SPOM & Main Grid Automation

[Yunru 1557]

38 minutes ago, psusi said:

Yea, algae terrariums and letting the PH20 off gas works fine for quite a while, but eventually you start having problems with gas mixing and flow to high consumption areas.

Except, you don't? 

[avc15 485]

52 minutes ago, psusi said:

I don't understand how one can not use a SPOM.

Careful about being so absolute. If you keep optimizing your setup, you'll eventually land on a build that's not a spom. Spoms are strictly not optimal.

 

edit: it's unfortunate this is where this thread went, and I know I helped it along. Starting out with "here's my build, give me feedback!" leads pretty firmly to "hey, that's a spom, my feedback is that you can do better"

But this other side-argument that's going on. There's a subtle difference.

[Lbphero 3222]

53 minutes ago, psusi said:

I don't understand how one can not use a SPOM.

morbs

[TripLykely 50]

28 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Except, you don't? 

A while back I posted wondering why I kept getting O2 notifications, naively thinking I had a firm enough grasp of 'basic' mechanics like vent piping. This issue was what I was missing - as I expanded I needed further ventilation to compensate, paying attention to air pressure in areas and backups I could split from of my SPOM setup. This whole discussion has got me working on a nice little addition to my base that incorporates the 'low tech' MOGOM, algae terrariums, and the SPOM I started this thread with. In hindsight, it really wasn't interesting enough to start a thread; but I've found the exchange to stimulate my creativity. 

14 minutes ago, avc15 said:

edit: it's unfortunate this is where this thread went, and I know I helped it along. Starting out with "here's my build, give me feedback!" leads pretty firmly to "hey, that's a spom, my feedback is that you can do better"

But this other side-argument that's going on. There's a subtle difference.

It was rather noobish to post a slight variation on an overly popular/used design for a game days away from its first DLC ;). The feedback and discussion made it worth doing in retrospect, I've gotten a spurt of ideas to optimize and tweak not just O2 but all systems. 

13 minutes ago, Lbphero said:

morbs

With what's been talked about, what I'm working on in the base this thread was started with, and what I've played around with in sandbox, I look forward to having a low morale, manual labor planet using those fun little guys. 

[TripLykely 50]

Well my rocketry program - and therefore sour gas boiler among other late game projects - has been put on hold. More important matters like low tech O2, a dupe strength gym, and synergizing them with my water production/germ removal came first. The dupes have finally finished sweeping up but I'm not sure they'll manage to finish mopping...

 

[KittenIsAGeek 1684]

I rarely build SPOMs anymore.  It wastes hydrogen that has better uses elsewhere.  Electrolyzers really don't use a lot of power, so it isn't hard to power them from other sources.  SPOMs aren't even that efficient -- the only thing going for them is the 'self-powered' part.  Its a "fire and forget" setup that is initially attractive.  

I have several problems with SPOMs:

1. The 'self-powered' part burns hydrogen, which you're going to want to use elsewhere.  
2. They're not very efficient.  If you only need oxygen, there are more efficient methods.  
3. They generate a lot of heat that must be dealt with.  Otherwise that heat is going to end up in your base.

There's nothing wrong with using electrolyzers to produce your oxygen.  I just won't do it because the hydrogen is more valuable to me than the oxygen is.  The way  I see it, oxygen is a by-product from producing hydrogen for my rockets.

 

Some of my favorite methods of producing oxygen are:

1. Deoderizers turning PO2 into O2 and clay (for ceramics)
2. Algae Terrariums (turns into #1 above)
3. Oxyferns.  I'm still working on a good method of delivering the CO2 they need without getting in the way of their O2 production, but.. once you start farming these, they work out pretty good in small scale.  But hey, 98.7% efficient conversion of water to oxygen beats even deoderizers which is only 90% efficient.  (Pic attached below)

This actually works really well.  I put left gas pump at "above 5kg" and the left at "above 7kg."  Actual output is about 560g/s of oxygen.  The vents for CO2 close if it gets off the first tile.

