Friday Facts #167 - Reactors Operational

[Sigma1]

If the cooling fails the reactor explodes and creates a ruin that creates a ton of pollution forever. The radiation destroys everything that comes too close. The player, cars, robots. Which means the ruin can't be erased. The same happens if the reactor is destroyed during an attack.

I'd say maybe a radiation shielded vehicle or something could be used for removing the wreck but otherwise I support this.

[MalcolmCooks]

If the cooling fails the reactor explodes and creates a ruin that creates a ton of pollution forever. The radiation destroys everything that comes too close. The player, cars, robots. Which means the ruin can't be erased. The same happens if the reactor is destroyed during an attack.

I'd say maybe a radiation shielded vehicle or something could be used for removing the wreck but otherwise I support this.

Cool I like this idea
It could be done with a new damage type, radiation, which buildings are resistant to, but players, vehicles and so on are vulnerable to. The wreck could have an area effect of radiation damage that decreases with distance, and also emits a lot of pollution.

[Sigma1]

If the cooling fails the reactor explodes and creates a ruin that creates a ton of pollution forever. The radiation destroys everything that comes too close. The player, cars, robots. Which means the ruin can't be erased. The same happens if the reactor is destroyed during an attack.

I'd say maybe a radiation shielded vehicle or something could be used for removing the wreck but otherwise I support this.

Also, radioactive mutant biters.

[ssilk]

Second try: And nobody recognizes the "more interesting" stuff:

That curves have a wider radius.
Looks like radius of 19 tiles.

See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12603 and viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19953

[MeduSalem]

That curves have a wider radius.
Looks like radius of 19 tiles.

Maybe... But I can barely see a difference if there's one. Also they are wrecked anyways so no train will go there.

[Mehve]

It's not that I didn't notice that rails were less sharply curved, but the picture of these rails comes within the context of an exposition about how terrain decoration no longer needs to rigidly follow the grid. So I wasn't about to get my hopes about these representing functional rails.

[psychomuffin]

Once again, I love your FFFs. I still can't believe you are doing so much hard work on a game that I believe is finish. You all have under-promised and over-delivered. I love the nuclear power idea. Please tell us more about your thoughts for the fuel. Will it be something that is mined? Maybe it will take some effort to figure out where to mine? Whatever you do it will be great.

Looking forward to 0.15 I want to binge more Factorio, but will wait =-)

[Extended]

Please tell us more about your thoughts for the fuel. Will it be something that is mined? Maybe it will take some effort to figure out where to mine?

Actually that's an amazing idea! Rather than having those regular mines, we could have to use technologies to find the uranium and we would need to grab with special machines.

Also, I think that nuclear waste would be a great thing to add, with the pools to cool them down for a while.

[Engimage]

Second try: And nobody recognizes the "more interesting" stuff:

That curves have a wider radius.
Looks like radius of 19 tiles.

See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12603 and viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19953

The idea of this particular picture was to show the new feature to add a random decal to the terrain. It has nothing to do with real tracks I am sure. Destroyed tracks are just cool to see.
And looking at them again I ask the question - why rail track recipe contains iron sticks instead of wooden poles...

[Engimage]

As for nuclear power.

I really like the idea of separating heat exchanger from the source of heat. This opens opportunities for different types of heat generators such as coal, oil products, nuclear etc.
For example if you make heat exchanger 1x3 you can even keep old boilers in the game while removinge their piping abilities to make it like this:

Code: Select all

              steam
-------------^^---------------
> water                        > water
------------------------------
|  boiler  |  boiler | boiler |
------------------------------

which generally reflects current development design (2x3)

Another bright side for this concept is one of major differences between burner boiler and heat exchanger namely pollution. Heat exchanger does not generate one (in nuclear design) while the burner itself does. As a result you might go for introducing different types and grades of heal generators which have different efficiencies and pollution.


Another idea for new boiler design could be like this:

Code: Select all

------------------------------
> Steam                       > Steam
------------------------------
> Water                       > Water
------------------------------

So instead of making a perpendicular output make both substances interconnectable. The only problem that arises here is a possible interconnection of output pipes. This can be fixed by either connecting an underground pipe or by adding a new type of a pipe to the game (like high pressure pipe or heat pipe whatever) which will not interconnect with common pipes and will have a different color to help understand the designs better.

In any case I do support the idea of reactors being 6x6 size as opposed to current 5x5 obviously due to new boiler being 2x3. There is no need to complicate interconnection between reactor and boilers (heat exchangers). The only excuse for 5x5 could be if 3 heat exchangers per side on 2 sides (total 6 heat exchangers) would be enough to operate a reactor, leaving 1 side open for cooling tower (if it is meant to connect to reactor at all) and one side open for inserters.

I am also not sure how could you unterstand if a boiler (heat exchanger) should output a normal steam (for steam engines) or high pressure high temperature one (for turbines). Maybe those should be 2 different grades for heat exchangers?

[RobertTerwilliger]

Spectacular desert! And broken rails look indeed organic there.

Nuclear power also look cool, HOWEVER it doesn't look like the game will force us not to use blueprints for nuclear energy, like it was promised before. It looks like we'll still use BPs, just few instead of one (modules of power plant) - probably with manual or semi-blueprinted piping.
Keep in mind that blueprint sharing will make possible avoiding dealing with high-tier reactors by yourself - just take existing design and feel good.
If explosions will be possible - the new level of griefing will arise! Share explosive blueprints to devastate bases without joining the game!

[AncientCulture]

These rails look great.

However. What is the lore behind? Why does the alien planet has some old rails? Would it mean that somebody was here before? If so, where is he? Are the more ruins? Are there maybe old treasure in form of technology laying around, which I could analyse in order to get some late technology early or to speed up the research to it by 30% or 50%???

