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Water and Oxygen recycling


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On 12/29/2020 at 12:51 AM, KittenIsAGeek said:

If E=mc^2, then mass=energy, so you're losing some of the mass in the process of doing work (growing).

Haha that is really a good one.

 

Let us assume reddit is right:

 

 

and 

 

E = mc2.

"c" is the speed of light.

If energy "E" is in Joules then c should be in meters per second and m will be in kilograms.

Speed of light is 3 x 108 m/s. So 1 kilogram becomes 9 x 1016 Joules.

 

so if somehow your plant has an inbuilt black hole and transforms matter directly into energy with 90 000 000 000 000 000 Joules you can fill a whole load of battery with one kilogram.

Now a bit more realistically our scientists can create a blackhole that transforms matter to energy only for a (tiny tiny) fraction of a second, so plants for sure dont do that in real life, all mass is conserved outside of the laboratory if you believe science (the truth certainly goes a bit deeper since blood as example can even get heavier in a sealed container, but still those things are not kilograms either).

 

On 12/25/2020 at 1:20 AM, TheKilltech said:

in this case it's actually easy to fix because all that needed to change is the carbon skimmer: it should output slightly more polluted water than it took in water, by just the amount that when run through an electrolizer reproduces the exact same amount of oxygen that was converted through breathing to carbondioxide. probably this could be done just so that the skimmer preserves mass instead of deleting it.

 

If you can provide me with a concept that still is challenging and realistic i might just mod it.

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This is frankly a terrible idea.

You argue it makes it more realistic, but that adds nothing to the experience.

You argue that it makes it easier to work out, but the numbers are already provided.

You argue like each asteroid is a closed system, but they're not.

Etc.

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9 hours ago, Rainbowdesign said:

[...] all mass is conserved outside of the laboratory if you believe science (the truth certainly goes a bit deeper since blood as example can even get heavier in a sealed container, but still those things are not kilograms either).

care to elaborate on your blood example? i don't think that should be the case. There are indeed effects that alter mass, but none should make a difference for blood, or at least i don't understand what you mean. Technically atomic mass depends also on the binding energy reducing the total mass of a atom to be slightly smaller then the mass of all its components. This is mostly only relevant for the atomic nucleus and its isotopes but technically applies to electrons and therefore chemical reactions as well. But the effect of this would only become noticeable if the electron mass were significantly heavier. 

9 hours ago, Rainbowdesign said:

If you can provide me with a concept that still is challenging and realistic i might just mod it.

Hmm, yeah it's actually a great idea. Its much faster to realize and one can test the impact on gameplay right away. and if it achieves its goal then it also stands as a very hard argument to overturn. 

I have made my fair share of mods for different games but haven't gotten to do it for ONI as of yet. I think i can represent most of cycles in terms of simple number changes rather then the need to implement new mechanics, so that should be actually straight forward to realize as a mod indeed. 

The ideas for a water cycle involving plant mechanics changes would be more complicated though, so if your are interested i would love to work on this together (and learn the tools for ONI modding in the process). But can we even do mods for the DLC as of yet?

As for the challenge part... well, it comes with how maps are setup. recycling loops make it so the game is more interesting in hard environments like a space station (no renewable resources from digging tiles or geysers). but for vanilla games where everything is already plentiful it would make things maybe too easy - so maps need to be made much poorer in starting resources to provide the challenge. and then of course recycling loops have a lot of points where they can get out of balance and break down just like in reality. indeed a mod would need to focus on giving a lot of opportunity for failure to make it interesting. 

4 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

The original post and others that follow has reference the carbon skimmer,

Isn't this particular resource loop creating that additional mass at the water sieve?

there were a few iterations of this cycle. which specifically are you referring to? but yeah, in general i was focusing on conserving the core elements (oxygen, hydrogen) first and didn't always look for a correct carbon balance so masses can be off. i don't think i have written down any numbers on the sieve though meaning that it should be free to balance so there is no mass defect. however someone pointed out correctly that in an early version my suggested skimmer-electrolizer loop created hydrogen at the skimmer. is that maybe what you meant?

5 hours ago, Yunru said:

You argue it makes it more realistic, but that adds nothing to the experience.

[...]

You argue like each asteroid is a closed system, but they're not.

