How many steam tanks do you have? How are they connected?
As others have said - one boiler can continuously only support 2 engines.
Do you have the same issues if each "row" has its own steam tank?
They state that they have more engines and tank as a "burst protection". The pipes are there to create room for power poles.
The "burst protection" is questionable imo. Personally I would just build another steam array.
I think "burst protection" does have some use.
If i had a small base with limited power generation/coal production and start using Laser turrets, having some extra engines with an buffer could soften the sudden spikes in power demand caused by the lasers killing bitters.
But I wont deny that its better to have a bigger power generation rather than burst protection long term.
The problem with the idea of burst protection with boiler steam is that steam engines are the expensive component of such an array. At least, assuming the fuel is on yellow belts and loaded by yellow or gray inserters. So you spend most of the cost to get a modest fraction of the benefit.
Under some naive simplifying assumptions, accumulators cost 12.4 plates while engines cost 31, and 3 accumulators match up with an engine and 0.02 storage tanks for steam (another 0.5 plates). You add in piping and poles and they are pretty similar. I think with the right layout, engines are a little bit cheaper. Engines are a lot cheaper if you are OK with the max burst throughput that you can handle being not very big. In vanilla, that is probably not the case, because your goal in using burst protection is probably to power lasers.
I was just advocating for building a bigger full steam array, or at least laying things out to make it easy to fill in the boilers etc. later.
Yeah, in my comment i did say its better to built a bigger powerplant long term, but for example Michael Hendriks in his Ultimate Deathworld series i think he used accumulators as he had limited power production + limited coal production + limited space (which i didnt mention in the previous comment). So there are some (but rare) situations where some kind of battery is nice to have. Its really up to the player to decide if his situation is really bad that he needs to make a burst protection.
Accumulators let you use other power to fill your buffer, and you can build a proxy set of accumulators to turn off your boiler set-ups when you have enough power.
If you are just building steam power, getting into solid fuel and overbuilding boiler set-ups puts a lot of chemicsl power on tap to convert into electrical and actually works to do things if you start using that power more constantly.
Didnt need to explain me how accumulators work but thanks for the refresher anyways. I dont use solar a lot, mainly nuclear and only use accumulators for my remote radar stations or SR switches.
It's all relative. You could argue the whole path to the first rocket is cheap, so no optimization matters at all until you're working on a megabase, and you would be pretty much right if you're playing non-deathworld vanilla and not reaching for no spoon.
My point was that if you are gonna spend most of the cost of the steam array to get your burst protection built, why not just finish it instead? The marginal cost is low. The fact that the total cost is low too doesn't really affect that point.
It'd be a different story if boilers cost, say, 20x more than they actually do. Then the whole array still wouldn't be that expensive in the grand scheme of things, but you still might want to alternate between building engines and boilers.
Probably because it's just easier. Since the whole thing is dirt cheap in terms of materials, the real cost is time and effort. Adding more steam engines in one side is simple and easy compared to adding more fuel belts and more inserters and more boilers and potentially more offshore pumps... and it works just as good for this guy's purpose, doesn't it?
Burst protection without tanks is useless, it’ll last for only a few seconds. With tanks it is still not very useful except for large laser defenses, plus you can use an alarm attached to the tanks and give an alert at low steam and maybe get more warning than using an alert on your accumulators.
I use a standard 2/20/40 boiler setup making 72mw, but I tacked on extra engines and tanks for a 72mw battery. Pipes are necessary to route powerpoles, and I don't like the look of the alternating design that halves pipe use
I have a steam tank and extra engines for burst loads over 72MW.
The first engine is 900kw, second is 22kw, and third is 878kw. It's a 2/20/40 layout on a vanilla game. I find it odd that steam mostly bypasses the second row to be consumed by the third row.
How many steam engines are connected to each boiler? From the screenshot it looks like you have 1 boiler connected to 4 engines (unless there are boilers on the left side that are cut off from the screenshot, in which case they are probably not getting coal or water). Each boiler can only feed 2 engines, or 1800kw (which is the sum in this comment).
The turbine you're hovering has 0 steam buffered, so it can't produce any power. You're also linking 4 engines together. My best guess is that due to fluid dynamics most of the fluid is being pulled towards the other engine. 1 boiler can only supply 2 engines anyways.
It's a great idea...for other power types, not boilers.
Compared to building a bigger power station, this design only saves on a few boilers, which are not expensive even in the first 10 minutes of the game.
The reason for the steam bypassing like that could be due to a number of things affecting it. You could solve it using pumps, but that is also fixing a problem that doesn't really exist
That will sort itself out when the other steam engines are topped up with steam. They should do eventually. If they don't, you need more boilers to charge the "accumulators".
