Fusion will have to be huge to compete with solar. All the fusion process to have a megabase running will have to be so minor on UPS for people to even consider it over solar. And that is if they don't add a second tier to solar panels and accumulators as well.
@@xanschneider I've never really made a megabase, so I might not fully grasp their scale or energy grids, but if we assume the Fusion plant is as big a jump from Fission to Fusion as Steam was to Nuclear, then you're making an *insane* amount of power with something of (maybe) minimal size I am also biased towards Fusion, as it's my favorite IRL energy source just for the sake of it being such a ludicrously powerful technology that is feasible within 100 years and we aren't doing everything we can to get it right now. Like applicable Fusion reactors would make energy having a *cost* be a foreign concept, it's like if were only using DC power until now with how much it would revolutionize electricity. I also like how anyone even slightly keyed into science implicitly knows this and wants Fusion, but just accepts that it's not getting enough funding no matter what we do. Same deal with Fission, really. Everyone who knows what they're talking about don't have the voice or the audience to make waves.
Nice, a new high quality Factorio creator. One thing you didn't mention in favor of Steam power. Instead of coal which you rightly point out needs a ridiculous amount of belts you can convert light oil into solid fuel which contains 12MJ vs 4MJ from coal, with liquefaction you can also convert coal into solid fuel. Even accounting for energy loses in the process coal into solid fuel is roughly twice as efficient.
You can actually run boilers off of nuclear fuel (not the fuel cells). Not nearly as efficient as fuel cells, but far better in terms of belt density than coal or solid fuel.
Oh dude nice! Now I don't have to build a million boxes with corresponding grabbers to store the blocks that I have to use in order for the oil processing then and there machines there connected to don't stop working because the belts are stopped from being too full
I feel like you kind of forgot to mention one very important part when comparing these three. Upfront cost. Producing 1.2GW of energy with Nuclear or even steam is way cheaper than as if you would produce the amount of solar panels and accumulators needed to match it. Solar, while having no drawbacks in terms of UPS and ease of construction, has a gigantic upfront cost in terms of entities needed to achieve a decent energy production.
It WAS brought up, just for some reason not factored into the final overview, despite being pretty important. This IS eased up by the fact that solar is very friendly towards being gradually transitioned into, meaning that upfront cost measured in millions of plates isn't *entirely* upfront, but I do feel like leaving it out of the final overview is a mistake.
You almost mentioned it but then didn't. Solar can be built gradually, not as in as your base grows, but as it replaces steam. It's relatively easy to separate your steam boilers from the rest of the network through a switch than turns on when accumulators are under X and turns off when they are over Y.
The coal requirements for steam power drops from ~15k to around ~7k if you use coal liquefaction to turn coal into oil products and produce solid fuel with the oil products, thus becoming about twice as efficient in terms of coal usage (or ~3k with productivity modules, or 5 times as efficient). The coal requirement to use rocket fuel is slightly lower than solid fuel, but only if you are using productivity modules in the rocket fuel assembling machines, still around ~3k, which can fit on 2 red belts. You could also use advanced oil processing to create the solid fuel, in which case you'd need ~55k oil (~30k with productivity modules). Producing rocket fuel with productivity modules instead of just solid fuel gets you just below 30k. Going for nuclear fuel you need ~850uranium ore (1 yellow belt) and ~2k oil or ~250 coal for your steam engines.
I thought they fixed a lot of the UPS issues with Nuclear.. can never get as good as solar for UPS of course but it's still the more interesting power producer to build.
I feel the nuclear reactor will be very efficient with a single pipe and heat pipe calculations, but you still have to mine and move all the uranium. So yes, for megabases nothing will beat solar. But nuclear will always have its place in difficult biter settings.
Incredible work man, factorio comunity needs these kind of content, structured, clear and concise. You should consider making a lets play series once the expansion drops.
I have a massive world going at the moment and I wanted to power my base with solar power and batteries, I have filled in oceans to cover in panels and accumulators. It takes 7 minutes to take my rocket fuel powered train from one end to the other and the only way I can realistically keep everything running is with a massive 100k drone network and a few dozen remote controlled spidertrons. Currently running at 28GW but still needs more power!
I usually add solar as soon as I unlock it to assist the steam engines during the day. But nuclear is my favourite to set up, I usually go for a 10 reactor design and I only use the steam when the accumulators drop under half full. Then I add solar and accumulators at infinitum to use the nuclear power only as a back up. Nuclear is by far the most fun and I always build and design it anew every game as it is a part of the game I enjoy the most.
My opinion: (Fusion?) > Nuclear > Solar > Steam. The space cost of Solar is a big factor to me at some point, because modules start to eat so much power that the space needed for solar becomes insane.
I play only deathworlds, so space is a valuable resource until late-game. I build steam only in early game, then move to nuclear. I build solar panels only for my artillery outposts that clear up space for my expansions, as they need to be 100% independent and they are usually deep into infested territory and they need to be still alive in case a power line to them is severed by biters.
@@AVADIIStrategy easier to just blueprint the outposts as stand-alone power-wise and they get on-demand other stuff via trains (like shells). I rarely have to go save a train that gets intercepted by biters.
if for any reason someone is watching this because they are playing space exploration and need the 2.4 GW output within 48 hours. I would recommend looking into the steam tank turbine battery, it takes like 4 hours setup though.
Before the first few rocket launches (and reliable artillery production), nuclear will always be king. This is because artillery hasn't kicked in yet, so biters are still a threat. While neither solar nor nuclear produce any significant pollution while running, the pollution created by setting up solar is going to attract way more attacks than the pollution from a nuclear reactor. The logistic requirements of nuclear are also trivial, as a single centrifuge fed by three miners can sustain one reactor continuously. With simple circuit logic to prevent fuel waste, this can be brought down even further. As long as you have space to store excess U-238, this is more than sufficient to reach artillery. Once a reliable source of artillery and flamethrowers trivialize biters and mass production of robots and roboports trivialize building, then solar wins out. The difference is still small though, as you need to reach truly staggering levels of production before fluid UPS actually becomes an issue.
Hi! Interesting strategy and thoughts. The Problem i see is: you have to research nuclear power before you can use it. It involves chemical science packs so it takes a while to get there which means you have to transition from steam to solar first anyway. Ignoring red & green science: 1000 chemical science packs are more expensive than 600 solar panels which will net you 36 MW of energy during the day.
36MW is just a one full stack of engines/boilers 40/20 on full load. Making power 24/7 with automatic output limiter if not loaded fully. You can also store steam. You can get to nuclear quicker than you think. And you always ommit accus. It's very ineffective when during day you have extra 36mw but at night half of your base stalls if you forgot to make/expand emergency coal/steam power plant to compensate for that.
I havent played Factorio, but have watched alot of videos about it. So correct me if im wrong. Dont Flamethrowers trivialize biters? From what ive seen the community agrees that Flamethrowers are OP
@@TaylorfromPapaLouieflamethrowers are pretty OP, but behemoths can still get through them if you haven't done many damage upgrades. they just don't use enough fuel to be balanced
@@TaylorfromPapaLouie yes for shure they do, but only when properly combined with other defence. Geneva Convention's violations take time to be effective when negotiating with locals so you need additional arguments in form of bright focused rays of quantum phisics phenomena and/or fast dispensers of little pellets with dense green shiny rocks. All of the arguments must be protected by layered walls preferably in form of dragon teeth and have ready a fleet of small flying assistants ready to support your arguments. This way you can withstand even the strongest march of protest against your absolutely non-violently invasive intentions, especially when you proactively apply a barrage of long range propaganda capsules against deeply located cells of protestors, they really don't like it.
