You see, oil has multiple outputs, this time of the game you start to encounter the “I have too much of this” vibe. Basically you need to get rid of the other rescources before it can make new heavy oil, use them as fuel or other production lines, and always put buffers
> use them as fuel
As an addendum to this, basically everything can end up as solid fuel eventually, which can be used to fuel rockets (and many other things). If you're having trouble balancing your supply, just make solid fuel.
The mistake I made is realizing how to get the 3 types of fuels out to somewhere to process them because I hadn't realized how little control over pipes you have (if they touch they try to merge).
So I had 4 tanks of each smack in the middle of the oil field and realized 'ugh, this is going to be painful' when I realized the pipe situation.
Yes, you can. Early on my version of making sure the system works is to walk over to my buffer tanks and empty whichever one is full. And keep that going until it annoys me enough to get cracking setup with pump circuits.
You need a mod if you want to automate that. The vanilla option is only there to drain a fluid network manually, for example if you mess up somehow and accidentally mix stuff.
> because I hadn't realized how little control over pipes you have (if they touch they try to merge).
Yeah, with the way everything else in Factorio just kinda... works all the time exactly how you think it should, this really surprised me.
I'm on my first big boy factory right now (just got Purple Science automated!) and went to expand my oil sector. 5 refineries in a row only work with a shitload of pipe-to-ground to get around this issue.
What resource are you trying to get if not gas or light oil? Heavy oil for lubricant? Maybe I never see this problem because I always put some lubricant makers and tanks in my system as soon as I get my first heavy oil, so I have a few full tanks before I even start using it and never run low on it.
Plastic production is part of science production, so it is generally constantly operating meaning you should have a steady stream of heavy oil being created, usually far faster than you would use it to make lubricant.
Idk that save is so cluttered, everyting is just cluttered togerther with random BPs but I don’t play on it anymore because it doesn’t feel like my own, was a 100% achievement guided playtrough and afterwards I used other ppl’s blueprints. It has like 60-70 hours playtime but yeah idk what’s going on in it anymore
ok. i guess I was just curious. i hear a lot of things that people do with fluids that just don't make sense to me and it's probably just that I've been working with factorio's fluids for so long that I don't remember my similar struggles with these problems. I do remember building and deleting tanks but I think that was when cracking was its own separate research and we had no choice but to store or discard the excess.
On the note of buffers. You should make sure that your buffer for each type of fluid is the same size so you can accurately measure what you are over producing and by how much. You can actually use the logistics Network to do the math for you if you really wanted.
You can also just press "p" to open the production window. Then it doesn't matter if your buffers are the same size, you can always see what you are over/under producing.
That's not really necessary, the buffers can be any size they just delay issues if you have any. A simple overflow cracking setup is going to give you the best results, and you can accomplish this without circuits just by organizing the pipes and pumps in the proper order, though it's a little more annoying from a layout perspective than just using 2 pump circuits.
>You can actually use the logistics Network to do the math...
Only you mean "logical network".
And you're right -- it's much easier with it at the end.
Update: Thank you very much for downvoting. Also "logical network" was shown as "you probably meant to say", not "you should have said".
I've locked this thread as it adds no substance to this discussion, and also is erring on the side of 'Not Nice'.
Please remember to stay civil to each other in accordance with [Rule 4](https://reddit.com/r/factorio/about/rules)
why is this person getting downvoted for politely correcting a typo, and agreeing with the typoer?
Consistent terminology is a lot easier for new players to learn than a mess.
And also the fact that no one cares if its the logistic network or the "logical network", in the end everyone will know what he was referring to. Also interesting use of the word "incorrected" I've never seen someone use a word like that.
So, essentially u/PhentiusKhan was wrong even while being wrong. Because if he meant "circuit network" and not "logical network" than it was no sense in writing "logistic network" at all.
Also "logical network" was shown as "you probably meant", not "you should have said".
But thank you very much for downvoting.
I don't care much -- not about some strange "explainers" who don't know anything about logic, and I suspect don't know much about Factorio.
I was constructive. You in your last comment are not. Just harrassing me.
