Stop making me feel stupid!!
But seriously, I’m totally impressed with your designs and it makes me feel inadequate when I think about my rudimentary knowledge of the game.
Figuring out that even without a pump stuff would circulate through the intakes and outputs was a happy accident. Doubling back half the output was something I read about in a forum post.
One tip that really helped these designs is using bridges to direct and prioritize flows. If you have contents moving indecisively in pipes or vents use bridges to direct flow. T intersections alternate flow, but an intake (any intake, bridge or other device) will take 100% of the flow until it backs up and only then will the flow go into any following pipe.
You can also use a bridge going back onto its own pipe to drain most an unused section of piping.
It’s now cycle 398. I have reached and begun to build on the surface of the asteroid. There’s been a lot of screwing around with various systems and a few near disastrous mistakes.
Note: Everything here is going to border on spoilers for those who want to discover things on their own.
Some important lessons learned along the way.
I nearly killed all the slicksters on my map by not realizing they require a high temp to survive. I gathered them up into a pocket of CO2 near my base and didn’t notice as they all died from being too cold. Fortunately an egg survived so they aren’t extinct.
If you discover a volcano, seal it off immediately. I found and unburied part of a magma volcano. Since it was still partly buried so I didn’t think it would erupt. I was wrong. It was going for a few cycles before I noticed it melting part of a hot biome. It created a cloud of phosphorus gas and a pool of liquid phosphorus in a large area I had explored but fortunately hadn’t built anything in yet. I sealed it off and pumped it full of polluted water to cool it down. There was so much heat while it did cool significantly the sealed off area is now filled with high pressure steam.
When I breached the surface it was a near disaster. I hadn’t taken notice of how incredibly hot the surface is. When carving out the area I was going to use as an initial airlock I hit a pocket of super high pressure high temp steam. Severely scalded a couple of my dupes.
Space is super hostile. The entire surface is covered with rock and regolith that’s some 500-600F. Meteor showers rain down periodically depositing more hit temp material. The showers blow through even the hardest rock. I discovered at one point that meteors had breached a cold biome near the top of the map and had to make a desperate effort to seal it before things got worse.
Fortuantely having lot of really hot rock can have some advantages. I was gradually running out of dirt due to early reliance on mealwood and large herd of glossy dreckos and sage hatches. However I did have some 50 tons of slime stored up from clearing slime biomes that I wasn’t using for anything. I built some storage compactors on the surface, using the hot mafic rock that was laying everywhere, loaded up all the slime, and some cycles later it melted into dirt (slime and algae become dirt at 257F).
When I did breach the surface it quickly became apparent that one bunker door would not be sufficient. I should have made a whole lot more steel before trying to get a foothold on the surface. My smelter/chiller design above was great for making gold, but water cooling is completely inadequate for steel. My first attempt broke the output pipe. I had to make some upgrades. I drained all the water from the system and replace it with crude oil. Even then with just four worts I could only smelt 100kg of steel every few cycles. I expanded the cold chamber into the area between the smelter and chiller so it could fit seven worts. I added a temp sensor that only activates the smelter if the coolant in the loop is under 5F. Now I can kick out a load of steel at least once a day. With the faster production I’m now sealing off the area I plan to build a research telescope in.
I’ve got a pair of electrolizers for oxygen. This is the primary one used to supply the base and the first set of atmosphere suits I built off of it. The worts in there are just to keep the machinery cool. I used the chiller I posted earlier to chill the base oxygen. Prior to the chiller the O2 splits off to the suit docks since they don’t appear to care what temp the O2 is.
Here’s the other oxygen module which is used exclusively to provide for the three other sets of suit docks I’ve built. I was using its spare hydrogen to power a second generator for a while before the power needs for the upper section of the base necessitated running my main heavy watt wire line all the way up.
Rather than wasting energy on a gas separator, the different densities of the gases are used to keep them separate. By walling off the pump at the top except for one square it ensures that no O2 will get in there (once the system is primed). Since the hydrogen stays at the top the pumps below will only ever pull oxygen. The one exception to this is if the hydrogen pump backs up and enough hydrogen collects at the top, but usually the electrolizer will overpressure and stop producing before hydrogen reaches the bottom. I set the pressure sensors for the pumps at 300 for the hydrogen and 1000 for the oxygen pumps.
The new improved oil cooled steel producing capable smelter setup
On a side note, all that wiring I’m building around it part of my upgrading all base wiring to conductive wire. Meteors deposit iron on the surface in large quantities which I’m taking advantage of. The iron is all It’s incredibly hot, but there isn’t enough of it in wires to significantly raise the heat of the surrounding area.
Space!
I’ve managed to build and protect a couple of meteor scanners. Once I have enough steel to extend the doors into the area between them I’ll set up a research telescope. For now there’s just an ablative shield of tiles that I keep needing to repair or rebuild after each meteor shower.
That shot reminds me I need to or together the meteor detectors so they act in concert. You can see one detector has gone off, but the other hasn’t yet so its door are still open.
Here’s the breach I recently finished sealing off and reinforcing
Meteors had blown through the surface and deposited a crapton of red hot regolith and iron. I didn’t observe this happening, but fortunately I noticed it before it had gotten too deep. The lower L shaped walls next to the ladder were built from inside in an initial effort just to seal things off from space. Later I built a corridor to the location from the outside and put in multiple walls to hopefully slow down the meteors. I just finished off the top one made out of the iron that’s laying all over the surface. I’ll have to see how it holds up to the next shower. It’s going to be a while until I have enough steel to seal it off for good.
I haven’t played since the first couple of weeks they released it, great to see all the progress they have made. I wanted a lot more systems and complexity and it looks like they have delivered. Looking forward to diving back in.
Wow, @Thrag , I’m humbled by your talent in this game. I can’t see myself ever surviving that long or making something that complex. I’m really impressed. I’ll be sure to take notes. ;)
Industry Update!
Too much awesome gaming recently. Need more time!
Maybe not great for people that have never even opened the game, but for those who have poked around a bit to understand the interface and in-game terms, this guide is great for giving some direction: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1542225479
Anyone else starting to feel a little concern regarding feature-creep?
According to their roadmap, this seems like one of the last feature additions. The rest is going to be polishing/quality of life stuff.
Is there supposed to be an official end game goal? I can only assume that rocketing back to Earth would be it, so rockets make sense.
I thought that at first, until I realized this game doesn’t have a modding scene. So unlike something like Rimworld where half the game’s content can ultimately come from mods, this takes the approach where all the crazy systems are being intertwined at the point of development. So not feature-creep so much as ensuring everything the developer wants is in the game his way. Don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.
This game could really use some more in game explanation on how all this stuff works. I am trying to like this game, but after the initial push to get some meal worms growing, and moving towards what filters what and how is a little overwhelming…
That was my issue as well and since it was still in EA I put it away. I have not read the Steam guide linked by Daagar yet but will not pick this up until it is at (or near) release and therefore more refined. It would seem to me that the strategies will change depending on how they balance things and I do not have a desire to continually re-learn the rules of this one.
I keep messing up pipes, be either for air or water, and it never ends well. :D
Use bridges to direct flow. If you are getting the thing where the pipes don’t flow it’s because you have both inputs and outputs in various places on the line and things get confused as to which way the flow should go. Use bridges as one way pipe sections to make it so the direction from output to input is consistent.