Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[Adamo]

I'm not sure you know what an oil refinery does.[...] that's cracking. The average density of the products from a refinery, minus changes for the removal of contaminants (which you argued against modeling, anyway), should be the same as the average density in the crude, unless the temperature is changed.

Oh, I'm not trying to claim that the Factorio refinery would be true to its real world counterpart. In fact, I'm basically offering up precisely the possibility that whatever mumbo-jumbo goes on inside those AOP tanks and pipes involves some partial cracking. Since the exiting fluids are measured by what I assume is some rudimentary volumetric unit, any change in density would go unnoticed.

So why even have cracking recipes for the chemical plant, if cracking is done in the refinery?

[Aflixion]

I don't understand what exactly you perceive the problem is with the way BOP currently works. Each of the proposals, both from the FFFs and from the threads discussing both FFFs, only seem to me like changes for the sake of changes. What exactly is the reason you think oil processing needs to be changed, and how do your changes actually address this problem?

[Theikkru]

So why even have cracking recipes for the chemical plant, if cracking is done in the refinery?

The cracking that occurs in the refinery could be partial and incidental, requiring a different chemical environment to get the process done thoroughly.

[Adamo]

So why even have cracking recipes for the chemical plant, if cracking is done in the refinery?

The cracking that occurs in the refinery could be partial and incidental, requiring a different chemical environment to get the process done thoroughly.

I dunno. I think you're going down the rabbit hole of coming up with more and more excuses against a rather simple idea that the refinery shouldn't output more oil than it takes in.

[Theikkru]

I dunno. I think you're going down the rabbit hole of coming up with more and more excuses against a rather simple idea that the refinery shouldn't output more oil than it takes in.

They're ad-hoc explanations, for sure, but they seem plausible enough.

[gamestefan]

There is some merit in the general idea that multiple outputs = the theme of oil processing, and of course the Heavy+Gas solution is compatible with that, while being very conservative in regards to the original BOP.
Considering option 1 (solid fuel in science), it does help a bunch as solid fuel requirements in the science pack could be increased quite easily since Light oil is not available, without getting into ridiculous numbers, without nerfing rocket fuel.
Option 2 is a lot more complex change, with the interesting part that only science production could be made in the same ratio as BOP outputs - and only the things built for non-science (indluding items on belts and fluids in pipes) would cause "multiple outputs problems", which could go either way. However the only solution for the player would be to either store more of one of the things, or convert it to solid fuel and burn it without incentive from a science pack to do so.

Personally I like option 1 the best, thanks for considering V. I am not so worried about producing SF in a non-efficient way when better recipes van be unlocked later on. One question though, can you look at the SF recipes so that the order from best to worst will be LO - HO - PG? (Maybe something like 10 LO, 15 HO or 20 PG)

Thanks again for considering the community feedback, I am looking forward for the end result.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, it seems that in Factorio, the advanced Refinery recipes also do some cracking at the same time? (See how Cracking recipes need water...)
EDIT: Heh, ninjaed by Theikkru...

What do you think about what I posted ?

[...]

Correct me if I’m wrong but petroleum gas would only go into plastic?
Maybe I could find a new place that would consume petroleum gas in addition to the existing recipe... Explosives? Batteries? Lubricant?
The science pack could easily be balanced in a way where the ratio of heavy:gas produced is the same as consumed when only making science. The rest of your consumption could either be smaller than a storage tank’s worth, or you would need additional storage until you could get AOP.

I’ll give it some more thought and try to implement the second option, and see where I get stuck or find issues.

So far petroleum is only transformed into Sulfur / Plastic / Solid Fuel. I don't think it would be too much of a problem to use Petroleum for plastic and solid fuel. The risk i see is if you want to mine lots of uranium, you'd need lots of sulfur, you'd end up with excess petroleum if you use AOP or BOP or even Coal Liquefaction.

