How do you guys balance your petrochemical fabs?

[KJ]

Enjoying the game a lot. One thing i find very tedious however is balancing petrochemical industry and also food procution.

In petrochemicals there is always one set of tanks that is full and requires manual switching on/off of buildings to balance it out, until the next thing runs empty or is full again. Once you go beyond the "basic diesel" stage it seems impossible to balance

I tried calculating ratios and stuff, but its impossible to keep up, as diesel consumption varies and also other consumptions (chains that are not related to just diesel production and require or produce fuel gas or naptha, or provide other things that throw off the balance)... Add one building that requires or produces any of the intermediary products, and you need to calculate again... Plus with infrequent demand/input, its practical impossible to get a "perfect ratio". Add to that feed from excess steam (e.g. nuclear power plant if not all power is needed) and its just chaotic, requiring constant oversight - unless you just waste stuff by burning or converting stuff over and over until nothing is left...

I wish this game had a logic system similar to factorio where you can build simple logic circuits to automate some simple balancing tasks. This would solve all my issues

[Coheed]

I use pipe balancers and conveyor balancers to set up a sort of logic system. I have alot of extra petrochem buildings to account for variable demand.

For example my current favoured build is eight rows of the three distillation towers.

Heavy oil is cracked to extra diesel. Excess diesel is converted to naphtha.

Naphtha is primarily sent to rubber and plastic manufacture; spare naphtha is then sent to make more diesel or more fuel gas with diesel priority and excess naphtha to make fuel gas.

All fuel gas is processed to hydrogen and CO2.

CO2 is used to make graphite rods or vented.

Hydrogen is sent to export for silicon and cement production; excess is used in liquid boilers to produce steam to prevent back ups. Vent also provided in case something goes very wrong, but yet to see it trigger.

Steam is primarily generated from electric boilers, but hydrogen steam is prioritised so the system doesn't back up.

Water is provided as a mixture of low steam desalination from burning hydrogen or high steam desalination.

All sour water is cleaned. Ammonia all used for fertilizer 1.

Sulphur to acid priority, followed by rubber and fertilizer 2, excess stored for export to tofu and excess processed with limestone to prevent back ups.

Think that's everything 🤔

[SamuraiProgrammer]

What I have done with good (but not perfect) success is:

1) Have tanks for every intermediate product - especially Medium Oil

2) Have at least one more Distillery 1 than Distillery 2

3) Have at least one more Distillery 2 than Distillery 3

4) Arrange tanks so that the tanks that feed the steam generation for the Distilleries are filled before the products go to later stages of distillation or power generation.

5) Arrange priorities so that later stages of distillation are full before going to the tanks for power generation.

6) Have enough capacity to produce all the diesel you need without cracking other products.

6) Prioritize steam generation for the complex like this:
Heavy Oil
Fuel Gas
Naphtha
Light Oil
Medium Oil

7) Prioritize steam generation for the power generators like this:
Heavy Oil
Medium Oil
Light Oil
Fuel Gas
Naphtha

8) Have at least 2 boilers for each product in each of steps 6 and 7. Leave them all on and combine their steam to send to the distillers or turbines.

9) Have a couple of Cracking buildings cracking Naphtha to Fuel Gas if the power generation Naphtha tank is full.

This has reduced my need to switch things around immensely. It has not completely removed it, but I went for decades (maybe even a century) of in game time without having to touch it.

Now as I approach the late game (just researched Lab IV) I only need to occasionally pause one or both of the cracking units.

The key to the situation is to make sure that things are taken care of in the order Distillation steam, further distillation, power generation, cracking. It is vital that each successive step is fully taken care of before allowing a product to go further down the chain.

I hope this helps.

[KJ]

I use steam Hi from my nuclear plant whenever there is excess (not enough power consumption), so that causes a lot of chaos with products overflowing. Diesel full -> problem, because no naptha for rubber etc, and no sour water for fertilizer

[SamuraiProgrammer]

I use the Diesel + sulfur recipe for rubber because I would rather use my naphtha for plastic. Because of that, I haven't experienced your exact problem because there is always a trickle of diesel consumption to make sure there is some light oil for naphtha.

A thought about Nuclear and not enough power consumption. I would recommend not using auto-balance for turbines attached to nuclear power. It is unsafe. If there is an issue that takes your attention away too long, you can have a meltdown. It WILL ruin your day if it happens. (Sadly, I know from first hand experience what a meltdown will do... basically game over unless you are a masochist.)

[manfred.stabentheiner]

there are 2 ways in the game
first all time full or clear storage (simple way)
or the secons way use math (harder way)
you can balance all fabriks farms warehouse market usw with the first or the second way

and how you handel it its the playstile of the player if he use trucks or belts

[Clonefarmer]

Most of the by products can be burned, dumped or sold.

For excess light and heavy set up an overflow with a flare. The priority is set to the pipe that heads to storage. If the storage fills up the excess gas will be sent to the flare to be disposed of.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2869051352

For excess diesel add more trucks or trade to a nearby village.

Excess food can be diverted in a similar way with balancers to composters or mixers.



For nuclear I keep it self contained and run it wide open. Less hassle that way and if expanding the power will get used up as you go.

[steholliday]

some good setups laid out by posters above.
In the past I'v just built it & 'winged' it, moving from one issue to another just trying to botch up a short term fix.
This last start (gold mountain) I observed & copied out JDPlay's tutorial on Advanced Diesel - good guide!.
Seems to be running well & nicely compact, but it's early days & I'v not got to distillation 3 research yet.....time will tell

[KJ]

Originally posted by SamuraiProgrammer:

A thought about Nuclear and not enough power consumption. I would recommend not using auto-balance for turbines attached to nuclear power. It is unsafe. If there is an issue that takes your attention away too long, you can have a meltdown. It WILL ruin your day if it happens. (Sadly, I know from first hand experience what a meltdown will do... basically game over unless you are a masochist.)

My nuclear power plant has so many redundancies, it's basically impossible to meltdown. Excess steam goes into water production and oil refineries (higher priority than burners) and if that backs up gets vented in cooling towers to get some water back.

Originally posted by Clonefarmer:

Most of the by products can be burned, dumped or sold.

For excess light and heavy set up an overflow with a flare.

I'm well aware how you can flare and dump stuff, but that's wasting ressources and exactly what i dont want...