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[Simple Build] Gaseous Element Converter 2.0 (Philosopher's Stone) - Convert any gas to another 1:1


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A little background first. Or just skip the spoiler and see the build. I added Philosopher's Stone to the title, thanks to @M.C..

Spoiler

With the recent discussion about how to efficiently make hydrogen, @SamLogan shared a solution given on reddit about how to make an electrolyzer overproduce hydrogen.  

The issue stems from the following game mechanic.

  • When different gases try to occupy a vacuum tile at the same time, only one of the gases will win and the other gas gets converted to the winning gas.  If the two gases come from above and from the right, then the gas coming from above will win.

@R9MX4 posted an element convert in the bug reports quite a long time ago that exploits this mechanic. The devs claimed to have fixed it, and even posted in one of the updates that the issues was completely resolved. The bug report is marked as fixed.

I played around with R9MX4's build, and found that with his setup, I could easily convert any gas to hydrogen.  But if I put hydrogen on the right and anything else above, eventually hydrogen would find its way to the top, and ruin the build. My best guess, the automation circuit causes too long of a pause, and the gases are not forced to return to their places fast enough. 

I now present Gaseous Element Converter 2.0

5c78547ebf640_Screenshotfrom2019-02-2812-53-06.thumb.png.b1ba81d1e17a72ecb648d28298d9982a.png

What makes this work?

  • The liquid valve supplies 70g/s of liquid (works with 50 and 60 as well, but not 100).
  • The tile to the right of the vent constantly swaps from water to vacuum. The 5 lower tiles should all have sufficient water to never swap to another element.
  • When the tile becomes vacuum, the gas to the right (PO2 in this example) and gas from above (O2 in this example) both fight for the vacuum spot.  The gas from above wins, and the gas from the right is converted. This can be any two gasses 
  • A tick later, the water returns to the tile and forces the combined (now all O2) gas upwards. The gases have no time to swap spots, and are forced back to their original positions. 

 

I've tested this with all the major gases (O2, PO2, H2, NG, CO2, Cl), on both sides. Not once has this element converter failed on any of the 3 in game speeds (haven't bothered with ultra fast speeds). This even works as a pump on the same gas, pumping gas upwards (making a high pressure room above from regular pressure gases). EDIT: The gasses will equalize pressure if both sides are the same, and if one side ever reaches vacuum, then the other gas will spill into the vacuum room.  The uses are endless. 2nd EDIT: The gases don't equalize pressure. Instead, the gases reach a 2:1 ratio, with twice the gas in the upper chamber than the right chamber.  This is what I've noticed after 150+ cycles of letting this thing run. 

Spoiler

Here is half the tests. This thing will convert any quantity, small or large.  Send mgs of gas at it, or send 10000 kg (grab Brothgars supercompressor to shove a gas toward the right side of this, and watch the wanted gas emerge).  

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If you need a broader range of temperatures, then swap the water to petroleum, and change the value to 500g/s (only done simple testing - not extensive - with this one, though it seems to work just the same). So convert any gas you want into steam, and then cool the steam somewhere else back to water. Needed more water? Done. Convert your NG to steam directly, then back to water, and skip the power plant completely with a perfect conversion rate.   

Spoiler

Remember to set the valve to 500g/s if you use petro. Each liquid will have its own required flow rate to make this happen.In the picture below you see the second where the tile to the right of the vent is region is vacuum. It will become petro a tick later in the game. 

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This works with steam just as well, though make sure you only send in preheated gasses. The temperatures combine when the gasses combine. 

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Attach this to a strength training gym, and you can instantly convert highly pressurized PO2 to O2, ready to breathe without any wait (though you don't your beautiful clay for ceramics... sad).  

Crazy? Yep! This definitely needs to be addressed by the devs. 

Spoiler

Game play order. 
1). Research power tree to large transformer (cycle 9-11) - build infinite power loop. Never worry about power again. 
2). Crack open the slime biome to get PW. Hypothermia for the dupes that get too much slime lung. (Cycle 11-15)
3). Strength training gym for massive PO2 creation. Build one of these to convert it all to breathable O2. (Cyle 15-20)  Never worry about power or oxygen again. 

Gonna have to find a way magically make food now. :)


Edit: I'm currently fiddling with an automation on/off control for this thing. Thought I had one. It flopped.  I'll add it here once I get it working. If you can figure it out first, I'll just link to your comment once we get the automation down.  I tried a door, to stop the top gas from combining, but that failed as the door pushed the upper gas down. 

Spoiler

Notice the PO2 packet in the lower region... 

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Edit 2:  Haha.  Simple automation.  Increase the flow rate.  Just add on an extra filter and shutoff valve that sends another 100g/s through.  The tile will never become vacuum, and the process stops.  Once the process stops, you can then shut the door and turn off the pump. I'll let those interested build this themselves. 
 

