First fuel generator/plastic/rubber factory setup

[PixelHoarder4Life]

Hello, as it says in the title i'm doing my first setup with fuel generators and the resin recipes for plastic/rubber. I'm trying to figure out 2 things for this setup. 1. How many refineries do I need to efficiently use all the resin my setup will produce. 2. How many water extractors per refinery.

Some info on my setup: I have 4 refineries connected to 14 fuel generators the last one is set to only produce 50mw, this is being fed by a single pure oil node. None of my machines are currently overclock and only the last generator is underclocked.

Lastly please keep in mind I do not yet have the Mk. 2 pipes unlocked.

[Mogges]

Why don´t you simply have a look at your machines and check the outcome / input of items? If your refineries run at 100%, they produce 4 x 30 resin = 120 resin / min.
A water pump gives 120 water / min, it´s simply mathematics. Build a refinery. place it somewhere for test purposes and have a look at the recipes, incl. the alternatives. This is how I do it.

[Mr.America]

It really depends on how much crude oil you have available. The standard recipes are best used when you want to get going and mainly extract plastic/rubber from oil. As a byproduct you will have heavy oil residue that you can then refine into something else that's useable.

What you will probably want to set up is 1:1 plastic and rubber refineries, however many your crude oil can support, then use the residual heavy oil to make fuel, because the numbers play nicely like that. Then you'll want to use the plastic to make containers for your fuel and use it for vehicles, until you unlock fuel generators and alternative recipes.

It'll be like this
[
2 Refineries - Oil to Plastic
2 Refineries - Oil to Rubber

1 Refinery - HOR to Fuel
]

And then multiply that. Petroleum Coke will be mostly useless until you have alt recipes for electronics or use it for turbofuel/aluminium.

[joe_schmoe_gamer]

I disagree with Coke being useless. I use it to produce all my steel items. That saves the more efficient Coal for generating electricity.

[Mr.America]

That's an alt recipe, isn't it? I'm starting from the standpoint that he has vanilla and nothing but the oil processing unlocked.

[Faustus]

Whilst it might not give the highest volume, you can have a perfectly balanced loop between two refineries where 50% of the rubber (or plastic) gets sent to the adjacent one as per my screenshot.

This uses:
Alt. Recycled Plastic requiring fuel and rubber
Alt. Recycled Rubber requiring fuel and plastic

I use the standard fuel recipe so then take resin by-product to a separate area and mixed with water I make Residual plastic.

In terms of the input/machines required, either have a look at the machines requirements in-game or have a look at the Satisfactory Calculator (https://satisfactory-calculator.com/)


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884233294

[kLuns]

Figure out how much items you need per minute and automate some packaged fuel for the jetpack. The throughput you need must be the leading number. Once you got a running setup, get your gear and hunt for hard drives. Heavy oil residue + diluted packaged fuel + recycled rubber/ plastic = win

[PhailRaptor]

The "correct" answer is going to depend on a couple of factors -- how much Crude you have, and what alternative recipes you have unlocked. There are 5 alt recipes in particular that completely alter how you look at Crude processing.

The first is the first 2 are the Recycled Rubber/Plastic recipes. This pair of recipes are best used together, since half the produced resource from one can be used to feed the inputs for the other. The only additional resource you'll need to run the cycle is Fuel. This lets you focus the entirety of your attention to turning the Crude into Fuel to maximize your output.

Next is the pair of Diluted Packaged Fuel, and Diluted Fuel. These are together because they do the same thing, although the Packaged version requires extra machines. Basically, you take Heavy Oil Residue, a product that is until this point just a waste product for you to figure out how to get rid of, and Water to make Fuel. For equal parts Heavy Oil and Water, you produce an equal volume of Fuel. This is far and away the best conversion ratio for producing Fuel. But for that power, it comes with complications. The Diluted Fuel version requires the use of the Blender, which you won't get until Tier 7 with Aluminum things. The Diluted version earlier, under a follow-up Milestone to Oil, but you have to use a loop of Packagers to make it work in a Refinery -- Package the Water, then send that to a Refinery with the Heavy Oil, then use more Packagers to get the Fuel into pipes. It's cumbersome and prone to throughput irregularities from the Canisters you have to loop through the system.

Finally, the piece that makes this all work. The Heavy Oil Residue alternate recipe lets you turn Crude directly into Heavy Oil, with Polymer Resin as a byproduct. Until the Diluted Fuel recipes, you'd probably never want this, since there's not a lot you can do with Heavy Oil. But since you can use it to produce double the volume of Fuel, now it's a desirable product unto itself. With this recipe, you get the best ratio of Crude into Heavy Oil, which you then get to double with the Diluted recipe(s). Better yet, that Polymer Resin is a great source for the Polyester Fabric alternate recipe (now in the MAM, rather than gained from Hard Drives -- yay!) for an infinite supply of Fabric for Gas and Iodine filters for the Gas Mask and Radiation Suit, respectively. And Parachutes, I guess?

So now that we've established that the best way to utilize Crude is to turn it into Fuel, that simplifies our intentions. Whether we're using it to run Fuel Generators, or to fuel the Recycled recipes for Rubber/Plastic, you're going to Dilute Heavy Oil to do it. Siphon off a little Packaged Fuel for the Jetpack, if you're into that, and for use in a handful of other unlocks.

Now the question emerges... to Turbofuel, or not to Turbofuel?

[JeanDeaux]

You initial startup won't be efficient, that comes much later. I typically setup to produce plastic and rubber to get a collection built up and typically flush the heavy crude by-product until I have enough computers and such to build gas generators.

Once I can, then I worry myself about refining to fuel. And to keep the system from clogging up, I usually put a smart splitter setup at the container fill location so that any overflow goes to an Awesome Sink so that the initial refineries don't stop producing heavy crude (purple stuff) just because the rubber/plastic containers reached capacity. Makes for some good coupon points.