Can you elaborate why you think it adds nothing to the experience? my motivation for this was exactly because my current experience with the DLC was lacking. 

and no, i didn't argue that an asteroid is a closed system. but in reality when planning a habitat in an hostile environment, one usually designs many aspects to work like a closed system, as to minimalize the dependence of survival on the cooperation of an not entirely predictable environment. if we someday build a colony on the moon, we would prefer to make it so it doesn't need to mine stuff for oxygen generation but can rather run indefinitely with what it has available. But of course any bonus oxygen that can be generated on sight is always appreciated. so basically you try to make your design closed in one direction only: don't lose any valuable stuff!

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12 minutes ago, TheKilltech said:

as to minimalize the dependence of survival on the cooperation of an not entirely predictable environment.

You see, that's why reality's boring and games are fun.

In reality, you minimise the bits that require interaction with the unknown.

In a game, that's where the engagement comes from.

 

Having to rely on those random elements is what prevents games from getting stale and repetitive.

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10 hours ago, TheKilltech said:

there were a few iterations of this cycle. which specifically are you referring to? but yeah, in general i was focusing on conserving the core elements (oxygen, hydrogen) first and didn't always look for a correct carbon balance so masses can be off. i don't think i have written down any numbers on the sieve though meaning that it should be free to balance so there is no mass defect. however someone pointed out correctly that in an early version my suggested skimmer-electrolizer loop created hydrogen at the skimmer. is that maybe what you meant?

Thank you for tending to this with a reply - I looked online for the numbers and couldn't find an up to date reliable source so I will provide them here shortly in this post. I'll post some current build screenshots of the buildings most likely in the water and oxygen loop. I think this might make a good reference. I don't recall which loop I was looking at when I made my first comment.

20210114052842_1.png.ad5e1d0d84dc81408f5f582b89109ae0.png20210114052847_1.png.1d88eea557aa826014a1441ef5307fb0.png20210114052852_1.png.c2d69c625fb18f42073cd52b4834ae03.png20210114052858_1.png.3ef977bac5404bfa0ed7251dfa70147a.png20210114052904_1.png.0236840f598d8313cf6f986af005cf31.png20210114052914_1.png.536751ed38e0ae05f3ed969571bf6980.png20210114053007_1.png.9f46548381a74cf2bea2f455472cc3cc.png20210114053025_1.png.251a7f84d12785194e1ccd4278da64e6.png20210114053035_1.png.4b0af3dff70b4f76acba466f4ff03896.png20210114053307_1.png.8cb7fd9fa1f4a0d0eaf904a5e1c271c8.png20210114053332_1.png.7e57e57f9b5a9382f485f38d912ec964.png

Clearly there's some loss of sand mass on the sieve.

Sublimation devices were added here because they can produce breathable air, although the duplicants will breath more mass of polluted air than they will of oxygen. Where that falls within the po2 converted versus o2 via the deodorizer vs them just breathing it, there may be some mass differences / benefit other than their comfort.

It's been my experience that allowing liquid and solid materials to sublimate naturally or through pumping chambers is mass efficient with no loss in mass on the conversion from substance A to gas A and so forth. This is to include the digging out of a sublimating mass - as 50% mass is dropped on dig, but not lost on sublimation - the oxylite being a prime example of this.

Currently polluted water pits and deodorizers do a better service than the sublimator - it appears the process of converting po2 to clay and o2 via sand is mass positive. Clay to ceramic to sand it positive with the exception of the mass of coal ( or it could be nearly the same ). I didn't post those details, it's an out of the way loop.

Polluted water has been my number one source of breathable air and clean clay - and largely for less electrical costs than via using the sublimator of electrolyzer. I find that the water sieve is useful for also making oxygen via the polluted dirt, so there's that as well bearing in mind that a sublimating mass is mass conserving and the hasty machines are not.

I'm leaving lots of undug polluted dirt tiles out the test their performance in pumping chambers, they behave much like oxylite but have a different coefficient of sublimation.

If you would like to go down a small rabbit hole about sublimation, I posted a lengthy topic about it in the bug reporting forum section, it has a script written off the back of the math regarding the accuracy of numbers being reported by info windows, it can be found here. It contains the exact mechanism of sublimation.