Just curious if there is more behind as it may seem in the first place

[bobingabout]

I didn't read all this topic, but....

3x2 boilers? wouldn't 2x2 be a better option? It's probably just my opinion.

Perhaps 2x3 isn't such a bad option, as long as modders can create them in alternate sizes.


Any news on using fluids for fuel yet?

[golfmiketango]

Holy crap that desert looks amazingly good.

Lots of complicated discussion in this thread. The new boilers look... confusing. Truth be told I'm pretty sure I don't fully understand the current ones. Looks like the mysteries of fluid dynamics in factorio will become more central to successful gameplay going forward.

I don't see why boilers should produce hot water. There's no use for it, so leave it away. Boilers should convert all of the water to steam. Similar to the current boiler we get something like this:

rest of post

The boiler consumes water and fuel and produces steam. Several small boilers feed one steam engine. You could think about a big boiler that exactly feeds one steam engine and is more efficient then the small ones. Another argument for the big boiler might be that it can burn every kind of fuel while the small one only burns wood, coal and solid fuel. Better fuels allow higher steam temperatures. For example wood is only good enough for steam at 250°C, coal 400°C, oil, gas and solid fuel 600°C. Higher temperatures mean more electric power.

The next advancement is the steam turbine which is much more efficient than the steam engine. Let's say something about 5x more energy from the same steam resource. The turbine consumes hot steam and produces "cold" steam. It produces more eletric power the hotter the incoming steam is. Also the released steam is hotter. That means that it is possible to build several turbines in series but of course every following turbine has less and less power. For example the first one gets steam at 600°C, the second one gets 300°C and the exhaled steam has just 150°C which can't really be used anymore. This steam is now cooled down in a cooling tower and becomes water again. This water can be fed into the boiler to create a closed cycle, that only needs water for the cooling tower which is much less than it would need when the cold steam is released into the enviroment.



The next step is the gas turbine. This is similar to the aviation engines on modern planes. It can run solely on fuel (oil or gas) and produces electric power. Now the thing is, it also creates a lot of heat that can be used. Connect a water pipe to it and it produces steam that can be used in a steam engine. The overall fuel to electricity efficiency is increased against the those of the boilers.



I like the some aspects of the previous reactor designs. The reactors needs very low amounts of fuel. Instead of current designs this reactors uses molten salt (or any other futuristic design) inside which makes it more reliable and more efficient. It consumes water and produces steam at 1000°C, hotter than any boiler can, and Is also big enough to feed several lines of turbines. The reactor itself doesn't emit any pollution. You could think about a reprocessing cycle for the nuclear waste that reduces the amount of used ore. These are the pro nuclear aspects. But there are also some cons:
1. The production of a single amount of fuel is very expensive.
2. The reactor needs a long time to change it's power. That means it always needs some additional power plants or accumulators.
3. If the cooling fails the reactor explodes and creates a ruin that creates a ton of pollution forever. The radiation destroys everything that comes too close. The player, cars, robots. Which means the ruin can't be erased. The same happens if the reacotr is destroyed during an attack.
4. Once the reactor is filled with fuel it can only be torn down by robots and it needs a very long time to do so.

Impressive use of Visio (or something like that) in a first post, Moo Rhy. Welcome to the Factorio forums! Not sure I understand all the stuff but I think your turbine idea sounds pretty cool.

[bobingabout]

The new boilers look... confusing.

Basically... they have 2 fluid boxes. The input fluid box is an input with 2 connections, and like the old boiler (And steam engine) is basically a pipe where fluid can flow both into and out of it. This is the one with connections on both ends, and is used for water. The intention being a water input, and an output to the next boiler.
The other fluid box is the one on the middle of the side, for steam output. This steam is basically a fluid fuel for steam engines.

In theory, many other entities could act this way to daisy chain a single input, however, they don't, because this limits changing recipes.

[hitzu]

That curves have a wider radius.

No, they don't.

[Gertibrumm]

I am also not sure how could you unterstand if a boiler (heat exchanger) should output a normal steam (for steam engines) or high pressure high temperature one (for turbines). Maybe those should be 2 different grades for heat exchangers?

- use one boiler on nuclear powerplant -> powerplant overheates and single boiler can hardly bear the high temperatures
- use many boilers on nuclear powerplant -> powerplant is kept cool and the steam will be relatively low temperature

- use one steam engine (low throughput) -> pressure will build up quicker
- use many steam engines -> pressure levels are lower

- use turbine for nuclear power
- use steam engine for low power coal power (coal is low power only in factorio)

We dont need different grades or levels for heat exchangers, just use different arrangements to achieve your wanted pressure and temperature levels.

[psychomuffin]

Please tell us more about your thoughts for the fuel. Will it be something that is mined? Maybe it will take some effort to figure out where to mine?

we could have to use technologies to find the uranium and we would need to grab with special machines.

nuclear waste would be a great thing to add

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Maybe a probe, or scan, or something that roams around surveying? I just thought with nuclear, a little fuel will go a long way, so it can't be like how you harvest a ton of coal.

I also like the nuclear waste option.

Also, depleted uranium ammo anyone?

[Jesperhk]

Just want to say, that I have never been more grateful for a purchase in my life as a gamer, the way factorio develops is just so great, and the team really needs to know how much we appreciate the hard work they do.
Remember the first time i started the game, i was just blown away!, and since that time, you guys just kept going and going. Love your game and i really love the way you work!

[ssilk]

That curves have a wider radius.

No, they don't.

Don't take my hopes away so simple!