Solar + Accumulators are really reliable, too. Solar has already long since been broken down to be producing about 42kW of power on average throughout the day+night, and building enough accumulators to sustain them isn't much of an issue anyway. When doing deathworld, I like to limit my entire production with an RS Latch. The factory turns off segments during night depending on power charge, allowing the pollution used to construct the solars to dissipate into the tiles. That's of course only one take. I do like to set up some nuclear before switching to solar. 480 MW of power with virtually no pollution and minimal UPS concerns is really great.
@@AVADIIStrategy I came up with the idea when doing a K2SE run only on solar and wind energy and core mining. RS Latch on core miners worked pretty well until I got my 3rd one. I needed hours of work to make enough accumulators to justify the costs. Then I came up with the idea to simply divide my factory into segments, and each segment would turn on/off depending on demand of certain resources. This didn't help that much, but it was still noticeable, especially on other planets where night would last 20+ minutes. This works actual wonders in deathworld for me. Only ammunition can operate 24/7, everything else is hooked up to a series of RS Latches and turns on/off depending on battery charge. Oil production stops when power drops below 80%, basic mall stops below 65%, smelteries turn off below 20%. Roboports were kind of tricky to set up, until I realized that with a well made grid, I can maximize the amount of cables input to the big poles, and they work separately just like ammo. This heavily reduced the pollution output, especially in desert starts.
I always swap from steam to solar in midgame to nuclear for mid game to late game then switch back to solar if I’m planning on megabasing. Nuclear is very cheap overall which makes it much easier to scale up space science production earlier since solar production won’t be eating into resource consumption and once a bunch of mining productivity researches have finished resource consumption and space become less of a concern so it becomes more practical to switch back to solar. Doing nuclear without logistic networks is too much of a pain for me to want to deal with though so it really is more of a bridge between a late game base and a megabase. One big point in favor of nuclear is how easy it is to scale up once you have production of fuel set up since the blueprints are fairly small so you can add entire giga watts to your production on a whim.
Exactly. The late game is not nuclear, is solar again. In most cases I either go straight for solar cause biters are a non factor on that particular run, or I go straight to nuclear without a single solar panel until I can afford to go full solar. But it all ends up in solar.
I usually build a solar nuclear hybrid. Solar on day and nuclear on night. So no need for accumulators, and it produced steam which can power outpost without pollution in compact way.
early game: steam..upto about 400 MW...800 MW if you're somehow struggling to get nuclear set up. mid game: nuclear. Upto about 4 GW...without much consequence in terms of UPS if built correctly. When your base is consuming about 2-3GW+, it's time to clear large swaths of area to place down large solar fields. Sure you can start plopping the solar builds down and skip nuclear altogether, but i found it's easier to have the nuclear set up to provide the power and RELIABILITY needed during the transitionary stage of the game.
I don't do megabases, so for me the choice is nuclear. It's not that space is precious as such, but since I don't do a megabase constantly churning out solar becomes a big resource drain to me. I usually jump straight from from coal burning to nuclear (even before kovarex), it's fairly cheap and has an incredibly small footprint. I start with a "small" 4x4 smart reactor, which is even worse for UPS, one setup that turns off the reactor and buffers steam. Once I go bigger with beacons and modules, I start production on a tileable reactor and put the smart reactor as a backup (with a power connector thingy and an accumulator on a set reset latch). While resource stop being an issue once you go big into beacons and modules, the space requirement for solar becomes even worse too. But as I said, I don't megabase. I can stay in a game for a long time and build fairly big, but never to the point of having UPS issues.
I absolutely love nuclear, it's just so cool. Which is why it bugs me so much that it's not feasible to run a huge base on it. I always go with solar for UPS reasons, because I always want to maximize SPM.
Off shore Solar Power Island anybody? Or am I the only one like this lol Also I enjoy converting a "depleted" oil rig into solid fuel for steam, it's pretty good once you have multiple oil pumping sites stockpiling at your base. I'm still trying to wrap my head around lossless nuclear power though, I don't like wasting my U238 😅 Anyways, here's a sub. Top Quality Content right here!
@@AVADIIStrategy True lol beacons and modules are great for breathing life back into the pumps. But often forget to bother by the time I have them lol. I have converted a few into "decoys" however, by surrounding them in flame thrower turrets and increasing pollution on purpose by them to lure biters away, at least until I've got artillery to deal with them.
Doesn't factor costs into the final result and doesn't factor difficulty to actually build into final result. I tried doing all solar and it was a nightmare. The vast majority of my base was solar panels and blackouts were common. Not enough resources to create panels/accum, not enough resources to expand the walls to place them, not enough power to place the walls, panels, and remove the forests with bots. It was SLOW. Then I switched to Nuclear and 1 compact little reactor made more than all of my solar panels.
I'm not sure if you factored for this already, but your example relies on a specific measurement of output, and solar needs more output to match the others, because you have to both power your base and charge batteries enough to power your base through the night. For example, if night lasted as long as day(I think it doesn't), you'd need double the amount of solar panels.
I assumed he accounted for that but a good question if he really did it's easy to forget about. But also Factorio nights aren't as long as the days. In fact dawn dusk and night added together equal the length of the day so you don't need to double solar cells to cover the night but you do need a decent amount extra
the ratio he mentioned factors in how many solar panels you need to charge during the day that being said, with space exploration you need to consider the daytime/nighttime ratio of the planets, though there are more means of getting power in space exploration
I usually go with Coal in the beginning, after automating green science I start adding solar to ease the demand on coal during night (1 boiler 4 engines and a tank). After blue science I faze out coal by adding more solar and building accumulators. This last until first rocket launch and then I maybe add nuclear power if I want to.
I always put my steam on an S/R latch so once solar or nuclear go live it will idle unless I over draw those sources. Helps to have a 100-200MW backup for when the "factory must grow" beyond what I have the power for.
if you switch to solid fuel, the steam generator will be uninterrupted. in the future it can be replaced with steam turbines. provided there is enough oil to produce fuel
This is all very informative and enlightening... buuuut I'm still gonna stick with mostly steam with the odd bit of solar and nuclear here and there because I'm bad at the game, but just good enough at it (or maybe stubborn enough) to have fun regardless of my inefficient practices... like not using blueprints despite them being infinitely more usable and convenient then just kinda eyeballing it and guessing.
I never do solar, by the time you made enough solar panels i already have more than enough nuclear going, its just better, more green and more powerfull!
For me it's usually the other way around. By the time I get to nuclear I have so many solar panels that I don't even need it. I do tend to play with large science multipliers though.
