Is decor still a thing?

[Assault Chicken]

1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

I know about the battery switching method, but I'm majoring in Electrical/Electronics Engineering Tech atm, and using that method just feels... wrong. A bit too exploity.

Does using heavy-watt conductive make a significant difference to decor? It would be a huge investment in refined metal, but if I can get non-stop overjoyed dupes, it might be worth it.

I use "power sub stations" that send or recieve power to/from my main power plant. 

Sub station:

 

Logic is controlled by smart batteries. (recieve: 70/40; send 100/80 - high/low threshold)

Connection to main grid:

For my applications 4 kw is more than enough, but can be extended easily.

It´s simple and I don´t need to run heavy watt wire all across the map.

The downside is, that you need to run automation wire along the power line and it takes a lot of space if you have high power demand in remote locations.

Note: My SteamTurbines (cooling) produce more power than i use atm^^. 

[Gurgel]

21 hours ago, suicide commando said:

@Gurgel That's going a little bit overboard imho. As I mentioned the max decor you can have is 120 so you don't need THAT much decor to reach that.

Actually, the real decor cap is 1000, or at least that is the cap for what counts towards the average. The average then may be capped at 120, have not really checked. But what I do there is not wasted.

[Assault Chicken]

15 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Actually, the real decor cap is 1000, or at least that is the cap for what counts towards the average. The average then may be capped at 120, have not really checked. But what I do there is not wasted.

True,

The average is not capped btw. Hovering over the decor value shows a tooltip:

I don´t know what the displayed decor value (474.5) means. Maybe it´s a 10s average or something.

[nakomaru]

16 hours ago, psusi said:

Don't even need conductive wire; the normal stuff will do just fine.

With a decor penalty. So not fine for me, and probably not in the context of this thread.

[Gurgel]

10 hours ago, Assault Chicken said:

I don´t know what the displayed decor value (474.5) means. Maybe it´s a 10s average or something.

It is the current environmental decor with some smoothing. If you lock a dupe in place, it converges to the current environmental decor. So yes, may be an "n seconds average".

[Prince Mandor]

13 hours ago, crypticorb said:

I know about the battery switching method, but I'm majoring in Electrical/Electronics Engineering Tech atm, and using that method just feels... wrong. A bit too exploity.

What's wrong in thin wire with high voltage alternating current and transformers at both ends? Most of realword electricity go that way, not by extremely thick cables

On 11/27/2019 at 12:38 AM, Gurgel said:

 

Offtopic: @Gurgel, what is Your way to place nature tiles at specific location?

15 hours ago, crypticorb said:

A question: How do I avoid having a massive decor debuff from dupes travelling next to heavy-watt wires?

Just make your shaft two cells wider, and separate heavy wire by non-window tiles and non-mesh doors. Also you can make this wire-shaft three cells wide, and place transformers there too

[Gurgel]

3 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

Offtopic: @Gurgel, what is Your way to place nature tiles at specific location?

These are deconstructed doors. I have done melted Algae in the past, but that is just way more effort.

[psusi]

13 hours ago, nakomaru said:

With a decor penalty. So not fine for me, and probably not in the context of this thread.

A small one with only radius 1 so as long as it's in the floor or wall nobody will see it.

[Maxposting]

On 26. 11. 2019 at 8:27 PM, Assault Chicken said:

 

Ah yes, lemme shower with the plants and the pips.

[Assault Chicken]

2 hours ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

Ah yes, lemme shower with the plants and the pips.

never showered with your cat watching? Kinda normal

[crypticorb]

15 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

Offtopic: @Gurgel, what is Your way to place nature tiles at specific location?

You can deconstruct doors by surrounding them on all sides but the top with solid tiles, then deconstructing them. The bottom-most tile of the door will become a natural tile. It's a bit of an exploit, but it works reliably.

An alternative is to use the mod that allows natural tiles to be built. Try not to use it for evil purposes like abyssalite walls. I used it to make customized nature reserves, rather than having to rely on extreme long term planning to not dig up the natural tiles early game.

[psusi]

3 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

You can deconstruct doors by surrounding them on all sides but the top with solid tiles, then deconstructing them. The bottom-most tile of the door will become a natural tile. It's a bit of an exploit, but it works reliably.

Wait, what?  The door is made of metal so... you get a metal ore tile?

The wiki suggests you either drop some algae and cook it into dirt or melt phosphorite and pour it and let it solidify to get natural tiles.

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

Wait, what?  The door is made of metal so... you get a metal ore tile?

