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Getting power from ethanol actually does not worth it and my feedback on it


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8 hours ago, DarkMoge said:

... It requires a lot of high tech to actually gain anything from it, a basic setup results in net negative in everything. ...

Thank you for your thorough investigation on something that felt off. I have no doubt players have found workarounds and efficient ways of making the best out of ethanol (or its byproducts which seems more important) but I find it comes with too many drawbacks if you dont pay attention on how to deal with them which is unneeded complexity for casual players and is misleading to new ones... I know this won't be popular here but I wish this would get some tweaking to be more straightforward.

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1 hour ago, PickPay said:

Thank you for your thorough investigation on something that felt off. I have no doubt players have found workarounds and efficient ways of making the best out of ethanol (or its byproducts which seems more important) but I find it comes with too many drawbacks if you dont pay attention on how to deal with them which is unneeded complexity for casual players and is misleading to new ones... I know this won't be popular here but I wish this would get some tweaking to be more straightforward.

2 things to consider.

1. Ethanol is not available on the easiest of the asteroids, so unless the casual player is looking for challenge or complexity, they won't be concerned by it, and same goes for newer players, unless they are looking for a challenge.

2. The petroleum generator does not actually say that it can burn ethanol. It is after all a "Petroleum" generator, and says it converts petroleum into electrical power. The implications for new players is therefore much less.

Given those two points, I don't think causal players or new players should be a big concern regarding the balance of the ethanol cycle.

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This again? I'm not even going to try to read the OP. Here's why ethanol power is great:

  1. The ethanol power chain produces polluted dirt and polluted water. With the right critters or machines, this gets you essentially everything you could need short of metals. No really, we are talking "my base is completely sustainable forever from cycle 90 onward and will never run out of anything".
  2. My Arboria base has so much power from my ethanol+natural gas->electrolysis system that when I set up a steam turbine to get power from refined metals I had to just remove the automation cause I never dipped below 90% power. To reiterate, ethanol power is very power-positive even when you deal with every single side-effect it has, especially when electrolysis gets involved to delete heat and make it even more power-positive.
  3. Yes it is high tech, and yes it is complicated, but that's what this game is about. This game is about figuring out jigsaw puzzles of different machines as you advance to sustainability. You can't just slap in an ethanol power system on cycle 20 like it's a coal generator, it's a much different beast that absolutely rocks. You don't need electrolysis though, just start with oxyferns, cause they actually turn water to oxygen more efficiently (at the expense of not providing a means of cooling and extra power generation, being a more passive system).
  4. The problems and solutions are more extreme. Coal generator carbon dioxide output has always been weirdly pitiful, while this actually feels like something you've gotta really deal with. I just wish things were a tad smoother and maybe carbon skimmers weren't as weak (4 of them's a little too much).
  5. Once you have everything sorted, dirt and/or sand become things you actually produce in quantity, rather than things you just find and get from other things you find. Basically, resources that you'd expect to be abundant and easy actually...are. Overall, forest start stuff is really well-designed and leads to a smother gameplay experience, even if it is a bit harder to figure everything out.

Is it perfect? No. I think Pokeshells are actually the biggest annoyance, as is polluted dirt's rapid offgassing in general. Pip planting also really shouldn't be directionally-dependent, cause that can be hair-pulling. Carbon skimmers could do with a slight buff as well and gas filters being a little lower wattage would help with the electrolysis and the option of pumping out carbon dioxide. Oh, and the wood burner's a very strange joke that makes it awkward to start with with plans to upgrade. These are all minor annoyances though, and all of them are about things tertiary to the actual ethanol power system.

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1 hour ago, ZanthraSW said:

Given those two points, I don't think causal players or new players should be a big concern regarding the balance of the ethanol cycle.

Good points, so it's not an official feature I guess, just there for those that wanna mess around with it ;)

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6 hours ago, Junksteel said:

Ofc there are many solutions but how likely are they?... In the case of ethanol chain, the byproducts seem to shine more than the power production itself. Nothing wrong with that if it's a design decision but we already have the steam turbine on that spot and I'm not a big fan of that approach. 

