sustainable table salt supply impossible?

[Z0366]

I find it hard to maintain a sustainable table salt supply, even for a late game.

25 dupe colony -> 25 gram table salt per cycle ->500kg salt per day -> 46 saltvine  dometstically -> 166kg chlorine per cycle (276g/s)

There is no way I could get that many chlorine, a typical chlorine vent would produce about 54kg per cycle. A trip to chlorine star will generally takes 30 days and result only 1000kg chlorine due to their often faraway distance, and that means only 30kg chlorine per cycle. Even with a chlorine vent and a dedicated rocket trip, it supplies only about 50% of the need. The asteroid material will slowly depletes too.

A saltwater geyser gives roughly 2.8kg/s saltwater which is only 117kg salt per cycle -> 6 g table salt per cycle, only 25%.

Given that the bonus is so minimal +1 moral, and the effort is tremendous as it has to be manually grinded and harvested. I find it hard to convince myself to put effort to build a salt supply line. It is a shame that I have to abandon part of the game mechanism and not achieving an "ultimate morale".

Any advice?

[silverbluep]

Do you have a salt water geyser? You can also filter the salt water not used for lettuce, to preduce some salt on the side. Does that supplement?

[Z0366]

3 minutes ago, silverbluep said:

Do you have a salt water geyser? You can also filter the salt water not used for lettuce, to preduce some salt on the side. Does that supplement?

I actually posted in my original post that it only supplement 6 g per cycle.

[avc15]

50 minutes ago, Z0366 said:

I actually posted in my original post that it only supplement 6 g per cycle.

Flash boil salt water and it drops about four times more salt. Well at least, used to be the case, but it seems to be because of a calculation that's not working quite right (I forget who discovered the cause but it seemed likely it wasn't intended)

Basically you just pump salt water into some very hot place so that it flashes to steam immediately on contact.

There was also something about flash boiling brine to get even more. Let me see if I can find the post...

 

edit: here it is, 

Nobody ever demonstrated flash boiling brine but if the same bug happens it'd create 8.3 kg salt per 10kg brine o.o - to exploit that you'd have to first cool salt water into brine and then flash boil the brine.

 

 

[Z0366]

Thanks for the advice, I have read the related posts and still not completely understood (or confident and comfortable) using it. But thank you anyway.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've found in my games that it is difficult to maintain a 100% supply of various items through much of the mid-game.   My recommendation is: save up the salt and use it when you need that extra 1 point of moral.

[DRAKCORE]

When I get home and actually remember, will post some pics and mechanics on how I process my salt water geyser/'s. He is right, the desalinator is just a waste of energy and time. 

*Usually I play with geo active + rich metal and volcano's, this normally gives two salt water geysers (instead of manually rolling till you get it, there is a mod that allows you select what map bonuses you get, saves a lot of time of re-rolling). Instead of using a desalinator pump the salt water into the steam room with the thermo aquatuner's used to cool the base or equipment. Have a sweeper in there to pick up the salt and dump it next to the rock crusher. The water from the steam turbines instead of being dumped back into the steam room is used for the base with priority over other water sources.

If you are chasing the moral bonuses I can also post a few simple ideas to get some easy and low hanging moral points.

[bobucles]

100kg of salt transforms into 1 point of morale for 1 day. That's a huge investment of raw matter for a tiny bonus. Even mealwood gives a better return, transforming 50kg of dirt into 1 day of food.

I don't think many players have seriously tested salt on their colonies. Just looking at the raw numbers clearly points it out as a huge amount of effort for a nearly pointless return.

[Gurgel]

19 minutes ago, bobucles said:

I don't think many players have seriously tested salt on their colonies. Just looking at the raw numbers clearly points it out as a huge amount of effort for a nearly pointless return.

I have basically done it once to see the animation. I think this is something you can do for one or two dupes basically for free, but beyond that other tings work better. 

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, bobucles said:

100kg of salt transforms into 1 point of morale for 1 day. That's a huge investment of raw matter for a tiny bonus. Even mealwood gives a better return, transforming 50kg of dirt into 1 day of food.

I don't think many players have seriously tested salt on their colonies. Just looking at the raw numbers clearly points it out as a huge amount of effort for a nearly pointless return.

I'm using it purely as I have no other use for salt. Playing on Oceania, thus I have literally tons of salt and no rust to use it on. 

[Craigjw]

Dare I say it, this is a salty conversation...

[DRAKCORE]

Basic concept for my cooling and salt water conversion.

