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Stupid-simple waterlock


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Hey all! OP is in spoilers below, but in case you came looking for a stupid-simple waterlock, I figured I'd update the OP with what people taught me in the course of this thread. Well, not all of it, but the bits that actually stuck.

Behold, the corner lock!

liquidlock_001.thumb.png.8793b2b495fb49299835a0342ce3d3cf.png

It is, as advertised, exceptionally simple. It uses ONI's 'one element per tile' rule, as all (?) liquid locks do, to prevent the gasses from transferring from one area to another. This is not a perfectly stable liquid lock, and it -can- break over time, though this particular build does some things to help prevent that from happening, and can be set up later in the game using stacked naptha and petrol to become extremely stable.

The enemy of this liquid lock is displacement. If this lock is in a high-traffic area, there is a chance that dupes can exhale (Dupes emit CO2 from their lower half D:) on the liquid tile, which would shove it to the left/right and disrupt the lock. A bigger risk is dupes carrying offgassing materials (such as bleachstone, polluted water bottles, etc) and either coincidentally having the object offgas while they are on the water tile, or the Dupe deciding to do something else, and rudely dropping their payload directly on the water tile. Also a worry? Flatulent dupes.

Those things said, if you are careful with your usage they're certainly reliable and stupid-simple liquid locks, consistently used by players much more experienced than myself.

 

Spoiler

 

Okay. I feel like this is too simple to actually be functional, because surely this method would show up in the umpteen lists of possible waterlocks you can find scouring wikis or google... but I've never seen it before.

It's literally a bead of water sitting on a block. Tell me this has been done before. Someone save me from myself!

(I've run it in a base I had up, it did not break for 4 cycles holding back a chlorine geyser with decent traffic. Don't have the means to test further atm, but surely all the stacked waterlocks and standard v-formation waterlocks I've made in the past weren't just... bad... right?)

Waterlock.png

 

 

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I call this a corner water lock.  I use them all the time because it only causes soggy feet instead of sopping wet.

You probably want to make sure the tile above the lock is CO2 by having a lip about the size of the bottle emptier. 

Also, be careful about hot materials greater than 100 C.

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Those are rather volatile like Zarquan said.  A dupe could also exhale near it and break it.  There are some rather neat looking waterlocks.  The best involve stacking multiple liquids and making the dupe jump across so they neither exhale on it or get a debuff from it.

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5 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

Those are rather volatile like Zarquan said.  A dupe could also exhale near it and break it.  There are some rather neat looking waterlocks.  The best involve stacking multiple liquids and making the dupe jump across so they neither exhale on it or get a debuff from it.

I would like to point out that though they are volatile, I use them all the time.  My current base has several dozen of them to maintain vacuums and such.

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20 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

I would like to point out that though they are volatile, I use them all the time.  My current base has several dozen of them to maintain vacuums and such.

Suppose you can use them in conjuction with exosuits so that dupes don't e

xile when passing through it? Will they break anyway?

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1 minute ago, Loscil2 said:

Suppose you can use them in conjuction with exosuits so that dupes don't e

xile when passing through it? Will they break anyway?

They only exhale when they breathe.  If you have a small lip keeping CO2 above the water, they will never break the lock by breathing.

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48 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

be careful about things that emit gas, including flatulent dupes and polluted water bottles.

Since Naptha can stack to 39.9999kg without any liquid flowing left or right, you can use a single blob of Naptha to stop off-gassing, and give yourself a very reasonable buffer to prevent it from breaking when someone takes something hot through it.  Naptha is very useful, pre viscogel. 

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When the dupe brings some toasty hot regolith home and boils all your locks ;)

I use these for temporary locks - never permanent locks. Very useful for breaking into high pressure or clean builds to do maintenance etc.

Other than that, save yourself the trouble and make a proper lock.

2 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Naphtha being underused all over. :)

I love it for my sweeper/loader cooling more than anything. Stacks nicely to 60kg, 30kg and works like a charm :) 

 

 

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Just now, Lifegrow said:

When the dupe brings some toasty hot regolith home and boils all your locks ;)

I use these for temporary locks - never permanent locks. Very useful for breaking into high pressure or clean builds to do maintenance etc.

