Official Factorio Wiki - User contributions [en]

Quality

2024-11-17T04:50:48Z

Redjard: /* Quality effects */

{{Boilerplate
|icon=No-building-material-icon.png
|line-1=This article is a lacking sources for details of upcoming changes.
|line-2=You can help this wiki by [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} adding them].}}
{{About/Space age}}

'''Quality''' is a feature of the [[Space Age]] expansion. It introduces four higher quality levels for all items, structures and equipment with improved attributes. The goal of quality is to allow vertical factory upgrading as alternative to expansion in size. Items of higher quality are created by chance when using quality modules in the producing structure. The two highest quality tiers require technology not available on Nauvis. Different buildings and items can have different attributes that can be upgraded. When hovering over something, the attributes that will be upgraded with quality will be marked with a blue diamond in the tooltip.

While players are required to own Space Age to access this feature, quality is a separate mod, and can be activated independent of most Space Age content.

== Quality tiers ==
There are 5 quality tiers in vanilla gameplay, with tier strength in brackets:
* [[File:quality_normal.png|15px]] Normal (0)
* [[File:quality_uncommon.png|15px]] Uncommon (1)
* [[File:quality_rare.png|15px]] Rare (2)
* [[File:quality_epic.png|15px]] Epic (3)
* [[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]] Legendary ('''5''')

Note that legendary quality represents a 2-tier improvement over epic.

== Technologies ==
Certain tiers of quality cannot be created until they have been researched.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Research !! Base Game !! {{SA}} Space Age !! Unlocks
|-
| {{icontech|Quality module (research)|}} [[Quality module (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}} x 300
| {{icon|Time|30}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}} x 500
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Epic quality (research)|}} [[Epic quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Legendary quality (research)|}} [[Legendary quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Metallurgic science pack}}{{icon|Electromagnetic science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}}{{icon|Cryogenic science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]]
|-
|}

== Quality effects ==
The currently known effects of each level of quality are as follows:
* +30% health
* +30% energy output
* +30% crafting speed
* +30% robot limit (rounded down)
* +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
* +30% positive module effects (rounded down for at least quality modules)
* +10% turret range
* +1 tile reach and +2 wire reach on power poles
* +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
* Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
* Increased ammo damage (30%?)
* Faster inserters
* Reduced resource depletion on miners (likely multiplicative in effect with productivity)
* +100% (+5 MJ) capacity on accumulators
* Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
* Reduced power consumption on beacons
* Larger scan range on radars
* +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)
* +5% fork chance on the [[tesla turret]] and tesla ammo for the tesla gun

These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary (5 tier-levels) [[Productivity module 3]] (base +10% productivity) would grant 25% productivity.

Some buildings, such as [[Transport belt]]s and [[Wall]]s, only gain increased health.

== Creating high-quality items ==

There are two ways to create an item with above normal quality: The player must either use ingredient items of the same quality, or use quality modules for a random chance of a higher-quality item.

=== Quality ingredients ===
Recipes that create items have variations for each quality that the item might take. When setting such a recipe in a production unit, an ingredient quality must be selected. For these variations, the set of ingredients required is the same, except that all item ingredients must have the specified quality.

Item ingredient quality requirements are exact, not minimum. For example, one can not combine uncommon [[iron plate]]s with rare [[battery|batteries]] to make an [[accumulator]] of any quality. One must therefore ensure that high-quality items do not clobber belts and starve production units of lower-quality items.

As fluids do not possess any quality, they are exempt from ingredient quality requirements; The same [[lubricant]] can be used to create [[electric engine unit]]s of any quality.

=== Quality modules ===
[[File:quality_module_animated.png|64px|right]]'''Quality modules''' allow crafting machines to produce items of a higher quality than their ingredients. Each module adds 1%/2%/2.5% quality chance to a machine, depending on its tier.

When working out the odds of improving quality, a machine starts with the sum of the quality chance of all its modules. When the machine produces an item, it performs a random roll with that chance to succeed. If it succeeds, the product is upgraded 1 level from its ingredients. If the product was upgraded, the machine repeats this process, now with a constant 10% chance of passing, rolling and upgrading until a roll fails.

For 10% quality chance crafting recipe with all tiers unlocked, this gives the following odds:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Input !! [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] chance
|-
| [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.09% || 0.01%
|-
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] || - || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.1%
|-
| [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] || - || - || 90% || 9% || 1%
|-
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] || - || - || - || 90% || 10%
|-
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] || - || - || - || - || 100%
|}

For 24.8% quality chance (4x[[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]]Legendary [[quality module 3]]), the odds are instead:
* 75.2% Normal
* 22.32% Uncommon (24.8% Uncommon+)
* 2.232% Rare (2.48% Rare+)
* 0.2232% Epic (0.248% Epic+)
* 0.0248% Legendary

When using quality ingredients as an input, the base quality is the quality of the recipe. You can only use items with the same quality as input.

Quality modules are only required to ''improve'' quality, crafting will always give the base quality of the used items. Additionally, the odds of improving from a given base quality is the same as improving the same number of tiers from Normal quality.

==== Optimal module usage ====
When using [[Assembling machine 3]]s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a [[Recycler]] with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take productivity modules), the optimal number of quality and productivity modules is as follows:
* If the quality modules offer less than 15% chance (Normal and Uncommon [[Quality module|T1]], [[Quality module 2|T2]], and [[Quality module 3|T3]]s), use 4 quality modules
* If the quality modules offer 16% (Rare T3s) or 19% (Epic T3s), use 3 quality modules and 1 productivity module
* If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary T3s), use 2 of each module
* If the quality modules offer ''exactly'' 15% (Legendary T2s):
** When the base quality of the inputs is Epic, use 4 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is Rare, use 4 quality modules
*** Except when your productivity modules have more than +1.5% productivity use 3 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is Normal or Uncommon, use 3 quality modules

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

== Relevant Factorio Friday Facts ==
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375 FFF 375 - Quality]
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 FFF 376 - Research and Technology]

== Trivia ==
* Quality is not technically exclusive to player-made entities; Though this does not occur naturally, quality is also allowed on enemies, asteroids, and even the [[player]] character.
** Some enemies with qualities above normal can even be created in regular sandbox gameplay: Big biters, behemoth biters, and big premature wriggler pentapods born from spoiled [[biter egg]]s, [[captive biter spawner]]s, and [[pentapod egg]]s inherit the quality of the spoiled items, with the latter two being possible to craft with quality modules. Furthermore, a starved captured biter spawner will retain its quality upon converting into a hostile biter spawner, with said quality even being inherited by the biters that it will spawn. Should these biters chose to expand, they may also create quality spitters and worms.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

{{C|Main}}

Quality

2024-11-17T04:48:46Z

Redjard: /* Quality effects */

{{Boilerplate
|icon=No-building-material-icon.png
|line-1=This article is a lacking sources for details of upcoming changes.
|line-2=You can help this wiki by [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} adding them].}}
{{About/Space age}}

'''Quality''' is a feature of the [[Space Age]] expansion. It introduces four higher quality levels for all items, structures and equipment with improved attributes. The goal of quality is to allow vertical factory upgrading as alternative to expansion in size. Items of higher quality are created by chance when using quality modules in the producing structure. The two highest quality tiers require technology not available on Nauvis. Different buildings and items can have different attributes that can be upgraded. When hovering over something, the attributes that will be upgraded with quality will be marked with a blue diamond in the tooltip.

While players are required to own Space Age to access this feature, quality is a separate mod, and can be activated independent of most Space Age content.

== Quality tiers ==
There are 5 quality tiers in vanilla gameplay, with tier strength in brackets:
* [[File:quality_normal.png|15px]] Normal (0)
* [[File:quality_uncommon.png|15px]] Uncommon (1)
* [[File:quality_rare.png|15px]] Rare (2)
* [[File:quality_epic.png|15px]] Epic (3)
* [[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]] Legendary ('''5''')

Note that legendary quality represents a 2-tier improvement over epic.

== Technologies ==
Certain tiers of quality cannot be created until they have been researched.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Research !! Base Game !! {{SA}} Space Age !! Unlocks
|-
| {{icontech|Quality module (research)|}} [[Quality module (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}} x 300
| {{icon|Time|30}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}} x 500
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Epic quality (research)|}} [[Epic quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Legendary quality (research)|}} [[Legendary quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Metallurgic science pack}}{{icon|Electromagnetic science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}}{{icon|Cryogenic science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]]
|-
|}

== Quality effects ==
The currently known effects of each level of quality are as follows:
* +30% health
* +30% energy output
* +30% crafting speed
* +30% robot limit (rounded down)
* +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
* +30% positive module effects (rounded down for at least quality modules)
* +10% turret range
* +1 tile reach and +2 wire reach on power poles
* +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
* Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
* Increased ammo damage (30%?)
* Faster inserters
* Reduced resource depletion on miners (likely multiplicative in effect with productivity)
* +100% (+5 MJ) capacity on accumulators
* Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
* Reduced power consumption on beacons
* Larger scan range on radars
* +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)
* +100% (+5%) fork chance on the [[tesla turret]]

These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary (5 tier-levels) [[Productivity module 3]] (base +10% productivity) would grant 25% productivity.

Some buildings, such as [[Transport belt]]s and [[Wall]]s, only gain increased health.

== Creating high-quality items ==

There are two ways to create an item with above normal quality: The player must either use ingredient items of the same quality, or use quality modules for a random chance of a higher-quality item.

=== Quality ingredients ===
Recipes that create items have variations for each quality that the item might take. When setting such a recipe in a production unit, an ingredient quality must be selected. For these variations, the set of ingredients required is the same, except that all item ingredients must have the specified quality.

Item ingredient quality requirements are exact, not minimum. For example, one can not combine uncommon [[iron plate]]s with rare [[battery|batteries]] to make an [[accumulator]] of any quality. One must therefore ensure that high-quality items do not clobber belts and starve production units of lower-quality items.

As fluids do not possess any quality, they are exempt from ingredient quality requirements; The same [[lubricant]] can be used to create [[electric engine unit]]s of any quality.

=== Quality modules ===
[[File:quality_module_animated.png|64px|right]]'''Quality modules''' allow crafting machines to produce items of a higher quality than their ingredients. Each module adds 1%/2%/2.5% quality chance to a machine, depending on its tier.

When working out the odds of improving quality, a machine starts with the sum of the quality chance of all its modules. When the machine produces an item, it performs a random roll with that chance to succeed. If it succeeds, the product is upgraded 1 level from its ingredients. If the product was upgraded, the machine repeats this process, now with a constant 10% chance of passing, rolling and upgrading until a roll fails.

For 10% quality chance crafting recipe with all tiers unlocked, this gives the following odds:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Input !! [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] chance
|-
| [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.09% || 0.01%
|-
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] || - || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.1%
|-
| [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] || - || - || 90% || 9% || 1%
|-
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] || - || - || - || 90% || 10%
|-
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] || - || - || - || - || 100%
|}

For 24.8% quality chance (4x[[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]]Legendary [[quality module 3]]), the odds are instead:
* 75.2% Normal
* 22.32% Uncommon (24.8% Uncommon+)
* 2.232% Rare (2.48% Rare+)
* 0.2232% Epic (0.248% Epic+)
* 0.0248% Legendary

When using quality ingredients as an input, the base quality is the quality of the recipe. You can only use items with the same quality as input.

Quality modules are only required to ''improve'' quality, crafting will always give the base quality of the used items. Additionally, the odds of improving from a given base quality is the same as improving the same number of tiers from Normal quality.

==== Optimal module usage ====
When using [[Assembling machine 3]]s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a [[Recycler]] with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take productivity modules), the optimal number of quality and productivity modules is as follows:
* If the quality modules offer less than 15% chance (Normal and Uncommon [[Quality module|T1]], [[Quality module 2|T2]], and [[Quality module 3|T3]]s), use 4 quality modules
* If the quality modules offer 16% (Rare T3s) or 19% (Epic T3s), use 3 quality modules and 1 productivity module
* If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary T3s), use 2 of each module
* If the quality modules offer ''exactly'' 15% (Legendary T2s):
** When the base quality of the inputs is Epic, use 4 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is Rare, use 4 quality modules
*** Except when your productivity modules have more than +1.5% productivity use 3 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is Normal or Uncommon, use 3 quality modules

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

== Relevant Factorio Friday Facts ==
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375 FFF 375 - Quality]
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 FFF 376 - Research and Technology]

== Trivia ==
* Quality is not technically exclusive to player-made entities; Though this does not occur naturally, quality is also allowed on enemies, asteroids, and even the [[player]] character.
** Some enemies with qualities above normal can even be created in regular sandbox gameplay: Big biters, behemoth biters, and big premature wriggler pentapods born from spoiled [[biter egg]]s, [[captive biter spawner]]s, and [[pentapod egg]]s inherit the quality of the spoiled items, with the latter two being possible to craft with quality modules. Furthermore, a starved captured biter spawner will retain its quality upon converting into a hostile biter spawner, with said quality even being inherited by the biters that it will spawn. Should these biters chose to expand, they may also create quality spitters and worms.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

{{C|Main}}

Scrap

2024-11-17T00:16:35Z

Redjard: /* See also */

{{Languages}}
{{:Infobox:Scrap}}
{{Stub}}
{{About/Space age}}
'''Scrap''' is a resource found on [[Fulgora]]{{SA}}. It needs to be recycled by hand or in the [[recycler]]{{SA}} to get usable products.

