Power - I JUST DON'T GET IT

[strawberrygirl]

I have about 100 hours played in this game so far. It doesn't seem to be nearly enough cause power is a major problem for me in this game. I can't seem to keep things running well.   First there was issue of wires constantly getting stressed.

Let me say aside from all this: The Hydrogen Generator DOES NOT SEEM TO BE AN OPTION for anything other than occasionally running something that isn't critical. I dont even know why its in game.

 

So back to game basics:

First of all there is this limit with the wires, so you dont want any more draw than 1000.  Not fun......

FINE.  I set up Natural Gas. But there were issues where it would constantly just shut down for no reason.... and I'd have to jump start it with wheels. I finally figure out I need to set up different power lines through the base each with, a transformer and some batteries.  I thought I was smart when I finally set up a SOLO line just to keep the main room which pumps the gas out of the Geyser room itself. It ran on its own Natural Gas Generator and therefore would never shut down on me again.

And YET the Natural Gas Geysers can now only power one Gas Generator? What gives?

 

So you got a Natural Gas Generator which first of all needs its own power to run. Here is what it needs:

1) A working pump

2) A working Gas Filter

3) Something that removes the CO2 it generates - in my case - An Air Scrubber

4) If I want to recycle the water that goes into the Air Scrubber than use a Water Purifier

*****So that's like half my electricity usage right there.. What is the point of all this ? So I have little extra to run the cooking machine and maybe one of the microbe mushers and if I'm lucky run an oxidizer?

 

Ultimately am I supposed to just hamster wheel everything in this game? What am I missing?

 

 

[Masterpintsman]

Box in the geyser in a 3*3 (inside) tile wall, with the gas pump and an atmo switch (set to above 800 or so) and you can deconstruct the gas filter as soon as you got rid of anything not natural gas in that box. The switch will lead to the pump only running ~1/4 of the time - ~300W saved.

 

Build a room where you put the air scrubber and vent the carbon dioxide from the generator into it, leave one tile free at the top that you build when the room is full of it (to have no other gases in the way). Have another atmo switch in that room to shut down the scrubber if pressure is below 500g or so. Build 2 scrubbers in it if you want to add more natural gas generators later.

Dump the polluted water into farm tiles and get fresh water from a geyser, same setup as for the gas geyser just with fluid switch, pump and piping - plus the tiles around 2 thick and from granite to hold the pressure.

 

There, way more power available...

 

[oOCKYOo]

I going to have to agree with this.

Gas felt too good in the initial patch, but after the change it feels too weak. Given the fact that they also output a gas and liquid you need to deal with it feels like you should be able to run multiple of them from a single vent.

After playing multiple 500+ in every major patch, power has always been a problem.

Hydrogen generators feel like their only purpose is to clean up after electrolyzers, that is until you get enough oxygen production going to sustain one. I get that they only have temp as a drawback but they still feel really weak for how much they consume. A possible improvement could be to reconsider the O2:He ratio of elecrolyzers?

Coal feels fair, manage temp and Co2. This is limited though but the input/attention it needs feels justified in the output. If you plan smart and not let any hatches die, coal is a really nice power source.

As  mentioned gas felt like the "end game" option when it was introduced. You could probably max a 20kW wire with gas alone (map wide) in the previous iteration. Now its barely possible to manage 2 generators and they die when the vent stops. It feels like there is a sweet spot between these two versions.

One thing that could fix all this is likely the battery thresholds on generators which currently only really mean anything for wheels and coal. If generators were to stop operation on the set thresholds then most of the above arguments are likely void.

 

 

[PickPay]

The Hydrogen Gen is mostly to get rid of the Hydrogen produced by Electrolyzers, does the job for me and provides extra power.

Imagine the game without infinite Natural Gas (which was the case before last update).

Study carefully your options, try to optimize power usage. Setups are meant to be tight and have conditions to make the game balanced and interesting.

My base runs 1 of each of those Gen (2 separate grids each with a Wheel for backup - no coal Gen.) for 20 Dupes living happily.

The wire going up is for my water pump at the Geyser (the one at bottom isnt being used).

 

 

Notice my Gas Gen has no filter.

Some manage that too for Hydrogen Gen.

[CodingKitteh]

 

12 hours ago, strawberrygirl said:

Let me say aside from all this: The Hydrogen Generator DOES NOT SEEM TO BE AN OPTION for anything other than occasionally running something that isn't critical. I dont even know why its in game.

My experience has been that you diversify the power in-game. Focusing on one type of power has its own set of problems that cost energy to deal with. Off the top of my head it's (CO2 for Natural Gas, Over abundance and cooling of O2 for Hydrogen Generator, CO2 and heat for Coal). When I mix and match, the problems are less significant and easier to deal with.