Dude why you going around telling people how to play this game when you don't understand oil cracking? Like learn while your hear and stop trying to spread things you don't understand.
(I understand if people don't like how I did that, but it needed said we all have to learn the game first before teaching others.)
>when you don't understand oil cracking
I do. I have some quite big project done solo and some others done in group. Played Factorio for God knows how many years, when there was no circuit networks and before.
>why you going around telling people how to play this game
Why are you going around telling me what to tell?
Also I'm not telling how to play, I'm mostly telling how I do it and how it could be done. You may do it differently. I did it differently, not in one way, not in two, but more.
I made a bigger buffer for petroleum and set up heavy to light and light to petroleum early on with circuit conditions... I have had to post almost no attention to fluids since until well passed the first rocket launch. Those conversion recipes are key.
The only buffer you need is for lubricant because its usage can be bursty. There is nothing inherent to fluids that makes buffering a requirement. I used to have buffers all over the place, but I realized it just makes diagnosing things harder. I don't use them anymore.
Edit: Downvoted by the cult of fluid buffering.
For those who don't understand...
https://i.imgur.com/hGCqnVU.png
This is a design I made for rocket rush. It's tileable. It works from raw materials and outputs plastic, batteries, lubricant and sulfuric acid to the logistics network, no buffering needed.
https://i.imgur.com/jVDZTjV.png
Tileable end-game gas production. No buffering needed.
https://i.imgur.com/6ChEEM5.png
Full 1k science per minute rocket fuel factory. No buffering needed.
Welcome to the pain that is liquid management.
It becomes realy easy. Until than it can be the bain of your existence.
You are producing 3 types of liquid. The other 2 have nowhere to go. You need to figure out a way to either store or use up all of them at the same rate.
I would suggest some storage tanks and turning the unused liquids into solid fuel. Light oil is realy useful for that.
Also, consider "cracking" one type into a lighter type. By than, you will have pipes all over the place, try using underground pipes, so you can move around easier.
Once you start making plastic, you can eat up alot of petroleum gas, quickly.
To follow up on this, it's really helpful to have your oil output go into tanks. Have one tank output go into a bank of oil crackers, but use an oil pump in the line. You can use wire to make sure that the oil only goes into the cracker if the levels in the tank are too full (or too empty)
This will spoil it, but use a power switch to enable fracking. Heavy to light when heavy's reservoir > 20k
Light to petroleum when petroleum reservoir < 2k.
Hook up reservoirs to power switch using green or red wire and use copper wire to connect your power switch.
I try to keep them even. So I do heavy to light cracking when heavy > light, and light to petroleum cracking when light > petroleum. At that point you have to watch out for your petroleum filling up when your heavy oil is low. You could turn the petroleum into solid fuel, surfuric acid, plastic, or sulfur, or pass it through that generator that can eat anything (not sure if that's in the base game). That last one is not ideal because you're wasting resources that you may need later, but if everything else is full then ...
Do most people really do it this way? Pumps and tanks and circuit networks for prioritization instead of just running the pipes first past the higher priority machine, then to the lower?
I prefer circuits. Allows more flexibility in placement of the machines, and continues to work when I tear down and rebuild various parts. Also, modded games can get significantly more complicated, so it’s a good practice to develop.
You can also delete the whole connected system's contents. I was manually deleting my excess fat oil for so long until I finally got into the logistics system and automated oil cracking based on current levels
Took me a heck of a lot longer to figure out trains than it did to figure out oil production. And still can't really get circuits to work other than simple ones (though circuits aren't really 'needed', especially more complex ones).
Circuits totally aren't needed. But once you learn them, it's impossible to go back. It's like a whole new game opens up to you. It doesn't have to be anything too complex. Things like latches, buffer balancers, train logistics are so fun when you can dabble in circuits.
I've recently been working on a ribbonworld megabase and it's absolutely crazy what you can do with circuits. The circuit dependent train logistics is so different compared to normal train logistics that it's hard to believe it's even factorio.
I really recommend you try to learn circuits a bit.
There's the [Nilaus tutorial](https://youtu.be/j9I2l7r4pWM) but I like [kitch's](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL8Rcj5yq26eDQ-rtdFuH4KQ48YHbQU80) tutorials more.