The wiki suggests you either drop some algae and cook it into dirt or melt phosphorite and pour it and let it solidify to get natural tiles.

The wiki is never fully up to date or has all relevant data, particularly involving small exploits, bugs, or recent updates.

Voila! It doesn't have to be build-able tiles, but there has to be full solid tiles on all sides except the top to make it work.

[psusi]

1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

Voila! It doesn't have to be build-able tiles, but there has to be full solid tiles on all sides except the top to make it work.

I can't tell what I'm looking at in that picture.  Is that a natural metal ore tile made out of whatever metal ore was used to make the door?

[crypticorb]

11 minutes ago, psusi said:

I can't tell what I'm looking at in that picture.  Is that a natural metal ore tile made out of whatever metal ore was used to make the door?

Correct.

It's a natural metal tile that appears in the space where the door was when it was deconstructed, made of whatever material you constructed the door out of. I've created a natural tile floor of steel once for fun, using this method.

The door has to be surrounded with solid tiles on all sides, and once you deconstruct it and form the natural tile, you can remove the surrounding tiles you used to set it up, leaving a natural tile for pips to plant in.

[suicide commando]

I prefer using the mod to make natural tiles to do this. Saves a lot of hassle and the end result is the same. My current base has the shower/nature reserve combo built with that. Which is a VERY nice morale booster ( +3 for shower, +6 for nature reserve for a whopping total of +9 )
 

[Craigjw]

Slightly off topic, China makes use of some DC power lines for their infrastructure as it's more efficient at transmitting power than AC.

Edison should really have won the debate over AC vs DC, but Tesla won due to AC being easier to convert to lower voltages.

[Gurgel]

51 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

Slightly off topic, China makes use of some DC power lines for their infrastructure as it's more efficient at transmitting power than AC.

Edison should really have won the debate over AC vs DC, but Tesla won due to AC being easier to convert to lower voltages.

Edison did enough questionable things in his time, including fraudulently patenting the light-bulb far before it was ready.

Incidentally, back then Tesla was exactly right. Converting DC to other voltages takes modern power semiconductors to be efficient. These where not known back then. For AC you just need transformers, i.e. essentially wires and iron.

[Craigjw]

I got the impression that Edison became very frustrated because he knew DC was more efficient in the long run and in time we'd develop the required technology but in desperation, did these questionable things in a bid to change the balance.

But stealing the invention of the light bulb from Del la Rue was just wrong.

[psusi]

2 hours ago, Craigjw said:

DC power lines for their infrastructure as it's more efficient at transmitting power than AC.

How do you figure?

[Gurgel]

20 hours ago, psusi said:

How do you figure?

Overall, DC is cheaper to build (1 or 2 wires compared to 3) and losses are around 3%/1000km compared to 4...5% for HVAC at the same voltage. Not really enough of a difference back then and Edison could not really have known that. Also, DC does not couple the networks frequency-wise, while AC does. That means when coupling two AC networks, you often do two conversions AC-DC-AC so they do not need to run at the same frequency. A good summary is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

[psusi]

16 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Overall, DC is cheaper to build (1 or 2 wires compared to 3) and losses are around 3%/1000km compared to 4...5% for HVAC at the same voltage. Not really enough of a difference back then and Edison could not really have known that. Also, DC does not couple the networks frequency-wise, while AC does. That means when coupling two AC networks, you often do two conversions AC-DC-AC so they do not need to run at the same frequency. A good summary is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

I'd argue that it doesn't really cost more for the 3rd wire since it's also getting you 50% more capacity.  Also the 3rd phase insn't strictly required.  At least in the US, homes don't get 3 phase power.  What causes the higher wire loss?  I would think that losses in DC-DC voltage converters would be higher than an AC transformer on the other hand.  And doesn't everyone just keep the entire grid synchronized to the same line frequency?  No need for conversion then and it doesn't really cost hardly anything to keep them synchronized / doesn't gain you anything to let different power plants operate at different frequency.

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, psusi said:

I'd argue that it doesn't really cost more for the 3rd wire since it's also getting you 50% more capacity.  Also the 3rd phase insn't strictly required.  At least in the US, homes don't get 3 phase power.  What causes the higher wire loss?  I would think that losses in DC-DC voltage converters would be higher than an AC transformer on the other hand.  And doesn't everyone just keep the entire grid synchronized to the same line frequency?  No need for conversion then and it doesn't really cost hardly anything to keep them synchronized / doesn't gain you anything to let different power plants operate at different frequency.

Well, we are getting a bit off-topic here. I recommend the wikipedia as a starting point to find out more.