Prioritize regolith as filtration medium?

[ChrisPBacon000]

Just curious if anyone know a way of forcing deodorizers and water sieves to use regolith rather than sand as their filtration medium ?

I'd like to save sand to feed hatches or make glass, and since regolith is renewable it is ideal if my dupes grab regolith, but I don't know how to force them. 

Could I build storage near my water sieves and fill it with regolith ?  Would dupes use the closest resource to the sieve?

[Craigjw]

I make a room with storage boxes in, set them to store only sand with high-ish prority, then collect all sand and then close the doors, sealing away any access from sand, forcing dupes to use regolith.

You can set door access so that only certain dupes can access the storage, these dupes will only be allowed to perform storage/tidy tasks, that way, they won't go filling up stuff with sand.

A sweeper and loader can be used to transport the sand to the glass factory from storage if you like.

Restricting access to cooled down regolith is another story entirely though.

I once left the door to the sand room open by accident and after a few hundred cycles, discovered that I had no sand left at all to build window tiles with

[KILLABUDZ]

You can go through the regolith > igneous > sand route.

But yeah, to keep sand you are probably best to store it in an area with access restrictions and ensure regolith is stockpiled close to where it needs to be.

[ChrisPBacon000]

I think a storage bin full of regolith with a sweeper will be the best solution. If I put super low priority on the swivel that should mean the sweeper does the task most of the time. Retrofitting the base to seal off the water sieves is going to be a pain though. 

And yes... Storing 20 tonnes of 300°C regolith may be a temperature disaster. One problem at a time I guess

[Craigjw]

I don't think you have grasped what I'm trying to suggest.

You make a room with storage bins in and 1 door for access.  The storage bins contain sand only.  The door allows access to only certain dupes, who only have storage/tidy task priorities.  The dupes will be able to store sand in this room and no one else can access it, because you have restricted door access.

This is a super simple solution and I have used it many times in the past, with success.

Sealing away your water sieves isn't a solution, but rather just a hindrance.  What if you make more water seives? what about the dozen or more air filters scattered randomly about the map?

For regolith, i have a cooling thing, basically a big tank of water cooled by aquatuners.  The storage boxes have sweep only and set to regolith, which is then loaded into the cooler thing.  I set a sweep command on fresh regolith, which gets sent to the cooler and depositted at a normal temperature.  If the cooled regolith is just dropped into a pile on the floor, when an air filter or sieve requires regolith, they tend to go to the pile of regolith that is cool because it's closer than going into space.

If you don't want to have a single dupe on storage/tidy only tasks, then just set all storage to priority 8 and set all dupes to storage only.  After a few cycles, when you have enough sand, reset the dupe priorities, but don't forget to lock the door afterwards, which is what I failed to do.

This is how you store Sand so that dupes are forced to use regolith in air filters and water sieves. However, as I said early, I broke it and lost all my sand, however before this incident all but one of the bins was full of sand and dupes were using the regolith that I was cooling.

You can add a loader into this room, which will send sand to your glass forge.  The conveyor shute comes from a loader next to a rock crusher to top up the sand.

There is absolutely no need to seal of air filters and water sieves, this would be anti-productive.

This is my cooling thing, it never got completed, as I am in the process of upgrading it, I just need to add a few more aquatuners and load it with super coolant.  When completed, this will be the Lagmaster 9000, as opposed to it's predecessor, the Lagmaster 1000. 

[ChrisPBacon000]

I got what you were saying. I gave it a shot, spent a cycle sweeping up sand.  I have 4 of my less skilled dupes on high priority for life support tasks, but they don't have permission to go in the sand room. I'm cooking about 40 t if regolith near the base for them to go get instead, and it seems to be working. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion!

[psusi]

13 hours ago, KILLABUDZ said:

But yeah, to keep sand you are probably best to store it in an area with access restrictions and ensure regolith is stockpiled close to where it needs to be.

Storing some close doesn't help since dupes look for things closest to where they happen to be when they take the job, not closest to where the delivery is.  So even though there is sand right next to the water sieve, if they happen to be on the surface when they take the job, they will grab some hot regolith and use that instead of the sand.

 

[bobucles]

Dupes are gonna dupe. You can never truly force them to do something, they'll always find a way to mess things up. What you can do is remove duplicants from the equation entirely. Lock them out of the room, and then fill the machines using an autosweeper. You can try dropping regolith into the top of the room using an automatic dispenser, or seal the room and deliver items using a conveyor network.

[KILLABUDZ]

7 hours ago, psusi said:

Storing some close doesn't help since dupes look for things closest to where they happen to be when they take the job, not closest to where the delivery is.  So even though there is sand right next to the water sieve, if they happen to be on the surface when they take the job, they will grab some hot regolith and use that instead of the sand.

 

Wutface. We just talked about using doors for restrictions. On one side of a door is sand. On the other side of the door is regolith. Almost all dupes arent allowed to go through the door. On the side with the regolith you have a bunch of things they need to do with regolith available. Dont allow dupes assigned to supply tasks to breach the surface if you are so worried about hot regolith. Prioritise you dupes correctly and use door restrictions correctly to stop people traveling where you dont want them. Keep one below x level and one above that, or one on the left side and one on the right. I dont see why you would be mass mining regolith before you have access to shipping, in which case it becomes even easier to sequester mats. If there is only storage of regolith accessible from where the task is, because dupe must have access to task to get the errand, they must have access to regolith, and if you have done your door restrictions right, they cant access any hot regolith or sand at all, unless a dupe has dropped some on their way through the area that the regolith supply dupe can access.

[Craigjw]

If you have an autosweeper to deliver the regolith, there is very little point in sealing off any room to prevent dupes from refilling it.

You can also set the receptacle thing to use manually, which also can help.

I would agree though, if a dupe is on the surface and has a job to fill something, they will go to the nearest pile, this is not easy to manage.  My solution was to only allow builder dupes access to space, preventing this happening.

When I need a stockpile of regolith, I set some boxes to high priority at my Lagmaster 9000™ and allow access to space for tidy/storage dupes, then do a few sweep commands on them 20t piles and wait a while, then reset it when it's done.  The Lagmaster 9000™ takes all hot stuff and cools it nicely.

However, due to the Lagmaster 9000™ being very laggy and also jet packs being very laggy, my computer melts and I get probably 2spf (seconds per frame) performance!

[0xFADE]

It is rather easy. You use automation. Deliver regolith only to a bin and use automation to deliver from there to whatever low priority building. 

[psusi]

26 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

It is rather easy. You use automation. Deliver regolith only to a bin and use automation to deliver from there to whatever low priority building. 

If dupes can also deliver though they will sometimes decide to do so even though the sweeper is closer and the dupes may deliver the wrong thing.

[Craigjw]

This is a very small edge case, a single batch of hot regolith every once in a while isn't going to have the same impact as having a dupe constantly supply hot regolith to a seive.  I've had my seives receive hot regolith for perhaps 50-100 cycles before i fixed the issue and nothing really happened, apart from the air getting a bit toasty (80-90c)  and nothing broke, as it was all made from gold.

I fixed the issue by building the Lagmaster 1000™ and later the Lagmaster 9000™

[0xFADE]

On 12/13/2019 at 8:45 PM, psusi said:

If dupes can also deliver though they will sometimes decide to do so even though the sweeper is closer and the dupes may deliver the wrong thing.

That is why I said low priority. Like 1.  The arms will deliver to it but the dupes won’t unless you’ve got everything in the base done and then congratulations.