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The SPOM is death, all hail the liquid hydrogen engine.


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10 minutes ago, ONIfreak said:

But you need space materials. Otherwise condensing sour gas to methane and back to natural gas is a bit more complex ( doable on smaller scale). 

We are talking about making hydrogen for rocket fuel. Being that hydrogen engines are the last thing on the research tree it is already a given that you have space age materials to even consider building one.

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The map has little oil and it's being used to make petrol to fly rockets.

 

So I have to say it's beyond brilliant to suggest I convert the oil to natgas, because then I don't need power as the base won't be using any resources when it runs out of oil. Not going to be a fun map to watch, but hey it has lots of useless power that is not needed. Have people even bothered testing if the steps involved is more or less power than is produced?

 

if I have enough low power cost water I might be able to spam SPOM's and leach off the extra power or something. The map does have a single volcano and the 300ish C oil fissure, 500C CO2 geyser, maybe some of that could be used to power steam turbines, in a way that would produce more power than it cost to make the power, the only problem is that Steam Turbines seems to involve going into the grey area where people can't agree on whatever it's exploit or not, so I don't have much experience with Steam Turbines, my first is the super simple O/H liquidizer I made and then I just use it to eat heat, not create power.

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This thread was amusing.

SPOM is not something spammed. It's something typically built one time to solve your mid-game transition from 4 to 8 dupes. (You can do more if it suits you, and I've edited this for more verbal accuracy)

If you are relying on the collection of hydrogen from the start of the game to sustain your hydrogen rockets...then GL and godspeed to you.

It all depends on your playstyle anyway. I like to play progressively quick, so the SPOM suits that playstyle. Other people like to clear an entire map with 1 dupe...SPOM might not be for them.

Why is this even an argument? I'm going to assume it's an intentional troll to see who gets triggered :P.

Building a system that covers a problem you experience in your game given a certain playstyle is => not a noob-trap.

Building a system because people tell you to build the system, without understanding what the system is even doing, or how it's even helping you = noob trap.

Noob trap / Noob =! bad. Building a system to see how things operate to get a feel for the game and get new ideas =! bad.

 

Quite simple really...If SPOM suits your playstyle and helps you progress faster / more worry-free : Build one.

If SPOM does not help you, or suit your playstyle, don't build one...But it's not going to make or break hydrogen rockets unless your planning or map seed is just that awful.

If you cannot manage to at least make one sustained max-range hydrogen rocket, then your map seed is lacking water-output. The only thing to blame at this point is RNG, or yourself for continuing to play on such a seed.

Here's some math showing how little you actually need to support 1 hydrogen rocket, with 2x cargo bays, reaching out to 135k km.

I looked through the seed browser to gain a typical average for steam geysers. Using this information, you only need a single average steam geyser to support your rocket. So if you have 2x terrible steam geysers, and no other water inputs, then yeah, you're not gonna have sustainable hydrogen rockets. Tough break.

 

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40 minutes ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Building a system that covers a problem you experience in your game given a certain playstyle is => not a noob-trap.

Building a system because people tell you to build the system, without understanding what the system is even doing, or how it's even helping you = noob trap.

Noob trap / Noob =! bad. Building a system to see how things operate to get a feel for the game and get new ideas =! bad.

 

 

I wanted to single this bit out here. This is gold.

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I early game build spom (s) and put them together and use excess hydrogen for some other low power system. When get to space and hydrogen rockets it is really easy switch ( at this point i usually have 4 spoms in one oxygen room ( 4 spoms as 4 hydrogen generatora alls connected to power transformators and from transformators just power pumps etc.) When i get sustainable power input - it is 1 cable switch. Save hassle. I can store extra hydrogen and i can reconnect part of oxygen room ( just reconnect 1 transformator at the time to differen input cable) over time to store more and more hydrogen if needed. I always thoight it is natural progression until this thread appeared.  

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On 07/01/2019 at 5:11 PM, Miravlix said:

300ish C oil fissure

 

Boil it to sour gas. This is the best use for oil from a leaky fissure, because it's already scalding hot.

On 07/01/2019 at 5:11 PM, Miravlix said:

Have people even bothered testing if the steps involved is more or less power than is produced?

 

The process generates a lot more power than it uses. If we're conservative and highball all the power costs, a condenser setup might take a constant 3kW to produce about 900g/s of natural gas from 1.3kg/s of oil, which can be burnt to produce 8kW of power. This is assuming you use the steam turbine to help handle some of the cooling load, so you'd also be getting some free electricity from the turbine.

 

1.3kg/s of crude oil would get you a pitiful 650W in the petroleum generator after you processed it through the refinery.

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Even in the early/midgame, you can gather Hydrogen:

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Toss in the aquatuner based cooling system and it's not power positive, but it's close.  However, I can guarantee my O2 production and distribution system (I use a pump + drift distribution).  Does it work a lot better with an electrical engineer?  Sure.  But this is cycle 40, when I've usually just gotten mechatronics engineers.  I grab one of the dupes working towards that and throw them in electrical.  It costs them 1/4 - 1/3 of a cycle every 3, but it certainly helps keep the system oiled.

I agree with the SPOM... and it's derivatives... are certainly still very viable until the very last edges of the end game.

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8 hours ago, Arcus2611 said:

 

Boil it to sour gas. This is the best use for oil from a leaky fissure, because it's already scalding hot.

 

The process generates a lot more power than it uses. If we're conservative and highball all the power costs, a condenser setup might take a constant 3kW to produce about 900g/s of natural gas from 1.3kg/s of oil, which can be burnt to produce 8kW of power. This is assuming you use the steam turbine to help handle some of the cooling load, so you'd also be getting some free electricity from the turbine.

