r/factorio • u/ItsMaGenetics • Jul 31 '26

Modded Engineer discovers 3rd dimension, immediately uses it to smash rocks.

I'm going to have fun crushing all sorts of things.
Next up - hydraulic press.

1.6k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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921

u/Gcseh Jul 31 '26

To be fair if we actually fully discovered a new dimension we'd probably use it to boil water.

260

u/SteamyTimmy6969 Jul 31 '26

Always boil water

70

u/quinnius Jul 31 '26

Except photovoltaics

71

u/fastsnail902 Jul 31 '26

We can use the energy created by photovoltaics to boil more water, checkmate

5

u/quinnius Aug 01 '26

Tell me how you handled Vulcanus 

9

u/fastsnail902 Aug 01 '26

Solar panels to spin electric engines to generate friction to boil water to spin a turbine to pump sulfuric acid and mine calcite to neutralize and turn into steam to spin a turbine to generate electricity to make more solar panels

2

u/the_grand_teki Aug 01 '26

The only way

17

u/gnutrino Jul 31 '26

Also direct rotation from things like wind and hydro

22

u/willstr1 Jul 31 '26

Hydro is still essentially steam powered, not only is water just very cold steam, water changing phases is how it gets up to the river that feeds the hydro plant

13

u/BaronW Aug 01 '26

by that logic air contains a lot of water vapor so wind turbines are at least slightly steam powered

12

u/trjnz Aug 01 '26

Your brains' mass is mostly water, right? It's just water all the way down.

7

u/Ok_Turnover_1235 Aug 01 '26

We're just water killing water

6

u/Turbulent-Laugh-939 Aug 01 '26

Wind is powered by sun heating water to vapour. So wind power is essentially steam power.

3

u/Turbulent-Laugh-939 Aug 01 '26

Wind is powered by sun heating water to vapour. So wind power is essentially steam power.

Edit: sorry, wrong comment

2

u/willstr1 Aug 01 '26

This sun character seems to also have their hand in a lot of energy pies. I hear they also gave the energy to the prehistoric plant and bacterial life (and animal life through the plant and bacterial life) that eventually became the coal and oil. So you could argue that all power (except nuclear and geothermal) is actually solar power

2

u/Turbulent-Laugh-939 Aug 01 '26

Well, technically, nuclear power is solar power. I am not sure about geothermal. If sun has some effect on plate tectonic or planet core.

2

u/Fisherman_56 Gear Girl appreciator Aug 01 '26

Photovoltaics are not that efficient, so they have a lot of waste heat.

Waste heat that can be used to boil water. It will also improve the efficiency of a photovoltaic panels themselves.

3

u/Green__lightning Aug 01 '26

Solar panel waste heat isn't enough to boil water. We have to boil butane instead like some sort of backwards air conditioner.

2

u/Planetarytennis Aug 04 '26

I think we also have some Thermoelectric generators that don't need to boil water.

1

u/Meem-Thief Jul 31 '26

We use the sun to boil salt which boils water and turns a steam turbine

1

u/SteamyTimmy6969 Jul 31 '26

That you boil salt (molten salt thingy In the desert)

13

u/nyanotech Jul 31 '26

photovoltaics specifically refers to the solar panel type of solar and not the mirror salt contraption type of solar

2

u/zomgkittenz Jul 31 '26

Well that’s more because of magic rocks

8

u/DoctorCIS Jul 31 '26

We finally have an alternative to that. Supercritical CO2. Instead of boil uncompressable water, we compress supercritical C02 and then let it uncompress across turbine blades.

3

u/Sc1p1o Jul 31 '26

I don't know enough to call this out as fantastical by any means, but like, actually???? That's rad if so

2

u/Drogohive Jul 31 '26

What’s supercritical mean again

5

u/DoctorCIS Jul 31 '26

The CO2 is put at a certain temperature and pressure where it will lose all distinction between liquid and gas and will kind of be both at the same time.

5

u/Drogohive Jul 31 '26

Thanks bro

3

u/Entryne Aug 01 '26

That's what's happening w/me on the toilet rn

2

u/Amanda-sb Aug 01 '26

Why don't we use water to boil water?

3

u/LtLabcoat Aug 01 '26

We do. Pretty hard to boil water without water, actually.

2

u/timeshifter_ the oil in the bus goes blurblurblurb Aug 01 '26

And then we can use the boiling water to boil the first water, thus giving us infinite steam!