1 They are 100% likely if you choose to build your base that way.

2. Yes, it's a design decision.

3.  There is no 'that spot'.  There is 'that large group of things, with room for many things.'

4.  'i'm not a big fan'  You'd already made that pretty clear.  Klei got rid of features like the fertilizer maker nat gas farms which were just quite imbalanced, but I think a lot of people are big fans of these more complicated processes with many side effects and the ethanol chain is the more balanced successor to the fert maker farms of last year.

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49 minutes ago, PickPay said:

Good points, so it's not an official feature I guess, just there for those that wanna mess around with it ;)

Certainly undocumented, not sure I would go so far as to say not official. In game ethanol has no documented uses. Although it does say in it's description that it can be used as a fuel. Perhaps they need to add an extra mode to the expresso machine that takes a small amount of ethanol for a temporary stress reduction (and a temporary stress increase the next morning). :)

I think something that could really improve the ethanol cycle is to make it so that famer's touch affects tree branch growth. That makes a good use for fertilizer so that you can make the ethanol cycle water positive as an alternative to large slickster ranches. It's a lightweight change that has big implications for the value, and does not make it better for free. Plus dupes already fertilize the trees even if they are fully grown, it just does not affect the branches.

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11 hours ago, SamuraiJones said:

Also, I think alot of people consider the byproducts an asset rather than a liability. Polluted dirt and water are easy to turn into clean dirt and water, which gives food and oxygen (or food for sage hatches or whatever).

Yes and no.  They're definitely an asset, but don't turn polluted dirt into clean dirt!  Feed it to the Pokeshells and get the extremely valuable lime from their shells for increased steel production, which is super useful mid-game when you're bunkering up space, building rockets, or aquatuners for heat deletion.

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3 hours ago, ZanthraSW said:

2 things to consider.

1. Ethanol is not available on the easiest of the asteroids, so unless the casual player is looking for challenge or complexity, they won't be concerned by it, and same goes for newer players, unless they are looking for a challenge.

2. The petroleum generator does not actually say that it can burn ethanol. It is after all a "Petroleum" generator, and says it converts petroleum into electrical power. The implications for new players is therefore much less.

Given those two points, I don't think causal players or new players should be a big concern regarding the balance of the ethanol cycle.

Verdante is 4th asteroid with survival chance "likely" that starts you in the forest biome. Rime is 3rd asteroid with survival chance "likely" that has forest biomes in it, but does not start you in one. If 3rd and 4th asteroid are not considered the easiest than I do not know. I believe that a newer player would find themselves starting in one of those asteroid when they are starting to look for variety in their experience.

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7 hours ago, Zarquan said:

You could hook it up with a power station to get an extra 1000 W out of it per generator.  Now that refined metal is renewable, this should be a consideration.

I have over 200 slicksters and I experience constant brownouts on everything.

If you take the CO2, feed it to slicksters, and burn the crude oil to petroleum or natural gas, you gain water from ethanol.  Specifically, 1 arbor tree producing 333.33333 kg/cycle costs 70 kg/cycle polluted water.  A natural gas boiler produces 89.16 kg/cycle through a natural gas boiler with that much CO2 through slicksters, resulting in a profit of 19.16 kg/cycle polluted water.  A petroleum burner or molten slicksters nets you 83.34 kg/cycle water, which is less impressive, but still very nice.  Even if you turn it in to crude oil and put it through a refinery, you still get around 72.93 kg water/cycle, so it is slightly water positive.  Plus you get all that wonderful polluted dirt which can be made in to food.

But, if you don't want to compost the dirt, that's fine.  Just let it offgas to oxygen or feed it to pokeshells.  Or you could burn it in to dirt to save dupe labor at the cost of 50% material.

I like this.  Either have them generate more material or reduce the power.

