Airlock automation

[Soulwind]

I am so bad at automation.  Can anyone point me to a relatively simple airlock automation setup?  One where the middle door closes and opens automatically a few seconds after a dupe passes through?

[Gus Smedstad]

I generally prefer an airlock design that's just two doors and a gas pump. No automation, it just empties the interior to a vacuum. Generally this is fairly effective, and gas doesn't escape.

An airlock with two mini-pumps is even better, since it uses less energy and is more effective at rapidly emptying the space. There reason being that gas pumps and gas mini-pumps have a plus-shaped area of effect, so a 2x2 gas pump has one tile it can't empty directly. It has to empty that tile using the gas movement rules, and that can take quite some time before it gets to zero. Two mini-pumps cover the entire area, and there's no slow progression through grams, milligrams, and micrograms of gas left.

The drawbacks of minipumps are that they require plastic and they've got a low overheat temperature. If there's steam or something else hot on one side of the airlock you don't want to use them.

I've never built one of those 3-door airlock setups. At least in part because forcing the middle door closed breaks Dupe pathfinding.

[Saturnus]

3 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I generally prefer an airlock design that's just two doors and a gas pump.

I've never built one of those 3-door airlock setups.

Forgive me for asking but how can you prefer something without having tried the other option at all?

[RonEmpire]

A 2 door setup with a pump in the middle.  So how exactly are you controlling the flow of dupes coming and going?

In real life, an airlock basically forces the person to be inside the airlock chamber until it decompresses before opening.

So technically when a dupe enters the airlock chamber of the 2 doors (the middle room),   you need to have him wait until your pump removes the gas before opening the second door to let him pass otherwise, its possible for the gas to enter from one door and then exit through the second door when the dupe leaves.     And you said you're not using automation?

If you're assigning only 1 dupe passage by name via the door assignment, then you've minimize the problem.   But if you have a high traffic door,   you're going to leak so much gas.

 

A 3 door setup (back to back)  is slightly better and doesn't require a pump because the middle door can possibly delete the gas


A waterlock is probably the best use of an airlock.   You would only have to worry about the sloppy wet debuff. 
But if you have an exosuit station, then you won't need to worry at all.

Its also even possible to create a water lock where the dupe just jumps through the liquid and not get sloppy wet, but that requires a little more exploiting mechanics. stacking 3 liquids.

Another alternative which requires a lot of power is using the Tube Transit.

[Gus Smedstad]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

Forgive me for asking but how can you prefer something without having tried the other option at all?

Because I know how the other option works. I mentioned the pathfinding issue. The 3-door lock, if the timing is correct, destroys the gasses caught by the middle door. I don't care for that, though I guess you could argue that not much gas is being destroyed.

Worst of all, rapid use of the airlock will result in gas displacement, which basically never happens with a pump lock, particularly a minipump lock.

10 minutes ago, RonEmpire said:

A 2 door setup with a pump in the middle.  So how exactly are you controlling the flow of dupes coming and going?

I'm not. I've never felt the need. I've set up one that did control the flow using checkpoints, once, just to see how it was done, but it didn't seem to convey enough of an advantage for me to implement it regularly.

And no, the airlock doesn't leak gas if you've got a lot of traffic. Not in practice. If you've got 2kg/tile on both sides, you get 400 grams entering the lock with each door activation, and pumps have no trouble at all keeping up with that.

I don't like water locks in principle. There's the "soaking wet" debutf, of course, and delay while the Dupe complains, but mostly I don't like 'em because they're crude. I know a lot of players like them.

[Denisetwin]

There are a couple on the forums

@Alex_D 's is included in this thread.

@Neotuck s in this thread

@Neotix in this thread

 

[Soulwind]

Hmm, so apparently it's not the first time I've asked the question.  Bad me.  I normally use water locks pretty much everywhere, but for a couple of places, they are inconvienent and I just can't seem to get the automation correct for the triple door lock.  Thanks for the threads, I'll go back and review them again.

 

[Mr.Trueba]

54 minutes ago, Soulwind said:

Hmm, so apparently it's not the first time I've asked the question.

HAHAHAHAH. You make my day.