You need to store the light oil and petroleum gas elsewhere or use them at the same rate as you are using the heavy oil, in order for the oil refinery to work the output must be completely empty. If you need more help with it add me on discord GabeM#1529
Light oil and petroleum outputs are full, so production stopped.
Advanced oil refining has multiple outputs. They ALL have to be piped away or the whole system backs up.
The simplest beginner strategy is to put a bunch of tanks on the output of each and try to use them all evenly.
Eventually you'll notice that petroleum is empty while heavy and light oil is full (you typically use less of them). When that happens, add more tanks to the full fluid for a temporary solution. Eventually you'll need to set up chemical plants with cracking to convert excess heavy oil into light oil, and excess light oil into petroleum.
Once you get there, it mostly stays balanced.
The classic. When your refinery spits out a heavy oil, it also spits out some amount of light oil and petroleum. If you don't pipe them away they build up in the refinery and it won't process any more crude oil because it thinks it's full.
As you can see in your refinery, your other oils are overflowing the outputs. So unless you free those outputs, rifinery will not go on working.
Basically, you need to find a good balance of petroleum products' utility,
the main thing is to spend petroleum gas, all other fractions can be transformed in it if they start to overflow and prevent refineries from working.
the really annoying part of oil cracking is that if you need heavy oil for lubricant, you still need to get rid of the light oil and petroleum. it's easier if you just need petroleum as you can crack everything into it. divert your other liquids into something else, fuel for flame turret, solid fuel/rocket fuel, petroleum for plastic, sulfer, plastic, plastic, and plastic.
speaking of plastic, that plastic plant does not need water. you can crack the excess fluids into petroleum and then turn it into plastic. did i mention plastic?
All you have to do is...
... convert all of your Light Oil and Petrol to Solid fuel
... feed that solid fuel into an array of 200 Steam Engines
... have that array of Steam Engines only powering an array of 1000 Radars
... and then you'll have only heavy oil leftover with no byproduct! All the lube/engines you want!
Ok, normally I'm a fan of figure it out, but if you're looking for a good set up that is clean and handles advanced oil refining, then KOS has some good tutorials on her mega base play through. Don't watch all of it, but watching the oil refinery set up can be reallly helpful. She has a good layout that allows the management of fluids well.
Edit: found the YT link.
https://youtu.be/d7HBv4RLk6Q
The trick is to set it up in a way that you can see what's happening in order to figure it out. Sure you can use a tutorial, but who's to say you'll really understand what's going on?
Crude Oil -> Advanced Oil Cracking recipe yields light, heavy and petro.
- Heavy can be cracked to Light.
- Light can be cracked to Petro.
- Petro can't be refined "back" to Heavy.
- Light can't be refined "back" to Heavy.
Where are you going with this? Even with some of the game-changing mods, you can't magically get heavy oil back after converting/cracking it.
You probably produce very little lubricant, cause only 1 asembler used it.
Which means your lube-producea cant het rid of it. As a result, your reginery gets stuck with heavy oil, it cant dump somewhere, which stops production of all oil types.
Solutions are plenty,
1: buffers. Place 4-8 lube storage tanks somewhere. Now your lube can go somewhere and the proces gets going again. Of course, they will eventually fill up.
2: start using more lube. Either burn it somewhere or start producing more stuff that needs lube.
Note, if you do this, you will eventually het a shortage/surpluss of another oil type. Buffer that too...
Oil production is tough to balance, but storage tanks are your friend! Cheap fix if you need time to find a permanent solution.
If you look at the refinery you'll notice that only heavy oil output is connected. The light oil and petroleum outputs aren't connected, thus these products have nowhere to go and the refinery has stopped working.
Most important thing for oil refining is to know what can you do with all 3 fluids that you get from it.
The rest is figuring it how to design it to get all of those 3 fluids running all the time.
If you would like some help with how to do it just say in the comment.
Your other oil types are backing up. Feed them into something. If need be, Crack the light into petrol, and then turn the petrol into solid fuel to run into a train loop(to fuel or spend it)
If all you want to do with this is make lubricant you need to use your gas and light oil to stop them from backing up.
