperature.png
max_steam_temperature.png (143.54 KiB) Viewed 1637 times
The fluid update order just determines how many steam engines will end up having steam at all.
If you provide more than 9.28 steam/s @500°C to a steam engine it reaches 900kW output power, any additional steam flow will result in wasted energy.

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