Water and Steam physics

[Alphasoldier]

So over the last few days I've been trying to design an extendable nuclear reactor build. I managed to make a few, but I always ran into the bottleneck of not being able to pump enough water.
I eventually got to a design that's possible, but requires 3 additional pipes and offshore pumps per extension, meaning that with each extension the design would become 3 tiles larger. Of course this bummed me out, and I started wondering why it would need that much. Then I realized another thing.

Water expands when it becomes steam. 1700 times the volume just about.

Of course, we're talking about pressurized steam here, otherwise the steam turbines and engines wouldn't work. So 1 water shouldn't be 1700 steam, but you should still get more units of steam from the same units of water.

Sure, you might say, "But dude, we don't know the exact measurements of the liquids in the game, so who's to say how much steam 100 units really is?"
Which I would agree with, but the game tells me that you turn 100 units of water into 100 units of steam. But! 100 units of steam also exist in the exact same space as 100 units of water, and this is simply impossible without a ridiculous amount of pressure (which in turn would require energy, and as thus electricity).

As such my suggestion:
I think that the game would be improved that when water becomes steam, it should be with a ratio of 1 to 10, or any rational/semi-realistic larger number.

That is all.

[nemostein]

I don't think that this kind of pseudo-realism would improve the gameplay at all...
Remember, it's a game, immersion and consistency is extremely important, but neither "immersion" nor "consistency" means "realism".

[Lav]

Steam has much lower density than water, true. But if you're going into realism, then steam is also much faster to move through the pipes. So it all can be averaged out in the end. I don't see a major problem here.

[bobingabout]

Steam has much lower density than water, true. But if you're going into realism, then steam is also much faster to move through the pipes. So it all can be averaged out in the end. I don't see a major problem here.

That's what I was going to say. The simulation would become unstable trying to handle the increased speed, so it's easier, game mechanics wise to treat it just the same as water.

[Alphasoldier]

I don't think that this kind of pseudo-realism would improve the gameplay at all...
Remember, it's a game, immersion and consistency is extremely important, but neither "immersion" nor "consistency" means "realism".

I think it would improve gameplay, by quite a bit too.
I personally don't care that much about realism in this game (which is what it is, I am fully aware), but water that turned into steam fitting in the exact same container it was before? That just doesn't make sense at all, realism or not.
When you think about it, the amount of water that go into the boilers/HE, and the amount of steam that then goes through the steam engines/turbines, you would expect them to become sprinklers with how much 'steam' is being forced out.

Besides that, there's no real negative to doing this.

Steam has much lower density than water, true. But if you're going into realism, then steam is also much faster to move through the pipes. So it all can be averaged out in the end. I don't see a major problem here.

I've done quite a bit of research today, and had help to figure this out, but even when you consider that steam would move more freely, and thus faster, the difference between volume size would still be substantially bigger than their difference in speed.

That's what I was going to say. The simulation would become unstable trying to handle the increased speed, so it's easier, game mechanics wise to treat it just the same as water.

Thankfully, this is not my suggestion.

[ssilk]

If a liquid, or better the picture of that liquid would be moved 10 times faster through the pipes, through this very little window, you will come to the point, where you will see the steam flowing backwards. Just an optical illusion, if repeating objects move too fast through a small window.

Deeper view into this though:
To see a "flowing animation in a small window" you need minimum 3 frames. (if you look at night at the lights of an Ferries wheel you can see use three rows of lamps to create an illusion of movement). Let's say the pipe-glas is 100 pixels wide, then you can move the animation only 33 pixels per tick to give an illusion of movement. I estimate the current max-speed of the fluid animation to about 10 ticks for the size of one glass, which means in other words, it's current max speed is 600 pixels per second for a window size of 100.
If you increase that to 6000 pixels (10 times more as suggested) per second you won't see any move in this window, just random bobbles...
If you increase the speed to more realistic - let's say - 2 times, the players just don't recognize much difference, cause that is just the maximum speed. For slower speed (which is kind of normal state) the eye cannot see that as a relevant information.

[Lav]

I think it would improve gameplay, by quite a bit too.

And I think it would kill FPS before gameplay has a chance to be affected.

Higher speed means higher calculation frequency.

[Alphasoldier]

Just going to slightly revive this because heck, it's my own post and I still think it's a good idea.

Also, I seriously don't get why you guys are talking about speed, or about animations. This isn't what I mentioned at all.

The only thing I'm suggesting is that when water turns to steam, it should become more steam than it was water. Because water expands when it becomes steam.
It would hopefully be the first of many steps to make fluid dynamics more functional and interesting.

And again, when you think about how much water a steam turbine is using up, you might as well call it a sprinkler.

[Mehve]

The current situation - even if it likely originates with the fact that water and steam used to be interchangeable - has gameplay benefits as well. It forces you to design with a mind towards your water supply, whereas a single pump would otherwise be good for 10's of GW worth of boilers and heat exchangers.

[Alphasoldier]

Again, false. Currently you have about 1 pump per little over 100 MW (3 pumps per 32 HE's, which supply for 55 ST's. 5.8MW per ST. 55*5.8/3=106.3) Having water multiply by steam by 10 as per my suggestion would make it a pump per GW.

I think that getting water from A to B with pumps in between to keep a high enough pressure (throughput) is challenging enough as it is.

[ssilk]

Well, there is another reason: If you reduce the amount of steam by factor 100 or so the game cannot calculate the values so exactly anymore. I don't know what exactly happens and how that works out in the end, but I think it's imaginable.
On the other hand, since steam is now an own liquid a change here would be simple: Any recipe depending conversion of water/steam divide by 100, any energy of steam multiply by 100, finished.