Thank you for being at one person that actually read through my post. Well, if one tries to get enough oil from slicksters alone, it can be pretty hard, because 200 slicksters are about equal to 1 oil well. The thing is, it might be irrelevant, because every asteroid seem to have multiple oil wells in it. Exceptions might be caused by different world seeds... During my look through multiple asteroids and whats special about them, it was easy to find 3+ oil wells. Well, except on Volcanea which during my first world gen did not have an oil biome at all and during second world gen only had 2 oil wells.

I have built oil -> natural gas boilers before, which is pretty much a super late game thing to build. Earlier you can just turn oil into petroleum which nets you free water and power which you can think about doing in the same time you have unlocked everything you need for ethanol production chains. Which is the problem that I am having. The only ways to actually get something from the ethanol system is to either ignore CO2 which gives me ocd to look at or use tons of wild arbor trees. If you do not do that, the system becomes just a CO2 generator for slickster farms and polluted dirt generator for other farms. I agree that it can be useful, but I also feel like there are already systems in game that can provide same things, but do it better and are easier to make.

Hence, my 2 suggestions. Maybe domesticated arbor trees should not be that costly or ethanol distillers should eat less power themselves to make the idea of building ethanol power chain feel more rewarding for the effort.

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the reasons explained in this OP are mostly the same reasons why I just use large banks of wood burners. Less labor, simpler systems, more net power.

But you can't really tune up 16 wood burners (the amount that one conveyor rail can supply) without deadlocking your base, so you give that part up.

(but hey man one suggestion, you have to explain your reasoning either in less than one page, or in an outline format with pictures - you can't expect people to all get through a post like this, and they will want to express their own opinions anyway)

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27 minutes ago, DarkMoge said:

Thank you for being at one person that actually read through my post. Well, if one tries to get enough oil from slicksters alone, it can be pretty hard, because 200 slicksters are about equal to 1 oil well. The thing is, it might be irrelevant, because every asteroid seem to have multiple oil wells in it. Exceptions might be caused by different world seeds... During my look through multiple asteroids and whats special about them, it was easy to find 3+ oil wells. Well, except on Volcanea which during my first world gen did not have an oil biome at all and during second world gen only had 2 oil wells.

I have built oil -> natural gas boilers before, which is pretty much a super late game thing to build. Earlier you can just turn oil into petroleum which nets you free water and power which you can think about doing in the same time you have unlocked everything you need for ethanol production chains. Which is the problem that I am having. The only ways to actually get something from the ethanol system is to either ignore CO2 which gives me ocd to look at or use tons of wild arbor trees. If you do not do that, the system becomes just a CO2 generator for slickster farms and polluted dirt generator for other farms. I agree that it can be useful, but I also feel like there are already systems in game that can provide same things, but do it better and are easier to make.

Hence, my 2 suggestions. Maybe domesticated arbor trees should not be that costly or ethanol distillers should eat less power themselves to make the idea of building ethanol power chain feel more rewarding for the effort.

Someone was looking for an oilless seed recently in a thread about "can't find any oil", since it'd be a real peculiarity and a challenge.

I think around 822W of net power gain per petroleum generator running continuously is pretty appealing in and of itself. Domestic trees being water-negative is the one big problem; right now the whole idea is to use wild trees so that the system can supply the base's water.

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I did the fuzzy math on this in another thread:

On 8/14/2019 at 5:25 PM, PhailRaptor said:

In summary:

  • 1 PetroGen
  • 4 Ethanol Distillers
  • 6 domestic Arbor Trees
  • 12 wild Arbor Trees
  • 4 Carbon Skimmers
  • 1 Water Sieve
  • 4 Composts
  • input of 1 kg/s Sand (or Regolith)
  • output of 200 W of power
  • output of a small amount of excess Lumber

The other thing to note, which I neglected to mention, is that you only need 1 Liquid Pump per 10 kg/s of Polluted Water produced by the PetroGens.  A similar situation can be found with the Carbon Skimmers and Water Sieve -- the Sieve can accommodate 5 Skimmers worth of Polluted Water, but each PetroGen/Distiller "unit" will produce slightly less than 4 Skimmers worth of CO2.  These 2 facts allow you to consolidate as you scale up.

