How to obtain plastic most easily?

[MrDo]

 

 

 

[Zarquan]

There are two methods to get plastic:

1. Polymer press
2. Glossy Dreckos.

Polymer press is the fastest way to get plastic.  All you need to do is get to the oil biome (which doesn't take too long) and build a gold amalgam pump in the oil, pipe it to a refinery, pipe the outputs to a polymer press, and you are pretty much done.  Though the polymer presses should be in water because they generate A LOT of heat and  a tiny amount of steam.  You probably want atmosuits to do this, or you may end up with burnt duplicants who keep having to run out of the room for air, but it is not strictly speaking necessary.

Glossy dreckos are the other solution.  These require ranchers and some know how.  You get glossy dreckos by feeding regular dreckos mealwood.  However, dreckos will only grow plastic when they are in a hydrogen atmosphere, so that is a bit tricky to get right.  You also need to remove eggs from the drecko ranches quickly or else they will become cramped and stop laying eggs.  There are plenty of posts about ranching, and it hasn't changed significantly in a long time.

I recommend the first option for newer players who need plastic fast and easy.

[Lurve]

How much plastic, and what's easy?

1) Make a drecko stable out of your mealwood farm. Shave any glossies that pop out. Seal the ceiling and you'll probably get some H2 there so you'll get more shears out of each drecko, if not, meh.

Productivity: Low. Enough plastic for turbines.
Ease: High. You already have a mealwood farm, just close it in and add scissors.
Time: High. Consider the drecko. He is in no hurry to reach the grooming station. He is already fabulous.

2) Shove a plastic extruder next to your refinery. Let it cook itself with its steam, then rebuild it if you need more.

Productivity: High As much as your existing cooling infrastructure can handle.
Ease: Low. You need to already be doing oil stuff.
Time: Low. Plastic starts coming immediately.

3) Do the slightest amount of either of the above to discover the material, and wait for more to plop out of the welfare pod.

Productivity: Three puft eggs and a bluff briar seed.
Ease: Maximum laziness.
Time: When the RNG deigns to smile upon you, i.e. the cycle after you give up and start doing it the hard way.

[meepmoop]

1, Glossy dreko ranching - smaller amounts, dupe time required, less energy/resources expensive (heat included)

2. Polymer press - large amounts, no dupe time required, more ersource expensive (big heat generation, power and petroleum)

[oosyrag]

If you have trouble managing a mixed atmosphere room for dreckos, the easy way is to make two single atmosphere rooms. Oxygen only, with food, for breeding. Move eggs to a hydrogen only room for shearing. The glossy dreckos can be sheared quite a few times before starving, and they will be replenished by the happy breeder drecko. 

If you have trouble setting up single atmosphere rooms or managing/automating egg movement, then try polymer press and petroleum, but I'd consider that harder if you haven't done it before. Dreckos might take more cycles to set up though, so start early.

[Zarquan]

2 hours ago, meepmoop said:

2. Polymer press - large amounts, no dupe time required, more ersource expensive (big heat generation, power and petroleum)

The refinery takes dupe time.  Unless he has a crude oil -> petroleum boiler, but if he had that, I doubt he would ask this question.

2 hours ago, Lurve said:

2) Shove a plastic extruder next to your refinery. Let it cook itself with its steam, then rebuild it if you need more.

Productivity: High As much as your existing cooling infrastructure can handle.
Ease: Low. You need to already be doing oil stuff.
Time: Low. Plastic starts coming immediately.

I would have to disagree with you on your option 2 being hard.  If you put around 50 kg/tile water on your polymer presses, they will run for many cycles before it starts breaking.  It doesn't take that much to get to the oil biome.

[KILLABUDZ]

Make your first SPOM also a ranch to get started quickly.

Dupes who snore dont care about light btw.

[meepmoop]

5 hours ago, Zarquan said:

The refinery takes dupe time.  Unless he has a crude oil -> petroleum boiler, but if he had that, I doubt he would ask this question.

I forgot there is even oil refinery in the game. it becomes a redundant building once you learn how to build boilers.

[psusi]

2 hours ago, meepmoop said:

I forgot there is even oil refinery in the game. it becomes a redundant building once you learn how to build boilers.

One of these days I plan on building one of those; I just have yet to need more petrol than a simple refinery can produce.

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, meepmoop said:

I forgot there is even oil refinery in the game. it becomes a redundant building once you learn how to build boilers.

I think of petroleum boilers as post-steel because often times my pump can easily get to above 125 C if the crude oil flow gets interrupted. And I believe steel is post-oil because to make a significant amount of steel, I want crude oil or petroleum as coolant or I risk either overheating my water source or breaking pipes.  Since I need for oil anyway, I might as well make some plastic and have a steam turbine to cool the coolant.  Therefore, I almost always build a oil refinery early to get plastic.

[meepmoop]

12 hours ago, psusi said:

One of these days I plan on building one of those; I just have yet to need more petrol than a simple refinery can produce.

Start experimenting with something as simple as the heart of design. You may have some failures at the start but after you learn from that you could do alternations until you make a working design of your own.

You can get magma from the core if it is not frozen.

12 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I think of petroleum boilers as post-steel because often times my pump can easily get to above 125 C if the crude oil flow gets interrupted. And I believe steel is post-oil because to make a significant amount of steel, I want crude oil or petroleum as coolant or I risk either overheating my water source or breaking pipes.  Since I need for oil anyway, I might as well make some plastic and have a steam turbine to cool the coolant.  Therefore, I almost always build a oil refinery early to get plastic.

Yes this is also a way of going around things. There are a lot of ways to approach things in oni.

The first metal refinery I set up, I do not use the petroleum loop with the turbine, instead I just dump the heat into a water source. or better yet, if the map has normal oil biome I use the oil as a heat dump. I can make hundreds of tons of steel until the oil actually gets to very high temperatures. only when I create the boiler I destroy it and make a new metal refinery with a petroleum loop and a turbine to cool it off.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 1/17/2020 at 11:57 AM, Lurve said:

 Consider the drecko. He is in no hurry to reach the grooming station. He is already fabulous.

OK, that was an awesome remark. Love it. =^.^=

[Crimsontide]

You can pretty much automate the glossy drekko stable, and can produce a TON of plastics from them if you want for almost nothing.

Use pips to plant naturally growing mealwood.  Once you have your 6 or so glossy drekkos stop grooming them.  They'll eat far less (your 9 natural mealwood plants will be more than enough), it doesn't affect scale growth rates, and the only duplicant time will be spend harvesting them.  With 12 glossy drekkos (2 stables of 6) you'll have FAR more plastic than you need (I use plastic everywhere and never use a polymer press) and a steady supply of phosphorite, for almost no duplicant time, and no resource inputs.