All Nuclear Reactor heat management components need a massive nerf in cost.

idk I build Fluid Reactors because it's just fun to have a big complex machine. I don't really care about material to energy output ratio or efficiency or any of that in late game.

I'd rather nerf the other generators to make nuclear more appealing.

Quote from Shirolol

I did some maths and the reality is: powerful reactors are completely worthless.

...

As long as the reactor components remain excessively overpriced, nuclear power plants will never be worth it and the only use for uranium that makes sense is a lot of very inefficient reactors for plutonium production.

Quote from Shirolol

It doesn't change the fact that Nuclear reactors in all forms remain incredibly inefficient.

I am not intending to offend you, yet I really want to laugh at what you said.

I haven't played IC2 for quite a bit of time, but I believe more than a year ago I have already built a self-sustaining uranium reactor design making use of the replicator. Though that build is not completed (thus not entirely made public), it had already achieved the ability to run on its own with a large surplus of EU. If I remember correctly the fuel rods in it aren't even operating at max efficiency. In terms of the exact minimum efficiency required please refer to this.

As its output scales with the amount of reactors used, the only thing that makes this thing balanced (at least to me) is its incredibly high building cost, the biggest portion of which is the component cost. Once the cost of the reactor components are cut down it would be too OP for such a thing to be even theoretically possible.

Quote from Shirolol

Sure you can build self-sustaining reactors.

But I can build self-sustaining biogas power plants that are WAY cheaper and WAY more powerful and probably also need less space.

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Nuclear reactors are a lot more endgame, especially with an automatic replicator setup, so they should MAYBE also have endgame-worthy efficiency and not be completely outclassed by baby's first biogas plant.

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The whole replicator-based reactor thing is indeed intended for end-game renewable power generation, but in general I don't think reactors are poorly efficient.

; Balance Values for Fermenter
[balance / fermenter]
need_amount_biomass_per_run = 20
output_amount_biogas_per_run = 400
hU_per_run = 4000
biomass_per_fertilizier = 500

To run a biomass-based fluid reactor that produces 20,000 HU/s (which is identical to what you mentioned and convenient to calculate), it needs 10 fermenters to consume all the heat at 100 HU/t each, which produces 4,000 mB Biogas in 2 seconds, which needs 200 semifluid generators to burn all of those biogas, as they burn 10 mB biogas every 1 second. In total you get 3200 EU/t.

The design that I used in my MOX array was a 4-chamber design with a single quad MOX rod and 4 iridium reflectors, running at roughly 82% heat and giving it a raw output of 600 EU/t each. Taking replication costs into account it outputs 427.668 EU/t on average. A 20-reactor array, which produces 8553.36 EU/t on average, has a volume of 12x11x35 = 4620 blocks. If a 20,000 HU/s design is more space efficient, the volume of it must be under 1728.44 blocks, which to me looks difficult.

Another thing is that your design doesn't scale up very well. I designed my reactors to be easily stackable, but if you want to, for instance, double you output you literally have to build everything again though some parts might be similar. Without overclockers in my fuel processing section, I would consider the thermal centrifuge to be the bottleneck of the maximum rate of fuel production, taking 25s to process a single item, thus taking 50s to process a single uranium ore. Replicating enough uranium ore (without scrap) to match this speed requires an input of 16,070 EU/t on average. Considering only 2872s/10000s of the power produced is used to replicate uranium, this would mean that it can take in 55,950 EU/t for the amount of time that EU is used for uranium replication, which equals to 93.25 reactors running simultaneously. If there are 90, they would have an average output of 38490 EU/t and a volume of 12x11x105 = 13860 blocks. If the 20,000 HU/s design is used then its individual volume should be no more than 1152 blocks.

In terms of building efforts your design would be tedious to build on a large scale, while mine should be much simpler.

As for the amount of machine blocks needed, my 20-reactor design needs 31 + 20 + 80 = 131 machines, while only one of yours needs 200+.

Also, don't forget lag, which is the most basic limiting factor of how large anything can be built. The more machines you use in a single build, the laggier it is, and in turn less of it can be built.

I currently have no idea about what your design is like, so that's what I can say for now. It would be great help for me to analyze exactly how much more efficient your setup is if you could post a world download.