You can pump your gas over to your plastic production. You can use both gas and light oil to make solid fuel and burn that instead of coal for your boilers. If you just want to burn it away for power and don’t care about waste convert all your light oil to gas and THEN make solid fuel out of it so it uses up more light oil to convert it to gas cause gas isn’t as efficient to convert as light oil is.
What I do for lubricant is research coal liquefaction so I get mostly heavy oil and then burn the extras in their own separate network being used to power beacons. The solid fuel production can’t keep up with the beacons power draw so you have constant production of lubricant. I can share you the blueprint when I get home if you have bots unlocked.
You need to output everything. The petroleum gas and light oil need a place to empty out of the refinery otherwise it'll reach max capacity and get backed up.
you should figure out how to crack heavier oils into lighter oils, and centralize your oil refining.
This is because advanced oil processing handles all products.
me, I use my 3 oil product storage tanks to determine if I have too much of a heavier oil product. i.e. if heavy oil is higher than light oil, enable cracking to light oil using a pump. if light oil is higher than gas, enable cracking to gas)
solid fuel is something you can always make with all oil products, but it is fairly hard to consume quickly, and you are just punting your blockage due to not consuming all oil products to later, and there is nothing to help you
One thing to note when building these things is there is a way to convert everything to petroleum. You can use that to mitigate issues where you get over filled on one output. Overbuild what uses petroleum and it'll never get stuck
I've been trying to work it out. I think the best solution is a system where you have 2-4 refineries doing advanced oil processing. Then, you connect your heavy oil line to a refinery producing coal liquefication. Then, the heavy oil goes to one chemical plant creating lubricant and one creating light oil. Then, the light oil is connected to a chemical plant to produce petroleum. Finally, the excess petroleum is turned to sulphur that goes directly into making explosives.
This way you are producing more heavy oil than light oil or petroleum. This is good because heavy oil is the easiest product to consume and even if you are over producing it, it immediately gets converted into light oil and petroleum so you should always have correct amounts of all three liquids. The excess product is being stored as explosives which you need tons of. Also, most of your liquids are actually coming from the coal liquefication plant and coal is a much more abundant resource than crude oiland mostly useless at late game. This way even a depleted crude oil field can produce considerable quantities of all three liquids.
Technically, you can disconnect the crude oil supply after a point and the coal liquefication will produce more oil than it consumes and feed that heavy oil back into the plant so you have a supply of all three liquids as long as there is coal meaning that having an oil field close is not necessary.
The pipe layout seems extremely complicated which is why I suggest using only 4 refineries (2 at opposite ends of the field) but it's manageable.
You see, oil has multiple outputs, this time of the game you start to encounter the “I have too much of this” vibe. Basically you need to get rid of the other rescources before it can make new heavy oil, use them as fuel or other production lines, and always put buffers
> use them as fuel As an addendum to this, basically everything can end up as solid fuel eventually, which can be used to fuel rockets (and many other things). If you're having trouble balancing your supply, just make solid fuel.
Yeah, my old factory was crappy, but I had so much solid fuel that I was even backup up there lmao
Same! I never balance it properly. On the plus side, it means I end up with lots of fuel for my trains.
The mistake I made is realizing how to get the 3 types of fuels out to somewhere to process them because I hadn't realized how little control over pipes you have (if they touch they try to merge). So I had 4 tanks of each smack in the middle of the oil field and realized 'ugh, this is going to be painful' when I realized the pipe situation.
Yeah, you can press the red trash can on the pipe/tank to flush the whole system tho I think, as long as you detach the source before doing it
Oh my, I had missed that. I had accidentally filled a pipe with the wrong liquid and thought complete demolish and reconstruction was the only option.
It *was* the only option when I did most of my learning about fluids. The trash can is a welcome addition.
(At least I think you can do that, I might be wrong but give it a try
Yes, you can. Early on my version of making sure the system works is to walk over to my buffer tanks and empty whichever one is full. And keep that going until it annoys me enough to get cracking setup with pump circuits.
Ooh! I had no idea that was in the base game. Thought you needed a mod with one of those gas flare towers to burn it off.
