Mods introducing new content into the game.
There are several components to balancing the ice melting. Here my focus is primarily on boiler steam power production:
The recipe is 3.2 "seconds", the Electric ice melter has a crafting speed of 2 and the recipe gives 30 water for 1 ice ore.
That's 18.75 water per second for 180kW. It's not enough to support a single steam engine. Also Ice ore has a mining time of 200%.
Ice ore consumption for 1 steam engine is 60/minute, compared to 13.5 coal/minute. And when factoring in that ice ore is 2 times harder to mine that means you need ~9 times more ice ore miners than coal miners to keep your steam engine running.
Together ice mining and ice melting use almost half the power produced by a steam engine (~430kW out of 900kW) while coal mining is at about 14kW.
The offshore pump gives 1200 water/second. That's 64 times more, for free (if you have access to water). That's kind of an extreme difference.
It is usable. And if you want to play a hardcore freezing deathworld world that is very deadly and hard to get power at then maybe it is fine as it is. As a water replacement in an otherwise vanilla default settings world it is very punishing. For non-deathworld I would suggest increasing the amount of water recieved from 30 to maybe 300. That would reduce ice mining machines, power used for mining and melting 1 water and reduce melting area required all at once. It would still be harder than offshore pumping but a good starting point for a default value for regular worlds.
Maybe 30 is a good option for those that want increased difficulty so it could be a startup mod setting for those that want to reduce it maybe?
I haven't checked how big the ice ore fields are since I spawned in ice ore with creative mod.
I'm testing this mod because I was considering adding ice to my new WIP mod and saw that you had already done a great ice mod that I could just make an depenency for to have it and save me the trouble. But for that I want ice to be a water source that has some default values that make it somewhat balanced with other ores. I could fix the recipes by updating the prototypes in my mod from super-difficult to normal values, but I decided to discuss it with you first to hear your opinion on the current balance.
So: What are your thoughts? How did you come up with the current numbers?
Early here was much easier balance, then I've change it. Yes, I think that this mod is pretty hard and must be rebalanced in better way.
I like this balance:
For one coal-powered-melter we are need about 1.8 coal-powered-mining-drills. One is not enough, but two is a little bit to much.
From one coal-powered-melter we are get water for 1.2 boilers (for 2.4 steam engines). The ideal proportion can be by big plants only.
It could be nice if we can melt ice ore by using of steam or heat (another mods, for example the heat from the underground, nuclear reactor etc.), but the closed cycle like electric melter - water - electric boiler (from another mod) - steam - steam engine - electric energy - electric melter must cost much more energy and cannot working as perpetual motion.
3 . Boiler: needs 60 water/second and needs 1800 kW of fuel energy, makes 60 steam/second; one steam fluid costs 30 kJ;
4 . Steam engine: needs 30 fluids of steam and generates 900 kW electric energy.
1 . Burner mining drill: needs 300 kW of fuel energy and it has mining speed 0.25. If our ore has mining time 1 second (like all ores) then we got 1 ice ore per 4 seconds. One ore costs 1200 kJ of fuel energy;
2 . The Burner ice melter needs 180 kW of fuel energy and melts the ice ore with the speed 1; we are need 3.2 seconds (like all of ores) to convert 1 ice ore to 30 fluids of water. It costs 576 kJ of fuel energy;
One 900 kW of electric energy costs: 1200 + 576 + 30 = 1806 kW of fuel energy. It looks nice, this system to convert ice ore resource to electric energy has almost 50% of effectivity.
Time calculating:
To supply one boiler with 60 water fluids per second we are need:
Two completed recipes per second, every of them get 30 fluids of water per second.
One melter needs 3.2 seconds to complete one recipe. Two melters need 1.6 seconds. Forth of them need only 0.8 seconds. On the huge plant we are need 6.4 of melters to for only one boiler, it looks too much. We can fix it if the melter will be more powerful, about 3 times and then we are need 2.13 of melters for one boiler.
