i dont understand this at all, like yea there is a recipie on taking heavy oil down to light oil, but what if that fills up then what do you do you can convert that to heavy, so eventually it wil just fill up no?
#Oil cracking
odd epoch
tidal coyote
Heavy can convert to light
Light can convert to petro
Worry about Petro filling up when it happens. People worry about this case a lot but you the ratios you actually use the oils are heavily weighted towards petroleum
odd epoch
then it seems i have to really balance my system i cant just overproduce
tidal coyote
Using the circuit network makes this significantly easier to deal with keeping things balanced
odd epoch
yea i have no idea how to use the circut network
tidal coyote
Do you know how to set a condition on a pump connected to a tank?
Basically if you connect a wire from a pump to a tank you can set a condition on when to enable it
Like if you set the condition on the pump to "water < 5000" the pump will only pump when the water in the tank is less than 5000 (I purposely chose a rather useless example)
odd epoch
and then i guess for prtrolium i would set it to stop the oil refining when it reaches a certain amount so it only starts if it needs but never fills up?
tidal coyote
For petroleum you want to manage whether you are cracking (converting from heavier to lighter) based on the state of the system
So you can imagine if you are out of heavy oil you don't want to convert it to light - you might need that heavy oil for other things.
If you have a ton of heavy oil you probably want to convert it so the system doesn't jam
You can decide for yourself what the threshold is for how much is a ton
But basically the larger the threshold the more you'd keep in reserve in case you suddenly needed tons of heavy oil
odd epoch
but the conditions would go like heavy oil over light poil over petrolium im guessing
tidal coyote
I don't want to directly state what to do - play around with it!
odd epoch
my brain hurts xD but i guess ill try
but thank you for giving me atleast general direction if can go after
tidal coyote
A good start is to have all flow go in and out of a tank so you have a source of truth to monitor oil quantity
twilit otter
The very basic principle is that we want (unless otherwise noted) to crack down everything into petroleum. Petroleum itself can't be cracked but is used for a wide array of important things, you will basically never have too much of it. Our goal is for the most part to turn oil into petroleum, heavy and light oil are simply hoops we have to jump trough.
Light and heavy oil are used for some things, however if you really don't want to complicate things simply crack them down entirely. They're not necessary until the very end of the game.
The rule I follow early game is that you want about an equal amount of Light Oil -> Petroleum cracking plants as you have refineries, and about 1 Heavy Oil -> Light oil Cracking plant for every 4 refineries.
Do this and you should crack all your oil into petroleum eventually. If you end up wanting either light oil or heavy oil as an excess, simply remove a cracking plant and you will get a surplus in the pipes.
odd epoch
my problem is more how to even make the circut system work, like i dont even know how i make it output a signal and how to use that signal if i ever get it setup
twilit otter
If you don't want to bother yourself it's quite easy.
||Basically you want to make a condition that says: "Only pump light oil liquid to the cracking plants if we have over 5k in the system"
This means that you will only crack it when there is a clear excess. This is done by wiring a pump (a one way gate essentially) to a tank connected to the light oil. We will only enable the pump when the tank has more than 5k liquid inside it.||
odd epoch
so i dont have to use the combinator things? i thought that was what sent the signal
twilit otter
The condition is as easy as "Is light oil bigger than X number"
Most things have simple interfaces like this
I think you can figure out yourself how the enable conditon works, and anything connected to it by wire will input to it
And the tank automatically sends its contents to the circuit network
odd epoch
okay i will try, im still setting up infrastructure, will i still need oil refineries that produces petrolium directly from crude or should i onlyt use the oil recipe?
twilit otter
Only use advanced oil processing, it's way more efficient
odd epoch
right okay will that create enough petrolium then?
twilit otter
If not just create more refineries
You get something like 50% more petro per oil if you use advanced oil processing with 100% cracking
odd epoch
and then what if i fill up on petrolium, is there a way to prevent that?
twilit otter
You won't really do that
Petro is the only thing really necessary for science production, so if you fill up on that it's just good
As I mentioned your goal is really just to convert as much as possible into petroleum, because having too much petroleum isn't really possible.
I can think of maybe a single edge case where it would be an issue
odd epoch
but if petrolium fills up fully that it cant even get out of the refiner then it will also stop the other oils from getting proccessed
cosmic loom
largely that isnt an issue.
youll be dumping it into plastic and sulfer.
you wont usually crack heavy and light down to zero, so youll still have some fluid to use for other needs.
if you have science fully shut off you cant just build 10000000 blue belts or anything
twilit otter
Think is heavy and light oil are really just needed for 2 things, and those 2 things are not needed unless the rest of your factory is running; which it won't without petro
Again, don't think of heavy and light oil as products, they are largely bi-products that we at best want to get rid off.
odd epoch
okay so im hearing i shouldnt really worry much about it as long as i have cracking setup
odd epoch
yea with the circut to atleast keep some
twilit otter
yep that is all that is needed
odd epoch
but i mean you need heavy oil for lube, so it is needed somewhat
twilit otter
Yes but lube is only needed in tandem with petroleum
cosmic loom
^^^
twilit otter
basically nothing uses solely heavy or light oil.
they all use the holy grail petro, which is the only thing we need in life
odd epoch
ah see that makes a ton more sense to me then
cosmic loom
youll only run into "i dont have lube, im jammed, i need to get rid of petro"
if you are building a metric ton of blue belts, or robot's
twilit otter
and even then lube is just dirt cheap so it really won't happen
cosmic loom
but if you keep science running while ALSO building a big buffer of belts/bots, then all itll do is reduce petro output a little and let you keep building
twilit otter
you need so very little heavy oil for it
odd epoch
if i have 4 tanks for 1 type of oil do i connect the wire to all 4? or just 1 of the tanks
cosmic loom
wire only reads the building its attached to
they should self balance so if you read 10k out of one, it should be 40k total
but it doesnt hurt wiring them all up, just know how many you have wired when you go to set the circuits up
odd epoch
okay makes sense
this stuff is complicated, but i bet that once learned its a game changer
