Need Power Advice/Help

[DrSugarFreeman]

So I've gotten the farthest I ever have so far, about 220 cycles in, and I've been doing just fine. I've expanded my base really nicely I feel, and I haven't even really required much power aside from manual just yet. However, given that I am so far into the game, I need to start loading up on more power and starting more advanced refinery processes. Luckily, a Natural Gas geyser spawned ever so closely to the outer wall of my starting biome, and I have since encased it. However, I can't figure out just how the hell to harness its power.

 

Thats where you guys come in.

 

I was hoping someone could help me figure out a good setup, or how to even modify my existing setup, so that I can start using that sweet, sweet fart power. Mind you I only mean the area around where my geyser is situated. I don't want or need an entire revamp of my base to get power flowing, thank you very much. I've included my latest save so that anyone interested in lending a hand could take a closer look at it. Any help at all would be appreciated.

 

Oh and I have two simple rules:

1. I'd rather not extend my nat gas setup into the neighboring ice biome.

2. I'd rather keep it as far down in that corner of my base as possible; I plan for it to be my industrial district as the time comes. If digging into the Tide Pool below  becomes necessary then so be it.

 

Thanks!

 

EDIT: I almost forgot! I have exactly one mod active: the Super Deodorizer. Other than that it should be compatible with the latest version of the game.

As always feel free to look around, and feel free to melt my entire base with the heat gun if you want. I know how fun it can be.

Green Burrito off of Fifth.sav

[Eternal Firesea]

You're already part of the way there.  Putting the natural gas in an insulated box with a steel pump is really the only way to harvest it.  If you have some plastic, using a high-pressure vent to create a dense storage box would help a bit with space concerns.
That thermal nullifier is going to a huge help..  Keeping that gas (and the generator by-products) cool enough for your base to absorb is normally one of the more complicated hurdles.

[QuQuasar]

A really nice, fully automated end-game NG setup looks something like this:
 

                  Oven Generators
                   ^     ^
                   b     b          
Geyser(s) ---^-----^-----^-----v-------- Gas Vent
             b                 b         |
             ^                 v        (storage chamber)
             |             Reservoir(s)  |
             |                 |         Gas Pump
             \-----------------< b <-----/
             
"> b >" = bridge

This ensures gas always goes where it needs to pretty much entirely through the use of pipe bridges. The oven gets priority, then the generators. If both those lines back up the gas flows into storage reservoirs, and if those are full, it goes into a storage chamber via a high-pressure gas vent.

If the geysers are dormant, the stored gas will flow out of the reservoirs and off to the consumers.This has preference over the storage chamber (bottom bridge), because reservoirs don't consume electricity. Finally, if the reservoirs are empty and there is room on the geyser line, gas will be pumped out of the storage chamber.

The only automation you need is an atmo-sensor attached to the geyser pump and storage pump, to avoid wasting electricity pumping a near-vaccuum.

[DrSugarFreeman]

49 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

A really nice, fully automated end-game NG setup looks something like this:
 

                  Oven Generators
                   ^     ^
                   b     b          
Geyser(s) ---^-----^-----^-----v-------- Gas Vent
             b                 b         |
             ^                 v        (storage chamber)
             |             Reservoir(s)  |
             |                 |         Gas Pump
             \-----------------< b <-----/
             
"> b >" = bridge

This ensures gas always goes where it needs to pretty much entirely through the use of pipe bridges. The oven gets priority, then the generators. If both those lines back up the gas flows into storage reservoirs, and if those are full, it goes into a storage chamber via a high-pressure gas vent.

If the geysers are dormant, the stored gas will flow out of the reservoirs and off to the consumers.This has preference over the storage chamber (bottom bridge), because reservoirs don't consume electricity. Finally, if the reservoirs are empty and there is room on the geyser line, gas will be pumped out of the storage chamber.

The only automation you need is an atmo-sensor attached to the geyser pump and storage pump, to avoid wasting electricity pumping a near-vaccuum.

Oooh, very nice-u, Caesar-chan.

