Viability of Coal Liquefication

[Karcel]

So since big clans usually just occupy all the big oil fields I was thinking about turning to oil liquefication in order to produce my own petrol.

The thing is that coal liquefication at the coal refinery takes 4:30 for 50 liters of oil.
To run a single oil refinery with a reformer you need 120 liters of oil every 2:30.
So for the oil refinery to run without pause you need 5 coal liquefications running at the same time.
This costs 6 energy per coal refinery.
Oil refinery with reformer addon costs 1 energy.
Water pump with electric pump another 0.5 energy.
To meet this demand you would need 3 petrol power stations.
To run 3 petrol power stations you need 150 liters of petrol every 1:30.
And if you remember it takes a single oil refinery 2:30 to produce 150 liters of petrol.
This doesn't even take into account the 3 coal harvesters you will need.

As you can guess from these numbers it is impossible to build a profitable facility that uses coal liquefication in order to produce petrol.

Here is the kicker though: On the foxhole wiki it says that coal liquefication takes 2:00 and not 4:30 and consumes 4 energy and not 6.
If those stats listed in the foxhole wiki were correct you could run a proper coal liquefication plant with 2 coal refineries, 1 oil refinery, 1 water pump, a petrol powerstation and 3 coal harvesters.

Is this a massive oversight from the devs or what is even the purpose of the coal liquefication addon?

Edit: This is on full power btw.

[Iskander]

I don't know about the viability of using coal for petrol, but regarding your statement that clans occupy the oil fields: If you are on the Warden side, those clans are required to provide public petrol. It is best to ask in region who runs a particular oil field and ask how/where to access the public petrol. Or if they are actively preventing you from taking public petrol, you can mention it in the chat: as that is not tolerated.
Ideally, you can join the WUH discord channel and lodge a complaint there with he WERKS organisation, which is responsible for organizing the public resource fields and ensuring things run as smoothly as possible. Clans who don't run an efficient resource field with public access, will have lower priority when choosing fields, or even get refused access to one if they repeatedly refuse to play for the entire faction, instead of only themselves.

[Karcel]

Originally posted by Iskander:

I don't know about the viability of using coal for petrol, but regarding your statement that clans occupy the oil fields: If you are on the Warden side, those clans are required to provide public petrol. It is best to ask in region who runs a particular oil field and ask how/where to access the public petrol. Or if they are actively preventing you from taking public petrol, you can mention it in the chat: as that is not tolerated.
Ideally, you can join the WUH discord channel and lodge a complaint there with he WERKS organisation, which is responsible for organizing the public resource fields and ensuring things run as smoothly as possible. Clans who don't run an efficient resource field with public access, will have lower priority when choosing fields, or even get refused access to one if they repeatedly refuse to play for the entire faction, instead of only themselves.

I am a Warden loyalist. I played since 2017/18 but not very active since the facility update.
Two wars ago I planned to run a public petrol distribution facility and started building at an oil field that wasn't being used yet(It was the first day of war). Spent the entire day building the facility and then some guys came up to us and told us to leave because the oil field was reserved by some really big clan and that we were "illegally" building there.

I am not on the WUH discord server but I haven't played anything but Warden for all these years. We first started to protest that we spent hours upon hours building our facility and in the end we were quite literally forced off the oil field and our time was wasted completely.

For this to not happen again we planned to build a facility near a coal mine and access to a water source nearby and use the coal liquefication addon from the coal refinery. I have spent some time calculating the optimal layout and necessary buildings in order to run a facility like that and today, after revising my calculations I came up with:
5 Coal Refineries+Coal Liquefication addon for one oil refinery with reformer addon turning 120L of oil and 30L of water into 150L of petrol.
In order to gain a net positive petrol output we MUST refrain from using petrol power stations as they consume almost double the amount a single oil refinery puts out with our method.
So the only solution we came up with was either A: 4 power stations that run on coal(and later coke) or 7 Diesel power stations with the coal addon.

Now when Tier 3 unlocks all this gets a lot easier. Drops down to 3 coal refineries with advanced coal liquefication addon needed for one oil refinery with reformer addon.
Additionally only 2 Power stations running on coal or 4 diesel power plants with coal addon.

Still, a coal liquefication plant should be able to supply its own petrol and have excess petrol for distribution. That is the actual point of my thread here.

