Automation and logistics
Oil Byproduct Cracking
Cracking excess refinery fluids into a more useful downstream fluid can keep an oil chain from stalling on a full byproduct…
WHERE & HOW TO FARM
Oil Byproduct Cracking
At the crude oil refinery line, with chemical processing equipment connected to the excess fluid output.
Before you go
- Crude oil source and powered Oil Extractor
- Oil Refinery
- Chemical Plant with the relevant cracking process unlocked
- Separate pipes or tanks and downstream fluid demand
Farming steps
- Run crude from the extractor to an Oil Refinery and separate its fluid outputs.
- Observe the tanks and identify which fluid is building up faster than it is consumed.
- Check the currently available chemical processing recipes for the matching cracking process.
- Connect the excess fluid to the Chemical Plant and supply any recipe inputs it requires.
- Pipe the cracked output to a consumer that can use it.
- Keep the other refinery products on separate lines and monitor their storage.
- Adjust the number of processing machines or fluid consumers if any tank repeatedly fills.
- A blocked byproduct can halt crude processing even when another product is in demand.
- Use storage to smooth mismatched demand, but do not treat a permanently full tank as a working sink.
Repeat, collect and use
Cracking repeats while the chemical plant receives excess fluid and its required inputs, and its output has somewhere to go. It is a production loop rather than a one-time farm.
Common mistakes
- Connecting distinct fluids to a shared pipe; keep refinery products separated.
- Cracking a fluid without a downstream consumer for the output; resolve that demand before scaling.
- Adding extractors while the refinery is blocked by full byproduct storage; clear the fluid bottleneck first.
When to stop or switch
Stop expanding the cracking line when refinery outputs remain usable and tanks no longer block processing. Rebalance if a different fluid begins accumulating.
Sources & fact checks
What you can get here
Open a guide to find other locations and see what the item is used for.