Cute names. I suppose I should name my rockets. I’d go with Serenity, but there’s nothing very serene about its missions.
I tried to get some solar power going. Well, it went about as expected. Which is to say that it’s a massive steel hog and that I’m out of lime (at least I can get lots of iron from space). Also that my solar panels overheated almost immediately since they only handle up to 75 C.
I have a plan of action but it’s all about the steel at this point. Need more bunker doors and more steel aquatuners. It does look like I can gather it from other planets, though only around 600 kg at a time… barely worth it.
It looks like solar panels count as heavy machinery as well, since they’re interfering with my scanners. So I need to tear everything down and rebuild the scanners at a much higher point. Ugh.
I think I’ve worked out a plan, though. All bunker doors on the top row. Then, 14 tiles with a scanner centered, and 2 tiles for a mining laser protected by bunker tiles. This gives max visibility to the scanners.
Below the 14 tiles of each scanner, diamond tile to let light through. And then much below that, two solar panels (7 tiles each). Repeat the pattern as necessary. The scanners let enough light past them to make the solar panels useful, and are separated in a way so I can cool them. At least that’s the theory.
That’s the setup I have so I think you’ll find it works fine. You’ll need to cool the lasers or periodcally deconstruct and reconstruct them. I guess it depends on how busy your dupes are.
I got my first super coolant!! I’m not sure what to do with it. I guess I’ll use it in one of the cooling units. I mean it is called super coolant.
Is there a way to have your cargo ships not return a particular type of cargo? I now have 700 tonnes of obsidian! It is like guys seriously, enough is enough, get the iron and copper, but leave the obsidian there.
Flood cooling seems to work ok. I put one layer of drywall behind the lasers and scanners and put a few kilos of oil there. It transfers heat to the tiles below effectively. I still need to put some radiant pipes through the floor to make sure the whole setup doesn’t get too hot, though.
Woo! Super coolant is great but it’s so limited that you have to be judicious. Essentially, you want to make sure your aquatuners always have supercoolant flowing through them. Then, use the supercoolant to chill some other coolant, like water or oil. Finally, run the secondary coolant to whatever you want to chill. The second pump takes a bit of energy but the aquatuner runs much more efficiently with this setup. I generally use 400 kg of super coolant with this setup, but it may chill a tank with many tons of other coolant.
I vent my waste gas onto them. The waste gas is usually between 50-80 degrees, but that actually cools them and get them well below the 275 for steel failure.
Soooooo… super coolant lives up to its name. I think I could paint my whole base blue with this stuff. Not that it would be a good idea but my whole industrial area is a deep blue now.
So how’s this for out of the box thinking. I can clear away some of my excess raw minerals but putting structures out where meteors can hit them and then repairing them. LOL
I like that post #666 is about figuring out the most effective way to keep heat under control.
Could you show the setup, preferably in plain, pipe and heat overlays?
I hope this works. Note, this is not my original design, although my original design was essentially identical (the only difference was the location of items in the box). I really needed a solution to heat so after building my first aquatuner based cooling unit, I looked up a design and found this. I ended up using their layout for fear that my layout was inferior for some reason. I don’t think it was. In the interest of giving credit where credit is due this is their URL. Steam Community :: Guide :: How to use Aquatuner and Steam Turbine to manage heat.)
No overlay: Steam Community :: Screenshot
And in the interest of sharing. Automated launch control and recovery. And yes, I know the layout of stuff is inefficient. It was my first time building in the space biome. Also, it isn’t finished yet for “Dork Ship 2” (on the right)
So here’s my goal for today! I’m going to make use of the chute. I actually had this idea a couple of days ago, but my biggest conceptual problem was how to deliver the regolith.
I have an infected water geyser. There’s a few ways to clear the germs but two of the main ways to it into pure water are:
Cool the water to below 10 degrees then sieve it. (or sieve then cool)
Boil that water!
But how to boil it? With regolith! Rather than using the regolith as a filtering medium I’m going to use it to boil the polluted water. The steam will condense as pure water.
My problem was how to deliver the regolith. And the answer is with a chute.