[Iskander]

Originally posted by Karcel:

I am a Warden loyalist. I played since 2017/18 but not very active since the facility update.
Two wars ago I planned to run a public petrol distribution facility and started building at an oil field that wasn't being used yet(It was the first day of war). Spent the entire day building the facility and then some guys came up to us and told us to leave because the oil field was reserved by some really big clan and that we were "illegally" building there.

I am not on the WUH discord server but I haven't played anything but Warden for all these years. We first started to protest that we spent hours upon hours building our facility and in the end we were quite literally forced off the oil field and our time was wasted completely.

I understand your pain. It is terrible if you lose many hours this way: not to the enemy, but to your own faction.
I strongly recommend you join the WUH discord and in particular: look at the WERCS channel. That is where they plan who gets to develop which resource field.
I can understand if you don't want to participate in the program, but at the least, you can see which fields are "claimed" so that you don't run into the same situation again.

I can't say anything about your coal facility, however: my knowledge there is limited and of no help to you.

[Oobie]

It is not viable for mass production, but it does have it's place. A few wars back we were pushing late game, in one of the 'forever' wars. I set up a small coal to petrol setup next to a relic in Stonecradle, and it made about 35 cans of petrol per hour.

It was fun to have passing tanks heading for the front do a double-take in surprise, 'There's petrol HERE?!?' That sort of thing.

This was made for our armor, not for 'production' or 'mines'. It worked very well, and was well received. We made our little batches and delivered them around the bunkers on the front with a tanker truck, 25 cans at a time, and it was fun.

It was not at all a large facility, very minimal, but it worked like a charm. I hope to do another if the opportunity arises.

Edit: Given the appearant changes to power/time I wonder if a small setup is even feasable, or what the hourly output would be now. Still I had a blast.

[Karcel]

Originally posted by Oobie:

It is not viable for mass production, but it does have it's place. A few wars back we were pushing late game, in one of the 'forever' wars. I set up a small coal to petrol setup next to a relic in Stonecradle, and it made about 35 cans of petrol per hour.

It was fun to have passing tanks heading for the front do a double-take in surprise, 'There's petrol HERE?!?' That sort of thing.

This was made for our armor, not for 'production' or 'mines'. It worked very well, and was well received. We made our little batches and delivered them around the bunkers on the front with a tanker truck, 25 cans at a time, and it was fun.

It was not at all a large facility, very minimal, but it worked like a charm. I hope to do another if the opportunity arises.

Edit: Given the appearant changes to power/time I wonder if a small setup is even feasable, or what the hourly output would be now. Still I had a blast.

Sounds exactly like what we are trying to achieve. However, I don't know if they changed output time but the foxhole wiki shows 2:30 mins and not 4:30 for oil production in coal refineries.
To run a setup right now on Tech 3 you need, for one single oil refinery running 24/7, 3 coal refineries, 2 coal harvesters and 2 water pumps. You can't run this setup on petrol power stations because then you have a net negative so you either go for 2 upgraded Power Stations or 4 Diesel power stations with coal addon.

On Tier 2 its much more ridiculous. You need 5 coal refineries with coal liquefication for one oil refinery. To run all that you need 7 coal powered diesel power stations... Its a pretty big setup to produce a bit of petrol.

[Rostige Schaufel]

Originally posted by Iskander:

Originally posted by Karcel:

I am a Warden loyalist. I played since 2017/18 but not very active since the facility update.
Two wars ago I planned to run a public petrol distribution facility and started building at an oil field that wasn't being used yet(It was the first day of war). Spent the entire day building the facility and then some guys came up to us and told us to leave because the oil field was reserved by some really big clan and that we were "illegally" building there.

I am not on the WUH discord server but I haven't played anything but Warden for all these years. We first started to protest that we spent hours upon hours building our facility and in the end we were quite literally forced off the oil field and our time was wasted completely.

I understand your pain. It is terrible if you lose many hours this way: not to the enemy, but to your own faction.
I strongly recommend you join the WUH discord and in particular: look at the WERCS channel. That is where they plan who gets to develop which resource field.
I can understand if you don't want to participate in the program, but at the least, you can see which fields are "claimed" so that you don't run into the same situation again.

I can't say anything about your coal facility, however: my knowledge there is limited and of no help to you.