== Scrap Recycling ==

[[File:Scrap-recycling-recipe.png|frameless|alt=Recipe icon for recycling scrap|Scrap recycling recipe]]

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ Recycling results
|-
! Item !! Percent
|-
| {{Imagelink|Iron gear wheel}} || 20%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Solid fuel}} || 7%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Concrete}} || 6%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Ice|space-age=yes}} || 5%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Stone}} || 4%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Steel plate}} || 4%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Battery}} || 4%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Copper cable}} || 3%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Advanced circuit}} || 3%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Processing unit}} || 2%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Low density structure}} || 1%
|-
| {{Imagelink|Holmium ore|space-age=yes}} || 1%
|}

Further recycling of these products allows the player to also obtain the following resources out of scrap:

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ Resource
|-
! Item
! Recycled from
|-
| {{Imagelink|Iron plate}}
| {{Imagelink|Iron gear wheel}}, {{Imagelink|Battery}}, {{Imagelink|Electronic circuit}}
|-
| {{Imagelink|Copper plate}}
| {{Imagelink|Low density structure}}, {{Imagelink|Copper cable}}, {{Imagelink|Battery}}
|-
| {{Imagelink|Plastic bar}}
| {{Imagelink|Low density structure}}, {{Imagelink|Advanced circuit}}
|-
| {{Imagelink|Electronic circuit}}
| {{Imagelink|Processing unit}}, {{Imagelink|Advanced circuit}}
|-
| {{Imagelink|Stone brick}}
| {{Imagelink|Concrete}}
|-
| {{Imagelink|Iron ore}}
| {{Imagelink|Concrete}}
|}

Recycling cannot undo chemistry, which means that it is not possible to obtain crude/light/heavy oil, petroleum, lubricant, coal or sulfur from scrap.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

== See also ==
* [[Fulgora]]{{SA}}
* [[Recycler]]{{SA}}
* [[Tutorial:Scrap recycling strategies]]{{SA}}

{{IntermediateNav}}
{{C|Resources}}

Tutorial:Scrap recycling strategies

2024-11-16T21:16:01Z

Redjard: /* Efficiently trashing excess */

Unlike with most other resources, processing [[scrap]] yields a variety of items. Furthermore, besides imports from [[space platform]]s or other planets, it is the only long-term source of most resources on [[Fulgora]], leaving players with no choice other than to rely on scrap.

= The easy part =
To make the task of sorting the recycled scrap less daunting, some may be easiest to first deal with the items that have a known destination:
* [[Ice]] only serves one purpose while on Fulgora, and that is to be melted for water.
* [[Solid fuel]] can be used in one of two ways: it is either burnt directly or converted into [[rocket fuel]]. The latter is needed to make [[rocket part]]s, and since can also be used as fuel, there should be no problem in simply converting all solid fuel into rocket fuel (which can even make trains go faster). Note that converting solid fuel into rocket fuel also requires [[light oil]], which can be cracked from [[heavy oil]] using water from melted ice. Heavy oil can be obtained from the oillands by using an [[offshore pump]].
* [[Holmium ore]] only has one use, which is to create [[holmium solution]] by combining it with water and stone.

Aside from the above, [[stone]] has various uses (even aside from its use in producing holmium solution), but as will not interact with the remainder of the recycling process (it is neither recyclable nor gained by recycling another item), it can also be sorted right away.

Sorting the above leaves only 8 items left to be dealt with among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling.

= Further recycling =
Among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling, 7 of them are themselves recyclable:
* [[Processing unit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s.
* [[Advanced circuit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[copper wire]].
* [[Low density structure]]s can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[steel plate]]s.
* [[Concrete]] can be recycled for [[stone brick]]s and [[iron ore]], the latter of which can be melted into [[iron plate]]s.
* [[Battery|Batteries]] can be recycled for [[iron plate]]s and [[copper plate]]s.
* [[Copper wire]] can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s.
* [[Iron gear wheel]]s can be recycled for [[iron plate]]s.
In addition to these, the electronic circuits from recycled [[processing unit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s can themselves be recycled for [[copper wire]]s and [[iron plate]]s.

Without direct access to iron or copper plates, some of these will have to be recycled. The simplest solution is to recycle everything down to iron plates, copper plates, steel plates, plastic bars, and stone bricks, and then remake everything when needed; That way, unused intermediates produced by scrap recycling will not cause clobbering. Processing units, advanced circuits, electronic circuits, and copper wires must be recycled in that order, as items earlier in that sequence will yield some of the later items upon recycling. Aside from these, low density structures, concrete, batteries, and iron gear wheels can all be recycled in parallel.

Note that steel can not be recycled; Although it is made using iron, it is a smelting recipe, which recyclers do not handle.

== Skipping the recycling process for select items ==
Recycling is a wasteful process, as only 25% of ingredient items and no fluids are returned upon recycling. Furthermore, both recycling and re-crafting requires enough machines to perform these operations fast enough, and room might be limited, especially on Fulgora. Therefore, simply recycling all items, while simple, is not ideal. This is even more true for batteries and processing units, which take sulfuric acid to re-craft.

When possible, it is often preferred to simply use the items emitted by scrap recycling directly. For that, there needs to be a way for these items to skip the recycling process when they are needed. This problem has a simple solution: Right before an item gets recycled, place a splitter, and connect its second output to wherever the item is needed. Make sure to set the splitter's priority output to that new belt; That way, items only get recycled when they are in excess.

Note that being able to craft more of these items might still be a good idea. For example, imagine a factory whose sole focus is to launch rockets. Two of the ingredients used in rocket parts, specifically processing units and low density structures, are among the direct results of scrap recycling. However, to rely on these exclusively will leave most other products of scrap recycling unused, even though some of them could be used to make even more processing units and low density structures.

= Getting rid of the excess =
Scrap recycling will never yield the exact distribution of items that players might need. With scrap recycling, this is a problem; Unlike on Nauvis, where having enough iron will simply pause iron production and nothing else, to pause production of one scrap recycling product is to pause scrap recycling altogether. In other words, if not every item produced by scrap recycling is consumed, then the belts will clobber, and scrap recycling is stopped from producing any items at all.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to use every item that scrap recycling produces. Some items have a limited set of applications that are not always relevant. Other times, you will need more of one item than another, causing an imbalance in what items are consumed.

When an item has no other uses, it may therefore be necessary to destroy it outright. There is a way to do this: When trying to recycle an item that has no recyclable recipe, a recycler will output the item itself with a 25% probability, leaving a 75% probability of destroying it. By looping the output of such a recycler back into itself, it is possible to completely destroy these items.

Be warned that scrap, while bountiful on some islands, is still a finite resource that can run out if wasted carelessly. And if all items produced by recycling have drains that simply destroy the items, it is possible to consume scrap even when the factory does not need it.

== Efficiently trashing excess ==

Some items produced directly or indirectly from scrap recycling have long crafting times. Especially bad is steel, which in an unmoduled recycler takes 2 seconds to recycle one steel, or 2.66 seconds in total considering the 25% chance of not destroying it.

Some of these slow-to-recycle products can be crafted into other items at higher rates than they can be recycled. Steel can be turned into steel chests at 20 steel per second inside an unmoduled normal yellow assembler. This can then in-turn be recycled back down to steel even more quickly due to the 16x recycling speedup. Considering the recycling yield, a yellow assembler without modules can handle 15 steel per second, and a recycler 96, compared to a recycler for steel which handles 0.375 steel per second.

Some such shortcuts are (speed comparison assuming one assembler and recycler at crafting speeds 1.25 and 0.5):
* [[Steel plate|Steel]] to [[steel chest]] (40x speedup)
* [[Iron plate|Iron]] to [[iron chest]] (8x speedup)
* [[Concrete]] to [[hazard concrete]] (6.25x speedup)
* [[Stone]] to [[landfill]] (10.42x speedup), note that landfill is unrecyclable so needs to be looped back into the recycler not the assembler
* [[Stone brick|Bricks]] to [[wall]]s (5x speedup)

[[Copper plate|Copper]] to [[copper cable]] is the same speed as direct recycling. Mixing in copper with steel at 2:1 to make [[heat pipe]]s is a 10x speedup, as long as enough steel is trashed together with the copper.

== Low-priority production ==
As an alternative to outright destroying the excess items, it may be possible to turn them into something that might be useful later, so that the items are not completely wasted. The point is not to make something that the player will need right away, as that is the job of the main production lines; Rather, it is to be seen as a bonus that players might want but do not need.

It should be noted that even these products will eventually fill up all storage and cause clobbering, meaning that destroying items might still become necessary in the long term.

High-quality items are a good candidate, as they take a lot of ingredients and are often nice to have without being outright necessary.

= Other tips and tricks =

== Recycling with quality modules ==
The recycler does not accept [[productivity module]]s. This is to prevent a net positive of items from being created when crafting and recycling items in a loop. However, this rejection of productivity modules in recyclers also applies to scrap recycling, even though there is no way to re-craft scrap from the results of recycling. In exchange, the game offers infinite research for increasing the productivity of scrap recycling, specifically. This all means that players are free to use a different kind of module, such as quality modules, without worrying about the loss of productivity.

Players may chose to place quality modules in their scrap recyclers and sort the items by quality, sending [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items to the main factory and using higher-quality items for a head start in quality manufacturing.

However, players should keep in mind that, much like productivity, quality modules benefit from long production chains, as it increases the number of chances for item quality to be increased. Even after sorting away all [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items, only 10% of the remaining items will be [[File:Quality rare.png|15px|link=]]rare or higher, as the probability of skipping a quality tier will always be 10% regardless of modules.

It should also be noted that [[File:Quality uncommon.png|15px|link=]]uncommon or higher [[holmium ore]] is not actually better than [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal holmium ore, because its sole use is to be used as an ingredient for [[holmium solution]], which is a fluid and therefore erases the quality of the holmium ore.

Tutorial:Scrap recycling strategies

2024-11-16T00:37:53Z

Redjard: /* Efficiently trashing excess */

Unlike with most other resources, processing [[scrap]] yields a variety of items. Furthermore, besides imports from [[space platforms]] or other planets, it is the only long-term source of most resources on [[Fulgora]], leaving players with no choice other than to rely on scrap.

= The easy part =
To make the task of sorting the recycled scrap less daunting, some may be easiest to first deal with the items that have a known destination:
* [[Ice]] only serves one purpose while on Fulgora, and that is to be melted for water.
* [[Solid fuel]] can be used in one of two ways: It is either burnt directly or converted into [[rocket fuel]]. The latter is needed to make [[rocket part]]s, and since can also be used as fuel, there should be no problem in simply converting all solid fuel into rocket fuel (which can even make trains go faster). Note that converting solid fuel into rocket fuel also requires [[light oil]], which can be cracked from [[heavy oil]] using water from melted ice. Heavy oil can be obtained from the oillands by using an [[offshore pump]].
* [[Holmium ore]] only has one use, which is to create [[holmium solution]] by combining it with water and stone.
Aside from the above, [[stone]] has various uses (even aside from its use in producing holmium solution), but as will not interact with the remainder of the recycling process (it is neither recyclable nor gained by recycling another item), it can also be sorted right away.

Sorting the above leaves only 8 items left to be dealt with among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling.

= Further recycling =
Among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling, 7 of them are themselves recyclable:
* [[Processing unit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s.
* [[Advanced circuit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[copper wire]].
* [[Low density structure]]s can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[steel plate]]s.
* [[Concrete]] can be recycled for [[stone brick]]s and [[iron ore]], the latter of which can be melted into [[iron plate]]s.
* [[Battery|Batteries]] can be recycled for [[iron plate]]s and [[copper plate]]s.
* [[Copper wire]] can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s.
* [[Iron gear wheel]]s can be recycled for [[iron plate]]s.
In addition to these, the electronic circuits from recycled [[processing unit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s can themselves be recycled for [[copper wire]]s and [[iron plate]]s.

Without direct access to iron or copper plates, some of these will have to be recycled. The simplest solution is to recycle everything down to iron plates, copper plates, steel plates, plastic bars, and stone bricks, and then remake everything when needed; That way, unused intermediates produced by scrap recycling will not cause clobbering. Processing units, advanced circuits, electronic circuits, and copper wires must be recycled in that order, as items earlier in that sequence will yield some of the later items upon recycling. Aside from these, low density structures, concrete, batteries, and iron gear wheels can all be recycled in parallel.

Note that steel can not be recycled; Although it is made using iron, it is a smelting recipe, which recyclers do not handle.

== Skipping the recycling process for select items ==
Recycling is a wasteful process, as only 25% of ingredient items and no fluids are returned upon recycling. Furthermore, both recycling and re-crafting requires enough machines to perform these operations fast enough, and room might be limited, especially on Fulgora. Therefore, simply recycling all items, while simple, is not ideal. This is even more true for batteries and processing units, which take sulfuric acid to re-craft.

When possible, it is often preferred to simply use the items emitted by scrap recycling directly. For that, there needs to be a way for these items to skip the recycling process when they are needed. This problem has a simple solution: Right before an item gets recycled, place a splitter, and connect its second output to wherever the item is needed. Make sure to set the splitter's priority output to that new belt; That way, items only get recycled when they are in excess.

