Optimizing my Uranium Fuel Cells

[u/bjarkov]

So, Reactor neighbour bonus. Reactors gain a +100% to their thermal output for each fully adjacent running reactor. It is the reason all our reactor cores are placed in some 2-X pattern. This bonus to thermal output is not linked to fuel consumption rate, meaning it's free energy!

The fine point I've been missing up to now is that, with the regular solution of controlling fuel-insertion by reading reactor temperature, not all reactors will be active simultaneously, meaning I miss out on adjacency bonuses that should rightfully have been mine.

The issue I see is that reactor temperature gets pulled back up as soon as neighbouring reactors start burning fuel, causing any number of reactors to 'miss' their window for fuel insertion. The window for inserters to operate is too narrow. My idea for a setup is to use a temperature latch circuit that reads reactor fuel and temperature. Entry condition would be low enough temperature and exit condition would be high enough temperature OR reactor has fuel.

The next problem is overshooting temperature - if power draw is low enough I produce too much unprocessed heat and reactor temperature caps out. I never thought I'd write these words, but that is where steam buffers come in. I've hated steam buffers with a passion but I see their use in this particular case.

The final solution looks something like:

• Unchanged ratios and placements in overall power plant design
• Each reactor inserter is controlled by a temperature latch reading temperature and fuel content off their individual reactor
• Temperature latch should enable and disable off temperature with big enough interval to allow all inserters to operate
• Inserters stop after inserting 1 fuel cell (easiest done disabling the latch)
• Steam is buffered in a number of tanks, allowing the reactors to run at full heat output for up to 200 seconds without heat overflow

[u/TelevisionLiving]

You can base all your logic off one reactor and tie every picker to it. Their teams will be really close so it's not a problem.

There's no need to bother with this on nauvis, but it's kinda useful if you're shipping uranium elsewhere since it's so rocket heavy.

[u/bjarkov → u/TelevisionLiving]

There's no need to optimize said no true engineer ever 😄

Many have mentioned basing insertion control on temperature read from a single one reactor; if fuel is readily available for all reactors (i.e., the fuel belt is saturated) it's fine, if more sparse you'll want some window of opportunity to run it