Non-casual reminder for beginers. Yes in long run solar will payoff. But when people say that green energy does no pollution (also IRL) they tend to showe under the rug the fact that in order to create that crazy amount of solars and accus per 1GW your pollution impact in terms of evolution factor (and resource draw) can be quite significant just for producing enogh to sustain ever growing power demand if you don't want to spend 65+ hrs just for making panels/accus on a single assembler, and you will be needed much more power for your factory in that time. You still need mine and process 2kk of raw resources. Also i dont see sulfur/oil calculations included (as well as all the rest of iron and copper) for 20k accus, they are a thing and can easily dry your oil low (yes, its technically infinite but you still need infractructure capable of fulfilling the demand) and whitout them solar is almost useless if dont want to run your factory only half-time. Also power poles and/or substations quickly grows from hundreds to thousands. Also solar eats SPACE when going BIG and require clearing of lots of biter's nests proactively and account for military expenses for securing ever growing perimeter. Exept ofc when you play without them, and if you plan to go megabase, why would you even play with them on in the first place? You go big solar only in late game and only for megabases as a substitute for nuclear when you can afford to dry out ore patches just for solar panels and accus production constantly. All of this is to warn new players that when they hear that solar is the king they tend to go full solar the moment the tech is researched and can end up in a shitty situation when they ran out of starting ore patches, evo factor is enormous but base is not quite advanced and defense/military is insufficient and base constantly chewed by biters due to pollution created by solar/accus producing infrastructure (what an irony). And they can not expand cause they are low on resources, can't defence, can't progress. This negative feedback loop can ruin your first runs pretty easily.
You make a good point about the accumulators, that's why I am rather fond of using a hybrid solution I found in a reddit post about using steam tanks instead of accumulators. You can basically supply 6MW of constant power in a ratio of about 100 solar panels : 1 boiler : 7 steam engines : 1 steam tank. That allows for up to 70% of your energy consumption to be satisfied by solar, while the boilers top up the steam tanks for night time. That cuts down on coal consumption, requires no oil and is available at green science. Solar panels still require a heavy resource and production investment, though.
I prefer using a hybrid of solar and a circuit controlled nuclear with a steam battery. Solar is at the top of the power hiarchy while accumulators are at the bottom. So naturally turbines will kick in at night before accumulators are drawn from. By setting the inserters for nuclear fuel to only operate when the steam battery is under a certain level you can reduce the nuclear fuel drain to nearly nothing.
@@simonnachreiner8380 that's the whole point. Use multiple systems to cover each other's flaws. Instead of crowning solar only and calling it a day, heck I even use sometimes or in some runs a super emergency steam engines stack with emergency supply of fuel to kickstart my water pumps (SE feature) and inserters if I f-ked up with power draw or to keep my defence grid (I use separatable grids with automatic power draw adjustment) sustainable for a brief moment if I'm overwhelmed by biter's retaliation strike.
Solid video, but I feel like you should've factored in the expense aspect of things more; while solar being extremely friendly to gradual integration does offset this, it *is* significantly more expensive than steam or nuclear, by two whole orders of magnitude. The sheer volume of components also makes the crafting and setup time much, much slower in comparison. (Particularly for newer players these are both VERY relevant factors, as I've run personally aground of problems caused by both on multiple occasions.)
I did calculate the raw materials for 1 GW of solar energy didn't i? I still believe it's no big deal. Just researching nuclear power is more expensive than setting up ~40 MW solar. For solar you don't even need blue science (where new players struggle a lot). There are even more pros that the video didn't cover because it's short and condensed: e.g. accumulators provide huge amounts of burst/peak energy which is very useful if defending with lasers.
I always go solar because of the way i approach power in factorio that is to say i want to spend as little time thinking about power as possible.It took me 3 worlds before i finally caved in and gave nuclear a shot.Ill admit it was kinda fun to setup but its just such a hassle.Every time i need to increase production id have to completely deconstruct it and rebuild a new one to accommodate for the extra few reactors plus constantly make more steel chests to fill with the useless uranium.While I definitely had fun designing a nuclear power plant im definitely sticking with solar.I just wanna slap down 50 bajillion blueprints and go back to pretending its not part of the game.
This was a good video, which will hopefully teach many new players what power source would be useful, when and where. But there is one thing that I feel you might have forgotten or overlooked: Steam engines can run on all fuels, except uranium fuel cells ofc, and aren't locked into using coal only. Maybe you could make an updated version of this, once the 2.0 update has dropped. I'm sure that will attract a fair few people to Factorio, who probably want and need Videos just like this.
as for the UPS, now we have the new fluid system so maybe it should be reviewed. solar will always be the top since it has no updating cost but i do think that with the new fluid system the other two will cost significantly less updates and may even be ignorable.
@@AVADIIStrategy the timing i myself use them could always be steam -> nuclear -> solar (or never solar). TLDR; there could be another facet to put into consideration, the cost to figure out how to make them work at a certain scale and to put them donw. i think for real endgame, when space and safety is no longer an issue, solar panels surely is the final answer. just plan a block with robot port in it and paste it all the way down, it will be taken care of. but it is quite slow. putting them down by robot takes time, manually doing that not only takes time but also is a pain in the xxx. so it is only an option when we reach the point we don't need to worry about space and bugs, and don't go around putting things down by ourselves. after the steam stage, normally a boost in power supply is desired. nuclear power takes much more work to understand and plan, not only the power setup but also the forehead resource production. but once it's done and you cameup with a tileable solution, the time performance on expanding it will be the highest. just put some more 4~8 reactor sets down and power supply will not be the problem for a long time.
Not bad. I know nuclear is decent because uranium is so prevalent, but i never went for it most games. Im in the middle of a 100x research cost krastorio2 run, and i rushed solar because of the scaling and pollution control.
Question, the space needed does require more wall defenses due to biters still being a problem thus even if solar is really good a nuclear reactor would be pretty good to for before really being able to have a reliable mega-base or are there ways to make this not an issue?
That's true. But unless you change size of ore patches / richness in your map settings (or maybe railworld?) you need to expand your base anyway. I was never in a situation where i need to expand my base to make room for solar energy.
i personally prefer nuclear, but thats because my largest base was in the 200 spm range. of course framerate becomes a concern eventually (key word eventually, ive seen 10 GW draw bases run entirely by nuclear only just beginning to dip slightly, but ive never built that scale and cant rly say), but for a more casual player like me the fact 1 reactor that fits in 6 chunks can do the same work that 300 chunks of solar can makes it a no brainer, especially with how much cheaper it is (i feel that pollution count for solar is a bit misleading since you need so many more resources to build solar that the iron and copper spent starts having a pollution impact on the production chain). I still produce solar panels and use them over steam engines while working towards nuclear, but the sheer space they demand is kind of impractical after the 30-50 MW range for me until endgame military science lets you claim land easily (and even then landfill can be a nightmare) this is all from the perspective of someone who tends to replay the whole game with friends im introducing to the game over developing large megabases though
The problem with taking pollution from material production into account is that it differs from player to player. With full efficiency modules everywhere it's not that big of a deal. But some other player maybe runs prod modules and emits 10x pollution.
@@AVADIIStrategy yeah for sure, it varies wildly, but its still a sizable amount more than the other power sources material requirments and is worth keeping in mind.
Nuclear all the way, it's so much cheaper and easier then solar, especially with biters on, since then you need to clear massive amounts of space to use solar and build massive walls.
