Oil Refinery Oil Dispenser

[Geoppolis]

First, let me offer my sincere complements to whomever on the development team designed the Oil Refinery. This place is magnificent, with the process piping and the stacks and the interwoven trackage. Not to mention the amazing night lighting.

What perplexes me is the lack of an oil dispenser adjacent to the fuel dispenser. I mean, it's an oil refinery - shouldn't it have an oil dispenser? The reason the lack is a problem is that these locomotives have small oil tanks that are often depleted long before the fuel.

[ling.speed]

Isnt that like only DM3 issue and only because we need to run it in high revs more often.
I dont think i ever ran out of oil before fuel, even on DM3, so it could be a driving style thing.

Also if a refinery is small enough to not have a train wrorkshop, we cant really expect it to produce ready use motor oils which require additives that often have expiry dates, so you would not put them in right after refining crude to different base fractions.

At least thats my internal explanation for likely deliberate gameplay balancing.

[maxine]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Isnt that like only DM3 issue and only because we need to run it in high revs more often.
I dont think i ever ran out of oil before fuel, even on DM3, so it could be a driving style thing.

Shunting with the DE2 I often run out of oil before fuel, because it idles so often.

[Geoppolis]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

I dont think i ever ran out of oil before fuel, even on DM3, so it could be a driving style thing.

This is a fairly egregious recent example - it's not usually quite this bad, but I definitely run out of oil first, consistently, when shunting, with all engines.

What is the driving style that avoids this? Or, maybe it's better to ask how you manage to avoid running out of oil before running out of fuel during shunting.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399816973

On edit: that screenshot is atypical - the difference in fuel and oil remaining is not usually that large. The reason it appears so bad in the image is because I had refueled (but not re-oiled) at the oil refinery a short while before. It does highlight the specific case of the oil refinery, I suppose, and my bringing up that we really could use an oil dispenser there so I can refuel/oil and keep on shunting.

[ling.speed]

Ok now i need to revisit DM3 with that image. This almost looks like a bug. Maxine above mentions iddling, but cant see that producing this much disparity... maybe something changed in most recent patches.

Of note as far as i know oil should drain with a ~constant volume lost per engine revolution. So the more it spins, the more oil gets lost.

I've plotted DM3 torque/power curves some time earlier - the (i believe) 2 stroke diesel of DM3 produces peak torque below 200rpm. So to save oil you want to run the engine at as low rpm as possible and highest throttle positions. And turn it off when you need to run around for more than a minute or two.

Using less engine braking would help too, as would shifting to 3-3 whenever not needing power.

[maxine]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Ok now i need to revisit DM3 with that image. This almost looks like a bug. Maxine above mentions iddling, but cant see that producing this much disparity... maybe something changed in most recent patches.

That was happening before as well, not just in B99. I can only speak for the DE2, as that's the only one I regularly do shunting jobs with. And consistently, whenever I do shunting jobs with the DE2 (or when it idles for long periods of time, because I forgot to shut it off), the oil drains a lot faster than the fuel. This does not happen when hauling.

[ling.speed]

Yeah now that i think of it its probably the loaded downhill routes with engine braking that are burning all the oil. Idk if that's realistic, but just stopping to use the jake brake should help a lot.

I've usually had fun with DM3 on non forestry routes that had lot of climbing with load and burned the fuel away at similar rate to oil.

[Geoppolis]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Of note as far as i know oil should drain with a ~constant volume lost per engine revolution. So the more it spins, the more oil gets lost.

Is this factual? Meaning, is this how the code itself is written?

I ask because this is not consistent with my personal observations. My observation is that oil consumption is a function of run time only. Fuel consumption varies with load and engine speed, which is why the remaining volume of oil relative to remaining fuel varies according to use (shunting versus hauling.)

[ling.speed]

I havent looked inside the game, but did some basic checks and thats what it looked like.

If you'd like to try yourself, park it at the repair shop, throw into neutral and check how fast the bill goes up different throttle settings.

edit: WAIT just realized the cockpit up there is DE2 not DM3, i've never ran out of oil on that one, so mind assumed it "has to be" DM... sorry for confusion, but now im totally struck how... gonna try to do some tests for DE2 later today.

edit2: welp seems like DE2 and DM3 do use similar amount of oil when hauling, about 1/2 of fuel (relative to their respective tank sizes) so yeah, no idea, DM3 has a lot more opportunity to burn extra oil. Even with different playstyle i cant see a way to loose that much oil in DE2 unless you leave it running while using other train or something. So a bug maybe?

