Solid Fuel v. Coal

[AmpsterMan]

So I just started pumping oil in my game. I can't refine into other stuff yet so I've been refining the three different products into Solid Fuel. Does this make sense? I noticed Coal is nescessary for Plastic (Tough, then again, so is petrogas) but solid fuel has 25 mJ of energy v. 8 mJ.

Do you guys use solid fuel? Does it make sense to have some of the less useful oil refinements (heavy and light) to convert to solid fuel?

[regex]

I generally transition my boilers over to solid fuel as soon as I can since I also use solid fuel to run trains and my car. I use a quadruple chest belt buffer to keep the oil flowing. As far as smelting, I don't bother because electric furnaces make that obsolete and I'd end up refactoring twice. Also, remember that the endgame requires solid fuel so it's nice to have a stockpile ready.

[Gus_Smedstad]

Yeah, refining all 3 products (heavy, light, gas) into solid fuel is what I do initially.

I keep a unified fuel belt, which runs to my steam engines, stone / steel furnaces, and trains. It's initially coal, but anything that will burn (wood, coal, solid fuel, small electric poles) can go on that belt. It doesn't matter if there's a type mismatch - if something like a boiler is burning something different, it'll pick up the new thing once it completely exhausts its stock of the old fuel. Hence there's no "second refactor" for smelting, it's generic fuel -> electric, not coal -> solid fuel -> electric.

While plastic needs both coal and oil, oil never completely runs out. So if I'm really, really concerned about bottlenecks, I'd rather burn oil over coal. In practice, it hasn't proved to be a problem, I always end up with enough coal for plastics.

I generally set up the unified fuel belt so that trash (wood, old wooden electric poles) goes on first, followed by solid fuel made from light oil, then from heavy oil, and then from gas, and finally coal. As long as there is a steady supply of fuel upstream on the belt of stuff, the later items don't get used.

The energy transition is generally fuel for steam + smelting -> solar reduces fuel demand during day -> accumulators (which require sulfuric acid from gas) eliminate steam fuel requirements at night -> advanced petroleum processing converts most crude oil into gas for plastics -> electric furnaces (which require plastics) eliminate fuel requirement for smelting.

In the end game, the oil demand is almost all gas for sulfur, primarily for batteries but a tiny trickle for processors, and plastics for advanced circuitry. A little bit gets converted into lubricant and solid fuel for trains, but not much.

[SirRichie]

There is another very important factor to consider here: full tanks

When your tanks of, say, light oil fill up, your entire oil processing stops. Creating solid fuel out of oil is a good way to solve that problem (although ultimately it shifts the problem to later storage...).

What I like to do it use small pumps in combination with wires. Once my tanks fill up beyond a certain point, I pump the content to an array of solid fuel creators.

[bobucles]

Solid fuel is pretty damn useful for stocking your vehicles, filling trains, and will be necessary at endgame. Don't be shy about turning medium oil into fuel as it is the most efficient out of all three fuel conversions. Yes, it is better to process heavy oil into medium oil rather than turn it directly into fuel.

Climbing the tech tree takes a large amount of petroleum gas. Making plastics will use some gas, and batteries will use lots of gas. Chances are you will have a shortage of gas and need to crack medium oil to get more, so store that gas for later instead of turning it into fuel.

[Ank]

Since I use only solar power at some point in the game, I dont realy need that much fuel to produce electricity. Because of that I generaly convert heavy and light oil into petroleum gas. (And some of the green stuff).

[TimmPure]

Once I get to blue circuits and modules, petroleum tends to be the bottleneck, so I generally crack every drop of oil into petroleum . But then again, I'm playing with a mod (RSO; Resource Spawner OVerhaul) that makes oil fields a lot more rare.

[AmpsterMan]

I guess i just haven't gotten very far in game. I JUST finished all green science modules. I'm preparing a blue science area, but i am doing everything green science allows me to do first to really learn the different interactions.

I hadn't built solar power yet because I'm actually doing somewhat well out with coal. Red Circuits seem to be so heavy on iron and copper... I've exhausted my iron deposits and have no idea how i ask going proceed. I keep hearing that the real kicker is petrogas in the future... i guess I'm yet to experience peak oil.

[roothorick]

For a different perspective:

I never use solid fuel at all (other than for rocket fuel) -- coal is very common and has little else use of volume, so it goes into my boilers and vehicles indefinitely. Then again, I tend to go solar early and hard (buying precious minutes on that evolution factor clock!), and I'm too impatient to put up with low-yield pumpjacks for long.

I start by turning heavy into lube and stockpiling it in a tank, stockpiling light in another tank as-is, and using gas for batteries and plastic dedicated exclusively to rushing for advanced processing research, then crack everything down to gas. Once my lube stockpile runs out, I'll switch back and forth between lube and heavy cracking as I need.