Since natural geysers have been "fixed," they only generate about enough gas for about 1.5x gas generators. So you're looking at one gas pump right on top of the geyser. I use an atmo switch to cut off power to pump of the pressure is not reached.

Hydrogen generators just don't generate much power at one unit. The minimum setup for a hydrogen generator is a gas pump and having the hydrogen accumulate naturally. Once you hit two units, you still need to semi-manage them (turn on and off once hydrogen is high and low, respectively). The more units, the higher your change for a need of an additional gas filter setup. I use electrolyzers all over my base and the hydrogen accumulates at the top of my base.

I shifted my use away from coal but I still use it for emergency situation. You can set the minimum threshold to operate on (mine in single digit % of battery storage)

Hamster Wheels are cheap sources of energy also with less secondary management too. Don't underestimate them.

12 hours ago, strawberrygirl said:

First of all there is this limit with the wires, so you dont want any more draw than 1000.  Not fun.....

 

To be fair, real life power transmission also has to use step down transformers. Your house doesn't connect directly to the power plant does it? It connects to a transformer located close to outside the house. That transformer connects to a sub station and the substation is connected to the power plant.

The moral of the story here is, the game uses that idea. And you will need to pre-plan your grid a little bit. Strategic grid placement is important for decor and resource saving (copper, iron, etc).

12 hours ago, strawberrygirl said:

So you got a Natural Gas Generator which first of all needs its own power to run. Here is what it needs:

1) A working pump

2) A working Gas Filter

3) Something that removes the CO2 it generates - in my case - An Air Scrubber

4) If I want to recycle the water that goes into the Air Scrubber than use a Water Purifier

1) Correct, strategic placement affects efficiency. Once you discover the geyser, highest efficiency is to enclose the space, by tiles or its natural formation, and stick a gas pump on it.

2) Not needed if following above. Use multiple airlocks and liquid air filters (something you have to lookup and construct) to keep non natural gases away. Once done, lock room and never visit it again.

3) Air scrubbers will always scrub more than it sucks in. Most of the time the machine is idle. Strategic placement may enhance efficiency (like one for whole base) though I use one in a room with generators. I figured I could also use that one for the whole base too.

4) Water recycling is not needed. Polluted water is too expensive to treat by sand and energy. Just pool it somewhere for use of magma/steam/battery chambers to purify later in the game using waste heat. Some people don't even bother to treat polluted water, which is possible even at 500 cycles.

[brummbar7]

As people have said, it's all about synergies.  I've run two natgas generators for scores of cycles off of just one pump/geyser pumping gas to both of them, and never have power problems.  In part, this may be because the hydrogen generator supplements a bit of what the geyser can't supply.  Also, I pump the CO2 down to the bottom of the base, venting it directly above the scrubber, but that scrubber operates in an open room, so it also scrubs the CO2 that settles down from the rest of the base.  That's double-duty for that scrubber.  The dirty water is pumped into fertilizer makers, which produce natgas, in the same general area.  I have a pump that sucks up anything in that room (a stew of CO2, natgas, and random bits of chlorine and oxygen), A filter takes out natgas produced by the fertilizer makes and sends it back up to the natgas generators.  So, in the end my natgas generator gets supplemented by extra gas from fertilizer, to make up for geyser deficiency, and the hydrogen generator probably picks up any remaining slack - I get about 3 circuits out of this (keeping in mind several major load banks, such as the electrolyzer setup, are intermittent).  And that hydrogen generator only runs part time, as I only run one electrolyzer for the whole base.  for my base of 10-ish dupes, one is way, way plenty.  You just run it in a sealed room, filter out hydrogen to send to the generator, and vent the oxygen at various vents across the base.  I've not had any problems with this setup once I got the transformer situation sorted.  It's only enough to run itself and the basic base with some intermittent loads though (cooking station, algae deoxidizers, etc).   I'm in the process of tapping another geyser to branch into coolers and heaters.

[k2trix]

Hi, i just read this topic.
I can run 4 Gaz generator with 2 geysers. baro sensor > 2000g for gaz pumps
Only one water pump is needed for 4 electrolyser + 3 Scrubbers + Plants + Shower
Then my 4 electrolyser are providing enough H2 to run 4 H generators.

As Brummbar said all is about synergy, use valve for Gas Gen (60.5g/s) then u can split one geyser on two GG.

See by yourself, here's a lil movie of it.
 

 

[Masterpintsman]

5 hours ago, k2trix said:

As Brummbar said all is about synergy, use valve for Gas Gen (60.5g/s) then u can split one geyser on two GG.

You can do that even without a valve, simply put them behind each other on the gas line - when the first ones storage is filled it'll let gas pass on to the other. Might take a moment for the second to start, but it'll reach a point of equilibrium.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Masterpintsman said:

You can do that even without a valve, simply put them behind each other on the gas line - when the first ones storage is filled it'll let gas pass on to the other. Might take a moment for the second to start, but it'll reach a point of equilibrium.