EDIT: the other risk is if you want to produce a lot of accumulator, you'd need to consume the PG somehow.

the ability to transform 100% of BOP in sulfur is nice, so maybe petroleum gas could be use to make sulfur, but at a terrible ratio, just as an almost flare stack.

Good luck !

I see that methane (= lightest hydrocarbon ~ Factorio's gas ?) is being used IRL as a rocket fuel ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_ro ... nt#Methane

The rocket fuel recipe continues to give me a visceral reaction at this point, becoming my biggest issue with the changes.

The concept of hinting at light oil being most efficient for solid fuel makes sense, but...there must be a better way to do it than making rocket fuel be a chunky mush of partially-solidified light oil.

It's in a bit of an uncanny valley where it creates too much imagination (bad imagery), yet not enough at the same time (to get a more abstract chemical process mental image)...for me at least.
[...]

See what else I found !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid-propellant_rocket

Maybe rocket fuel could be made from Solid Fuel and/or Light Oil and/or Gas ? One could also add a steel/barrel "container" I guess?

(Of course, input from an actual chemist would be nice...)

In a similar way to how Factorio abstracts away petroleum gas = ethylene, one could imagine that there's some cracking involved during the chain to make rocket fuel to transform petroleum gas = butane+propane into methane ?

[...] So, if you want to put sulfur somewhere, either continue with the magic we have now, and put it anywhere that makes sense for gameplay (heavier oils are better for making chemical sense), or, reconsider the process altogether and realize that sulfur should be removed as a solid (well, really, as hydrogen sulfide, and then converted to a solid or to sulfuric acid) as part of the refining process, without destroying the oil it came from.

Unfortunately, having sulfur removed from refineries would make it a 4th blocking factor in the multiple outputs problem, so, as much as I like realism, I'd have to vote "magic" here, on the grounds that in direct conflict, game design trumps realism.

A solid as a blocking factor is much less problematic than a fluid... what would be the gameplay implications of having Basic Oil Processing to output Sulfur + Gas ? (In case Chemical science needs sulfur.)

Otherwise, still for Chemical Science requiring Sulfur,
one suggestion (that happened by mistake) in the last thread was about having Heavy Oil processing in the Chemical Plant to output Sulfur while making Lubricant.
At the time, I had considered that it would make a nice "advanced" recipe for Lubricant/Sulfur, probably also requiring Water as an input,
but if Chemical Science needs Sulfur, then why not having it replace the "basic" Lubricant (that always seemed a bit too simple to me) and Sulfur recipes at or near Basic Oil Processing ? (Probably without requiring Water...)
EDIT: No, wait, you would still need a second Sulfur-making recipe to not end up swimming in Lube...

[zenos14]

So, I tried implementing the Heavy + Petroleum gas BOP.

I am leaning towards option 1 being my preferred choice, though I will admit, I'm interested to see how the various ratios of sulfur work under option 2

[Serenity]

One question though, can you look at the SF recipes so that the order from best to worst will be LO - HO - PG? (Maybe something like 10 LO, 15 HO or 20 PG)

It's not that simple. HO and PG are equally good or bad just by the SF recipe numbers. But HO can be cracked into LO.
40 HO gets you 2 SF directly. But it also gets you 30 LO through cracking, which gets you 3 SF

[mmmPI]

Option 2: Sulfur in Chemical science pack, Sulfur made from Heavy
- AOP still mandatory for rocket fuel
- Solid fuel only used by itself when the player would want to burn it or to boost vehicle speed
- the amount of obtainable sulfur would be limited by amount of consumed PG, which would be mainly for plastic.


Option 2 is a lot more complex change, with the interesting part that only science production could be made in the same ratio as BOP outputs - and only the things built for non-science (indluding items on belts and fluids in pipes) would cause "multiple outputs problems", which could go either way. However the only solution for the player would be to either store more of one of the things, or convert it to solid fuel and burn it without incentive from a science pack to do so.

