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Some Newbie Questions


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Heya - I'm really enjoying the game so far and I've made it almost to 400 cycles in my current game.  But, I have some questions

* How should I have dealt with an abyssalite gap to the magma ?  Basically, there's a gap and it's first boiled the crude to petroleum and then to sour gas.  I've dealt with it by using 2 steam turbines and a lot of faffing about right now, but it's a horrible mess of sour gas, liquid lead and suchlike down there.   Is there a maximum temperature that Atmo suits can handle?

* When, if ever, should I remove the hatch farms - are there any better sources of lime to make Steel?  (I have the calories, I was just keeping them around for the lime - it's just that as it stands I think I'm using a lot of valuable building material to get a tiny amount of lime).

* Can I just remove the Gravitas building and contents - it's kind of in the way, but are there reasons to keep it?


* Space scanning - if my network quality is '50%' - how much warning time am I getting before I need to close the bunker doors?  I have a setup as in this guide - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1836883700 - which is great, but I don't know how long I should wait before closing the bunker doors (as it is, I have set it for a few seconds, which means I'm losing a lot of solar energy).

* I'm not sure I actually understand what tempshift plates actually do - I've been throwing them into designs as people always seem to want them but I don't really understand why say diamond is better than granite - they both shift temperature around.  Does it remove the clamping effect?  Is constructing them in a checkerboard fashion equally good?  And quite probably related is the next question ...

* How do I create liquid hydrogen ?  My current setup seems to be creating some, but I keep getting large solid lumps of it in the tank.  The problem I seem to have is that aquatuners cool by 14 degrees - there's no way to say "please only cool by 3".  Would some sort of buffer work?  I'm thinking aquatuner -> cools metal tiles with radiant pipes -> more radiant pipes run through the metal tiles through the hydrogen tank -- would this work and help even out the temperature?  (And where do I put the automation?)
 

 

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When you are exploring the fog acts as a preservative so if you check for breaks In the abyssalite as you explore you can plug them with insulated tiles before everything gets cooked.

i think Atmo suits can handle up to like 700c ish then scalding occurs.

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8 hours ago, BigCalm said:

How should I have dealt with an abyssalite gap to the magma ?

There's lots of different ways. If you're wanting to stop the heat, then build a couple of insulated tiles in the gap.  Ceramic is best, but Igneous will work for a while if its two or three tiles deep.

8 hours ago, BigCalm said:

 Is there a maximum temperature that Atmo suits can handle?

I'm not currently sure.  I know there was a while where atmo suits would melt into their base metal on contact with magma, but I haven't tried in forever so I'm not sure if that's still a thing.

8 hours ago, BigCalm said:

When, if ever, should I remove the hatch farms - are there any better sources of lime to make Steel?

Hatch farms are great for meat and for coal.  Egg shells aren't that great for lime, but every bit helps.  The molts from the crabs are decent, as are "fossils" found in  the oil biome.  So, really, its up to you.

9 hours ago, BigCalm said:

Can I just remove the Gravitas building and contents

Some you can destroy, some you cant. There's a mod out there that lets you destroy anything.  But yes, I agree: They definitely CAN be in the way and obnoxiously placed.

9 hours ago, BigCalm said:

I'm not sure I actually understand what tempshift plates actually do

Tempshift plates encourage thermal transfer in the area around the tempshift plate.  Basically the circle of tiles immediately around the tempshift plate will transfer their thermal energy at a higher rate.  Sometimes this can have unexpected consequences.  For example, insulation thermal calculations use the minimum transfer rate between the insulation and whatever they're transferring energy with.  Tempshift plates use the log average instead of minimum -- so if a tempshift plate is touching an insulated tiles, it can cause thermal energy to transfer to/from the insulated tile.  Another use for tempshift plates is as a heat sink.  For example, a granite tempshift plate has 800kg of granite while a granite tile is only 200kg.  This means you can store 4 times more thermal energy in a granite tempshift plate than you can in a tile.  This can be useful when you're wanting to slow down temperature fluctuations.  If you're working with colder materials, you can build tempshift plates out of dirt.  For example, I often use a pool of water as a thermal sink.  An aquatuner loop cools it down, and another loop runs through with whatever I'm pulling heat out of.  If I build a pool and fill it with dirt tempshift plates, then each square has the mass of water AND the mass of dirt as a thermal sink, so it takes a lot more energy to raise the temperature.

9 hours ago, BigCalm said:

How do I create liquid hydrogen ?

This is both simple and difficult.  The biggest hurdle will be working with temperatures that low.  You can't use water as a coolant in your loop, for example, because it will freeze solid and break your pipes.  Your best choice for coolant is supercoolant.  Alternatively you can use liquid hydrogen, but there's the problem that you first have to MAKE liquid hydrogen...  You can also use liquid oxygen, which you can make using gaseous hydrogen and a thermo regulator -- but that's really finicky and you will definitely break pipes.  However, if you have super coolant, its very simple: Run a loop of supercoolant through your aquatuner and into a chamber of hydrogen and just keep running it until the hydrogen liquifies.

