Friday Facts #167 - Reactors Operational

[Klonan]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-167

[Mylon]

Can't wait for 0.15!

[malecord]

Can't wait.

I will ask a friend of mine to come with me on the mountains and get me buried under an avalanche of snow so I can be hibernated. Then he will come back when 0.15 is out and unfroze me.

[Rhamphoryncus]

Heat transfer from the nuclear reactor is weird, not at all the simple, straightforward implementation I would expect. I love it!

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..

[Lee_newsum]

The next think to work out is the nuclear reactor size vs the new Boilers and were to put the het out on it.

[IronCartographer]

As a bonus, this removes the absurdity of converting a 2x2 furnace into a 1x1 boiler structure.

[MeduSalem]

Mhm... The new targeted boiler size is really... nasty... to say at least. Also that the Steam Output is perpendicular to the Water input isn't making it any easier.

I think that it might require some additional prototyping to find a size that works both favorably for early Steam Engine setups and later Nuclear Reactor stuff...

Maybe I'll think about something over the weekend, various patterns etc, maybe I'll find something. Maybe I even come to the conclusion that it's okay the way it is proposed in the FFF and it's just my initial fears taking over now.


Also another thing... the Nuclear Reactors still snap to one another, do they? Meaning the Heat they generate pass from one Reactor to another next to it?


So I looked into it in more depth here on the 4th page: viewtopic.php?p=228986#p228986

[HammerPiano]

When 0.15 is out, most of the bases will be dead because of the new boiler size.
CAN"T WAIT!
The red desert with the broken rail is so perfect together

[MalcolmCooks]

I think it seems pretty good so far! No doubt there will be some backlash to increasing the size of the boilers so much, because it means setups will have to change drastically, but I think reworking the steam system is right - it's a bit weird the way it works currently. Maybe 3x2 is a bit large and 2x2 would be better, although it would sacrifice some symmetry.
If the same boilers are used for nuclear power and basic steam power, does this mean that you could potentially make the steam turbines a lower technology than reactors, and people can make conventially-fuelled steam turbine power?
Something else springs to mind... with the new larger size of the boiler, you could allow boilers to be fuelled on oil. Possibly the heat input pipe and the liquid fuel input pipe could be the same since you wouldn't need to use both. Does that mean then that boilers would be more like chemical plants, where you choose a "recipe" and then the inputs and outputs change.

Red desert and the new decals look amazing as well

[hitzu]

Please. If you want change the size of boilers then make them a different item/entity and keep existing 1x1 boilers as a legacy item and block its recipe instead of replacing boilers like it was with turrets and breaking existing setups. So the transition within current saves would be smooth since power supply is a critical point of the entire base.

[Proxy]

i'm Still Hoping for Slightly Logical Reactors... like Different Fuels, RTGs, Uranium Enrichment, High Perssure Turbines, Better Pumps, etc.

but i'm also Looking forward to the Community Sitting with Calculators trying to get the New Perfect Boiler-Engine Ratio.
and soon, Reactor-Boiler-Engine Ratio.

if i might say one thing tho. It has been a Long time... but Water Still has No Animation?

[Jonathan88]

That red desert scene looks AMAZEBALLS!
Maybe we could see some new scenarios coming out with the new biomes soon...

Also: Would it be possible to mod biomes in in the future?

[Matthias_Wlkp]

Wow... The red desert scene looks more like Factorio 2.0, than 0.15...

[MalcolmCooks]

The red desert looks like mars....... nice

[Semaphor]

Doesn't a reactor require water to keep the rods submerged and cool? Looks like the reactor is just providing heat for the boilers to turn water into steam.

i'm Still Hoping for Slightly Logical Reactors... like Different Fuels, RTGs, Uranium Enrichment, High Perssure Turbines, Better Pumps, etc.

but i'm also Looking forward to the Community Sitting with Calculators trying to get the New Perfect Boiler-Engine Ratio.

The Reactors mod has it down to that granular level. I enjoy that mod greatly in comparison to something simpler, like Nucular...

[MeduSalem]

Okay my first conclusion is... make the Reactors 6x6 and with 2 heat connections on each side, like so:

Nuclear Power 1.png (25.2 KiB) Viewed 18929 times

Allows for much better patterns when placing the Nuclear Reactors next to one another. Also allows for two 2x3 Boilers on each reactor side.


5x5 is really bad when combining several of them, I tried it and it becomes extremely inefficient because the connections don't align anymore.


Either that or make the entire edge of the reactor snap to another reactor/boiler because otherwise it might be frustrating to find patterns that allow for "puzzling" around.


So I looked into it in more depth here on the 4th page: viewtopic.php?p=228986#p228986

[MalcolmCooks]

Doesn't a reactor require water to keep the rods submerged and cool? Looks like the reactor is just providing heat for the boilers to turn water into steam.

Depends on the kind of reactor. Yes, most reactors currently in use use water as a coolant, but they are succeptible to steam explosions in the case of a meltdown, so new generations of reactors are being developed that use molten salts, molten metals, or gas (usually helium) cooling. The heat pipes system proposed seems to be most like a gas cooling system.

[Ghoulish]

The desert looks great! Each FridayFacts gets me more excited

[Koub]

This red desert is pure eyegasm !

[Extended]

I love this desert! A very nice thing to do would be to place the resources according to the themes (for example more stone in the deserts, more coal in the forests…). Changing the efficiency of the production would also be great (hotter climate in the deserts improving the efficiency of the solar panels but reducing the speed of the logistics).

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.