Heat exchangers water consumption is too high and off balance with 2.0

[andreyskv]

Factorio 2.0 has heat exchangers (HA) water consumption at 10.3/s for the base game (to 25.8/s for legendary if quality is present) while bobs HA at all tiers consume 120/s. Together with the absence of higher tier water pumps comparable to for example legendary (at 3000/s) this makes current nuclear setups very unbalanced (requiring huge number of pumps for large builds) and not aligned with the base Factorio game.

Edit: also noticed the same issue with boilers

Recommendation: Adjust heat exchangers water consumption down ~10x to 10-12/s or make them similar to levels in quality mod.

Additionally, consider bumping up values for energy generation for higher tier steam turbines and heat exchangers. 18MW for HA at tier4 and 9MW corresponding turbine is too low for very large builds.

[andreyskv]

First: Can the ratio of water/steam be kept 1:1, but still reduced to 6/12/s from 60/120? This will impact only a handful recipes for steam, but it does not look like a big deal since you can then tweak those recipes so they produce 10x faster, but will use slightly more water. The issue is much bigger for energy generation.

Second: If that does not work then how about bumping higher tiers of energy producing entities to produce at least 5x more power (including top tier solar). Currently nuclear power plant producing 20GW to feed a relatively moderate size factory ( built 5 tier modules and top tier beacons) upgraded to top tier is way way too big and not interesting. The end game megabase you are supposed to have compact and strong power producing methods.

[Qatavin]

Are you sure you're seeing Heat Exchangers consume 120 water? That shouldn't be the case. Water isn't consumed by Boilers/Heat Exchangers at a defined rate. It's determined by the ratio of the heat_capacity of the two fluids (and the energy consumption and target temperature of the boiler). In Factorio 2.0, Water has a heat_capacity of 2kJ, and Steam is 0.2kJ, so the ratio should be 1:10 Water to Steam for all boilers without us needing to change anything, and when I load Bob's Power, that is exactly what I see. Some other mod you are using may be changing the parameters of Water. You can check for that by finding Water in Factoriopedia.

[KiwiHawk]

Factorio 2.0 changed the ratio from 1:1 to 1:10. Angel's mods change it back to 1:1. The change messed up too many of the petrochem recipes.

[andreyskv]

Right, I figured from some other post that this is because it had to be 1:1 and so boilers/exchangers still need a lot of water to feed turbines. May be simply need a big buff to exchangers/turbines. The entire factory energy scales exponentially while you get an immaterial upgrade from 7.2MW turbine to 9MW (at least doubling at each tier makes sense). Also the water pump at 1200/s become inadequate. There is also "heavy offshore pump", but what a joke it gives only 1500/s. What about making that pump 15000/s. That would be the easiest change.

[KiwiHawk]

The main point of the heavy offshore pump is that it has module slots and is affected by beacons.

But yes, I agree that power things could do with another review.

[Qatavin]

Well, I suppose what we could do is gradually increase the energy and fluid consumption of the boilers and engines as they go up in tier. Something like:

Boilers:
1: 6 fluid/1800J
2: 7.5 fluid/4500J
3: 9 fluid/8100J
4: 10.5 fluid/12600J
5: 12 fluid/18000J

Fluid boiler (Boiler x 1.5):
2: 11.25/6750J
3: 13.5/12150J
4: 15.75/18900J
5: 18/27000J

Heat exchanger (Boiler x 2):
2: 15/9000J
3: 18/16200J
4: 21/25200J
5: 24/36000J

Steam engine (2/Boiler, 3/Fluid boiler, 4/Heat exchanger):
1: 30/900J
2: 37.5/2250J
3: 45/4050J
4: 52.5/6300J
5: 60/9000J

Steam turbine (1/Boiler, 1.5/Fluid boiler, 2/Heat exchanger):
3: 90/8100J
4: 105/12600J
5: 120/18000J

With a proportional increase in pollution, of course. Net effect, tier 5 entities are 10x as power dense as tier 1 instead of 5x.

That said, as a Bob's-only player, I feel like they're fine as they are now. I'm sure Angels needs a lot more energy, but in Bob's, so long as you aren't completely irresponsible with your energy economy, the current stats will work just fine for you.