 

1.3kg/s of crude oil would get you a pitiful 650W in the petroleum generator after you processed it through the refinery.

What about stopping the heat at petroleum? Do you know the wattage numbers for that?

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On 1/6/2019 at 6:05 PM, Saturnus said:

We are talking about making hydrogen for rocket fuel. Being that hydrogen engines are the last thing on the research tree it is already a given that you have space age materials to even consider building one.

Cannot argue with iron logic you present. ;)

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On 1/8/2019 at 2:08 PM, bleeter6 said:

What about stopping the heat at petroleum? Do you know the wattage numbers for that?

I'm cooking crude to petro, but just for plastic, because I haven't set up a Drecko ranch yet.  If you have a volcano, the only cost is pumping losses, if you do good heat exchange.  If you're going to burn the petro in a plant, you will double your yield by cooking the crude instead of refining it.  But that's still a long ways from cooking to Sour Gas.

  • Coal Gen gives 0.6 J/g
  • Petro Gen gives 1 J/g
  • Hydrogen gives 8 J/g
  • NatGas gives 8.9 J/g

So if you have a kilo of petro laying around and compare it to a kilo of natgas, you can see that natgas has almost 9x the energy density right there.  That's why natgas is OP.  Cooking converts crude to petro and sour gas at 1:1, but condensing sour gas only yields 60% methane.  So, 1.3 kg/s crude yields:

  • 1.3 kW petro power
  • 1.3 * 60% * 8.9 = 6.9 kW natgas power

NatGas is more than 5x better, ignoring boiling/condensing costs.

Now, many people will tell you to brute-force the cooling of sour gas into methane with Thermo Regulators, AquaTuners, etc., jacking up the "refining" cost of cooking.  Some will tell you to use a heat exchanger to reduce this cost by maybe half.  But the truth is, you can make a clever zero-power heat exchanger that reduces the cost to an arbitrarily low level.  It only requires a fixed amount of space and materials.  That is, you can make a single AETN condense as much sour gas as you want, if you build a big enough heat exchanger.  Since an AETN only costs 80 W to run, I consider its operation "nearly free".  After all, you can't run refrigerator on 80 W!

That's why I haven't bothered to build an Oil Refinery or Petro Generator even though I have hundreds of tons of crude sloshing around the bottom of my oil biome.

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2 hours ago, Lawnmower Man said:

That is, you can make a single AETN condense as much sour gas as you want, if you build a big enough heat exchanger.  Since an AETN only costs 80 W to run, I consider its operation "nearly free".

Uh...  AETNs don't use power at all.  They consume, what, 10 g/s Hydrogen?  Where's the 80 W coming from?

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I don't think that SPOMs are death, they are just an early game helper.  Though I do agree that if you just build an electrolyzer, three pumps, a hydrogen generator, a smart battery, and tie that to a closed circuit, then that is a bad idea but it isn't going to make or break anything.

One, if the electrolyzer was perfect, you have excess hydrogen because it would generate 12g/s more than the generator can use, so eventually this system will back up and fail.  You could take that excess hydrogen out of the system and store it for use elsewhere to make it better, but it's still a waste in my opinion since early on you generally don't have power.  The power you do have is from manual generators or coal generators.  Makes much more sense to me to use that hydrogen for power in the early game and later store it once you have other power souces like Nat Gas, Steam, or Solar.  I have my generators all tied to smart batteries, and each type of generator only run if my power is that low.  So, having an isolated generator that only runs oxygen is a waste to me since I could instead run my oxygen production off hydrogen now and then run it off solar later.  Instead, if it's a closed loop, that hydrogen is always being used and thus not around for other uses.

Two, having one SPOM is fine.  Having multiple SPOMs a waste of power.  In a perfect world with a 100% up time electrolyzer, you want 1.77 oxygen pumps and 0.22 hydrogen pumps per electrolyzer.  So, if you want to be smart with your power, you'd be better off having one gas pump that collects hydrogen from up to 4 electrolyzers to optimize your power usage.  Additionally, since gas pumps pull 500g packets, having two separate SPOM setups means two oxygen pumps are not running at full capacity either, but are using full power.  If you put them together, you can use fewer pumps.  With 4 electrolyzers, you only need 7 gas pumps and a mini gas pump to maximize the oxygen to power ratios.

Three, it depends on your design.  Some SPOMs are just the electrolyzer, pumps, generator, and smart battery.  Other are all that plus wheezeworts or thermo regulators.  If it's a self cooling system using wheezeworts, you'll probably use more wheezeworts than needed to cool two separate lines of oxygen than if you were to put the two lines of oxygen together and run that through a cool room.  Wheezeworts are limited until you reach space so losing them to multiple SPOMs just leaves less cooling for other ventures.  With a thermo regulator, if you aren't putting full packets through it, it's wasting power as well.  So while it might be self powering, it's also wasting a ton of the power it's generating.

 

Like I said, I see them as a stepping stone.  I use the hydrogen to power things for me when I'm starting out, but stop using it later when power becomes available from other sources.  If you continue to use it, it just means you need to wait longer for it to produce more hydrogen, find a hydrogen vent, or run more electrolyzers.

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Is it just me or this discussion is really black and white. ? No the spom is not dead - depends of seeds you might want extra hydrogen and have excess of water just to simply don't care. Yes you can use terrarium if you find it preferably way to create oxygen. Yes you can use one or two or even five pumps to take hydrogen if you find it useful. Yes SPOM is helpful, so to terrarium, or running pumps and electrolyzers using coal, steam, or even manual generators ( if you want to boost up dups athletics). It all depends of seeds and your personal approach. It is really nice to know that there is sufficient alternative to spoms not making it THE design. :)

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