What if you add a receipe to make sulfur, either from heavy oil with good ratios, or from light oil with worse ratio. And remove petroluem gas from coal liquefaction, ( it only produce a little and we can crack the other output at this point in the game).

That would solve the problem of needing to consume plastic for sulfur production in late game. ( and with science ratio, it's fine ealy game).

[Domanoc]

Option 1: Solid fuel in Chemical science pack, Sulfur made from PG
- "don't make me produce SF inefficiently" people will hate. I don't find it to be a huge deal though, and it would be completely clear that AOP unlocks more efficient Solid Fuel - it could even be written in the technology description.
- AOP still mandatory for rocket fuel
- the idea of increasing the amount of solid fuel for the science pack is not stupid at all, the player could put all Heavy into SF if they do not use Lubricant, or add from PG if they are, or if they want to burn some
- easy change, no need for math as petroleum gas has a sink pretty much always (sulfur and/or plastic)

I think this is a good compromise to the problem. I would suggest the following additions.
- Make the solid fuel ratio for Light & Heavy oil the same. This removes the "don't make me produce SF inefficiently" bias.
- Make the solid fuel ratio for Petroleum even worse. This discourages the use for new players. And makes the creation of solid fuel to clear a blocking of Petroleum more effective.
- Double down on light oil for rocket fuel, either by making rocket fuel solely out of light oil or more a 50/50 with solid fuel.
- Keep solid fuel in the Chemical Science pack. This helps to bleed of excess oil products. Increase the solid fuel cost in the Chemical Science pack if needed.

AOP would still be needed to launch the rocket but only for that not for all the pre-space sciences.

[SirSmuggler]

How about implementing the new GUI for refinery with the new and improved indicators of backed up problems, and a tutorial first and see how far thouse changes goes toward solving the "new players quit at oil"-problem before doing drastic and controversial changes to the actual recepies?

[kbk]

Sorry for the late reply.

[...]
Correct me if I’m wrong but petroleum gas would only go into plastic?
Maybe I could find a new place that would consume petroleum gas in addition to the existing recipe...
[...]

You mean, a some way to spend PG before/besides plastic?
Why, again, not to go for power/momentum generation? I mean, just let's burn it down to heat up some steam before we get to have a nuclear reactor? I've already suggested we might even use refineries just for that.
No go for the Flare stack idea? We otherwise can have PG canned in propane canisters as yet another all-purpose fuel variant with a recipe similar to FFF-304 initial flametrower ammo proposal. Unfortunately Solid fuel must then be tampered with to do this. While this may look like a "yet another basic step" kind of addition, consider a complex of measures to make this more interesting:

• buff the Solid fuel to lessen the energy gap between Solid and Rocket/Nuclear fuel. Maybe also buff Rocket fuel as well. As you can see, 12/100/1210 MJ is way too much a progress shift compared to 2/4/12MJ, and I have no doubt that you have received a lot of feedback on the overall matter of fuel energy density. I suggest 24 MJ for Solid fuel and 120 MJ for Rocket fuel. This buff, in its turn, can be negated by doubling ratios in Solid fuel recipes and cutting its consumption in half in Blue science and Rocket fuel recipes. This also solves some other people's "Rocket fuel will have become 10% more expensive with light oil" concerns
• remove PG>Solid fuel recipe
• then add PG as additional result of other Solid fuel recipes, so that PG becomes a rather semi-unwanted byproduct of both oil processing and solid fuel crafting (note how IRL petroleum coking also produces some significant amount of gas)
• then a PG>PG canister recipe kicks in. How about 3 steel plate + 50 PG for a 10 MJ canister?

As a result player now can substitute coal for PG in some of his Boilers and Furnaces as a rather direct result of setting up a first oil factory and long before solid fuel is in abundance (i.e. minutes before AOP). This includes a storage option for player (chests or tanks for PG?) and lures him into making some factory design decisions between future plastic and plenty of fuel early on. This also combines kinda well either with current FFF set of proposals, most sulfur options and most PG+Light and PG+Heavy BOP proposals.

