Fertilizer -> Dirt loop bug fixed?

[Z0366]

Guys I am thinking about building a sleetwheat farm just for fun (leaving them wild and harvest them with a sweeper or just run errand is actually an easier solution), I remember read an article about losing 50% of the cooked dirt mass and I am wondering whether any guru would know whether that is fixed or not. Thanks.

[Nickerooni]

When you cook slime or algae into dirt, it turns into a dirt block that you have to dig. When you dig a block, you lose half the mass. That’s the 50% loss that you’re probably thinking about. I’m not sure if that’s a bug or not. It’s a pretty big ingrained part of the game at this point, though.

[Sasza22]

It`s not a bug. All digging actions remove half of the mass. If this wasn`t the case you could multiply dirt using the fertilizer maker and cooking the fertilizer.

The only bug was the mass sometimes doubling when certain stuff melted. I`m not sure if it`s still in.

[Saturnus]

23 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

The only bug was the mass sometimes doubling when certain stuff melted. I`m not sure if it`s still in.

Still there.

[DreamApart]

3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

All digging actions remove half of the mass

Wait... WHAT?

So if you have a iron volcano and the iron freeze into a tile and you dig it off and later it melts, freezes, and dug, and melts, freeze, dug you finally lose all tons of iron into nothing?

[Gus Smedstad]

Wait, when does a volcano create iron tiles? In my experience, metal volcanos produce liquid, which then turns into solid debris when it cools, not tiles that must be dug up.

The only time I’ve had to dig out a volcano is if I’ve soaked it in polluted water. Sufficient heat will turn polluted water into steam and dirt tiles. Those dirt tiles must be dug up, they’re not debris.

[DreamApart]

4 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Wait, when does a volcano create iron tiles? In my experience, metal volcanos produce liquid, which then turns into solid debris when it cools, not tiles that must be dug up.

When the mass of liquid in a cell exceeds a particular quantity and freezes, it becomes a tile.

[Gus Smedstad]

So, you’d have to accumulate a lot of liquid iron and then let it solidify. Seems unusual. You’d have to dig up the volcano, and then both keep it in vacuum so the iron doesn’t cool and not exploit it until the liquid iron built up considerably.

I gather you’ve done this?

[Junksteel]

5 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

So, you’d have to accumulate a lot of liquid iron and then let it solidify. Seems unusual. You’d have to dig up the volcano, and then both keep it in vacuum so the iron doesn’t cool and not exploit it until the liquid iron built up considerably.

I gather you’ve done this?

You have to accumulate exactly 801 kg to have a tile. 800kg will solidify into debris. Francis John made a very good video on the topic: 

 

[DreamApart]

28 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

So, you’d have to accumulate a lot of liquid iron and then let it solidify. Seems unusual. You’d have to dig up the volcano, and then both keep it in vacuum so the iron doesn’t cool and not exploit it until the liquid iron built up considerably.

I gather you’ve done this?

You don't have to.

When new liquid comes out it may heat up the solid debris on the ground back into liquid, and so they merge into a larger amount of liquid.

This happens when the metal debris can't lose heat fast enough so it can easily melt again.

[Z0366]

5 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

It`s not a bug. All digging actions remove half of the mass. If this wasn`t the case you could multiply dirt using the fertilizer maker and cooking the fertilizer.

The only bug was the mass sometimes doubling when certain stuff melted. I`m not sure if it`s still in.

Darn. Ok, so mass conservation is not strictly followed. I never actually checked the mass of dug material against the block. Thanks for the information. Well, I guess I will have to leave the sleetwheat wild then...Maybe I can do a calculation to see if CO2->PW->Sieve->dirt loop is possible. Probably not...

[Nickerooni]

The largest dirt source is PW to polluted O2 (100%) to puft slime (50%) to cooking the slime (another 50%). Net 25%. If I remember correctly, you can get enough polluted water from bathrooms and showers to feed a dupe. Or close to that.

You only get 4% (?) from the sieve and compost. So, you need more PW sources.

[Gus Smedstad]

One reason I never pursued the Polluted Water -> Polluted Oxygen conversion is that I understand it to be very slow if you use standing water instead of bottles. Getting polluted water bottles generally requires shenanigans that bother me, since you have to get a Dupe to pump it out of a pool and then force them to drop it somehow.

Emptying a terrarium also gives you polluted water bottles, but then you’ve got to prevent Dupes from picking it up. Assuming you’ve got a bottle emptier anywhere set for polluted water, that is.

Maybe there are other ways to get polluted water bottles with which I am unfamiliar.

[beowulf2010]

33 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Emptying a terrarium also gives you polluted water bottles, but then you’ve got to prevent Dupes from picking it up. Assuming you’ve got a bottle emptier anywhere set for polluted water, that is.

