Forgive me if I'm missing something, or wasting anyone's time. However, after some napkin calculations, it seems like there is a certain balance issue.

If you are looking to use up your wood pulp, you have several options; great! Wood brick, charcoal, ash, and cellulose. The latter isn't really used for energy, but rather plastic and sulfuric acid production, so it won't enter into our comparison. Ash, similarly, is itself useful for algae and fertilizer production, which are both versatile and important.

So now the question is the balance of charcoal vs. wood brick. Early game, wood brick is an easy way to handle and burn wood pulp, of course, so the [Pulp -> Brick] recipe is itself fine, but I don't think wood brick should be so outclassed in the midgame.

Consider the two production chains, (very different in complexity):

[24 Pulp -> 1 Brick -> 2/3 Solid fuel -> 0.4 Coke], vs.

[24 Pulp -> 5 Charcoal -> 8 (or 6) Coal -> 16 (12) Light + 52 (39) Heavy oil -> 16 (12) Light oil + 39 (29.25) Light oil = 55 (41.25) Light oil -> 5.5 (4.125) Solid fuel -> 3.3 (2.475) Coke].

That is, if my calculations are correct, the latter recipe is over 8 times more efficient! This is probably undesirable? The latter chain requires purple science, of course, and without it (but with blue science) we only get a ratio of 24 -> 2.475, which is still over 6 times better.

One counterpoint is that the wood brick chain only requires green science, which is of course much easier. I still don't think there's any huge issue with buffing the [Wood bricks -> Solid fuel] recipe, however, which currently converts 60 MJ into 24 MJ. For the privilege of getting to use solid fuel in the long-term for, say, rocket fuel, we are losing 60% of our energy! The recipe could even be [2 Wood brick (40 MJ) -> 3 Solid fuel (36 MJ)], which still operates at a loss of 10%, but isn't egregiously wasteful, instead of [3 Wood brick (60 MJ) -> 2 Solid fuel (24 MJ)].

This change would then mean [24 Pulp -> 1 Brick -> 1.5 Solid fuel -> 0.9 Coke], which is only 3 times worse. I think that an efficiency multiplier of ~3 is a fair reward for blue science.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll have to think this over when I can think more clearly again -- hardly slept last night. Also, there's an update almost ready for release. I'm really afraid adding such changes right now would delay that for too long: there are some people waiting for Krastorio² compatibility. :-)

So, I hope you'll understand that I postpone this for now.

Thanks for the snappy response :)

I'm possessed by napkin calculations (I really like this mod, haha), so I'll make another few threads, but please don't let my spam overwhelm you; that's not my intention at all.

Sorry it took so long -- too many things happening with too many mods. :-)

So now the question is the balance of charcoal vs. wood brick. Early game, wood brick is an easy way to handle and burn wood pulp, of course, so the [Pulp -> Brick] recipe is itself fine, but I don't think wood brick should be so outclassed in the midgame.

From the 0.18.29 (yet unreleased) changelog:

    - Moved recipes "Solid fuel from wood bricks", "Bio stone brick", and "Basic gas processing" from "Coal processing 1" to "Coal processing 2". These recipes can only be used in chemical plants, which are guaranteed to be available when "Coal processing 2" is researched. Also, the move gives an incentive to really use wooden bricks as fuel instead of converting them to solid fuel almost immediately.

Would that be OK?

Please try version 0.18.29!

I'm planning on doing a playthrough soon :)
I'm personally running Factorio 1.1.x, so if you could allow BI for 1.1.x, that would be optimal for me.