The electric boiler, geothermal heat exchanger, and ambient heat exchanger have the 1:1 input:output ratio of water. could you fix this and make it take a tenth of the water it should?
Thanik you, im loving IR3

you might also want to do the same to liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, liquid helium, etc to a 1:10 or 1:40 to be consistent with this change

Before I go making this change, I have a question. I'm not familiar with the IR3 recipes so you'll have to forgive me.

Considering that I'm trying to keep IR3 faithful to the old experience, why shouldn't I just nerf the vanilla boiler back to 1:1? You'll need more pumps of course, but that's hardly the only thing IR3 makes harder.

I don't see the need to implement questionable vanilla changes to the mod, the mod is balanced to work that way, otherwise you might as well play vanilla. Almost the entire mod is calculated from basic parameters entered in the globals file, arbitrarily modifying one would make it unbalanced.

when it comes to water and steam, It will mostly come down to ammount of water pumps needed and with how cheap those are, it's mostly an aesthetic thing. I personally wouldn't mind if i just neded one or two pumps for my nuclear reactor rather than 20, for purely aesthetic reasons.

Now the cryogenic liquids. Those I wouldn't touch. That would affect balance more severely. Flow rates, energy spent, all that should need rebalancing for porper progression and it would definitely be more work than it's worth.

Looking at boilers and heat exchangers again, it seems like everything in IR3 is consistently set to the 1:1 ratio.

My proposal: I'm going to buff offshore pumps (both kinds) by 4x. This should make nuclear setups a bit less ridiculous, and if you need higher rates, they're a fairly cheap item to make Quality versions of.

My only concern is that the increased rate may be too much for pipes to handle, but placing some tanks as a buffer should solve that, right?

But in a "normal" game, can you really use so much water?

that works, i think the 1:10 ratio is to make nuclear setups viable on space age space platforms, which dont exist in IR3. I
i dont think it will hurt anything either way.
If youre going to buff offshore pumps, could you buff normal pumps, too? I feel like this will be needed in a lot of midgame boiler setups.

Yes I'll do that. Space Age can be a problem for another day...

Looking at boilers and heat exchangers again, it seems like everything in IR3 is consistently set to the 1:1 ratio.

My proposal: I'm going to buff offshore pumps (both kinds) by 4x. This should make nuclear setups a bit less ridiculous, and if you need higher rates, they're a fairly cheap item to make Quality versions of.

My only concern is that the increased rate may be too much for pipes to handle, but placing some tanks as a buffer should solve that, right?

Pipes are not an issue in 2.0, they have infinite throughput. Issue comes from machines consuming or producing more than 6k/s of liquids, as that is the theoretical maximum amount that one input/output port can handle, in practice that number is as low as 4.2k/s. So as long as individual offshore pump doesn't go above that then no problem (if offshore pumps even shares this limitation in the first place, not sure if its only machines that uses recipes)

Yes I'll do that. Space Age can be a problem for another day...

It's another day! I think I'm going to change water:steam to be 1:10 and unbuff the pumps again, but leave the compressed air products at their current ratio of 1:4.

Just to double-check, I'll need to alter the following recipes:

• All boilers and heat exchangers
• Electric water boiling
• Polluted steam cooling
• Geothermal steam
• Geothermal hot water

Polluted steam I'm not sure how to deal with. My idea is that polluted steam:water stays at 1:1, and the "Geothermal steam" recipe gives 600 Steam instead of 60. So it's a fairly efficient source of Steam power if you can deal with all the polluted water.

For the geothermal steam, it's a bit more difficult to balance indeed. First instinct tells me, compress the dirty steam into /10 dirty water and expand the input water into x10 a steam. So input 60 dirty steam 6 water, output 6 dirty water, 60 steam. They will make polluted steam be equally effective, but require less dirty water cleaning and thuis providing less gravel, silica and sulfur. So it's easier to mannage. If the ambient heat exchanger is going to compress polluted steam into dirty water, so should the geothermal exchanger.

If you want to increase the usefullness of geothermal energy, might as well increase the polluted steam fissures yield. that way you have to build more infrastructure for the power. After all, bigger infrastructure is always cooler to build.

I'm trying to avoid changing the balance of the original mod. Right now, my "Geothermal steam" recipe looks like this:

• IN: 60 Polluted steam
• IN: 6 Water
• OUT: 60 Polluted water
• OUT: 60 Steam

and I changed the "Steam cooling" recipe on the heat exchanger to be 40 Steam -> 4 Water (changed from 40 Water).

I think it's an irrelevant change for logistical purposes and the exchanger is an entity in itself, so it's better to leave it as it is.

Won't that get clogged with water? If the Geothermal plant is producing more water than it uses, won't it clog?

no, the recipe can actually be modified as desired, the only thing that affects it is how much polluted steam you take from the fissure

If 6 water go in, and 60 dirty water goes out, after cleaning it you get 50 clean water. from those 50, 6 go back into the exchanger, 44 is extra and must be disposed of. Either in other water recipes or boiling it and venting it. Which defeats the purpose of having a geothermal plant.

