Regolith clearing

[Gravity5581]

How are people automating the regolith clearing? I normally have my dupes just clear it out manually before i manually open the bunker doors, but this is just really inefficient obviously. Anyone have some good suggestions for this issue?

 

[Promethien]

The easiest solution is autominers attached to mesh tiles (don't conduct) with piles of regolith on top of them that you don't care about. 

[badgamer123]

where the regolith drop,if the place is not important just let them sit there,you have laser ,door crush and melting it 3 option

[Gus Smedstad]

Personally, I automate the bunker doors. As soon as the meteors end they open, dumping accumulated regolith on to a ceiling of mesh tiles. Robominers then dig it away. The miners have overhead protection, and overlap in pairs so they can clear adjacent miner roofs.

This requires that I cool the robominers. I put drywall behind them, and a dollop of petroleum on top of them. This is required for heat exchange. I then cool the petroleum puddles with radiant pipes, which in turn cools the robominers. I just feed the hot petroleum to a steam chamber, so any heat the miners generate eventually becomes power.

What I don’t do is try and clear the regolith debris after mining. There’s too much of that.

Another solution - one I’m not a fan of personally, purely because it feels “wrong” - is to destroy regolith with mashing airlock doors.

[suicide commando]

Gus's solution is also what I use. On top of that, I have my dupes sweep up the regolith piles to a storage area in the space biome level once in a while. There I have autosweepers grab it from the storage to feed to my shove vole ranch. Originally I wanted to just set up autosweepers all across the top to get it all, but it was too much of a hassle.

Shove voles make excellent regolith munchers and they leave behind tons of meat.

 

[nakomaru]

Are mechanical airlocks a lost art?

[Nitroturtle]

2 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Are mechanical airlocks a lost art?

This is by far the easiest, and my preferred method.  But you're going to get all the 'exploit' crusaders out telling you how you're going to ruin your fun by cheating.

[MorsDux]

If you want to feed all the regolith to hatches / shovoles this seems to make the lowest amount of lag late game. Nice. 

[Lilalaunekuh]

1 hour ago, nakomaru said:

Are mechanical airlocks a lost art?

The most fun I have playing ONI is finding, overengineering solutions for ingame problems.

=> I was never a fan of door crushers in any way, but they do their job well.

 

My current base (>cycle 2000) does rely on a steady supply of new filtration medium.

My current solution: I have an automated rocket, which clears some regoltih when it starts or lands.

=> I use a rocket for my regoltih supply

[Oxygenbreather]

I suppose that's a pretty standard setup "how it's supposed to be done", without the door "exploit".

The airlocks above the auto miners open after 120 seconds after the bunker doors, so they don't block the light on the solar panels, the auto miners stand in a pool of petroleum so they can give away their heat on the the background tiles, there is a pipe running through taking the heat. The wallpapers are higher so the petroleum doesn't get lost when regolith falls down, the wall probably needs to be higher for some rare cases.

Needs dupes to bring the regolith into the vole farm. I tried with auto sweeper conveyors before, but discovered they created a lot of lag for me.

[Gus Smedstad]

2 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Are mechanical airlocks a lost art?

Well, I did say:

6 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Another solution - one I’m not a fan of personally, purely because it feels “wrong” - is to destroy regolith with mashing airlock doors.

So, already mentioned before you posted, even if I didn't go into implementation detail.

The destruction of matter is a little cheaty, but I have trouble seeing anyone getting up in arms about it. It's not like matter conversion or carrying 30 kw on a 1 kw wire. It's really more at the "personal preference" level, like using waterlocks vs. pump airlocks.

You do get one mild advantage from robominers, in that you can suck up the heat from the debris for steam turbines if you want. I haven't tried to run the numbers on whether that makes up for lost solar panel time, assuming you've got solar panels below.

[nakomaru]

It was more a feeling I get from going ages on the forum without it being recommend or exhibited. It feels like lost tech around here.

Doors destroy the regolith? Guess I should test that. Nice feature.

