AAI Industries: Steam research is a downgrade?

[Silverbird]

Standalone burner: 5/m pollution 2.22KW 95% efficiency

Steam Turbines research afterward: 30/m pollution 1.8KW

Why would I want 600% more pollution? Am I missing something?

[Fel]

You are trading 5% fuel efficiency in order to get a lot less pollution unless I missed something else.

[DCYW]

Perhaps adding more beacons to improve efficiency using efficiency modules, but requires more power production because using beacons.

Efficiency modules reduces pollution levels on red areas of the map, depending how much pollution you set on the map per square.

I just found out that when positive numbers increases pollution vise versa reduces pollution when negative numbers.

Learning when playing.

[Overeagerdragon]

The thing with the standalone burner is that you're forgetting something; every burner needs it's own fuel supply whereas the turbines only need a single fuel supply per TWO turbines. This doesn't sound like a big deal but it becomes bigger once you start using mods that were meant to be used in conjunction with AAI like Bobs and Angel that have their own respective upgrades to the turbines. So even though the burner generator IS more efficient at the start it quickly gets out performed by the higher tiered turbines by bob's and angels. Also 5% fuel efficiency loss doesn't sound like much but eventually that loss of efficiency will cause MORE pollution than using turbines once you start to get a big base (and because each burner needs its own fuel supply it means you can only feed less generators from a single belt than you could turbines)

[THE kilroy]

Turbine is better for scale because 5 percent efficiency is alot at scale. Not so much at the start. And as someone already mentioned, the go along mods can emphisize fuel efficiency even more.

[PunCrathod]

Escrito originalmente por Overeagerdragon:

Also 5% fuel efficiency loss doesn't sound like much but eventually that loss of efficiency will cause MORE pollution than using turbines once you start to get a big base

That is not how math works. Pollution and fuel consumption scales linearly with power production in both cases. So either it makes more pollution from the start or it never will.

[Fel]

Escrito originalmente por PunCrathod:

That is not how math works. Pollution and fuel consumption scales linearly with power production in both cases. So either it makes more pollution from the start or it never will.

It's not how "math" works on its own but coupled with how the game works when you scale up it ends up working like that anyway.

The reason being that as your base grows larger, pollution becomes less and less of a concern, especially after getting to the point where you can destroy nests that are in range of your pollution fairly easily.

On the other hand, efficiency starts to matter a lot more as your scale goes up.
5% fuel efficiency technically is the same at all points but when it starts to mean that you need a few extra electric mining drills or that you need to divert more of your oil towards it instead of towards your production the impact becomes more visible.
And that 5% also starts to pile up to mean a lot of stacks of coal or solid fuel getting destroyed simply to pollute less.

If pollution is a big concern in the mid or late game for whatever reason you have access to efficiency modules that greatly reduce the energy cost of your machines and your pollution as a direct result but without having to sacrifice your fuel efficiency.

[PunCrathod]

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

It's not how "math" works on its own but coupled with how the game works when you scale up it ends up working like that anyway.

No it does not.

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

The reason being that as your base grows larger, pollution becomes less and less of a concern, especially after getting to the point where you can destroy nests that are in range of your pollution fairly easily.

This does not make turbines pollute less.

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

On the other hand, efficiency starts to matter a lot more as your scale goes up.
5% fuel efficiency technically is the same at all points but when it starts to mean that you need a few extra electric mining drills or that you need to divert more of your oil towards it instead of towards your production the impact becomes more visible.

5% more fuel production means that fuel production produces 5% more pollution. NOT 600+% more. Sure you need to get 5% more oilwells/coal mines but the pollution resulting from that is miniscule compared to what power generation produces.

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

And that 5% also starts to pile up to mean a lot of stacks of coal or solid fuel getting destroyed simply to pollute less.

If pollution is a big concern in the mid or late game for whatever reason you have access to efficiency modules that greatly reduce the energy cost of your machines and your pollution as a direct result but without having to sacrifice your fuel efficiency.