 

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents on this whole debate.

[thegroundbelow 9]

On 12/2/2020 at 9:50 PM, Lbphero said:

morbs

Aren't morbs really inefficient for oxygen production, though? Like, if you have 20 dupes, you need well over a hundred morbs to support them, which rather kills one's FPS.

[Lbphero 3222]

5 hours ago, thegroundbelow said:

Aren't morbs really inefficient for oxygen production, though? Like, if you have 20 dupes, you need well over a hundred morbs to support them, which rather kills one's FPS.

Morbs produce 200g whenever they sense that the pressure is below 1000g. You can get plenty of poxygen from them if you just stick them in a room with a gas pump connected to an atmo sensor.

[psusi 309]

1 hour ago, Lbphero said:

Morbs produce 200g whenever they sense that the pressure is below 1000g. You can get plenty of poxygen from them if you just stick them in a room with a gas pump connected to an atmo sensor.

"Whenever" is not 5 times per second... I don't think it's even once a second.  Even under ideal conditions, you still need TONS of morbs to produce very much PO2.  If you are out of slime on the map, then you can use a few dozen morbs to feed a few pufts to produce the minimal amount of slime you need to grow half a dozen mushrooms, but beyond that... I can't see them as a viable source of oxygen, unless you are trying to survive without using any geysers at all, and even then, you're going to need like 100 of them to support 8 or 10 dupes.  I've had much better luck feeding pufts from two po2 geysers than from a mass of morbs, and po2 geysers don't put out much.

[TheMule 346]

I'm kinda late to this thread.

First, nice job. I don't want this comment to sound dismissive. I'm going to focus on the things I don't like about it because... constructive criticism. It doesn't mean I don't like it at all. Please keep that in mind or the following might sound a bit harsh taken out of context.

With that out of the way, let's start.

I don't think that's a Rodriguez. When it comes to SPOM designs, every single tile placement counts. High pressure electrolyzers are not easy beasts to tame, as opposed to near vacuum and submerged ones. Some mass deletion/change is going to happen. A slight difference in the shape of the SPOM can trigger a huge difference in the outcome. In a Rodriguez, the hydrogen pump is one tile higher, and the "roof" is not flat. It's a very specific shape. I'm not saying that I've tested it and it makes a difference, I'm saying it could make a difference. So that's not a Rodriguez in my book.

The extensive gas piping Francis John shows in his video isn't entirely optional. I usually don't go full radiant (that looks like a way to make it unnecessarily expensive), I use granite, but other than cooling down the generators it also acts as a small tank for hydrogen. The SPOM needs a buffer of sort, I've found that sometimes the battery isn't enough if I use short, direct pipes for the generator room. Of course you counter that by drawing from the main grid if needed, but more on that later.

It seems there's a cooling loop running behind the top layer, where hydrogen collects. That's a total waste of cooling for something that is going to be destroyed soon. Heat conduction in the downward direction is so poor, especially when 2 different gasses are involved, that you might consider the top layer insulated from the bottom. So even if you're going to cool the lower oxygen layer, you don't need to cool the hydrogen. It may make sense only if you don't use hydrogen generators at all and all hydrogen is for rocket fuel production. But that's no longer a SPOM.
 

Any provision for the SPOM to draw energy from the main grid is unnecessary, by definition. A SPOM is self-powered. Something's wrong with the design (or it's name) if at any point (well, excluding the start up of course) it needs external power. That should never happen, the entire point is that should the main grid fail, the SPOM still goes on forever, as long as there's water coming in. That's why, BTW, if it's possible, I power the external water pump from the SPOM internal grid. (*)

 

This is more of a personal opinion, but I find way easier to handle fuel than electricity.