Thera are not much of other paths for PG, but Wikipedia subtly suggests we could, again, alkylate ('reverse-crack') PG to Light oil...

[F_W]

The idea of Heavy only and adding cracking is nice, quite functional and quite sensible, but a double-step cracking just to get the gas seems to be wtf tedious as you need to put vast majority of heavy into gas that way.

This is only true if you MUST have red chips in the blue science recipe. Why not get rid of it? There was a suggestion to make the blue science recipe use electric engines (to use lube) and lots of solid fuel (like 5 units or something). If you really want to keep 3 items in the recipe, then you could go ahead with the sulfur from heavy oil idea, which I think is reasonable and more comparable with real life

Here's a representation of how a heavy oil only BOP setup and thought process might work to a new player, without the "required" two step cracking thing that you seem so hung up on. This is with - in my opinion - a better blue science recipe that would go well with heavy oil only from BOP

Player: "Hmm, blue science packs... I wonder what it needs"
x5
(maybe, if you decide to keep 3 items for blue science and do sulfur from heavy oil)

Player: "I guess I need to research basic oil processing. What does it unlock?"
Have BOP unlock ALL of the following:
and optionally, the sulfur recipe from heavy oil if you decide to go with that

Player: "Sweet, now I can research blue science! But man, the amount of heavy oil I need is ridiculous. Hey what's this new tech called 'High Efficiency Solid Fuel Production'?"
Have this new tech unlock the following:


Player: "Score! Now I can make solid fuel more efficiently from light oil, reducing the strain on my heavy oil"
Eventually, to get more cool toys, the player will need to use petroleum. Group all the PG related stuff into a single tech called "Petroleum gas refining" and have it unlock the PG related stuff (but maybe not PG to solid fuel, that should be removed imo):


Player: "Cool, now I can make red chips with the plastic. But man, I get so little heavy oil from BOP. I wonder if there's another way to make more oil stuff. Hey wait a sec, what's this 'Advanced Oil Processing' tech?"
At this point the player can research AOP and get more light oil and PG while keeping a bit of BOP for lube if they need tons of blue belts, and can optionally use coal liquefaction to turn coal into heavy later on

This, to me, seems a much more elegant solution that slowly introduces the player to each fluid and its uses while keeping BOP and AOP useful just like it is now AND reduces overall demand on PG while raising demand for HO and LO, better balancing out the usage of all three fluids

[Tricorius]

I’ve been considering two alternatives, one of which I have even implemented, but it does not work.

...

I’ll give it some more thought and try to implement the second option, and see where I get stuck or find issues.

I fully admit that I don’t remember my thoughts when I originally “solved” oil. So I don’t remember how hard dealing with the three outputs was. I do remember realizing I needed to rebuild it, therefore I lost a lot of fluids when popping up a few tanks. (Not a pleasant experience.)

But, my problem with only one output is that it feels too simplistic. And that it basically just kicks the can down the road a mile to deal with it later. At which point you still have to deal with all three outputs (and probably rebuild oil).

Two outputs does simplify a *bit* ... I suppose.

But is dealing with two outputs really that much easier than dealing with all three? I’m skeptical. You now have to go through nearly as much energy / thought to manage two fluids. But you also kick the can down the road like 3/5th of a mile. And then you still probably have to rebuild (though admittedly probably not as bad as before) when you unlock Advanced Oil. (I’m guessing most would end up restructuring for cracking. Which you’re trying to encourage.)

It feels to me having a weird hybrid two-output chain is going to be way crazier to convert to cracking than having the normal three outputs in tanks (which I think is the way the game *should* hint people toward). It is far simpler to drag out a pump (or even just pipes) to cracking plants than to deconstruct and rebalance some hybrid system trying to push petroleum and heavy oil (for instance).

