Ranching vertically.

[beowulf2010]

Yeah. Last I remember checking, the super nutrients from a farm station only affected the main trunk, not the branches that actually generate the wood. Maybe it changed recently, I honestly haven't grown domestic arbor trees ever. 

[psusi]

1 hour ago, KILLABUDZ said:

Hmm well I am fairly certain I have seen them using it, its low prio atm compared to my food production and I havent been paying much attention once it got up and running. Are you certain it has no effect? Is this a known bug or intentional? Are arbor trees the only plant it doesnt work on?

Known thing.. also doesn't work on mealwood.  If it did work then there wouldn't be much reason to plant wild arbor trees since domestic ones would be water positive.

[Craigjw]

it makes sense that the farm station should work on arbor trees, but I can't say either way with any certainty.  Perhaps the farmer dupes are just using the station to make micro-nutrients and not using them on the trees.

What I'm saying about slicksters is that it's the natural choice to place them in the power gen complex, however you choose to go about it.  I normally place them below in a horizontal layout and fill the excess space in the ranches with batteries with the PW dripping onto the batteries to a collection pit at the bottom.  to stop the slicksters having far to go, i just use a door and tile with a gap at the top.

Having a horizontal layout does have it's advantages.

[KILLABUDZ]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

domestic ones would be water positive

Does fertilizer double the growth rate without scaling the consumption rate? Without any testing I thought it would still use the same mats to grow the plant to harvest.

[RonEmpire]

I would like to add that you could narrow the width for Drecko movement by having 2 (2x2) pits of water  one on each side. this will restrict Drecko movement.  In the middle between the 2 you can place sheering.  This works well with willd drecko no grooming or feeding, immerse room in hyrogen if you like to keep scales growing.  One of the pit can be (2x3) with a cage door at the bottom and you can drop eggs into that and they will crawl out.  This will solve your cramped problem for sealing the room to make the sheering/stable work.

[psusi]

9 hours ago, Craigjw said:

What I'm saying about slicksters is that it's the natural choice to place them in the power gen complex, however you choose to go about it.  I normally place them below in a horizontal layout and fill the excess space in the ranches with batteries with the PW dripping onto the batteries to a collection pit at the bottom.  to stop the slicksters having far to go, i just use a door and tile with a gap at the top.

Hrm... that might work.

9 hours ago, KILLABUDZ said:

Does fertilizer double the growth rate without scaling the consumption rate? Without any testing I thought it would still use the same mats to grow the plant to harvest.

Of course; it would be pointless otherwise.

5 hours ago, RonEmpire said:

I would like to add that you could narrow the width for Drecko movement by having 2 (2x2) pits of water  one on each side. this will restrict Drecko movement.  In the middle between the 2 you can place sheering.  This works well with willd drecko no grooming or feeding, immerse room in hyrogen if you like to keep scales growing.  One of the pit can be (2x3) with a cage door at the bottom and you can drop eggs into that and they will crawl out.  This will solve your cramped problem for sealing the room to make the sheering/stable work.

Hrm... I normally like to let them climb on the ceiling where the hydrogen stays and keep a layer of oxygen at the shearing station so the rancher can work.  I suppose I could use an atmo suit and a water lock to get into the room and keep it completely hydrogen though and that would be better.

[Craigjw]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

Hrm... that might work.

Might work?  it does work because that's what I built.

[psusi]

One advantage I just thought of for the vertical slickster ranch is the temperature gradient.  You want to keep the petrol gen cooled to 40 C and get the 40 C pwater out quick before it is heated by the 70 C CO2.  You then want to heat the CO2 up on the way down to the molten slicksters to keep them at a happy 100+ C. With the horizontal setup, the heat will distribute more evenly, making it harder to keep the petrol gen cool and the slicksters hot.  With the vertical ranch, the petrol gen can be at the top where it is coolest, the ethanol distilleries can be in the middle to preheat the CO2 some on its way down, and the molten slicksters can be in the hottest part that is 24 tiles away from the cooler petrol gen.  You also have room to fit one auto sweeper that will load all 4 ethanol distilleries.  Can't do that horizontally.