To supply all melters we are need to mine 6.4 ice ores per second. One ore needs 4 seconds, then we are need 25.6 burning mining drills, it's too much too. We can reduce the time of mining about 6 times (4.26 burning mining drills for 1 ore/second), but then we are reducing the consuming energy from 576 kJ per ore to 96 kJ per ice ore, it looks too cheap.
For example one iron plate (and 1 iron plate per second) needs:
Burner mining drill needs 180 kW of fuel energy, has speed 0.25 and makes one iron ore every 4 seconds. One iron ore costs 720 kJ. You are need 4 mining drills to make 1 iron ore per second.
One stone furnace needs 90 kW of fuel energy, has speed 1; it needs 3.2 per one plate, then one smelting recipe costs 288 kJ. You are need 3.2 stone furnaces for one iron plate per second.
Total energy for one iron plate: 1008 kJ of fuel energy.
Test base setup
Some things are idling but there's mostly burner things without drain and the system reached equilibrium before I took the screenshots. And there's not a lot of idling of ice ore mining and melting so the sizes can be used to get an indication of how big each area needs to be.
All fluids, items and power come from Ice Ore which is melted and made into things with Basic Sea Block.
Fluid production
Items production
Power production
The power drainer shows 0W but it actually uses all leftover power after the ~2.8 MW for machines have been used up. So the system has an output of 4.6 MW.
792 Ice Ore/m or 13.2/second.
4.6 / 13.2 ~ 0.35 MJ net energy per Ice Ore. Or about 4.4% of what you get out of coal mining directly with free water (coal is twice as easy to mine so I halved the value of ice ore). This depends heavily on the balance of how much water is consumed by the recipes in Basic Sea Block though (or "Basic Ice Block").
I'm not saying you should balance Ice Ore for the BIB mod combo. But it is still interesting and an indication of how much water you get out of mining Ice Ore.
I'll comment on the calculations you provided in a while.
Links give me an error 403. Now you can change this mod for make it useful in BIB.
The links work fine for me right now.
Bu I cannot.
Please change the parts of this mod as you will. You have permission for it.
Oh, now I get it. Thanks for collaborator permissions :3
I could PM you the pictures if you want, but the important data is already available in the text so not sure if you want it.
I'll try out some values and see what works well and maybe add a setting for how much water is given per ice ore. It's fitting that it isn't just endless free water like Stone Water Well and similar but I don't want water to be a big obstacle so it's fine if it's just a bit more work than the regular offshore pump. It would be cool if ice melting is a viable (but of course slightly harder) alternative to pumps for a megabase without getting ridiculous in area or UPS required.
And with a setting those that want it to be a complete struggle to get just a few drops could get their painful experience q:
But I'm not really sure if there's a demand for making it very hard to get water. Maybe everyone just want an alternative way to get water that is a bit more fitting to their ice themed world?
The Burner Offshore Pump can be useful in this situation: the same amount of water, but needs fuel.
The BIB can be based on Frost Punk:
- no water at all, the water is actually an ice, some parts of that ice can be used as water source;
- the idea of the Building Platform: you can place heavy buildings on the stable grounds only; use analog of the landfill to switch the unstable ground to stable, Sea Block and Co. have same thing to grow the area of the factory;
- sometimes you can find seas, with salted or hot water from underground, here you can use burner offshore pump; use desalter for salted water and use the water for power production;
- may be convert not stable ground to water on heavy polluted areas; the water will be often, but use that damn landfill for whole of the factory, don't drawn!
It looks nice, this system to convert ice ore resource to electric energy has almost 50% of effectivity.