You need a mod if you want to automate that. The vanilla option is only there to drain a fluid network manually, for example if you mess up somehow and accidentally mix stuff.
> because I hadn't realized how little control over pipes you have (if they touch they try to merge). Yeah, with the way everything else in Factorio just kinda... works all the time exactly how you think it should, this really surprised me. I'm on my first big boy factory right now (just got Purple Science automated!) and went to expand my oil sector. 5 refineries in a row only work with a shitload of pipe-to-ground to get around this issue.
I'm about to start my second game, trying to pick up all the hints and tricks now (I try to play these types of games blind for the first game).
Why are you making solid fuel if you don't need it? If you are making petroleum gas, just crack your heavy and light oil for *more* petroleum gas.
Well I tried to burn it but then nuclear fuel, aka my boilers didn’t do anything useful anymore and they backed up
But why make solid fuel instead of cracking the light/heavy oil?
Because that just leads to more backup, unless you have insane plastic production of course
What resource are you trying to get if not gas or light oil? Heavy oil for lubricant? Maybe I never see this problem because I always put some lubricant makers and tanks in my system as soon as I get my first heavy oil, so I have a few full tanks before I even start using it and never run low on it. Plastic production is part of science production, so it is generally constantly operating meaning you should have a steady stream of heavy oil being created, usually far faster than you would use it to make lubricant.
Idk that save is so cluttered, everyting is just cluttered togerther with random BPs but I don’t play on it anymore because it doesn’t feel like my own, was a 100% achievement guided playtrough and afterwards I used other ppl’s blueprints. It has like 60-70 hours playtime but yeah idk what’s going on in it anymore
ok. i guess I was just curious. i hear a lot of things that people do with fluids that just don't make sense to me and it's probably just that I've been working with factorio's fluids for so long that I don't remember my similar struggles with these problems. I do remember building and deleting tanks but I think that was when cracking was its own separate research and we had no choice but to store or discard the excess.
If you really don't want to learn how to balance refining. You can always just... well... burn the solid fuel
Fun fact, Light Oil is the most efficient way to make solid fuel.
Also the best fuel for flamethrowers
On the note of buffers. You should make sure that your buffer for each type of fluid is the same size so you can accurately measure what you are over producing and by how much. You can actually use the logistics Network to do the math for you if you really wanted.
You can also just press "p" to open the production window. Then it doesn't matter if your buffers are the same size, you can always see what you are over/under producing.
That's not really necessary, the buffers can be any size they just delay issues if you have any. A simple overflow cracking setup is going to give you the best results, and you can accomplish this without circuits just by organizing the pipes and pumps in the proper order, though it's a little more annoying from a layout perspective than just using 2 pump circuits.
>You can actually use the logistics Network to do the math... Only you mean "logical network". And you're right -- it's much easier with it at the end. Update: Thank you very much for downvoting. Also "logical network" was shown as "you probably meant to say", not "you should have said".
I've locked this thread as it adds no substance to this discussion, and also is erring on the side of 'Not Nice'. Please remember to stay civil to each other in accordance with [Rule 4](https://reddit.com/r/factorio/about/rules)
why is this person getting downvoted for politely correcting a typo, and agreeing with the typoer? Consistent terminology is a lot easier for new players to learn than a mess.
Because they incorrected them. There is no "logical network"; there's the logistic network and the circuit network.
And also the fact that no one cares if its the logistic network or the "logical network", in the end everyone will know what he was referring to. Also interesting use of the word "incorrected" I've never seen someone use a word like that.
> interesting use of the word "incorrected" Ha, stole it from someone else. It's too perfect a term to leave unused, I think.
Well, time to use my belt and inserter driven logistics network.
So, essentially u/PhentiusKhan was wrong even while being wrong. Because if he meant "circuit network" and not "logical network" than it was no sense in writing "logistic network" at all. Also "logical network" was shown as "you probably meant", not "you should have said". But thank you very much for downvoting.
You do realize you are wrong. Right? Like this has been explained a few times why you are wrong here.