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Lmao damn.  I was thinking of trying to create something like this the other day since I mostly rely on that SuperSPOM that converts some extra oxygen to hydrogen.  But I figured, if he couldn't do it, I probably won't either, and decided against it.

We're breaking the game more and more every day!  Awesome stuff.

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So just to point out some of the ridiculous possibilities you can now with a little effort turn Slime, algae, chlorine  and sour gas into natural gas. You could make a morb farm and turn the PO2 into natural gas. You can take flatulant dupes and convert the gas into oxygen. You can boil phosphorite and make natural gas or oxygen out of it. You can take waste CO2 and turn it back into oxygen! That is some next level exploit potential.

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35 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

ridiculous possibilities

Oh, you can take water, pump to the oil biome to make oil, boil the oil to sour gas, make steam, cool to water, pump to the oil biome, etc., in an infinite loop and then keep your dupes living in space as you watch your entire map fill with water. 

31 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

If nothing else threads like this will bring dev attention to this problem. I wonder how complex is it to fix.

This is precisely why I post them.  I love this game more than any other game I've ever played. I'm not sure how hard this one will be to fix, though I do hope the devs see this build.  By bringing awareness of the bug, through a showcase like this, I hope it gets obliterated like drip cooling and the showcase of @Saturnus's BorgCube. The simpler to build, the more likely the showcase will get copied. The more people copy it, the more likely the devs will obliterate it. At least that's my hope. 

For now, time to exploit it like mad and see what kind of crazy things we can do. Happy tinkering all. 

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So tempting to restart and just start abusing the hell out of all these new bugs, just to see what I can get away with.

That, or I feel like coming back in a few months when the game is patched and I won't be tempted to abuse these bugs.  Seems to me the devs will have a bit of a harder time patching this than something like the water in front of vent trick (which I still can't believe is around).

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2 minutes ago, Epishade said:

That, or I feel like coming back in a few months when the game is patched and I won't be tempted to abuse these bugs.

Stay with us. Play the parts you enjoy most. Break them. Help make oni better. I start a new game several times a week but thats because i enjoy the start. If you enjoy rockets then stick with them.

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9 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

I love the Alchemy tag.

I just sat down to work on actually producing gaseous gold, and then printing it at 1000g/s from an air vent. Then I'll pick up the pace and see if I can get 10kg/s going. :) When I'm done, I'm thinking of making another post titled, "Stinky's search for El Dorado," and having several snapshots of comic clips along the way. There will be a gravestone section of all the dupes that died while trying to reach the needed temps, and then in the end everything will be gold plated, with piles and piles of gold left over.  

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Well, I think it's possible, but man is it going to be a pain.  I believe I'll need to have liquid steel pumping in at about 100kg/s (so 10 large pumps going full time) to maintain the liquid/vacuum conflict. This poses several problems.  

  1. Getting 10 full time pumps actually able to pump liquid steel (see "The mystery about pump" range by @R9MX4).
  2. Steel barely wants to move, so building a contraption (probably with door pumps) to push the steel away as it accumulates. 
  3. Getting enough steel in the first place (debug for now). 

Once I solve these, I can turn on the printing press and bathe (literally) in gold. 

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Got it!  I used a door pump with a staircase to even out the flow. I think @Saturnus magma pump will make this simpler and smaller.  Here's a first build. Gaseous gold can be printed as fast as you can put gas at 3175K into the lower right chamber (that might be the hardest part, though a metal refinery running niobium or steel as the coolant could do this). The temp range is quite narrow, as you don't want your doors/airflow tiles to melt at 3200K, but you don't want the gold to liquefy at 3129K.  I had to swap to Niobium as the main liquid, because steel floats on top of niobium.  The purple blob in the niobium is steel.  The niobium, steel, and vacuum constantly swap places in the appropriate tile, enabling a 100% uptime converter.  Not realistic in game (yet), but possible.  Philospher stones exist in ONI.  Fun times. 

Here's the save if you want to play: Alchemy101.sav

The picture below has the idea.  Interestingly enough, this approach also provides another mechanism different than the valve approach, to create the element converter.  I bet an escher waterfall (no pump at all) could get this thing going full time. 

5c78c11534a49_Screenshotfrom2019-02-2822-16-45.thumb.png.f22bf4b02c355df37fc6b5836efe1012.png

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Yep. An escher waterfall can get this thing running full time, though it's quite finicky on getting the exact quantities of liquid. The pump version is much simpler. The waterfall is in the lower left, with oxygen and carbon dioxide creating the waterfall. 

