number of rockets

[darknotezero]

So in my current game I have two rockets, and I'm very tempted to set up a third. This is likely going to tax my power grid reserves (that already is somewhat strained when my natural gas geyser goes dormant, my primary power source) and current fuel supply (i've only just finished researching LOX/LHydrogen and am only now setting up something to make them, so i'm currently doing everything with Petroleum and Oxylite).

So I thought I'd get a broad opinion from this lovely community regarding overall rocket guidance - how many do you have in your mid-late game colony? How do you split up their mission objectives? How do you manage their fuel and infrastructure demands?

[SharraShimada]

2 rockets should be no problem. 3 rockets may, but then, consider a fourth one. If you have access to a planet with methan, coal or other fuels, and you can reach it with petroleum-engines, your problems are solved. You can support your third rockets needs with the stuff you bring back from space with the fourth one. Petroleum is not that power consuming to produce, neither is a steady amount of oxylite.

[TheMule]

You can place a 9x3 diamond box right under the rocket  (8x3 if you have bunker tiles) and collect the heat, transfer it to a steam chamber and produce power with steam turbines.

Of course you can go crazy

 

[Yunru]

One of my mid- to late- game bases (by play time) hasn't even researched refined metal.

It got itself self-sustaining and I just kinda... stopped developing. Under the pretence of letting the dupes skill up.

[Mastermindx]

As far as rocket goes, 1 can be enough mid-late game.  I mean... Rockets are not mandatory to start with. In my current game, I only have 2 active ones.  I have space planned for 6 I believe (2xLH2, 4xPetro). I could place more... But that darned Gravitas lobby is in the way...  I'll need to melt some of it first.

I'd say, if adding 1 more rocket is going to tax your power production,  I'd worry about that first. I know I'm late game, but I'm at a point that I'm not even burning Nat gas anymore. All is either solar or steam.

I'd need to give credit in part to this setup : https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/112813-how-to-cool-your-regolith-to-generate-steam-power/. I kindda adapted/improved on it a bit...  But the main idea is there, ie. : regolith powered generator. And the output goes straight to the shove vole!

 

 

[Gurgel]

10 hours ago, darknotezero said:

So I thought I'd get a broad opinion from this lovely community regarding overall rocket guidance - how many do you have in your mid-late game colony? 

Never more than one. I see no need.

[ScreamingPict]

14 hours ago, TheMule said:

You can place a 9x3 diamond box right under the rocket  (8x3 if you have bunker tiles) and collect the heat, transfer it to a steam chamber and produce power with steam turbines.

Of course you can go crazy

 

Despite having petroleum, nat gas and hamster-wheels as a back-up, I'm running my entire mini-base off my rockets' steam power! Indeed I am often finding I have to open all the doors under my steam turbines and waste power just because I have too much of it. Even just one rocket provides more than enough power for a base of this size.

 

If you have the space to do a taller rocket chimney you can get even more power.

However as others here say, initially get 1-2 rockets going and get yourself some fullerene for super-coolant. That will make your aqua-tuners much more efficient and allows for more advanced builds like liquid O2/H coolers.

Meanwhile focus on boosting your power grid. Either go down and get some Oil (best turned into Petroleum using a Petroleum boiler, but in the short-term it's much easier just to use the Petroleum refinery) or go up and install Solar Panels and batteries.

Also be sure to be regulating your power production with smart batteries so that you aren't over-producing power when you don't need it.

 

[darknotezero]

HI all, thanks for all of your input!

20 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

2 rockets should be no problem. 3 rockets may, but then, consider a fourth one. If you have access to a planet with methan, coal or other fuels, and you can reach it with petroleum-engines, your problems are solved. You can support your third rockets needs with the stuff you bring back from space with the fourth one. Petroleum is not that power consuming to produce, neither is a steady amount of oxylite.

So far the only stuff that I've grabbed from space is solid cargo rather than liquid - i didn't really know what the fuel used/fuel gained ratio was for grabbing fuel from rocket missions, and i had a huuuuge reservoir of oil in my oil biome without having to tap into an oil reservoir, but that's about to run dry, so I was contemplating whether it would be better to get my liquid from space missions or start tapping the oil reservoir.

 

4 hours ago, ScreamingPict said:

Despite having petroleum, nat gas and hamster-wheels as a back-up, I'm running my entire mini-base off my rockets' steam power! Indeed I am often finding I have to open all the doors under my steam turbines and waste power just because I have too much of it. Even just one rocket provides more than enough power for a base of this size.

i saw your post earlier about this mini base and noted this - super neat. right now i'm not using the steam from my rockets for anything, it's just getting vacuumed out since i built my rockets in space. i think changing my current grid would be waaaay too complicated to try to adapt this, but I may experiment with capturing this with a third rocket after I get done trying to build my LOX/LH set up.

 

4 hours ago, ScreamingPict said:

Meanwhile focus on boosting your power grid. Either go down and get some Oil (best turned into Petroleum using a Petroleum boiler, but in the short-term it's much easier just to use the Petroleum refinery) or go up and install Solar Panels and batteries.

Also be sure to be regulating your power production with smart batteries so that you aren't over-producing power when you don't need it.

I have a lot of smart battery set ups; i think part of my issue is that I'm running too much machinery and my set ups are not actually well optimized.

My base is split into roughly four power grids: let's call them oil grid, main grid, transition grid, space grid. We're going to use my transition grid as my example:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

This is one of my psuedo-SPOM setups in this grid. I say pseudo SPOM bc none of my SPOMs can actually power themselves - this was a colony where I did Super Sustainable, so all of my SPOM set ups were powering everything for a while, plus two of my Hydrogen setups were feeding half of their Hydrogen to AETNs so i could do cooling. The result is that i never had any hydrogen overflow.