If you can reduce pollution in one case you can reduce it in the other as well. And as the reductions are multiplicative then if one way makes less pollution at the start it will always be the way that makes less pollution. No matter what you try to do. Even if you use modules everywhere you can't change the fact that using standalone burners you generate less pollution per KW. Even if you calculate the costs of mining and processing the fuel.

I'm sorry but the fact is that either having to produce 5% more fuel makes the standalone burned pollute more per KW from the very start or no matter what you do it will pollute less.

[Fel]

Where did I say turbines pollute less?
What I said was pollution is less of a concern as you progress through the tech tree and your base grows larger.

Pollution is a concern if you are playing with settings that make enemy a lot more dangerous and around the start before you have access to good defenses like the flamethrower turrets.

As soon as you have the means to start destroying all of the spawners that would be attacking you it matters very little even if your pollution cloud is a few times larger.


If pollution is a big concern to you, you will be rushing the modules, solar panels and electric furnaces anyway, so you will be using those standalone burners until you get your solar power and completely ignore all of the other forms of power.

You absolutely would not be staying with standalone burners in the long term in that case, and if pollution is not a major concern then standalone burners are a bad investment because of the fuel efficiency.

(I don't know why you are trying to force what I wrote to mean that I suck at math so bad that I can't understand the difference between 5% and 600%...)

[PunCrathod]

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

Where did I say turbines pollute less?

Well since you asked.

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

Escrito originalmente por PunCrathod:

That is not how math works. Pollution and fuel consumption scales linearly with power production in both cases. So either it makes more pollution from the start or it never will.

It's not how "math" works on its own but coupled with how the game works when you scale up it ends up working like that anyway.

This implies that you disagree with my statement. And my statement was that no matter what turbines pollute more. Thus by implication you think that they somehow can pollute less.

[Fel]

What I disagreed with was the "That is not how math works" that you used, and I developped why I don't agree with shutting down the fuel efficiency to "scales linearly with power production" exactly because some things like pollution have different impacts on your base depending on the scale and tech level of it.

It doesn't pollute less but the importance of fuel efficiency grows stronger as the scale goes up while the impactof pollution tends to be less (especially since it disperses in all directions so the pollution cloud does not reach 6 times as far for example).

[PunCrathod]

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

What I disagreed with was the "That is not how math works" that you used, and I developped why I don't agree with shutting down the fuel efficiency to "scales linearly with power production" exactly because some things like pollution have different impacts on your base depending on the scale and tech level of it.

It doesn't pollute less but the importance of fuel efficiency grows stronger as the scale goes up while the impactof pollution tends to be less (especially since it disperses in all directions so the pollution cloud does not reach 6 times as far for example).

So you didn't understand my statement then. The size of the base does not matter. The effects of pollution does not matter.

Escrito originalmente por Overeagerdragon:

...will cause MORE pollution than using turbines...

That is not how math works.

5/m of pollution per 2.22KW + pollution for 5% more fuel production will never be more than 30/m pollution per 1.8KW. No matter how many KW you are using. This is a fact and no amount of "developping" will change that.

[Fel]

The math would probably be fun to do because that 5% efficiency does mean an increase in machine (that produce pollution) and an increase in power generation (and pollution) directly linked to those extra machines.

For example, an electric mining drill by default outputs 10 pollution per minute when working at full capacity, same for a pumpjack, 6 for an oil refinery, 4 for a chemical plant.

Given the large difference in the base pollution it will most likely take quite a few machines to reach the point where both chains cause the same amount of pollution.

(No clue when I'll be finished with the math or if I end up abandonning so I'm posting this as is for now)

EDIT: The math starts very weird, effectivity is 0.95 but for some reason when calculating how much energy it consumes (and not produces) it is supposed to be 2/effectivity but to get 2.2222... you need an effectivity of 0.9
Weirder still the actual energy production seems to be 1.9 MW which means 2MW of fuel at 0.95, I'm really not sure what to use as a base anymore and I barely started...

[PunCrathod]

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

The math would probably be fun to do because that 5% efficiency does mean an increase in machine (that produce pollution) and an increase in power generation (and pollution) directly linked to those extra machines.

For example, an electric mining drill by default outputs 10 pollution per minute when working at full capacity, same for a pumpjack, 6 for an oil refinery, 4 for a chemical plant.