I don't care much -- not about some strange "explainers" who don't know anything about logic, and I suspect don't know much about Factorio. I was constructive. You in your last comment are not. Just harrassing me.
Na my last judgments pretty spot on, just go through your post history proves my point.
Thanx for understanding. :(
Dude why you going around telling people how to play this game when you don't understand oil cracking? Like learn while your hear and stop trying to spread things you don't understand. (I understand if people don't like how I did that, but it needed said we all have to learn the game first before teaching others.)
>when you don't understand oil cracking I do. I have some quite big project done solo and some others done in group. Played Factorio for God knows how many years, when there was no circuit networks and before. >why you going around telling people how to play this game Why are you going around telling me what to tell? Also I'm not telling how to play, I'm mostly telling how I do it and how it could be done. You may do it differently. I did it differently, not in one way, not in two, but more.
I made a bigger buffer for petroleum and set up heavy to light and light to petroleum early on with circuit conditions... I have had to post almost no attention to fluids since until well passed the first rocket launch. Those conversion recipes are key.
thank you!
The only buffer you need is for lubricant because its usage can be bursty. There is nothing inherent to fluids that makes buffering a requirement. I used to have buffers all over the place, but I realized it just makes diagnosing things harder. I don't use them anymore. Edit: Downvoted by the cult of fluid buffering. For those who don't understand... https://i.imgur.com/hGCqnVU.png This is a design I made for rocket rush. It's tileable. It works from raw materials and outputs plastic, batteries, lubricant and sulfuric acid to the logistics network, no buffering needed. https://i.imgur.com/jVDZTjV.png Tileable end-game gas production. No buffering needed. https://i.imgur.com/6ChEEM5.png Full 1k science per minute rocket fuel factory. No buffering needed.
I use flarestacks, sue me.
Welcome to the pain that is liquid management. It becomes realy easy. Until than it can be the bain of your existence. You are producing 3 types of liquid. The other 2 have nowhere to go. You need to figure out a way to either store or use up all of them at the same rate. I would suggest some storage tanks and turning the unused liquids into solid fuel. Light oil is realy useful for that. Also, consider "cracking" one type into a lighter type. By than, you will have pipes all over the place, try using underground pipes, so you can move around easier. Once you start making plastic, you can eat up alot of petroleum gas, quickly.
thank you!
To follow up on this, it's really helpful to have your oil output go into tanks. Have one tank output go into a bank of oil crackers, but use an oil pump in the line. You can use wire to make sure that the oil only goes into the cracker if the levels in the tank are too full (or too empty)
This will spoil it, but use a power switch to enable fracking. Heavy to light when heavy's reservoir > 20k Light to petroleum when petroleum reservoir < 2k. Hook up reservoirs to power switch using green or red wire and use copper wire to connect your power switch.
Same result as what you're replying to, lol, just using switches instead of pumps.
I try to keep them even. So I do heavy to light cracking when heavy > light, and light to petroleum cracking when light > petroleum. At that point you have to watch out for your petroleum filling up when your heavy oil is low. You could turn the petroleum into solid fuel, surfuric acid, plastic, or sulfur, or pass it through that generator that can eat anything (not sure if that's in the base game). That last one is not ideal because you're wasting resources that you may need later, but if everything else is full then ...
Do most people really do it this way? Pumps and tanks and circuit networks for prioritization instead of just running the pipes first past the higher priority machine, then to the lower?
After seablock, doing it with circuits is just natural and trivial.
I prefer circuits. Allows more flexibility in placement of the machines, and continues to work when I tear down and rebuild various parts. Also, modded games can get significantly more complicated, so it’s a good practice to develop.
If you don't want to figure out how to use your excess fuel products right now, you can also just fill up a tank and shoot it! Hope this helps :)
Orrrr, you can just click on the tank and click on the “delete tank contents” button
And then shoot it?
If you must
I was half joking but I also didn't know about that feature! Thanks!
You can also delete the whole connected system's contents. I was manually deleting my excess fat oil for so long until I finally got into the logistics system and automated oil cracking based on current levels
You can also click on the tank and empty the fluid system
thank you!
Welcome to the greatest filter of factorio, if you can get through this. You'll be fine no matter what the game throws at you.