Note that being able to craft more of these items might still be a good idea. For example, imagine a factory whose sole focus is to launch rockets. Two of the ingredients used in rocket parts, specifically processing units and low density structures, are among the direct results of scrap recycling. However, to rely on these exclusively will leave most other products of scrap recycling unused, even though some of them could be used to make even more processing units and low density structures.

= Getting rid of the excess =
Scrap recycling will never yield the exact distribution of items that players might need. With scrap recycling, this is a problem; Unlike on Nauvis, where having enough iron will simply pause iron production and nothing else, to pause production of one scrap recycling product is to pause scrap recycling altogether. In other words, if not every item produced by scrap recycling is consumed, then the belts will clobber, and scrap recycling is stopped from producing any items at all.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to use every item that scrap recycling produces. Some items have a limited set of applications that are not always relevant. Other times, you will need more of one item than another, causing an imbalance in what items are consumed.

When an item has no other uses, it may therefore be necessary to destroy it outright. There is a way to do this: When trying to recycle an item that has no recyclable recipe, a recycler will output the item itself with a 25% probability, leaving a 75% probability of destroying it. By looping the output of such a recycler back into itself, it is possible to completely destroy these items.

Be warned that scrap, while bountiful on some islands, is still a finite resource that can run out if wasted carelessly. And if all items produced by recycling have drains that simply destroy the items, it is possible to consume scrap even when the factory does not need it.

== Efficiently trashing excess ==

Some items produced directly or indirectly from scrap recycling have long crafting times. Especially bad is steel, which in an unmoduled recycler takes 2 seconds to recycle one steel, or 2.66 seconds in total considering the 25% chance of not destroying it.

Some of these slow-to-recycle products can be crafted into other items at higher rates than they can be recycled. Steel can be turned into steel chests at 20 steel per second inside an unmoduled normal yellow assembler. This can then in-turn be recycled back down to steel even more quickly due to the 16x recycling speedup. Considering the recycling yield, a yellow assembler without modules can handle 15 steel per second, and a recycler 96, compared to a recycler for steel which handles 0.375 steel per second.

Some such shortcuts are (speed comparison assuming one assembler and recycler at crafting speeds 1.25 and 0.5):
* [[Steel plate|Steel]] to [[steel chest]] (40x speedup)
* [[Iron plate|Iron]] to [[iron chest]] (8x speedup)
* [[Concrete]] to [[hazard concrete]] (6.25x speedup)
* [[Stone]] to [[landfill]] (10.42x speedup), note that landfill is unrecyclable so needs to be looped back into the recycler not the assembler

[[Copper plate|Copper]] to [[copper cable]] is the same speed as direct recycling. Mixing in copper with steel at 2:1 to make [[heat pipe]]s is a 10x speedup, as long as enough steel is trashed together with the copper.

== Low-priority production ==
As an alternative to outright destroying the excess items, it may be possible to turn them into something that might be useful later, so that the items are not completely wasted. The point is not to make something that the player will need right away, as that is the job of the main production lines; Rather, it is to be seen as a bonus that players might want but do not need.

It should be noted that even these products will eventually fill up all storage and cause clobbering, meaning that destroying items might still become necessary in the long term.

High-quality items are a good candidate, as they take a lot of ingredients and are often nice to have without being outright necessary.

= Other tips and tricks =

== Recycling with quality modules ==
The recycler does not accept [[productivity module]]s. This is to prevent a net positive of items from being created when crafting and recycling items in a loop. However, this rejection of productivity modules in recyclers also applies to scrap recycling, even though there is no way to re-craft scrap from the results of recycling. In exchange, the game offers infinite research for increasing the productivity of scrap recycling, specifically. This all means that players are free to use a different kind of module, such as quality modules, without worrying about the loss of productivity.

Players may chose to place quality modules in their scrap recyclers and sort the items by quality, sending [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items to the main factory and using higher-quality items for a head start in quality manufacturing.

However, players should keep in mind that, much like productivity, quality modules benefit from long production chains, as it increases the number of chances for item quality to be increased. Even after sorting away all [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items, only 10% of the remaining items will be [[File:Quality rare.png|15px|link=]]rare or higher, as the probability of skipping a quality tier will always be 10% regardless of modules.

It should also be noted that [[File:Quality uncommon.png|15px|link=]]uncommon or higher [[holmium ore]] is not actually better than [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal holmium ore, because its sole use is to be used as an ingredient for [[holmium solution]], which is a fluid and therefore erases the quality of the holmium ore.

Tutorial:Scrap recycling strategies

2024-11-16T00:34:28Z

Redjard: /* Further recycling */ fix links

Unlike with most other resources, processing [[scrap]] yields a variety of items. Furthermore, besides imports from [[space platforms]] or other planets, it is the only long-term source of most resources on [[Fulgora]], leaving players with no choice other than to rely on scrap.

= The easy part =
To make the task of sorting the recycled scrap less daunting, some may be easiest to first deal with the items that have a known destination:
* [[Ice]] only serves one purpose while on Fulgora, and that is to be melted for water.
* [[Solid fuel]] can be used in one of two ways: It is either burnt directly or converted into [[rocket fuel]]. The latter is needed to make [[rocket part]]s, and since can also be used as fuel, there should be no problem in simply converting all solid fuel into rocket fuel (which can even make trains go faster). Note that converting solid fuel into rocket fuel also requires [[light oil]], which can be cracked from [[heavy oil]] using water from melted ice. Heavy oil can be obtained from the oillands by using an [[offshore pump]].
* [[Holmium ore]] only has one use, which is to create [[holmium solution]] by combining it with water and stone.
Aside from the above, [[stone]] has various uses (even aside from its use in producing holmium solution), but as will not interact with the remainder of the recycling process (it is neither recyclable nor gained by recycling another item), it can also be sorted right away.

Sorting the above leaves only 8 items left to be dealt with among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling.

= Further recycling =
Among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling, 7 of them are themselves recyclable:
* [[Processing unit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s.
* [[Advanced circuit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[copper wire]].
* [[Low density structure]]s can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[steel plate]]s.
* [[Concrete]] can be recycled for [[stone brick]]s and [[iron ore]], the latter of which can be melted into [[iron plate]]s.
* [[Battery|Batteries]] can be recycled for [[iron plate]]s and [[copper plate]]s.
* [[Copper wire]] can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s.
* [[Iron gear wheel]]s can be recycled for [[iron plate]]s.
In addition to these, the electronic circuits from recycled [[processing unit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s can themselves be recycled for [[copper wire]]s and [[iron plate]]s.

Without direct access to iron or copper plates, some of these will have to be recycled. The simplest solution is to recycle everything down to iron plates, copper plates, steel plates, plastic bars, and stone bricks, and then remake everything when needed; That way, unused intermediates produced by scrap recycling will not cause clobbering. Processing units, advanced circuits, electronic circuits, and copper wires must be recycled in that order, as items earlier in that sequence will yield some of the later items upon recycling. Aside from these, low density structures, concrete, batteries, and iron gear wheels can all be recycled in parallel.

Note that steel can not be recycled; Although it is made using iron, it is a smelting recipe, which recyclers do not handle.

== Skipping the recycling process for select items ==
Recycling is a wasteful process, as only 25% of ingredient items and no fluids are returned upon recycling. Furthermore, both recycling and re-crafting requires enough machines to perform these operations fast enough, and room might be limited, especially on Fulgora. Therefore, simply recycling all items, while simple, is not ideal. This is even more true for batteries and processing units, which take sulfuric acid to re-craft.

When possible, it is often preferred to simply use the items emitted by scrap recycling directly. For that, there needs to be a way for these items to skip the recycling process when they are needed. This problem has a simple solution: Right before an item gets recycled, place a splitter, and connect its second output to wherever the item is needed. Make sure to set the splitter's priority output to that new belt; That way, items only get recycled when they are in excess.

Note that being able to craft more of these items might still be a good idea. For example, imagine a factory whose sole focus is to launch rockets. Two of the ingredients used in rocket parts, specifically processing units and low density structures, are among the direct results of scrap recycling. However, to rely on these exclusively will leave most other products of scrap recycling unused, even though some of them could be used to make even more processing units and low density structures.

= Getting rid of the excess =
Scrap recycling will never yield the exact distribution of items that players might need. With scrap recycling, this is a problem; Unlike on Nauvis, where having enough iron will simply pause iron production and nothing else, to pause production of one scrap recycling product is to pause scrap recycling altogether. In other words, if not every item produced by scrap recycling is consumed, then the belts will clobber, and scrap recycling is stopped from producing any items at all.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to use every item that scrap recycling produces. Some items have a limited set of applications that are not always relevant. Other times, you will need more of one item than another, causing an imbalance in what items are consumed.

When an item has no other uses, it may therefore be necessary to destroy it outright. There is a way to do this: When trying to recycle an item that has no recyclable recipe, a recycler will output the item itself with a 25% probability, leaving a 75% probability of destroying it. By looping the output of such a recycler back into itself, it is possible to completely destroy these items.

Be warned that scrap, while bountiful on some islands, is still a finite resource that can run out if wasted carelessly. And if all items produced by recycling have drains that simply destroy the items, it is possible to consume scrap even when the factory does not need it.

== Efficiently trashing excess ==

Some items produced directly or indirectly from scrap recycling have long crafting times. Especially bad is steel, which in an unmoduled recycler takes 2 seconds to recycle one steel, or 2.66 seconds in total considering the 25% chance of not destroying it.

Some of these slow-to-recycle products can be quickly crafted into other items at large numbers. Steel can be turned into steel chests at 20 steel per second inside an unmoduled normal yellow assembler. This can then in-turn be recycled back down to steel even more quickly due to the 16x recycling speedup. Considering the recycling yield, a yellow assembler without modules can handle 15 steel per second, and a recycler 96, compared to a recycler alone which handles 0.375 steel per second.

Some such shortcuts are (speed comparison assuming one assembler and recycler at crafting speeds 1.25 and 0.5):
* [[Steel]] to [[steel chest]] (40x speedup)
* [[Iron plate|Iron]] to [[iron chest]] (8x speedup)
* [[Concrete]] to [[hazard concrete]] (6.25x speedup)
* [[Stone]] to [[landfill]] (10.42x speedup), note that landfill is unrecyclable so needs to be looped back into the recycler not the assembler

[[Copper plate|Copper]] to [[copper cable]] is the same speed as direct recycling. Mixing in copper with steel at 2:1 to make [[heat pipe]]s is a 10x speedup, as long as enough steel is trashed together with the copper.

== Low-priority production ==
As an alternative to outright destroying the excess items, it may be possible to turn them into something that might be useful later, so that the items are not completely wasted. The point is not to make something that the player will need right away, as that is the job of the main production lines; Rather, it is to be seen as a bonus that players might want but do not need.

It should be noted that even these products will eventually fill up all storage and cause clobbering, meaning that destroying items might still become necessary in the long term.

High-quality items are a good candidate, as they take a lot of ingredients and are often nice to have without being outright necessary.

= Other tips and tricks =

== Recycling with quality modules ==
The recycler does not accept [[productivity module]]s. This is to prevent a net positive of items from being created when crafting and recycling items in a loop. However, this rejection of productivity modules in recyclers also applies to scrap recycling, even though there is no way to re-craft scrap from the results of recycling. In exchange, the game offers infinite research for increasing the productivity of scrap recycling, specifically. This all means that players are free to use a different kind of module, such as quality modules, without worrying about the loss of productivity.

Players may chose to place quality modules in their scrap recyclers and sort the items by quality, sending [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items to the main factory and using higher-quality items for a head start in quality manufacturing.

However, players should keep in mind that, much like productivity, quality modules benefit from long production chains, as it increases the number of chances for item quality to be increased. Even after sorting away all [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items, only 10% of the remaining items will be [[File:Quality rare.png|15px|link=]]rare or higher, as the probability of skipping a quality tier will always be 10% regardless of modules.

It should also be noted that [[File:Quality uncommon.png|15px|link=]]uncommon or higher [[holmium ore]] is not actually better than [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal holmium ore, because its sole use is to be used as an ingredient for [[holmium solution]], which is a fluid and therefore erases the quality of the holmium ore.

Tutorial:Scrap recycling strategies

2024-11-16T00:23:42Z

Redjard: /* Getting rid of the excess */ Add chapter about recipes which are faster to recycle than their base ingredients

Unlike with most other resources, processing [[scrap]] yields a variety of items. Furthermore, besides imports from [[space platforms]] or other planets, it is the only long-term source of most resources on [[Fulgora]], leaving players with no choice other than to rely on scrap.

= The easy part =
To make the task of sorting the recycled scrap less daunting, some may be easiest to first deal with the items that have a known destination:
* [[Ice]] only serves one purpose while on Fulgora, and that is to be melted for water.
* [[Solid fuel]] can be used in one of two ways: It is either burnt directly or converted into [[rocket fuel]]. The latter is needed to make [[rocket part]]s, and since can also be used as fuel, there should be no problem in simply converting all solid fuel into rocket fuel (which can even make trains go faster). Note that converting solid fuel into rocket fuel also requires [[light oil]], which can be cracked from [[heavy oil]] using water from melted ice. Heavy oil can be obtained from the oillands by using an [[offshore pump]].
* [[Holmium ore]] only has one use, which is to create [[holmium solution]] by combining it with water and stone.
Aside from the above, [[stone]] has various uses (even aside from its use in producing holmium solution), but as will not interact with the remainder of the recycling process (it is neither recyclable nor gained by recycling another item), it can also be sorted right away.

