Lamps and plants

[Kermack]

With regards to the new agriculture components, if I don't see any mention of bonus from light can I assume that lamps are no longer relevant to farming?

[GreatGameDota]

Lamps only help Algae Terrariums. I don't think they've ever helped plants grow.

[Kermack]

alrighty then thanks

[Townkill]

 ceiling lamps and probably regular lamps can be used for heating plants if the area is too cold

[Sevio]

A space heater wired to a thermo sensor could do that more efficiently though.

Lamps in general seem to be quite pointless and wasteful once you don't need algae terrariums anymore. Since there is a separate light overlay, I imagine they will have more purpose than just decor in a future update.

[Townkill]

13 hours ago, Sevio said:

A space heater wired to a thermo sensor could do that more efficiently though.

Lamps in general seem to be quite pointless and wasteful once you don't need algae terrariums anymore. Since there is a separate light overlay, I imagine they will have more purpose than just decor in a future update.

No. it wouldn't. While space heaters provide more heat/watts they can also quickly overheat any sealed planting area and also require a dedicated spot on a circuit.  lights can be attached to pretty much any circuit, because they only cost 5/10 watts and every circuit ends up with at least 40 unused watts. So in essence you're either reserving 120 watts thatll barely ever be used or using wattage that would otherwise be wasted.  The only plant that requires enough energy to warrant a space heater is peppernuts

[NanoD]

2 hours ago, Townkill said:

The only plant that requires enough energy to warrant a space heater is peppernuts

And only plant that needs heating.

[Townkill]

Thermo regulators remove more heat than ideal temperature range of every single plant, so if youre using one to cool gas then you need to reheat it to maintain ideal conditions

[NanoD]

I have never had to heat a place that I have cooled down with Thermo regulator. The plants will heat the place up just fine.

[Townkill]

You must have alot of heat transfer going on then. When i cool my farms they stay cold for a really long time unless i heat them.

[Kermack]

30 minutes ago, Townkill said:

You must have alot of heat transfer going on then. When i cool my farms they stay cold for a really long time unless i heat them.

 

What setups are you using, do you use insulated tiles?  Insulated pipes?  Abyssalite?  I've got a decent small farm that has yielded some 99.9 results, but I have to to maintain a  couple of wheezeworts inside in case it gets too cold, working with mealwood.  If I don't use the wheezeworts it will get above 22 too soon and I won't make the minimum 80 for seeds.  The incoming air is close to 20C and pressure is the easiest thing to maintain.  I wish the gas valve would shut off completely at 0.

Wonder if losing a few degrees from the doors opening or if insulated tiles and pipes aren't worth it and just use abyssalite.

[Whispershade]

I've personally noticed incredible amounts of heat transfer with the doors. I really hope they add insulated doors at some point to accommodate access to temperature controlled rooms.  But Kasuha has noted temperature changes have favored directions and recommended placing access to areas you want to cool above and areas you want to heat below. As cold wants to migrate down and heat wants to migrate up. Though this is not done through gas movement like in real life.

insulated tiles and pipes do not seem to be worth it with how available abyssalite is, but if I were to make your room, I'd close up those doors with abyssalite tiles and perhaps put door access to the room near where the storage compactors are to limit temperature change.

[Kermack]

A door from the top, didn't even think to do that.

[Whispershade]

2 hours ago, Townkill said:

Thermo regulators remove more heat than ideal temperature range of every single plant, so if youre using one to cool gas then you need to reheat it to maintain ideal conditions

It is really hard to cause temperature swings with regulators that would exceed ideal temperature ranges.  The two options of I can think of using regulators to cool a room would be to directly send the room's air through a regulator or a gas pipe radiator cooled by a regulator. In the radiator style thermal conduction is kind of slow and you have time to by-pass the radiator to allow the plants to warm up the room. In the case of sending the room's air to the regulator it comes out and disperses its cooled air it must share its energy differential with a room of air and ends up being far less than the 14C change the regulator produces on its' processed packets.

The real risk, I think, and perhaps something that lights could help with is disproportionate cooling, some areas getting too cold while other areas aren't quite cold enough. But there are other ways to mitigate that, too.

[Townkill]

33 minutes ago, Kermack said:

 

What setups are you using, do you use insulated tiles?  Insulated pipes?  Abyssalite?  I've got a decent small farm that has yielded some 99.9 results, but I have to to maintain a  couple of wheezeworts inside in case it gets too cold, working with mealwood.  If I don't use the wheezeworts it will get above 22 too soon and I won't make the minimum 80 for seeds.  The incoming air is close to 20C and pressure is the easiest thing to maintain.  I wish the gas valve would shut off completely at 0.

Wonder if losing a few degrees from the doors opening or if insulated tiles and pipes aren't worth it and just use abyssalite.

 

heres an ss of my old farm setup, been experimenting a bit since then.

now i use normal abyssalite tiles and water piping(used to be insulated, using normal abyssalite now since both are fairly equal), gold amalgam mechanized doors, 10-12 plants per room ,  gas pump near the entrance going to a thermo reg outside, vent and thermo switch/ceiling light on the far end(only use one now since only the one near the vent comes on) granite gas piping on the return line from the thermo reg.  