I think it would naturally end people away from cracking and toward just adding the light oil output to do whatever light oil can then do. (Run a couple pipes straight to some rocket fuel or whatever and completely bypass trying to optimize the refinery.)

[V453000]

The idea of Heavy only and adding cracking is nice, quite functional and quite sensible, but a double-step cracking just to get the gas seems to be wtf tedious as you need to put vast majority of heavy into gas that way.

This is only true if you MUST have red chips in the blue science recipe. Why not get rid of it? There was a suggestion to make the blue science recipe use electric engines (to use lube) and lots of solid fuel (like 5 units or something). If you really want to keep 3 items in the recipe, then you could go ahead with the sulfur from heavy oil idea, which I think it reasonable and comparable with real life

Here's a representation of how a heavy oil only BOP setup and thought process might work to a new player, without the "required" two step cracking thing that you seem so hung up on. This is with - in my opinion - a better blue science recipe that would go well with heavy oil only from BOP

Player: "Hmm, blue science packs... I wonder what it needs"
x5
(maybe, if you decide to keep 3 items for blue science and do sulfur from heavy oil)

Player: "I guess I need to research basic oil processing. What does it unlock?"
Have BOP unlock ALL of the following:
and optionally, the sulfur recipe from heavy oil if you decide to go with that

Player: "Sweet, now I can research blue science! But man, the amount of heavy oil I need is ridiculous. Hey what's this new tech called 'High Efficiency Solid Fuel Production'?"
Have this new tech unlock the following:


Player: "Score! Now I can make solid fuel more efficiently from light oil, reducing the strain on my heavy oil"
Eventually, to get more cool toys, the player will need to use petroleum. Group all the PG related stuff into a single tech called "Petroleum gas refining" and have it unlock the PG related stuff (but maybe not PG to solid fuel, that should be removed imo):


Player: "Cool, now I can make red chips with the plastic. But man, I get so little heavy oil from BOP. I wonder if there's another way to make more oil stuff. Hey wait a sec, what's this 'Advanced Oil Processing' tech?"
At this point the player can research AOP and get more light oil and PG while keeping a bit of BOP for lube if they need tons of blue belts, and can optionally use coal liquefaction to turn coal into heavy later on

This, to me, seems a much more elegant solution that slowly introduces the player to each fluid and its uses while keeping BOP and AOP useful just like it is now AND reduces overall demand on PG while raising demand for HO and LO, better balancing out the usage of all three fluids

I believe advanced circuits (or even the suggestion of plastic, though I find that a bit too basic) are much better fit in Chemical science pack, especially than electric engines. The only use for electric engines are exoskeletons, robots (and utility science pack), and the rocket silo itself. All those things are quite far, while advanced circuits are necessary for quite a few things rather early (modular armor, robots, ...). That's probably why I'm so hung up on cracking as a necessity because you still need plastic the most, with Sulfur second - Sulfur from Heavy oil would not be an issue at all with this suggestion though.

[jodokus31]

So, I tried implementing the Heavy + Petroleum gas BOP.

Thank you very much for the consideration and effort.
It seems to me, that option 1 would be the most straight forward, even compared to the main proposal from FFF-305.
However, my preference would be option 2, as it looks more interesting.

Big advantages of both of those options are:
- con-bots don't have to be moved into blue science.
- New players have a smaller hurdle to AOP and the need to rebuild gets less likely.
- Looks more realistic (at least for me )

But is dealing with two outputs really that much easier than dealing with all three? I’m skeptical. You now have to go through nearly as much energy / thought to manage two fluids. But you also kick the can down the road like 3/5th of a mile. And then you still probably have to rebuild (though admittedly probably not as bad as before) when you unlock Advanced Oil. (I’m guessing most would end up restructuring for cracking. Which you’re trying to encourage.)