 

I can just barely make out a schematic from the ASCII, and I'm not sure what an oven is (Gas Range?), but if what you're saying is accurate then I can mine out the rest of that Slime biome in the bottom-right corner and make a storage area for the gas. Veeery nice-u. And here I was thinking of using my metal to build reservoirs. Pfft.

 

One more thing: Carbon Dioxide management? Where would I ship that out to?

[PhailRaptor]

Another important note on the Natural Gas Generator, which I missed the first time I tried to play around with them, is that their Polluted Water production does not exit through pipes.  It is simply expelled from the machine and falls to the floor.  This requires you take a moment to stop and think about the layout of the room itself when building a NatGas power plant.

2 minutes ago, DrSugarFreeman said:

One more thing: Carbon Dioxide management? Where would I ship that out to?

The easiest thing to do is to simply vent it to an otherwise sealed room with a Carbon Skimmer in it.  Once you start getting down into the Oil Biome, you can use some of it to sustain Slicksters instead.  Though, they don't really consume all that much unless you have a truly massive number of them...

[DrSugarFreeman]

9 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

Another important note on the Natural Gas Generator, which I missed the first time I tried to play around with them, is that their Polluted Water production does not exit through pipes.  It is simply expelled from the machine and falls to the floor.  This requires you take a moment to stop and think about the layout of the room itself when building a NatGas power plant.

The easiest thing to do is to simply vent it to an otherwise sealed room with a Carbon Skimmer in it.  Once you start getting down into the Oil Biome, you can use some of it to sustain Slicksters instead.  Though, they don't really consume all that much unless you have a truly massive number of them...

Oh I knew about the polluted water. Thats why in that screenshot I have the mesh tile with a mechanical door system underneath. The hydro sensor was set to open the doors at 1000kg of liquid and dump it into the pit underneath.

[DemainaNyx]

Personally, I'm a collector that likes to move things where I want vs building where I find it.  I build a small box around my geysers and pipe out from there to a large storage tank so that my geysers are always producing.

Spoiler

 

From there it depends where I build everything.  Previously, I would put my Nat Gas Generators with my Hydrogen Generators in my Oxygen Setup.  This image is a little dangerous because a single polluted oxygen packet being off gassed in this room will break this setup, so normally I put the nat gas generators to the left below the electrolyzers to avoid this problem, but as you can see there is a ton of salt water that I didn't feel like moving to accomplish this.  It hasn't broken so far though.

Spoiler

 

I'm unsure if this is still true but Nat Gas Generators used to output polluted water and carbon dioxide at the same temperature as the machine so by putting it in this cold room, it would produce near freezing water.  This was nice because by letting the water hit a solid tile under them, they would become self cooling and even cool the room they were in even more.  I'm unsure if that's still true, but if so that's a ton of cooling power as well as power generation.

Because of that, trapping them in a cold room was always my preferred method, hence why I gather the gasses from around the asteroid and bring them where I want vs building next to a vent.  

 

Alternatively, Brothgar went in the other direction and heated up his Nat Gas Generators so they basically output steam.  Then he placed a steam turbine on top of his layout to harvest even more power.  Requires better materials, but still achieves the same goal.

 

It really depends whether this is your main power source or just a stepping stone.  Normally I upgrade to solar and then never really use any other power methods, so I make small setups that I leave attached in case of emergency, hence why there are only 6 nat gas gens and 3 hydrogen gens.  If you plan to make a sour gas boiler at some point, then you might want to setup a larger nat gas system.  But normally this handles my needs well enough until I get solar up and running.

[DrSugarFreeman]

 

23 hours ago, DemainaNyx said:

Personally, I'm a collector that likes to move things where I want vs building where I find it.  I build a small box around my geysers and pipe out from there to a large storage tank so that my geysers are always producing.

  Hide contents

 

From there it depends where I build everything.  Previously, I would put my Nat Gas Generators with my Hydrogen Generators in my Oxygen Setup.  This image is a little dangerous because a single polluted oxygen packet being off gassed in this room will break this setup, so normally I put the nat gas generators to the left below the electrolyzers to avoid this problem, but as you can see there is a ton of salt water that I didn't feel like moving to accomplish this.  It hasn't broken so far though.