Sorting the above leaves only 8 items left to be dealt with among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling.

= Further recycling =
Among the 12 items produced by scrap recycling, 7 of them are themselves recyclable:
* [[Processing unit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s.
* [[Advanced circuit]]s can be recycled for [[electronic circuit]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[copper wire]].
* [[Low density structure]]s can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s, [[plastic bar]]s, and [[steel plate]]s.
* [[Concrete]] can be recycled for [[stone brick]]s and [[iron ore]], the latter of which can be melted into [[iron plate]]s.
* [[Battery|Batteries]] can be recycled for [[iron plates]] and [[copper plates]].
* [[Copper wire]] can be recycled for [[copper plate]]s.
* [[Iron gear wheel]]s can be recycled for [[iron plate]]s.
In addition to these, the electronic circuits from recycled [[processing unit]]s and [[advanced circuit]]s can themselves be recycled for [[copper wire]]s and [[iron plate]]s.

Without direct access to iron or copper plates, some of these will have to be recycled. The simplest solution is to recycle everything down to iron plates, copper plates, steel plates, plastic bars, and stone bricks, and then remake everything when needed; That way, unused intermediates produced by scrap recycling will not cause clobbering. Processing units, advanced circuits, electronic circuits, and copper wires must be recycled in that order, as items earlier in that sequence will yield some of the later items upon recycling. Aside from these, low density structures, concrete, batteries, and iron gear wheels can all be recycled in parallel.

Note that steel can not be recycled; Although it is made using iron, it is a smelting recipe, which recyclers do not handle.

== Skipping the recycling process for select items ==
Recycling is a wasteful process, as only 25% of ingredient items and no fluids are returned upon recycling. Furthermore, both recycling and re-crafting requires enough machines to perform these operations fast enough, and room might be limited, especially on Fulgora. Therefore, simply recycling all items, while simple, is not ideal. This is even more true for batteries and processing units, which take sulfuric acid to re-craft.

When possible, it is often preferred to simply use the items emitted by scrap recycling directly. For that, there needs to be a way for these items to skip the recycling process when they are needed. This problem has a simple solution: Right before an item gets recycled, place a splitter, and connect its second output to wherever the item is needed. Make sure to set the splitter's priority output to that new belt; That way, items only get recycled when they are in excess.

Note that being able to craft more of these items might still be a good idea. For example, imagine a factory whose sole focus is to launch rockets. Two of the ingredients used in rocket parts, specifically processing units and low density structures, are among the direct results of scrap recycling. However, to rely on these exclusively will leave most other products of scrap recycling unused, even though some of them could be used to make even more processing units and low density structures.

= Getting rid of the excess =
Scrap recycling will never yield the exact distribution of items that players might need. With scrap recycling, this is a problem; Unlike on Nauvis, where having enough iron will simply pause iron production and nothing else, to pause production of one scrap recycling product is to pause scrap recycling altogether. In other words, if not every item produced by scrap recycling is consumed, then the belts will clobber, and scrap recycling is stopped from producing any items at all.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to use every item that scrap recycling produces. Some items have a limited set of applications that are not always relevant. Other times, you will need more of one item than another, causing an imbalance in what items are consumed.

When an item has no other uses, it may therefore be necessary to destroy it outright. There is a way to do this: When trying to recycle an item that has no recyclable recipe, a recycler will output the item itself with a 25% probability, leaving a 75% probability of destroying it. By looping the output of such a recycler back into itself, it is possible to completely destroy these items.

Be warned that scrap, while bountiful on some islands, is still a finite resource that can run out if wasted carelessly. And if all items produced by recycling have drains that simply destroy the items, it is possible to consume scrap even when the factory does not need it.

== Efficiently trashing excess ==

Some items produced directly or indirectly from scrap recycling have long crafting times. Especially bad is steel, which in an unmoduled recycler takes 2 seconds to recycle one steel, or 2.66 seconds in total considering the 25% chance of not destroying it.

Some of these slow-to-recycle products can be quickly crafted into other items at large numbers. Steel can be turned into steel chests at 20 steel per second inside an unmoduled normal yellow assembler. This can then in-turn be recycled back down to steel even more quickly due to the 16x recycling speedup. Considering the recycling yield, a yellow assembler without modules can handle 15 steel per second, and a recycler 96, compared to a recycler alone which handles 0.375 steel per second.

Some such shortcuts are (speed comparison assuming one assembler and recycler at crafting speeds 1.25 and 0.5):
* [[Steel]] to [[steel chest]] (40x speedup)
* [[Iron plate|Iron]] to [[iron chest]] (8x speedup)
* [[Concrete]] to [[hazard concrete]] (6.25x speedup)
* [[Stone]] to [[landfill]] (10.42x speedup), note that landfill is unrecyclable so needs to be looped back into the recycler not the assembler

[[Copper plate|Copper]] to [[copper cable]] is the same speed as direct recycling. Mixing in copper with steel at 2:1 to make [[heat pipe]]s is a 10x speedup, as long as enough steel is trashed together with the copper.

== Low-priority production ==
As an alternative to outright destroying the excess items, it may be possible to turn them into something that might be useful later, so that the items are not completely wasted. The point is not to make something that the player will need right away, as that is the job of the main production lines; Rather, it is to be seen as a bonus that players might want but do not need.

It should be noted that even these products will eventually fill up all storage and cause clobbering, meaning that destroying items might still become necessary in the long term.

High-quality items are a good candidate, as they take a lot of ingredients and are often nice to have without being outright necessary.

= Other tips and tricks =

== Recycling with quality modules ==
The recycler does not accept [[productivity module]]s. This is to prevent a net positive of items from being created when crafting and recycling items in a loop. However, this rejection of productivity modules in recyclers also applies to scrap recycling, even though there is no way to re-craft scrap from the results of recycling. In exchange, the game offers infinite research for increasing the productivity of scrap recycling, specifically. This all means that players are free to use a different kind of module, such as quality modules, without worrying about the loss of productivity.

Players may chose to place quality modules in their scrap recyclers and sort the items by quality, sending [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items to the main factory and using higher-quality items for a head start in quality manufacturing.

However, players should keep in mind that, much like productivity, quality modules benefit from long production chains, as it increases the number of chances for item quality to be increased. Even after sorting away all [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal items, only 10% of the remaining items will be [[File:Quality rare.png|15px|link=]]rare or higher, as the probability of skipping a quality tier will always be 10% regardless of modules.

It should also be noted that [[File:Quality uncommon.png|15px|link=]]uncommon or higher [[holmium ore]] is not actually better than [[File:Quality normal.png|15px|link=]]normal holmium ore, because its sole use is to be used as an ingredient for [[holmium solution]], which is a fluid and therefore erases the quality of the holmium ore.

Infobox:Landfill

2024-11-15T23:25:47Z

Redjard: Landfill is non-recyclable

{{Infobox
|image = landfill_tile.gif
|map-color = 382218
|prototype-type = tile
|internal-name = landfill
|stack-size = 100
|recipe = Time, 0.5 + Stone, 50
|category = Logistics
|producers = Assembling machine + Player
| required-technologies = Landfill
| extra1 = {{Translation|Used to build Grass}}
|recycling-results = Landfill, 0.25
}}<noinclude>[[Category:Infobox page]]</noinclude>

Recycler

2024-11-15T23:22:34Z

Redjard: /* Non-recyclable items */ Landfill is non-recyclable

{{Languages}}
{{:Infobox:Recycler}}
{{Stub}}
{{About/Space age}}

The '''recycler''' is a building that can convert most items into the ingredients used in their recipes, at the cost of losing 75% of said ingredients. In other words, it performs a lossy reversal of crafting.

It has 4 module slots, but it cannot use [[Productivity module]]s.

== Mechanics ==

When an item enters a recycler, the item's main recipe is found, and the recycler is automatically set to perform its inverse.

For each type of item used as an ingredient in the recycled item's main recipe, the number of items returned by the recycler is decided by <code>floor(0.25 * i / o + r)</code>, where <code>i</code> is the number of items used as ingredients, <code>o</code> is the number of items returned by the recipe, and <code>r</code> is a random number that is greater than or equal to 0 but less than 1. On average, this returns exactly 25% of the items needed to craft one item of the same type as the recycled item. For example, recycling a [[processing unit]] always gives 5 [[electronic circuit]]s while having a 50% chance of returning one [[advanced circuit]].

All fluid ingredients are lost when recycling, as the recycler has no fluid output.

Without quality modules, the resulting items have the same quality as the item being recycled, even if the latter was crafted using lower-quality ingredients. Quality modules can further increase the output's quality, just like with regular non-recycling recipes.

The recycler has 12 internal slots for its output, but can only hold one stack of each item. The recycler will try to eject the contents of these slots, much like a mining drill. It is therefore not necessary to use an inserter to collect its output.

=== Non-recyclable items ===
Some items, such as ores, have no recipe, and can therefore not be recycled. There are also some recipes that are irreversible, which include smelting and chemical processes.

When an item with no reversible recipe is "recycled", then the same item has a 25% chance of being returned, and a 75% chance of being destroyed instead. This can be used to destroy unwanted items, such as byproducts from [[scrap recycling]].

Irreversible recipes include (but may not be limited to):
* Recipes performed in furnaces or chemical plants
* Recipes for science packs
* Recipes for [[uranium fuel cell]]s
* Recipes for [[biolab]]s or [[captive biter spawner]]s
* Recipes for spoilable products
* [[Landfill]]

=== Unique recycling recipes ===

Some items have unique recycling recipes:

* Recycling [[scrap]] will perform the [[scrap recycling]] recipe, for which there is no inverse, as scrap can not be crafted. This is used to obtain most resources on [[Fulgora]].
* Recycling one [[nutrients]] will yield 2.5x that amount of [[spoilage]], as if they were made using the [[nutrients from spoilage]] recipe. This is useful for getting rid of excess nutrients, as they cannot be burned directly.

=== Stats ===

The recycling recipe for an item besides scrap takes time equal to 1/16th (0.0625) of the time it takes to craft that item. (Items without recipes, such as ore, are treated as having a crafting time of 0.5 seconds.) But because the recycler has a base crafting speed of 0.5, the time it takes one recycler to recycle one item is effectively 1/8th (0.125) of the item's crafting time without modules or beacons. For example, the time it takes to craft a [[steel plate]] in a [[stone furnace]] (which has a crafting speed of 1) is 16 seconds, and so recycling a steel plate takes 2 seconds. The following table provides some examples of how long it takes a recycler without modules or beacons to recycle one of that item, and the rate at which it recycles those items.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left !important;"
|-
! Recycler Input !! Time !! Rates
|-
| {{Imagelink|Processing unit}} || 1.25s || 0.8/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Advanced circuit}} || 0.75s || 1.33/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Low density structure}} || 1.875s || 0.533/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Steel plate}} || 2.0s || 0.5/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Copper plate}} || 0.4s || 2.5/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Iron plate}} || 0.4s || 2.5/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Iron ore}} || 0.0625s || 16/s
|-
|}

The scrap recycling recipe takes .2 seconds, meaning that it actually takes .4 seconds to run in a recycler, so a recycler takes in 2.5 scrap/s. The output rates are as follows:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Input || Output || Chance || Rate
|-
| rowspan="12" | {{Imagelink|Scrap|space-age=yes}}
| {{Imagelink|Processing unit}} || 2% || 0.05/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Advanced circuit}} || 3% || 0.075/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Low density structure}} || 1% || 0.025/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Solid fuel}} || 7% || 0.175/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Steel plate}} || 4% || 0.1/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Concrete}} || 6% || 0.15/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Battery}} || 4% || 0.1/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Ice|space-age=yes}} || 5% || 0.125/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Stone}} || 4% || 0.1/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Holmium ore|space-age=yes}} || 1% || 0.025/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Iron gear wheel}} || 20% || 0.5/s
|-
| {{Imagelink|Copper cable}} || 3% || 0.075/s
|}

In total, the recycler spits out 1.5 items/s, meaning 10 recyclers are just enough to saturate a yellow belt. The output values are increased by [[Scrap recycling productivity (research)|scrap recycling productivity research]].

== Trivia ==
* If the recycled item has a fluid ingredient, then the smoke emitted from the recycler matches the fluid in colour.

== Gallery ==
[[File:Fff-375-recycler-freezeframe.png|500px]]

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

== See also ==
* [[Quality]]{{SA}}

{{ProductionNav}}
{{C|Producers}}

Steam turbine

2024-11-15T04:59:29Z

Redjard: /* Power output */ unit fix

{{Languages}}
{{:Infobox:Steam turbine}}
The '''steam turbine''' consumes [[steam]] to create electric energy. It is usually used together with [[heat exchanger]]s and a [[nuclear reactor]].

While designed for the 500°C steam of a nuclear reactor, turbines can still be connected to [[boiler]]s for use in conventional 165°C steam power. At this mode, the steam turbine acts equal to two separate [[steam engine]]s, producing 1800 kW and consuming 60 steam/sec. However, actual power production is based on the temperature of the steam, not the building itself. This means that using a steam turbine is no more fuel-efficient than using two steam engines. Unless saving space within a large build, it is not necessary to use the more costly turbines for boiler steam.