Exporting excess energy from the Rodriguez SPOM is much easily done with hydrogen. Overall, there's very little power left, it barely makes a contribution to your main grid. We're talking 500W tops, excluding the external pump, and that's w/o counting hydrogen deletion. Anyway, it's much easier to do w/o messing with the SPOM internal grid, just handle the extra hydrogen. The setup is trivial, if you want to avoid infinite storage for any reason, all you need is a loop, with N gas reservoirs, and M smart battery controlled generators, with a bridge somewhere in the loop with the overflow directed to a single generator w/o automation. You can use any of the white intakes of the reservoirs to the same effect. You choose N (the capacity of the loop) and M (the power output). Other than the smart battery used to control the generators, there's no automation involved at all. It's so simple that it's impossible, for example, to forget a gate.


I have kinda abandoned the Rodriguez design, one of my favorite. I usually use a submerged electrolyzer setup, Saturnus' way, which comes with infinite storage included, even if I don't use it entirely that way (I used atmosensors to turn off the electrolyzers when pressure exceeds 20kg), and usually it's not a SPOM, and hydrogen is saved for space from the start.

Sorry again if this sounded harsh, it's not meant to. I find your build very neatly overdesigned. It's pleasant to the eye. But overdesigned nonetheless.


(*) On the other hand, I did destroy the power section of a Rodriguez in some colonies of mine, once I decided to collect all the hydrogen for space. But that's no longer a SPOM or a Rodriguez. It's the electrolyzer chamber of the Rodriguez used to produce hydrogen. Actually, it's best you build one in space leaving the bottom open and not building the oxygen pumps at all. You end up with 1/4 of the Rodriguez SPOM build. Some people call that a Rodriguez, too, referring to the specific shape of the hydrogen chamber. Which you don't have. That's why it's the first thing I've mentioned. That's the signature shape of a Rodriguez.

[TripLykely 50]

1 hour ago, TheMule said:

I don't think that's a Rodriguez. When it comes to SPOM designs, every single tile placement counts. High pressure electrolyzers are not easy beasts to tame, as opposed to near vacuum and submerged ones. Some mass deletion/change is going to happen. A slight difference in the shape of the SPOM can trigger a huge difference in the outcome. In a Rodriguez, the hydrogen pump is one tile higher, and the "roof" is not flat. It's a very specific shape. I'm not saying that I've tested it and it makes a difference, I'm saying it could make a difference. So that's not a Rodriguez in my book.

Fair enough, indeed it isn't the exact shape of the original. And I haven't done any testing on efficiency, I just know this tweak makes it stabilize significantly faster than with the slightly higher hydrogen chamber. To me it was close enough to the design to reference that since I was tweaking that design but you make a valid point. It isn't really a Rodriguez.

1 hour ago, TheMule said:

It seems there's a cooling loop running behind the top layer, where hydrogen collects. That's a total waste of cooling for something that is going to be destroyed soon. Heat conduction in the downward direction is so poor, especially when 2 different gasses are involved, that you might consider the top layer insulated from the bottom. So even if you're going to cool the lower oxygen layer, you don't need to cool the hydrogen. It may make sense only if you don't use hydrogen generators at all and all hydrogen is for rocket fuel production. But that's no longer a SPOM.

This is the first time I've done a loop like this, normally I'll run the gas pipes through a cold chamber with an AT setup for cold O2. This is for a mini base mod so I have a cooling loop that covers my entire base starting with the living area and moving into O2/utility/industry. It isn't necessary but the top to bottom temp gradient of my mini base makes it worth it  

1 hour ago, TheMule said:

Any provision for the SPOM to draw energy from the main grid is unnecessary, by definition. A SPOM is self-powered. Something's wrong with the design (or it's name) if at any point (well, excluding the start up of course) it needs external power. That should never happen, the entire point is that should the main grid fail, the SPOM still goes on forever, as long as there's water coming in. That's why, BTW, if it's possible, I power the external water pump from the SPOM internal grid. (*)

When starting it you need a jumpstart, and if you run out of water it needs a jump start. It wasn't necessary to automate it to the main grid but for my playstyle with how little power I use for early/midgame and how much I automate everything it seemed like an issue to engineer for. In previous playthroughs I've normally done what you've said, just tying something different. Calling it a SPOM is somewhat inaccurate, although it is selfpowered, it can also power more than itself or be powered by other gens. 

