Too much material sitting there, uselessly

[Loscil2]

There is too much of material that really you don't know what to do with it.

Regolith can be used as filtration medium, sure, but it isn't enough and you often get piles upon piles of the stuff. Same with mafic rock: sure you can build the base with it but there is just so much of it.

I propose additional uses for these materials. For example, making them edible for hatches. Igneous rocks are more or less similar to mafic irl and could be fed to stone hatches. Regolith is granular like sand, which regular hatches already eat and could be added to their diet.

As for abyssalite is like beating a dead horse but go ahead and discuss it.

I also propose smelting rust. Irl the main way to produce iron is from heating rust along with a reducing agent (like carbon) which produces pure iron and slag. I believe there can be instances where an asteroid can have naturally occurring rust but no salt water geyser and/or very little to no salt water. I have tons of the stuff and really I have no use for it.

[avc15]

I actually had a challenge of finding enough things to feed my hatches this time around.

Dirt, clay, sand, rock name it - all of them became coal for my generators.

 

[nakomaru]

Regolith to coal would just be too easy and powerful. Regolith is an end game problem and has an end game solution in melting it to make it more useful.

I agree about mafic rock. It's something you encounter in normal maps now before space and in limited quantities. Being able to crush it would be good.

Is it possible to encounter rust without an ocean biome & saltwater geyser in the map?

 

[bobucles]

A lower supply would accomplish the same thing. Can't have too much stuff if you don't have any.

[Loscil2]

11 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Regolith to coal would just be too easy and powerful. Regolith is an end game problem and has an end game solution in melting it to make it more useful.

I agree about mafic rock. It's something you encounter in normal maps now before space and in limited quantities. Being able to crush it would be good.

Is it possible to encounter rust without an ocean biome & saltwater geyser in the map?

 

I did, back when a salt geyser wasn't guaranteed. Also the barren map... Uh... Aridio, Oasisse? Can't remember.

 

2 minutes ago, bobucles said:

A lower supply would accomplish the same thing. Can't have too much stuff if you don't have any.

Good point. The ginourmous quantities the game keeps on giving of regolith is ridiculous.

[Nebbie]

The rust deoxidizer gives you iron ore too now, so rust is somewhat useful if you can deal with the chlorine. It would be nice to also be able to use the metal refinery to turn it into iron more directly.

I definitely think that hatches should eat mafic rock (it's actually a type of igneous rock!) Not regolith, since that's basically weird sand. Maybe there should just be less regolith buildup.

Abyssalite is a nasty problem because it's been rendered completely useless over time, but is still around as a map gen crutch to keep biomes from diffusing temperature too fast. In my opinion, it should be removed from the game, replaced mostly by mafic rock and/or obsidian, possibly with vacuum pockets as well to further slow temperature diffusion, and existing abyssalite should become obsidian at the same masses and temperatures.

[lunazone]

Shove Voles Eat Regolith faster than you can find it

[suxkar]

6 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Regolith to coal would just be too easy and powerful. Regolith is an end game problem and has an end game solution in melting it to make it more useful.

I agree about mafic rock. It's something you encounter in normal maps now before space and in limited quantities. Being able to crush it would be good.

Is it possible to encounter rust without an ocean biome & saltwater geyser in the map?

 

To my (may be limited) experience, mafic rock is not crazy abundant like obsidian or granite. Plus, correct me if I am wrong, it has the lowest conductivity of natural raw materials, with only ceramic and insulation beating it, so it does have its uses.

Regolith is basically shove voles food and late game filtration medium if you don't want to crush other materials into sand.
I've seen some regolith melters, they look to be basically the most complicated designs in the game, even more then sour gas boilers. Are they worth it? 

[Siromatik]

3 minutes ago, suxkar said:

Plus, correct me if I am wrong, it has the lowest conductivity of natural raw materials

True, when everything else is 2 or over, Mafic Rock got 1 Thermal Conduc.

[nakomaru]

I have 4355.7t of mafic rock after digging out a rime map, so it's definitely fairly plentiful now. I can produce as much ceramic as I want so I will never have a use for mafic rock in the current state, besides melting it to igneous. That said, a large pile that never does anything doesn't really bother me. Maybe I will melt it someday. It just seems overlooked in the crusher and hatches.

[Sasza22]

I`ve never ran out of granite or igneous. There`s always soo much of it. Rocks are always plentyful but well we are underground so there should be a lot of rocks here, right?

Sometimes i wish we had a machine to change sand or regolith back into rock (maybe with good insulating properties).

[blash365]

Mafic/Regolith -> Lava -> Ingenious Rock -> Hatch

There is already a sink for it. It is just harder to set up.

[Loscil2]

3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

I`ve never ran out of granite or igneous. There`s always soo much of it. Rocks are always plentyful but well we are underground so there should be a lot of rocks here, right?

Sometimes i wish we had a machine to change sand or regolith back into rock (maybe with good insulating properties).

If you have like 16 hatches or two farms of 8 each one, they'll eat that rock in no time.