== Power output ==

Each steam turbine takes a maximum input of 60 units of 500°C [[steam]] per second and outputs 5.82MW of electricity; the 5.8MW listed on the tooltip is rounded.

* [[Heat exchanger]] heats 15°C [[water]] to 500°C [[steam]];
* It takes 0.2 kJ of [[Fuel|burner]] energy to raise 1 water 1°C;
* Steam is consumed by steam turbines at a rate of 60 units per second;
* (500°C - 15°C) × 0.2 kJ × 60 units/s = 5820 kJ/s, or 5.82 MW.
* On the other hand, the calculation for the Boiler-generated steam is: (165°C - 15°C) × 0.2 kJ × 60 units/s = 1800 kJ/s, or 1.8 MW.

== History ==
{{history|0.18.18|
* Adjusted [[steam engine]] and turbine collision boxes so player can walk between two steam engines.}}

{{History|0.15.0|
* Introduced}}

== See also ==
* [[Power production#Nuclear power|Power production]]
* [[Heat pipe]]
* [https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/67xgge/nuclear_ratios/ Nuclear ratios]

{{ProductionNav}}
{{C|Energy}}

Steam turbine

2024-11-15T04:58:56Z

Redjard: /* Power output */ unit fix

{{Languages}}
{{:Infobox:Steam turbine}}
The '''steam turbine''' consumes [[steam]] to create electric energy. It is usually used together with [[heat exchanger]]s and a [[nuclear reactor]].

While designed for the 500°C steam of a nuclear reactor, turbines can still be connected to [[boiler]]s for use in conventional 165°C steam power. At this mode, the steam turbine acts equal to two separate [[steam engine]]s, producing 1800 kW and consuming 60 steam/sec. However, actual power production is based on the temperature of the steam, not the building itself. This means that using a steam turbine is no more fuel-efficient than using two steam engines. Unless saving space within a large build, it is not necessary to use the more costly turbines for boiler steam.

== Power output ==

Each steam turbine takes a maximum input of 60 units of 500°C [[steam]] per second and outputs 5.82MW of electricity; the 5.8MW listed on the tooltip is rounded.

* [[Heat exchanger]] heats 15°C [[water]] to 500°C [[steam]];
* It takes 0.2 kJ of [[Fuel|burner]] energy to raise 1 water 1°C;
* Steam is consumed by steam turbines at a rate of 60 units per second;
* (500°C - 15°C) × 0.2 kJ × 60 units/s = 5820 kJ/s, or 5.82 MW.
* On the other hand, the calculation for the Boiler-generated steam is: (165°C - 15°C) × 0.2 kJ × 60 units = 1800 kW, or 1.8 MW.

== History ==
{{history|0.18.18|
* Adjusted [[steam engine]] and turbine collision boxes so player can walk between two steam engines.}}

{{History|0.15.0|
* Introduced}}

== See also ==
* [[Power production#Nuclear power|Power production]]
* [[Heat pipe]]
* [https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/67xgge/nuclear_ratios/ Nuclear ratios]

{{ProductionNav}}
{{C|Energy}}

Quality

2024-11-10T03:22:42Z

Redjard: /* Optimal module usage */ reshuffle conditions to be more readable

{{Boilerplate
|icon=No-building-material-icon.png
|line-1=This article is a lacking sources for details of upcoming changes.
|line-2=You can help this wiki by [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} adding them].}}
{{About/Space age}}

'''Quality''' is a feature of the [[Space Age]] expansion. It introduces four higher quality levels for all items, structures and equipment with improved attributes. The goal of quality is to allow vertical factory upgrading as alternative to expansion in size. Items of higher quality are created by chance when using quality modules in the producing structure. The two highest quality tiers require technology not available on Nauvis. Different buildings and items can have different attributes that can be upgraded. When hovering over something, the attributes that will be upgraded with quality will be marked with a blue diamond in the tooltip.

While players are required to own Space Age to access this feature, quality is a separate mod, and can be activated independent of most Space Age content.

== Quality tiers ==
There are 5 quality tiers in vanilla gameplay, with tier strength in brackets:
* [[File:quality_normal.png|15px]] Normal (0)
* [[File:quality_uncommon.png|15px]] Uncommon (1)
* [[File:quality_rare.png|15px]] Rare (2)
* [[File:quality_epic.png|15px]] Epic (3)
* [[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]] Legendary ('''5''')

Note that legendary quality represents a 2-tier improvement over epic.

== Technologies ==
Certain tiers of quality cannot be created until they have been researched.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Research !! Base Game !! {{SA}} Space Age !! Unlocks
|-
| {{icontech|Quality module (research)|}} [[Quality module (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}} x 300
| {{icon|Time|30}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}} x 500
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Epic quality (research)|}} [[Epic quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Legendary quality (research)|}} [[Legendary quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Metallurgic science pack}}{{icon|Electromagnetic science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}}{{icon|Cryogenic science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]]
|-
|}

== Quality effects ==
The currently known effects of each level of quality are as follows:
* +30% health
* +30% energy output
* +30% crafting speed
* +30% robot limit (rounded down)
* +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
* +30% positive module effects (rounded down for at least quality modules)
* +10% turret range
* +1 tile reach for power poles
* +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
* Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
* Increased ammo damage (30%?)
* Faster inserters
* Reduced resource depletion on miners (likely multiplicative in effect with productivity)
* Larger capacity on accumulators
* Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
* Reduced power consumption on beacons
* Larger scan range on radars
* +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)

These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary (5 tier-levels) [[Productivity module 3]] (base +10% productivity) would grant 25% productivity.

Some buildings, such as [[Transport belt]]s and [[Wall]]s, only gain increased health.

== Creating high-quality items ==

There are two ways to create an item with above normal quality: The player must either use ingredient items of the same quality, or use quality modules for a random chance of a higher-quality item.

=== Quality ingredients ===
Recipes that create items have variations for each quality that the item might take. When setting such a recipe in a production unit, an ingredient quality must be selected. For these variations, the set of ingredients required is the same, except that all item ingredients must have the specified quality.

Item ingredient quality requirements are exact, not minimum. For example, one can not combine uncommon [[iron plate]]s with rare [[battery|batteries]] to make an [[accumulator]] of any quality. One must therefore ensure that high-quality items to not clobber belts and starve production units of lower-quality items.

As fluids do not possess any quality, they are exempt from ingredient quality requirements; The same [[lubricant]] can be used to create [[electric engine unit]]s of any quality.

=== Quality modules ===
[[File:quality_module_animated.png|64px|right]]'''Quality modules''' allow crafting machines to produce items of a higher quality than their ingredients. Each module adds 1%/2%/2.5% quality chance to a machine, depending on its tier.

When working out the odds of improving quality, a machine starts with the sum of the quality chance of all its modules. When the machine produces an item, it performs a random roll with that chance to succeed. If it succeeds, the product is upgraded 1 level from its ingredients. If the product was upgraded, the machine repeats this process, now with a constant 10% chance of passing, rolling and upgrading until a roll fails.

For 10% quality chance crafting recipe with all tiers unlocked, this gives the following odds:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Input !! [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] chance
|-
| [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.09% || 0.01%
|-
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] || - || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.1%
|-
| [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] || - || - || 90% || 9% || 1%
|-
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] || - || - || - || 90% || 10%
|-
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] || - || - || - || - || 100%
|}

For 24.8% quality chance (4x[[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]]Legendary [[quality module 3]]), the odds are instead:
* 75.2% Normal
* 22.32% Uncommon (24.8% Uncommon+)
* 2.232% Rare (2.48% Rare+)
* 0.2232% Epic (0.248% Epic+)
* 0.0248% Legendary

When using quality ingredients as an input, the base quality is the quality of the recipe. You can only use items with the same quality as input.

Quality modules are only required to ''improve'' quality, crafting will always give the base quality of the used items. Additionally, the odds of improving from a given base quality is the same as improving the same number of tiers from Normal quality.

==== Optimal module usage ====
When using [[Assembling machine 3]]s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a [[Recycler]] with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take productivity modules), the optimal number of quality and productivity modules is as follows:
* If the quality modules offer less than 15% chance (Normal and Uncommon [[Quality module|T1]], [[Quality module 2|T2]], and [[Quality module 3|T3]]s), use 4 quality modules
* If the quality modules offer 16% (Rare T3s) or 19% (Epic T3s), use 3 quality modules and 1 productivity module
* If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary T3s), use 2 of each module
* If the quality modules offer ''exactly'' 15% (Legendary T2s):
** When the base quality of the inputs is Epic, use 4 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is Rare, use 4 quality modules
*** Except when your productivity modules have more than +1.5% productivity use 3 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is Normal or Uncommon, use 3 quality modules

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

== Relevant Factorio Friday Facts ==
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375 FFF 375 - Quality]
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 FFF 376 - Research and Technology]

== Trivia ==
* Quality is not technically exclusive to player-made entities; Though this does not occur naturally, quality is also allowed on enemies, asteroids, and even the player character.
** Some enemies with qualities above normal can even be created in regular sandbox gameplay: Big biters, behemoth biters, and big premature wriggler pentapods born from spoiled [[biter egg]]s, [[captive biter spawner]]s, and [[pentapod egg]]s inherit the quality of the spoiled items, with the latter two being possible to craft with quality modules. Furthermore, a starved captured biter spawner will retain its quality upon converting into a hostile biter spawner, with said quality even being inherited by the biters that it will spawn. Should these biters chose to expand, they may also create quality spitters and worms.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

{{C|Main}}

Quality

2024-11-10T03:14:59Z

Redjard: /* Quality effects */

{{Boilerplate
|icon=No-building-material-icon.png
|line-1=This article is a lacking sources for details of upcoming changes.
|line-2=You can help this wiki by [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} adding them].}}
{{About/Space age}}

'''Quality''' is a feature of the [[Space Age]] expansion. It introduces four higher quality levels for all items, structures and equipment with improved attributes. The goal of quality is to allow vertical factory upgrading as alternative to expansion in size. Items of higher quality are created by chance when using quality modules in the producing structure. The two highest quality tiers require technology not available on Nauvis. Different buildings and items can have different attributes that can be upgraded. When hovering over something, the attributes that will be upgraded with quality will be marked with a blue diamond in the tooltip.

While players are required to own Space Age to access this feature, quality is a separate mod, and can be activated independent of most Space Age content.

== Quality tiers ==
There are 5 quality tiers in vanilla gameplay, with tier strength in brackets:
* [[File:quality_normal.png|15px]] Normal (0)
* [[File:quality_uncommon.png|15px]] Uncommon (1)
* [[File:quality_rare.png|15px]] Rare (2)
* [[File:quality_epic.png|15px]] Epic (3)
* [[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]] Legendary ('''5''')

Note that legendary quality represents a 2-tier improvement over epic.

== Technologies ==
Certain tiers of quality cannot be created until they have been researched.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Research !! Base Game !! {{SA}} Space Age !! Unlocks
|-
| {{icontech|Quality module (research)|}} [[Quality module (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}} x 300
| {{icon|Time|30}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}} x 500
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Epic quality (research)|}} [[Epic quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Legendary quality (research)|}} [[Legendary quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Metallurgic science pack}}{{icon|Electromagnetic science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}}{{icon|Cryogenic science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]]
|-
|}

== Quality effects ==
The currently known effects of each level of quality are as follows:
* +30% health
* +30% energy output
* +30% crafting speed
* +30% robot limit (rounded down)
* +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
* +30% positive module effects (rounded down for at least quality modules)
* +10% turret range
* +1 tile reach for power poles
* +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
* Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
* Increased ammo damage (30%?)
* Faster inserters
* Reduced resource depletion on miners (likely multiplicative in effect with productivity)
* Larger capacity on accumulators
* Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
* Reduced power consumption on beacons
* Larger scan range on radars
* +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)

These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary (5 tier-levels) [[Productivity module 3]] (base +10% productivity) would grant 25% productivity.

Some buildings, such as [[Transport belt]]s and [[Wall]]s, only gain increased health.

== Creating high-quality items ==

There are two ways to create an item with above normal quality: The player must either use ingredient items of the same quality, or use quality modules for a random chance of a higher-quality item.

=== Quality ingredients ===
Recipes that create items have variations for each quality that the item might take. When setting such a recipe in a production unit, an ingredient quality must be selected. For these variations, the set of ingredients required is the same, except that all item ingredients must have the specified quality.

Item ingredient quality requirements are exact, not minimum. For example, one can not combine uncommon [[iron plate]]s with rare [[battery|batteries]] to make an [[accumulator]] of any quality. One must therefore ensure that high-quality items to not clobber belts and starve production units of lower-quality items.

As fluids do not possess any quality, they are exempt from ingredient quality requirements; The same [[lubricant]] can be used to create [[electric engine unit]]s of any quality.

=== Quality modules ===
[[File:quality_module_animated.png|64px|right]]'''Quality modules''' allow crafting machines to produce items of a higher quality than their ingredients. Each module adds 1%/2%/2.5% quality chance to a machine, depending on its tier.