You aren't converting ice ore to electric energy though, the ice is just the medium to transfer energy from coal. On top of the coal used in ice mining and ice melting you also need coal for the boilers and the coal miners. So in BIB your system needs to create like 30 MW in coal and you only get 4.6 MW out. Because almost all the coal goes back into the large ice mining and smelting, far more than what ends up the boilers. So the efficiency for the coal there (BIB) becomes 16%. This is for water that is otherwise unlimited and requires no energy to get while ice ore is finite. But what you are mining is actually ice ore (792/minute) which is almost double the coal amount (440/min). And those take double the mining time so it's about 4x less efficient than the 16% number. So the real comparison would be the 4.4% energy you get out compared to mining coal.
I did some testing without BIB also to see how different setups with different mod packs would compare.
This is what I came up with:
A boiler requires 1.8 MW, or 0.45 coal/s.
It also requires 60 water/s, or 0.5 ice ore/s
It also means you need 10 smelters to supply as much water as 1 offshore pump.
This means you need slightly more ice ore mining to feed the boilers than you need coal mining. But you also need even more power now (compared to offshore pump) since ice ore mining and melting requires coal too, so you also need to expand your coal mining so it is slightly bigger than ice mining, to power the water gathering. So in total ice ore + coal power is more than 2x as expensive as coal + free unlimited water.
I think this makes it a bit harder than vanilla but still balanced enough that ice doesn't become the primary focus of the game instead of the factory building. It is also harder than some other offshore pump replacement mods (Burner Offshore pump, Drill to Aquifer etc). I would say it is balanced really well to fit in with an otherwise default settings vanilla run.
If some want it harder then maybe we could maybe add an "expensive recipe" for those that play with that map setting and the players can also reduce Ice Ore spawn settings in the map generator. That sounds much better than asking the users to balance it themselves because it will also be automatically applied when they choose the expensive recipes option. And they don't need to run through all the calculations we have done to get something that fits. I think it's up to us as mod makers to balance mods after all since we know how it's done.
For an optional expensive recipe, I'm thinking maybe 2 "energy" for 60 water /ice ore. And the regular recipe is as detailed above.
I've made small setup https://imgur.com/a/H9OFMvR and got:
Power source: 1000 x wood (2.0 MJ) = 2000 GJ
Accumulator up to 5 GJ (must me enough)
One Burner mining drill (150 kW)
One Ice melter (180 kW)
One boiler (1.8 MW, but it mus be like for free)
Two steam engines.
The melter is done 744 times recipe, then in the burner mining drill the fuel goes out; rest energy: 3200 and 2000 in boiler and Ice melter; stored energy in accumulator: 669600000. It's looks like it's almost 670 GJ, more then the third part (33.48%) of the initial energy.
After rebalancing it must be the 50% for expensive and 75% for normal difficulty.
Another simulation https://imgur.com/a/LTtTOFl :
I have three steel chests, each with 48 stacks of coal (total: 3 x 9600 MJ);
the ice melter has done 7999 of recipes;
The burner mining drill needs whole chest, 9600 MJ.
The melter needs 1152 of coal, 4608 MJ (5 of coal in inventory).
The boiler needs 1800 of coal, 7200 MJ (5 of coal in inventory).
The accumulator has 7200 MJ of electric energy.
Input: 9600+4608+7200 = 21408 MJ, output: 7200 MJ, it's 33.63 % of effectivity.
But vanilla has 100 % of effectivity, free water is must cheaper then every of mods with not free water.
I noticed now that I've been testing with mining productivity +40% researched... doh.
So my efficiency numbers would be lower without it. I'll have to redo my simulations.
But vanilla has 100 % of effectivity,
The burner mining drill makes 1 coal in 4 seconds. Or 4 MJ. So it produces 1 MW in fuel. And it uses 150 kW. Vanilla with free water has an efficiency of 85%. In your simulation, you get the coal for free. But in a real implementation, you would have to feed your burner mining drill also. Inserters use a small amount of energy.
But the values I posted above roughly double the mining needed. Doubling your mining without doubling your fuel output means you double your costs, so that would give you an efficiency of less than 70%. So do you agree that the new recipe that I proposed is fairly well balanced, yes?