Solar energy is best. But it takes 2-10 times the space of the rest of your factory. Nuclear, as hard as it is, is increadably energie dense. Boilers meanwhile, as bad polution and efficiency they are, are redicukously easy, and can be built no matter the place or time, cause fuel is everywhere in one way or another. Finally theres fusion.... Or will be... From what Ive seen, Fusion is going to be the most energy dense and require the least fuel imput yet. But its complexity for fuel creation, pipeless setip, and heat management makes it the hardest by far.
Steam early game. Solar mid game. Nuclear late game. Often not needing nuclear. I will let solar run until the chests are full. That way if we ever run into a power issue, I can stamp down a lot of megawatts of power.
This is the second time I see this, and it's completely wrong. Solar is the late game option since UPS is the only true limiting factor of the game. You start with steam, then you might use solar a bit, but in the mid game the cost and space (assuming there are biters) will be the limiting factor, making nuclear a must in dire biter settings. Once you get to the late game research gets you over all your problems but one, UPS. You have resources to spare, clear the world of biters. For most the game ends there and that's why you might call it the late game, but for megabases you are not even halfway through. Eventually you can't afford the ups to even have a backup, it has to be 100% solar.
@@xanschneidersure, It’s just a lot of work clearing those mega biter bases in the late game with artillery and spider Tron to make enough room for solar when you are trying to power beacons. On my mega base, I tried to do solar in the north and expand down south for power. Typically, I am playing weekly reset servers so UPS is not a major consideration as the map gets reset every Friday.
I get the jist of being a nuclear fan, but it would be way more interesting if you actually included the underlying cost of getting to nuclear. Tech cost is wildly higher as well as the necessity of significantly higher underlying infrastructure and while those are variable, just saying nuclear is cheaper because the particular setup you used requires less materials doesn't make sense.
I build 1 GW of steam power just for this video and got 1 or 2 headaches doing it. It's actually a lot of work for just 1 GW because of the fuel supply and water pumps/pipes. The small kovarex setup you briefly see in the video is actually feeding 2 of my 8 core reactors (it coul probably support 4-6) and it's simple and doesn't need much uranium. That's why i think fuel supply for nuclear is a Pro.
Works well. Unfortunately you still have to construct the same amount of boilers/steam engines. So i don't think it's worth it. Building 1 GW of steam power for this video gave me a huge headache ;)
Solar should win in reliability. It will ALWAYS work every day. If you by some miracle royally screw up and run out of Uranium-235 without noticing? It's literally impossible to start it back up by hand. Extremely low risk but an extremely bad outcome.
The issue with solar is that it's possible to run out of electricity during nights if you fail to keep up with your bases demand. If you defend with lasers you're totally screwed and biters will destroy parts of your base. This will never happen with nuclear because even if you produce less energy than required: lasers have energy priority over other entities so they will always be able to defend your base with the full amount of nuclear energy.
so I've got about 200 hours into the game with a decent early late-game base going. I genuinely don't see any use for efficiency modules especially if you use nuclear or solar for power as the decrease in electricity doesn't decrease any pollution and the main energy drain is beacons which aren't effected by other efficiency modules. Do you know any good uses?
pollution production of machinery is proportional to its energy consumption, at least according to the wiki. so using green modules will reduce pollution.
if you are still using steam power, the reduced power consumption means the boilers have to run less, resulting in a lot less pollution. miners also produce a ton of pollution that gets massively reduced by efficiency modules they are good when biters are a threat, because they reduce the size and frequency attacks, and slow evolution. but with the nature of factorio you eventually reach a point where biters are no longer a threat. they are great early game, but they currently have no significant uses late game. this may be changing in 2.0 (situationaly , at least)
Did you play deathworld though? In a normal default run i agree with you but on deathworlds it's very very useful to use efficiency modules. And yes it does decrease pollution proportional to the decrease in electricity. And to your question: "why would you play with biters when planning a megabse?" - Because it is fun ;)!
It is noteworthy to point out when people are saying the pollution of a machine is proportional to it's energy consumption, they don't mean the pollution caused by your means of electric energy production, they mean the pollution the machine itself emits: An electric mining drill produces 10 pollution per minute (you can see that in the crafting menu or by hovering over them). Fill it with three efficiency modules 1 to reduce the energy consumption by 80%, and you can see it decrease to 2 pollution per minute. Filling it with three speed modules 1 increases energy consumption by 150% and it now produces 25 pollution per minute. So filling 10 mining drills with speed modules 1 will net you the ore production of 16 mining drills while producing the pollution of 25 mining drills. That's before considering the pollution of your energy production, and it applies to miners, pump jacks, assembling machines, furnaces etc.
@@ecogreen123 LOL! You are right. I have no idea how it got there. But based on some older savegames it was sitting there for at least 50 hours of playtime.
No fusion? Come on man. We're in the space age now! 🤣
Jokes aside, great video!
We’re gonna enter the space age by late October, then you’ll get your fusion reactor (cf latest post on the factorio blog)
UPS impact of fluid for nuclear should be negated too, which will help a lot for megabases
Fusion will have to be huge to compete with solar. All the fusion process to have a megabase running will have to be so minor on UPS for people to even consider it over solar. And that is if they don't add a second tier to solar panels and accumulators as well.
@@xanschneider I've never really made a megabase, so I might not fully grasp their scale or energy grids, but if we assume the Fusion plant is as big a jump from Fission to Fusion as Steam was to Nuclear, then you're making an *insane* amount of power with something of (maybe) minimal size
I am also biased towards Fusion, as it's my favorite IRL energy source just for the sake of it being such a ludicrously powerful technology that is feasible within 100 years and we aren't doing everything we can to get it right now.
Like applicable Fusion reactors would make energy having a *cost* be a foreign concept, it's like if were only using DC power until now with how much it would revolutionize electricity.
I also like how anyone even slightly keyed into science implicitly knows this and wants Fusion, but just accepts that it's not getting enough funding no matter what we do.
Same deal with Fission, really. Everyone who knows what they're talking about don't have the voice or the audience to make waves.
What the hell is the comment bro youre so old go home to your wife wheres your family bro
Nice, a new high quality Factorio creator. One thing you didn't mention in favor of Steam power. Instead of coal which you rightly point out needs a ridiculous amount of belts you can convert light oil into solid fuel which contains 12MJ vs 4MJ from coal, with liquefaction you can also convert coal into solid fuel. Even accounting for energy loses in the process coal into solid fuel is roughly twice as efficient.
You can actually run boilers off of nuclear fuel (not the fuel cells). Not nearly as efficient as fuel cells, but far better in terms of belt density than coal or solid fuel.
Baby's nuclear reactor
@@pyroavatar9251 we have nuclear reactor at home xD
Oh dude nice! Now I don't have to build a million boxes with corresponding grabbers to store the blocks that I have to use in order for the oil processing then and there machines there connected to don't stop working because the belts are stopped from being too full
I feel like you kind of forgot to mention one very important part when comparing these three. Upfront cost. Producing 1.2GW of energy with Nuclear or even steam is way cheaper than as if you would produce the amount of solar panels and accumulators needed to match it. Solar, while having no drawbacks in terms of UPS and ease of construction, has a gigantic upfront cost in terms of entities needed to achieve a decent energy production.
It WAS brought up, just for some reason not factored into the final overview, despite being pretty important. This IS eased up by the fact that solar is very friendly towards being gradually transitioned into, meaning that upfront cost measured in millions of plates isn't *entirely* upfront, but I do feel like leaving it out of the final overview is a mistake.