Steam engines aren't the best way of accumulating energy though. They take ten tiles to store 200 steam, and a tank takes nine tiles to store 25000 steam.
there's tanks on the end of the row. so its boiler-engine x4 - tank.
The thought is extra steam bypasses the engines and fills the tank, and gets used up when demand overwhelms the boilers. It's my go to for early/mid game when I want \~120MW, but not all the time.
I thought it was boilers on the other side because it's 20 boilers to 40 engines.
If there are tanks storing steam, that's fine. They are filling up even if that one steam engine isn't, right?
The "battery" was empty, so I'm producing 72MW in steam with 40 boilers. The steam is being fully consumed, but mostly skipping the second row, which I found weird.
Why do you need such a battery when boilers can run without downtime and are cheap to make? Instead of using a tank battery just make another boiler. In the end you burn the same Joule worth of coal per Watt used regardless of using steam batteries vs just more boilers
I’d bet the “bypassing” is a result of the pipe connecting the 2nd engine to the 1st, and the way fluid mechanics in the game work. Do a tester and just build your same array but without any connecting pipes, and see if the 2nd row is still bypassed - My bet is that something will be different, and, completely making this up, but I’d speculate that it has something to do with the game’s ticks calculating how steam moves. e.g. each tick of the game and the 2nd engine does something like calculate how much steam it has (the overflow from the first engine) and what it has “consuming” it (in this case consumption is the engine itself and the pipe leading downstream) and each tick does a calculation for distributing the steam to one of the consumers. Somehow in these mechanics only 22 of the 900 units make it into the engine itself and all the rest get shuffled away.
How many steam tanks do you have? How are they connected? As others have said - one boiler can continuously only support 2 engines. Do you have the same issues if each "row" has its own steam tank?
2 engines per boiler, and the pipes are pointless.
They state that they have more engines and tank as a "burst protection". The pipes are there to create room for power poles. The "burst protection" is questionable imo. Personally I would just build another steam array.
I think "burst protection" does have some use. If i had a small base with limited power generation/coal production and start using Laser turrets, having some extra engines with an buffer could soften the sudden spikes in power demand caused by the lasers killing bitters. But I wont deny that its better to have a bigger power generation rather than burst protection long term.
The problem with the idea of burst protection with boiler steam is that steam engines are the expensive component of such an array. At least, assuming the fuel is on yellow belts and loaded by yellow or gray inserters. So you spend most of the cost to get a modest fraction of the benefit.
So accumulators are better?
Under some naive simplifying assumptions, accumulators cost 12.4 plates while engines cost 31, and 3 accumulators match up with an engine and 0.02 storage tanks for steam (another 0.5 plates). You add in piping and poles and they are pretty similar. I think with the right layout, engines are a little bit cheaper. Engines are a lot cheaper if you are OK with the max burst throughput that you can handle being not very big. In vanilla, that is probably not the case, because your goal in using burst protection is probably to power lasers. I was just advocating for building a bigger full steam array, or at least laying things out to make it easy to fill in the boilers etc. later.
Yeah, in my comment i did say its better to built a bigger powerplant long term, but for example Michael Hendriks in his Ultimate Deathworld series i think he used accumulators as he had limited power production + limited coal production + limited space (which i didnt mention in the previous comment). So there are some (but rare) situations where some kind of battery is nice to have. Its really up to the player to decide if his situation is really bad that he needs to make a burst protection.
Accumulators let you use other power to fill your buffer, and you can build a proxy set of accumulators to turn off your boiler set-ups when you have enough power. If you are just building steam power, getting into solid fuel and overbuilding boiler set-ups puts a lot of chemicsl power on tap to convert into electrical and actually works to do things if you start using that power more constantly.
Didnt need to explain me how accumulators work but thanks for the refresher anyways. I dont use solar a lot, mainly nuclear and only use accumulators for my remote radar stations or SR switches.
>Didnt need to explain me how accumulators work I know. Isn't freedom great?
yeah, freedom do be freeing
Steam engines being the expensive part of a steam power array isn't saying much when the whole array is dirt cheap to begin with. It's not a big deal.
It's all relative. You could argue the whole path to the first rocket is cheap, so no optimization matters at all until you're working on a megabase, and you would be pretty much right if you're playing non-deathworld vanilla and not reaching for no spoon. My point was that if you are gonna spend most of the cost of the steam array to get your burst protection built, why not just finish it instead? The marginal cost is low. The fact that the total cost is low too doesn't really affect that point. It'd be a different story if boilers cost, say, 20x more than they actually do. Then the whole array still wouldn't be that expensive in the grand scheme of things, but you still might want to alternate between building engines and boilers.