5c78cdb0f3991_Screenshotfrom2019-02-2823-13-41.thumb.png.dad311080aae81e4c1042486d668eff8.png

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So, I've been thinking about this little gem of ingenuity...

I suppose you could call it an exploit since I really doubt this was intended. On the other hand, it boils down to weaponization of two important mechanics in the game: the "one element per tile" rule (the veritable golden mine of exploits that it is) and conservation of mass. I don't think the former will be easy to fix since it's so fundamental to how the game operates. Conservation of mass is also kind of important since we the players ***** and moan incessantly every time we lose our hard-earned stuff. It's probably easier to change compared to the other half of the exploit, but I am not convinced it's likely to happen.

The bottom line is, it's entirely possible that the dev team will scramble and fix it, but if I were to make a bet, I would have placed on this particular exploit having a long, glorious life before it goes away.

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3 hours ago, mathmanican said:

Yep. An escher waterfall can get this thing running full time, though it's quite finicky on getting the exact quantities of liquid. The pump version is much simpler. The waterfall is in the lower left, with oxygen and carbon dioxide creating the waterfall. 

5c78cdb0f3991_Screenshotfrom2019-02-2823-13-41.thumb.png.dad311080aae81e4c1042486d668eff8.png

darn it seem i missed something funny in forum?care to share how the waterfall work?,i think it could drive steam turbine(replace my door pump) and other stuff too 

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9 hours ago, M.C. said:

First a perpetual motion machine, now a Philosopher's Stone.

Was thinking about this. You would need to find a way to automate the off gassing of the pH2O(one of brothgars videos comes to mind), but you can make a machine that outputs power with 0 net input with NG gens. The only question would be how much can be converted per second. 

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19 minutes ago, ishakaru said:

Was thinking about this. You would need to find a way to automate the off gassing of the pH2O(one of brothgars videos comes to mind), but you can make a machine that outputs power with 0 net input with NG gens. The only question would be how much can be converted per second. 

Make a super compressed PW pool. the conversion speed is proportional to the mass of PW.

 

yield rate bigger than conversion rate -----> increased mass -----> increased conversion rate

yield rate less than conversion rate -----> decreased mass -----> decreased conversion rate

The process is a positive feedback and finally your conversion rate will be same as the yield rate

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@R9MX4 The problem is the unpredictable nature of the compressed PW pool. So you would need more PW than the average balancing point. While if you could automate bottling of the PW you would have a consistent production for far less water.

 

The conversion rate I was specifically talking about was the pO2->NG via the Philosopher's Stone.

 

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2 hours ago, ishakaru said:

automate bottling of the PW

For this you just use a MOGOM, or a strength training gym that uses pumps to deliver water instead of manually emptying the bottles. As long as you make sure the dupe can never complete the mop task, then you can automate when they start the task (though automating the stopping is not as easy).  Once the currrent dupe finishes their mopping task, you use door permissions to guarantee no other dupe can enter. 

This little element converter works off a percentage (10% of the cell next to the vacuum becomes the other gas). If you have 2000g in the room, then you'll get about a 200g/s conversion rate.  If you have 10 dupes and want them to breathe 100% off this thing, then you'll need to make sure your preconversion room pressure is above 10kg, so that 10% of 10kg gives you the needed 1kg of gas.  Now, this all assumes that the tile next to vacuum stays at the same pressure as the rest of the room (it does not, rather it is slightly lower). So you will need a room with >10kg of gas in it to make sure the tile near the vaccuum stays around 10kg. Pressure sensors can help with this, since they go up to 20kg. 

Have one room offgas PO2 (strength training gym). Either fiddle with automation to make sure this room can overpressurize and keep off gassing, or let the pressure there stay around 2kg and use a door pump to move gas from that room into a high pressure room (or a liquid over vent actual pump). If you opt for the two room approach, then you can use automation to deliver gas to the high pressure room at the required amount, and element filters (actual, mechanical, or automation) to make sure that no wrong gasses ever enter the preconversion room. Then let the Philosopher's Stone take over from there. 

Key takeaways:

  • This thing is completely controllable in how fast it converts stuff. Just focus on making sure the preconversion room gets the correct amount.
  • If you insert gas at 1000g/s to the preconversion room, eventually (will take a bit) the output will be 1000g/s. The preconversion room will build in pressure until it outputs exactly what is input. So if you don't mind waiting a few cycles for things to normalize, then just start putting in EXACTLY the amount you want out.  It's as simple as that. 

 

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10 minutes ago, Denisetwin said:

Am I the only one that looks at these waterfalls and wishes that Klei would give us a waterwheel for power?  I would LOVE the way that looks!

Waterwheel is a kind of gravitational energy. To introduce waterwheel, Klei has to introduce gravity first. (ie. pump liquid to different altitude costs different energy)

I dont think this will happen.

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