Better way to airlock locations

[natanstarke]

Guys its kinda needed to have a way to reliably lock an air from escaping to places, building the mechanized doors simply dont work we need more than one and even then may fail.

This suggestion was originally made today by a friend streamer named buildanisland.

Hope you like it, have a suggestion on how this building should look or cost?

[Sasza22]

It`s either a complicated setup with pumps, checkpoints and filters or one of the liquidlock variants (including visco-gel).

It kinda feels like implementing a simple way to do it like some sort of forcefiled is too easy. But if they added a new building i wouldn`t oppose. You can`t make liquid locks vertical anywya so maybe a designated "liquid holder" tile dupes can pass through.

[Alfons100]

You can use liquid, since 1 small tile of any liquid will block all gas from passing through, even 1 gram of water in a small 1 tile passage will block it all. You can even use CO2 because it sinks the most out of any gas, no gas will push it away and get through. There is a few gimmick setups you can do to stop gas from passing through

There is Visco-gel, a lategame material that can be frozen and then used to build plastic tiles, but these plastic tiles melt instantly and create a viscous liquid that can form in some strange ways, so you can create airlocks.

The downside is that you do get wet if you don't wear an Exosuit.

[Casm]

I think this problem is two-fold. The first problem is exactly what the OP said. Airlocks as they exist now just don't function very well at all. Every time a dupe uses it, air is going to escape. Even building 4 or 5 airlocks back to back, you still risk air seeping through. Also, airlocks are extremely slow opening and closing, wasting your dupe's precious time. In a nutshell, they're just kind of bad.

The second problem are that the custom made liquidlocks are vastly superior to airlocks in every way. Liquidlocks are 100% effective, not letting any gas through, dupes can move through them quickly and they take very little effort to build. So, even if airlocks are made better than they are now, they're still not likely to beat liquidlocks.

I'm not sure what a good solution would be but I definitely think it should be addressed.

[Sasza22]

7 hours ago, Alfons100 said:

There is Visco-gel, a lategame material that can be frozen and then used to build plastic tiles, but these plastic tiles melt instantly and create a viscous liquid that can form in some strange ways, so you can create airlocks.

You don`t actually need to freeze it. Using a bottle emptier will make it stack as well.

[Nickerooni]

I think the biggest problem here, since this game is closer to release, is that liquid locks isn’t an obvious discoverable solution. Having a building called, “airlock” is a pretty big distraction in that discovery. Moreover, liquid locks are vastly superior to the mechanized airlock in every way, other than the “wet” debuff. Which, by the way, you can avoid if you convince the dupes to hop through the liquid lock.

The game needs to do one of:

- have in game documentation or a tutorial about liquid locks (my top pick)

- buff existing solutions or create an easy building that does this - something that matches he strength of liquid locks (unlikely)

- debuff liquid locks (unlikely)

[Gus Smedstad]

On 4/10/2019 at 3:47 AM, Casm said:

Airlocks as they exist now just don't function very well at all. Every time a dupe uses it, air is going to escape. Even building 4 or 5 airlocks back to back, you still risk air seeping through.

They aren’t really airlocks. They’re airlock doors. They do what it says on the label: air and liquids can’t pass through the door when it’s closed.

I’ve had excellent results with a door / gas pump / door setup. The pump keeps the space in between in vacuum. If it’s gas on both sides, and not vacuum on one side, I’ll filter the pumped gas so it goes to the correct side. This setup doesn’t risk any gas seeping through in practice.

[Casm]

On 4/10/2019 at 3:07 PM, Nickerooni said:

I think the biggest problem here, since this game is closer to release, is that liquid locks isn’t an obvious discoverable solution. Having a building called, “airlock” is a pretty big distraction in that discovery. Moreover, liquid locks are vastly superior to the mechanized airlock in every way, other than the “wet” debuff. Which, by the way, you can avoid if you convince the dupes to hop through the liquid lock.

The game needs to do one of:

- have in game documentation or a tutorial about liquid locks (my top pick)

- buff existing solutions or create an easy building that does this - something that matches he strength of liquid locks (unlikely)

- debuff liquid locks (unlikely)

I don't think the game should give anyone a tutorial on liquidlocks. The entire game is pretty much designed so that people are encouraged to come up clever ways to solve whatever issues their colony is having, not to mention that anyone having trouble figuring out how to separate gasses will can easily find a tutorial/guide that leads them to liquidlocks. Besides, I don't think it was the developers intentions to make such a clever use of game mechanics the primary method of separating gasses, so having a tutorial on how to build them within the game kind of goes against the spirit of the game. It's much more likely that the devs wanted players to use airlock doors and try to rig up something that works for them, much like what Gus is suggesting, it's just that liquidlocks are simply better in every way.

