Friday facts #151 - The plans for 0.14

[Evilreaver]

This has been my idea for Nuclear power from a looong time ago:

Nuclear would require Uranium that is cracked from coal or stone in very small amounts (more from stone than coal) requiring lots of polluting mines and power before it can be started. A 'nuclear plant' is basically a multi-structure building that has the reactor core (uranium+water = superheated water+depleted U), the dynamo (superheated = power+steam), the towers (exhausts steam at a set rate, too much steam forces a cooldown), and as many breeders as you can fit (using uranium and power, cuts uranium use in the reactor for a small net benefit: less power-per-second, more total power-per-uranium)(Works like a Beacon, IE affects any Cores in range: stuff 8 Breeders around 1 core, or have Breed+Core+Breed fractals, etc).

Uranium is cracked ((stone || coal) + power = U), then enriched in a centrifuge (U + power = Enriched U). Depleted Uranium can be used for bullets or Heavy Walls (an improvement over Steel Walls, an improvement over Stone Walls). Breeders, Crackers and Enrichers pollute and accept modules.

Uranium Cracking is done via Chemical Plant Mk2, requiring Sulfuric Acid + (Stone || Coal)
Reactor Core is expensive, requiring Graphite Rods (Stone Brick + Coal), Steel, Processors, Pipes, Effect3 Modules, and Concrete
Dynamo is also expensive, requiring Steel, Underground Pipe, Steam Engine, Speed3 Modules, and Processors
Towers are comparatively cheap, just needing a ton of Steel and Concrete
Breeders are Assembler3s+Processors+Beacon
Centrifuges are Assembler3s+Steel+Electric Engines+Advanced Chips



In this way, I believe Nuclear is implemented with Maximum Factorio(tm):
-Multiple structures/steps...
-...Which can be min-maxed as needed or just 1:1:1 pushed straight through if you're lazy
-Builds off existing tech trees, products, and lines
-Fairly realistic with compromises made for playability/simplicity
-Straightforward and easy to understand with quick tooltips, doesn't add wacky new mechanics out of nowhere, similar to previous machines/mechanics

[kremlinkev]

I agree with Elwin that nuclear power should include some way of managing nuclear waste. I think this would be an excellent oppertunity to launch our nuclear waste into space with our rockets. Simply produce some kind of 'nuclear waste rocket pod', insert it into the slot where satellites usually go, and hit that launch button!

This would be an excellent solution to the late game power delivery. Nuclear power may however be problematic during the early- and midgame, where rocket launching is not yet available. Other ways of getting rid of nuclear waste have to be used here.

Waste as depleted uranium would be interesting for late game tier 3 armor piercing round :}

[Spockstar]

I like the idear of Nuclear power very much! It would greatly improve the power situation in the game!
I think it would be important to implement nuclear waste as well! Not sure how but I think way to much games don't consider that kind of problem! Anno for example...

[SHiRKiT]

You are the best developers out there. Thanks for this awsome game. From the day I met, I still play it (not every day though )

[Undermind]

New late-game content at last!

[LucidMoses]

On the Multithreaded topic. Why not just use instructions like CMPXCHG8B witch is meant for this kind of thing. Collisions are catastrophic but are so seldom (at CPU speeds) that a recalc every now and again is nothing.

[chris13524]

We need a way to defend train tracks. I'm not sure if biters will spawn on train tracks, you mentioned the artillery trains. Might be something to think about.

[Brunel]

Firstly, after seeing the hd car again, I have a newfound respect for it's sprite, god I love the factorio design

I do not have concrete plans as to the details for nuclear, but here are my two cents on how should it feel, and then a bunch of nonsense "it would be cool"-s:

First, I think, generally it should be complex, but easily scalable. Meaning that it has a complex production chain, with multiple steps, liquids, chem plants, assemblers, whatever, maybe with feedback of a portion of the used fuel for max efficiency BUT at the same hand, the whole setup should be scalable, in a way, that adding another 50 or 100 MW of power does not mean that three different belts get oversaturated and need refiddling alongside the fuel chain. Basically, if you make your design with blue belts, and your piping isn't too long, it should scale up to 0,5-1GW without too much reinventing. (after you have invested a few good hours in initial setup that is)
Of course the trade off with solar would be the initial time investment, if you only really ever going to need 100 MW, you are better off slowly creeping the land with solar fields, but for much higher, nuclear would make sense. This also means, that just like trains, it would not be exactly required just to finish the game (and there is nothing wrong with this I think)
Right now this is the greatest annoyance with steam late game (and I am at a point where I have done the maths for a 1GW rocket fuel based steam only power plant) (also, screw the endless fields of solar nonsense together with the environment:D)

Secondly, the unavoidable meltdown mechanic..... based on your decisions so far, I hope you would not curse us with some dice roll mechanic where every minute there is a .1% chance your base is going to blow up. BUT if you do make such a thing part of the game, please, don't make it a complete gamble. Maybe only destroy very locally, few tiles radius, so if you are prepared, your robo network can mitigate the damage. Instead it could give off a YUUUUGGGGEEEEE and long lasting pollution spike, like, YUUUGEE one, so that your defences will feel the increased biter pressure especially, if you were irresponsible and didn't take the risk into account.