When working out the odds of improving quality, a machine starts with the sum of the quality chance of all its modules. When the machine produces an item, it performs a random roll with that chance to succeed. If it succeeds, the product is upgraded 1 level from its ingredients. If the product was upgraded, the machine repeats this process, now with a constant 10% chance of passing, rolling and upgrading until a roll fails.

For 10% quality chance crafting recipe with all tiers unlocked, this gives the following odds:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Input !! [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] chance
|-
| [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.09% || 0.01%
|-
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] || - || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.1%
|-
| [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] || - || - || 90% || 9% || 1%
|-
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] || - || - || - || 90% || 10%
|-
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] || - || - || - || - || 100%
|}

For 24.8% quality chance (4x[[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]]Legendary [[quality module 3]]), the odds are instead:
* 75.2% Normal
* 22.32% Uncommon (24.8% Uncommon+)
* 2.232% Rare (2.48% Rare+)
* 0.2232% Epic (0.248% Epic+)
* 0.0248% Legendary

When using quality ingredients as an input, the base quality is the quality of the recipe. You can only use items with the same quality as input.

Quality modules are only required to ''improve'' quality, crafting will always give the base quality of the used items. Additionally, the odds of improving from a given base quality is the same as improving the same number of tiers from Normal quality.

==== Optimal module usage ====
When using [[Assembling machine 3]]s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a [[Recycler]] with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take productivity modules), the optimal number of quality and productivity modules is as follows:
* If the quality modules offer less than 15% chance (Normal and Uncommon [[Quality module|T1]], [[Quality module 2|T2]], and [[Quality module 3|T3]]s), use 4 quality modules
* If the quality modules offer 16% (Rare T3s) or 19% (Epic T3s), use 3 quality modules and 1 productivity module
* If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary T3s), use 2 of each module
* If the quality modules offer ''exactly'' 15% (Legendary T2s):
** When the base quality of the inputs is Epic, use 4 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is ''not'' Epic, use 3 quality modules
*** If the productivity modules offer 1.5% or less and the base quality of the inputs is Rare, use 4 quality modules and not 3

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

== Relevant Factorio Friday Facts ==
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375 FFF 375 - Quality]
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 FFF 376 - Research and Technology]

== Trivia ==
* Quality is not technically exclusive to player-made entities; Though this does not occur naturally, quality is also allowed on enemies, asteroids, and even the player character.
** Some enemies with qualities above normal can even be created in regular sandbox gameplay: Big biters, behemoth biters, and big premature wriggler pentapods born from spoiled [[biter egg]]s, [[captive biter spawner]]s, and [[pentapod egg]]s inherit the quality of the spoiled items, with the latter two being possible to craft with quality modules. Furthermore, a starved captured biter spawner will retain its quality upon converting into a hostile biter spawner, with said quality even being inherited by the biters that it will spawn. Should these biters chose to expand, they may also create quality spitters and worms.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

{{C|Main}}

Quality

2024-11-10T03:13:55Z

Redjard: /* Quality tiers */

{{Boilerplate
|icon=No-building-material-icon.png
|line-1=This article is a lacking sources for details of upcoming changes.
|line-2=You can help this wiki by [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} adding them].}}
{{About/Space age}}

'''Quality''' is a feature of the [[Space Age]] expansion. It introduces four higher quality levels for all items, structures and equipment with improved attributes. The goal of quality is to allow vertical factory upgrading as alternative to expansion in size. Items of higher quality are created by chance when using quality modules in the producing structure. The two highest quality tiers require technology not available on Nauvis. Different buildings and items can have different attributes that can be upgraded. When hovering over something, the attributes that will be upgraded with quality will be marked with a blue diamond in the tooltip.

While players are required to own Space Age to access this feature, quality is a separate mod, and can be activated independent of most Space Age content.

== Quality tiers ==
There are 5 quality tiers in vanilla gameplay, with tier strength in brackets:
* [[File:quality_normal.png|15px]] Normal (0)
* [[File:quality_uncommon.png|15px]] Uncommon (1)
* [[File:quality_rare.png|15px]] Rare (2)
* [[File:quality_epic.png|15px]] Epic (3)
* [[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]] Legendary ('''5''')

Note that legendary quality represents a 2-tier improvement over epic.

== Technologies ==
Certain tiers of quality cannot be created until they have been researched.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Research !! Base Game !! {{SA}} Space Age !! Unlocks
|-
| {{icontech|Quality module (research)|}} [[Quality module (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}} x 300
| {{icon|Time|30}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}} x 500
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Epic quality (research)|}} [[Epic quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Legendary quality (research)|}} [[Legendary quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Metallurgic science pack}}{{icon|Electromagnetic science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}}{{icon|Cryogenic science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]]
|-
|}

== Quality effects ==
The currently known effects of each level of quality are as follows:
* +30% health
* +30% energy output
* +30% crafting speed
* +30% robot limit (rounded down)
* +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
* +30% positive module effects (rounded down for at least quality modules)
* +10% turret range
* +1 tile reach for power poles
* +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
* Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
* Increased ammo damage (30%?)
* Faster inserters
* Reduced resource depletion on miners (likely multiplicative in effect with productivity)
* Larger capacity on accumulators
* Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
* Reduced power consumption on beacons
* Larger scan range on radars
* +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)

These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary [[Productivity module 3]] would grant 25% productivity.

Some buildings, such as [[Transport belt]]s and [[Wall]]s, only gain increased health.

== Creating high-quality items ==

There are two ways to create an item with above normal quality: The player must either use ingredient items of the same quality, or use quality modules for a random chance of a higher-quality item.

=== Quality ingredients ===
Recipes that create items have variations for each quality that the item might take. When setting such a recipe in a production unit, an ingredient quality must be selected. For these variations, the set of ingredients required is the same, except that all item ingredients must have the specified quality.

Item ingredient quality requirements are exact, not minimum. For example, one can not combine uncommon [[iron plate]]s with rare [[battery|batteries]] to make an [[accumulator]] of any quality. One must therefore ensure that high-quality items to not clobber belts and starve production units of lower-quality items.

As fluids do not possess any quality, they are exempt from ingredient quality requirements; The same [[lubricant]] can be used to create [[electric engine unit]]s of any quality.

=== Quality modules ===
[[File:quality_module_animated.png|64px|right]]'''Quality modules''' allow crafting machines to produce items of a higher quality than their ingredients. Each module adds 1%/2%/2.5% quality chance to a machine, depending on its tier.

When working out the odds of improving quality, a machine starts with the sum of the quality chance of all its modules. When the machine produces an item, it performs a random roll with that chance to succeed. If it succeeds, the product is upgraded 1 level from its ingredients. If the product was upgraded, the machine repeats this process, now with a constant 10% chance of passing, rolling and upgrading until a roll fails.

For 10% quality chance crafting recipe with all tiers unlocked, this gives the following odds:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Input !! [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] chance
|-
| [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.09% || 0.01%
|-
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] || - || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.1%
|-
| [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] || - || - || 90% || 9% || 1%
|-
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] || - || - || - || 90% || 10%
|-
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] || - || - || - || - || 100%
|}

For 24.8% quality chance (4x[[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]]Legendary [[quality module 3]]), the odds are instead:
* 75.2% Normal
* 22.32% Uncommon (24.8% Uncommon+)
* 2.232% Rare (2.48% Rare+)
* 0.2232% Epic (0.248% Epic+)
* 0.0248% Legendary

When using quality ingredients as an input, the base quality is the quality of the recipe. You can only use items with the same quality as input.

Quality modules are only required to ''improve'' quality, crafting will always give the base quality of the used items. Additionally, the odds of improving from a given base quality is the same as improving the same number of tiers from Normal quality.

==== Optimal module usage ====
When using [[Assembling machine 3]]s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a [[Recycler]] with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take productivity modules), the optimal number of quality and productivity modules is as follows:
* If the quality modules offer less than 15% chance (Normal and Uncommon [[Quality module|T1]], [[Quality module 2|T2]], and [[Quality module 3|T3]]s), use 4 quality modules
* If the quality modules offer 16% (Rare T3s) or 19% (Epic T3s), use 3 quality modules and 1 productivity module
* If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary T3s), use 2 of each module
* If the quality modules offer ''exactly'' 15% (Legendary T2s):
** When the base quality of the inputs is Epic, use 4 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is ''not'' Epic, use 3 quality modules
*** If the productivity modules offer 1.5% or less and the base quality of the inputs is Rare, use 4 quality modules and not 3

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

== Relevant Factorio Friday Facts ==
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375 FFF 375 - Quality]
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 FFF 376 - Research and Technology]

== Trivia ==
* Quality is not technically exclusive to player-made entities; Though this does not occur naturally, quality is also allowed on enemies, asteroids, and even the player character.
** Some enemies with qualities above normal can even be created in regular sandbox gameplay: Big biters, behemoth biters, and big premature wriggler pentapods born from spoiled [[biter egg]]s, [[captive biter spawner]]s, and [[pentapod egg]]s inherit the quality of the spoiled items, with the latter two being possible to craft with quality modules. Furthermore, a starved captured biter spawner will retain its quality upon converting into a hostile biter spawner, with said quality even being inherited by the biters that it will spawn. Should these biters chose to expand, they may also create quality spitters and worms.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

{{C|Main}}

Quality

2024-11-10T03:12:50Z

Redjard: /* Quality tiers */ make legendary quality tier of 5 more visible

{{Boilerplate
|icon=No-building-material-icon.png
|line-1=This article is a lacking sources for details of upcoming changes.
|line-2=You can help this wiki by [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} adding them].}}
{{About/Space age}}

'''Quality''' is a feature of the [[Space Age]] expansion. It introduces four higher quality levels for all items, structures and equipment with improved attributes. The goal of quality is to allow vertical factory upgrading as alternative to expansion in size. Items of higher quality are created by chance when using quality modules in the producing structure. The two highest quality tiers require technology not available on Nauvis. Different buildings and items can have different attributes that can be upgraded. When hovering over something, the attributes that will be upgraded with quality will be marked with a blue diamond in the tooltip.

While players are required to own Space Age to access this feature, quality is a separate mod, and can be activated independent of most Space Age content.

== Quality tiers ==
There are 5 quality tiers in vanilla gameplay, with tier strength in brackets:
* [[File:quality_normal.png|15px]] Normal (0)
* [[File:quality_uncommon.png|15px]] Uncommon (1)
* [[File:quality_rare.png|15px]] Rare (2)
* [[File:quality_epic.png|15px]] Epic (3)
* [[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]] Legendary ('''5''')

== Technologies ==
Certain tiers of quality cannot be created until they have been researched.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Research !! Base Game !! {{SA}} Space Age !! Unlocks
|-
| {{icontech|Quality module (research)|}} [[Quality module (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}} x 300
| {{icon|Time|30}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}} x 500
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Epic quality (research)|}} [[Epic quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Legendary quality (research)|}} [[Legendary quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Metallurgic science pack}}{{icon|Electromagnetic science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}}{{icon|Cryogenic science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]]
|-
|}

== Quality effects ==
The currently known effects of each level of quality are as follows:
* +30% health
* +30% energy output
* +30% crafting speed
* +30% robot limit (rounded down)
* +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
* +30% positive module effects (rounded down for at least quality modules)
* +10% turret range
* +1 tile reach for power poles
* +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
* Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
* Increased ammo damage (30%?)
* Faster inserters
* Reduced resource depletion on miners (likely multiplicative in effect with productivity)
* Larger capacity on accumulators
* Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
* Reduced power consumption on beacons
* Larger scan range on radars
* +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)

These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary [[Productivity module 3]] would grant 25% productivity.

Some buildings, such as [[Transport belt]]s and [[Wall]]s, only gain increased health.

== Creating high-quality items ==

There are two ways to create an item with above normal quality: The player must either use ingredient items of the same quality, or use quality modules for a random chance of a higher-quality item.

=== Quality ingredients ===
Recipes that create items have variations for each quality that the item might take. When setting such a recipe in a production unit, an ingredient quality must be selected. For these variations, the set of ingredients required is the same, except that all item ingredients must have the specified quality.

Item ingredient quality requirements are exact, not minimum. For example, one can not combine uncommon [[iron plate]]s with rare [[battery|batteries]] to make an [[accumulator]] of any quality. One must therefore ensure that high-quality items to not clobber belts and starve production units of lower-quality items.

As fluids do not possess any quality, they are exempt from ingredient quality requirements; The same [[lubricant]] can be used to create [[electric engine unit]]s of any quality.

=== Quality modules ===
[[File:quality_module_animated.png|64px|right]]'''Quality modules''' allow crafting machines to produce items of a higher quality than their ingredients. Each module adds 1%/2%/2.5% quality chance to a machine, depending on its tier.

When working out the odds of improving quality, a machine starts with the sum of the quality chance of all its modules. When the machine produces an item, it performs a random roll with that chance to succeed. If it succeeds, the product is upgraded 1 level from its ingredients. If the product was upgraded, the machine repeats this process, now with a constant 10% chance of passing, rolling and upgrading until a roll fails.

