Yet Another Another Borg Cube...

[mathmanican]

Using flaking, this turned 9000kg of 27C oxygen into liquid oxygen in less than 1/10th of a cycle.  Um....... Should I say more.....  (um. ok, it's not a cube?)

Ok. I'll say a bit more. So the borg cube was bad. I don't know what to call this.  You can pick the temp of the surrounding environment by picking the solid tile you wish to flake. Thanks to @kbn's little tidbit about how automatic dispensers will reload solid tiles with debris, the major hurdle I saw with solid flaking is solved. And yes @beowulf2010, the mad scientists are laughing, though the volume of that laugh is now deafening.  

Every time the temp of the hydrogen (behind the automatic dispenser) rises 3K above the solid oxygen's melting level, the temp resets to basically 3K above hydrogen's condensation level (specifically -255.15C).The more mass of hydrogen, the better.  I'm at 9999kg hydrogen, but I'll drop to 2000kg in survival. Liquid oxygen flakes off, falls into the mesh tile, solidifies, gets reinserted back into the tile by the dispenser, and then the cycle repeats. You get a constant stream of hydrogen at just above freezing levels....

You can change the solid tile to whatever you want. Change it to ice, and you'll get temps near, 0C. Change to petro, and you'll be near -40C.  The design above is not yet optimzed, and has some fatal flaws that can be designed around.  If the temp of the solid oxygen rises to much (within 3K of melting), then flaking stops, and eventually eveything will melt (nothing we can't design around).  If the heat to the left is too much to prevent the hydrogen from ever cooling the oxygen in the mesh tile, then other problems arise (cap off the top 2 metal tiles with insulated tiles, and remove a conveyor bridge heading left).  It might not convert 9000kg of oxygen in 1/10th of a cycle anymore, but I can probably do with a tad bit less cooling (maybe 1/4th of cycle is enough). I don't think I can send rockets out fast enough to keep up with this.... 

If you want to play with this and optimize it, break it, find flaws, etc., feel free to share. 

UPDATE:  This won't work without manually reloading the solid oxygen tile (because it is the only solid with mass max under 5kg).  All other solids should be fine.  Here is GIF of the basic setup using methane. 

Spoiler

 

[Zarquan]

I was experimenting with the dispenser replenishing, closed the game, came back, and someone made me an obelisk or something.  This goes from about half way down the map all the way to space.  It didn't overwrite existing solid tiles.  I should have read kbn's post more closely.  Fortunately, it missed all my experiments.

I think we have to regulate the mass with a weight plate.  If we keep it well below the mass where it fails to combine, we should be good.  Except using weight plates on solid tiles is inconsistent.  Sometimes it doesn't detect the tile.

[Manarz]

Its just genious.
Im still not sure i get eveything right with this cooling method, but as far as i understand it depends on the low freezing point of hydrogen.
Can u scale it up with Supercoolant? In theory Supercoolant has a freezing point... Can we produce LH with it?

[Zarquan]

2 minutes ago, Manarz said:

Its just genious.
Im still not sure i get eveything right with this cooling method, but as far as i understand it depends on the low freezing point of hydrogen.
Can u scale it up with Supercoolant? In theory Supercoolant has a freezing point... Can we produce LH with it?

I believe it is impossible to obtain solid supercoolant.  Even if you cool it to -273.1 C, it won't solidify. 

Also, you need a gas to cause flaking.  Liquid oxygen is the best you can do, as hydrogen is the only gas that is gas when oxygen is solid.

[mathmanican]

1 minute ago, Manarz said:

Can u scale it up with Supercoolant? In theory Supercoolant has a freezing point... Can we produce LH with it?

Solid flaking requires a solid parent and a gas donor. They produce a liquid child, which refreezes into a 5kg chunk that you insert back into the parent (canibalism) with the dispenser. The child always appears on the side of the gas donor. If the parent gets too close to melting point, things top.  So you can use gas on the other side of the parent to keep the parent cold enough (if needed).