Misc idea 1: To discourage the players from burying the nuclear plants in the heart of their bases (where a pollution spike would not matter) maybe the possible meltdown event could also make the surrounding area uninhabitable (like if there was a gigantic poison capsule like aoe dps effect, obv penetrating shields (but maybe not tanks, so you could still access the plant in some way))
Misc idea 2: It would be really cool, if at least the nuclear chain included waste management. One example: the reactor has multiple outputs, one of them is the hot water, and two different kinds of waste. One of the waste is permanently useless, and needs to be dealt with, the other is at some point reusable and can be feeded back into the fuel production chain. (possibly after extra research, like adv oil processing).
Misc idea 3: Linked to waste disposal, but has implications to general gameplay. Every time you implicitly destroy items (shooting a wooden chest full of trash anyone?) it would generate a one time pollution spike in the area. In relation to spent fuel waste, obviously, huge pollution penalty, maybe again harmful aoe effect, and also, annoying stacking (like, 1 stack = 1 spent fuel canister) so you have to set up a system for depositing the waste long term.

Thank you if you read through all of this

(is there hope for spidertron in .14?)

[Golnor]

This has been my idea for Nuclear power from a looong time ago:

Nuclear would require Uranium that is cracked from coal or stone in very small amounts (more from stone than coal) requiring lots of polluting mines and power before it can be started. A 'nuclear plant' is basically a multi-structure building that has the reactor core (uranium+water = superheated water+depleted U), the dynamo (superheated = power+steam), the towers (exhausts steam at a set rate, too much steam forces a cooldown), and as many breeders as you can fit (using uranium and power, cuts uranium use in the reactor for a small net benefit: less power-per-second, more total power-per-uranium)(Works like a Beacon, IE affects any Cores in range: stuff 8 Breeders around 1 core, or have Breed+Core+Breed fractals, etc).

Uranium is cracked ((stone || coal) + power = U), then enriched in a centrifuge (U + power = Enriched U). Depleted Uranium can be used for bullets or Heavy Walls (an improvement over Steel Walls, an improvement over Stone Walls). Breeders, Crackers and Enrichers pollute and accept modules.

Uranium Cracking is done via Chemical Plant Mk2, requiring Sulfuric Acid + (Stone || Coal)
Reactor Core is expensive, requiring Graphite Rods (Stone Brick + Coal), Steel, Processors, Pipes, Effect3 Modules, and Concrete
Dynamo is also expensive, requiring Steel, Underground Pipe, Steam Engine, Speed3 Modules, and Processors
Towers are comparatively cheap, just needing a ton of Steel and Concrete
Breeders are Assembler3s+Processors+Beacon
Centrifuges are Assembler3s+Steel+Electric Engines+Advanced Chips



In this way, I believe Nuclear is implemented with Maximum Factorio(tm):
-Multiple structures/steps...
-...Which can be min-maxed as needed or just 1:1:1 pushed straight through if you're lazy
-Builds off existing tech trees, products, and lines
-Fairly realistic with compromises made for playability/simplicity
-Straightforward and easy to understand with quick tooltips, doesn't add wacky new mechanics out of nowhere, similar to previous machines/mechanics

I like this. However, I wandered over to Wikipedia on a hunch, and it turns out depleted U is not the result of running U through a reactor, but is a by-product of the enrichment process. So I would suggest that the centrifuge produces 1:3 (or something) enriched to depleted U, and the reactors produce radioactive waste. The RW would damage the player when on the ground or belt, or when in an unshielded chest, and could be turned into stone by a very long build in an assembler. So it could be dealt with, but would be difficult. Also it would be hard to fix if something goes wrong as the RW would be there hurting the player as he tries to fix it.

[jcranmer]

I think a tanker car of some kind is overdue. I know there's some mods that add it, but I've had problems with them in the past. One big problem is that you need some way to only unload the tank if some conditions hold; having a NO₂ train unload its cargo into my empty Cl₂ tank because the waiting queue backed up into a station is not fun to clean up.