Maybe there are other ways to get polluted water bottles with which I am unfamiliar.

With terrariums you just have to set all bottle emptiers that accept polluted water to "Sweep Only" and then manually sweep the bottles in unwanted places. It's a bit of a pain, but considering how good the whole terrarium to bottled polluted water to offgassing to deodorizer is, I personally don't mind. 

I'm not sure if this still works, but the next best minimally exploity way I know of to get bottled polluted water is deconstructing full liquid reservoirs. 

[Denisetwin]

35 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

I'm not sure if this still works, but the next best minimally exploity way I know of to get bottled polluted water is deconstructing full liquid reservoirs. 

This is great to know, thanks for sharing!!

 

[beowulf2010]

14 minutes ago, Denisetwin said:

This is great to know, thanks for sharing!!

 

I apologize in advance if it's been fixed. I haven't tried it myself for 3+ months, but I haven't seen anything in the patch notes either. 

[Gus Smedstad]

I don’t think that’s a bug. You deconstruct anything and you get its contents, and if the contents are fluids, you get bottles instead of the fluid spreading across the floor. Reservoirs would be a huge PITA to restructure if they dumped water on the floor instead of bottled water.

[Grimgaw]

8 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I don’t think that’s a bug. You deconstruct anything and you get its contents, and if the contents are fluids, you get bottles instead of the fluid spreading across the floor. Reservoirs would be a huge PITA to restructure if they dumped water on the floor instead of bottled water.

Meanwhile gas tanks spread their contents on deconstruction.

[Gus Smedstad]

That’s kind of surprising. The game does, after all, have bottled gasses. 

[Neotuck]

2 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Maybe there are other ways to get polluted water bottles with which I am unfamiliar.

Using a plumber to empty a pipe is the best way to automate bottle making.  As long as you have PW flowing in the pipe the plumber never stops.  Use a pressure plate under the bottles to control plumber access with dupe check points or by automating doors

[Yunru]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Using a plumber to empty a pipe is the best way to automate bottle making.

Bwah?!

[Z0366]

 

6 hours ago, Nickerooni said:

The largest dirt source is PW to polluted O2 (100%) to puft slime (50%) to cooking the slime (another 50%). Net 25%. If I remember correctly, you can get enough polluted water from bathrooms and showers to feed a dupe. Or close to that.

You only get 4% (?) from the sieve and compost. So, you need more PW sources.

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Using a plumber to empty a pipe is the best way to automate bottle making.  As long as you have PW flowing in the pipe the plumber never stops.  Use a pressure plate under the bottles to control plumber access with dupe check points or by automating doors

I have done some calculation. It is just not sustainable. A puft produce  25g/s slime, so that is 12.5g/s dirt. A day it produce 7.2kg. One sleet wheat need 5 kg/day, and 2.5 wheat per dupe, so for each dupe, I need  1.7 puft. My colony is 20 dupes, and that would mount to 34 puft constanly groomed for max production! That is just not possible. I might as well just fly a rocket to bio-mass to get slime and algae to cook.  A biomass can appear at 9 cycle distance, and that consumes only water as fuel (petroleum is from water->-oil->petro too).  Roughly 900kg of petro and oxygen, so that is 900kg oil then 300kg water, and 1100 water for electrolyzing, and I get 2000 kg slime/algae which is 1000kg dirt per 9 day, so 100kg per day for 20 sleetwheat to feed 8 dupes.....

That sucks too.... Man I will just leave these sleet wheat wild. Too much effort for so little gain. Barbecue is equally nice anyway...

[Yunru]

Water Sieve converts filtration medium (such as Regolith) into polluted dirt at a 20% ratio.

[Z0366]

3 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Water Sieve converts filtration medium (such as Regolith) into polluted dirt at a 20% ratio.

That doesn't seems to work. On my map I only have 2 polluted water geysor(1 cold slush one normal), That is about 4kg/s. So if I sieve all of them, that is only 200g dirt per sec, then 48 kg a day, which can feed sleetwheat for 4 dupes.

[Gus Smedstad]

26 minutes ago, Z0366 said:

 

That sucks too.... Man I will just leave these sleet wheat wild. Too much effort for so little gain. Barbecue is equally nice anyway...

I fed a colony of 20 Dupes pepper bread using only the dirt I got from sieving polluted water. Which in turn I obtained from petroleum generators and carbon skimmers processing CO2, mostly from the petroleum generators.

One thing to keep in mind is that fertilizer reduces the overall dirt cost. It costs dirt to make, but it doubles the growth of plants.

It was a little precarious, I’ll grant you, since I had problems unless I deliberately burned more petroleum than I needed for electricity. Oil’s a fairly renewable resource if you’ve got a couple of oil wells. I had 3 of those, and I consistently produced more oil than I burned.