Factorio Forums

Hey Factorio forum,
I need help with the new patch, I can`t seem to make heads and tails of the new Oil based Industry, im at a complete loss.
Like how does chemical plant work, how do barrels work, how to fill them, how to get lubricant, engine, etc.
Please help my current high level factory is completely broken with the new patch, it`ll be fun to fix it from the ground up but currently I can`t seem to figure out how Oil works.
Thank you all for help

From what i gather, you need 3 techs.

Oil Extraction (I think its called). This is useless by itself, but it will allow you to build oil Derricks.
Liquid Logistics is also useless by itself, but gives you storage tanks (like a chest buffer) and super-duper-expensive steel barrels, and liquid pumps (require power).
Oil processing will give you access to the two buildings that will make any of this useful, and provide the processing plant (aka, refinery), and the chemical plant.

The Processing Plant (Refinery) lets you turn oil into three products. Heavy Oil, Light Oil, and Petrol (correct me on the last bit). To my knowledge, these cannot be packed into steel barrels and must be stored/pumped to a chemical plant. I also believe that all three of these semi-processed fluids are yielded at the same time when a unit of liquid crude is processed. This is also where you can use Barrels to store and physically transport liquid crude, and later 'unpack' it back into a fluid form.

At the Chemical Plant:
Heavy Oil is used for Lubricant (new requirement for engines, which are required for modular armor, trains, and cars).
Petrol is used for plastics (New material requirement for Advanced Electronic Circuits)
I forget what light oil is used for.
All three can, alternatively, be processed into solid fuel blocks, which is a slightly more powerful variant of coal, and can be transported via normal inventory management.

Chemical plants also have other things they can do, such as new ingredients required for explosives, but I didn't get a chance to fully explore it yet.

@Zourin good explanation:) I will just add that the light oil is meant as the "fuel fraction" from the oil. At the moment it can be used only for the solid fuel blocks which store more energy than the coal.

Anexgohan wrote: Like how does chemical plant work, how do barrels work, how to fill them, how to get lubricant, engine, etc.
Please help my current high level factory is completely broken with the new patch, it`ll be fun to fix it from the ground up but currently I can`t seem to figure out how Oil works.
Thank you all for help

The chemical plant is "just an assembling machine with the pipe". You bring some liquids, some items and there are your products (liquids and / or items). Selecting the chemical plant shows you the in / out connection points for the pipes and expected fluid inputs / outputs.

Barrels are not really necessary, you can transport all the fluids in the pipes and use a pump(s) if the pipe is too long.

Lubricant, engine, sulfur, sulfuric acid, etc. are materials. Before we had only 1 type of material - items. Now we have 2 - items and fluids. Player cannot manipulate (craft / store) fluids in hand at the moment. But the chemical plant can craft fluid + item recipes and excessive fluids can be stored in the storage tanks.

Zourin wrote:From what i gather, you need 3 techs.

Oil Extraction (I think its called). This is useless by itself, but it will allow you to build oil Derricks.
Liquid Logistics is also useless by itself, but gives you storage tanks (like a chest buffer) and super-duper-expensive steel barrels, and liquid pumps (require power).
Oil processing will give you access to the two buildings that will make any of this useful, and provide the processing plant (aka, refinery), and the chemical plant.

In my opinion, that should be changed in the future. There is really no point in having a tech that doesn't allow you to do anything new on its own. I mean, there's no point in just developing the derricks, since you can't do anything with the raw oil. There should be one starting tech for the oil industry that allows you to build derricks, refineries and chemical plants. This way, you're actually able to do something with it. The storage, barrels, pumps can then be put into one or several additional techs.

The tech tree is complex anyway, there is no need to make it more complicated than necessary.

Thnx guys, i'll give it another go with the power of knowledge you guys have given me.

Hey guys,
Thank you for all the input, I now get the entire Liquid Industry its really awesome and complicated.
Currently running my entire Base with solid fuel , so much fun. I really struggled for a while to get to understand it but now that I do its a blast.

And it only took you 3 months! Congrats

Hey, if you still need help with this you could check out my playthrough in my signature. The videos labeled oil and solid fuel could help you with the oil industry, and the video labeled oil outpost could help you with barrels.

Moved from general to help...

undeadnightorc wrote:And it only took you 3 months! Congrats

Oh! no I just stumbled across this post again and felt rude of me not to thank you guys for helping me out, I got it within a month lol.