That's what I did too. I have 3 gas geysers connected to 5 gas generators, with all input pipes connected. I have a perfect equilibrum. It required a lot of pipework to get everything connected, but it gets the system very efficient as gas consumption now matches gas production.

As people said, the air scrubbers and water purifiers are things you need anyway late game as for instance algae is hard to come by. 2 air scrubbers can clean 3 gas generators and roughly the rest of your CO2 production.

And never use a gas filter for geysers! put the pump on it, box it in and let it pump the gas out. Even if you initially have some other gasses in it, it's worth the small repair cost as the issue solves itself.

[Thelder]

Agreed, I hope the dev increase the natural gas geyser to at least sustain 3 generators per geyser

[k2trix]

3 hours ago, turbonl64 said:

And never use a gas filter for geysers! put the pump on it, box it in and let it pump the gas out. Even if you initially have some other gasses in it, it's worth the small repair cost as the issue solves itself.

Haha, indeed ! but it was a way to show how much over-power this device was already making. when they go into the chambers, they don t even lose their time to repair generators.
If u pay attention to the desoxydiser device, there are 4 pumps not needed too, increase by 15% Ox production for 33% more energy used ^^

[Buldric]

5 hours ago, turbonl64 said:

And never use a gas filter for geysers! put the pump on it, box it in and let it pump the gas out. Even if you initially have some other gasses in it, it's worth the small repair cost as the issue solves itself.

I find that something like the design below works best. The natural gas is both heavier and more highly pressurized from the polluted oxygen above it, meaning no need to filter out other gases at all. A little CO2 seeped in, but I was able to deal with that by simply leaving a little extra space at the bottom. Leaving water at the bottom will prevent any stray slime from producing polluted oxygen as well.

The result is that I have never needed a filter, have never had to repair my generators, and have seen only very minimal spillover of natural gas.

(I keep the atmo switch at 1,000 just to make sure the CO2 stays at the bottom. If you're using generators and geysers at a 1:1 ratio, you can leave off the atmo switch, since the natural gas pressure will stay close to 5k at all times.)

(When actually building this, you will probably need to set the airlocks to 'open' while building the stuff in the tile directly below them. For some reason dupes will treat those build jobs as unreachable if the airlock is set to 'auto'.)

[Trego]

11 hours ago, turbonl64 said:

And never use a gas filter for geysers! put the pump on it, box it in and let it pump the gas out. Even if you initially have some other gasses in it, it's worth the small repair cost as the issue solves itself.

The costs are small with or without a filter.  You can feed all the input from all your geysers, plus all your fertilizer makers, into your gas filter, and it will supply enough throughput for over 16 natural gas generators at 100% operational time.  Saving 120 watts out of 12800 watts generated, versus the hassle of possibly breaking your generators every time you hook up a new geyser, or you let some air into your fertilizer maker room...I'd rather spend less than 1% of my wattage to make the system bulletproof; everyone has their own preferences and colony size obviously affects the numbers here.

[k2trix]

4 hours ago, Trego said:

The costs are small with or without a filter.  You can feed all the input from all your geysers, plus all your fertilizer makers, into your gas filter, and it will supply enough throughput for over 16 natural gas generators at 100% operational time.  Saving 120 watts out of 12800 watts generated, versus the hassle of possibly breaking your generators every time you hook up a new geyser, or you let some air into your fertilizer maker room...I'd rather spend less than 1% of my wattage to make the system bulletproof; everyone has their own preferences and colony size obviously affects the numbers here.

you just find the words i need !

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Trego said:

The costs are small with or without a filter.  You can feed all the input from all your geysers, plus all your fertilizer makers, into your gas filter, and it will supply enough throughput for over 16 natural gas generators at 100% operational time.  Saving 120 watts out of 12800 watts generated, versus the hassle of possibly breaking your generators every time you hook up a new geyser, or you let some air into your fertilizer maker room...I'd rather spend less than 1% of my wattage to make the system bulletproof; everyone has their own preferences and colony size obviously affects the numbers here.

With the update that reduced gas output to 1/4, it's very difficult to get back to 10+ KW in a sustainable way (so excluding coal generators). Therefore, especially in the case of the topic starter who really struggles with power, saving 120w for each geyser can make a difference. You are not starting out with enough sources of gas nearby to run 16 NGG's. I'm at cycle 105 currently and I'm just about to finish NGG 4 & 5, with 6 planned in the near future.

[Kasuha]

14 minutes ago, turbonl64 said:

With the update that reduced gas output to 1/4, it's very difficult to get back to 10+ KW in a sustainable way

No it is not. Just build some fertilizer makers and use their gas output to feed more generators. Three makers require 360 W power and lead to 800 W produced (minus some for scrubber).