For 10% quality chance crafting recipe with all tiers unlocked, this gives the following odds:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Input !! [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] chance
|-
| [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.09% || 0.01%
|-
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] || - || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.1%
|-
| [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] || - || - || 90% || 9% || 1%
|-
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] || - || - || - || 90% || 10%
|-
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] || - || - || - || - || 100%
|}

For 24.8% quality chance (4x[[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]]Legendary [[quality module 3]]), the odds are instead:
* 75.2% Normal
* 22.32% Uncommon (24.8% Uncommon+)
* 2.232% Rare (2.48% Rare+)
* 0.2232% Epic (0.248% Epic+)
* 0.0248% Legendary

When using quality ingredients as an input, the base quality is the quality of the recipe. You can only use items with the same quality as input.

Quality modules are only required to ''improve'' quality, crafting will always give the base quality of the used items. Additionally, the odds of improving from a given base quality is the same as improving the same number of tiers from Normal quality.

==== Optimal module usage ====
When using [[Assembling machine 3]]s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a [[Recycler]] with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take productivity modules), the optimal number of quality and productivity modules is as follows:
* If the quality modules offer less than 15% chance (Normal and Uncommon [[Quality module|T1]], [[Quality module 2|T2]], and [[Quality module 3|T3]]s), use 4 quality modules
* If the quality modules offer 16% (Rare T3s) or 19% (Epic T3s), use 3 quality modules and 1 productivity module
* If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary T3s), use 2 of each module
* If the quality modules offer ''exactly'' 15% (Legendary T2s):
** When the base quality of the inputs is Epic, use 4 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is ''not'' Epic, use 3 quality modules
*** If the productivity modules offer 1.5% or less and the base quality of the inputs is Rare, use 4 quality modules and not 3

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

== Relevant Factorio Friday Facts ==
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375 FFF 375 - Quality]
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 FFF 376 - Research and Technology]

== Trivia ==
* Quality is not technically exclusive to player-made entities; Though this does not occur naturally, quality is also allowed on enemies, asteroids, and even the player character.
** Some enemies with qualities above normal can even be created in regular sandbox gameplay: Big biters, behemoth biters, and big premature wriggler pentapods born from spoiled [[biter egg]]s, [[captive biter spawner]]s, and [[pentapod egg]]s inherit the quality of the spoiled items, with the latter two being possible to craft with quality modules. Furthermore, a starved captured biter spawner will retain its quality upon converting into a hostile biter spawner, with said quality even being inherited by the biters that it will spawn. Should these biters chose to expand, they may also create quality spitters and worms.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

{{C|Main}}

Quality

2024-11-10T03:11:48Z

Redjard: /* Quality effects */ rewording

{{Boilerplate
|icon=No-building-material-icon.png
|line-1=This article is a lacking sources for details of upcoming changes.
|line-2=You can help this wiki by [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} adding them].}}
{{About/Space age}}

'''Quality''' is a feature of the [[Space Age]] expansion. It introduces four higher quality levels for all items, structures and equipment with improved attributes. The goal of quality is to allow vertical factory upgrading as alternative to expansion in size. Items of higher quality are created by chance when using quality modules in the producing structure. The two highest quality tiers require technology not available on Nauvis. Different buildings and items can have different attributes that can be upgraded. When hovering over something, the attributes that will be upgraded with quality will be marked with a blue diamond in the tooltip.

While players are required to own Space Age to access this feature, quality is a separate mod, and can be activated independent of most Space Age content.

== Quality tiers ==
There are 5 quality tiers in vanilla gameplay, with tier strength in brackets:
* [[File:quality_normal.png|15px]] Normal (0)
* [[File:quality_uncommon.png|15px]] Uncommon (1)
* [[File:quality_rare.png|15px]] Rare (2)
* [[File:quality_epic.png|15px]] Epic (3)
* [[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]] Legendary (5)

== Technologies ==
Certain tiers of quality cannot be created until they have been researched.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Research !! Base Game !! {{SA}} Space Age !! Unlocks
|-
| {{icontech|Quality module (research)|}} [[Quality module (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}} x 300
| {{icon|Time|30}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}} x 500
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Epic quality (research)|}} [[Epic quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]]
|-
| {{icontech|Legendary quality (research)|}} [[Legendary quality (research)]]
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}} x 5000
| {{icon|Time|60}}{{icon|Automation science pack}}{{icon|Logistic science pack}}{{icon|Chemical science pack}}{{icon|Production science pack}}{{icon|Utility science pack}}{{icon|Space science pack}}{{icon|Metallurgic science pack}}{{icon|Electromagnetic science pack}}{{icon|Agricultural science pack}}{{icon|Cryogenic science pack}} x 5000
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]]
|-
|}

== Quality effects ==
The currently known effects of each level of quality are as follows:
* +30% health
* +30% energy output
* +30% crafting speed
* +30% robot limit (rounded down)
* +30% robot recharge rate (both number and speed, rounded down)
* +30% positive module effects (rounded down for at least quality modules)
* +10% turret range
* +1 tile reach for power poles
* +1 equipment grid size (both dimensions)
* Larger inventory (unknown boost size)
* Increased ammo damage (30%?)
* Faster inserters
* Reduced resource depletion on miners (likely multiplicative in effect with productivity)
* Larger capacity on accumulators
* Increased output rate on nuclear reactors, boilers, and steam engines/turbines
* Reduced power consumption on beacons
* Larger scan range on radars
* +100% durability on consumable items (repair packs, science packs)

These effects are per quality strength and additive, a Legendary [[Productivity module 3]] would grant 25% productivity.

Some buildings, such as [[Transport belt]]s and [[Wall]]s, only gain increased health.

== Creating high-quality items ==

There are two ways to create an item with above normal quality: The player must either use ingredient items of the same quality, or use quality modules for a random chance of a higher-quality item.

=== Quality ingredients ===
Recipes that create items have variations for each quality that the item might take. When setting such a recipe in a production unit, an ingredient quality must be selected. For these variations, the set of ingredients required is the same, except that all item ingredients must have the specified quality.

Item ingredient quality requirements are exact, not minimum. For example, one can not combine uncommon [[iron plate]]s with rare [[battery|batteries]] to make an [[accumulator]] of any quality. One must therefore ensure that high-quality items to not clobber belts and starve production units of lower-quality items.

As fluids do not possess any quality, they are exempt from ingredient quality requirements; The same [[lubricant]] can be used to create [[electric engine unit]]s of any quality.

=== Quality modules ===
[[File:quality_module_animated.png|64px|right]]'''Quality modules''' allow crafting machines to produce items of a higher quality than their ingredients. Each module adds 1%/2%/2.5% quality chance to a machine, depending on its tier.

When working out the odds of improving quality, a machine starts with the sum of the quality chance of all its modules. When the machine produces an item, it performs a random roll with that chance to succeed. If it succeeds, the product is upgraded 1 level from its ingredients. If the product was upgraded, the machine repeats this process, now with a constant 10% chance of passing, rolling and upgrading until a roll fails.

For 10% quality chance crafting recipe with all tiers unlocked, this gives the following odds:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Input !! [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] chance !! [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] chance
|-
| [[File:quality_normal.png|32px]] || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.09% || 0.01%
|-
| [[File:quality_uncommon.png|32px]] || - || 90% || 9% || 0.9% || 0.1%
|-
| [[File:quality_rare.png|32px]] || - || - || 90% || 9% || 1%
|-
| [[File:quality_epic.png|32px]] || - || - || - || 90% || 10%
|-
| [[File:quality_legendary.png|32px]] || - || - || - || - || 100%
|}

For 24.8% quality chance (4x[[File:quality_legendary.png|15px]]Legendary [[quality module 3]]), the odds are instead:
* 75.2% Normal
* 22.32% Uncommon (24.8% Uncommon+)
* 2.232% Rare (2.48% Rare+)
* 0.2232% Epic (0.248% Epic+)
* 0.0248% Legendary

When using quality ingredients as an input, the base quality is the quality of the recipe. You can only use items with the same quality as input.

Quality modules are only required to ''improve'' quality, crafting will always give the base quality of the used items. Additionally, the odds of improving from a given base quality is the same as improving the same number of tiers from Normal quality.

==== Optimal module usage ====
When using [[Assembling machine 3]]s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a [[Recycler]] with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take productivity modules), the optimal number of quality and productivity modules is as follows:
* If the quality modules offer less than 15% chance (Normal and Uncommon [[Quality module|T1]], [[Quality module 2|T2]], and [[Quality module 3|T3]]s), use 4 quality modules
* If the quality modules offer 16% (Rare T3s) or 19% (Epic T3s), use 3 quality modules and 1 productivity module
* If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary T3s), use 2 of each module
* If the quality modules offer ''exactly'' 15% (Legendary T2s):
** When the base quality of the inputs is Epic, use 4 quality modules
** When the base quality of the inputs is ''not'' Epic, use 3 quality modules
*** If the productivity modules offer 1.5% or less and the base quality of the inputs is Rare, use 4 quality modules and not 3

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

== Relevant Factorio Friday Facts ==
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375 FFF 375 - Quality]
* [https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 FFF 376 - Research and Technology]

== Trivia ==
* Quality is not technically exclusive to player-made entities; Though this does not occur naturally, quality is also allowed on enemies, asteroids, and even the player character.
** Some enemies with qualities above normal can even be created in regular sandbox gameplay: Big biters, behemoth biters, and big premature wriggler pentapods born from spoiled [[biter egg]]s, [[captive biter spawner]]s, and [[pentapod egg]]s inherit the quality of the spoiled items, with the latter two being possible to craft with quality modules. Furthermore, a starved captured biter spawner will retain its quality upon converting into a hostile biter spawner, with said quality even being inherited by the biters that it will spawn. Should these biters chose to expand, they may also create quality spitters and worms.

== History ==
{{history|2.0.7|
* Introduced in [[Space Age]]{{SA}} expansion.
}}

{{C|Main}}

Pipe

2024-11-08T03:03:37Z

Redjard: /* History */

{{Languages}}
{{:Infobox:Pipe}}

The '''pipe''' is the most basic method of distribution of fluids. It is commonly used to provide water from [[offshore pump]]s to [[boiler]]s and steam to [[steam engine]]s for power generation, and later on, [[crude oil]] and [[Oil processing|oil products]]. Unlike [[transport belts]], [[player]]s and [[enemies]] can't walk over them.

{| class="wikitable"
! Building !! Process !! Results
|-
| {{Imagelink|Assembling machine 1}}<br>{{Imagelink|Assembling machine 2}}<br>{{Imagelink|Assembling machine 3}} || {{Imagelink|Pipe}} || {{icon|Time|0.5}} + {{Icon|Iron plate|1}} → {{Icon|Pipe}}
|-
| {{Imagelink|Foundry|space-age=yes}} || {{imagelink|Casting pipe}} || {{icon|Time|1}} + {{icon|Molten iron|10}} → {{icon|Pipe}}
|}

The flow rate in pipes is heavily dependent on differences of fluid levels in individual segments, more complete information on handling fluids can be found on the [[fluid system]] page. Attempting to build a pipe that would potentially mix two liquids will fail, as the pipe won't be placed. However, fluids may be mixed in other ways, so pipes can contain multiple fluids. Undesired fluid can be flushed from the pipe system by opening the pipe GUI and clicking the trash button next to the fluid. Fluids that are flushed from pipes are deleted permanently.

== Gallery ==
<gallery heights=175px widths=273px>
File:pipe_mix_deny.gif||Failed attempt to mix fluids. <small>(Pre 2.0)</small>
File:Pipe_GUI.png|GUI of a pipe inside a fluid system containing mixed fluids.
File:pipes_placement_gui.png|The GUI of liquids going through pipes when ready to place more pipes.
</gallery>

== History ==

{{history|2.0.0|
* Pipes no longer follow a complex fluid flow algorithm, instead large chunks of pipe networks share a singular fill level, connections between which need to be made via pumps.}}

{{history|0.15.0|
* Increased stack size from 50 to 100.}}

{{history|0.13.0|
* Underground pipes and belts are placed at max connecting distance apart when built by dragging.}}

{{history|0.11.6|
* The Oil refinery and chemical plant are disconnected from pipes if the recipe is reset.}}

{{history|0.10.1|
* Added new icons}}

{{history|0.10.0|
* Unused pipe connections are passive and do not connect to pipes.}}

{{history|0.9.1|
* Pipes now refresh their connection to [[storage tank]]s when rotated.
* Small quantities of fluid can be pushed/destroyed by larger quantities in pipes.
}}

{{history|0.9.0|
* New graphics.
* All terminating pipes now have visuals.
* Pipes now show fluid inside when {{keybinding|ALT}} mode is enabled.
* Optimized bounding boxes.
}}

{{history|0.5.1|
* The [[boiler]] is now fast-replaceable with pipes, and vice versa.
* New graphics.
}}

{{history|0.2.0|
* Visualization of connection to a pipe to ground.}}

{{history|0.1.0|
* Introduced}}

== See also ==
* [[Pump]]
* [[Pipe to ground]]
* [[Fluid system]]

{{LogisticsNav}}
{{C|Energy and fluid distribution}}

Boiler

2024-11-08T02:57:08Z

Redjard: /* History */

{{Languages}}{{:Infobox:Boiler}}

The '''boiler''' is used to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. When [[fuel]]ed it converts feed water into steam at 165°C, matching the maximum temperature of the [[steam engine]]. Boilers have 2 water connectors, allowing them to pass water through to other adjacent equipment, but only 1 steam connector for output.

