Upgrading Nuclear Reactor + Uranium usage

[Klaranth]

ThinkSome: Nuclear Reactor can do with better output. Reduce solar and hydro significantly (e.g solar/10 and hydro/5) and make reactors much better.

Hedgehog: Reducing the usefulness of one to ump up the other may be the wrong road to take. In the end, removing a choice players have here may result in this server seeing players leave. If you want to improve the reactor, build a better one.

Alternatively: Introduce semi-heavy and heavy water.

Normal water gives out the current output. Then : River water gives out twice that. Semi heavy water 4 times. Heavy water 7 times.

Recipe for semi heavy water is made ( don't laugh) by alloying bucket of river water with a block of iron. Recipe for heavy water is alloy semi-heavy with another block of iron.

Then you can get more power output based on the water you pour into it.

Thinksome: Maybe by crafting and loading plutonium fuel?

Test_User Closest improvement is making the outer shells of multiple reactors intersect

Thinksome: I've never built one of those reactors, but from the code it seems like they have an inventory with 6 slots that accept 6*99 fuel and on start one rod is consumed from each slot. So, could make it so that having >=10 rods in each slot makes it consume 10 and supply 800 kEU for a week?

Maybe we need a new fuel type?

Another option would be much higher enrichment?

[S-S-X]

This idea has a lot in common with #106 (HV hydro) discussion.

ThinkSome: Nuclear Reactor can do with better output. Reduce solar and hydro significantly (e.g solar/10 and hydro/5) and make reactors much better. Hedgehog: Reducing the usefulness of one to ump up the other may be the wrong road to take. In the end, removing a choice players have here may result in this server seeing players leave. If you want to improve the reactor, build a better one.

Balancing would be more correct word here, reducing current max hydro output would be better for output balance. Balancing solar is harder decision, solar do provide superior output and nothing can get even near that but only during daylight hours. Way how solars work make them unique power generator, some average performance values could probably be calculated by taking required battery boxes into account when calculating absolute performance of solars.

Question would be what are current performance values for solar, nuclear and hydro taking all required components into account. Then add maintenance impact which is zero for hydro, zero for solar, some for nuclear. Best possible balance would be when player cannot make decision simply by absolute energy output performance, mixing maintenance free setups with setups that require even some maintenance is big part of problem.

Alternatively: Introduce semi-heavy and heavy water. Normal water gives out the current output. Then : River water gives out twice that. Semi heavy water 4 times. Heavy water 7 times.

Upgrade like this alone is too simple, cost vs output basically makes heavy water only viable option for nuclear. I think instead of introducing multi tier it would be better to just require heavy water and give bit smaller output boost for all reactors like 150kEU / reactor. I think this could also be done in a way that allows old reactors to run with 100kEU output but allow starting reactor again only with heavy water and then also give output boost.

I've never built one of those reactors, but from the code it seems like they have an inventory with 6 slots that accept 6*99 fuel and on start one rod is consumed from each slot. So, could make it so that having >=10 rods in each slot makes it consume 10 and supply 800 kEU for a week?

This could provide another balanced way to combine performance boost with heavy water: require more fuel when using heavy water and then give output boost based on that. Possibly with some small performance bonus. However (not being expert on this field) based on my quick research it seems that main (only?) purpose of heavy water in reactors is to allow using much lower grade uranium fuels through slowing down the emitted neutrons and achieving criticality through that instead of through critical mass.

This basically means that there should be another fuel grade, natural uranium fuel rods used in heavy water reactors.

• Requires heavy water
• More fuel rods consumed at once
• Output is worse (but fuel processing is a lot simpler)
• Reduce reactor size by removing / changing some shielding layers?

Maybe we need a new fuel type? Another option would be much higher enrichment?

Could be option too, way harder to revert and requires some good planning. Basically much higher enrichment will also require new fuel type while new fuel type does not necessarily require higher enrichment (heavy water reactors).

[OgelGames]

Some related things:

• https://wiki.aidancbrady.com/wiki/Fission_Reactor (Minecraft mod)
• https://wiki.aidancbrady.com/wiki/Fusion_Reactor (same mod)
• https://github.com/BuckarooBanzay/technic_fusion (draft)

[S-S-X]

Linking few issues that mostly aim to include shortcuts for speeding up game, reducing required space for machines, making mining or processing simply faster as main goal without providing much anything else: #164 #159 #136 #114 #108 #106 #81

[dennisjenkins75]

Suggestion:

1. Keep current nuclear reactor as-is.
2. New reactor requires mithril outer shield, and the fuel is (make up random magic name) an allow of uranium ingots and mithril ingots, then compress that. Or process it in a machine that requires rare-ish things to make. But such a reactor and fuel combo could yield 10x the power output.

So the balancing is between effort to build the reactor/fuel combo vs power output. Mithril is fairly rare until one starts mega-mining deep under ground, by which point they typically already have a mining ship w/ a few nuclear reactors or lots of hydro.

Or make it so that the machine that converts uranium+mithril into the magic-fuel only works at elevations that are in the war zone. Like it needs to be close to $diety of something to work. Or you need to chuck a few xenos into a grinder, get the acid out, and use that, or something.

[SwissalpS]

what good is having 800kEU nuke if polyfuse cuts it at 120kEU usage. This is a delicate manouver. :/

[Klaranth]

birdlover32767 Add nuclear bombs

FeXoR Since this is the second time - I guess you want fission and fusion bombs?

iceyou yes

SX removed unrelated comments

SwissalpS removed more unrelated comments

[Klaranth]

birdlover32767 Make a large enough mass of uranium blocks go critical, resulting in an explosion. Might want to add some checks for protection Hedgehog Rather not. Everyone with a drawer with the stuff will want to hunt you.....

[Klaranth]

birdlover32767 buff nuclear because it's too underpowered compared to mv hydros maybe have it give 200kEU or so

SX For balancing it would likely be better to nerf hydro to balance geothermal, solar, nuclear and fossil fuel to match better with hydro. But unfortunately doing so would break many factories and ships.

[Klaranth]

wf13 not putting reactors on jumpdrives pokestir wdym? et well if the reactor was more advanced than that would probably be a problem wf13 I do wish they where more advanced like the TechAge fusion reactor