Until the effectiveness of liquidlocks is addressed, airlocks will simply be obsolete. The real question becomes, is that really a bad thing? It could just be a philosophical choice for the player. If a player wants to stay as true to the developers intentions as possible, they can simply choose not to use liquidlocks, going for a more traditional solution such as airlocks. If a player doesn't really care and just wants to play as optimally as possible, they will just use liquidlocks. I'm not sure it's really an issue that needs a 'fix' per se, it really boils down to what's fun for everyone and frankly, if the developers mind that people are cheesing an aspect of their game in such a way.

[Oozinator]

Since players are building airlocks ingame / liquid / flush - systems, i was discussing this topic with my grandma on sundays, for the last year.
While we had fine Königsberger Kloppse and after that nice schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, grandma had a cool idea and sketched down a rough drawing of her idea.
Reminds me someway in the art it revolves, that it could be part of a revolver.
Thats the reason, we call it "turntable tube door"

[Aevum]

On 10/04/2019 at 10:07 PM, Nickerooni said:

I think the biggest problem here, since this game is closer to release, is that liquid locks isn’t an obvious discoverable solution. Having a building called, “airlock” is a pretty big distraction in that discovery. Moreover, liquid locks are vastly superior to the mechanized airlock in every way, other than the “wet” debuff. Which, by the way, you can avoid if you convince the dupes to hop through the liquid lock.

The game needs to do one of:

- have in game documentation or a tutorial about liquid locks (my top pick)

- buff existing solutions or create an easy building that does this - something that matches he strength of liquid locks (unlikely)

- debuff liquid locks (unlikely)

I 100% agree with this, the ideal option being a new building that is both effective and intuitive for new players to use as an airlock, instead of the currently terrible doors we have.

[Maremick]

I tryed to make a legit airlock with pump and automation ... too long to pass throught, compare to liquid airlock, and energy consumer.

- debuff liquid locks (unlikely)

-> make wet debuff stay until next shower.

---

A new room called "airlock"

- Gas and liquid pump are very effective in this room and can suck all tiles of the room (and not doing **** with mcg quantities)

This room can accept exosuit stuff or just be a 4 tiles (or even 2) room with just a pump

[Gus Smedstad]

17 minutes ago, Maremick said:

I tryed to make a legit airlock with pump and automation ... too long to pass throught, compare to liquid airlock, and energy consumer.

You don't need automation, and you don't need a delay for a "legit" airlock. Just put a pump between two airlock doors. It'll do the job.

If you really, really want automation, add some Dupe checkpoints, so they don't go through the lock unless it's in vacuum. I did that as a test, and it worked fine. I just didn't do it again because frankly the checkpoints aren't needed to ensure gas integrity.

Spoiler

 

[Maremick]

26 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

so they don't go through the lock unless it's in vacuum

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Yes, automation for fun ; delay for the one way thing and the time to vacum ; it's energy consumer, for just passing a way compare to 120 joules door or the 1000 joules transit tube.

• 2 doors : 240 joules
• X gas pumping + gas filter : X * 360 joules

X should be round up ( (number of gas) * (quantity / pump max usage) )

960 joules seems enought for me. We can optimize with minipumps to consume only 600 joules.

 

But liquid airlock will stay the best. But this kind of room will also help to make vaccum rooms.

[fredhp]

I usually use the liquid lock method - easy to set up, effective.... but it's just feel very wrong to dive while wearing an atmo suit to cook some food in a kitchen full of chlorine.

[Gus Smedstad]

5 minutes ago, Maremick said:

Yes, automation for fun ; delay for the one way thing and the time to vacum

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but there's no real delay for either on of those things, in practice. Checkpoints stop Dupes if the condition isn't met, but don't otherwise delay them. If the room is currently in vacuum there's no delay. No-automation vacuum locks entail no delay; one with checkpoints will give you a delay if a Dupe wants to use it twice in rapid succession, i.e. going in and the coming back out.

Even then, it's pretty fast, particularly if you use two minimpumps rather than a single gas pump. They cover the area inside the lock better, and that's more important for this than the lower overall pump rate.