[ThemInspectors]

A no automation system to have your dupes dig regolith is by coating the mesh tiles with crown moulding tiles as they will create dig errands for the dupes with out having them ever built due to it being an invalid location.

[nakomaru]

39 minutes ago, ThemInspectors said:

A no automation system to have your dupes dig regolith is by coating the mesh tiles with crown moulding tiles as they will create dig errands for the dupes with out having them ever built due to it being an invalid location. 

Great late game excavation trainer!

[Argelle]

11 hours ago, Oxygenbreather said:

 

I suppose that's a pretty standard setup "how it's supposed to be done", without the door "exploit".

The airlocks above the auto miners open after 120 seconds after the bunker doors, so they don't block the light on the solar panels, (...).

Nice set up, I will remember the shelter door for robot

I guess the minimum distance of interference with scanner (9 tiles) not respected and small detection cone are on purpose since it's not for scan network but for solar power and reolith collection, right?

[mathmanican]

13 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Are mechanical airlocks a lost art?

They just got renamed "sandlocks" by @metallichydra. 

[Oxygenbreather]

4 hours ago, Argelle said:

I guess the minimum distance of interference with scanner (9 tiles) not respected and small detection cone are on purpose since it's not for scan network but for solar power and reolith collection, right?

Honestly I don't know much about the interference mechanics.. so don't copy the scanner setup

What I know, the higher scanner has a much better detection score than the lower one, but this is because the lower one is limited on regolith walls right and left of the screenshot. I put one the bottom, so it keeps sending reliably a signal, since on the upper one I loose the floor for a while when opening the doors, so regolith can fall through. Anyway, anything higher than ~10 seconds minimum warning time I consider unnecessary, since that what the doors take. I guess one can optimize on longer opening times, when it's sure the consistent.

[Aelfled]

9 hours ago, Argelle said:

Nice set up, I will remember the shelter door for robot

I guess the minimum distance of interference with scanner (9 tiles) not respected and small detection cone are on purpose since it's not for scan network but for solar power and reolith collection, right?

An older post said that miners don't count as machinery for the interference check, though sweepers and conveyor loaders did, IIRC

[badgamer123]

23 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Are mechanical airlocks a lost art?

no,it just a bit buggy some time for solar to work

[Argelle]

32 minutes ago, Aelfled said:

An older post said that miners don't count as machinery for the interference check, though sweepers and conveyor loaders did, IIRC

Yes, indeed, that's what wiki states as well... (into Light Machinery at the bottom) !

Check in game:

Thanks @badgamer123 thanks to you my network jump to 56%

[badgamer123]

22 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

The most fun I have playing ONI is finding, overengineering solutions for ingame problems.

=> I was never a fan of door crushers in any way, but they do their job well.

 

My current base (>cycle 2000) does rely on a steady supply of new filtration medium.

My current solution: I have an automated rocket, which clears some regoltih when it starts or lands.

=> I use a rocket for my regoltih supply

yes i noticed the return rocket will crush anything..I never brother to setup robo miner ever since 

[nakomaru]

12 hours ago, badgamer123 said:

no,it just a bit buggy some time for solar to work

Nope. You only run the crushers for a few seconds after bunkers have opened.

[0xFADE]

This design has been working out pretty well so far.  The steel miners don't overheat because the trapped co2(being sent to slicksters) is not as hot as the regolith, and that regolith is usually cooled down enough by the liquid coolant running through the doors and tiles.  I wish there was a mass disable autorepair option for all those broken stairs.

Autominers don't target through the bunker doors even if open so I had to redesign it a lot.

[nakomaru]

I wonder how much power you are losing going though 14 tiles of CO2 and one tile of glass, and not stacking solar panels.

[0xFADE]

I'm too close to the top of the map to stack the solar panels and have more room to go higher to trap more co2.  I could probably at least double or tripple the co2 if I put the walls all the way up.  I'm not sure I need to since when a shower is happening it is more than the one pipe can handle.  I'll need to fit in some gas storage somewhere to buffer it.  Once the co2 is cleared out enough they do run full bars so that isn't as much of a problem as it might seem.  Most of the dense co2 is cleared out before the doors open.