Just started playing, need help with some problems

[darkpanday]

Hi, I recently started playing ONI and I just want to say that it's a really fun and addicting game.First of all, I want to note that I tried searching the threads but it didn't quite answer my questions so I decided to start a new topic in light of someone helping me with some of the questions. 

First - I decided to use chlorine to disinfect the germs in liquid containers. I immediately realized that the germs in the pipes are not getting cleaned so I used a series of liquid bridges to continuously circulate the water in 2 liquid containers until all the germs are destroyed. However, the water coming out still have germs which rapidly spawns after going to my clean water containers. I learned that there is still water with germs on the last pipe that connects my liquid container to the shutoff valve. And I don't know anymore how to clean it since the water will go there first before filling up the liquid container. I already placed the shut-off valve immediately next to the liquid container but I still need to connect the two using a pipe segment. I'm still in the early stages (less than cycle 150) and don't have access to plastic yet. Any suggestions?

Second - I tried using the thermal aqua tuners to cool down my water but I can't seem to get it running properly. I have 3 coal generators connected to a transformer which is connected to the aqua tuner. All of them are connected using the high wattage wires. But for some reason, the aqua tuner will still go ON and OFF saying it does not have any power. There are no other devices connected to the circuit. I tried adding several smart batteries but that didn't seem to also help with the issue.

Third - I am planning to use liquid pipes running around my base for cooling. The liquid pipes start from a water source then runs into a ice biome and then ran back into my base. When should I be using insulated pipes and when should I be using radiant pipes so that I can maximize the cooled water inside the pipes?

Looking forward to your replaced. I appreciate any inputs and thank you in advance. Have a nice day.

[DarkMoge]

4 hours ago, darkpanday said:

Second - I tried using the thermal aqua tuners to cool down my water but I can't seem to get it running properly. I have 3 coal generators connected to a transformer which is connected to the aqua tuner. All of them are connected using the high wattage wires. But for some reason, the aqua tuner will still go ON and OFF saying it does not have any power. There are no other devices connected to the circuit. I tried adding several smart batteries but that didn't seem to also help with the issue.

 

The issue might be lying in the transformer that you are using... Aquatuner requires 1200 W... Red transformer caps output at 1000 W... Yellow transformer caps it at 4000 W though. 
 

 

4 hours ago, darkpanday said:

Third - I am planning to use liquid pipes running around my base for cooling. The liquid pipes start from a water source then runs into a ice biome and then ran back into my base. When should I be using insulated pipes and when should I be using radiant pipes so that I can maximize the cooled water inside the pipes?

Do not do that. Instead, move ice into the areas you want to cool or melt ice into 0 degree water and run that water around your base.

 

 

4 hours ago, darkpanday said:

First - I decided to use chlorine to disinfect the germs in liquid containers. I immediately realized that the germs in the pipes are not getting cleaned so I used a series of liquid bridges to continuously circulate the water in 2 liquid containers until all the germs are destroyed. However, the water coming out still have germs which rapidly spawns after going to my clean water containers. I learned that there is still water with germs on the last pipe that connects my liquid container to the shutoff valve. And I don't know anymore how to clean it since the water will go there first before filling up the liquid container. I already placed the shut-off valve immediately next to the liquid container but I still need to connect the two using a pipe segment. I'm still in the early stages (less than cycle 150) and don't have access to plastic yet. Any suggestions?

Cant suggest anything without a screenshot.

[cblack]

5 hours ago, darkpanday said:

First - I decided to use chlorine to disinfect the germs in liquid containers. ... Any suggestions?

My suggestion is to not bother.  I never disinfect water, and if it's full of germs, so be it.  What matters is that your food poisoning doesn't get into the food itself.  To fix this, build refrigerators within chlorine, and don't bother powering them.  Chlorine will kill any germs on the food and prevent spoilage:

5 hours ago, darkpanday said:

Second - ...for some reason, the aqua tuner will still go ON and OFF saying it does not have any power.

As DarkMoge mentioned it might be a small transformer that's causing the problem.  However, I also strongly recommend you also put a smart battery on the circuit and use it to turn the generators on/off so you don't waste power.  A screenshot can help diagnose the issue further if you're still having problems.

5 hours ago, darkpanday said:

Third - I am planning to use liquid pipes running around my base for cooling.