If you have to go to some Discord servers to find out who is claiming what - in a game that promises me freedom... Honestly, then no one should be surprised if at some point no one plays it anymore. Either I find the information in the game or it's worthless.

[Iskander]

Originally posted by Rostige Schaufel:

If you have to go to some Discord servers to find out who is claiming what - in a game that promises me freedom... Honestly, then no one should be surprised if at some point no one plays it anymore. Either I find the information in the game or it's worthless.

You are not wrong.
With the addition of facilities, the devs envisioned greater co-operation between (groups of) players, to prevent the creation of 10 facilities that produce the same thing. But without in-game map tools to broadcast what is being built where... this becomes an idealistic dream that doesn't translate well into practice.

[ChiliOil]

I have been saying for years that this game needs a heavy in-game communications tools update. People can, and will, cooperate if you give them the tools to communicate. The catch is you will have swasticocks on the map and even more vulgar graffiti. I think it's hilarious, but there's only so many times you can take the same low-hanging fruit of crude humor before someone brings in the B& hammer.

Are you all willing to pay that price for a suit of communications tools to coordinate large scale industrial warfare? Also, what would you each want from a communications tools update? If just one aspect, what would you want, and how should it work?

[Pizzashot]

All facilities should just be like refineries and all problems would be solved. Main power management should be on the builder and everything else is free for the public to use and private/public stockpiles are in every facility. The random player should be able to put resouces in some reserve powerplant to gain power if it is down. You should as a solo player not need to beg for high-tier materials if you want to build something fun. Facilities that build vehicles could be like a mass production facility where you queue stuff up, some regiment stuff should pause what randoms are trying to do to not overflow the game.

The facility update kind of killed solo gameplay in this game because it made it a full time job if you wanted to play alone and have access to high-tier stuff. I am a solo player that want to play when I want to play, I do not want a schedule to when I should play. I used to farm components some hours in a night before the update and have private components to last me the war and it was fun, and then they added the update and I could no longer farm for some interesting things, I needed a stupid high-tier regiment facility..

[[TAG]Alblaka]

Originally posted by Pizzashot:

All facilities should just be like refineries and all problems would be solved. Main power management should be on the builder and everything else is free for the public to use and private/public stockpiles are in every facility. The random player should be able to put resouces in some reserve powerplant to gain power if it is down. You should as a solo player not need to beg for high-tier materials if you want to build something fun. Facilities that build vehicles could be like a mass production facility where you queue stuff up, some regiment stuff should pause what randoms are trying to do to not overflow the game.

The facility update kind of killed solo gameplay in this game because it made it a full time job if you wanted to play alone and have access to high-tier stuff. I am a solo player that want to play when I want to play, I do not want a schedule to when I should play. I used to farm components some hours in a night before the update and have private components to last me the war and it was fun, and then they added the update and I could no longer farm for some interesting things, I needed a stupid high-tier regiment facility..

You're describing U56. Facilities work exactly like refineries now, except that each facility can 'only' run 5 queues in parallel instead of infinite. You can walk up to anyone's base and privately process whatever you put in there and retrieve it within the usual 49h window before it goes public. And exactly for that reason I have not yet seen a facility base that will prevent you from using it in exactly that manner (there probably are a couple people who missed the update notes or are just general ♥♥♥♥♥, but that's now the exception, rather than the rule).

[Runner]

Originally posted by Iskander:

Clans who don't run an efficient resource field with public access, will have lower priority when choosing fields, or even get refused access to one if they repeatedly refuse to play for the entire faction, instead of only themselves.

Out of idle curiousity - how does it work in practice, when you have a NEW clan joining the program? To prove they can actually run an efficient setup, they have to first get to build the facilities - which they'll be locked from until they can prove their efficiency. Kind of a Catch-22, isn't it?

DISCLAIMER: We play Collie this war, and are not planning to switch, at least atm. So if you don't want to spill your faction's secrets, I understand that.

[Iskander]

Originally posted by Runner:

Originally posted by Iskander:

Clans who don't run an efficient resource field with public access, will have lower priority when choosing fields, or even get refused access to one if they repeatedly refuse to play for the entire faction, instead of only themselves.

Out of idle curiousity - how does it work in practice, when you have a NEW clan joining the program? To prove they can actually run an efficient setup, they have to first get to build the facilities - which they'll be locked from until they can prove their efficiency. Kind of a Catch-22, isn't it?

