Is it a bird? a plane? No, just another volcano tamer post

[Steve Raptor]

 

Hey everyone!

This is my take on the volcano tamer, it was one hell of a roller-coaster due to me discovering the nasty "off-screen conveyor rail" bug that showed its ugly face just as i thought i'm finally done with my design, nearly ended the entire idea of using rails for heat transfer and with this the entire design.

Big thanks to @wachunga for nailing this bug and its cause, allowing me to come up with a solution and salvaging the entire thing.

Also apologize for my very crude English, as you can quickly notice its not my native language so i'm trying my best.

[Loscil2]

Loving these volcano tamers.

[Majestix]

This has got to be the best ONI tutorial/set of explanations I have seen online, and I have seen quite a few of them! Great job! Obviously also great job taming that volcano, but I am even more impressed with how well explained this is.

[Steve Raptor]

51 minutes ago, Majestix said:

This has got to be the best ONI tutorial/set of explanations I have seen online, and I have seen quite a few of them! Great job! Obviously also great job taming that volcano, but I am even more impressed with how well explained this is.

Thank you, my videos end up long and I know that most veterans find most of the stuff i explain obvious to the eyes.

My Sister, which is also the one responsible for the thumbnails, is a casual ONI player that just started and she barely even understand how to create a self-sufficient bathroom or how bridges work etc. She finds complex design such as this, let alone automation and basic logic gates completely alien, she is studying art, she never encountered stuff like logic gates or let alone subjects like heat transfer and thermodynamics.

Before I create my videos, I always call her and explain to her how everything works, piece by piece.

If at the end she truly understands whats going on and how the thing works, then I know that my mission was accomplished and i can essentially use the same explanation for my video and send it to the public.

In general, designs like this one may seem really intimidating when a new player attempt to view them, let alone build one for themselves and understand whats going on, so I try to go to greater detail from how every bit and piece is working and how to build those complex designs from start so new players won't run off the moment they see such monstrosities.

[Majestix]

I pity your sister! My wife would never be able to sit through an explanation like this without suddenly remembering that she has things to do. If your sister does not understand how bridges work, she might want to get that self-sufficient bathroom right first, before trying to tame a volcano

Having said that, I consider myself a novice at ONI (no difficulty with bridges or logic gates, though), so I have a question: instead of this timed liquid dripping mechanism for cooling the robominer and the sweeper, why could you not just leave a little bit of liquid on that tile underneath them and run the cooling loop directly through that tile?

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that some maps have no wolframite, so to make the tutorial perfect, you might want to mention alternatives. Depending on the temperature output of the volcano, you might be able to get away with steel for the wires. Otherwise, I guess one might have to pre-cool the magma a little bit just before it passes through the first door, since that's where it encounters the first wire. I think the automation could be redesigned a little bit so that all the wires go entirely underneath the first cooling station, so maybe the other alternative is to adjust timings and to not power the first door.

And for radiant pipes, you could also use aluminium, which is abundant on some maps, and which is great for radiant pipes. I don't know whether it would in fact be too good, and would boil your coolant; you would probably want to use oil or petroleum for coolant.

[Steve Raptor]

39 minutes ago, Majestix said:

I pity your sister! My wife would never be able to sit through an explanation like this without suddenly remembering that she has things to do. If your sister does not understand how bridges work, she might want to get that self-sufficient bathroom right first, before trying to tame a volcano

Having said that, I consider myself a novice at ONI (no difficulty with bridges or logic gates, though), so I have a question: instead of this timed liquid dripping mechanism for cooling the robominer and the sweeper, why could you not just leave a little bit of liquid on that tile underneath them and run the cooling loop directly through that tile?

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that some maps have no wolframite, so to make the tutorial perfect, you might want to mention alternatives. Depending on the temperature output of the volcano, you might be able to get away with steel for the wires. Otherwise, I guess one might have to pre-cool the magma a little bit just before it passes through the first door, since that's where it encounters the first wire. I think the automation could be redesigned a little bit so that all the wires go entirely underneath the first cooling station, so maybe the other alternative is to adjust timings and to not power the first door.

And for radiant pipes, you could also use aluminium, which is abundant on some maps, and which is great for radiant pipes. I don't know whether it would in fact be too good, and would boil your coolant; you would probably want to use oil or petroleum for coolant.

So for the materials I went for wolframite since its easier to get than steel, but steel also gets the job done because its melting point is way above the temperature of the magma.

The idea was that its possible to construct this volcano tamer as early as you discover your first ice biome.

Logic gates and wires don't consume a lot of materials so they won't strain ones wolframite reserves.

Conveyor rails and bridges do take a good chunk of metal to make but it only goes for the main loop, the secondary track that snakes in the cooling chamber can be made with cheap stuff like copper since the igneous rock comes out at low temperature.

There is no real drawback at powering the mechanize airlock, it consumes power for a brief moment when it opens and closes but its so negligible in terms of power consumption compared how to useful its closing and opening speed is when controlling liquid flow downwards.

For radiant pipes you can pretty much use anything you want really, I chose iron as default because it rains from the sky, even lead can work since those radiant pipes pass in fairly cool areas (below 100C)

I prefer PW water as coolant because of its heat capacity compared to oil and petroleum.

This is the trade off: Oil gives you twice the heat conductivity compared to PW while PW gives you 4 times the heat capacity.compared to Oil.

Since I don't need rapid cooling here I chose PW since this also means that the aqua tuner works less and therefor consumes less power and PW is easier to obtain early on.

 

Also regarding with leaving machines in small pools of liquid:

I actually tried playing around it but it proved difficult to place the sweepers/robominers in such way that it can also be in liquid and has clear line of sight into the magma chamber (robo miners) or the tile with the igneous rocks at the lower chamber.

I chose the method in the video because its very easy to build and set up.

I think that I will re-visit my design in the near future and try to make it more compact.

[Majestix]

2 hours ago, Steve Raptor said:

So for the materials I went for wolframite since its easier to get than steel, but steel also gets the job done because its melting point is way above the temperature of the magma.

The idea was that its possible to construct this volcano tamer as early as you discover your first ice biome.

Logic gates and wires don't consume a lot of materials so they won't strain ones wolframite reserves.

Conveyor rails and bridges do take a good chunk of metal to make but it only goes for the main loop, the secondary track that snakes in the cooling chamber can be made with cheap stuff like copper since the igneous rock comes out at low temperature.

There is no real drawback at powering the mechanize airlock...

You misunderstood what I was trying to say. Some maps have no ice biomes (for example I am currently on Verdante, which has no ice biomes), in which case even one gram of wolframite strains ones reserves :-). I realise that wolframite/tungsten is the easiest to use here, if you have it. If not, then the next highest melting point among refined metals (for power and automation wires) is steel. However, its melting point is below the output temperature of some volcanos, so I was talking about how to avoid those wires getting into contact with the magma altogether if you have a very hot volcano, e.g. redirecting the automation wires and not powering the door.

[Steve Raptor]

5 minutes ago, Majestix said:

You misunderstood what I was trying to say. Some maps have no ice biomes (for example I am currently on Verdante, which has no ice biomes), in which case even one gram of wolframite strains ones reserves :-). I realise that wolframite/tungsten is the easiest to use here, if you have it. If not, then the next highest melting point among refined metals (for power and automation wires) is steel. However, its melting point is below the output temperature of some volcanos, so I was talking about how to avoid those wires getting into contact with the magma altogether if you have a very hot volcano, e.g. redirecting the automation wires and not powering the door.

Ah fair enough.

Your right, I could definitely improve the lay out of wires/gates to avoid contact with magma and therefore the needed use of expensive materials like steel and wolframite.