[malventano]

I see where the original issue is coming from now that I'm working on my own expandable reactor design. You can only have 4 pipe tiles per pump (2x underground strings) to maintain enough flow to achieve 480MW. That's extremely limiting especially if you need to pipe in water from a remote source. I did not that on the other hand, I did not need any pumps for steam in my setup. I haven't dug into the prototype files on this, but perhaps if steam is able to 'flow easier' than water, perhaps nudge the value for water a bit closer to that of steam so that it flows a bit easier and makes the pumping situation a bit less cumbersome.

[Alphasoldier]

Any recipe depending conversion of water/steam divide by 100, any energy of steam multiply by 100, finished.

Except for the steam generator and turbine, right? Otherwise they're still sprinklers.

So coal liquefaction would require 500 steam, which... kind of sounds like a lot, maybe that could be tweaked.

@malventano
I'm mostly just talking about 1 water giving 10 steam.
Currently the pressure is okay-ish. Due to the ratio's of the reactors to heat exchangers you can plant 16 (1 reactor + 3 neighbors = 4*4) on a 5 tiles wide setup. 10 tile wide if you do it per 2 reactors and use 32 HE's. This allows for a setup of 3 offshore pumps (which would technically supply 33-something HE's, meaning you don't need to get a perfect 100% water pipe throughput.

But that's still 3 pipes of water that you can't properly fit in from the outside. Why?
If you were to chain 16+16+17 steam turbines next to each other (55 total, which is necessary for 32 HE's), you would have 9 (3+3+3) tiles of width occupied. That's 1 tile width left for a pipe that you could pull from the far side of the steam turbines. We need 3. You COULD put underground pipes between the ST's, but they can only go underground for 9 tiles, and steam turbines are 5 tiles long, meaning you'd have to put an underground pipe every single steam turbine until you reach the other end. That's 40% extra length (2 tiles per 5 tiles of ST), which is a lot of wasted space and materials.

Ergo, the only solution I found is to pull in the water from in between the ST's and HE's. This means you have to separate the two by 3 additional tiles every time you'd expand it. (And also pull the water from the side you're expanding it from, otherwise you'd continuously have to replace everything).
I found this solution acceptable. But I still think water should expand when turning into steam.

[malventano]

Any recipe depending conversion of water/steam divide by 100, any energy of steam multiply by 100, finished.

Except for the steam generator and turbine, right? Otherwise they're still sprinklers.

So coal liquefaction would require 500 steam, which... kind of sounds like a lot, maybe that could be tweaked.

@malventano
I'm mostly just talking about 1 water giving 10 steam.
Currently the pressure is okay-ish. Due to the ratio's of the reactors to heat exchangers you can plant 16 (1 reactor + 3 neighbors = 4*4) on a 5 tiles wide setup. 10 tile wide if you do it per 2 reactors and use 32 HE's. This allows for a setup of 3 offshore pumps (which would technically supply 33-something HE's, meaning you don't need to get a perfect 100% water pipe throughput.

But that's still 3 pipes of water that you can't properly fit in from the outside. Why?
If you were to chain 16+16+17 steam turbines next to each other (55 total, which is necessary for 32 HE's), you would have 9 (3+3+3) tiles of width occupied. That's 1 tile width left for a pipe that you could pull from the far side of the steam turbines. We need 3. You COULD put underground pipes between the ST's, but they can only go underground for 9 tiles, and steam turbines are 5 tiles long, meaning you'd have to put an underground pipe every single steam turbine until you reach the other end. That's 40% extra length (2 tiles per 5 tiles of ST), which is a lot of wasted space and materials.

Ergo, the only solution I found is to pull in the water from in between the ST's and HE's. This means you have to separate the two by 3 additional tiles every time you'd expand it. (And also pull the water from the side you're expanding it from, otherwise you'd continuously have to replace everything).
I found this solution acceptable. But I still think water should expand when turning into steam.

Oh, I get it, you're trying to hang all of the HE's and ST's off of one side of a 2 by x chain. You might be able to get enough water in there with two parallel pump lines, but yeah, you are pushing it as far as the steam flow goes.

I'm personally solving that issue by hanging 16HE's off of each side of the 2 by x chain.

[Alphasoldier]

Oh, I get it, you're trying to hang all of the HE's and ST's off of one side of a 2 by x chain. You might be able to get enough water in there with two parallel pump lines, but yeah, you are pushing it as far as the steam flow goes.

I'm personally solving that issue by hanging 16HE's off of each side of the 2 by x chain.

I'm not sure if I'm following, you mean a reactor 2 by x chains, right? Because there's no other way to do it besides doing a 1 by x reactor chain, and that's incredibly wasteful due to the neighbor bonus.

As for the HE's and ST's? I'm not hanging them off one side, but I AM doing it per 2 reactors per side, which works way better for design purposes. Having 10 tiles of width, and 3 water pumps per 32 HE's, instead of 2 water pumps per 16HE's. Also having a ST line that's 3 wide instead of 1 (because of 5 tiles width of the reactor), and I don't think 27 ST's in a row properly works with pressure (throughput).

[HurkWurk]

i think the real solution here that does fit properly in the base game is to add electric wells sometime around the creation of red circuits so that people can create water anywhere, if they provide electricity. that way you arent trapped in design by offshore pumps.

[Alphasoldier]

That isn't a half bad idea. But I personally think this should be considered as well, seeing it's logical.
Again: Water expands when it turns to steam, and unless we have some really well made high pressure pipes, one shouldn't be able to fit 500°C steam in the same piece of pipe that the same amount of water can exist in.
I know Factorio isn't about realism at all; looking at storage proves that, but something like this just makes sense.

Oh and I also still refuse to call the ST's anything else but sprinklers.