More details can be found here (check solid parent flaking for all the gory stuff) and a simple hydrogen/ice combo found here before the gory details appeared. 

 

[Zarquan]

I can't seem to get solid oxygen tiles to recombine.  Was there a trick to that?  What was your solid oxygen mass?  And this is consistently never working, not a probability thing. 

Also, automatic dispensers are annoying power-wise.  They constantly use power, even when disabled my automation.

[Prince Mandor]

Dispensers needs power only to keep something. without power they just drop content instantly. So, no need to power this one

[Zarquan]

2 minutes ago, Prince Mandor said:

Dispensers needs power only to keep something. without power they just drop content instantly. So, no need to power this one

Huh, I never tried not powering them.  That's silly.

[Prince Mandor]

Without power it is just metal tube -- everything you put in one end falls out from another end

You need power to block this hypothetical tube and to control it with logical signals

[mathmanican]

9 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I can't seem to get solid oxygen tiles to recombine

This mechanic needs more testing. I think the combining has to do with max mass (a stat you can see on oni-db.com thanks to @f4rtux). Maybe max mass plus 200. For abysallite this is 3200+200=3400. For oxygen this is 1+200. I don't have all details figured out yet. I can't sleep I'm so excited....

UPDATE: It's just max mass.  Things reload provided you stay UNDER mass max.  For ice this is 1100, so you can reload any tile with the flaked off child debri provided the tile starts with a mass under mass max. It's that simple. 

[Zarquan]

Wow, max mass of 1 kg.  I can work with that information.  Thanks!

[mathmanican]

I think I can massively increase the cooling power and make solid oxygen by using mcg of chlorine on the top cell of dispenser. More details tomorrow.

[Manarz]

i did some quick testing with the stacking of tiles. this mechanic is also insane

The Abysallite tiles stacked up each only have a mass of 1kg. u can build a free insulation wall with minimal materials. You only need to pass the stack threshhold for the bottom most tile. The resulting column pierces everything in its way upwards without disturbances. Why did noone tell me about this earlier!?

Is someone keeping a list with all the things we discover but dont fully analyze yet? They all deserve their own thread.

 

[mathmanican]

12 minutes ago, Manarz said:

Is someone keeping a list with all the things we discover but dont fully analyze yet? They all deserve their own thread.

Sounds like you found your first thread to start. 

You found a new way to make natural tiles. Pip farmers will be very happy.

[Zarquan]

I'm confused.  Is max mass measured in kg?  Because this just happened:

  

[mathmanican]

7 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

I'm confused.  Is max mass measured in kg?  Because this just happened:

Looks to me like your donor hydrogen just solidified a lot of gas and completely skipped the liquid phase. You froze your asteroid in one tick. doomsday device as you said earlier to me.

Sometimes I get buried objects and sometimes things combine. Not sure details yet. Unfortunately I'm on my phone in bed trying unsuccessfully to sleep.  Too much brain activity.

[Tobruk]

3 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I was experimenting with the dispenser replenishing, closed the game, came back, and someone made me an obelisk or something.

That happens if you put more than 3200 kg of stuff into a tile with the dispenser.

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, Tobruk said:

That happens if you put more than 3200 kg of stuff into a tile with the dispenser.

Interestingly, I have now > 10'000t of Regolith on a tile (via dispenser) and nothing happend. (Loaded several times.) Is there perhaps a requirement that there may not be tiles left and right of it or are there other conditions?

[mathmanican]

11 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

are there other conditions?

Not sure yet. I did just notice that regolith, sand, snow, crushed ice, and crushed rock all have a min horizontal flow variable. They are the only solids with this variable and they fall too when no tile is below them. I'm guessing this variable is connected.

[Tobruk]

33 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

min horizontal flow variable

You mean the overflow tile can move upwards only so far, and other solids can travel infinitely high?

