Subs/missle uranium cost way off

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YoMomma
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Subs/missle uranium cost way off

Post by YoMomma »

Instead of 1m uranium the SSN-21 Seawolf (for ex.) cost 10m uranium. No wonder theirs a huge uranium shortage on modern maps.

Maybe its me but why are the cost every day?
Last edited by YoMomma on Aug 23 2016, edited 1 time in total.
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YoMomma
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Re: Subs uranium cost way off

Post by YoMomma »

This also applies to nuclear missles, which is huge. All superpowers do missle wise is produce nuclear missles 99%.

Anyone understand impact of this/know what i am talking about?

Basicly game puts an extra 0 behind uranium cost of militairy units.
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DuSean
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Re: Subs/missle uranium cost way off

Post by DuSean »

Hello YoMomma,

I know I am getting to this issue 3 years after posting but we are cleaning up some backend and thought I would take a look. When building the SSN, is shows the uranium cost as 1, 000, 00 which would be 100 000kg and not 1m. I am unsure where you are seeing the 1m or 10m uranium cost for the unit. If you have more information, I would be happy to hear it :)
" 'You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.' - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
YoMomma
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Re: Subs/missle uranium cost way off

Post by YoMomma »

Hi Sean, maybe you can check on my other ignored topics as well. You might sell some more games.

IDK anymore how i get on that 10M but it's not 100,000 KG

Turn of all auto build starting a game as US and build 1 SSN21-Seawolf.
Goto domestic market under uranium click on materials. Here you will see 5,350 KG
5,350kg * 200 days = 1.070.000 (ofcourse rounding isnt even in our favour)

Also when it shows 1.000.00 i wouldnt think of 100.000 so i get why this is getting confusing for the engine.
Infact when you hover over it it shows 1.000.00 but when you double click its 1.000.000

Also on missiles, a small google search on 'how much uranium i need for a nuclear missile', shows me abt 15 KG which seems alot more logical then 141.000 kg even tho i dont claim to know alot about military.

Back on subs, uranium powered sub uses 200-400 KG uranium at most during it's lifetime.

Now i dont rly care about this issue anymore. Somehow Belgium can now import Uranium on a vanilla game i checked quickly and Balth said he fixed some submarines which had errors so it might be 'fixed' now. As long uranium is available for smaller countries to import so they can use their nuclear power im fine with it. You guys prolly have your reasons for this high ammount of consumption as it's also 1M in SR2020. I dont rly know if its an issue anymore since i only play my mod now on which i increased uranium output.
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bowtie
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Re: Subs/missle uranium cost way off

Post by bowtie »

personally I strongly suggest keeping the high uranium costs for gameplay purposes. Hell - I would increase the cost if it was up to me. Uranium is a strategic resource and scarcity makes it a motivation secure a steady supply.
Nerei
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Re: Subs/missle uranium cost way off

Post by Nerei »

Keep in mind that uranium is not just uranium. Isotopes matter quite a bit.

As the game represents uranium it is most likely either pure metal as mined from the ground or it is yellowcake. The main difference there is that yellowcake is around 15% oxygen as most of it is U3O8.

Uranium as mined is around 99.2% U-238. This is important as this isotope is quite stable. It is for the most part not usable in the nuclear industry (with a few exceptions but we will get to those).
The remaining part or roughly 0.8% is almost entirely U-235 (there are traces of U-234 but we can ignore those). This is the actual fissile material that is usable in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.

This means that a US SSN costing 100.000kg off uranium actually only have around 680-800kg of actual fissile material to work with at best if we assume nothing is lost in the enrichment process. How much there actually is in a S9G or S6W reactor is highly classified though but the numbers does not sound insane.

For the record US submarines in particular runs on highly enriched uranium. The best numbers I can find says something like 95% U-235 which is a higher enrichment that what was used in both Trinity and Little boy.
For comparison a common reactor type like the boiling water reactor uses around 5% enrichment and a heavy water reactor can run on un-enriched fuel (saving the cost of the enrichment process but using expensive heavy water instead).

There is also uncertainties such as refuelling which will affect especially french submarines (runs on low enriched fuel from what I remember) more than US in particular (S9G reactors have an estimated 30+ year lifetime at which point the boat will probably be scrapped instead of refuelled)


For nuclear weapons the problem is really that the game abstracts everything quite a bit. Too much for my preference but that is another matter.
The game skips the entire process that actually matters for nuclear weapons which is either producing highly enriched uranium (that was the main cost of project Manhattan) or producing plutonium. Right now we just grab a load of yellowcake and load it into our ICBM's.

As for the numbers they are entirely insane. I can probably run a large breeder reactor for years on what a single ICBM costs in uranium and produce enough plutonium to produce a staggering number of number of nuclear warheads. Indias fairly new 500MW totally-not-a-breeder-reactor is estimated to be able to produce around 115kg of plutonium each year. We need around 5kg of Pu-239 for a functional implosion weapon. Naturally not all of it will be Pu-239 (commercial reactor produce far less than breeders) and some will be lost during processing but on the other hand a LGM-118A costs enough uranium to run that reactor for several years of normal use (best estimates I can find is that a 1GW reactor uses around 1 tonne of fissile material and with the LGM-118A we get around 6).
Also Pu-239 is produced from U-238 so there is plenty to take from. This is one of the main relevant uses of U-238 in the nuclear industry.

Naturally we will also use some uranium in our warhead if we make fission-fusion-fission (or boosted fission) warheads that use a uranium case but that is negligible. This the other relevant usage for U-238 as it is only inert in normal situations. It is not inert when exposed to the extremely high energy neutrons produced in the nuclear fusion stage of a boosted fission device.

So really submarine usage might not be entirely insane but nuclear weapons really are. Naturally it might be for balancing reasons as without the actual infrastructure needs churning out hundreds of nuclear weapons would be about little other htan how much cash you have.
bowtie
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Re: Subs/missle uranium cost way off

Post by bowtie »

I would love to see additions of the infrastructure for producing nuclear weapons. that would add some definite fun new tactics ie eliminating nuclear production facilities like isreal-iran and similar
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