I think, it's easier, especially if blue science would consume in a good ratio. If you want bots, balancing would change. But here you also need both, lubricant and red circuits (for roboports)

[V453000]

But is dealing with two outputs really that much easier than dealing with all three?

It's certainly simpler and from design perspective more predictable. For example chemical science pack could require a ratio that BOP would not have to deadlock with, but with the original this can only be overestimated, which would mean 5 solid fuel per craft of 2x Chemical science pack. At that point you would have to spend all of your light oil on solid fuel, plus a little extra from one of the other two fluids.

But I sure do admit that it's certainly much less of a complexity reduced and effort saver compared to the single output solution.

[VFaalcatnodriiro]

I know I know, it's a wall of text (and pictures), but I haven't read anything that took all that what Antaios wrote into account.
V, all the others please don't waste time into changing oil - there is so much more to do for .18 or even 1.0 ... it's not broken, you don't need to fix it.

I don't understand.

Honestly, Oil isn't a problem. Multiple outputs isn't complicated or difficult to understand.
Most people with a problem solving mind, and a mind for how recipes works, as they should have after 10 minutes in the game, will quite easily understand that if the refinery can't push out it's light and heavy oil, it'll stop producing. This should take about 10 seconds of looking at the recipe - I don't think this is a stumbling block. However, even if it is a stumbling block for some people, the fact is, it is one they have to stumble upon at some point, it simply is a hurdle they will have to overcome. Two versus three products changes the problem or it's complexity very little aswell.
Furthermore, anyone with a mind for debugging their factory, which a new player should be used to by this point, should be adept at looking backwards through their production lines in order to find the bottleneck, it won't be strange or odd to get to "no petroleum gas", then to investigate the refinery and notice it's stuck full of other products. From there the solution is rather easy to understand, do something about those other products, and the player has tools to deal with that at this point - tanks, such a simple and easy solution, place and go which I'd wager is what anyone would do. This is a new player, a tank solution is so much simpler and easier to deal with multiple outputs right now than cracking, having oil early like this exposes them to this whilst the solution for now is 'place a tank', it exposes to them the problem and hints at a better solution down the line whilst providing a simple solution for right now whilst they're busy dealing with other things. When pushed back later, the solution is changed to 'design new production facilities and balance cracking', Tanks won't work later because they need these new products in good ratios for things at this later point, so now they're exposed to the problem and need to come up with an immediate good solution using more complicated parts and setups.

The only issue with oil, if there indeed really must be an issue made out of the multiple outputs, is that it is much less apparent at a glance what is happening with liquids than with other products. Humans see and latch onto movement, it's really easy to see if an assembler is or isn't working. It's really hard to see if the refinery or a chemical plant is or isn't working. Similarly pipes offer essentially 0 feedback, and tanks aren't great with their tiny windows. If anything should be done, pipes and tanks just need more or larger windows and feedback on the current movement of fluids, and refineries/chemical plants (the new chemical plant design is great) need to be made much more obvious as to whether they are currently running. If that isn't enough, the aforementioned status messages in GUIs will handle the rest.

“The wall is the ever growing complexity of science packs.”
“The wall is the ever growing resource demands of science packs.”
I can’t really imagine how would the progression be interesting if the science pack steps would be about the same price and/or complexity increase steps. In the beginning it would just be insane, and in the late stages just a chore. Should there be smaller steps? That’s a tough question, but I think 0.17 has improved on the distribution of these steps quite significantly.

If we want to talk about what makes Blue Science feel slow, we need to actually look at it in context.

When I last played, I made separate factories for each science, besides refining and smelting everything was done on site, and it demonstrates the complexity curve beautifully.
These are simple-as-they-get ratios, if someone wanted to follow ratios, this is how they'd likely start, because all I did here was take the seconds in recipes and presume 1 per second. (note it ends up being 45 science per minute due to assembly mk2's running at 0.75.) A modest factory, I would think.