Speaking of combinators, how hard would it be to make a custom combinator that runs a LUA function on circuit network updates (e.g.., update=function (entity, green_in, red_in) { return output_signals; } on the entity descriptor)? That would make combinators more flexible for mods while hopefully keeping the game slowdown for large numbers of combinators low.

[Rysith]

As a fan of the uranium power mod, it seems like Nuclear power should have a long and complex enrichment chain (Uranium power, for example, has 0.7% to 4.7% uranium hexafluoride enrichment in 0.5% steps after building uranium hexafluoride from fluorite and uranite), but once you have the plant set up it should give you an essentially free way to boil and/or superheat water. I'd imagine that it would include turbines, and possibly a new fluid like superheated steam, to make large-scale power plants less limited by Factorio's fluid dynamics.
Introducing nuclear waste seems like it would be difficult (since you can put it in a chest and shoot it, or it needs to be made very 'special' as an item) and just there for annoyance rather than realism, but I do like the idea of making nuclear plants less responsive - right now both solar and steam power will happily provide exactly as much power as you need at the moment, but if nuclear plants needed time to ramp up and down their power generation (by which I mean 'the amount of water they are boiling') they could become an excellent choice for late-game baseline power production without completely displacing steam/solar/accumulators as something to handle the spikes of production speed changing / laser turrets / etc.

[vipm23]

For dirty ores: Will the 'dirt' be outputted as an item we'll have to manage, or is it assumed to just disappear?

In particular, it'd be a nice mechanic to have refining uranium ore output, say, 9 pieces of fertile material (U-238) for 1 piece of fissionable material (U-235).

The fissionable material is the only fuel for nuclear reactors, but fertile material is safer to handle, can be used to make DU ammo, armor and radiation shielding, is required for nuclear weapons as a tamper, and can be breed with breeder reactors into more fissionable material.

[Tricorius]

Liquid wagon + universal barrelling

Woot! I'm lukewarm on the liquid wagon as I'm fond of barrels. But man, barreling lube and acid is going to be sweet for modular construction sites.

[Physonic]

Very interesting plans. I am always using the available nuclear mids, so a vanilla solution is something ill look forward to. I am also using the inserters mods out there containing many extra types, including extra long ( 2 tiles away) and im wondering if these types of multithreading solutions would make these mods impossible.

[tmr_2000]

I think the nuclear power option is really cool, but needs time and effort put into it so its not sone half arsed job. My suggestion is that to go within a 50 tile radius of nuclear ores or object's (ore processing power generator) you have to be wearing a hazmat suit, an item inside the power armour. Ores should be tiny and very rare, so that they have to bre bought in on trains, and that they don't spawn in the starting area. The power stations shod have a safe working life, (couple of hours) and once that's counted down to zero there should be a chance of the power station blowing up and releasing radiation. Radiation should make the bitters evolve much quicker and big releases should spike attacks. Nuclear weapons could be an option, but I think if dropped should leave the surrounding area in habitable for a short period of time (half an hour)

[Furan]

Ok, very quick:
Solar panels with lower efficiency, aging
Water: Vapor ratio, temperature, pressure
UF6 gas with 235/238 ratio

New structures:
- Steam generator (higher efficiency than boiler, higher pressure)
- Turbogenerator (2 high-pressure sections, double low-pressure section, 14 connections total), higher efficiency, VERY LONG response time
- Reactor (4x2 connections + 1 cold water for showers), large quantity of Uranium needed to start, very low consumption in large bundles. (Emergency: large release of radioactive vapor, no explosion)
- Cooling tower (vapor ratio to 0, temp below 100°C)
- Uranium separation - tree of centrifuges - EXTREME energy usage (see Manhattan project history), especially for optional high-grade (bombs or interstellar engines)

Tier 1
Offshore pump -> Boiler(steam 100°C) -> Steam engine <- Offshore pump (cold water for condensation)

Tier 2
Offshore pump -> Small pumps -> Heavy Boilers (steam 300°C) -> Steam engines

Tier 3
Offshore pumps -> Small pumps -> (Heavy) Boilers -> Turbine HP -> Heavy boilers reheat -> Turbine LP -> Cooling tower -> hot water back to inlet
Meets the high energy requirement for first Reactor fill-up.