Well, it was all fun and games seeing just how cold I could get my base, but water is freezing in my pipes so maybe I better stop trying to make it as cold as possible.
I’m starting to use shipping a bit more, and thinking about how to set it up. Obviously I can run direct lines from production to destination. But this seems inefficient (probably because it is). I’m thinking of setting it up like a railroad system. Collection at a central yard, and then re-distribution.
I pretty much just use point-to-point distribution. A railyard approach sounds interesting, but I tend to use the conveyors for food, and that doesn’t do well with long-term storage.
Incidentally, the chutes are great for food. Have them dump the contents right onto a weight plate, which feeds back to the farm production (like the light bulbs for a berry farm). Much less power than a fridge, and no problems with things getting stuck in the rail system and rotting.
BTW, rail items exchange heat well with other things on the tile. This can be advantageous or not. I previously had a problem with hot dirt heating up my sleet wheat farm. Eventually it would equalize but it disrupted production. Now, I run the dirt through the water chiller first. It pre-chills the dirt before it enters the farm area, so it all stays at a comfortable 2-3 C.
Out of curiosity, has anyone else seen issues with power overproduction, particularly with solar panels and steam turbines? My cycle report says I’m wasting power due to overproduction, but the weird part is that I have plenty of battery storage left. Even if my panels and turbines are producing more than I need, it should at least charge the batteries first. Can’t figure out what’s up here.
Interesting about heat and conveyors. Something to keep in mind.
The over production I think is a bug because generators always report maximum energy whenever they are on regardless of how much energy they produce.
If you click on a battery and go to the energy tab, then you’ll see every steam turbine says “850” no matter what. Same with solar power. It is report as 380 even when they’re producing less. So that game thinks you’re overproducing.
I just use my batteries as a guide. If they’re routinely at 100%, then I’m overproducing; otherwise, it is fine.
Beep, Dr. Strangelove, you both work in the tech field and seem quite interested in this game. How does it resonate with what you’ve become skilled at or like to do? The question is open to all but seeing Beep and Dr. Strangelove be particularly into ONI made me wonder.
Ahh! Makes perfect sense. Both solar panels and steam turbines are variable output, so they would be affected by a bug like that. My batteries are doing what I expect, and I have some fancy automation to enable hydrogen/nat gas/petroleum generators depending on storage levels. They do turn off as expected when the battery levels rise, so I think the solar and steam are probably working as designed.
The solar system does seem to work ok now. I have a cooler that runs petroleum through the solar chamber and then through the scanners above it. The solar stays nice and cool. The scanners–which have all the mined regolith–are not so chilly, though they haven’t broken yet.
I think I’ll build a pre-cooler for the petroleum. It always comes back at ~250 C. I don’t need an aquatuner for that; just run it through a steam box with a turbine (or two) above it. That should bring the petroleum down to 125 C, which will put less load on the aquatuner.
I love it! I bought it back in Early Access mainly because it was made by Klei, and I have a lot of confidence in them to make a high quality game. But I did fear that I might not play it that much. I wasn’t very good at Don’t Starve, and I wasn’t very good at KSP, and this seemed like a mix of both.
And really, I wasn’t very good at this game at first. But there is something about this game that almost has a research mentality to it. It is very open to experimentation without crippling you if you make a bad choice (unless it is REALLY bad, especially in the early game). Every single run I’ve mastered some new aspect of the game. I feel like there’s still plenty to master though. I feel my layouts are inefficient. I’ve not mastered shipping. There’s plenty more automation I could do. And the space biome is owning me at the moment.
So yeah, I love it. I have a friend who is an engineer. He adores this game. He loves building stuff and making it all work together.
I’ve found that drywall is “sticky”. So you can release a gas in what would other wise be a vacuum in the centre of a bunch of drywall and it’ll will spread throughout the drywall. Even if normally it would rise, i.e. like hydrogen.
Note, how the gasses are trying to stick to drywall areas. They even stick to the bunker doors too.
I’m not sure what to do with it. I guess I’ll use it in one of the cooling units. I mean it is called super coolant. 
Also, it isn’t finished yet for “Dork Ship 2” (on the right)