Given the large difference in the base pollution it will most likely take quite a few machines to reach the point where both chains cause the same amount of pollution.

(No clue when I'll be finished with the math or if I end up abandonning so I'm posting this as is for now)

sigh... The math is very simple.

P1=total pollution for standalone burner
P2=total pollution for turbine
a=pollution for producing 1KW with standalone burner
b=pollution for producing 1KW worth of fuel including power to produce as well as the machines processing it.
c=pollution for producing 1KW with turbine.
P1=a*x+b*1.05*x
P2=c*x+b*x

a,b and c are all constants. They do not change no matter how much power is produced.

All terms in P1 and P2 have x in it and since zero and negative power are irrelevant we don't have to account those. We can divide all terms by x and we get

P1/x=a+b*1.05
P2/x=c+b

And since we know that when x is small P1 is smaller than P2 that means than a+b*1.05 is smaller than c+b

Thus for any nonzero positive value of x P1 is smaller than P2.

Now we account for modules.

Modules in machines that don't produce fuel only changes the needed x so those can't change the result. Modules in machines that produce fuel change b and the formulas change to

P1/x=a+K*b*1.05
P2/x=c+K*b

so to make P1 and P2 equal you would need a+K*b*1.05=c+K*b so lets solve for K
So c-a=K*b*0.05
and since c=7.4a (since (5/2.22)/(30/1.8)=7.4)
we get 7.4a=K*b*0.05. Divide by 7.4
a=K*b*0.01
So K=a/(b*0.00676)
And since we know that the pollution from mining and refining fuel is not significantly higher than producing power we can infer that for modules to ever achieve the result of equalizing P1 and P2 it would need to make fuel production/refining produce around 148x more pollution. So unless you have modules that can make your coal mine produce 14800% more pollution then this is impossible.

Then lets account for mining productivity research.

Mining productivity gives free fuel without any additional power or pollution. So it makes b smaller
So increasing mining productivity towards infinity our formulas become

P1/x=a
P2/x=c

And a<c then P1<P2


Long story short. Unless you have modules that can make fuel production produce over 148 times its original pollution then producing power with standalone burners will always result in less total pollution than using turbines.


Edit. Oh and since the pollution from power for mining/refining fuel is significantly less for burner than turbine the original formulas become

P1=a*x+d*b*1.05*x
P2=c*x+e*b*x

where b is the pollution from the machines mining/refining fuel and d the pollution from power with burner and e pollition for power with turbine.

And since e is multiple times bigger than d it changes the result in the scenario with modules so that no matter how many modules you have P1 will always be smaller than P2

[Fel]

Unless I am missing something or widely overcomplicating (which wouldn't be a first) 1kW of energy produced is not equal to 1kW of energy made available for the rest of the factory.

Perhaps it doesn't change the final result but the better comparison is with 1kW (or whatever value) of energy after the cost of production.

Am I trapping my mind with a loop formula when there isn't one in the first place like I tend to do when I don't know where to start?

[PunCrathod]

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

Unless I am missing something or widely overcomplicating (which wouldn't be a first) 1kW of energy produced is not equal to 1kW of energy made available for the rest of the factory.

Perhaps it doesn't change the final result but the better comparison is with 1kW (or whatever value) of energy after the cost of production.

This is accounted in my calculations.

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

Am I trapping my mind with a loop formula when there isn't one in the first place like I tend to do when I don't know where to start?

Well if we want to be exact then there is a "loop formula" but the looping part will increase the 5% more fuel into 5% + 5% of 5% + 5% of 5% of 5% + so on. Which roughly calculates to ~0.25% which is pretty insignificant and won't change the result. I also use 1.05 as a multiplier even tough the exact multiplier should be 1/0.95=1.0526315789473684210526315789474.... but the bit that I rounded off again doesn't really alter the results.

I do however agree with you that in mid/lategame pollution becomes less important and most people will want to use turbines so they have that 5.26315789473684210526315789474% more fuel before they have to expand. My issue was that the statement of more pollution with burners is factually incorrect.