Once i achieved Super Sustainable, I opted to not breakdown my SPOM grids but adapt them by building backup power options or turning the Hydrogen Generators into the backup option. For the above grid, I built coal generators since I had over 250t of coal built up from my hatch farms which helped, but i've now hit a point where a 500-600 cycles later even my coal is almost depleted because there is so much power consumption in that grid.

The main culprit of that power consumption is the cooling chamber above it. i have an aquatuner/steam turbine set up (blatantly Francis John stolen), but maybe I don't have the specs right because it can't sustain itself without a lot of help from the rest of the grid. I have an automated power shut off that severs the connection until the steam turbine battery runs low to temper the power use from the rest of the grid, but it drains so often and so quickly that it might as well not be there.

Spoiler

 

 

This is the crux of my problem both here and in my space grid - aquatuners and the oxylite refineries are expensive, transit tube stations are expensive, my automated bunker door/robominer setups are expensive. i need most of these (i guess i could stop using transit tubes), but I feel like my ratio of power consumption to power generation is incredibly off kilter because of these. My space biome grid is primarily nat gas generator and petroleum generator, and when my nat gas geyer goes dormant, i start running depressingly low on petroleum.

I should also mention that I have yet to do anything with solar power. This is primarily out of fear - I redesigned my space set up where all of my robominers are killing off regolith that drops *below* all of my space scanners after the bunker door opens rather than putting robominers above the bunker doors in an effort to keep a clearer space scanner network, but if i build a solar panel setup, that's not possible, and i didn't feel like the return on solar power would be great enough to do much more than just maintain itself.

But i also still see myself as stumbling through this game, so I'm open to any pointers. which went a bit OT from the 'number of rockets' thing, but hey.

[babba]

I have 2 rockets in my base - I recently took me 2000 cycles or so to have the first one. I could imagine that a typical system could crash if you start 10 in the same moment and at the same second have the cycle day change. The most critical crash sensitive moment seems to still be the cycle change, I always make sure to not press any keys or click with the mouse on cycle change. Always wanted to have rockets and did a 1 year ONi break because I knew how much effort it would be to have rockets - In the way I play.

I`m glad Klei wants to further work on Space, it was also the robo miner overheat stuff which kept me from playing the game again for a year. I still don`t like how its happening in the game. Also all the weirdness/quirks/tricks/blocking/ranges/overheat-rules with the observatory and radars should be improved, like youtubers too have requested. Without insider knowledge on all that space stuff, from Utube or web, new players are lost on those things.

Had time now, played 3500 cycles in a week...Wow, what a great game. I hope Klei can generate a regular income stream with ONi, so it can further work on the game and further develop new game play content. The amazing thing is that one can even start the game with a 10 time bigger map size, so in 20 years there will be a CPU`s to fully play such a map. In 20 years it should be possible to launch 100 rockets at the same time on such a mega over size map. If we then still live, we can check it out then

Maybe I can bring the topic up again on the 6th November 2040. Sometimes I answer people old emails they sent to me in 2000, their answers and photos are then sometimes amazing.

Its great how much passion and great help @Neotuck has provided in this forum over such a long period of time.

@JoeW >>> Can Neotuck also have a furniture piece with his name in the game, like Brothgart ?

May the Kerbin be with you all !

[Neotuck]

8 minutes ago, babba said:

Its great how much passion and great help @Neotuck has provided in this forum over such a long period of time.

@JoeW >>> Can Neotuck also have a furniture piece with his name in the game, like Brothgart ?

This is the greatest complement any one has ever given me, thank you

[babba]

The good, the planners, the honest, the dreamers and the heart full in the world deserve to be honored, there is too much bad happening on this planet. Give love, to receive love.

“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

[pether]

Wait, does Brothgar have his name on the game piece? What?

[babba]

12 hours ago, pether said:

Wait, does Brothgar have his name on the game piece? What?

This was actually an mistake by myself. I just now tried to find this "Brothgar bar" in my ( now ) vanilla game, but now I realized that it must have been in one of Brothgar associated mods which I had running in the past ( I play vanilla since a while ).

What about the "Neotuck Stirling Engine" ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

I would be fine with having a bit here and there things of relevant community contributors in the vanilla game.

Alternative: "Neotuktuk"

[Yunru]

26 minutes ago, babba said:

Alternative: "Neotuktuk"

Well, you just won me over.

[thegroundbelow]

I have 4 rockets, just because it was taking FOREVER to get enough isoresin for a build I was doing that needed some insulation.  One rocket has 1 cargo bay and 3 fuel tanks, the next has 2 cargo bays and 2 fuel tanks, and the other two both have 3 cargo bays and 2 fuel tanks.  So at least one rocket can get to any planet, and I can still load up on niobium/isoresin from some (luckly nearby) asteroids with decent percentages using the 3-cargo-bay rockets.

I probably could have gone with 3, but I have my rockets set up in pairs. 

[babba]

Cycle 3669

Tiling up the steam-rocket room with a thousand new mafic rock temp-shift-plates tonight...Maybe I manage to cool the 50-500kg/cell steam down at some point, to get the water back. I love the steam smoke effect when the steam evaporates in to space In some location there is 1000kg steam/cell at 130 celsius. A dupe opens a door and the amount of steam coming in to the colony in a few seconds is mega !

All aqua-tuners and steam-engines are doing overwork to keep the colonies cooling system going.

-----

Adding more bunker doors to extend the entry width, to have more of the valuable hot regolith drop in to the rocket steam room(s) below:

With the reverb sounds in the game, working in and on the big Tsherno-Buran-Spaceshuttle-Hall plates is always awesome joy for me

Building and flooding a new reactor zone with steam, 2 new steam engines...