Hrm.. do the slicksters exchange heat with the CO2 they are in, or the oil or mesh tile they are standing on, or both?  i.e. do I have to heat the CO2 or just the mesh tile they stand on to keep them warm?  I hope it's just the mesh tile.

[Craigjw]

The slicksters would be on mesh tiles, otherwise, they become submerged, mesh tiles do not exchange heat, therefore slicksters will be exchanging heat with the CO2.

The issue you have, is that the PW will drop to the bottom and heat up from the ambient CO2, which you are wanting to be >100c for lava slicksters, the end result of this, is that you will be boiling an amount of PW into steam.  Steam is lighter than CO2, so will naturally go to the top and heat the cooled area at the top, removing the temperature gradient.

It's easier and simpler to keep the generator complex at a uniform temperature. 

If you want to ranch both slicksters & lava slicksters, it's easier to just have 2 power gen complex, one actively cooled to ~70c and another cooled by steam turbines running at ~130c.  Then just deliver the appropriate eggs to the correct complex.

[psusi]

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

The slicksters would be on mesh tiles, otherwise, they become submerged

They are quite happy to float on top of petrol.

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

mesh tiles do not exchange heat, therefore slicksters will be exchanging heat with the CO2.

Right.. that stinks then since you are heating up the CO2 only to have it deleted.  There must be a way to keep the critter warm without heating the CO2.  Hrm... what if you kept a layer of petrol trapped on the floor that is heated instead of letting it fall through mesh tile immediately?  Would the slickster exchange heat with the petrol or not because they are floating on top of it and in the co2?

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

The issue you have, is that the PW will drop to the bottom and heat up from the ambient CO2, which you are wanting to be >100c for lava slicksters, the end result of this, is that you will be boiling an amount of PW into steam.

You catch the water immediately under the generator and pump it out.  You let the CO2 keep dropping down and getting hotter on the way.

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

If you want to ranch both slicksters & lava slicksters, it's easier to just have 2 power gen complex, one actively cooled to ~70c and another cooled by steam turbines running at ~130c.  Then just deliver the appropriate eggs to the correct complex.

Why would you bother having both?  Just go with the molten one and forget the regular slicksters.  Hrm... so I guess if you keep the generators at 130+ ( so steel required ) then they will be creating heat, but immediately boiling the pwater they produce, the dirt will drop and the steam will rise above the co2 where a turbine can collect it and condense it into 95 C clean water?  That sounds pretty good.

Oh darn.  You can't run the ethanol distillers in that kind of heat or the lumber will probably heat up above 78 pretty quickly and cause the ethanol to boil in the pipe as soon as it is produced.

[KILLABUDZ]

7 hours ago, psusi said:

Of course; it would be pointless otherwise.

Doubling resource efficiency seems exploitable. The more expensive the crop the better trade of time. Just producing twice as fast should be enough of a bonus alone, as its saving you construction mats and travel time of a farm 2x the size and can be enabled to quickly resolve shortages.

 

3 hours ago, Craigjw said:

The slicksters would be on mesh tiles, otherwise, they become submerged, mesh tiles do not exchange heat,

A row of mesh tiles on top of a row of normal tiles catches the liquid and holds it in the mesh tile and then im pretty sure the mesh tile exchanges heat with the liquid or at least the block under, also allowing you to suck it up with the single block wall pump if you have the mod installed or divert it into a pit.

[Craigjw]

Catching the water immediately after it drops out eh?  Good luck with that.  It's easy to say these words and conjecture, but have you actually made a power system that actually uses slicksters effectively?

I'm giving you my advice based on system's that I have actually built and used in the past, with the fore-sight of previous experience and knowledge.

If you don't have at least slicksters, you don't get lava slicksters.  If you do, you are putting yourself at risk of losing all your lava slicksters when something goes wrong, hence at the very least, you need a slickster ranch and there's very little point in having a separate ranch dedicated only for slickster that have CO2 pumped into it, as that's just a waste of power, you could just have built CO2 scrubbers and done with it, as it would be cheaper.

Why don't you open sandbox and build a system that you think might find work, then report back when you have a system that does work and then I can reply back to you with I told you so.

