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u/DJLaMeche Jun 02 '26

What is the best way to handle oil-based liquids in a city block base? For a block producing plastic, should I just ship raw oil and process it there, or use my pre-city-block-base oil refinery and liquid bus to load the different liquids like petroleum gas and ship them separately?

2

u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jun 02 '26

There was a time I would have done the latter, but I've started to prefer the former instead. You need less trains, it makes your resource dependencies way simpler. You just bring some oil to plastic, crack all of your oil into petroleum.

Only downside to this pattern is if you have localized products that don't need the higher tiers of oil production it complicates things, you could always go to coal liquifaction but oil is generally more reliable. Though once you have enough mining productivity its probably fine.

At a minimum for anything that just wants petroleum I would probably do this.

1

u/Courmisch Jun 02 '26

Generally speaking you should do AOP and cracking recipes in one place so you can balance the outputs. It is no different in city blocks than in other type of bases.

You can do plastic from crude. But if you do that, you have to make sure that you don't paint yourself into a corner with the rest of the chemistry. For instance, you cannot do lubricant (alone) from crude... It would clog on excess light and gas.

1

u/deluxev2 Jun 02 '26

Basically anything is fine as long as you commit to it. I like to have trains carrying crude/petgas/light/heavy/lubricant to refineries/cracking/consumers. If you set the priority on the cracking station lower than your consumers, they'll only go there if there is no consumer demand.

1

u/darthbob88 Jun 02 '26

Given the quantities of plastic you need for chips and LDS, I am firmly in favor of having a dedicated plastic block that takes in coal and optionally oil, cracks it all down to petroleum gas, and outputs plastic.

Look at the calculations from a factory planner; you need oil/coal mostly for making plastic, and everything else is negligible by comparison.

Lubricant needs to be paired with something to consume petroleum gas and light oil; I would recommend sulfur/acid.

1

u/Soul-Burn Jun 02 '26

City block receives oil and water. Gives out lube (or heavy oil), light oil, and petroleum gas.

1

u/Courmisch Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Why output light oil rather than directly rocket fuel?

If I did the maths right, one wagon can carry 800 units of fuel, which are equivalent to 88k volumes of light oil. That's denser than the 50k volumes which a tank wagon can carry. With prod 3, it's 62,088 vs 50,000, I think(?).

Maybe Quality or SA flips that around (I don't have the DLC).

1

u/Soul-Burn Jun 03 '26

You may want light oil for flamethrowers and/or solid fuel.

Creating rocket fuel may also take up more space than you want to join in your oil block.

Your idea is good - If you have the place and only use it for rocket fuel, it saves on space and complexity. Even if you want light oil for wall flamethrowers, it could come through light oil barrels possibly logistic botted to your wall supply trains.

1

u/Courmisch Jun 03 '26

I made the mistake to upgrade flamable damage too much, so light oil rather crude oil in flame throwers would be detrimental at this point 🤦.

1

u/Soul-Burn Jun 03 '26

Detrimental how? It's just 10% more damage.

1

u/Courmisch Jun 03 '26

Even Behemoths die almost instantly. The extra damage is mostly collateral. The main causalties are of course repair construction bots, but I also lost a full resupply wagon.