Balanse, part 1

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10 days ago

Synthetic diesel and batteries are unbalanced. I would have just lived with it, but I failed to edit the code for myself. I found the necessary lines, but the changes won't compile. So, I have to write here.

Let’s break it down.

1. Synthetic Diesel.
An interesting concept, especially regarding CO2 recycling, but it is not viable. I did the math... in a steam turbine cycle using hydrogen fuel, we get a hydrogen energy density of 12.5 MJ per unit. Synthetic diesel, when used in a Diesel generator, provides only 6.58 MJ, which completely invalidates its value for this use case. It is more efficient to use molten salt storage instead.

  • Proposal: Bring the energy value of synthetic fuel in the generator closer to 9.19 MJ per unit. This translates to 22 synth fuel per 60 seconds for a generator with the current power output. This would offer convenience at the cost of slightly lower efficiency compared to messing around with molten salt storage.
  • Recipe Adjustment: I also suggest reducing the amount of sulfur in the recipe. In the late game, sulfur is consumed by the kiloton for acids. Even when importing sour water, sulfur is scarce. And before the late game, there is plenty of oil available anyway. On the other hand, synthetic diesel itself is a questionable endeavor since oil can easily be bought with gold, and gold is generated by selling diesel made from that very same oil—with a profit left over.

2. Batteries.
A glaring imbalance. According to my calculations, 1 battery costs 86.3 MJ from the charging station side. At the same time, we have a battery consumption set in the code as 50 units per 10 minutes for a T2 truck and 50 units per 12 minutes for a T3 truck. This is over 100 times less efficient than any other chemical fuel in the game, which completely ruins this mod content.

  • Proposal: Either make battery charging cheaper or reduce battery consumption. A balanced approach would be best: bring the T2 truck's consumption to around 18 MJ (relative to hydrogen), similar to vanilla, while maintaining a reasonably large fuel tank capacity for batteries. It would even make sense to lower this value to 12 MJ, since battery energy drives the wheels directly without the need to convert hydrogen into electricity first.
  • Tech Requirements: I also suggest removing the Computing (Teraflops) requirement for the charging station. There is zero justification for it. All the necessary electronics are already inside the battery and the charging station itself.

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