I’m team nuclear all the way. I do recognize the strengths of solar builds, I just choose not to use them because shiny candy rock go brrrr
I made a mod that makes nuclear way more expensive, because I love it and want it to be more challenging lol
Why spend hundreds of thousands of resources to get 1GW from solar when you can just setup nuclear for a few thousand resources
@@Isuckatgames2too because while solar has a large initial investment, the power is free forever after that
Combustion generators, generate electricity by burning light fuel, heavy fuel and natural gas
@@pilopuha they also aren't in vanilla
Your a new factorio channel. and your already making the top quality videos. NICE
Thank you!
You almost mentioned it but then didn't. Solar can be built gradually, not as in as your base grows, but as it replaces steam. It's relatively easy to separate your steam boilers from the rest of the network through a switch than turns on when accumulators are under X and turns off when they are over Y.
correct, and that's where you burn all those TONS and TONS of wood lol
The coal requirements for steam power drops from ~15k to around ~7k if you use coal liquefaction to turn coal into oil products and produce solid fuel with the oil products, thus becoming about twice as efficient in terms of coal usage (or ~3k with productivity modules, or 5 times as efficient).
The coal requirement to use rocket fuel is slightly lower than solid fuel, but only if you are using productivity modules in the rocket fuel assembling machines, still around ~3k, which can fit on 2 red belts.
You could also use advanced oil processing to create the solid fuel, in which case you'd need ~55k oil (~30k with productivity modules). Producing rocket fuel with productivity modules instead of just solid fuel gets you just below 30k.
Going for nuclear fuel you need ~850uranium ore (1 yellow belt) and ~2k oil or ~250 coal for your steam engines.
I thought they fixed a lot of the UPS issues with Nuclear.. can never get as good as solar for UPS of course but it's still the more interesting power producer to build.
Just needed a single long piece heat pipe that counts as a single building, too many pipe to pipe calculations.
the major fixes are gonna come in 2.0 and will likely make nuclear better, but not as UPS efficient as solar though
I feel the nuclear reactor will be very efficient with a single pipe and heat pipe calculations, but you still have to mine and move all the uranium. So yes, for megabases nothing will beat solar. But nuclear will always have its place in difficult biter settings.
Incredible work man, factorio comunity needs these kind of content, structured, clear and concise. You should consider making a lets play series once the expansion drops.
Found this channel thru your live stream. Good quality video, keep 'em coming!
Thank you!
I have a massive world going at the moment and I wanted to power my base with solar power and batteries, I have filled in oceans to cover in panels and accumulators. It takes 7 minutes to take my rocket fuel powered train from one end to the other and the only way I can realistically keep everything running is with a massive 100k drone network and a few dozen remote controlled spidertrons. Currently running at 28GW but still needs more power!
I usually add solar as soon as I unlock it to assist the steam engines during the day. But nuclear is my favourite to set up, I usually go for a 10 reactor design and I only use the steam when the accumulators drop under half full. Then I add solar and accumulators at infinitum to use the nuclear power only as a back up. Nuclear is by far the most fun and I always build and design it anew every game as it is a part of the game I enjoy the most.
My opinion: (Fusion?) > Nuclear > Solar > Steam.
The space cost of Solar is a big factor to me at some point, because modules start to eat so much power that the space needed for solar becomes insane.
Eventually it all comes down to UPS. That's why solar is always the late game only option. If UPS is not a problem, you are not at the late game yet.
I play only deathworlds, so space is a valuable resource until late-game. I build steam only in early game, then move to nuclear. I build solar panels only for my artillery outposts that clear up space for my expansions, as they need to be 100% independent and they are usually deep into infested territory and they need to be still alive in case a power line to them is severed by biters.
Interesting. I like to rush solar even in deathworlds. Never building more than 4 boilers.
What about defending power lines with lasers?
@@AVADIIStrategy easier to just blueprint the outposts as stand-alone power-wise and they get on-demand other stuff via trains (like shells). I rarely have to go save a train that gets intercepted by biters.
if for any reason someone is watching this because they are playing space exploration and need the 2.4 GW output within 48 hours. I would recommend looking into the steam tank turbine battery, it takes like 4 hours setup though.
Before the first few rocket launches (and reliable artillery production), nuclear will always be king.
This is because artillery hasn't kicked in yet, so biters are still a threat. While neither solar nor nuclear produce any significant pollution while running, the pollution created by setting up solar is going to attract way more attacks than the pollution from a nuclear reactor.
The logistic requirements of nuclear are also trivial, as a single centrifuge fed by three miners can sustain one reactor continuously. With simple circuit logic to prevent fuel waste, this can be brought down even further. As long as you have space to store excess U-238, this is more than sufficient to reach artillery.
Once a reliable source of artillery and flamethrowers trivialize biters and mass production of robots and roboports trivialize building, then solar wins out. The difference is still small though, as you need to reach truly staggering levels of production before fluid UPS actually becomes an issue.
Hi! Interesting strategy and thoughts.
The Problem i see is: you have to research nuclear power before you can use it. It involves chemical science packs so it takes a while to get there which means you have to transition from steam to solar first anyway.
Ignoring red & green science: 1000 chemical science packs are more expensive than 600 solar panels which will net you 36 MW of energy during the day.
36MW is just a one full stack of engines/boilers 40/20 on full load. Making power 24/7 with automatic output limiter if not loaded fully. You can also store steam. You can get to nuclear quicker than you think. And you always ommit accus. It's very ineffective when during day you have extra 36mw but at night half of your base stalls if you forgot to make/expand emergency coal/steam power plant to compensate for that.
I havent played Factorio, but have watched alot of videos about it. So correct me if im wrong.
Dont Flamethrowers trivialize biters? From what ive seen the community agrees that Flamethrowers are OP
@@TaylorfromPapaLouieflamethrowers are pretty OP, but behemoths can still get through them if you haven't done many damage upgrades. they just don't use enough fuel to be balanced
@@TaylorfromPapaLouie yes for shure they do, but only when properly combined with other defence. Geneva Convention's violations take time to be effective when negotiating with locals so you need additional arguments in form of bright focused rays of quantum phisics phenomena and/or fast dispensers of little pellets with dense green shiny rocks. All of the arguments must be protected by layered walls preferably in form of dragon teeth and have ready a fleet of small flying assistants ready to support your arguments. This way you can withstand even the strongest march of protest against your absolutely non-violently invasive intentions, especially when you proactively apply a barrage of long range propaganda capsules against deeply located cells of protestors, they really don't like it.
Solar + Accumulators are really reliable, too. Solar has already long since been broken down to be producing about 42kW of power on average throughout the day+night, and building enough accumulators to sustain them isn't much of an issue anyway.
When doing deathworld, I like to limit my entire production with an RS Latch. The factory turns off segments during night depending on power charge, allowing the pollution used to construct the solars to dissipate into the tiles.
That's of course only one take. I do like to set up some nuclear before switching to solar. 480 MW of power with virtually no pollution and minimal UPS concerns is really great.
You shut off parts of your base? I've never seen that idea before.
@@AVADIIStrategy I came up with the idea when doing a K2SE run only on solar and wind energy and core mining.