10 unit of steam is produced for each unit of water. A single unit of [[coal]] (4MJ) fed into a boiler and then utilised in a steam engine will result in 4MJ of energy added to an electrical system. It costs 30kJ energy to heat 1 unit of water to steam at 165°C, so one boiler will produce 60 steam per second.

[[Inserter]]s can insert and remove fuel from boilers. This allows to chain multiple boilers with inserters, each inserter taking fuel from one boiler and placing it into the next.

== History ==
{{History|2.0.0|
* Decreased water use by 10x, changing the water:steam ratio from 1:1 to 1:10.}}

{{history|0.15.10|
* Steam became a separate resource, boilers now produce steam rather than high temperature water that is displayed as steam
** This distinction is meaningful for circuit network accounting of steam and the [[coal liquefaction]] recipe}}

{{history|0.15.0|
* New graphics.
* Changed boiler dimensions to 3×2.
* 'Steam' is produced on a separate connector rather than heating water passed through.
** At this time, steam is actually water that is renamed when over 100 degrees.
* Significantly increased energy consumption/production.}}

{{history|0.13.0|
* New fire graphics for boilers.}}

{{history|0.9.2|
* Enabled the [[inserter]] to take [[fuel]] out of boilers.}}

{{history|0.8.0|
* Flickering light added to [[furnace]]s and boilers.}}

{{history|0.6.1|
* Boilers show their fuel inventory in the entity info.}}

{{history|0.5.1|
* Boilers are now fast-replaceable with pipes.
* New boiler graphics.
}}

{{history|0.1.0|
* Introduced}}

== See also ==
* [[Electric system]]
* [[Fluid system]]

{{ProductionNav}}
{{C|Energy}}

Steam

2024-11-08T02:54:45Z

Redjard: /* History */

{{Languages}}
{{:Infobox:Steam}}
'''Steam''' is a [[fluid system|gas]] created by heating water in a [[boiler]] or [[heat exchanger]]. After being distributed via [[pipe]]s, steam can be used to generate electricity via [[steam engine]]s and [[steam turbine]]s. Steam is also used in [[coal liquefaction]] in [[oil refinery|oil refineries]]. Since steam is a fluid, it can be stored in a [[storage tank]].

== Power generation ==
The amount of energy contained in steam is linearly proportional to its temperature (minus 15°C ambient temperature). The energy storage of steam is exactly ''200 Joule / unit / degree Celsius'', so for every degree increase in temperature of a single unit of fluid requires exactly 200 Joules.

In all cases, steam produced in boilers is 165°C and steam from heat exchangers is 500°C. This higher temperature equates to a higher energy density of the same number of units of steam, meaning: higher temperature, more energy per volume. Steam suffers no thermal losses sitting or flowing through [[pipe]]s or [[storage tank]]s, the energy put into water to create steam is the same amount of energy you get back out from it since both steam engines and turbines are 100% efficient.

For example, a storage tank that holds 25000 units of Steam at 165°C contains...
<pre style="width: 68%;padding-right: 0em;">(200 Joule / unit / Celsius) * 25000 units * (165°C-15°C) = 750 000 000 joules = 750 MJ </pre>

A storage tank holding 25000 units of Steam at 500°C thus contains 2.425 ''giga''joules of energy, a surprisingly large amount equal to 485 fully charged [[accumulator]]s!
(200 Joule / unit / Celsius) * 25000 units * (500°C-15°C) = 2 425 000 000 joules = 2.425 GJ

If the temperature of the steam is lower than the steam engine or turbine can handle, then the power output will be lower than optimal, but no energy will be wasted. However, if the temperature of the steam exceeds the maximum temperature of the steam engine or turbine, then the power output is capped at maximum, and the extra energy in the steam is wasted. Other than this difference, either steam engines or turbines can be used to generate power off of steam from any source.

== Trivia ==
* The fill meter on steam storage tanks fills from the top instead of from the bottom.
* Steam is the only non-liquid fluid in Factorio.
* Steam is the only fluid that cannot be stored in [[barrel]]s.

== History ==

{{history|2.0.0|
* Changed the water:steam ratio from 1:1 to 1:10 in all boilers.}}

{{history|0.15.10|
* Introduced as separate fluid. Previously it counted as Water, with a >100 temperature.}}

== See Also ==
* [[Fluid system]]
* [[Electric system]]
* [[Oil processing]]

{{IntermediateNav}}
{{C|Fluids}}

Heat exchanger

2024-11-08T02:52:51Z

Redjard: /* History */

{{Languages}}{{:Infobox:Heat exchanger}}
The '''heat exchanger''' exchanges heat between a heat connection and [[water]] to produce [[steam]].

Heat exchangers produce ~103 steam with a temperature of 500°C every second.

Heat exchangers will not produce steam until they reach 500°C. The steam produced is exactly 500°C hot, even if the exchanger is hotter. Heat exchangers have a heat capacity of 1 MJ/°C. Thus, they can buffer 500 MJ of heat energy across their working range of 500°C to 1000°C, and require 485 MJ of energy to warm up from 15°C to 500°C when initially placed.

== Calculating steam production rate ==

Heat exchangers produce 103 steam/second.This can be calculated by relying on [[steam turbine]] data: A steam turbine consumes 60 steam/second and produces 5.82MW (assuming 500°C steam). This means a single unit of 500°C steam has <code>5.82MW / (60/s) = 0.097 MJ</code> of energy. A heat exchanger produces 10 MJ a second, therefore it produces <code>10MJ / 0.097MJ = 103.0927835</code> steam per second.

The steam production rate can also be calculated using the energy consumption: 1 Heat exchanger consumes 10MW, so it's putting 10,000,000 joule of energy into heating water/steam per second. To heat up 1 unit of water 1 degree, 200 joules are needed, so the heat exchanger is heating up water by 50,000°C in total. But the water only gets heated up from 15°C to 500°C, so by 485°C. So the 50,000°C are enough to heat up 103 units of steam per second, since <code>50,000 / 485 = 103.09</code>. Since steam is produced from water in a 10:1 ratio, this also means that 10.3 units of water are consumed per second.

== History ==
{{History|2.0.0|
* Decreased water use by 10x, changing the water:steam ratio from 1:1 to 1:10.}}

{{History|0.17.67|
* Heat pipes (also in reactors and heat exchangers) glow with high temperatures.}}

{{History|0.15.0|
* Introduced
* Doubled the heat capacity of water from 0.1kJ per degree per liter to 0.2kJ}}

== See also ==
* [[Power production#Nuclear power|Nuclear power]]
* [[Steam turbine]]
* [[Nuclear reactor]]
* [[Heat pipe]]

{{ProductionNav}}
{{C|Energy}}

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:48:22Z

Redjard: /* Neighbor bonus */

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to about 10.3 units/second of water into about 103 units/second of 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying exactly 116.4 heat exchanger.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second, compared to the 120 steam/seconds two turbines can consume. The exact ratio, rounded up, is 1.718.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱N || 32 ⸱N || 0.275 ⸱N || 55.2 ⸱N || 320MW ⸱N || 160MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for exactly 1164MW of power or 116.4 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:47:25Z

Redjard: /* Heat exchanger */

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to about 10.3 units/second of water into about 103 units/second of 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying exactly 116.4 heat exchanger.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second, compared to the 120 steam/seconds two turbines can consume. The exact ratio, rounded up, is 1.718.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱N || 32 ⸱N || 0.275 ⸱N || 55.2 ⸱N || 320MW ⸱N || 160MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for 1165MW of power or about 116.5 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:41:45Z

Redjard: /* Heat exchanger */ new steam ratio means 10x more exchangers per water pump

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 10.3 units/second (maybe 10.309?) of water into 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying 116.5 (116.4) heat exchanger.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second, compared to the 120 steam/seconds two turbines can consume. The exact ratio, rounded up, is 1.718.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱N || 32 ⸱N || 0.275 ⸱N || 55.2 ⸱N || 320MW ⸱N || 160MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for 1165MW of power or about 116.5 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:34:40Z

Redjard: /* Notice */ remove pump change mentioned in 2.0 notice

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying 11.64 heat exchanger. The [[Fluid_system#Transport|Fluid System]] flow rate needs to be considered when supplying water to the heat exchangers.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second, compared to the 120 steam/seconds two turbines can consume. The exact ratio, rounded up, is 1.718.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱N || 32 ⸱N || 0.275 ⸱N || 55.2 ⸱N || 320MW ⸱N || 160MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for 1165MW of power or about 116.5 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:32:51Z

Redjard: /* Steam turbine */

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, 1 water pump is more than sufficient for even large reactor setups and it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying 11.64 heat exchanger. The [[Fluid_system#Transport|Fluid System]] flow rate needs to be considered when supplying water to the heat exchangers.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second, compared to the 120 steam/seconds two turbines can consume. The exact ratio, rounded up, is 1.718.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱N || 32 ⸱N || 0.275 ⸱N || 55.2 ⸱N || 320MW ⸱N || 160MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for 1165MW of power or about 116.5 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:25:55Z

Redjard: /* Neighbor bonus */ add limit for tilable designs

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, 1 water pump is more than sufficient for even large reactor setups and it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying 11.64 heat exchanger. The [[Fluid_system#Transport|Fluid System]] flow rate needs to be considered when supplying water to the heat exchangers.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|-
| 2×N || 2 ⸱N || 32 ⸱N || 0.275 ⸱N || 55.2 ⸱N || 320MW ⸱N || 160MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for 1165MW of power or about 116.5 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:19:27Z

Redjard: /* Heat pipes */ removed pipe speed comparison which no longer made sense in 2.0

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, 1 water pump is more than sufficient for even large reactor setups and it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying 11.64 heat exchanger. The [[Fluid_system#Transport|Fluid System]] flow rate needs to be considered when supplying water to the heat exchangers.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes, in contrast to regular pipes, is limited. Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for 1165MW of power or about 116.5 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2024-11-08T02:15:57Z

Redjard: /* Neighbor bonus */ Adjust water pump counts to new water-steam scaling in 2.0

{{Cleanup|This tutorial needs to be updated due to changes in Factorio 2.0. For example, 1 water pump is more than sufficient for even large reactor setups and it is now simple to automate nuclear power production control without any tanks since reactors can be wired directly to read their heat level.}}

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, you will need more than just an [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]]. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam. One water pump can maximally produce 1200 water/second, satisfying 11.64 heat exchanger. The [[Fluid_system#Transport|Fluid System]] flow rate needs to be considered when supplying water to the heat exchangers.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[steam turbine]] using normal [[pipe]]s.

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes is far more limited than regular pipes, in part because there is no analogous "Heat pump". Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~133
|-
| 80 MW || ~59
|-
| 120 MW || ~45
|-
| 160 MW || ~30
|-
| 240 MW || ~10
|-
| ~278 MW || 4
|-
| ~284 MW || 3
|-
| ~290 MW || 2
|-
| ~297 MW || 1
|-
| ~302 MW || 0
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

Throughput may also be thought of in terms of exchangers per pipe. Exchangers can be placed on one or both sides of a heat pipe. Laying two or more pipes in parallel can increase the distance heat travels.
{| class="wikitable" |-
! Parallel Pipes !! Exchangers on one side !! Exchangers on both sides
|-
| 1 || 21 || 31
|-
| 2 || 29 || 42
|-
|}

[[File:Heat_exchangers_per_pipe.png|800px]]

This picture also shows how distance between your heat source and heat exchangers will affect output. The last exchanger in a given row may not operate at full capacity.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Water pumps !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 1 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2×1 || 2 || 16 || 1 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2×2 || 4 || 48 || 1 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2×3 || 6 || 80 || 1 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2×4 || 8 || 112 || 1 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2×5 || 10 || 144 || 2 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|-
| 2×6 || 12 || 176 || 2 || 303 || 1760MW || 147MW
|-
| 2×7 || 14 || 208 || 2 || 358 || 2080MW || 149MW
|-
| 2×8 || 16 || 240 || 3 || 413 || 2400MW || 150MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power. One water pump can supply for 1165MW of power or about 116.5 exchangers.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each 10-pack of fuel cells, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Raw resource cost of running a single reactor (late game) ===

Water is free and infinite, so there are only two costs to run a Nuclear Reactor. One is the material cost for the buildings involved, and the other is the materials needed for the fuel cells. Since the building materials are only needed once, we will only consider the resources needed to produce enough fuel cells for a reactor to continously run. And we will do this computation for the late game by including Kovarex processing and the reprocessing of used fuel cells.

# 1 reactor uses 1 fuel cell every 200 seconds, which is 0.005 fuel cells per second
# To make 10 fuel cell the recipe uses 1 U235, 19 U238 and 10 Iron plate
# So 1 fuel cell costs 0.1 U235 + 1.9 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing the used fuel cells (1 used cell gives back 0.6 U238): 0.1 U235 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (where you get 1 U235 for 3 U238): 0.3 U238 + 1.3 U238 + 1 Iron plate = 1.6 U238 + 1 Iron plate#
# 1 fuel cell cost after reprocessing + Kovarex (measured in raw ore cost): 16 Uranium ore + 1 Iron ore

So '''to power 1 reactor continously with Kovarex enrichment you need''' 0.005 times the above ore cost, which is '''0.08 Uranium ore and 0.005 iron ore being mined every second'''. (Because a small fraction of U235 does not require Kovarex enrichment, the actual cost is marginally less, 0.0789 Uranium ore per second.)

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]