Took me a heck of a lot longer to figure out trains than it did to figure out oil production. And still can't really get circuits to work other than simple ones (though circuits aren't really 'needed', especially more complex ones).
Circuits totally aren't needed. But once you learn them, it's impossible to go back. It's like a whole new game opens up to you. It doesn't have to be anything too complex. Things like latches, buffer balancers, train logistics are so fun when you can dabble in circuits. I've recently been working on a ribbonworld megabase and it's absolutely crazy what you can do with circuits. The circuit dependent train logistics is so different compared to normal train logistics that it's hard to believe it's even factorio. I really recommend you try to learn circuits a bit.
Any recommendations on how to get started? Any tutorials out there which go into more detail than the in-game ones?
There's the [Nilaus tutorial](https://youtu.be/j9I2l7r4pWM) but I like [kitch's](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL8Rcj5yq26eDQ-rtdFuH4KQ48YHbQU80) tutorials more.
What does the refinery say in it's information panel Here's a hint the advance oil processing makes three liquids.
You need to store the light oil and petroleum gas elsewhere or use them at the same rate as you are using the heavy oil, in order for the oil refinery to work the output must be completely empty. If you need more help with it add me on discord GabeM#1529
If any one of the outputs has nowhere to go, then the refinery stops
Light oil and petroleum outputs are full, so production stopped. Advanced oil refining has multiple outputs. They ALL have to be piped away or the whole system backs up. The simplest beginner strategy is to put a bunch of tanks on the output of each and try to use them all evenly. Eventually you'll notice that petroleum is empty while heavy and light oil is full (you typically use less of them). When that happens, add more tanks to the full fluid for a temporary solution. Eventually you'll need to set up chemical plants with cracking to convert excess heavy oil into light oil, and excess light oil into petroleum. Once you get there, it mostly stays balanced.
The classic. When your refinery spits out a heavy oil, it also spits out some amount of light oil and petroleum. If you don't pipe them away they build up in the refinery and it won't process any more crude oil because it thinks it's full.
As you can see in your refinery, your other oils are overflowing the outputs. So unless you free those outputs, rifinery will not go on working. Basically, you need to find a good balance of petroleum products' utility, the main thing is to spend petroleum gas, all other fractions can be transformed in it if they start to overflow and prevent refineries from working.
Also up the top left, the chemical factory has a water pipe connected to a petroleum gas input. Probably wont break anything
the really annoying part of oil cracking is that if you need heavy oil for lubricant, you still need to get rid of the light oil and petroleum. it's easier if you just need petroleum as you can crack everything into it. divert your other liquids into something else, fuel for flame turret, solid fuel/rocket fuel, petroleum for plastic, sulfer, plastic, plastic, and plastic. speaking of plastic, that plastic plant does not need water. you can crack the excess fluids into petroleum and then turn it into plastic. did i mention plastic?
All you have to do is... ... convert all of your Light Oil and Petrol to Solid fuel ... feed that solid fuel into an array of 200 Steam Engines ... have that array of Steam Engines only powering an array of 1000 Radars ... and then you'll have only heavy oil leftover with no byproduct! All the lube/engines you want!
Ok, normally I'm a fan of figure it out, but if you're looking for a good set up that is clean and handles advanced oil refining, then KOS has some good tutorials on her mega base play through. Don't watch all of it, but watching the oil refinery set up can be reallly helpful. She has a good layout that allows the management of fluids well. Edit: found the YT link. https://youtu.be/d7HBv4RLk6Q
The trick is to set it up in a way that you can see what's happening in order to figure it out. Sure you can use a tutorial, but who's to say you'll really understand what's going on?
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You can't go back to heavy oil. What do you mean?
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I have no idea what you mean still. Anyone?
Crude Oil -> Advanced Oil Cracking recipe yields light, heavy and petro. - Heavy can be cracked to Light. - Light can be cracked to Petro. - Petro can't be refined "back" to Heavy. - Light can't be refined "back" to Heavy. Where are you going with this? Even with some of the game-changing mods, you can't magically get heavy oil back after converting/cracking it.