[onebit]

I tried checkpoints but its hard to account for dupes on each side using the airlock at once and both doors being open. It also was extremely large. Maybe it could work if one is for entry and one is for exit.

[impyre]

3 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Forgive me for asking but how can you prefer something without having tried the other option at all?

@Saturnus That seems a bit argumentative, and almost intentionally obtuse. Are you suggesting you have never known that you disliked an idea without first trying it? You've never heard someone suggest something and think to yourself, "Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea."? The whole "you've never tried it so you can't know" concept may work for some foods (I know I don't like overly spicy foods from experience, so I tend to avoid them, even those I haven't yet tried) and possibly for some experiences... but it simply doesn't work for most things. See exhibit A.

Exhibit A:

Person A: I haven't been able to find a decent job.

Person B: What are you doing these days?

A: Working at a grocery store.

B: Hey, you should come out with me and work on the road crew. We make good money.

A: Tell me more.

B: We get up at 4AM, and work shovels for 12 hours. Sometimes we get to do other things. Make sure you bring plenty of sunscreen and water!

A: I'll pass, thanks.

B: But you haven't even tried it yet!

[Saturnus]

6 minutes ago, impyre said:

@Saturnus Are you suggesting you have never known that you disliked an idea without first trying it?

That's not what I wrote though so your argument is invalid.

I wrote, how can you say you prefer something over something else if you've never tried the other option. At most you can say you don't like something, or you like something else.

[Yoma_Nosme]

@Soulwind

Here you go. Not my design, btw  but who cares 

 

[Cypher-7]

51 minutes ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

@Soulwind

Here you go. Not my design, btw  but who cares 

 

That’s wicked! What are the timings? 

[Mr.Trueba]

55 minutes ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

@Soulwind

Here you go. Not my design, btw  but who cares 

 

Great design! Does this arrangement cut the pathfinding?

I sometimes use the one that is similar to this that I saw Neotuck publish it one day, but I only use it in volcanoes because that does cut it.

[Yoma_Nosme]

26 minutes ago, Mr.Trueba said:

What are the timings? 

Standard timing is what I use I think. My last colony was some time ago tbh I can't remember. Use some trial and error, start with standard and speed it up procedurally.  Not too much to quack up there. 

Cheers 

30 minutes ago, Mr.Trueba said:

Does this arrangement cut the pathfinding?

No it doesn't cut pathfinding.

Only caveat. If dupes drop something on the pressure plates...but very fixable. Either manually or you could implement an override switch for the plates in case of emergency. But so far it only happened maybe 3 times mainly by my own error, constructing it without cleaning the room first

Cheers 

[RonEmpire]

sweeper could pick up the stuff on the ground I suppose.

[Grimgaw]

11 hours ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

No it doesn't cut pathfinding.

Seeing as middle door closes, yes, it does.

[impyre]

@Saturnus I apologize, but failure to understand my argument doesn't make it any less valid. Also, I never said that's what you wrote. I'm afraid my efforts were wasted in that post, but I'll try to clear up any confusion on the matter.

I was clearly not quoting you when I said that. The part I quoted was clearly indicated by the forum's formatting, and the quote was pasted in automatically. I didn't alter it in any way, it's an accurate quote.

I was trying to illustrate how your generalized statement cannot possibly apply to all situations. I attempted to do this using a Socratic approach. (This is where you ask questions less for answers and more to cause your listener to actually think about the answers and the implications they carry.)

For example, if a person says something like this: 

"Forgive me for asking but how can you prefer something without having tried the other option at all?"

It implies one of three things:

A) This person has no idea how you can prefer something without having tried an alternative, and would genuinely like to know.

B) This person believes no one can prefer a thing without having tried an alternative, and is using a Socratic approach in an attempt to "enlighten" the recipient of the message (believing that if the recipient cannot sufficiently answer, they'll be forced to either change their words or re-evaluate their standpoint.)

C) This person had doubts as to whether such a preference can reasonably be made about this specific subject, and wanted to know how the preference was formed.