Tier 4
Offshore pumps -> Small pumps -> Reactor -> Turbine HP -> Heavy boilers reheat -> Turbine LP -> Cooling tower -> hot water back to inlet

[knub23]

Many good suggestions regarding nuclear powers here. I thought a bit about the balance:

- Nuclear power should be way more expensive to build
- It should cause biter mutation in a very large area
- It should produce ridiculous amounts of energy

I think coal and solar have to be rebalanced. Make them produce less energy, so a huge solar energy system will take up lots of space. For coal it would mean that you have to burn more stuff, to get the same result, which means more pollution. Each energy system should have a major drawback:

Coal = Pollution (maybe even more than now)
Nuclear = High cost and Mutation (maybe possible meltdown if not run properly)
Solar = Huge fields of solar arrays and storage needed

And major advantages:

Coal = Cheap and steady
Nuclear = Low space requirement, lots of energy
Solar = No pollution


It would also be cool to see other technologies changed with it. Uranium bullets to give gun turrets and guns more impact lategame? Maybe tactical nuclear rockets, shot by the rocket launcher? Oh and if we get a real nuclear plant with cooling towers and breeders, can we get a similar coal power plant? At least the water turbines and cooling towers should be the same if the design goes that far.


I am really looking forward to the final release. The game already got a lot better with 0.13 and the new circuit network possibilities.

[Ironwolf200]

For mining uranium, something similar and familiar could be done, similar to how uranium was mined in the early Atomic Age: Strip-mine the ore and process it using thermochemical methods, such as the Ames Process. AKA, mine it and throw it in a furnace, get uranium metal. A more modern method involves treating the ground-up ore with chemicals to extract Uranium Oxide yellowcake. For something more interesting, there's also Heap leaching or In-situ leaching, where acid is pumped into the ore deposit to dissolve ore, then pumped back up to be processed into yellowcake. This would require a special mining rig that you could pump sulfuric acid into and outputs uranium-containing acid to a chemical plant which outputs some form of solid uranium.

Then comes enrichment, since regular ol' light water (opposed to heavy water, where the hydrogen atoms have an extra neutron) reactors require higher percentage of U-235 compared to what is available in uranium ore. Of course, this portion could be handwaved away for simplicity by saying the alien planet we're on is a little younger than Earth, so natural uranium has a usable percentage of U-235. If looking for more complexity, the enrichment process involves converting yellocake into gaseous uranium hexaflouride, which is run through cyclotron accelerators (for old days) or centrifuges (Relatively modern) to increase the concentration of U-235, and then desublimated back into a solid. As someone said earlier in the thread, the waste stream depleted of U-235 could be used as depleted uranium in ammo and armor. This may require a new structure. A cyclotron facility could make for some interesting art that fits in with the world, I think.

Last step is fuel production, converting the enriched material into fuel rods, which could easily be done in an assembler. Then load it into the plant and off it goes for a few years.

Dealing with the nuclear waste stream could also be interesting, to add more complexity and a severe draw-back. Run used fuel through a chemical plant, to output processed waste which needs to be placed in the world somewhere, being potentially harmful to the player and generating a ton of pollution to anger the biters, although it may hurt them as well.

For the power plant itself, one of the interested properties of nuclear power is that it takes several days to safely ramp up from cold-shutdown to full-power. This could be imitated in game where the output increases over time from zero to its max output and reduce its ability to adjust power, requiring some other power source to support the constant up-and-downs of power draw.

I'm just super excited about nuclear power coming to the game. I should really learn how to code and make a Bobs-mods like mod for this myself.

While on the topic of other power generation, wasn't there a plan for oil-fired boilers? Or was that just an idea from someone on the forms or /r/factorio?

[kaldskryke]

I'm sad to see that a combat-rebalance is not on the list for your plans before 1.0.

The new additions to combat lately are nice, like the new grenades and flamethrowers. But there are some issues with Factorio's existing combat, particularly with the balance between items. An easy example is to compare the rocket launcher to the shotgun:
1) The rocked launcher requires much more research. Its ammo is complex to produce and expensive since it requires oil. It does a mere 72 DPS with explosive rockets until you get max upgrades, at which point it does 298 DPS.
2) The combat shotgun is easier to unlock. It's ammo is cheap - it's just some steel and copper. It does 230DPS with piercing shells, and after upgrades it does 1318 DPS. It's damage is divided into 16 projectiles which makes it weak against enemies with lots of resistance... but even against a behemoth biter with 8/10% resistance it still does 388DPS, still more than the rocket launcher (which does 197 in this case).

Have you ever tried fighting max-evolution bases with the rocket launcher? It takes over a hundred rockets to kill a behemoth biter, and by the time you kill it (~45 seconds) plenty more have spawned. It's truly futile. If reviewers find that Factorio's most expensive (handheld) weapon is pretty much useless, they'll think that the game is unfinished and unready for release. And that's tragic because the rest of the game is so good!

