Petroleum generators are far too inefficient compared to nat gas gens

[Hexicube]

Basic numbers:

• Natural gas generators produce 800W from 90g/s of natural gas.
• Petroleum generators produce 2000W from 3000g/s of petroleum.
• Petroleum can be converted into natural gas gram for gram.
• 3000g/s of natural gas would produce 26,666.666666W of power (13.333x as good)

This is basically forcing anyone who wants to use oil for power to go directly to volcanoes, simply because of how much of a waste petroleum generators are. I even go as far as pre-heating the crude oil using metal refineries, since I'm typically using very small amounts of oil for the power output required to begin with.

To solve this, I have a few proposals:

• Petroleum generators consume one tenth the mass (300g/s), mostly bringing it in line.
• Petroleum generators convert some of the mass into natural gas (2000g/s) to make up for the low output for the consumed mass.
• Petroleum generators produce 10 times the power (20kW), forcing heavi-watt wire usage, and maybe also require expensive materials as well as having problematic waste products or just a lot of heat generation.
• A new refining machine is added that converts petroleum into natural gas, likely at 50%-75% efficiency.

The key thing in these proposals is that volcano power still wins in power output, gram for gram. The difference is that these solutions are far more practical, and would be an appropriate transitional power source for those wanting to take advantage of end-game power sources like that. Expert players will still want to use volcanoes for power, because they are strictly better power sources once running, but the option is there to take a less optimal route that isn't trash.

In current form, there is absolutely no reason to set up petroleum generators if you have a volcano, which maps tend to have. As soon as you find that volcano, the petroleum generator is out-classed due to the hilarious inefficiency of the machine, and effectively makes it worthless.

I'd also like to note that natural gas generators in their current form seem like they are reasonable, so I would prefer that they do not change. Volcano power takes a fair bit of effort to set up, can have extremely disastrous consequences if done incorrectly, and are very hard to modify when running. The power for effort ratio there is good depending on the volcano you get (I have a gold volcano, which sucks for it despite the god-tier 2kg/s average output).

[Coolthulhu]

Making petroleum generator consume 1/10 of what it consumes would mean that a single tile of oil could produce 4000kJ. Most colonies could use petroleum gens as sole power source for a thousand cycles, without even building oil wells (and a single oil well could power 5 such buffed generators).

The biggest problem related to natgas generators is oil boiling. For some reason Klei didn't fix that yet, even though it makes balancing petroleum generator and natgas generator impossible without dropping oil amount to some small fraction of what we currently have (or bumping natgas consumption to some huge amount). There are multiple ways of fixing that:

• Making boiled oil drop coal as most of its mass and gas only as a small fraction (like pwater boiling, but with reversed fractions)
• Making boiled oil turn into octane gas (and turning back to petroleum when cooled) instead of cracking into methane
• Making crude oil split into petroleum and gas on boil, then the point above for petroleum

[trukogre]

1 hour ago, Coolthulhu said:

Making petroleum generator consume 1/10 of what it consumes would mean that a single tile of oil could produce 4000kJ. Most colonies could use petroleum gens as sole power source for a thousand cycles, without even building oil wells (and a single oil well could power 5 such buffed generators).

The biggest problem related to natgas generators is oil boiling. For some reason Klei didn't fix that yet, even though it makes balancing petroleum generator and natgas generator impossible without dropping oil amount to some small fraction of what we currently have (or bumping natgas consumption to some huge amount). There are multiple ways of fixing that:

• Making boiled oil drop coal as most of its mass and gas only as a small fraction (like pwater boiling, but with reversed fractions)
• Making boiled oil turn into octane gas (and turning back to petroleum when cooled) instead of cracking into methane
• Making crude oil split into petroleum and gas on boil, then the point above for petroleum

boiled oil turning into octane gas I like...honestly, even cracking crude into octane gas is done IRL at like 700 C, not 500 C, and with an aluminum catalyst (or whatever fraction of heptane and octane and their various isomers that modern gasoline is now, it's all quite complicated for us non-chemists). Cracking into methane so easily as ONI models it is both unrealistic and game breaking.

[Hexicube]

Less efficient oil boiling could work too, but I feel like the amount of coal that would come out of it would be absurd, and you'd have to modify petroleum boiling regardless since the machine can spew it out at 50% efficiency.