Oops, I suddenly realized that you are not using a fluid reactor to provide the heat for fermenters. IIRC the fermenter can provide enough biogas to power itself, providing biomass it is basically a perpetual motion machine. If you are refering to this then I am quite confident that reactors are much more efficient.

Quote from Shirolol

I have no idea how you came up with your numbers for the biogas setup, because they don't make any sense at all. 200 Semifluid generators would produce 3200EU/t, but that's not what I am using, I am using 32 Liquid fuel fireboxes, which produces 1024HU/t or 20480HU/s. 200 liquid fuel fireboxes would produce 128000HU/s.

I thought that you were using the heat from a fluid reactor to power the fermenters. Sorry about this.

Quote from Shirolol

I am gonna do some maths now, but before that I can say that your design and its efficiency doesn't actually matter at all.

You are using EU-mode reactors. I don't know if they are more efficient, but if they are, that just makes the implementation of fluid reactors even more worthless, because this would mean that Fluid reactors are completely outclassed by EU-reactors even though they were designed to be way more efficient.

Apparantly you don't know much about reactors, but if you want to compare other stuff with reactors I highly recommend that you have a deeper understanding of reactors first.

About the EU / fluid reactor efficiency: The following design can at most produce 140 EU/t in an EU reactor, but if you throw it into a fluid reactor it can produce 896 HU/t, which can be converted into 672 EU/t (with an volume of 288 blocks even counting the lever). If a MOX rod is used then it can produce 600+ EU/t in an EU reactor (which uses the exact same fuel rod configuration as the design that I mentioned in previous threads), while with a single MOX a single fluid reactor can produce 1279.68 HU/t (959.76 EU/t) on average. The fluid reactor provides a decent increase in efficiency given the same fuel (reflector) input.

The main reasons that I used EU reactors in my design was 1) they are significantly smaller than the fluid reactor generating the same amount of EU and 2) they are much easier to build than fluid reactors.

Quote from Shirolol

I am using 32 Liquid fuel fireboxes, which produces 1024HU/t or 20480HU/s

...

but you cannot build a fluid reactor that would be more efficient than a good biogas setup in both cost and size, which was my main point.

What I am really concerned about is the necessity to provide heat for the fermenters to get biogas - sure 32 liquid fuel fireboxes can produce 20480 HU/s, but in 1 second they consume 320 mB Biogas, which requires 3200 HU to ferment that many biogas. If you burn biogas to provide heat for the fermenters (which to me seems to be the most efficient way of doing so) then that gives you a net output of only 17280 HU/s, or 864 HU/t, which is already less than 32 HU/t less than what a quad U-rod fluid reactor can produce.

As I have only built a ~280 EU/t biogas based power plant in survival it would be helpful for me to see how things are scaled up if you could post something about your design (e.g. screenshots) so I could take a look at it.

Quote from Shirolol

No, I understand fluid rectors. I built one that outputs 1kEU/t.

never mind about that

Quote from Shirolol

Yeah, the fermenter powering is a bit of a flaw in my design, because if I only run a single block of the power plant, I get lazy and just use Electric Heaters, which, yeah, would mean I only get 608EU/t.

Well there is a balance between simplicity and efficiency. Electric heaters are lower in efficiency, but they make fermenters ferment faster. For EU generation a semifluid generator is the most straightforward way, but using high pressure steam or stirling kinetic generators yields a higher output. You've got to find a balance between the two.

Quote from Shirolol

But again, the space requirement and material cost of it is much lower than a comparable fluid reactor setup.

Like I said the reactor would be SEVERAL TIMES more expensive to build, so unless you can get 40000HU/t with a MK1, it is impossible for fluid reactors to ever be worth it compared to a biogas plant.

4 of the 896 HU/t fluid reactors that I used output a total of 2688 EU/t. A fermenter running on a liquid fuel firebox produces 400 mB biogas every 6.25 seconds, 62.5 mB of which is consumed by itself, giving a total net output of 337.5 mB, which equals to 54 mB/s. If semifluid generators are used to produce 2688 EU/t then 42 of them is needed, which requires 7.77 fermenters.

Now I'm starting to understand why you say fluid reactors are crap - It isn't difficult to fit 42 semifluid generators inside this area and they're cheaper, right? This was built before practical usage of stirling kinetic generators were a thing (there was no practical way in vanilla IC2 to get rid of hotspring water back then), so it may have room for improvement in size.

