Optimising the oil residue-creating part of my turbofuel factory. This isnt super advanced math but still.
Try not to accidentally become a competent process engineer
I blame factorio pyanodon’s mods for my life choice to become a chemical engineer. And no, i have not finished it, at some point i just realized that i need a degree in chemical engineering to fish that mod
One nice thing compared to Factorio is that the ratios in this are pretty approachable - I know some people go fucking crazy trying to be hyper optimized about power usage but, tbh, there’s a fuckton of power available unless you start power-slugging production buildings so the math has always felt manageable to me.
me when recycled rubber and recycled plastic balancing
I keep a journal in a text file and do what I call “watneying” after Mark Watney of The Martian. Looks a bit like this:
80 rubber plants (4 gangs of 20) will produce 1600 HOR/min. The turbo blend fuel recipe takes HOR, Fuel and Coke, plus sulfur. 15 fuel, 30 HOR and 22.5 coke/min. Need to figure up the fuel and coke in terms of HOR/min
Diluted fuel takes 50 HOR/min and makes 100 fuel/min.
Petrol coke takes 40 HOR/min and makes 120 coke/min.
So we’re talking about 30 raw HOR, 7.5 fuel HOR and 7.5 coke HOR/min. So 45 HOR/min plus some sulfur becomes 45 turbofuel/min.
My play time counter in this game is wildly inaccurate because I spend about as much time looking at the map, wiki and planning in my text document as I do in-engine building factories and shooting piggies.
Why don’t you just use a solver instead of doing linear programming with pencil and paper?
“yOu WoN’T aLwaYs haVe a CaLcUlator aROund.”
And other statements from the 90s
The solver didnt work for what i wanted to do /:
I think that suggestion about Matlab is silly, that’s so overkill.
But, in case you ever run out of graph paper, consider Desmos, I use it a lot because it’s simple:
I think that suggestion about Matlab is silly, that’s so overkill.
right? use
calc-modelike a self-respecting unix geek.Good suggestion (although that isnt my graph), i might use it next time
That when you get out python or Matlab, or if insanity beacons Fortran, or maybe even c++
joy of accomplishment? :)
Same reason I still do mortar math on paper in games that actually have it matter. It’s more fun that way, and I can do it faster than going to a website and plugging it in.
So you don’t forget how to do it?
The solver didnt work for what i wanted to do /:
ChatGPT, Gemini and alike are good in this. And before/still also WolframAlpha. They even display and explain the steps to you. You should still check if the results make sense, but my experience so far is very positive.