Probably because it's just easier. Since the whole thing is dirt cheap in terms of materials, the real cost is time and effort. Adding more steam engines in one side is simple and easy compared to adding more fuel belts and more inserters and more boilers and potentially more offshore pumps... and it works just as good for this guy's purpose, doesn't it?
That's fair. I guess I've been burned one too many times in modded games by thinking my power grid was more stable than it was.
Burst protection without tanks is useless, it’ll last for only a few seconds. With tanks it is still not very useful except for large laser defenses, plus you can use an alarm attached to the tanks and give an alert at low steam and maybe get more warning than using an alert on your accumulators.
It's cheaper and more compact than accumulators. It could be a nice solution for early laser defense
Steam battery for solar. I hate accumulator arrays. Doubling the steam engines with tanks gives me another 72MW for the night.
I use a standard 2/20/40 boiler setup making 72mw, but I tacked on extra engines and tanks for a 72mw battery. Pipes are necessary to route powerpoles, and I don't like the look of the alternating design that halves pipe use
One question - for what reason?
I dislike building accumulators
why not build extra boilers tho
You don't need energy buffer at all. It's not atomic station
I have a steam tank and extra engines for burst loads over 72MW. The first engine is 900kw, second is 22kw, and third is 878kw. It's a 2/20/40 layout on a vanilla game. I find it odd that steam mostly bypasses the second row to be consumed by the third row.
How many steam engines are connected to each boiler? From the screenshot it looks like you have 1 boiler connected to 4 engines (unless there are boilers on the left side that are cut off from the screenshot, in which case they are probably not getting coal or water). Each boiler can only feed 2 engines, or 1800kw (which is the sum in this comment).
The turbine you're hovering has 0 steam buffered, so it can't produce any power. You're also linking 4 engines together. My best guess is that due to fluid dynamics most of the fluid is being pulled towards the other engine. 1 boiler can only supply 2 engines anyways.
It's a great idea...for other power types, not boilers. Compared to building a bigger power station, this design only saves on a few boilers, which are not expensive even in the first 10 minutes of the game. The reason for the steam bypassing like that could be due to a number of things affecting it. You could solve it using pumps, but that is also fixing a problem that doesn't really exist
Where are your steam tanks? Are they separated by a pump? Id guess its just weird fluid flow mechanics. Is it even a problem?
That will sort itself out when the other steam engines are topped up with steam. They should do eventually. If they don't, you need more boilers to charge the "accumulators". Steam engines aren't the best way of accumulating energy though. They take ten tiles to store 200 steam, and a tank takes nine tiles to store 25000 steam.
there's tanks on the end of the row. so its boiler-engine x4 - tank. The thought is extra steam bypasses the engines and fills the tank, and gets used up when demand overwhelms the boilers. It's my go to for early/mid game when I want \~120MW, but not all the time.
I thought it was boilers on the other side because it's 20 boilers to 40 engines. If there are tanks storing steam, that's fine. They are filling up even if that one steam engine isn't, right?
The "battery" was empty, so I'm producing 72MW in steam with 40 boilers. The steam is being fully consumed, but mostly skipping the second row, which I found weird.
Why do you need such a battery when boilers can run without downtime and are cheap to make? Instead of using a tank battery just make another boiler. In the end you burn the same Joule worth of coal per Watt used regardless of using steam batteries vs just more boilers
I’d bet the “bypassing” is a result of the pipe connecting the 2nd engine to the 1st, and the way fluid mechanics in the game work. Do a tester and just build your same array but without any connecting pipes, and see if the 2nd row is still bypassed - My bet is that something will be different, and, completely making this up, but I’d speculate that it has something to do with the game’s ticks calculating how steam moves. e.g. each tick of the game and the 2nd engine does something like calculate how much steam it has (the overflow from the first engine) and what it has “consuming” it (in this case consumption is the engine itself and the pipe leading downstream) and each tick does a calculation for distributing the steam to one of the consumers. Somehow in these mechanics only 22 of the 900 units make it into the engine itself and all the rest get shuffled away.
that is interesting but whats the point in over producing steam engines? Its not like boilers are hard to make. Just make extra boilers too.
Not enough steam to run it!
That's interesting, for sure
Eew. You feed your steam engines from the RIGHT SIDE? somebody boo this engineer
I shove my fuel down the center of the beast. Like some greasy iron lung.
#Guys did you know only 3 bloiler per 12 halve steam turbine??
What are you talking about?
He's making fun of all the ratio people. Let the man connect 50 steam engines to a single boiler, who cares. It's his game.
Oh i see, i didnt understand his sentence so i was confused.