DISCLAIMER: We play Collie this war, and are not planning to switch, at least atm. So if you don't want to spill your faction's secrets, I understand that.

It leans towards catch-22, but isn't quite fully so: There are still way more resource fields then there are regiments who want to build them, so as a new clan, you can still get a field, just not your first choice, or not a very good/important field.
To give you an example: There is a tiny regiment, with half a dozen people or so, who is ranked quite high, higher than many large and famous regiments, simply because they focus 100% on the facility and give away everything for free.

So: you do have a good point, and the system is far from perfect. But it is the intention of those who operate the system, to make it as fair as possible for everyone, from big to small clans, from veterans to new players.

[Karcel]

Originally posted by Iskander:

It leans towards catch-22, but isn't quite fully so: There are still way more resource fields then there are regiments who want to build them, so as a new clan, you can still get a field, just not your first choice, or not a very good/important field.
To give you an example: There is a tiny regiment, with half a dozen people or so, who is ranked quite high, higher than many large and famous regiments, simply because they focus 100% on the facility and give away everything for free.

So: you do have a good point, and the system is far from perfect. But it is the intention of those who operate the system, to make it as fair as possible for everyone, from big to small clans, from veterans to new players.

Looking at the current map it seems there is a facility at every single scrap and coal field. Wouldn't say a new clan would just be able to take one that isn't good because even worse fields are taken.

I myself got quite lucky this war actually. I went to a coal field near Protos and I was told noone claimed that specific field by someone who got a field assigned by "WERCS".
Have been producing quite a bit of msupps for now but as soon as Facility tech 2 is here I can finally start coal liquefication.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Originally posted by Karcel:

Originally posted by Iskander:

It leans towards catch-22, but isn't quite fully so: There are still way more resource fields then there are regiments who want to build them, so as a new clan, you can still get a field, just not your first choice, or not a very good/important field.
To give you an example: There is a tiny regiment, with half a dozen people or so, who is ranked quite high, higher than many large and famous regiments, simply because they focus 100% on the facility and give away everything for free.

So: you do have a good point, and the system is far from perfect. But it is the intention of those who operate the system, to make it as fair as possible for everyone, from big to small clans, from veterans to new players.

Looking at the current map it seems there is a facility at every single scrap and coal field. Wouldn't say a new clan would just be able to take one that isn't good because even worse fields are taken.

I myself got quite lucky this war actually. I went to a coal field near Protos and I was told noone claimed that specific field by someone who got a field assigned by "WERCS".
Have been producing quite a bit of msupps for now but as soon as Facility tech 2 is here I can finally start coal liquefication.

Honestly there's some fields that were up for grabs until just recently. It's very much a matter of "how willing are people to set up shop here" when a spot is annoying to reach, let alone defend or transport supplies to/from. You can kind of see this in the southwest with Sagitta and the surrounding islands from the other side of things: the Collies just don't really seem to like naval logi at all, so clans/regiments that wanted a challenge and didn't want to mess up an actual combat hex sailed up, claimed Sagitta, and then fortified it to the point where gunboats can't dislodge them. Not only that, but they've also taken other islands with mixed success in that area as well..

[Iskander]

Originally posted by Karcel:

Looking at the current map it seems there is a facility at every single scrap and coal field. Wouldn't say a new clan would just be able to take one that isn't good because even worse fields are taken.

I myself got quite lucky this war actually. I went to a coal field near Protos and I was told noone claimed that specific field by someone who got a field assigned by "WERCS".
Have been producing quite a bit of msupps for now but as soon as Facility tech 2 is here I can finally start coal liquefication.

I believe there were 49 WERCs participants this war. (some claim one field, others claim two nearby fields to have synergy, most often they claim an oil and component field that are close to each other)
But not everyone who builds up a resource fields participates in WERCs.
Basically, being part of WERCs means you get to (try to) claim the specific field you want, and then get the weight of WERCs behind you to ensure you get that field, over random, non-WERCS participants.
After that, whatever is left over, can (and will) be built up by others. Be they clans not participating in WERCs, solo people, or members of clans that DO participate in WERCs, but aren't part of an official clan project, i.e. they are just building it outside of clan approval, on their own time and effort.