Since "C" is a simple miscommunication, I'll address it first. They should use specific language instead of generalized language so that it's clear that they're asking about this specific case. IE: "Forgive me for asking, but how can you prefer that airlock design if you haven't tried this other popular design?" This question actually asks the reader to explain the reason for their preference, if in a very indirect and confusing way. A better question might've been "Why do you prefer that airlock type, and was there any other information about the alternative version that set you against it?" 

I believe "A" is probably the least likely. In fact, I'm not even sure how this would really be the case. You'd have to have gone your entire life without ever developing any preference until trying at least one alternative.

"B" seems to be the most likely case, especially considering that you believe my argument was invalid. Again, this rests wholly on the assumption that it's impossible to form a preference without trying an alternative. This is sometimes the case, but not always. In general, vast over-generalized statements like this tend to be false at least sometimes (if not frequently). I have yet to see an example of an over-generalized statement that is true 100% of the time.

Finally, I'd like to address the use of the term preference. Here are a few ways it is defined:

A greater liking for one alternative over another or others.

The fact that you like something or someone more than another thing or person.

Ignoring definitions which resort to using the word "preferred" to define "preference" (Which I find a bit redundant anyhow), you find that largely the word "preference" is, simply put, a way of expressing a difference between how much you like one thing, and how much you like another. So to revisit your statement:

"...how can you say you prefer something over something else if you've never tried the other option"

The above is immediately followed by the below:

"At most you can say you don't like something, or you like something else."

Using our dictionary, we can translate this; it means: "At most you can say you like A less than B", which also means "At most you can say you prefer B"

My original post was meant to attempt to keep you on topic and help remind you that being argumentative isn't really all that helpful or constructive. It was also an attempt to get you to re-evaluate your position on preferences, or at the very least make room for validating the preferences of others (even if you don't respect those preferences). If you have any other confusions or questions about anything I've written, or complaints about my argument, my inbox is available to you.

[ImDaMisterL]

Alright guys, let's get back on-topic here.

[impyre]

@Yoma_Nosme and @Mr.Trueba Any time you lock a door that a duplicant has plotted a path through, the path must be re-evaluated. If the destination area is no longer reachable the errand will be cancelled. Since airlocks often are the only point of access to an area by design, this means that usually dupes will start to do something, but if another dupe uses the lock first causing it to reset, it will definitely break the path. Fortunately, for this particular design the lock is re-enabled pretty quickly, so it *should* have minimal impact. However, this depends largely on how far said dupe is from the job and what the job is. If the job is to deliver coal from a distant storage to some point on the other side of the airlock, even intermittent path interruption may halt the job completely since any dupe taking a closer job would get to the airlock first and interrupt the path, which would then cause the dupe to give up the task. Once the task was picked up again, they'd have to start all over. There are two ways to mitigate this problem:

1) Have a second "bypass" airlock and ensure the main airlock is "preferred". You can do this by making the bypass airlock much longer (think "U" shaped). This would cause dupes to prefer the more direct path, and only alternate if their initial route was interrupted.

2) Having multiple airlocks to the same contiguous area but spread farther apart. (this is the optimal method) This only works well if your base is fairly large or your external area is fairly large (or both). The idea here is that instead of having a "bypass" airlock, you have two "main" airlocks. One is closer to your farms (or whatever), while the other is several dozen blocks away, closer to your bedrooms. This way, dupes will prefer the closer airlock generally, but can use the other if the one they are pathing towards becomes locked. Even if the bypass route then becomes locked later, they should normally switch back to the initial route. The only way to completely break path here is if both locks are used simultaneously (which shouldn't happen often unless you have a *lot* of dupes running through this area. If that's the case though, it might be a good indicator that it's time to expand your base.

[Mr.Trueba]

31 minutes ago, impyre said:

You can do this by making the bypass airlock much longer (think "U" shaped). This would cause dupes to prefer the more direct path, and only alternate if their initial route was interrupted.

I like this. Thank you! (:

[Yoma_Nosme]

@impyre, @Grimgaw

Ok, now I see what you mean. It does cut path for a little bit... never noticed it because I've only use this kind of airlock in rooms that are little frequented (1 dupe) 

Thank for pointing it out to me.