When you have multiple liquids like oil & pw, the liquid doubles up consuming a whole tile, submersing the slickster.  Yes they do float on a single tile of liquid, but they don't float on a tile containing more than a single liquid.

[psusi]

16 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

When you have multiple liquids like oil & pw, the liquid doubles up consuming a whole tile, submersing the slickster.  Yes they do float on a single tile of liquid, but they don't float on a tile containing more than a single liquid.

There is no such thing as a tile that contains more than one liquid.  When I played last year I piped the CO2 from NG gens down to the oil biome to feed slicksters and accidentally got some molten ones.  The pool was a mix of petrol and oil and they floated on it just fine.  Have they broken slicksters recently somehow?

[Craigjw]

Use some common sense please. The PW sits on top of the oil, these tiles cause the slickster to be submerged.  I know this, because I have a few tiles that aren't mesh in my current power station and the slickster get submerged on these tiles because of exactly this reason.

[psusi]

48 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

Use some common sense please. The PW sits on top of the oil, these tiles cause the slickster to be submerged.  I know this, because I have a few tiles that aren't mesh in my current power station and the slickster get submerged on these tiles because of exactly this reason.

Like I said, you don't let the pwater mix with the oil, but petrol mixed with oil should behave the same.  If slicksters now drown from that, then Klei definitely broke it in the last year.

[Craigjw]

Look, I've already told you what happens, based on previous experience from a working system that I built and used for over 1k cycles and you are saying that what I'm saying is false?  What have you built? do you have a system that works? 

The slickster don't drown as it moves on, but i'm sure it impairs there performance, for one, they can't consume CO2 while submerged.

You have no choice on the mixing of these liquids as at some point, the slickster will drop some oil on a tile and if that tile already has PW on it, it'll form a double layer of liquids consuming 2 tiles.

As I said earlier, you should make a system before trying to disprove what I'm saying, because you are really starting to piss me off with your condescension when all I'm trying to do is be helpful.

 

[psusi]

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

Look, I've already told you what happens, based on previous experience from a working system that I built and used for over 1k cycles and you are saying that what I'm saying is false?  What have you built? do you have a system that works? 

What's your problem?

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

The slickster don't drown as it moves on, but i'm sure it impairs there performance, for one, they can't consume CO2 while submerged.

They didn't used to have this problem.  They would float on top of whichever liquid was on top.

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

You have no choice on the mixing of these liquids as at some point, the slickster will drop some oil on a tile and if that tile already has PW on it, it'll form a double layer of liquids consuming 2 tiles.

Like I said several posts ago, you have a basin to catch the pwater under the generator instead of letting it fall down to the slicksters.  Or if you do it horizontally, you keep the pwater on one side of the room and the slicksters on the other.  It's not rocket science.

[Craigjw]

 

26 minutes ago, psusi said:

They didn't used to have this problem.  They would float on top of whichever liquid was on top..

Well, they don't, they become submerged for what ever reason.  I'm not going to take a screenshot to prove this to you, you either accept it or not, which will not change what actually happens; that they become submerged.

26 minutes ago, psusi said:

Like I said several posts ago, you have a basin to catch the pwater under the generator instead of letting it fall down to the slicksters.  Or if you do it horizontally, you keep the pwater on one side of the room and the slicksters on the other.  It's not rocket science.

In one sentence you are wanting a heat differential and in the next you are describing things that prevent that from happening.

How is CO2 going to travel below the liquid? if you collect it at the side, then the CO2 is effectively walled off from travelling lower because of the layer of liquid, you'd need open areas at the side of the room for the gas to travel.  How much space do you need to collect liquid using a pump?  I'll tell you, 4 tiles, 2 for the steel pump and 2 for tiles either side to allow the collection of liquid.  How wide is a generator?  4 tiles, the same width as a pump to collect the liquid, leaving no space for gas to travel. 

I suppose you could use mesh tiles, but you still have the problem that you need a liquid sensor to activate the pump when there is sufficient liquid present, otherwise, you are using 240w to pump only grams of liquid, which means your power station is inefficient with the pumps sucking up 2.2kw of power on a nearly constant basis.