RS Latch on core miners worked pretty well until I got my 3rd one. I needed hours of work to make enough accumulators to justify the costs. Then I came up with the idea to simply divide my factory into segments, and each segment would turn on/off depending on demand of certain resources. This didn't help that much, but it was still noticeable, especially on other planets where night would last 20+ minutes.
This works actual wonders in deathworld for me. Only ammunition can operate 24/7, everything else is hooked up to a series of RS Latches and turns on/off depending on battery charge. Oil production stops when power drops below 80%, basic mall stops below 65%, smelteries turn off below 20%. Roboports were kind of tricky to set up, until I realized that with a well made grid, I can maximize the amount of cables input to the big poles, and they work separately just like ammo.
This heavily reduced the pollution output, especially in desert starts.
Thats really easy
Steam for early hame
Nuclar for end game
Solar for Megabase
ofc in normal mode
nuclear is great for mid/late game
For megafactory u should switch to solar to save ups
This video was very well made. I'm looking forward to the next one.
You earned yourself a subscriber
Thanks a lot!
I always swap from steam to solar in midgame to nuclear for mid game to late game then switch back to solar if I’m planning on megabasing. Nuclear is very cheap overall which makes it much easier to scale up space science production earlier since solar production won’t be eating into resource consumption and once a bunch of mining productivity researches have finished resource consumption and space become less of a concern so it becomes more practical to switch back to solar. Doing nuclear without logistic networks is too much of a pain for me to want to deal with though so it really is more of a bridge between a late game base and a megabase. One big point in favor of nuclear is how easy it is to scale up once you have production of fuel set up since the blueprints are fairly small so you can add entire giga watts to your production on a whim.
Exactly. The late game is not nuclear, is solar again. In most cases I either go straight for solar cause biters are a non factor on that particular run, or I go straight to nuclear without a single solar panel until I can afford to go full solar. But it all ends up in solar.
it's solar only if your PC is utter trash or you're going for 20k spm. the second option is not happening, obviously@@xanschneider
I usually build a solar nuclear hybrid. Solar on day and nuclear on night. So no need for accumulators, and it produced steam which can power outpost without pollution in compact way.
early game: steam..upto about 400 MW...800 MW if you're somehow struggling to get nuclear set up.
mid game: nuclear. Upto about 4 GW...without much consequence in terms of UPS if built correctly.
When your base is consuming about 2-3GW+, it's time to clear large swaths of area to place down large solar fields.
Sure you can start plopping the solar builds down and skip nuclear altogether, but i found it's easier to have the nuclear set up to provide the power and RELIABILITY needed during the transitionary stage of the game.
I don't do megabases, so for me the choice is nuclear. It's not that space is precious as such, but since I don't do a megabase constantly churning out solar becomes a big resource drain to me. I usually jump straight from from coal burning to nuclear (even before kovarex), it's fairly cheap and has an incredibly small footprint. I start with a "small" 4x4 smart reactor, which is even worse for UPS, one setup that turns off the reactor and buffers steam. Once I go bigger with beacons and modules, I start production on a tileable reactor and put the smart reactor as a backup (with a power connector thingy and an accumulator on a set reset latch). While resource stop being an issue once you go big into beacons and modules, the space requirement for solar becomes even worse too.
But as I said, I don't megabase. I can stay in a game for a long time and build fairly big, but never to the point of having UPS issues.
I absolutely love nuclear, it's just so cool. Which is why it bugs me so much that it's not feasible to run a huge base on it. I always go with solar for UPS reasons, because I always want to maximize SPM.
True, maybe the DLC will make it viable with reworked fluid mechanics.
the devs are changing how liquid works in upcoming expansion, with less calculations, nuclear could be very suitable for megabases too
Solar power too OP
Off shore Solar Power Island anybody? Or am I the only one like this lol
Also I enjoy converting a "depleted" oil rig into solid fuel for steam, it's pretty good once you have multiple oil pumping sites stockpiling at your base.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around lossless nuclear power though, I don't like wasting my U238 😅
Anyways, here's a sub. Top Quality Content right here!
I've never considered an oil rig "depleted". I just add speed modules and beacons like crazy. ;)
Thanks for the sub!
@@AVADIIStrategy True lol beacons and modules are great for breathing life back into the pumps. But often forget to bother by the time I have them lol. I have converted a few into "decoys" however, by surrounding them in flame thrower turrets and increasing pollution on purpose by them to lure biters away, at least until I've got artillery to deal with them.
Doesn't factor costs into the final result and doesn't factor difficulty to actually build into final result. I tried doing all solar and it was a nightmare. The vast majority of my base was solar panels and blackouts were common. Not enough resources to create panels/accum, not enough resources to expand the walls to place them, not enough power to place the walls, panels, and remove the forests with bots. It was SLOW.
Then I switched to Nuclear and 1 compact little reactor made more than all of my solar panels.
I'm not sure if you factored for this already, but your example relies on a specific measurement of output, and solar needs more output to match the others, because you have to both power your base and charge batteries enough to power your base through the night. For example, if night lasted as long as day(I think it doesn't), you'd need double the amount of solar panels.
I assumed he accounted for that but a good question if he really did it's easy to forget about.
But also Factorio nights aren't as long as the days. In fact dawn dusk and night added together equal the length of the day so you don't need to double solar cells to cover the night but you do need a decent amount extra
the ratio he mentioned factors in how many solar panels you need to charge during the day
that being said, with space exploration you need to consider the daytime/nighttime ratio of the planets, though there are more means of getting power in space exploration
Yes i did factor that in. 23800 solar panels output 1.428 GW. With a perfect ratio of accumulators this results in a possible continuous 1GW output.
@@AVADIIStrategy Awesome, thanks!
Solar is calculated as the average day output, not the max output at midday. Else you have a base that runs a couple of hours a day.
I usually go with Coal in the beginning, after automating green science I start adding solar to ease the demand on coal during night (1 boiler 4 engines and a tank). After blue science I faze out coal by adding more solar and building accumulators. This last until first rocket launch and then I maybe add nuclear power if I want to.
This.
I always put my steam on an S/R latch so once solar or nuclear go live it will idle unless I over draw those sources. Helps to have a 100-200MW backup for when the "factory must grow" beyond what I have the power for.
if you switch to solid fuel, the steam generator will be uninterrupted. in the future it can be replaced with steam turbines. provided there is enough oil to produce fuel
This is all very informative and enlightening... buuuut I'm still gonna stick with mostly steam with the odd bit of solar and nuclear here and there because I'm bad at the game, but just good enough at it (or maybe stubborn enough) to have fun regardless of my inefficient practices... like not using blueprints despite them being infinitely more usable and convenient then just kinda eyeballing it and guessing.
I never do solar, by the time you made enough solar panels i already have more than enough nuclear going, its just better, more green and more powerfull!
For me it's usually the other way around. By the time I get to nuclear I have so many solar panels that I don't even need it. I do tend to play with large science multipliers though.