The solution isn't just to make rockets better because there are lots of other balance issues too that are interrelated. There have been plenty of discussions on this forum about what needs to change, and I think you may need to check the Health, resistance, walking speed, damage, range, cooldown etc of every entity in the game. It's a lot of work, but at least it wouldn't require programming or recompiling.

I'm sure others would prefer that you spend your precious development time on building-gameplay features and improvements. Afterall, Combat is not the focus of Factorio. It's not why I bought it, and it's not why I continue to play it. If I only wanted some violence, I could play Doom or something. Factorio's greatest strength is its building-focused gameplay. But combat is important because it enhances the building-gameplay too:

1) It creates a need to unlock research and produce items. Most of the technology tree is focused on military.
2) It penalizes producing too much pollution and it adds a cost to expanding to new resources, which protects the pacing of gameplay. Without combat, you can beat the game much too quickly and there's no need to explore.

Some people don't like violence, so Peaceful Mode is good to have. But there are people who use Peaceful Mode only because the combat isn't always fun, and that's a shame because it makes a lot of Factorio's incentive structure fall apart. For example, it should be fun to automate the production of rockets and set up a munitions factory... but why bother if rockets are useless?

My overall enjoyment of the game would really improve if I thought that the combat was compelling, fun, and motivating... even if that's not my main reason for playing.

P.S. There are lots of suggestions and ideas for combat in other parts of the forum, but I would really like to see an early-game solution to keeping things repaired. I imagine an inserter-like repair arm that is stationary and can pick up repair packs from behind it and repair the building in front of it. It's not as good as Construction Robots, of course, but roboports take a lot of research. I think this would allow for combat improvements when biters attack your defenses. Right now, if the biters can reach your turrets and cause damage, it is very tedious to run around and keep things repaired. To avoid this tedium, players build lots of turrets and have so much DPS that enemies die before they can cause damage. But this results in really boring battles, the waves of biters get annihilated in under two seconds. There's no tension or drama because the enemies seem so weak. If repairing things can be automated, then even early-game enemies can be given more HP (or turrets less DPS) to create more longer, more interesting battles without introducing extra tedium. In general I wish combat was slower and more thoughtful, to better match Factorio's thoughtful building gameplay.

[Liquius]

For mining uranium, something similar and familiar could be done, similar to how uranium was mined in the early Atomic Age: Strip-mine the ore and process it using thermochemical methods, such as the Ames Process. AKA, mine it and throw it in a furnace, get uranium metal. A more modern method involves treating the ground-up ore with chemicals to extract Uranium Oxide yellowcake. For something more interesting, there's also Heap leaching or In-situ leaching, where acid is pumped into the ore deposit to dissolve ore, then pumped back up to be processed into yellowcake. This would require a special mining rig that you could pump sulfuric acid into and outputs uranium-containing acid to a chemical plant which outputs some form of solid uranium.

Then comes enrichment, since regular ol' light water (opposed to heavy water, where the hydrogen atoms have an extra neutron) reactors require higher percentage of U-235 compared to what is available in uranium ore. Of course, this portion could be handwaved away for simplicity by saying the alien planet we're on is a little younger than Earth, so natural uranium has a usable percentage of U-235. If looking for more complexity, the enrichment process involves converting yellocake into gaseous uranium hexaflouride, which is run through cyclotron accelerators (for old days) or centrifuges (Relatively modern) to increase the concentration of U-235, and then desublimated back into a solid. As someone said earlier in the thread, the waste stream depleted of U-235 could be used as depleted uranium in ammo and armor. This may require a new structure. A cyclotron facility could make for some interesting art that fits in with the world, I think.

Last step is fuel production, converting the enriched material into fuel rods, which could easily be done in an assembler. Then load it into the plant and off it goes for a few years.

That's pretty much how I went about it when I made my Uranium Power mod. However it made a lot more sense to use chemical plants rather than a specialised centrifuge building.

There were a few core problems that I couldn't solve, and I eventually walked off in frustration.

During the enrichment process, when do you stop? It doesn't do it justice to have a single product called "Enriched Uranium", and it seems a waste not to have rows of centrifuges slowly purifying your Uranium 235. But then when do you stop? Do you let the player make fuel pellets out of every enrichment value? With the current system of recipes, this is just too much.

Do you bother about nuclear waste? Over the span of the game you would produce so little. Is it even worth modeling? On the other hand, who doesn't want to make plutonium.

How do you implement a reactor? Is it just a single building that produces electricity? That would be a little dull. The only other option as I see it is a glorified boiler, but then that doesn't mesh well with the implementation of boilers and steam engines. It could work if the rebalanced/reworked it.