Reworking the Steam-outputting reactor concept

SegFaulter · Feb 23rd 2013

Well, I have been playing with the steam output reactors for a while, and I see that it's not really that HAYO-ish. I have an idea to make it better, so if you can spare a few minutes, please continue reading.

Basically, the idea states that, when steam-outputting reactors are enabled in the config file, the inventory space of the reactor is reduced to a 1x6 grid, increasing by another 1x6 column for every adjacent chamber, with the grid shoved to the far left side of the GUI. Here, only uranium cells can be placed, no other components work. (maybe even disabling crafting of other components when the config option is enabled...). In the remaining space, there are two liquid-bars, one for steam and one for water. Here's a rough example of a complete reactor's GUI:

The 7x6 grid is for the single/dual/quad Uranium cells. In the upper-right corner, there are two liquid bars. The left one holds water, the right one holds steam. The little bar under the left one shows the steam production (how hot the water is, not the hull - starts at 0, reactor starts making some steam at 25%, and steam production rises from there). And the little ''Hull heat'' text kinda describes itself - all it does is read the reactor's hull temperature and output the value, in percent, where 0% = 0 and 100% = meltdown.

Basically, As long as there is water in the reactor, it heats water into steam rather than dispersing the heat to the reactor hull. But, if there is no more water to heat into steam, the heat is dispersed into the hull. Also, if the reactor is shut down when heat is in the hull, the heat will be used to boil water into steam, until it either runs out of heat, or runs out of water.

At 25% steam production, 8 heat = 1 steam, 50% is 4 heat = 1 steam, 75% is 2 heat = 1 steam, and 100% is 1 heat = 1 steam.

Also, it may be somehow possible to make a bigger GUI (I have seen it in other mods), allowing more room for the water/steam bars, and steam production bar.

If you like the idea, or have an idea to make the idea better, please leave a reply. Thank you for reading.

Chocohead · Feb 23rd 2013

I like the idea of there being a way of monitoring steam and heat levels, as well as needing to pump water in like a rail craft boiler. Not too sure on making the reactor's space for uranium smaller though.

Eliav24 · Feb 23rd 2013

How about making the nuclear steam boiler- like the regular boilers, it can have up to 9 special nuclear fireboxes, and what regularly comes as electricity now comes as the amount of heat transferred to the boiler , and reactor cooling is used to prevent the fireboxes themselves from melting due to excess heat.

Also, depending on the math, new super high pressure boiler tanks might be needed to work with the new heat output- perhaps something like 40-80 steam/tick,max heat 2000-8000 (which produces 450-900 eu\t in the largest boiler with many turbines), with the reactor itself running very very fast and then slower (and thus more efficiently) as it reaches the max heat
(Cooling speed is also slower, due to ~~making different reactor ticks per second affects both heat made and vented~~ the heat of the entire boiler affecting cooling)
(also note that reactor speed is irrelevant yo steam production, which is dependent only on the tanks).

These reactors should always be mark 1 reactors, so even with a supremely expensive and cleaver design you can't expect too much.

This way we get proper steam power with nuclear reactors and still don't have to trash the old paradigms- if you do the math, if each nuclear firebox is crafted with a single chamber and adds a single row you get exactly as much as inventory as a regular reactor.

Proposed crafting recipes:

firebox-

( ==dense plating)

advance boiler tank-
( ==high pressure tank)
( ==dense plating)

MatLaPatate · Feb 23rd 2013

Quote from Eliav24

How about making the nuclear steam boiler-

That would be cool, but that won't come from IC² I guess. Should be added to RC

GregoriusT · Feb 23rd 2013

CovertJaguar should definetly add a Boiler-API or something like that.

Since removing the minigame from the Reactors would cause it to be too simple, how about that. If the Steam inside reaches full capacity without being used the Boiler explodes, like as if there is not enough Water, because getting Water infinitely is even with Railcraft alone too easy.

Eliav24 · Feb 23rd 2013

Quote from MatLaPatate

"How about making the nuclear steam boiler-"
That would be cool, but that won't come from IC² I guess. Should be added to RC

Well steam is from RC. you can't expect a solution without primarily considering it. And for greg: It won't remove the minigame in my suggestion: you still have the inventory of 1-9 by 6 rows to organize, and still need to cool down excess heat- the boiler only takes what normally uses EU, and the regular heat management is still essential to prevent your fireboxes from melting down.

And someone needs to tell the jaguar(?) that.

MatLaPatate · Feb 24th 2013

I'd suggested something like a limited cooldown by water, and as Greg said, making the reactor explode if Steam isn't used.
Maybe a better idea would be to make water turned into steam cooling down Coolant Cells, so that would buff these one and be more realistic as nowadays, Nuclear Reactor uses 2 Water Circuit, one directly in the core, which is also used to contains radiation, and the other one, heated by the first, to generate energy.
Something like a 6 Heat (what Coolants cells can currently absorb per tick I believe), and maybe increasing the amount of Heat/t they cool with and without external water ?

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