  Hide contents

 

I'm unsure if this is still true but Nat Gas Generators used to output polluted water and carbon dioxide at the same temperature as the machine so by putting it in this cold room, it would produce near freezing water.  This was nice because by letting the water hit a solid tile under them, they would become self cooling and even cool the room they were in even more.  I'm unsure if that's still true, but if so that's a ton of cooling power as well as power generation.

Because of that, trapping them in a cold room was always my preferred method, hence why I gather the gasses from around the asteroid and bring them where I want vs building next to a vent.  

 

Alternatively, Brothgar went in the other direction and heated up his Nat Gas Generators so they basically output steam.  Then he placed a steam turbine on top of his layout to harvest even more power.  Requires better materials, but still achieves the same goal.

 

It really depends whether this is your main power source or just a stepping stone.  Normally I upgrade to solar and then never really use any other power methods, so I make small setups that I leave attached in case of emergency, hence why there are only 6 nat gas gens and 3 hydrogen gens.  If you plan to make a sour gas boiler at some point, then you might want to setup a larger nat gas system.  But normally this handles my needs well enough until I get solar up and running.

I've already taken the advice to store my gasses elsewhere, even if "elsewhere" means "one room over." I thought since a High Pressure vent can handle up to 20kg of pressure, that I could use as much space as possible to keep as much nat gas power as possible.

I suppose I'm not sure whether I want this to be my main power source or not. At least for now I want it to last me quite a while. At the same time i've mined out the entire rest of the slime biome underneath the geyser, and pumped all of the stray nat gas into the reservoir. Each tile at the moment is near 4000g. 

I have power to spare assuming I can make use of the polluted water and the carbon dioxide, and I can! It should provide me with plenty of polluted water to either sieve and reclaim or to use for starting a reed farm. I'm focusing my Drecko ranch on producing lots of plastic right now, and Ive been keeping the normal Dreckos for phosphorite production due to my abundance of Balm Lily and wanting for lots of Wheezie usage. Because of all the Slime I've dug up, the nat gas I have saved up, and in general just the amount of polluted water I've generated on my own, a Reed farm seems like a worthwhile replacement for Drecks, at least until I figure out where to build a spare chlorine room for normal drecks. I could just skim the carbon for now. In fact Carbon seems to be the most abundant resource I have at the moment. I even dug up a crappy Carbon Dioxide Geyser several meters away from the top of my base. I have no idea how the hell Im going to ever use such a thing. Maybe I can box it and later use it for Slickies. **** I wish it were a cool slush.

[DemainaNyx]

10 minutes ago, DrSugarFreeman said:

I have power to spare assuming I can make use of the polluted water and the carbon dioxide, and I can! It should provide me with plenty of polluted water to either sieve and reclaim or to use for starting a reed farm. I'm focusing my Drecko ranch on producing lots of plastic right now, and Ive been keeping the normal Dreckos for phosphorite production due to my abundance of Balm Lily and wanting for lots of Wheezie usage. Because of all the Slime I've dug up, the nat gas I have saved up, and in general just the amount of polluted water I've generated on my own, a Reed farm seems like a worthwhile replacement for Drecks, at least until I figure out where to build a spare chlorine room for normal drecks. I could just skim the carbon for now. In fact Carbon seems to be the most abundant resource I have at the moment. I even dug up a crappy Carbon Dioxide Geyser several meters away from the top of my base. I have no idea how the hell Im going to ever use such a thing. Maybe I can box it and later use it for Slickies. **** I wish it were a cool slush.

Yeah, Carbon Dioxide Geysers and polluted oxygen geysers kinda suck.  I mostly just save it up for later.  Once I build my large farms, I fill them with it so that my crops don't rot and then the rest of it gets sent into the oil biome for slicksters.  You can also just sieve it if you want to convert regolith/sand into dirt, but that might not be a big concern for you right now.