As others have already mentioned in this thread, the Ethanol -> PetroGen system lends itself highly to Tune Ups, increasing the Power yield per PetroGen affected from 2,000 to 3,000 W.  This is more than enough excess power to cover the Sweepers and Conveyors to automate the system(s), freeing up Dupe time for other tasks.

And, again, there's a lot of versatility baked into the resource chain involved in an Ethanol power complex.  Instead of keeping Domestic Trees, you can let them all grow wild.  It costs you space, but it frees up a lot of Polluted Water to work with.  You can either Compost the Polluted Dirt, or you can feed it to Pokeshells for Sand.  You also get their Molts to convert into Lime just for keeping them, and if you Ranch them instead you greatly increase the rate of Sand they produce, as well as get extra Eggs for Omelettes (and Egg Shell, which means more Lime).  You can Sieve the CO2, or you can use it to feed Slicksters to produce Oil (and Eggs and Meat).

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The oxygen generation from all the extra p-dirt ain't too shabby, I haven't tried it in a pure vaccum / pump environment yet, but it's currently making up 1/2 of my current oxygen generation passively. Lets my spom handle all of the atmo suit bays I have setup.

Finally got around to hauling most of it out of the distiller room. I put some hungry pokeshells underneath to taunt them.

image.thumb.png.c51a2697efe7478c1b716429f4f712e8.png

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I dont really see the problem. You can use the system fine. For example: CO² it not needed, vent it into space. Problem solved. Heat can be solved with worts for free with a loop, "powered" by a bridge. No pump, and so, no power needed. (if phosphorie for the worts is an issue, use an entropy nullifier with a bit of hydrogen)

Lumber can be harvested for free from wild trees. 

It only becomes not really worth the efford, the moment you try to use alle domestic and use all of the ouput. But as addition to other power sources, its a fine one.

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59 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

It only becomes not really worth the efford, the moment you try to use alle domestic and use all of the ouput. But as addition to other power sources, its a fine one.

Not always. I think certain circumstances warrant it...

I'm having fun making use of this, which is enough for ~ 30 some odd domestic trees :

image.thumb.png.d4e2b4d07e6a89e6a4e4712d37151ffe.png

You could say it's better used elsewhere...but for what?

I haven't uncovered 1/2 the geysers yet...(geoactive)

In addition to this p-water geyser I've found :

2x Cool steam Geyser, 1x Steam Geyser, 1x Water Geyser, 1x Salt Water geyser

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The main issue is that you lose half your power generating more Ethanol. It's certainly viable but you need huge areas dedicated to growing and cooling your Arbor as well as Ethanol production. It's certainly more efficient than just burning lumber but if i were to start another colony, i would probably skip straight to petroleum. The creation of fuel isn't efficient enough.

Also, what do i do with all this polluted dirt lol.

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2 hours ago, Xuhybrid said:

Also, what do i do with all this polluted dirt lol.

1) Feed it to Pokeshells for lime and sand. 

2) Feed it to Sage Hatches for coal. 

3) Compost it to normal dirt for Sleet Wheat and/or fertilizer. 

4) Ignore it and let it slowly offgas to polluted oxygen which can be cleaned by the sand from the Pokeshells or converted directly to liquid oxygen for rocketry. 

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13 hours ago, Junksteel said:

Glad to know it was clear and that you had all the exact answers in an opinion based debate. :D

You think this is an opinion based debate?  That's just like, your opinion, man. :)