Non-casual reminder for beginers. Yes in long run solar will payoff. But when people say that green energy does no pollution (also IRL) they tend to showe under the rug the fact that in order to create that crazy amount of solars and accus per 1GW your pollution impact in terms of evolution factor (and resource draw) can be quite significant just for producing enogh to sustain ever growing power demand if you don't want to spend 65+ hrs just for making panels/accus on a single assembler, and you will be needed much more power for your factory in that time. You still need mine and process 2kk of raw resources. Also i dont see sulfur/oil calculations included (as well as all the rest of iron and copper) for 20k accus, they are a thing and can easily dry your oil low (yes, its technically infinite but you still need infractructure capable of fulfilling the demand) and whitout them solar is almost useless if dont want to run your factory only half-time. Also power poles and/or substations quickly grows from hundreds to thousands. Also solar eats SPACE when going BIG and require clearing of lots of biter's nests proactively and account for military expenses for securing ever growing perimeter. Exept ofc when you play without them, and if you plan to go megabase, why would you even play with them on in the first place? You go big solar only in late game and only for megabases as a substitute for nuclear when you can afford to dry out ore patches just for solar panels and accus production constantly. All of this is to warn new players that when they hear that solar is the king they tend to go full solar the moment the tech is researched and can end up in a shitty situation when they ran out of starting ore patches, evo factor is enormous but base is not quite advanced and defense/military is insufficient and base constantly chewed by biters due to pollution created by solar/accus producing infrastructure (what an irony). And they can not expand cause they are low on resources, can't defence, can't progress. This negative feedback loop can ruin your first runs pretty easily.
You make a good point about the accumulators, that's why I am rather fond of using a hybrid solution I found in a reddit post about using steam tanks instead of accumulators. You can basically supply 6MW of constant power in a ratio of about 100 solar panels : 1 boiler : 7 steam engines : 1 steam tank. That allows for up to 70% of your energy consumption to be satisfied by solar, while the boilers top up the steam tanks for night time. That cuts down on coal consumption, requires no oil and is available at green science. Solar panels still require a heavy resource and production investment, though.
I prefer using a hybrid of solar and a circuit controlled nuclear with a steam battery. Solar is at the top of the power hiarchy while accumulators are at the bottom. So naturally turbines will kick in at night before accumulators are drawn from. By setting the inserters for nuclear fuel to only operate when the steam battery is under a certain level you can reduce the nuclear fuel drain to nearly nothing.
@@simonnachreiner8380 that's the whole point. Use multiple systems to cover each other's flaws. Instead of crowning solar only and calling it a day, heck I even use sometimes or in some runs a super emergency steam engines stack with emergency supply of fuel to kickstart my water pumps (SE feature) and inserters if I f-ked up with power draw or to keep my defence grid (I use separatable grids with automatic power draw adjustment) sustainable for a brief moment if I'm overwhelmed by biter's retaliation strike.
Solid video, but I feel like you should've factored in the expense aspect of things more; while solar being extremely friendly to gradual integration does offset this, it *is* significantly more expensive than steam or nuclear, by two whole orders of magnitude. The sheer volume of components also makes the crafting and setup time much, much slower in comparison.
(Particularly for newer players these are both VERY relevant factors, as I've run personally aground of problems caused by both on multiple occasions.)
I did calculate the raw materials for 1 GW of solar energy didn't i?
I still believe it's no big deal. Just researching nuclear power is more expensive than setting up ~40 MW solar.
For solar you don't even need blue science (where new players struggle a lot).
There are even more pros that the video didn't cover because it's short and condensed:
e.g. accumulators provide huge amounts of burst/peak energy which is very useful if defending with lasers.
If you use logistics you can skip the bulk of accumulators and just have the grid switch to nuclear during the night.
Unfortunately the solar panels are the expensive part.
Love the Style.
Good Audio, good pace .. love it.
I always go solar because of the way i approach power in factorio that is to say i want to spend as little time thinking about power as possible.It took me 3 worlds before i finally caved in and gave nuclear a shot.Ill admit it was kinda fun to setup but its just such a hassle.Every time i need to increase production id have to completely deconstruct it and rebuild a new one to accommodate for the extra few reactors plus constantly make more steel chests to fill with the useless uranium.While I definitely had fun designing a nuclear power plant im definitely sticking with solar.I just wanna slap down 50 bajillion blueprints and go back to pretending its not part of the game.
This was a good video, which will hopefully teach many new players what power source would be useful, when and where.
But there is one thing that I feel you might have forgotten or overlooked: Steam engines can run on all fuels, except uranium fuel cells ofc, and aren't locked into using coal only.
Maybe you could make an updated version of this, once the 2.0 update has dropped. I'm sure that will attract a fair few people to Factorio, who probably want and need Videos just like this.
Imo i thunk a combo between solar and nuclear, separate nuclear from your base and use it only you reach the limit on solar, then build meore solar
I fell in love with this fat ass nuclear power plants ,especially when it blows up
Great well put together video, excellent commentary. Keep up the great work!
as for the UPS, now we have the new fluid system so maybe it should be reviewed. solar will always be the top since it has no updating cost but i do think that with the new fluid system the other two will cost significantly less updates and may even be ignorable.
That's a good point. When the DLC is out i certainly have to review some of my advice/recommendations.
@@AVADIIStrategy
the timing i myself use them could always be steam -> nuclear -> solar (or never solar).
TLDR;
there could be another facet to put into consideration, the cost to figure out how to make them work at a certain scale and to put them donw.
i think for real endgame, when space and safety is no longer an issue, solar panels surely is the final answer. just plan a block with robot port in it and paste it all the way down, it will be taken care of.
but it is quite slow. putting them down by robot takes time, manually doing that not only takes time but also is a pain in the xxx. so it is only an option when we reach the point we don't need to worry about space and bugs, and don't go around putting things down by ourselves.
after the steam stage, normally a boost in power supply is desired.
nuclear power takes much more work to understand and plan, not only the power setup but also the forehead resource production. but once it's done and you cameup with a tileable solution, the time performance on expanding it will be the highest. just put some more 4~8 reactor sets down and power supply will not be the problem for a long time.
0:22 it's the strong force in this case
Not bad. I know nuclear is decent because uranium is so prevalent, but i never went for it most games. Im in the middle of a 100x research cost krastorio2 run, and i rushed solar because of the scaling and pollution control.
right now im figuring out how to make an effective nuclear setup in my 9-high ribbon world!
Question, the space needed does require more wall defenses due to biters still being a problem thus even if solar is really good a nuclear reactor would be pretty good to for before really being able to have a reliable mega-base or are there ways to make this not an issue?
That's true. But unless you change size of ore patches / richness in your map settings (or maybe railworld?) you need to expand your base anyway.
I was never in a situation where i need to expand my base to make room for solar energy.
@@AVADIIStrategy alright thanks
i personally prefer nuclear, but thats because my largest base was in the 200 spm range. of course framerate becomes a concern eventually (key word eventually, ive seen 10 GW draw bases run entirely by nuclear only just beginning to dip slightly, but ive never built that scale and cant rly say), but for a more casual player like me the fact 1 reactor that fits in 6 chunks can do the same work that 300 chunks of solar can makes it a no brainer, especially with how much cheaper it is (i feel that pollution count for solar is a bit misleading since you need so many more resources to build solar that the iron and copper spent starts having a pollution impact on the production chain). I still produce solar panels and use them over steam engines while working towards nuclear, but the sheer space they demand is kind of impractical after the 30-50 MW range for me until endgame military science lets you claim land easily (and even then landfill can be a nightmare)
this is all from the perspective of someone who tends to replay the whole game with friends im introducing to the game over developing large megabases though
The problem with taking pollution from material production into account is that it differs from player to player.