Other than that, save yourself the trouble and make a proper lock.

How does one makes a proper lock? Petroleum lock, constantly cooling?

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2 minutes ago, Loscil2 said:

How does one makes a proper lock? Petroleum lock, constantly cooling?

Mine are normally 150kg crude, 150 petrol (or just under) standard v-shape.

That way they're relatively stable, and easily mopped if you expand/change your base later

If I can get away with a gas lock i'll use them instead, but I'm not a fan of the heat transfer.

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Just now, Lifegrow said:

Mine are normally 150kg crude, 150 petrol (or just under) standard v-shape.

If I can get away with a gas lock i'll use them instead, but I'm not a fan of the heat transfer.

That way they're relatively stable, and easily mopped if you expand/change your base later

OKay cool.

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They are a great way to have permanent access to your cryogenics room, using a single drop of supercoolant. (The hydrogen formed later and is unnecessary.)

water.thumb.png.3f967434c3fcc22489143d539aa60de0.png

Permanent access to your volcano with perfect insulation (vacuum protects napththa, and volcano auto shuts off before it reaches it).

vent.thumb.png.d3066c595703cb8390c001da739f7539.png

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I approve.

Thanks for all the responses, people! Glad to know it exists as pervasively as I thought it should, and that the basic design can be improved upon via the CO2 packet above the water itself. I don't see myself using it all that much after cycle 50-ish, but setting up and dismantling waterlocks in the early game (When I typically use a bunch of 'em to try manage gasses) is a pain in the ass, and much simpler with this setup.

Still curious, though. Does the gas displacement mean that dupes emit gas from the bottom tile they occupy, not the top?

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25 minutes ago, Fleetfeet said:

Does the gas displacement mean that dupes emit gas from the bottom tile they occupy, not the top?

Yes. A 30kg naphtha tile with a 333g petroleum tile above will never be displaced by a dupe pathing by. CO2 comes out their butt.

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For anyone who doesn't know, naphtha is really easy to get if you have an aquatuner,  I keep my chambers under my cooling turbine at above 200 C (using steel), so whenever I need naphtha, I just build a few plastic tiles connected to it underneath.  They melt and I mop it up.  You can use any aquatuner to do this, but chances are you do not need to do it that often, so it is better to use your aquatuner to delete heat. 

EDIT:  I should note that I keep my turbine in a vacuum cooled by a skim of crude oil.

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48 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

It's better than viscogel for 2 tile locks as well, with petroleum, because of a better temperature range. Viscogel can take shock heating/cooling better though, with more mass.

A tempshift plate, or 2 tile tall statue, behind your naptha/petro stacked lock will hold up just fine to 1000C metal passing through. The liquid temp change from the plate trumps the debri exchange, by leaps and bounds. :)  

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1 hour ago, Lifegrow said:

When the dupe brings some toasty hot regolith home and boils all your locks ;)

I use these for temporary locks - never permanent locks. Very useful for breaking into high pressure or clean builds to do maintenance etc.

Other than that, save yourself the trouble and make a proper lock.

I love it for my sweeper/loader cooling more than anything. Stacks nicely to 60kg, 30kg and works like a charm :) 

 

 

I'm the same. I use them for a temporary break in to an area i'll be sealing up. Setting up a full V liquid lock is a pain to clean up unless you make them with multiple liquids, but they're 100% reliable.

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32 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

A tempshift plate, or 2 tile tall statue, behind your naptha/petro stacked lock will hold up just fine to 1000C metal passing through. The liquid temp change from the plate trumps the debri exchange, by leaps and bounds. :)  

Oh nice and good in general.

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1 hour ago, Lifegrow said:

Stacks nicely to 60kg, 30kg

Trying to stack naptha on itself, and failing.  Am I missing something, or was this an old behavior?  If you can make a 60/30 stack, I'd love to learn how. :) 

8 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

Oh nice and good in general.

I forgot. Use a gravestone.... higher mass.....  We still aren't sure if the mass is higher or not with a dupe inside....  You are welcome to test for us and report back. :) 

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