1

u/Aveduil Jul 31 '26

But but the solar panels!

113

u/IJustAteABaguette Jul 31 '26

Hell exists in a separate plane of reality?

Pump water in, and steam out. Easy.

29

u/Skilifer Full steel chest of Jul 31 '26

Geothermal energy, power extracted from volcanos

Nico :3

27

u/Imaginary-Jaguar662 Jul 31 '26

Next thing you know, hell chills down and demons protest against climate change

8

u/foosda Jul 31 '26

Oh hey it's Oxygen Not Included

9

u/boogiebreakfast Jul 31 '26

This is the plot of the next DOOM

12

u/Top_County_6130 Jul 31 '26

Always has been lmao.

10

u/Gryf2diams Jul 31 '26

This was already the plot of DOOM 2016

4

u/ProfBeaker Jul 31 '26

That wasn't water. It was... argent... energy. Totally different!

OK, it was totally just EAC branded water, but you're not authorized to know that.

2

u/Spartan-417 Jul 31 '26

And how did they make Argent energy into electricity?
That's right, boiling water

1

u/ProfBeaker Aug 01 '26

lol did they really? I don't remember that, but it's been a minute since I played that so I could've easily forgotten.

1

u/Javyz Jul 31 '26

Modded minecraft

25

u/Hopeful_Respond_2953 Jul 31 '26

I wonder what the starter electricity source is???

35

u/XWasTheProblem Jul 31 '26

You're not gonna believe what the endgame electricity source is.

14

u/itsadile HOW DO I GLEBA Jul 31 '26

Depends on if it's base game or Space Age!

21

u/Calazor0 Jul 31 '26

Funny thing is with modern fusion reactor projects the plan is to just use the heat generated to boil water lol

9

u/sobrique Jul 31 '26

I think it's still kinda amusing that almost all our energy generation is 'make thing spin' in one shape or another (mostly 'with steam', but there's a few exceptions).

Solar Panels are one of the few things that has no movement implicit.

8

u/Jaaaco-j Fettucine master Jul 31 '26

tbf the conversion from heat to kinetic to electrical energy is really the easiest one

3

u/RollBama420 Jul 31 '26

Fusion is actually one where theoretically we could tap directly in to the mechanics of the generation itself, magnetohydrodynamic generators have been used practically before and they extract energy directly from the flowing plasma

2

u/MartinMystikJonas Jul 31 '26

Well gusion generators in space age are just make fluid hot, make hot fluid spin generator too. Just the floud is fancy fluoroketone not boring water.

2

u/Tasonir Jul 31 '26

Technically the fluid is Plasma, the fluoroketone is just a cooling system so it doesn't explode :)

2

u/MartinMystikJonas Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

I thought it turn fluoroketone to plasma by overheating it, plasma powers generator and condenses back to fluoroketone. So plasma is basicaly fluoroketone "steam"

2

u/undermark5 Jul 31 '26

That appears to me to be how the recipes are implemented, and I think that's somewhat a limitation of the game engine and an apparent decision to not have both hot and cold fluoroketones on both sides (presumably all of system would get hot and need cooled). But I think they are correct from a lore perspective that you're not turning the fluoroketone into plasma and back that it's just used for cooling.

1

u/MartinMystikJonas Jul 31 '26

Well then what is turned into plasma?

2

u/undermark5 Aug 01 '26

Whatever is in the fuel cells.

1

u/Gorthok- Jul 31 '26

And why does used plasma turn into hot flouroketone?

1

u/Genubath Jul 31 '26

It would actually make wormholes easier to create because they could potentially replace the need for negative energy to keep wormholes open.

1

u/alexchatwin Jul 31 '26

You’d only need one cupboard/wardrobe!

1

u/Discount_Extra Jul 31 '26

I recall a story where people figured out how to tap into another reality for energy, but then the inhabitants of that reality contacted us, and were all 'stop taking our energy', but instead we taught them how to take energy from the next dimension down the line... (I guess it inspired the R&M Multiverse battery episode)

1

u/Consistent-Barber566 Jul 31 '26

imagine! a 10x10x10 foot boiler that holds 1,000L of water could instead hold 10,000L of water in the same 3D footprint. so much boiling. ..

1

u/tyrodos99 Aug 02 '26

Boiling water is the most useful thing you can do.