Fundamentally speaking, the practical way to achieve an opinion based debate is to correct factual mistakes until nothing is left to debate but the opinions.  Trying to have an opinion based debate without achieving agreement on the facts first is like building on sand instead of pouring a proper foundation.  We see the same thing in the hydrogen generation thread, people are debating opinions on whether it is overpowered or unviable, but half the people's opinions are  based on a factually wrong calculation of the power potential per kg/s of water converted by electrolysis to hydrogen.  ethanol is more complex, with more outputs, but this opens up more potential for factual error, not less.  put another way, what does it mean to have an opinion based debate?  I would say it fundamentally means that people compare different opinions about the same set of facts.  If you have the same opinions, it's not a debate at all, and if you have different opinions about different facts, that's not really a debate either, it's just...logical to have different opinions about different sets of facts.  If you say "man, my opinion is that Sammy Hagar is the greatest musician of all time!" and then I try to have an opinion debate with you but choose different facts to discuss, now I'm saying something like "Oh yeah!  Well I think that 3 is my favorite number, for sure!"  The connection here to a debate about the ethanol cycle in which some of the people aren't aware that simply venting co2 to space is an optional part of the ethanol cycle may not be obvious, but analogically here the ethanol cycle is like Sammy Hagar and the ethanol cycle minus the venting co2 to space option is like the number 3, except it's easier to confuse one pair than the other.

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As I've finished / rounded out my current Ethanol system, this be my final 2 cents...

If a process does not give you something you want at a reasonable cost, then do not use it.

This fancy new ethanol process seemed attractive to me because I prefer passive processes that require minimal effort from both the duplicants, and myself.

Not only ethanol, but it's constituent byproducts can be setup pretty darn passively, so I think that's the main allure for me.

Also Ethanol process is somewhat flexible based on your needs. And I kinda like this, seeing as how this process takes one input and gives you 3 outputs. Lumber -> Ethanol + Pdirt + Co2

The fact that it provides some extra cooling is also handy, because even at 12 distillers running non-stop (which is a bit of a soft cap for this system imo) the Aquatuner can overcool, and provide extra cooling somewhere else. I'm using it by pumping the tons of cold co2 through my base, which pre-heats it for my slickster farm.

Anyway....Need more O2? Send the pdirt to a scrubber room. Need more sand and lime? Send the pdirt to pokeshells. Need more coal? Send the pdirt to sage hatches.

Need more dirt? Compost the pdirt.

Need p-water? Keep the trees wild and scrub co2 for more p-water.

Need more food and fuel? Send the co2 to molten slicksters. Only took 12 tamed slicksters to poop out this many eggs (see picture below)....and it's almost at equilibrium.

Some math, I guess, for people into that sorta thing. Doing this based on the outputs of my current system running 12 distillers.

Ethanol : 500 g/s * 12 = 6 kg/s, 3,600 kg/cycle

Generators use 2 kg/s ethanol. Current system draw is 4,500 watts.

3 tuned up generators = 6000 watts. 4,500 watts / 6,000 watts = 0.75 or 75% uptime

Ethanol extracted = 0.25 * 6 kg/s = 1.5 kg/s or 900 kg/s.

This is enough ethanol to support 45 nosh sprouts, yielding 12*45 = 540 nosh beans every 21 cycles (without farm buff).

Which is ~ 13,712 kcal / cycle in tofu. 17,140 kcal / cycle in spicy tofu.

Or you can do 1.3kW'ish from another tuned generator.

Pdirt extracted : 4 kg/s or 2,400 kg/cycle. 

P-water : 750 g/s * 3 petrol gens * 0.75 (uptime) = 2.25 kg/s or 1,350 kg/cycle

Co2 : 12 Distillers @ 166.67 g/s co2 = 12 * 166.67 = 2 kg/s co2 * 600s = 1,200 kg/cycle co2

3 Petrol gens @ 75% uptime = 3 * 500 g/s * 0.75 = 1 kg/s or 600 kg/cycle

 

What I've chosen to do with my co2....

Tamed molten slickster consumes 20 Kg/cycle co2 and the byproduct of consumption is 1/2.

So 12 tamed molten slicksters consume 240 kg/ cycle.

139 glum slicksters consume 20 * 0.2 * 139 = 556 kg / cycle.

Their current output is roughly 400 kg/cycle petroleum, and 4,832 kcal / cycle of meat.

Ideally you could get them to consume the entire 1,800 kg/cycle co2 and output 900 kg/cycle petrol.

Comparing this to a single oil refinery : 10 kg/s crude in, 5 kg/s petrol + 90 g/s natgas out.

Which is 3,000 kg/cycle petrol + 54 kg/cycle natgas out.