Running liquid pipes around your base for temperature control is a very good idea.  However, using a biome is a short-term solution as once you warm it up, it no longer serves its purpose.  Soon enough you will want something like this:

These are two heat exchangers.  The top one is for warming the base (I'm playing on Rime, so I need to heat my base as often as I need to cool it), while the bottom is for cooling.  The top tank is warmed by the tepidizer to always be at my "high" limit (25C in my case) and the bottom is cooled in my cooling loop to always be at my low limit (21C, which is just over the minimum for Buddy Buds).  If water in the cooling loop is outside of those temps, it gets sent into the appropriate exchanger; e.g. if the circulating fluid is 26C it is sent into the 21C water, and if it's 20C it's sent into 25C water.

[metallichydra]

welcome to the forums, @darkpanday.

its much easier for us to find solutions to your problem, if you take a screenshot of your base, or the area with the problem.

5 hours ago, darkpanday said:

Third - I am planning to use liquid pipes running around my base for cooling. The liquid pipes start from a water source then runs into a ice biome and then ran back into my base. When should I be using insulated pipes and when should I be using radiant pipes so that I can maximize the cooled water inside the pipes?

if you want your water to be cold, radiant pibes should be in cold areas, insulated pibes in warm areas, and radiant or normal in your base (the areas you want cooled).

[abud]

1. To avoid germy water sitting inside pipe, use mechanized door instead of valves. This is example using clock sensor and door.
2. Screenshot your power overlay please, it will be easier to explain (or you will see the problem yourself after looking at this overlay). I suspect you're using single small transformer which only have 1kw continuous supply.

3. 5 hours ago, darkpanday said:

   When should I be using insulated pipes and when should I be using radiant pipes

   Insulated pipe when you don't want liquid inside to exchange temperature with environment, for example in transit. Radiant pipe when you want much faster temperature exchange than normal pipe with same length, for example in your cooling source and destination.

[darkpanday]

I would like to thank everyone who spent the time reading my questions and gave suggestions. I've included in this reply the screenshot of my chlorine setup. In my last screenshot, I think the germ is located in that small pipe. What I'm doing right now is have a dupe go inside the room, and manually connect / disconnect the liquid container and the shut-off valve and that seems to work but labor intensive.

Thanks again.

3 hours ago, DarkMoge said:

The issue might be lying in the transformer that you are using... Aquatuner requires 1200 W... Red transformer caps output at 1000 W... Yellow transformer caps it at 4000 W though. 

I see, that might be it. I was using a red transformer instead of the yellow transformer. Thank you,

3 hours ago, DarkMoge said:

Do not do that. Instead, move ice into the areas you want to cool or melt ice into 0 degree water and run that water around your base.

I'll take note of this. Thanks,

3 hours ago, DarkMoge said:

Cant suggest anything without a screenshot.

I have included the screenshots in my reply above. Thanks.

 

2 hours ago, metallichydra said:

welcome to the forums, @darkpanday.

its much easier for us to find solutions to your problem, if you take a screenshot of your base, or the area with the problem.

Thank you for the greetings. I'll make sure I include screenshots when available in my future topics and replies

2 hours ago, metallichydra said:

if you want your water to be cold, radiant pibes should be in cold areas, insulated pibes in warm areas, and radiant or normal in your base (the areas you want cooled).

Got it. Thanks.

2 hours ago, abud said:

To avoid germy water sitting inside pipe, use mechanized door instead of valves. This is example using clock sensor and door.

Thanks. I'll check the thread and review the design for future plans.

 

2 hours ago, abud said:

Screenshot your power overlay please, it will be easier to explain (or you will see the problem yourself after looking at this overlay). I suspect you're using single small transformer which only have 1kw continuous supply.

Yes, I was using a single red transformer which I realized now was a mistake. 

 

2 hours ago, abud said:

Insulated pipe when you don't want liquid inside to exchange temperature with environment, for example in transit. Radiant pipe when you want much faster temperature exchange than normal pipe with same length, for example in your cooling source and destination.

Got it. Thank you.

[KittenIsAGeek]

There are many solutions to your problems.  Everything above is just fine, but here's my take on it:

1) Cleaning polluted germy water.  This problem pops up a lot for various reasons, including infected polluted water geysers.  Food poisoning will not die in polluted water on its own, but you can clean it with chlorine.  Your trick with two reservoirs is a great idea that has been written about before.  Here's an example of a robust system that can be adapted and works very well.  

