Oil Processing Simplification and Blue Science Changes
I've been refraining from writing another guide post about science packs, while the discussions about changing some of the recipies in recent Friday Facts were still ongoing. But as of now, the only change is to chemical science, which I already did anyway. So here's an explanation of the changes as well as a quick update to the blue science guide from last time. Afterwards I'll get to work on the remaining two science packs, when I can.
The changes described here are already live in the most recent update to the experimental and include changes to oil refining and chemical science. As discussed in the recent Friday Facts, these changes are meant to make it easier for new players to get into chemical processing. For this, the basic oil processing was greatly simplyfied. Instead of crafting each type of oil and having to balance those, the basic processing now produces exclusively pertoleum gas.
Unlike previously, the basic processing no longer takes crude oil in both inputs. The inputs are now dedicated to only one type of input, so you no longer have to remember which one is for water if you want to make switching over to advanced oil processing easier. This will also avoid the problem of changing the recipe the refineries are set to, which previously caused the new "can't mix two fluids" warning if there were still refineries with the basic recipe in the pipe network.
The other two liquids often seemed much less useful to new players. You're just going to put all heavy oil into making lube and then crack everything down into petroleum, once you get advanced processing. The new update changed some things to improve this. I already talked about the previous change to requiring solid fuel in blue science and even praised it for making your first chemical build more straightforward, since you could now make plastic from petroleum and put everything else into crafting solid fuel. At least until you get advanced oil processing.
Now it is even more simple. Since you only get petroleum out of the basic processing, you can then craft plastic and sulphur from it without having to worry about any of the other liquids. The first still goes into making red chips, while the latter replaced solid fuel as an ingredient in chemical science packs.
Only after you unlock new research using your first couple of blue science packs will you get the other types of chemicals. Heavy oil still goes mainly into making lube, while light oil is now an ingredient in rocket fuel. So aside from that, you can still use it mostly for cracking into petroleum or use it for making solid fuel.
The only downside to this is, that it doesn't incentivise crafting solid fuel early on, like the previous recipe change did. You still need it for rocket fuel of course. But having blue science require solid fuel was a nice mid-game incentive to make lots of it and use it for your steam engines, trains or even your furnace lines. Now it's been relegated to "that intermediate product you need for rocket fuel" again.
Since rocket fuel now also requires light oil, this means a new liquid that needs to be piped down the main bus for those of us who build using that principle. I usually don't put all the liquids on the bus, only lubricant and sulphuric acid, since those are needed in more advanced recipes. I keep the other chemicals in their dedicated oil processing area and do most of the crafts there.
With these changes an early blue science build could look something like this.
I chose to make sulphur locally since it crafts pretty quickly and you don't need a lot of it. So no need to go overboard with chem plants for now. And making them in a dedicated area and putting sulphur on the bus doesn't seem worth it due to the low demand and not being needed in any other recipe (besides for making acid). That's up to you though
Now that the blue science changes are hopefully final and won't be changed again in the foreseeable future, purple science is up next!
Below the cut is the revised chemical science pack build.
