Is the amount of steam produced by a reactor always the same no matter how much energy its producing?

[258789553873]

Decided to do the math to see how much steam a single reactor would produce. To my surprise, its always the same no matter how much energy the reactor is producing. I did my math under the assumption that each reactor always has the max number of exchangers it can support. Since both power and number of exchangers doubles with each neighbor bonus, this seems to mean that their number is irrelevant. Also, producing more power causes the fuel to run out faster, which reduces the amount of time that steam is being produced. This means the amount of steam 1 unit of fuel would produce is always 6 2/3 tanks, with the only difference being that the steam fills the tanks faster with more reactors.

Did I do this right? If it matters, here's the formula I used:

8000/40^numberOfReactors*4^numberOfReactors*200/24000

If you can't make sense of this formula, the 8000 is how many megawatts is in one unit of fuel (it displays as 8 gigajeuls in the stats screen). Reactors have a base output of 40 mw, but this is doubled per neighbor bonus which is what the exponents are for (a reactor with one neighbor produces 80 mw, 2 makes it output 160 mw, and 3 produces 320 mw). This part calculates the number of seconds of burn time. The number 4 is how many heat exchangers there are, which are also doubled per neighbor bonus. 200 is the steam each exchanger produces. This gives the total amount of steam produced per second. These two values are multiplied together to get the total steam made. And finally, the 24000 is how much steam a single tank can produce, thus dividing the total gives the number of tanks needed to store all the output from the reactor. Like I said, turns out, the answer is always 6 2/3 tanks. This is because as the rate of steam production increases, the total burn time decreases by the same proportion, causing the total output to always be the same, again the only difference being that the final output is reached faster with more reactors.

[PunCrathod]

Your experiment is flawed. In factorio an uranium fuel cell will run for 200 seconds. There are only two ways to change that fact. One is to mine the reactor before that 200 seconds is up. The second is to use a mod to change the burn time. If you have multiple linked reactors it will still be 200 seconds.

So if you put a single fuel cell in a single reactor you will get 200s*40mw=8GJ. However if you put two fuel cells in two connected reactors you will get 200s*80mw*2=32GJ or 16GJ per fuel cell. Note that to get the neighboring bonus both reactors need to have fuel.

[258789553873]

Either way, 200 seconds of burn time still equates to 6 2/3 tanks worth of steam with 4 heat exchangers. This equates to 1 2/3 tanks per exchanger. Would multiplying that number by the number of heat exchangers tell me how much steam my set-up will produce per fuel cell?

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

Either way, 200 seconds of burn time still equates to 6 2/3 tanks worth of steam with 4 heat exchangers. This equates to 1 2/3 tanks per exchanger. Would multiplying that number by the number of heat exchangers tell me how much steam my set-up will produce per fuel cell?

Each unit of 500c steam is (500-15)*0.2kj=97KJ So 8 000 000KJ/97KJ = 82474 units of steam=3.299 tanks of steam without neighboring bonus. And you multiply that by the neighboring bonus. So with two reactors you would get 164948 units of steam or 6.598 tanks per fuel cell. ETC

And yes you do get more steam per fuel cell if you have neighboring bonus on the reactors.

Edit: sources for where these numbers come from: https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Nuclear_power https://wiki.factorio.com/Steam_turbine

[258789553873]

Why does that not line up with my math? An exchanger produces 200 steam per second. If it burns for 200 seconds, that equals 40k steam, which is 1 2/3 of a tank.

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

Why does that not line up with my math? An exchanger produces 200 steam per second. If it burns for 200 seconds, that equals 40k steam, which is 1 2/3 of a tank.

I don't know where you got 200 steam per second from. A heat exchanger uses 10MW or 10MJ per second. So 10 000KJ/97KJ =103.0927835 units of steam per second. This odd number is a result of the devs wanting the heat generation of a reactor be easily divisible by the usage of heat exchangers. 4 heat excangers for a single reactor. 8 heat exchangers per reactor with 100% neighboring bonus. 12 with 200% and 16 with 300% and 24 with 400%.

[258789553873]

The game explicitly states that exchangers output 200 steam per second, while consuming 200 water per second. So, the in-game math contradicts itself? Wtf?

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

The game explicitly states that exchangers output 200 steam per second, while consuming 200 water per second. So, the in-game math contradicts itself? Wtf?

Ah I see the confusion now. That number is not talking about the rate of water to steam conversion. That 200 is how big the internal tanks of the heat exchanger is.