The idea is to use doors to disable the reservoirs.   Your method, using valves, also works, but as you observed, the packet stuck in the pipe at the valve still has germs, so you need to set up bypass piping to get it all back into the reservoir.

 

2) Thermal aquatuners are power-hungry beasts that transfer heat from a piped liquid into the environment around the aquatuner. You can pair up regular transformers, use a large transformer, or have a battery bank on the aquatuner side of the circuit.  If your aquatuner is going to only run periodically, batteries are a simple solution.  If you're running continually, then you want either a large transformer or a pair of small ones.  Here's an example of paired transformers:

Spoiler

 

This configuration will support up to 2kw of power on a conductive line, which will let you easily run a 1200 watt aquatuner.

Liquid pipes for cooling is an excellent idea and can work very well -- however, its a bit of overkill.  If you're wanting to use a cold biome to cool the water from, say, a steam vent, then you want to use radiant pipes to encourage heat transfer.  However, there are some issues you should be aware of.  Here's my current pipe network:

Spoiler

Its not running currently and you can see that there's a red bar over one of the pipes.  This is one of the problems: The water cooled down too much and froze in the pipe, so I shut power down to the pump until I can fix the pipe.  The orange pipe from the pump is insulated, the white is normal, and the gold is radiant.  The short stretch above the thimble reeds has successfully melted the water there and at some point I'll pump it out.  Another issue to watch is at the polluted water pool.  When I started, the ice was up to the mesh tiles and my radiant pipe segment ran only through the tiles.  As it has melted, the level has dropped down, meaning that periodically I have to run in, build some ladder, and add more pipe.  It works just fine -- its just troublesome.

The next issue is the piping within your base to do the actual cooling.  I've had some pretty decent luck using granite pipes from a cold pool that run to my bathrooms, especially if the pipes have to cross a portion of the base.  Here's an example from my current base that is running in the opposite direction: I've got a tepedizer warming a pool of water to warm up my base.  Rime is crazy that way.

Spoiler

You'll notice the warmth follows the piping.  This method can be somewhat slow, because the further from the pool, the warmer (or colder in my case) the water will be.  However, eventually the entire loop will cool down (or warm up) to the temperature of your pool.  Another method I've used is a recirculating loop.  One side of the loop is in a pool at the temperature you want.  The other side is where you want the cooling to go.   Here's an early example from my Rime base (acting as a heater rather than cooling, but the concept works the same):

Spoiler

The water circulates in a loop through all of the irrigation tiles.  At the bottom, space heaters warm up the tiles (and therefore the water) in the loop.  The reservoir keeps the water flowing, and the bottom segment adds new water (close to freezing) at the output of the reservoir only as necessary to keep the pipes full.  This method is slow, because the water is heated indirectly, but it works enough to keep my plants from freezing.  The coldest corner is 10c, and the warmest is almost 16c.  Another 30 cycles after this screenshot, the cold upper right corner was at 14c.   If you want to change temperatures more quickly, use radiant pipes instead of regular to both set the temperature of your coolant and where you want the temperature to change.

 

 

[darkpanday]

3 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

There are many solutions to your problems.  Everything above is just fine, but here's my take on it:

Thank you very much. All your inputs and suggestion was very helpful. It helped explained a lot of things for me and gave me fresh ideas on how to work on my next colony.

7 hours ago, cblack said:

My suggestion is to not bother.  I never disinfect water, and if it's full of germs, so be it.  What matters is that your food poisoning doesn't get into the food itself.  To fix this, build refrigerators within chlorine, and don't bother powering them.  Chlorine will kill any germs on the food and prevent spoilage:

Thank you. I'll take note of this and your inputs on cooling / heating management.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I agree with @cblack about polluted water.  The only time you have to be careful is with germy but otherwise clean water.  For example, after filtering it through a sieve, the clean water will still have the germs from the polluted water.  This is absolutely fine everywhere -- EXCEPT where food is concerned.  You don't want to use germy water for cooking, and you don't want to use it in the water cooler.  In both cases your dupes will get food poisoning.  However, its perfectly safe to wash hands, use for the shower, or for the toilet.  I've made a post about this before.