So yeah if you consider this by itself, then sure it looks weak, it's currently operating at 1/5th the output of a single oil refinery with the potential to operate at 1/3. But! 1) This is in ADDITION to whatever else is going on, and 2) Is passive and a near continuously operating process.

But then you take into account it's cooling my entire base and providing me extra ethanol and food for minimal effort...It's not too shabby.

If using wild Arbor trees, then the inputs would basically be free...you just can't run it as hard until you get enough trees. (eventually, since the printer DOES give you arbor seeds)

Since I'm using a ph20 geyser I currently can't find another use for, it's still basically free...

image.thumb.png.680db70e6f022638f3f9cec4b40a4bf1.png

 

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1 hour ago, ruhrohraggy said:

This fancy new ethanol process seemed attractive to me because I prefer passive processes that require minimal effort from both the duplicants, and myself.

its funny that you say that, because my complain about ethanol is exactly that it requires too much dupe work and too much setting up from me. For the last few days, I have been playing on oasisse asteroid, trying different setups first in sandbox and than trying to make them in survival. 

Looking at the multiple screenshot shared by you, it appears that there some major differences between how we play though. When I play, I never end up with large supplies of some resources, I plan ahead and seek immediate use for the resources.

 

1 hour ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Anyway....Need more O2? Send the pdirt to a scrubber room.


Yeah, except, such system takes a lot of cycles to kickstart... To do some math for you. Deodirizers convert 100 pO2/s into 90 O2/s. In theory, 800 kg of polluted dirt could be converted into 720 kg of O2. Which should be enough to supply 12 duplicants... But, that is not taking into account how the polluted dirt actually transforms into pO2. Lets say, we put that polluted dirt into multiple rows of conveyor receptacles, each has a capacity of 100 kg... So, we wait 1 cycle and split 800 kg among 8 receptacles and we get this:

During my testing experiment, 100 kg of pdirt emits pO2 in a rate of 1823 mg/s, almost 2 grams. Though, it seem to spike up once in a while to a higher number. Wiki suggests that it should be emitting exactly 2 g/s, so lets go with that number.

8*2*600= 9600 g/cycle

Ouch, we actually only emit 1.2% of that mass per cycle. To emit the entire 800 kg each cycle, we need 666 receptacles with 66600 kg of pdirt stockpiled. Which takes over 86 cycles to actually make. In the end, we are making a system that is going to take at least 20000 kg of metal ore for the receptacles and coveyers alone to construct  and will require us to spend 86 cycles waiting. Spreading the mass more thin makes it so that we need to wait less, but need to waste more resources... Preparing larger chunks of pdirt means that we need to accumulate much higher stockpile first. For example, putting dirt in chunks of 20000 kg inside storage bins will make it emit about 17 kg of pO2/cycle. So, we would need about 47 storage bins filled with 940t of polluted dirt. Which would take over 1k cycles to make.

Question. Is it worth it? 

Alternatively, one could search for a steam geyser of some sort... Build a cooling loop around it and feed that water to electorlyzer... Granted, steam geysers tend to give enough water for 9 duplicants, so, we will have to look for two of them. I do not think I ever saw a geyser with dormancy period of 86 cycles.

 

2 hours ago, ruhrohraggy said:

139 glum slicksters consume 20 * 0.2 * 139 = 556 kg / cycle.

I am scared to start counting how many cycles does it take to make that many slicksters to get 1/5 of an oil refinery.
 

 

2 hours ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Need p-water? Keep the trees wild and scrub co2 for more p-water.

So:
Step 1. Pray for a good starting seed that does not have too many holes in the starting biome, so you can have clean lanes of surface for pips to plant on.
Step 2. Carefully dig the out the tunnels for trees and make sure to remove all the seeds from the area.
Step 3. Relocate pips into the prepared area together with the seeds.
Step 4. Wait for centuries until pips actually plant all those trees. Because they seem to have some random interval at which they consider trying to plant something.
Step 5. Wait 36 cycles for your first lumber harvest.

So, we have a setup that takes 36 cycles to kick start. Also:
Step 0: actually obtain enough arbor seeds, which really takes too long.