I think crude oil to petroleum is fine on its own, there's nothing severely wrong going on there with just a 2x boost. Petroleum boiling could convert 20% mass to natural gas and leave the rest as some other fluid, or maybe it could even drop refined carbon, or even make a secondary gas to make things interesting.

I'm not sure where the realism lies on any of the reactions, and honestly I don't think it's super important that it simulates life to the letter. The problem I see is that petroleum generators are just out-classed.

[BlueLance]

I don't do chemistry etc, or remember much from my science days but I would just be happy if they changed it so it doesn't product natural gas when its boiled. 

Or if they added flash points etc that would be interesting too. Heat it up too much and it just goes bang XD But I persoannly use Petroleum from Oil. I don't like to boil it because I feel it is incredibly unbalanced.

[trukogre]

10 hours ago, Hexicube said:

Less efficient oil boiling could work too, but I feel like the amount of coal that would come out of it would be absurd, and you'd have to modify petroleum boiling regardless since the machine can spew it out at 50% efficiency.

I think crude oil to petroleum is fine on its own, there's nothing severely wrong going on there with just a 2x boost. Petroleum boiling could convert 20% mass to natural gas and leave the rest as some other fluid, or maybe it could even drop refined carbon, or even make a secondary gas to make things interesting.

I'm not sure where the realism lies on any of the reactions, and honestly I don't think it's super important that it simulates life to the letter. The problem I see is that petroleum generators are just out-classed.

In general gameplay is more important than realism to me in these arcane reactions, mainly because most people don't know exactly how petrocracking actually works anyway.  At some point realism is important; here's why:  Why did Klei use real elements at all, they could have just given everything a unique new name, like abyssalite?  using real elements makes the game quicker to pick up, because people already kinda know what to expect.  Obviously, if they used real elements, but switched the names around, so that igneous rock is water, and water is natural gas, etc, that would be even worse than just using alien new names.  So the real things have to be 1-1 matched with the ingame equivalents for Klei's purpose to bear fruit, and they have to behave generally the same.  So Klei sucks you in by making new players feel like they understand certain things about this world, but that there are other mysterious alien creatures to learn about.  Then, at some point, you realize that these familiar elements and physical laws aren't simulated faithfully, and that is actually more significant than all the alien creatures put together, in terms of ONI's difference from real life.Some people are more attached to certain physical properties than others, you see it all the time, the chemical engineer bugs out about the lack of reactions, the electrician can't get over the weird circuit behavior.  Anyways, I agree with you, the main problem is how OP nat gas generators are compared to pet gens, per gram of fuel, but I definitely think people underestimate the importance of realism, mainly by not understanding how much more friendly to new players this game becomes due to the amount of realism that ONI does have 

[Hexicube]

On 06/07/2018 at 9:17 AM, BlueLance said:

I don't like to boil it because I feel it is incredibly unbalanced.

The thing is, you actually only have a limited amount of boiling power available, and in some cases none. I think it's balanced in that sense, and given that it's oil, the others just need a buff to compensate.

[FullMetalArthur]

You are all forgeting about the uses of that "waste". I use the CO2 to feed my slickter farm, and the Polluted watter for my pincha pepper farm, the excess goes to a watersleve to feed an electrolizer connected in the cold biome for small ammounts of H that feed the thermo nullifier thingy. I mean, looking at just the output of the petroleum generator, compared to others may look as inneficient, but in my set up where I have no CO2 vent and a shortage of polluted water I don't consider it waste. With 2 slicksters farms I kind of make it up because eventually I get molten slicksters that skip the power waste and usage of a refinery.

Look at the big picture.

I do thing boiling should be nerfed. Of course, if you don't need the polluted water or the CO2, and you already have a full room made for Natural Gas generators, then you don't need another source of power. I think is close to be in a good balance.

Perhaps, just twich the refinery to work by itself, or maybe needing semi-manual control like the oil pump?

[Vim Razz]

You can't balance everything around end-game power efficiency.  Petroleum generators are extremely quick and easy to set up relative to an array of nat gas gens + boiling system, and the current balance reflects that pretty appropriately, imho. 

They're also an easy and reliable early source of CO2 for skimmer/sieve cooling loops and slickster feeding for 1/6 the infrastructure setup and 1/3 the heat pollution than you'd have to deal with producing the same amount of CO2 from nat gas, even before considering the time necessary to build the oil boiler itself.