Green, Red and Military science fit into such a small and simple footprint.
RedGreenGrey.jpg

Here's Blue, woah, that's a beasty, much bigger than all the last three packs combined!
Blue.jpg

Here's Purple (I'm going to keep referencing science colours because I forget the darn names, sorry)
Not a huge step, more just a case of 'pile on the advanced circuits'
Purple.jpg

And Yellow, at this stage in the game, this one's juicy. Again it's not too much more than purple, but it's more intricate, there are more intermediaries.
Yellow.jpg

I don't have space science in this map, though by the time you reach it I think the complexity curve is out the door.

Blue is certainly a big jump. But there's more, Blue isn't just this:
Bluesml.jpg
Around the time you're dealing with blue science you're also doing a few things...

• You're probably starting to deal with defence properly.

Defence.jpg

• You're probably thinking about expanding around now, surely you had to venture for oil anyway.

Outpost.jpg

• You're also probably dealing with the new trains you just unlocked.

Train.jpg

• Oh, and you're setting up oil, ready for new technologies and gadgets in the near future, not just science.

Refinery.jpg

I'm using images because that conveys just how much stuff is going on at this point, in a way text doesn't.

The time in the game that is blue science is all of those put together, each being done for the first time, on top of blue being a big step up in complexity and parallel production compared to previous sciences (Blue science requires the most assemblers producing the flasks of any science!).

There's a lot going on at this point in the game, subsequently, blue takes a long time to get to. And it isn't because of oil, it's just because that's a busy time in the game. Even if you were to remove oil from blue science, I doubt it would radically reduce the time between the science packs here. The wall isn't complexity, it's just time, hence why so many people finish researching most of the green sciences before they have blue up and running.

But people aren't complaining too much about those other factors, Oil is a scapegoat for that time sink between science packs because it's arguably the least interesting, but why?
Let's explore the rewards for the main things going on at this point in the game.

Defence
Well this one's pretty obvious, you live! woo, pretty rewarding! killing biters feels pretty good early on too, so there's that.

Expanding
Faster and more reliable production, fantastic! Who doesn't like the feeling of turning on or connecting an outpost for the first time? watching that ore flow.

Trains
Getting a functional train network, even just two stations, is quite rewarding and it shows immediate progress.

Oil
This one's complicated, what does oil get you?
Well, it gets you some intermediaries, then some more intermediaries. I suppose maybe we'll look at what those intermediaries get you?

• Lasers?
  We don't have the power for that yet, really.
  So you have to want lasers to care

• Flamethrower?
  A side venture, and usually very easily setup with a jury-rigged tiny ammo station. Flamethrower turret opinions, however, vary - somewhat similar to laser turrets, quite easily overlooked until defences require more than gun turrets, so I think these come more into play later, generally speaking.
  So you have to want Flamethrowers to care

• Accumulators?
  I'm pretty sure most people stick with steam for a while yet, and laying solar fields isn't exactly rewarding.
  So you have to want accumulators to care

• Explosives?
  these just get glossed over, and to be honest it's because they're annoying to make and not fantastically competitive. For beginners, somewhat of a trap, or something obscure to ignore.
  So you have to want explosives to care

• Modules?
  It's too early and they're too expensive right now. If you're a beginning player, they're also somewhat complicated.
  So you have to want modules to care

• Solid Fuel
  Not particularly useful, other than science
  So you have to want solid fuel to care

• And finally, Advanced circuits (which leads into bots)
  which have no decent use right now beyond the few you require if you want bots early.
  Plus science, but oil is only a small part of the advanced circuit picture, which is probably half of the blue science picture
  So you have to want bots to care, because even if what you want is science, there's too much more to do beyond oil to get more science for advanced circuits alone to feel rewarding, there's just no good other uses for them at this point.

