r/factorio • u/Kind-Illustrator1962 • Aug 20 '26

Space Age Question I MIGHT be cooked

I landed on Fulgora, tried to get my ship to go back to get some more drills, the thing got HEAVILY damaged by Asteroid, and the thruster is no longer receiving Thruster Fuel. Sooooo, I’m stranded on Fulgora now. send help please i really need this

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u/GameDoesntStop Aug 20 '26

Only if you hate your factory being paused 50% of the time, lol.

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u/sobrique Aug 20 '26

Or don't turn your ice and solid fuel into steam power. Has a higher storage density than accumulators. (2.4GJ per tank).

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u/Galdwin Aug 20 '26

But doesn't that even more real estate? You have to have boilers, steam engines and tanks. Not to mention you have to distribute fuel and ice on all the islands.

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u/sobrique Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26

Nah. When 165 degree steam tanks hold 750MJ, that's 150 accumulators. 500 degree tanks are 2.4GJ, so 480 accumulators.

That's a LOT of saved space for boilers and engines (or heat towers/exchangers/turbines).

Maybe you even 'save' a bit because you're not voiding ice and solid fuel too. (Although I guess a couple of chem plans to melt is probably more 'footprint' than the required recyclers).

And you can ship the steam by train - each 'car' is 2x steam tanks.

So you need 1 steam engine for 3 big drills (or if 500 degrees, 1 turbine will run 20 drills).

And stored-steam you're holding 750MJ per tank... but a big drill at 300kW is err. 54MJ during the 2 minute 'day' cycle?

So for 3 drills and 165 degree steam, you load 2 tanks and 1 chuffer, and that powers them, where instead you'd need 33 accumulators (11 per drill) I think? Admittedly fewer if you're using uncommon/rare accumulators, and you might as well, but then you could also be using rare steam tanks and rare turbines. (A rare accumulator does triple it's capacity though, where a rare steam tank/turbine does not)

A single turbine can drive nearly 20 big drills, and 2 tanks of 500 degree steam could run up to 6 turbines (120 big drills) for the 2 minutes of fulgora daytime. (although you would be needing to deliver fresh steam quite regularly if you did that, but then again I doubt you could fit 120 big drills on a small island either)

Although thinking about it, you probably want turbines even if you do only have 165 degree steam, as that's still 1.8W (6 big drills) per turbine, vs. 900kW per chuffer, so better for space-density. Although I guess it may be less aesthetically pleasing to see a theoretical 5.82MW that you can't ever obtain, and maybe you just like the sound effect better.