Well, 450 kg/cycle is a lot of water, not as much as a geyser, but theoretically geysers  are limited. The problem starts when we begin looking at lumber as an unlimited resource and realize that it is heavily limited by the number of seeds... Best way to produce seeds is to setup domestic tree farm which will constantly drain the water we are trying to produce. It might be better to look at the trees as a limited asset like geysers... And when looking at them in this fashion, I start to realize that I need those seeds to setup my pips ranches.

 

3 hours ago, ruhrohraggy said:

If a process does not give you something you want at a reasonable cost, then do not use it.

Yeah. That is true, but its why I made this topic to start with. When the cost in cycles before it starts working, research needed and materials needed makes it look like its not worth it. Its like trying to sustain your entire base with morbs which you honestly can do, but the time needed makes it a dissapointing idea. Honestly, if the domestic arbor trees were not so water extreme, it would fix most of my problems with the ethanol chain... Or maybe, it is missing some advanced technology... Like, similar to how one could make petroleum by hitting up crude oil instead of running it through oil refinery, maybe, ethanol could use a similar trick to make it more interesting. Or maybe, CO2 should be more interesting. Instead of just having slicksters which barely give any oil and have their food supply easily replaceable by multiple other critters.
 

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36 minutes ago, DarkMoge said:

its funny that you say that, because my complain about ethanol is exactly that it requires too much dupe work and too much setting up from me. For the last few days, I have been playing on oasisse asteroid, trying different setups first in sandbox and than trying to make them in survival. 

Looking at the multiple screenshot shared by you, it appears that there some major differences between how we play though. When I play, I never end up with large supplies of some resources, I plan ahead and seek immediate use for the resources.

Appreciate the detailed reply btw...

I think the bold parts mean the most.

The map type *should* dictate your strategy. But the argument didn't seem to reflect that to me. It's blasting a part of the game generally, not specifically. At least imo. *shrug*

As far as getting pure power from ethanol. I feel that would be correct. The surplus power isn't great. Afaik, it's the one good way to generate dirt and high morale food. I remember struggling with dirt prior to the launch upgrade for sure.

I also want to note, that I do not employ linear thinking with regards to strategy. I do not re-roll maps if I can't find a ph2O geyser for example. However, I WILL make use of a ph2O geyser if I find one....And launching a giant ethanol chain off of one has been quite fun.

With regards to seeking immediate use for resources...I'm...not sure that's planning ahead? I plan ahead by having the materials I need already on hand for when I get to whatever it is that needs them. In this case, I'll have a hefty supply of petroleum for when I hit petrol rockets. I don't have to wait on manufacturing it once I get to them. I simply pump it into the rocket and off they go. Now that I have petrol pretty much sorted, I'll be working on stockpiling o2 and hydrogen for hydrogen rockets.

The slickster farm took ~ 50 cycles to really get going. I started with 2 normal slicksters as well, because that's all my oil biome had for some reason...

Slicksters poop out eggs really fast. So if you either incubate them, or sweep the eggs out of the room immediately, you can get a giant slickster farm going rather quickly.

Also, if I decided to later on, I can setup the 24 domestic Arbor trees I currently have into farmed rooms, and double my production to 24 distillers...I probably wont...but I could.

 

Also could have saved you a bit of math on the p-dirt / oxygen part...That's 10 containers @ 16t each.

Spoiler

image.thumb.png.14c4d325a3b1859efff427c10cc754a9.png

 

And yeah, we play differently. Might not be worth it to you...I'm currently having fun with it, and it's giving me things that I want.

It's just like solar. Lotta people don't think solar is worth it. I personally find solar awesome.

There's only one thing in this game that I feel truly has no point, and that's the ore scrubber, and I'm sure there's someone out there that can make an argument for even that.

 

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1 minute ago, blash365 said:

How do you keep your petroleum generators from overheating?

90t of 40F co2. The aquatuner that sits above that setup cools the entire room and then some.

You'll also notice the room is surrounded by abyssalite. That was intentional.

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