Oil is probably considered a 'problem' in the build up to blue science because it isn't immediately and obviously rewarding, the things you can do with it aren't hugely necessary at this stage. Though, if you want to go and explore the things it unlocks, then the one or two small useful things you can do with it are very impactful, namely bots. However oil only unlocks those, it isn't actually those things, so the interesting things like bots get praise and the part oil plays in that gets ignored. Oil enables, like smelting, only it's actually somewhat an interesting puzzle. This is sort of a mind trick, a trick of psychology, in the same way smelters don't feel incredibly rewarding, oil itself doesn't - but the things smelting, or oil, unlocks do.

You might think this is grounds to move it further up the tree, that it generally isn't necessary at this stage, or that the arguably more interesting technologies that use oil are unlocked with blue science - but that's not true, it's precisely the reason to leave it where it is. Whilst a new player might sidestep the technologies it unlocks on their first play-through, those those they decide to end up using on the second, or third play-through end up adding to and aiding their other fun goals that are happening between green and blue science, defence, expansion, trains, etc. It's preferable that the groundwork be done here, in one of the most interesting parts of the game, when there are lots of other things to distract from any possible tedium. Lumping it onto purple science or yellow just creates even more tedium as there is less 'new' there to offset it because there's a lot of production chains to set up to get proper use of out the new blue science technologies, you're busy ramping up production of advanced circuits and putting together all the new things those require, you don't want to be just starting to get a handle on oil at this stage - you need oil handled before now, before you really need it. It's better to learn it and set it up whilst it's a side curiosity. Every player is going to be glad they had all three oil products handled well before they need to start mass producing things that rely on oil, just like players are happier when they build smelters larger than they need in advance of future iron or copper demands. This stage in the game is about laying groundwork, some of that is rewarding, and immediately so, some other parts aren't, and I'm not sure there is much you can do about that other than to keep the puzzle interesting in an effort to maximise the interest it does have.

On solid fuel.
I really enjoyed the change when solid fuel was added to blue science, for one reason, I used solid fuel. Until I had been making it for science, I never used solid fuel, or even rocket fuel, because I had oodles of coal. Now, with solid fuel being part of science, I have it around, and it's enjoyable to have this thing and decide that since I'm making it, I mayaswell use it for a few things.

On bots.

“Pushing robots back is not fun.”
This was pretty much my first response when I first heard about the whole idea, but now I’d say it’s really not that huge difference between late logistic and early blue science, especially with the basic refinery being quicker to set up. I will be observing this very closely what exact effects will it have. We were considering to add burner powered construction robots a few years ago, but I can’t currently see how and when would those appear.

I think you're underestimating construction bots a bit. I'm sure I'm not the only one who jury rigs about 200 or so advanced circuits and some electric engines as soon as possible, before oil is even properly setup, definitely before blue science is setup just to get those measly 10-20 construction robots in my modular armour running on solar panels. Keep in mind everything I demonstrated in this post that also pushes blue science back far more than oil does as well. Someone on here also did the math, even if you forget all those other things and rush bots, it's about ~450x more expensive in those components to jury rig bots now, because you have to jury rig blue science too.


In closing, I honestly don't think oil is a problem, at least not beyond needing some more information pointed to the player on what's going on. There is a perception out there that it is, simply because it, in a similar fashion to smelting, only produces intermediate products, which make it feel slow to setup and not particularly rewarding. This is just a side effect of what oil is. Oil itself is relatively simple and logical if you take proper time to investigate it when or if you get stuck.

[lacika2000]

So, I tried implementing the Heavy + Petroleum gas BOP.

Option 1: Solid fuel in Chemical science pack, Sulfur made from PG
...
Option 2: Sulfur in Chemical science pack, Sulfur made from Heavy
...
I didn't do enough math yet on how much/ratio should AOP do. Coal liquefaction should definitely make a lot of heavy oil, same or similar as it does now.

I am not sure if this needs to be said but you are absolutely amazing doing this on a Sunday!!