Quote from Shirolol

And I am pretty sure that my 26880HU/s reactor is about as powerful as it gets.

I made a 35553.8 HU/s reactor (avg output) more than a year ago. I can't recall if it was tested in-game, but if it works I'm pretty confident that it has reached the output limit for a single fluid reactor.

Quote from Shirolol

The internal components and the heat exchangers just completely ruin fluid reactors with their resource costs.

You might not know that since industrialcraft-2-2.8.36-ex112 (which is in early 2018) the fermenter balance was changed to output 4 times as much. From that perspective maybe it is biogas production itself that was made too powerful, which in turn ruins the reactors.

; Balance Values for Fermenter
[balance / fermenter]
need_amount_biomass_per_run = 20
output_amount_biogas_per_run = 400
hU_per_run = 4000
biomass_per_fertilizier = 500

; Balance Values for Fermenter
[balance / fermenter]
need_amount_biomass_per_run = 10
output_amount_biogas_per_run = 200
hU_per_run = 8000
biomass_per_fertilizier = 500

(btw I won't be back until next friday)

I've done some more calculations in the past week, and from current results I can surely say that the fermenter was bumped up too much.

As the EU required for biomass is negligible, I'm only comparing the fermenter data below.

After 2.8.36, a fermenter powered by a liquid fuel firebox:

- takes 6.25s to produce 400 mB biogas

- liquid fuel firebox consumes 62.5 mB biogas

- equals to a net biogas production of 54 mB/s

- can be converted into 129.6 EU/t (with a HU to EU ratio of 1 : 0.75)

Before 2.8.36, a fermenter powered by a liquid fuel firebox:

- takes 12.5s to produce 200 mB biogas

- liquid fuel firebox consumes 125 mB biogas

- equals to a net biogas production of 6 mB/s

- can be converted into 14.4 EU/t

As it can be seen, the change in fermenter balance actually made a single fermenter 9x more capable.

Considering that the most simple nuclear reactor produces only 5 EU/t, currently fermenters are simply too powerful compared to the sheer material cost of reactors.

Quote from Shirolol

Yeah well that is one way of saying "Nuclear reactors are too weak for their material cost" :p

You got it. Now I'm not opposing this idea, what I really meant is that the fermenter needs to be nerfed. Reactors have been like that for very long, and from my perspective what Aroma1997 noted in the changelog of 2.8.36 does not suggest that they intend to make the fermenter that powerful. IMO it is the fermenter that is causing the problem you've mentioned.

I fully understand that it feels disappointing to see something in favor of you being nerfed, but here are some reasons why I propose my suggestion that fermenters should be nerfed:

1. As aforementioned, the change that made the fermenters much more powerful is probably unintentional.

2. One use of biogas is what you are using - renewable energy via plants. The fact that biogas generators dwarf nuclear reactors simply don't make sense.

3. Another intentional use of biogas is to provide more efficient means to convert HU into EU for fluid reactors, the current default fermenter configurations completely ruin this use, for steam setups and stirling generators have much lower HU to EU ratio in comparison. The original config is much more reasonable.

Quote from Shirolol

What would speak against nerfing the costs of the reactor components, though?

5.3 copper ingots, 2 tin ingots, 8.5 iron ingots for a god damn basic B fan, really?

I consider reactors currently to be balanced ( except for the fermenter part of course). If you would like to nerf its costs I think there are two things that should be taken into consideration:

1. As reactors are generators, their costs must not be too low to make other generators unreasonable to use.

2. Self-sustaining reactors must not be easily accessible in a large scale.

As the whole generator balance thing is a rabbit hole that affects the fundamentals of IC2, I'm not very willing to go down it and therefore leaving it to you guys.

Large scale reactors are basically end-game, which is when you are likely to have accumulated a large amount of basic ores via automated mining. So rather than material costs manual labor needed is of greater importance. Crafting of vents can be automated too.

Quote from Doctor Weird

Something that has bothered me about reactor vents is that they incorporate an electric motor in its recipe, but they don't require any external source of power to actually vent out heat from the reactor.

Might be more fun and challenging if you had to supply a small amount of power for each vent to remove the heat from the reactor. Forgetting to power the vents would lead to a meltdown.

I would assume that the vents are powered internally. How would you like to power the vents then?