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19 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Another use for tempshift plates is as a heat sink.  For example, a granite tempshift plate has 800kg of granite while a granite tile is only 200kg.  This means you can store 4 times more thermal energy in a granite tempshift plate than you can in a tile.

Not really. For thermal transfer they are considered buildings, and their mass is reduced to 1/5. So they act like 160kg of granite.

Basicly they act as a 3x3 building. If they overlap with tiles, shiftplates are considered entombed, and they have a huge thermal transfer boots with those tiles. That's why they transfer heat relatively too well with insulated tiles. Or even neutronium.

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9 minutes ago, TheMule said:

Not really. For thermal transfer they are considered buildings, and their mass is reduced to 1/5. So they act like 160kg of granite.

How was this determined?  Or, more specifically, when was this changed?  I've used dirt tempshift plates for their thermal inertia since they first introduced thermal physics.  Treating a tempshift plate as 800kg of material always works out when I do the math for how much energy they can store.  They also transfer heat with the log average of the tempshift plate's conductivity and the conductivity of whatever they're transferring with, which is why you see them passing heat to insulated tiles.

If I'm wrong, that's fine, but I'd like to know where you came up with your numbers, please.

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4 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

How was this determined?  Or, more specifically, when was this changed?  I've used dirt tempshift plates for their thermal inertia since they first introduced thermal physics.  Treating a tempshift plate as 800kg of material always works out when I do the math for how much energy they can store.  They also transfer heat with the log average of the tempshift plate's conductivity and the conductivity of whatever they're transferring with, which is why you see them passing heat to insulated tiles.

If I'm wrong, that's fine, but I'd like to know where you came up with your numbers, please.

It was determined by tests in sandbox made by me, but you can find old posts in these forums about them. Try it yourself, all it takes is a tile of water at 0C, build a shiftplate next to it (in sandbox mode they're all built at 20C) and see how much the temperature of the water changes.

Here's a forum post, referring to both the mechanisms (mass reduction and entombed transfer boost) I mentioned:

In my tests, when huge amounts of heat were involved, TC was completely irrelevant. Tranferred heat was proportional to the SHC of the material. In some conditions, plastic was the winner (not always tho).

The smaller the heat involved, the more TC counted, to the point that for transfering heat from gasses (at "normal" pressure), SHC was irrelevant, TC was king. Basicly I'd use dirt to even out temperature in a pool of water, diamond for evening out temperature in a steam chamber, (unless we're talking 1000kg/tile of steam of course).

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On 3/30/2020 at 5:22 PM, BigCalm said:

* How should I have dealt with an abyssalite gap to the magma ? 

As a temporary measure, use one or better two layers of insulated tiles of any material. For a longer-term fix, use tile-vacuum-tile insulation (can be done with regular tiles, at least for the outer layer) and make sure to use materials that have a higher melting point than the magma for all tiles in direct contact with it.

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10 hours ago, Gurgel said:

As a temporary measure, use one or better two layers of insulated tiles of any material. For a longer-term fix, use tile-vacuum-tile insulation (can be done with regular tiles, at least for the outer layer) and make sure to use materials that have a higher melting point than the magma for all tiles in direct contact with it.

This isn’t necessary if you have two tiles thick of insulated tiles next to each other heat is almost entirely stopped to the point that something hot like a volcano won’t be noticed at all.

the mechanics of having double thick insulated tiles even if granite provide better insulating properties than a one thick wall of insulation insulated tiles.

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12 hours ago, BT_20 said:

This isn’t necessary if you have two tiles thick of insulated tiles next to each other heat is almost entirely stopped to the point that something hot like a volcano won’t be noticed at all.

the mechanics of having double thick insulated tiles even if granite provide better insulating properties than a one thick wall of insulation insulated tiles.

That was not my point. The point is that for a vaccum insulation, you need less material on the hot side. Long-term, even insulated tiles in contact with magma will heat up and melt if not made from the right material. For magma, you need Ceramic or Obsidian. Depending on application, you can safe material by using vaccum-insulation. Of course, if you just need to plug a hole a few tiles wide, just use Ceramic or Obsidian insulated tiles for the inner layer and any other insulated tile for the outer layer. But if you make, say, a large lava-tank, using vaccum insulation may pay of nicely in material saved.

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Thanks for all the advice here - much appreciated - I've finished the game! (breached the temporal tear / built a monument).

Still not sure what Tempshift plates actually do - do they remove the 1 degree clamping effect?  I solved the liquid hydrogen tank basically by routing the cooling the other way around (coldest at top, warmest just as it's exiting the tank), and adding one diamond tempshift plate in there and gradually tweaking the temperature down by a degree at a time.

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10 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

They encourage thermal transfer around them.

To expand a bit, tempshift plates transfer thermal energy easily between all 9 tiles that it "occupies" (the one you build it in and the 8 surrounding it) in an attempt to equalize the temperature of all 9 tiles. 

Similar to radiant pipes, they ignore some of the normal rules of thermal transfers. They also ignore (severely reduce?) the insulation effect, so keep them a space away from insulated tiles. 

Most of the time, granite is "good enough" for tempshift plates, but refined metal (especially aluminum) and diamonds are amazing. 

If you need to melt ice fast, try building tempshift plates out of ice. 

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