For pollution neutral combination, use 1 gas geyser, 16 fertilizer makers, 7 gas generators, and 3 scrubbers.

 

[Mason607]

I would like to add something here that should really point out a flaw with the electrolizer in this game. If we take a step back and look at the function of this device it takes H20 which is water and splits them apart to produce Hydrogen and Oxygen. That part we know so WHY does an electrolizer product almost 8 times more oxygen than it does Hydrogen when Water is 2 parts Hydrogen and 1 part Oxygen. So that means it should be producing at a 2:1 ratio. So at the very least it should be producing 800g/s Hydrogen and 400G/s Oxygen. If the Devs could fix this it would solve this problem with the Hydrogen Generator not working properly. Please fix it PLEASE its the right thing to do science wise and will allow people to expand there base beyond the circular start area I have yet to even touch a Ice Biome or Slime Biome because my colony runs out of Coal and power please fix this. Thank you

 

Just to add so you don't think I'm exaggerating: http://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Electrolyzer

Type:	Oxygen
Requirements:	Water: -1000.0g/s Power: -120.0W Liquid Input Pipe
Dimensions:	2x2 (Width/Height)
Effects:	Oxygen: +888.0g/s Hydrogen: +112.0g/s Heat: +6.3W
Decor:	-10 (2 tiles radius)
Construction cost:	200kg Raw Metal

[Grimgaw]

Check your science on how Hydrogen and Oxygen compare per gram.

[Trego]

7 hours ago, turbonl64 said:

With the update that reduced gas output to 1/4, it's very difficult to get back to 10+ KW in a sustainable way (so excluding coal generators). Therefore, especially in the case of the topic starter who really struggles with power, saving 120w for each geyser can make a difference. You are not starting out with enough sources of gas nearby to run 16 NGG's. I'm at cycle 105 currently and I'm just about to finish NGG 4 & 5, with 6 planned in the near future.

You're not saving 120w per geyser, that's the entire point of my post. It's 120w per up to 16 NGG.  That doesn't mean you have to build 16 NGG all at once, so your analysis of whether you should build 16 NGG early is irrelevant, you build 1 gas filter and it supports as many as you want, up to 16.  I would never build less than 3 to start though, even if you only had 1 gas geyser there's still your FM's to account for.

I disagree that it's difficult to get up to 10+ sustainable KW.  I always find enough NG geysers and build enough FM's to get that much, not even trying to, just as a byproduct of my other activities ingame that happens.  How could I term that difficult?

What does nearby mean?  My current base has around 10 gas geysers that I'd discovered by cycle 50, at which point I'd probably revealed about 25% of the map.  I always find more NG geysers than steam geysers in maps created since the gas geyser nerf, I'm wondering if they spawned more gas geysers with that change?  Or I've just been getting randomly high NG geysers since the change...

[Mason607]

2 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

Check your science on how Hydrogen and Oxygen compare per gram.

Can you give me the science then please, Thanks

[Trego]

6 minutes ago, Mason607 said:

Can you give me the science then please, Thanks

oxygen's atomic weight is 16. hydrogen's is 1.  Need more?

[heckubis]

1 minute ago, Mason607 said:

Can you give me the science then please, Thanks

The atomic density of hydrogen is half that of oxygen on top of the individual quantity of the atoms 

[heckubis]

its like asking why is this box of bowling balls not able to hold as many balls as this box of golf balls

[Trego]

I don't know man, golf balls and bowling balls are both spherical man-made objects made with a high-quality plastic exterior (polyurethane for both), with an asymmetrical core made of other materials for increased rotational propensity.  I feel like they're brothers from another mother.  Maybe one of the boxes is broken?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Trego said:

What does nearby mean?  My current base has around 10 gas geysers that I'd discovered by cycle 50, at which point I'd probably revealed about 25% of the map.  I always find more NG geysers than steam geysers in maps created since the gas geyser nerf, I'm wondering if they spawned more gas geysers with that change?  Or I've just been getting randomly high NG geysers since the change...

Then you lucked out. I have found 6 geysers in total while going to the complete top of the map, so around 50% of the map explored. Usually you'll never find as many as you did, and certainly not at cycle 50. Not calling you a liar, but it sounds highly unrealistic to get 10 gas geysers at 25% of the map. It depends how your swamp biomes spawn, and with a high amount of luck they can spawn in a concentrated area, but very often are scattered around.

Regarding difficulty: understand that while you might have heaps of experience with the game, most of us have a decent understanding of the game, but are not yet at that level of management to get as quickly to the same point of, for instance, power production.

For the record, I neither need 10KW to have a fully functional colony. Usually I only start looking for geysers when future planning demand more power than is currently available. At current state my colony only needs half of that, although I'll probably will have to look for one additional KW to start to cool my base.