You could space each generator so that it takes up 5 spaces, but then your power station room can't have the full 7 generators in.  You could place generators vertically, but then your whole complex becomes unseasonably tall.

All these factors make an unreasonably complex, awkward and inefficient power station facility.

You should make what you preach and show me your proposal, then I will consider apologising.

[psusi]

3 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

How is CO2 going to travel below the liquid? if you collect it at the side, then the CO2 is effectively walled off from travelling lower because of the layer of liquid, you'd need open areas at the side of the room for the gas to travel.  How much space do you need to collect liquid using a pump?  I'll tell you, 4 tiles, 2 for the steel pump and 2 for tiles either side to allow the collection of liquid.  How wide is a generator?  4 tiles, the same width as a pump to collect the liquid, leaving no space for gas to travel. 

The side tiles can be airflow to allow CO2 to pass, and of course, you can leave more space to the side if you want.  I have no idea why you think the width of the generator matters at all.  Also a petrol gen is only 3 wide.

14 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

but you still have the problem that you need a liquid sensor to activate the pump when there is sufficient liquid present, otherwise, you are using 240w to pump only grams of liquid, which means your power station is inefficient with the pumps sucking up 2.2kw of power on a nearly constant basis.

I guess I never really thought about liquid pumps wasting power on small amounts of liquid.  It makes sense though.  I'm not sure how you get from 240w to 2.2 kw though.  You could use a timer to run the pump for 1 second every 10 or 12 to fix that.

16 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

You could space each generator so that it takes up 5 spaces, but then your power station room can't have the full 7 generators in.  You could place generators vertically, but then your whole complex becomes unseasonably tall.

7 generators?  Jesus that's a lot of power!  And CO2.  I was only planning on one. You need 15 slicksters to handle just one.

 

[KILLABUDZ]

24 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

I suppose you could use mesh tiles, but you still have the problem that you need a liquid sensor to activate the pump when there is sufficient liquid present,

If you play with mods the wall pumps and vents mod lets you build something like this.

[Craigjw]

7 generators is the maximum you can make before exceeding the room size.

My current base has 7 petrol generators running close to full time, with engies tune up present on each of them. As a backup, it has 7 Nat gas & 7 Hydrogen gens.  Before I had 10kg/s supply of petrol, the nat gas & hydrogen had to take up the slack. If you can't make a power facility with 7 petrol, 7 nat gas & 7 of any other type, then what's the point?

My math was really shoddy, it's 7*240, which is 1.68kw and not 2.2kw, which is what you'd need to have a pump under each of 7 generators.  This requires that 2 natural gas generators are on permanently to power the pumps. 

Clocks really aren't a reliable solution to this, liquid sensors are the best solution, practically. 

Clocks are just going to require faffing around, you set the clock to handle the low power requirement, then you start making steel, LOX & LH2, then you find the sumps are overflowing, then you change the clocks and later find out that the pumps are still overflowing during the offtime, then you have to change the automation to real timers, then you have a low power time and have to change the automation, again and before you know it, your spending all your time watching a power station & changing clocks/timers rather than playing the game.

7 generators would require about 13 ranches, this is too many really.  the only purpose of having the slicksters in there is to help minimize how much CO2 that will need to be filtered with a CO2 skimmer.  The oil & petrol produced is really not a significant amount compared to running 7 petrol generators full time with engies tune up present on them all.

I would thoroughly recommend venting the CO2 into space with doors rather than using skimmers to remove the CO2.  The noob trap is to have gas pumps to remove the CO2 from the power station into another room with CO2 skimmers in.

[psusi]

On 12/5/2019 at 5:37 AM, KILLABUDZ said:

Doubling resource efficiency seems exploitable. The more expensive the crop the better trade of time. Just producing twice as fast should be enough of a bonus alone, as its saving you construction mats and travel time of a farm 2x the size and can be enabled to quickly resolve shortages.

Dirt ( at least since they added the arbor trees ) and clay are abundant, as is space on the map.  Saved travel time from a smaller farm doesn't make up for the time it takes to apply the fertilizer.  Also you only have to build the farm tiles once, but you keep spending dirt and water making the fertilizer.  The only reason it's worth it is because it cuts the other costs of growing the crops in half.