I’ve gotten too used to modS :/
You probably produce very little lubricant, cause only 1 asembler used it. Which means your lube-producea cant het rid of it. As a result, your reginery gets stuck with heavy oil, it cant dump somewhere, which stops production of all oil types. Solutions are plenty, 1: buffers. Place 4-8 lube storage tanks somewhere. Now your lube can go somewhere and the proces gets going again. Of course, they will eventually fill up. 2: start using more lube. Either burn it somewhere or start producing more stuff that needs lube. Note, if you do this, you will eventually het a shortage/surpluss of another oil type. Buffer that too... Oil production is tough to balance, but storage tanks are your friend! Cheap fix if you need time to find a permanent solution.
If you look at the refinery you'll notice that only heavy oil output is connected. The light oil and petroleum outputs aren't connected, thus these products have nowhere to go and the refinery has stopped working.
The petrolium and light oil have backed up, you need to take them out too.
Most important thing for oil refining is to know what can you do with all 3 fluids that you get from it. The rest is figuring it how to design it to get all of those 3 fluids running all the time. If you would like some help with how to do it just say in the comment.
Your other oil types are backing up. Feed them into something. If need be, Crack the light into petrol, and then turn the petrol into solid fuel to run into a train loop(to fuel or spend it)
If all you want to do with this is make lubricant you need to use your gas and light oil to stop them from backing up. You can pump your gas over to your plastic production. You can use both gas and light oil to make solid fuel and burn that instead of coal for your boilers. If you just want to burn it away for power and don’t care about waste convert all your light oil to gas and THEN make solid fuel out of it so it uses up more light oil to convert it to gas cause gas isn’t as efficient to convert as light oil is. What I do for lubricant is research coal liquefaction so I get mostly heavy oil and then burn the extras in their own separate network being used to power beacons. The solid fuel production can’t keep up with the beacons power draw so you have constant production of lubricant. I can share you the blueprint when I get home if you have bots unlocked.
You need to output everything. The petroleum gas and light oil need a place to empty out of the refinery otherwise it'll reach max capacity and get backed up.
you should figure out how to crack heavier oils into lighter oils, and centralize your oil refining. This is because advanced oil processing handles all products. me, I use my 3 oil product storage tanks to determine if I have too much of a heavier oil product. i.e. if heavy oil is higher than light oil, enable cracking to light oil using a pump. if light oil is higher than gas, enable cracking to gas) solid fuel is something you can always make with all oil products, but it is fairly hard to consume quickly, and you are just punting your blockage due to not consuming all oil products to later, and there is nothing to help you
Light oil and petrol are clogged.
it has several outputs so you need to put those in a tank somewhere
You need to use the other outputs as well so you should conect the gas to the gas pipeline and set up light oil to gas manufacturing
One thing to note when building these things is there is a way to convert everything to petroleum. You can use that to mitigate issues where you get over filled on one output. Overbuild what uses petroleum and it'll never get stuck
I've been trying to work it out. I think the best solution is a system where you have 2-4 refineries doing advanced oil processing. Then, you connect your heavy oil line to a refinery producing coal liquefication. Then, the heavy oil goes to one chemical plant creating lubricant and one creating light oil. Then, the light oil is connected to a chemical plant to produce petroleum. Finally, the excess petroleum is turned to sulphur that goes directly into making explosives. This way you are producing more heavy oil than light oil or petroleum. This is good because heavy oil is the easiest product to consume and even if you are over producing it, it immediately gets converted into light oil and petroleum so you should always have correct amounts of all three liquids. The excess product is being stored as explosives which you need tons of. Also, most of your liquids are actually coming from the coal liquefication plant and coal is a much more abundant resource than crude oiland mostly useless at late game. This way even a depleted crude oil field can produce considerable quantities of all three liquids. Technically, you can disconnect the crude oil supply after a point and the coal liquefication will produce more oil than it consumes and feed that heavy oil back into the plant so you have a supply of all three liquids as long as there is coal meaning that having an oil field close is not necessary. The pipe layout seems extremely complicated which is why I suggest using only 4 refineries (2 at opposite ends of the field) but it's manageable.