Gives 100 rating on 7-8 plants and 90+ on the 2 near the vent and sometimes 1 near the door

 

Yes you can gain a ton of heat thru doors especially when dupes go thru.  Gold amalgam will transfer it lt slower and you should use mechanized doors as the open and close faster than manual, minimizing gas transfer

interestingly enough, i have a harder time maintaining air pressure than temperature... 

[Kermack]

I think the air pressure for my setup is easier to maintain only because the dupes don't have to spend as much time in the room as yours, and my outside air pressure isn't too far off so the shift isn't as abrupt when they're going in and out.  My whole base is rather open, there are no single tile corridors, all my ladder chutes are 2 spaces open, so air flow is very relaxed.

[Townkill]

8 minutes ago, Kermack said:

I think the air pressure for my setup is easier to maintain only because the dupes don't have to spend as much time in the room as yours, and my outside air pressure isn't too far off so the shift isn't as abrupt when they're going in and out.  My whole base is rather open, there are no single tile corridors, all my ladder chutes are 2 spaces open, so air flow is very relaxed.

Yeah its just a tradeoff. the more airflow you have the more heat is going to transfer. Theres plenty of setups that work, its just a matter of striking a good balance

The rest of my base was 3 tile open floors not single tile corridors, that was just to restrict oxygen flow to the farms. i only wanted hydrogen in the rooms

[Whispershade]

10 minutes ago, Townkill said:

interestingly enough, i have a harder time maintaining air pressure than temperature... 

This setup is probably going to be prone to low air pressure or difficult to control temperature. The pumps will always remain an air pressure sink. Part of the problem here is that to mitigate air pressure problems you would need to pressurize the room so much that the room + all the pipes to and from your regulators would need to be filled. Presumably the pump engages on a thermo switch and whenever it does that you'll lose air pressure into the pipes.  If you pack your pipes enough you'll probably run too cold as the regulator will work too hard.

You could put the pump on a atmo switch and run the thermo switch to your thermo regulator and create a bypass so you could pack your air pressure in the pipe but if the temp is low enough it won't be cooled and just continue on.  That might be tricky though.

[Townkill]

6 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

This setup is probably going to be prone to low air pressure or difficult to control temperature. The pumps will always remain an air pressure sink. Part of the problem here is that to mitigate air pressure problems you would need to pressurize the room so much that the room + all the pipes to and from your regulators would need to be filled. Presumably the pump engages on a thermo switch and whenever it does that you'll lose air pressure into the pipes.  If you pack your pipes enough you'll probably run too cold as the regulator will work too hard.

You could put the pump on a atmo switch and run the thermo switch to your thermo regulator and create a bypass so you could pack your air pressure in the pipe but if the temp is low enough it won't be cooled and just continue on.  That might be tricky though.

Thats my old playthru, it ended up being unplayable because  i took on too many dupes. Anyways,  temperature was always spot on, but id need to repressurize the room every 70 or 80 cycles, thats the purpose of that valve at the entrance.

Ive since switched to only making 2 mealwood farms and using a atmo switch tied to a gas pump 

[Whispershade]

15 minutes ago, Townkill said:

Yeah its just a tradeoff. the more airflow you have the more heat is going to transfer. Theres plenty of setups that work, its just a matter of striking a good balance

The rest of my base was 3 tile open floors not single tile corridors, that was just to restrict oxygen flow to the farms. i only wanted hydrogen in the rooms

For the sake of completeness I want to add that this works for Mealwood but not other crops. The "Ideal Temperature" rank doesn't care about the temperature of the plant but of the air around it.  And all plants are planted as 400kg of genetic ooze at 19c. It happens that Mealwood's ideal temp is 18c to 22c so conductivity with the environmental gas will help stabilize it towards ideal in general and hydrogen's thermal conductivity might be really great in helping maintain this range. But other plants are much further away and you have to fight harder to get them into ideal. Thermally conductive gas that conducts with the plant becomes a liability, since you want the plant to change the air temperature as little as possible.

[Kermack]

   Dang man, that's not bad at all.  I wouldn't even consider it a problem.  If it can hold pressure for that long then i would just consider is quarterly maintenance.

[Townkill]

Setup was identical on my BB farms except with co2 instead of hydrogen, as a result thermo regs run alot more. its really not ideal for peppernuts or sleet though, since both of these youre better going for quantity than quality

[NanoD]

This is what I would basically do if I did meal wood. One Thermo regulator, the gas vale set to 100. Hydrogen in the grow room with 2 kilo per tile. and the thermo switches to 21C. And to keep the hydrogen in the room you need to keep a 1 kg pressure outside and it should be fine.

 

Might be slight overkill for mealwood. But there will be some heat coming in from outside and when you harvest the plants the meallice will heat up litle bit. but your thermo regulator shouldn't run much. And use Abyssalite  for the watering pipes.

[thewreckedangle]

so.. maybe i'm just stupid but.. why on earth do you guys make it so complex?

i just stick them in the main area as they are around the temp that dupes seem to like also?!

(this is just an example i pulled from screenshots folder)

[Townkill]

6 minutes ago, thewrecktangle said:

so.. maybe i'm just stupid but.. why on earth do you guys make it so complex?

i just stick them in the main area as they are around the temp that dupes seem to like also?!

(this is just an example i pulled from screenshots folder)

Because over time the area will heat up. Those bio distillers, fridges, wheels, cooking stations, algae deoxydizer all generate heat. its fine doing that early on  but by cycle 300, 200 maybe even 100 they wont be able to grow