On 12/5/2019 at 5:37 AM, KILLABUDZ said:

A row of mesh tiles on top of a row of normal tiles catches the liquid and holds it in the mesh tile and then im pretty sure the mesh tile exchanges heat with the liquid or at least the block under, also allowing you to suck it up with the single block wall pump if you have the mod installed or divert it into a pit.

That's what I was thinking.  It's only when the mesh tile holds a vacuum that it stops exchanging heat.

 

[KILLABUDZ]

6 hours ago, psusi said:

Dirt ( at least since they added the arbor trees ) and clay are abundant, as is space on the map.  Saved travel time from a smaller farm doesn't make up for the time it takes to apply the fertilizer.  Also you only have to build the farm tiles once, but you keep spending dirt and water making the fertilizer.  The only reason it's worth it is because it cuts the other costs of growing the crops in half.

Late game you can go for max efficiency or style. Early game resources are much more important including space, building a farm twice as large isnt always an option depending seed availability, and life support tends to be much more thrown together limiting longer travel distances. This is more so on inhospitable maps. So halving the grow time can be a huge benefit on its own, without considering consumable resources.
Even late game, producing enough reeds for insulation seems to be limited by pwater, 160kg to 80kg is enormous considering the positive output of each dupe using the bathroom is only 6.7kg x 10 dupes 67kg per cycle so it takes 24 dupes to support a single reed or only 12 if you use a farming station (if not recycling water 11.7kg), making it seem like from your very first bathroom reed you should use a farming station for them.

Hmmm while reading on this I saw this  "The Planter Box is early available after researching Basic Farming. It can grow Mealwood, Bristle Blossom, and Sleet Wheat. It does not allow Irrigation. "
But the Blossom requires 20kg pc water irrigation. Does this mean you get to harvest the plant without irrigation?

Also balm lillies are an infinite dirt source, along with dreckos make infinite phosphorus, meat, reed, flowers, and dirt.

I prefer to play "realistically" in games, even when it is suboptimal. This is why I dont build ranches that circumvent the critter cap etc, though I do use mods that I feel are not "cheaty".

[psusi]

46 minutes ago, KILLABUDZ said:

Even late game, producing enough reeds for insulation seems to be limited by pwater, 160kg to 80kg is enormous considering the positive output of each dupe using the bathroom is only 6.7kg x 10 dupes 67kg per cycle so it takes 24 dupes to support a single reed or only 12 if you use a farming station (if not recycling water 11.7kg), making it seem like from your very first bathroom reed you should use a farming station for them.

That's why you don't grow reeds; ranch drakeos instead.

47 minutes ago, KILLABUDZ said:

Hmmm while reading on this I saw this  "The Planter Box is early available after researching Basic Farming. It can grow Mealwood, Bristle Blossom, and Sleet Wheat. It does not allow Irrigation. "
But the Blossom requires 20kg pc water irrigation. Does this mean you get to harvest the plant without irrigation?

No, it means your dupes have to get water from a pitcher pump and deliver it by hand.

 

[KILLABUDZ]

4 minutes ago, psusi said:

No, it means your dupes have to get water from a pitcher pump and deliver it by hand.

Irrigation and automated irrigation are not the same thing.
" Planter Box

The Planter Box is early available after researching Basic Farming. It can grow Mealwood, Bristle Blossom, and Sleet Wheat. It does not allow Irrigation.

Farm Tile

The Farm Tile is available after researching Meal Preparation. It can grow Mealwood, Bristle Blossom, Sleet Wheat, Pincha Pepper and Wheezewort. It allows fertilization and manual irrigation. "

This must just be really badly written then, which is part of what makes this game difficult is how hard it is to get accurate info.
"It does not allow Irrigation."
" It allows fertilization and manual irrigation. "

 

9 minutes ago, psusi said:

That's why you don't grow reeds; ranch drakeos instead.

Unless you resort to ranching methods I dont like, from what I have read a huge reed farm is going to be less laggy than an equivalent producing drecko farm, and probably use about the same amount of dupe time per unit produced. Do you have a source for the maths and testing of these methods against each other?