EDIT: Ooops, sorry. You meant horizontal, so my "upwards" interpretation is incorrect. I've no clue now.

[mathmanican]

1 hour ago, Tobruk said:

You meant horizontal

Yep. I did mean "horizontal."  Here is a snapshot from https://oni-db.com/details/regolith. 

In particular, all the solids that fall when nothing is under them have this "Min. Horizontal Flow" variable set at 50 (last item).  My best guess is that the devs didn't want to create another variable (as this variable is used for liquids), and basically this variable is a flag that tells the program this solid is special. The name makes no sense at all, so for now I'll just treat it as a binary flag (as it either is there with value 50, or nonexistant).

@Zarquan, and everyone else following, the liquid oxygen version of this new doomsday device will not work.  My bad.  The max mass of 1 will prevent flaking. You can build a tile over and over again, but at that point @Zarquan's approach using liquid flaking will be much better. So fo r all your liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen needs, that liquid flaking freezer has you covered. 

However, you can use methane and every other solid quite nicely. So this works perfectly in a crude->NG boiler for freezing sour gas (after you have flaked the crude and petro at basically zero cost).  You also can pick the temp you want by choosing any solid (other than oxygen with max mass 1, and hydrogen because no cooler gas). All other solids have a max mass that will enable soild flaking (checked them all), followed by reloading,  at ridiculous rates. I have only practiced reloading and cooling stuff with a few solids, but the mass max variable seems to be the key variable (scrap the +200 statement). 

A key issue on reloading is that you must stay BELOW the max mass threshold. With regolith, any value that takes the tile above 1000 will be embeded in the tile.  For Ice, max mass is 1100. If you have 1000kg of ice, and try to reload exactly 100kg, it becomes embeded instead.  If you instead try to reload 99.9kg, then it refills the tile. For methane, the value is 750.  Here I reloaded methane up to 749.9. Anything higher, and you get the "buried object" notification.

So, you build a contraption like the one that began this post, and just make sure the solid block you begin with has a melting temp near what you want, and mass close to, but not exceeding, the max mass of the material.  Then you can use the contraption basically forever. This GIF shows the basic idea. 

Now I just need to optimize it.  @HeatEngine gives some keys to optimization over here. For this device, I think a layer of oxygen gas two tiles wide along the bottom will do quite nicely (gotta play with it more though first, as I don't want to freeze the oxygen, but liquefying should not be a problem).

 

[mathmanican]

This took about 1 cycle to do.  I started with 9999kg/tile 27C chlorine up top. Since conduction works based off percentages, this thing will work off percentages too. I've decided to just go with 3 hydrogen filled tiles next to the methane tile on the left.  On the right, the two extra hydrogen blobs are a spot for adding additional cooling should it ever be needed.  As long as the gas on the left never gets close to methane's freezing point, they won't be needed.  So the only thing that this needs extra power for is if I want to condense sour gas or natural gas. 

[mathmanican]

This device fails if any of the following occur:

1. The solid parent gets above 3K below the melting temp of the parent.
2. The hydrogen gas cannot get 3K above the melting temp of the parent.. (It doesn't fail persay, but the temp reset won't happen till this occurs). 

We can solve this in two ways. 

• Provide a heat source to the hydrogen room IF it climbs above ParentMelting -3K, and stays there for too long (add a filter to automation). 
• Put a cold course (aquatuner) on the nonflaking side of the solid parent, and only enable the cold source if that side gets too warm (which will almost never happen in most scenarios).
• When trying to liquefy sour gas, you'll need to maintain a 6K delta between the solid methane parent and hydrogen gas donor. This only need turn on once the hydrogen gas warms too much that it no longer effectively cools the sour gas.  

ONI Engineering Prinple:  If hydrogen gets too warm to effectively cool sour gas, then heat it up a tad bit more.  The extra heat will help liquefy your sour gas, and possibly even freeze the resulting methane.  If something is too hot to cool other stuff, then make it hotter.