General mass and energy preservation concerns

[Vincie]

Let's look at the hydrogen generator. What really are those things...? I mean they consume hydrogen and give energy, simple. But where does the hydrogen go? It is turned into holium, while fused? I could use the holium. Is it burned? That would use up oxygen and really, you would not be able co continue with electrolysis on it's products, it's an endoenergetic process. And what about fossil fuels? Coal combustion not only uses no oxygen, but mass of it's products is significantly lower than substrates in game. Where is the missing smoke, where are the ashes? Why is there no naphta produced as a byproduct of oil reffinement, it's missing and could be used for that vaporising-liquifying to methane-turning to natural gas process.

Methane entalpy is -890kJ/mol and obtaining two moles of O2 toi burn it and the entalpy of water is -286kJ/mol, so well, one would not be able to burn natural gas to obtain enouhg energy to electrolyse water to obtain the oxygen to burn it and NG combustion yelds a mass of waste equal to used NG, so I am OK with that, strange chemistry.

About coal, it should, to be playable, yeld a load of ashes that, after some reprocessing, could yeld lime (coal ashes actually are used for manufacturing concrete).

Petroleum generator is loosing 750g/s of waste somewhere. And this is a lot. Maybe it could yeld soot, good for energy consuming production of fullerene or grease? Grease could be used for tuning up regular machinery by general engeneers.

Fixed temperature outputs of devices are just weird, but I suppose this was in favor of game's efficiency.

Critters clearly destroy mass, yet they could yeld some waste that could be eventually used for something. Maybe to be composted to fertilizer?

Food production (liceloaf, that green goop), destroys a ton of resources while it could yeld a ton of waste.

I won't complain on oxygen-consumption quota, it's just a good game ballance.

Finally, what about a late-game tech for direct change of enviromental heat to electricity? Some sor of doodaish-Faraday's discish-thingy. It beaks the II law of thermodynamics and surrealism of the idea fits in ONI.

[SharraShimada]

Yeah and dupes wont get older, compared to the size of the rock the gravity is way to high, and so on. Its a game. 

[Sasza22]

Hydrogen gens are weird. Someone somewhere said they were supposed to use mercury at one point. I`m not sure if we can change them without unbalancing the game at this point.

The oil refinery is losing 50% mass. But there is naphta as a resource and bitumen in the codex so maybe they will find a way to add more outputs to the machine (also sulfur, byproduct of nat gas cooking outside the refinery).

Ashes would be cool. They already have a role in DS. They would also be a byproduct of making refined carbon and ceramic. Maybe could be used in some medicine recipies.

As for critters they ideally should use up the mass to grow and increase their own mass. It`s kinda hard to balance and wild critters don`t always have resources to consume so it`s a bit wonky. Lets imagine shinebugs turn mass into light. We can live with that.

Mush bar production could output some clay to not remove mass. As for liceloaf and generally food is more of an water to calories convertion and dirt to calories rather than mass conservation. I prefer it to be balanced this way.

We alreasy change heat to electricity by the steam turbine. i don`t think one that works below 100<sup>o</sup>C would be balanced. i like the balance of power generators, each tier is harder to maintain and requires a more complicated setup. I don`t want a magical thingy that just works unless it`s somewhat hard to set it up.

[Nightinggale]

If we are to talk realism like that, then we would have to add that a space rock is way too small to have a noteworthy gravity. Everything would float around. It would be like dupes always wearing jetpacks.

I think we should all agree that it's a game and that it picks gameplay when it have a choice between gameplay and realism.

[natanstarke]

The game is almost perfect already just adding more byproducts as already told above seems nice to me :).