 

1 hour ago, TheMule said:

Sorry again if this sounded harsh, it's not meant to. I find your build very neatly overdesigned. It's pleasant to the eye. But overdesigned nonetheless.

Neatly overdesigned is my MO; so thanks haha  I appreciate your feedback. In hindsight I wouldn't have made this post, but I do appreciate the discussion that it's brought.

[TheMule 346]

3 hours ago, TripLykely said:

In hindsight I wouldn't have made this post, but I do appreciate the discussion that it's brought.

Why not? These posts are always welcome.

It's just that I see a Rodriguez as very valueable build for beginners, it solves a problem for good, it's a fire and forget solution, but nothing more than that. I feel your talents for neatly overdesigning things are wasted on it, if anything, I encourage you to try with something more rewarding.  I want to see more of this stuff.

[Fyrel 13]

This is what I have been using for my oxygen production lately.

The bead pumps force the gas to the top storage area to 20Kg pressure and stop the electrolyzers from over pressuring. The water beads also cool the oxygen down to a nice usable temperature.

Still a work in progress it needs more automation to not restart the electrolyzers until the pressure drops down to a low level after it originally shuts off.

[psusi 309]

3 hours ago, Fyrel said:

This is what I have been using for my oxygen production lately.

Why have 4 electrolyzers with only 2 oxygen pumps?  One would almost be enough to keep those pumps busy.

[Fyrel 13]

38 minutes ago, psusi said:

Why have 4 electrolyzers with only 2 oxygen pumps?  One would almost be enough to keep those pumps busy.

There would normally be a more gas pumps down the right hand side.

I didn't have any saves to load into due to the new DLC so quickly threw that together in debug mode.

 

I was thinking of connecting the electrolzers to a timer so they only run while plug slugs are sleeping and producing all the oxygen for the day.

 

[psusi 309]

2 hours ago, Fyrel said:

I was thinking of connecting the electrolzers to a timer so they only run while plug slugs are sleeping and producing all the oxygen for the day.

That's not a bad idea to deal with the burst power production... rather than storing it in a big battery array.  The other down side I see with this is that it takes up a lot more space and cools the hydrogen, which isn't good if you are going to feed it to hydrogen generators.

[ghkbrew 400]

9 hours ago, Fyrel said:

This is what I have been using for my oxygen production lately.

Have you tested your output from that? You've got complex 2 gas + liquid interactions in the column that seem likely to delete a lot of mass.

[Fyrel 13]

6 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

Have you tested your output from that? You've got complex 2 gas + liquid interactions in the column that seem likely to delete a lot of mass.

I haven't tested the output.

9 hours ago, psusi said:

That's not a bad idea to deal with the burst power production... rather than storing it in a big battery array.  The other down side I see with this is that it takes up a lot more space and cools the hydrogen, which isn't good if you are going to feed it to hydrogen generators.

The problems I have always had when using the standard SPOM design have been overheating if I don't have access to gold amalgam or steel and the system quite often failing late game due to one side backing up,

The cooling with this system means I can build the pumps and electrolyzers out of anything and not worry about the heat.

It also comes with infinite gas storage built in so the failsafes I usually have to build into the standard SPOM to stop it backing up aren't needed. 

[psusi 309]

11 hours ago, Fyrel said:

The problems I have always had when using the standard SPOM design have been overheating if I don't have access to gold amalgam

Well, yes, you do need gold amalgam... isn't that available on every world?  I haven't tried them all yet.

11 hours ago, Fyrel said:

he system quite often failing late game due to one side backing up,

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

11 hours ago, Fyrel said:

It also comes with infinite gas storage built in so the failsafes I usually have to build into the standard SPOM to stop it backing up aren't needed. 

