i've had some issues with my petrochemical production in my save relating to not getting anywhere near enough sulfur for what i need, although it might be a side effect of other stuff (lots of mods that add uses for sulfur(ic acid), and i have far too much of everything else

the "workaround" i found is to utilize the solid fuel/petroleum/methane recipes to turn petroleum gas (+solid fuel, which will always be made of petroleum in this example) to methane, then use the methane/solid fuel recipe to make butane out of just petroleum, which i then crack with the butane pollution recipe + crack the resulting light oil, basically just "transmuting" petroleum into sour gas.

is this the intended solution? it my factory just lopsided and i should be using more of other oil products to not be blocked on sulfur somehow?

No, that isn't really intended. The usual problem, at least in our playtesting, was the opposite: having too much sour gas, which is why recipes like impure fuel and sour gas sweetening exist. If you're using mods that add a lot of uses for sulfuric acid and thus have higher sour gas demand, that is going to shift things.

I talked to Saf about this and we decided we're going to add some sort of "rapid oil processing" recipe that will process crude oil quickly by leaving in a lot of impurities, which will make it yield more sour gas (and tar) and hopefully be a solution to your problem.

aye, understandable, probably just due to differing lists causing different sulfur/plastic consumption ratio. ill probably just supplement with space sulfur in the meantime.

also, did some math on the methane loop, it appears that at a measly 18% prod (3x prod2 in chemplants) it generates basically as much petroleum out as it took, before even considering cracking the butane (either simple or via pollution). my math says with 18% and making the solid fuel from petroleum gas, each cycle of 100 methane made and 100 methane consumed generates ~15 butane for the cost of 2 petroleum gas. maybe just reduce the petroleum+solid recipe's methane output to like 40 or 60 instead of 80? 40 would make the positive loop require at least quality prod3s i think

Are you sure? 18% productivity gives you 94.4 methane for 40 petroleum gas + 1 solid fuel. If you convert that methane back into petroleum gas, once again with 18% productivity, you use 1.18 more solid fuel to get 55.7 petroleum gas and 13.9 butane. That's a gain of 15.7 petroleum gas and 13.9 butane, but the 2.18 solid fuel used costs 43.6 gas. Converting 100 petroleum gas to methane and back again costs 5 solid fuel, and with 18% productivity you only gain 39.24 petroleum gas and 14.75 butane, so you're still losing around 46 gas in solid fuel costs from the loop.

Things do get a bit iffy at higher productivity values. With 50% productivity, 40 petroleum gas gets you 120 methane, which you can convert back to 90 petroleum gas and 22.5 butane, so you've gained 6.4 petroleum gas (and the butane) even including the solid fuel. It might be worth not doubling the methane recipe in Remix mode, which would push the solid fuel costs even higher, making this loop not profitable either.

i was doing the math based off the hover values so it mightve been a little off but yea its quite close to being an issue. ill post my work

solid fuel plant generates 1.66 solid fuel and 1.38 methane for 28.7 petroleum
methane plant generates 67.2 methane for .71 solid fuel and 28.7 petroleum
butane plant generates 21.2 petroleum and 5.3 butane for 35.9 methane and .44 solid fuel

for every 100 methane generated the plant consumes 42.7 petroleum and 1.05 solid fuel, which takes 18 petroleum, totaling 60.7 petroleum for 100 methane
for every 100 methane cracked, it consumes 100 methane and 1.22 solid fuel (21petroleum) and generates 58 petroleum and 14 units of butane
ok wait heres where i realize the mistake -- the inputs from the loop are 81 petroleum, and it generates 58 petroleum and 14 butane. i think that butane is enough to make it still net infinite oil. it'd just need to crack into like 23 petro all said and done?

butane plant reads as 21.5 butane cracking into 6.2 petroleum, 10.6 light oil, and 3.6 solid gas
dividing down to the 14 butane per cycle gets 6.9 light oil and 4 petroleum
light oil cracking is 17.9 light -> 33.8petroleum, which would make the 6.9 light oil crack into like 14 petro?
math says not infinte at 18% but its just barely, when accounting for cracking butane you end up down 5 petroleum per cycle. any quality on your prod modules anywhere would be enough to break it

solid fuel plant generates 1.66 solid fuel and 1.38 methane for 28.7 petroleum

Solid fuel from petroleum gas shouldn't generate any methane. If it is, then some other mod has changed things on your end and it's not a surprise our numbers don't agree.

ah, that'd make sense. figured it was intended since i think that'd be the only recipe that uses petroleum and doesnt generate methane

Regardless of the exact numbers, the underlying issue still remained at higher productivity values, so after talking with Saf we did decide to give the methane recipe a pretty heavy nerf. It's still possible to create an infinite loop at > 100% productivity, but we're less concerned about that.

yea over 100 prod takes better stuff than possible in vanilla since max is i think 75% with legend prod3s. ty for fix!! glad i could help!!