Testing without productivity research (and using the new recipe):
154 coal/min = 10.266 MW (ran for 1 "hour", 60^3 ticks)
Output power = 7.15 MW (8 steam engines, inserters use 50kW together)
69.6% efficiency, like I estimated :)
I think this is good enough, pretty close to the 75% you suggested. And the numbers are really nice. 1 second for melting, 1/10 as much water from a melter compared to an offshore pump. The mining required for power is roughly doubled. Altering the numbers would just give weird ratios. I'll try 60 water/2 seconds and ice ore for the expensive recipe later.
Yes, it looks good enough.
Burner mining drill 150 kJ / sec makes 1 ice ore per second;
ice melter needs 180 kJ / sec and makes 120 fluids / sec of water from 1 ice ore;
Two setups of boiler+double steam engine take this water and make the energy (for free).
Coal mining need another 600 kJ per 4 seconds for every coal item. May be we can change this recipe too?
1 coal item / second will be nice for bigger logistic and enough for the world without free water.
The name of the mod is "Ice Ore". It is pertty clear what it does from it's name. So I think it's best if we don't touch the coal mining. I don't see a problem with coal mining, and you can upgrade to electric miners if you want fast and more efficient coal. And then you can put efficiency (or other modules) in the electric miners if you want even less waste. So I don't think coal needs a change.
And it would be surprising for people that want just ice to have other parts of their game changed if they didn't know or ask for it (like me xD). I think it's great that this mod does one thing only, so any other mod that needs ice can just add a dependency on this. That's one great way I want to use this neat mod. :)
If you want to rebalance other parts then that seems out of scope for this mod, but it could be a part of another mod. I'm not really interested in that though.
All this stuff can set done as an option, default is false.
The good balance is too different for all players and some of them need to have it much harder or much easier.
Expensive mode is for hardcore players, but the normal difficulty can be too hard for casual players.
The modder DellAquila makes pretty casual mods and they're popular, makes sense for children, that play Factorio.
All this stuff can set done as an option, default is false.
Making coal easier seems like a weird thing to add to a mod that makes water more complicated. This mod is made to introduce a route with an extra step for water. Those that want a more casual experience would install "Stone Water Well" instead and would never install this mod. And Ice Ore doesn't make it that much harder (after the rebalance) that anything else needs a buff.
And installing this mod doesn't disable regular offshore pumping by default (which is a great default) so it doesn't make it harder at all unless you turn on that setting.
I uploaded v0.3.0 with the new recipes.
The ice ore spawning is much more common than other ores with similar settings. And at max settings, the entire map is covered in ice with just small holes in the one big ice ore patch. While the numbers can be tuned down some in map gen settings to get a normal amount of ice ore (compared to other resources) so it doesn't hurt really, I think it is a bit extreme. And if someone wanted very rare ice then that isn't really possible.
And if I set "frequency" to lowest setting I get massive ice ore patches even with the lowest size setting. So I'm guessing Ice Ore uses the old ore spawning controls since it was released before the map generator was rewritten.
Changing it can mess with peoples ongoing saves, but we could bump the version number to 1.0.0 and make it extra clear that it's a significant change. And it wouldn't move already found ice patches, so it wouldn't break anything.
We can easy change the spawning controls to new ones until the stable vanilla 0.17; if vanilla is unstable, then all vanilla prototypes can be changed freely.
We can also make old spawning control as an option, it can be here for old maps support.
Thanks for the new version.
UPD:
Please see the FrozenWorld
Thank you for making the mod in the first place <3
And FrozenWorld looks pretty cool. q:
I mostly keep all vanilla stuff the same and only really modify things before smelting and after rockets, so most of my base is still vanilla. I tried making a burner base before though (burner assemblers and inserters etc) and might try to complete that later when I'm done with my other projects. Might take a look at Fantario for that then depending on what it alters.
What you think, is one kJ for one water is not too cheap?
1200 kW for 1200 fluid per second (+ modules)
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BurnerOffshorePump/changelog