[maxine]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

edit: WAIT just realized the cockpit up there is DE2 not DM3, i've never ran out of oil on that one, so mind assumed it "has to be" DM... sorry for confusion, but now im totally struck how... gonna try to do some tests for DE2 later today.

edit2: welp seems like DE2 and DM3 do use similar amount of oil when hauling, about 1/2 of fuel (relative to their respective tank sizes) so yeah, no idea, DM3 has a lot more opportunity to burn extra oil. Even with different playstyle i cant see a way to loose that much oil in DE2 unless you leave it running while using other train or something. So a bug maybe?

We were talking about shunting though, when running out of oil before fuel, not hauling.

[Geoppolis]

Originally posted by maxine:

We were talking about shunting though, when running out of oil before fuel, not hauling.

Yes.

I've been operating under the belief that oil consumption is a fixed rate as a function only of time. But Ling's remark about a watching the rate of consumption on the repair station has me rethinking that. I guess I should try that myself.

[maxine]

Originally posted by Geoppolis:

Originally posted by maxine:

We were talking about shunting though, when running out of oil before fuel, not hauling.

Yes.

I've been operating under the belief that oil consumption is a fixed rate as a function only of time. But Ling's remark about a watching the rate of consumption on the repair station has me rethinking that. I guess I should try that myself.

However that only works while stationary, which doesn't really load the engine like driving.

[Geoppolis]

Originally posted by maxine:

However that only works while stationary, which doesn't really load the engine like driving.

Very true, but at least it would tell us whether the engine speed matters.

[Geoppolis]

Well, I did as Ling suggested, and Ling is right! I was quite wrong that oil consumption is only a function of time: it's a function of both time and throttle.

Sitting in the round house, in neutral:

60s at idle = 0.36 units of oil consumed
60s at notch 10 = 1.08 units of oil consumed

Now, as Maxine points out, this test didn't include load. But, obviously, if it is a function of load as well, then adding load certainly isn't going to reduce the oil consumption. Meaning to say, it only gets worse from here.

I guess one lesson here is, if you're trying to save oil, keep your engine speed as low as possible.

[TheLostPenguin]

Oil usage being a function purely of engine run time is the thing that's made the most sense to me of the options suggested when discussing this previously. I constantly see noticeably higher oil usage than fuel on my DH4 that sees use pretty much exclusively as a shunter, which whilst not to the insane extent in Geoppolis's screenshot still means that it always needs to be serviced for oil before fuel.
I'd wager the DE6 has the exact same problem and the only reason it isn't noticed is very few people use it for shunting work so it doesn't see the same sort of low duty cycle usage that DE2/DM3/DH4 often run at.

As for the exact formula to oil consumption I'd say the details really do not matter that much because it's so far from sane, the needed fix would be as a minimum on a scale of halving oil consumption or doubling loco capacity for oil, at least going by what I see running DH4. Yes pretty much everything is tuned for arcadey-ness rather than realism in DV, but it simply should not even be remotely close in terms of consumption between oil and fuel for a locomotive in good condition that isn't being thrashed and overheated. If we skip refilling oil it should be possible to go through several tanks of fuel before genuinely needing to refill oil, at least for any non-abusive use case. Still not a 'realistic' consumption rate, but would at least be along the right flavour lines in that you don't run out of oil before fuel unless there's a serious problem somewhere!

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by Geoppolis:

But, obviously, if it is a function of load as well

Usually oil pump is connected to crank shaft, and thats it. The pumps power is directly related to engine rpm. In theory load or throttle position does not change oil consumption.
In pracice the mechanisms that increase oil consumption with load are all complex, indirect, and take time to materialise - like excessive wear / damage causing micro and macro leaks etc.
I doubt the game goes that deep, but i would check for mechanical powertrain damage, it might be a factor here.

Also i've ran a quick test, and DE2 would need to iddle for more than 3.5 hours, real time, to burn that much oil, and it would still burn twice the fuel you were missing in that screenshot. So as far as i can see the only way to get that situation is refilling fuel at some point without filling oil or significant engine damage (maybe?).