Oxygen backing up is no problem... hydrogen is easily dealt with by a small infinite storage room with a little oil on the floor.  Or just burn off the excess hydrogen even if it wastes power.

[Fyrel 13]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

Well, yes, you do need gold amalgam... isn't that available on every world?  I haven't tried them all yet.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Oxygen backing up is no problem... hydrogen is easily dealt with by a small infinite storage room with a little oil on the floor.  Or just burn off the excess hydrogen even if it wastes power.

Gold amalgam is not available on every world in the base game and isn't available on the starting world in the new DLC. Steel is always available but takes a lot more time to acquire.

Problems I have encountered are pumping hydrogen around with the oxygen when the hydrogen backs up and also running out of hydrogen when the oxygen blocks up. All bad planning on my part. I just prefer things that can't fail so I never have to look at them again.

[Lbphero 3222]

On 12/8/2020 at 7:11 PM, psusi said:

"Whenever" is not 5 times per second... I don't think it's even once a second.  Even under ideal conditions, you still need TONS of morbs to produce very much PO2.  If you are out of slime on the map, then you can use a few dozen morbs to feed a few pufts to produce the minimal amount of slime you need to grow half a dozen mushrooms, but beyond that... I can't see them as a viable source of oxygen, unless you are trying to survive without using any geysers at all, and even then, you're going to need like 100 of them to support 8 or 10 dupes.  I've had much better luck feeding pufts from two po2 geysers than from a mass of morbs, and po2 geysers don't put out much.

feeding pufts is definitely their intended purpose, and I myself use them that way. But logistically, it definitely feels like to me that they can be used as duplicant air production too, even if its not the most efficient thing in the world when it comes to framerate. The mechanisms that I build for producing morbs for the sake of puft feeding can basically just run forever once I've set them up, infinitely spawning morbs. So the idea of having a hundred of them doesn't seem like too far off of a possibility.

On 12/10/2020 at 4:20 PM, psusi said:

Well, yes, you do need gold amalgam... isn't that available on every world?  I haven't tried them all yet.

to my knowledge, asteroids without the swamp (err, marsh with the DLC) biome are subsequently without gold amalgam, so you'd need to skip straight to steel on those.

[psusi 309]

3 hours ago, Lbphero said:

it definitely feels like to me that they can be used as duplicant air production too, even if its not the most efficient thing in the world when it comes to framerate.

I've never really thought of them as usable for producing oxygen; only for producing renewable slime to grow mushrooms.  Even for that purpose, it takes a LOT of morbs and having tried it, it just doesn't seem worth it compared to other methods of doing the same thing.  It's just so much easier to get polluted water from a vent, or just use normal water and feed it through either toilets, sinks, and /or carbon scrubbers to make it polluted, and let it off gas rather than farming a hundred morbs. 

3 hours ago, Lbphero said:

to my knowledge, asteroids without the swamp (err, marsh with the DLC) biome are subsequently without gold amalgam, so you'd need to skip straight to steel on those.

I guess all of the worlds I have tried so far have had gold amalgam on them.  Even the one with mostly salt water biomes still has some gold in it.  As well as the one with the forest start that has aluminum inststead of copper in the starting biome I am on now still had a good geode deposit of copper core and plenty of gold amalgam, and not one but two copper volcanoes.  Even if you don't have any gold amlagam, by the time I'm ready to build a proper coolrod spom, is about the time I am ready to make a steam turbine and AT and while you can start that with gold amalgam, I'm on the cusp of making steel by that point anyway.  As long as you have a proper cold biome, even if you don't have gold amalgam, you can make some steel and dump the heat into the cold biome to get started.

[Lbphero 3222]

5 minutes ago, psusi said:

, it just doesn't seem worth it compared to other methods

but what if i told you....

its FREEEEE!!!!!