 

If you have pips, just make a wild reed farm.  Reeds use a ton of water, which might not be a concern right now but the water for 1 reed plant can feed 8 bristles, so I rarely ever domesticate them.  Dreckos become my reed source since one ranch tends to be enough.  Reeds aren't needed for a ton so generally I can just survive off the wilds.

Once you understand how the pip mechanics work, it's really easy getting them to plant where you want.  They look 5 up, 5 right, 5 down, and 6 left of a tile and count how many plants are in that area.  So, in this image, it planted in the red area because there is only 1 plant in the yellow area.

Spoiler

 

You can get them to either plant in clusters of 3 or 1 every other tile.  It's the same number either way assuming your floor is even.  My floor below isn't, so the bottom row has 9 plants while the top has 10.

.

 

As far as your power though, you can always just set up 6 or so generators and see how it goes.  If you are using smart batteries, decide which generator you want to use up first and adjust the others so only one set of generators works at a time.  For me I have Nat Gas used first, hydrogen next, coal after, and manual as a last resort.  If you can deal with all the carbon dioxide, ethanol is a good mid game power source but it is a ton of carbon dioxide to deal with vs others.  With some wild pips and some arbor trees, you can generate a lot of power off the lumber.  You can easily put them in with your nat gas gens because it's the same Co2 exhaust and polluted water drip, so you can take advantage of the pump that already exists for that.

[TheEvilMango]

U can double up on storage by building gas tanks and filling them up than fill up the room with gas. So that way u have 20 KGs of gas in every tile plus the 150 KGs in the tanks. That's the best way to store it unless u make a gas compressor with doors or liquidate it.

[QuQuasar]

I built a version of that ascii schematic in sandbox mode. It looks so clean! Makes me realize how horrifically messy my survival bases piping system is. I kind of want to sketch out an entire bases ventilation system like this, see how clean I could make it...

 

Regardless, all that really matters here is the layout of the pipe bridges. Scavenged gas will be prioritized, followed by geyser gas, then reservoir-stored gas, and finally gas stored in the pressurized chamber.

And just for the benefit of anyone who doesn't understand why this works the way it does: pipe bridges.

[DrSugarFreeman]

4 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

I built a version of that ascii schematic in sandbox mode. It looks so clean! Makes me realize how horrifically messy my survival bases piping system is. I kind of want to sketch out an entire bases ventilation system like this, see how clean I could make it...

 

Regardless, all that really matters here is the layout of the pipe bridges. Scavenged gas will be prioritized, followed by geyser gas, then reservoir-stored gas, and finally gas stored in the pressurized chamber.

And just for the benefit of anyone who doesn't understand why this works the way it does: pipe bridges.

Now thats a handy little visual.

[PhailRaptor]

18 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

 

The only improvement I can suggest over this is using the liquid trick over the Gas Vent in the storage room, to allow infinite storage in that room.

[KittenIsAGeek]

50 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

The only improvement I can suggest over this is using the liquid trick over the Gas Vent in the storage room, to allow infinite storage in that room.

I do that frequently. Its very easy to set up in a survival game, and it means you can store your gas in a relatively small room.  

[Nicz]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I do that frequently. Its very easy to set up in a survival game, and it means you can store your gas in a relatively small room.  

Isn't that cheating? A little bit? It makes high pressure gas vent useless.

[Majestix]

On 06/08/2019 at 4:48 AM, DrSugarFreeman said:

Oh I knew about the polluted water. Thats why in that screenshot I have the mesh tile with a mechanical door system underneath. The hydro sensor was set to open the doors at 1000kg of liquid and dump it into the pit underneath.

Just mesh tiles at the bottom would have done the trick.

[KittenIsAGeek]

15 hours ago, Nicz said:

Isn't that cheating? A little bit? It makes high pressure gas vent useless.

No, its like a one-way valve.  I also use high-pressure gas vents, but not for the purpose of storing high concentrations of gas.  For example, sometimes i want a room with around 5k/tile of gas, such as a slime puft farm or a slickster farm.  Not to mention that if you have plastics, the high-pressure vent is much simpler to build.  You also don't have to worry about waiting for dupes to deliver water, etc.