Used x3 steam turbines with x4 thermo aquatuners (ratio is x1 steam t for ever 1.5 thermo aq) firstly since my rooms are 14 blocks wide and it just fits but more importantly they can process 6L/s of liquid with the steam turbines (2L every one of them) which is perfect for 2 salt water geysers.

The circuit image breaks down the mechanics.

Green : Salt water is allowed in as long as 1. The pressure is below 20k (highest I could go) and no salt water is detected.

Blue : Water from the steam turbines is automatically piped into my system with priority over other water sources so the steam turbines don't get blocked. If the pressure drops below 7.5k the shutoff valve is enabled and the water is piped back into the steam room to recycle until the pressure is restore (aka more salt water is poured in).

*Note I disabled the salt water pumps so you could see the system recycle the water.

Also the liquid bridge between the two shutoff valves entering the steam room isn't needed and might cause a loop preventing new salt water to enter.

[Craigjw]

Your piping network is something I'd be pleased with, you've packed a lot in there quite neatly.

[DRAKCORE]

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

Your piping network is something I'd be pleased with, you've packed a lot in there quite neatly.

Wait till I actually clean it up  Had to bum rush it since the base was getting toasty.

Also on the morale agenda. A simple compact base layout forcing dupes to move through areas can net you bare minimum 15-20 points excluding decor, food, etc. And rule of thumb, make everything out of gold. I love Goooooooooold!

 

*Salt calculations.

You have x2 salt geysers = 6L/s +- = 6x600 = 3600L. Confirmed I get 19-20% when flashing salt water into salt = 3600 x 0.2 = 720Kg+- salt per cycle = 35g of table salt ( so enough for 35 dupes if they eat each day).

 

[silverbluep]

20 hours ago, Z0366 said:

I actually posted in my original post that it only supplement 6 g per cycle.

I missed that part on your post. I usually end up with two salt geysers; so 12 g is usually enough for my dupes (I go for 12). Maybe Klei needs to balance how much table salt we get from crushing salt. I would rather a 50-50 conversion; as it is silly that a whole rock of NaCl only yields trace amounts of it, and the rest is silica powder.

Or have desalinators produce table salt and not salt. That would help, as there is no other use of salt other than rust deoxydizer.

[DarkMaster13]

I'd call it unbalanced at the moment.  The bonus from table salt just is not worth the effort and you consume far more than you can reasonably produce even when mining the salt deposits around the map, let alone sustainably.

[Z0366]

On 10/28/2019 at 7:33 PM, DarkMaster13 said:

I'd call it unbalanced at the moment.  The bonus from table salt just is not worth the effort and you consume far more than you can reasonably produce even when mining the salt deposits around the map, let alone sustainably.

completely agree.

[DRAKCORE]

4 hours ago, Z0366 said:

completely agree.

But with 2 salt geysers you can support 35 dupes and that is with them eating every day.

Just flash the salt water instead and the yield will be 20% salt.

[Yunru]

Oh it's sustainable alright, just axe a couple of dupes.

...

Repeat where necessary.

[Z0366]

On 10/30/2019 at 4:39 PM, Yunru said:

Oh it's sustainable alright, just axe a couple of dupes.

...

Repeat where necessary.

How come I never thought of it! What a wonderful idea! Yes the dupes! They are the source of every possible trouble you can think of!

[wronny]

On 29/10/2019 at 12:33 AM, DarkMaster13 said:

I'd call it unbalanced at the moment.  The bonus from table salt just is not worth the effort and you consume far more than you can reasonably produce even when mining the salt deposits around the map, let alone sustainably.

Depends. If it is meant as a temporary and minor source of additional morale, then it is filling its role nicely. If it is meant to be something that's sustainable, then the numbers need adjustment.

[avc15]

8 hours ago, wronny said:

Depends. If it is meant as a temporary and minor source of additional morale, then it is filling its role nicely. If it is meant to be something that's sustainable, then the numbers need adjustment.

But then. Is there a way to enable/disable that dupes will use table salt, or only allow certain dupes to use table salt? There isn't, aside from the clunky idea of putting it all inside storage located behind doors with restricted permissions.

I don't think it's intended as a way to temporarily boost morale by 1 or target certain dupes who need 1 more morale.

[wronny]

9 hours ago, avc15 said:

There isn't, aside from the clunky idea of putting it all inside storage located behind doors with restricted permissions.

Delivering the table salt via Auto Sweepers to selected tables would be another option.

Table Salt has a rather bad labour / morale ratio and ranges from difficult to impossible to sustain based on available geysers and colony size. This sounds rather similar to other things you'd want to either heavily automate, transition away from sooner rather than later or avoid using in the first place.