With my proposal, 6 water goes in, 6 dirty water goes out. wich cleans into 5 (after 10 cycles to get the 60 for the recipe). So you need the regular setup to top up the system with a bit more water as you loose some to cleaning. Same as in the old version, just needing less water cleaners. Touches the balance a bit, but i would say in a minor way.

Yeah I see the problem. If I change Polluted water cleaning to be 60 Polluted water -> 5 Water, that would fix it, correct?

how much sulfur wasted!

Yeah I see the problem. If I change Polluted water cleaning to be 60 Polluted water -> 5 Water, that would fix it, correct?

That would work too. Would affect the balance to ore washers, but it's not like water is in limmited suply. They'll simply need a bigger water suply that shouldn't be hard to come by.

I wouldn't touch the water from the ore washers, otherwise you'd have to double the sour gas fissures because they give you half the sulfur that the factory uses and there's never enough anyway.

Don't forget oil processing gives plenty of sour gass too. In my 1.1 playtrough i completed the game without using a single sour gass fissure and never really using the sulfur from my ore cleaning. That was a byproduct to get rid off, not a crucial source of resources.

I have a current batch, I have 3 sour gas fissures and I use all the bi-product sulfur and I am out of sulfuric acid for the electroplating machines. Do you use military technologies? They are 15 sulfurs per military package, the advanced technologies close 1000 each, do the math

The changes are now on the Codeberg build if you want to have a look at them. Ore washing recipes are unchanged.

Shemp, do these changes only apply if they're active space age? Does the base game remain unchanged?

I have a current batch, I have 3 sour gas fissures and I use all the bi-product sulfur and I am out of sulfuric acid for the electroplating machines. Do you use military technologies? They are 15 sulfurs per military package, the advanced technologies close 1000 each, do the math

The original 1.1 version had far less use for the explosive (military) science pack. Maybe that's a game changer. But that's offtopic from the water/steam ratio discussion.

The game balance is still the same and sorry it was referring to the washing machine, I personally use all the sulfur produced and reducing the water by 1/10 for my gameplay would result in the elimination of the military packages entirely

Shemp, do these changes only apply if they're active space age? Does the base game remain unchanged?

It's both. But it's just the amount of water, right? I don't understand how that affects Military science / Sulfur balance, you'll have to explain that to me.

Shemp, do these changes only apply if they're active space age? Does the base game remain unchanged?

It's both. But it's just the amount of water, right? I don't understand how that affects Military science / Sulfur balance, you'll have to explain that to me.

Maybe he thinks you were going by my suggestion of reducing dirty water from geothermal.

I don't understand why not keep the water:steam ratio of 1:1 since IR3 relies on it for various things and it's cleaner to look at.
The vanilla ratio was changed to 1:10 in Space Age to stop people from hoarding steam in tanks on space stations IIRC... That didn't stop people from hoarding steam though.

Also why reduce the amount of water produced in recipes, instead of multiplying the steam produced by all sources???? It'll just cause issues with polluted water and such.
If you want to be consistent, multiply all sources/consumers of steam and polluted steam by x10 and call it a day. Or do the opposite with water and polluted water

I agree with you, also because Deadlock has made formulas in its global files to keep everything in proportion and harmony, changing them arbitrarily is not very useful for now, in case we will think about it when there is a problem and for the aesthetic issue in nuclear plants it seems even more irrelevant to me. At the limit we could integrate levels of different boilers that raise the temperature of the steam to the "Bob" meaning that they automatically reduce the need for water

Yes, the primary reason is Space Age. It's a 2.0 change, so it'll take effect with or without the DLC. If you really don't like it, there's an option in port/config.lua which you can automatically override by declaring a setting in your own add-on mod.

I'm not multiplying steam because then I would need to change fluidbox sizes to fit it. The only effect of changing water amounts should be that some systems will require more or less water to feed them on Nauvis, where it's easy to get it.

I can't change the ratio per boiler because it's a property of the "water" fluid itself, the "heat capacity" is now 10x greater than steam's.

EDIT: After thinking about Supershadow's comment, I think I'm just going to change it all back (including removing the pump buffs). I'm going to have to manually rebalance everything for Space Age anyway, and for people like TritiumSeeker who want the new ratio, this seems like a good candidate for a startup setting.

EDIT the Second: And to clarify further, if you're using the Space Age add-on, you won't be allowed to change the setting.

I think Shemp I won't complain anymore :D if you listen to everyone you won't do anything, in the end you have to do what you think, if I don't like the result I'll play Krastorio :DD

I downgraded factorio to 1.1 to check this thermal capacity thing because I didn't know anything about it, but both 1.1 and 2.0 have both water and steam 200j

And from what I've read, it's the amount of energy needed to heat them that varies, not the volume of fluids.

Edit : Sorry, I made a mistake, it's IR3 in components.lua which sets it to 200j 4 water

i really appreciate the option to have the 1:10 ratio change!