With full efficiency modules everywhere it's not that big of a deal. But some other player maybe runs prod modules and emits 10x pollution.
@@AVADIIStrategy yeah for sure, it varies wildly, but its still a sizable amount more than the other power sources material requirments and is worth keeping in mind.
A video that will last for all of 2 whole months. Awesome ;)
Nuclear all the way, it's so much cheaper and easier then solar, especially with biters on, since then you need to clear massive amounts of space to use solar and build massive walls.
Solar energy is best.
But it takes 2-10 times the space of the rest of your factory.
Nuclear, as hard as it is, is increadably energie dense.
Boilers meanwhile, as bad polution and efficiency they are, are redicukously easy, and can be built no matter the place or time, cause fuel is everywhere in one way or another.
Finally theres fusion....
Or will be...
From what Ive seen, Fusion is going to be the most energy dense and require the least fuel imput yet.
But its complexity for fuel creation, pipeless setip, and heat management makes it the hardest by far.
They’re just different stages, boilers is early, solar is mid, and nuclear is late.
Wrong. Nuclear is mid, solar is late.
I use a combination of nuclear + (solar + accumulators)
With 2.0 fluid UPS might be better for coal and nuclear. They're revamping fluids.
But heat stays the same
Steam early game. Solar mid game. Nuclear late game. Often not needing nuclear. I will let solar run until the chests are full. That way if we ever run into a power issue, I can stamp down a lot of megawatts of power.
I just skip solar
This is the second time I see this, and it's completely wrong. Solar is the late game option since UPS is the only true limiting factor of the game. You start with steam, then you might use solar a bit, but in the mid game the cost and space (assuming there are biters) will be the limiting factor, making nuclear a must in dire biter settings. Once you get to the late game research gets you over all your problems but one, UPS. You have resources to spare, clear the world of biters. For most the game ends there and that's why you might call it the late game, but for megabases you are not even halfway through. Eventually you can't afford the ups to even have a backup, it has to be 100% solar.
@@xanschneidersure, It’s just a lot of work clearing those mega biter bases in the late game with artillery and spider Tron to make enough room for solar when you are trying to power beacons. On my mega base, I tried to do solar in the north and expand down south for power.
Typically, I am playing weekly reset servers so UPS is not a major consideration as the map gets reset every Friday.
Nuclear is just a more advanced version of steam, should have made the thumbnail BoilerVsSolarVSNuclear
I get the jist of being a nuclear fan, but it would be way more interesting if you actually included the underlying cost of getting to nuclear. Tech cost is wildly higher as well as the necessity of significantly higher underlying infrastructure and while those are variable, just saying nuclear is cheaper because the particular setup you used requires less materials doesn't make sense.
I build 1 GW of steam power just for this video and got 1 or 2 headaches doing it.
It's actually a lot of work for just 1 GW because of the fuel supply and water pumps/pipes.
The small kovarex setup you briefly see in the video is actually feeding 2 of my 8 core reactors (it coul probably support 4-6) and it's simple and doesn't need much uranium.
That's why i think fuel supply for nuclear is a Pro.
Won't the UPS problem with Nuclear be negated by Factorio 2.0?
no
well made video. good job
steam is better because we got user reviews and forums and and server support and fair refund policies.
Solar power can't beat nuclear. Just can't. The resources? You doesn't even comsidered it.
I use the "always day" mod, and then just spam solar only.
Haha, never heard of this mod. I know the console command though.
After I can produce panels efficiently its solar only.
I know nuclear is better, sure.
I just want to plop it once and dont think about it anyomore.
Well, solar+batteries good for uncentralising
That is a cool Chanel, how did you get do far in YT in such time?
good overview
It's weird hearing electricity and not electri-citty in a Factorio video
What about Steam with Solid Fuel? :)
Works well. Unfortunately you still have to construct the same amount of boilers/steam engines.
So i don't think it's worth it. Building 1 GW of steam power for this video gave me a huge headache ;)
nuclear just strait up better in every way
Solar power in real life is OP too? 😊
Solar should win in reliability. It will ALWAYS work every day. If you by some miracle royally screw up and run out of Uranium-235 without noticing? It's literally impossible to start it back up by hand. Extremely low risk but an extremely bad outcome.
once the enrichment process is set up then you never run out of u235, like ever
@@anon1963 Say that when accidentally deconstruct the whole thing without realizing.
The issue with solar is that it's possible to run out of electricity during nights if you fail to keep up with your bases demand.
If you defend with lasers you're totally screwed and biters will destroy parts of your base.
This will never happen with nuclear because even if you produce less energy than required: lasers have energy priority over other entities so they will always be able to defend your base with the full amount of nuclear energy.
@@AVADIIStrategy Who goes half meme when doing a meme run though? Lasers only isn't really a challenge if you don't stack solar power only.
Haven't watched ot bu I say nuclear is the best !!!
im always solar purely because zero fuel needed
so I've got about 200 hours into the game with a decent early late-game base going. I genuinely don't see any use for efficiency modules especially if you use nuclear or solar for power as the decrease in electricity doesn't decrease any pollution and the main energy drain is beacons which aren't effected by other efficiency modules. Do you know any good uses?
pollution production of machinery is proportional to its energy consumption, at least according to the wiki. so using green modules will reduce pollution.
if you are still using steam power, the reduced power consumption means the boilers have to run less, resulting in a lot less pollution. miners also produce a ton of pollution that gets massively reduced by efficiency modules
they are good when biters are a threat, because they reduce the size and frequency attacks, and slow evolution. but with the nature of factorio you eventually reach a point where biters are no longer a threat. they are great early game, but they currently have no significant uses late game. this may be changing in 2.0 (situationaly , at least)
Did you play deathworld though? In a normal default run i agree with you but on deathworlds it's very very useful to use efficiency modules.
And yes it does decrease pollution proportional to the decrease in electricity.
And to your question: "why would you play with biters when planning a megabse?" - Because it is fun ;)!
It is noteworthy to point out when people are saying the pollution of a machine is proportional to it's energy consumption, they don't mean the pollution caused by your means of electric energy production, they mean the pollution the machine itself emits:
An electric mining drill produces 10 pollution per minute (you can see that in the crafting menu or by hovering over them). Fill it with three efficiency modules 1 to reduce the energy consumption by 80%, and you can see it decrease to 2 pollution per minute. Filling it with three speed modules 1 increases energy consumption by 150% and it now produces 25 pollution per minute.
So filling 10 mining drills with speed modules 1 will net you the ore production of 16 mining drills while producing the pollution of 25 mining drills. That's before considering the pollution of your energy production, and it applies to miners, pump jacks, assembling machines, furnaces etc.
2:27 how did that coal get there?
I don't see any coal at 2:27 🧐
@@AVADIIStrategy i swear there is 2 pieces of coal on the left side of that uranium ore belt, but i might just be seeing things lol
@@ecogreen123 LOL! You are right. I have no idea how it got there. But based on some older savegames it was sitting there for at least 50 hours of playtime.
@@AVADIIStrategy god dam! i wonder how it even got there. LOL
I hate solar cuz its expesive AF.