I believe the exact same math is still being used. It gives details about how much is emitting at a given time for a given mass given a zero mass cap and max pressure never exceeds the current 1800g. It also says how many seconds it would take to deplete a mass.

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It it possible to make mods for the dlc. I would love a mod that really makes sure there is no loss of matter.

 

16 hours ago, TheKilltech said:

 

I have made my fair share of mods for different games but haven't gotten to do it for ONI as of yet. I think i can represent most of cycles in terms of simple number changes rather then the need to implement new mechanics, so that should be actually straight forward to realize as a mod indeed. 

 

Well if you want to get into it changing the water sieve might be as easy as (untested, no warranty it works of anykind, i assembled it in 5 minutes):

 


    [HarmonyPatch(typeof(WaterPurifierConfig), "CreateBuildingDef", null)]
    public static class WaterPurifierConfigMod
    {

        public static void Postfix(GameObject go)
        {
            ElementConverter elementConverter = go.AddOrGet<ElementConverter>();
            elementConverter.consumedElements = new ElementConverter.ConsumedElement[2]
            {
      new ElementConverter.ConsumedElement(new Tag("Filter"), 1f),
      new ElementConverter.ConsumedElement(new Tag("DirtyWater"), 5f)
            };
            elementConverter.outputElements = new ElementConverter.OutputElement[2]
            {
      new ElementConverter.OutputElement(5f, SimHashes.Water, 0.0f, false, true, 0.0f, 0.5f, 0.75f, byte.MaxValue, 0),
      new ElementConverter.OutputElement(1f, SimHashes.ToxicSand, 0.0f, false, true, 0.0f, 0.5f, 0.25f, byte.MaxValue, 0)
            };
        }
    }

 

Also adding to the carbon skimmer: if it takes in 1kg water and 300 grams carbon it should put out 1.3kg of something.

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18 hours ago, Yunru said:

You see, that's why reality's boring and games are fun.

In reality, you minimise the bits that require interaction with the unknown.

In a game, that's where the engagement comes from.

Having to rely on those random elements is what prevents games from getting stale and repetitive.

Well, actually i feel like it's quite the other way around. The problem with ONI is that we are confronted with very stable and predictable environments - simply because the game doesn't give us the tools to handle complex scenarios of an unpredictable changing environment. But in reality we have to take into account all eventualities when lives (or worse money) are on the line. For these eventualities we have to counteract the effects of the enviorment, so there is exactly your interaction with the unknown. Where do we have anything like that in ONI? 

Instead in ONI it's very linear. If you start in an algae biome, u go for algae terrarium. if it's a rust biome, u go for rust deoxidizers. a lot of polluted dirt? sublimation stations. in reality it's more complicated. you always go for recycling, just so in case of unforeseen eventualities you have a backup to rely on. but if you have a source to produce oxygen then you take it and combine it with your recycling loop - but when you allow systems to interact you allow for more ways for things go wrong. hence you have to balance the systems against each other - and adapt that to all possible scenarios that might happen. so you see... reality is a lot about extremely complex and therefore nearly unforseeable interactions.

In ONI however the different process "building blocks" don't fit that well with each other. usually one building only works with one or two others in the follow-up resource processing resulting in clear and simple processing chains with very clear and limited interactions. so you rarely have a different chains compete for the same resources - whereas that is in reality a big problem everywhere you go. 

For example IRL burning coal requires oxygen, therefore energy generation competes with breathing, so on an asteroid with limited oxygen sources this is a thing that needs careful balancing. In ONI however coal generator needs no O2 removing an interesting interaction for the player to balance. 

as for games being fun... not all of them are. actually most are bad and not worth the time. out of the good games, the sort of which i like the most present the players with difficult situations with a wide array of tools and options to solve them. ONI may be on the better end of games, but it doesn't have the depth i would like it to have. but given how closely related the scenarios are that ONI confronts players with to real problems a NASA engineer could be tasked to solve it becomes apparent how little meaningful choices it presents the player with to approach them - compared to what reality has in store. So allow me the analogy to a 3d-shooter: it feels like exploring a game world that looks amazing, open and huge on the first glance, but then every time you stray from the marked path you just hit invisible walls and you realize how small the level actually is. that demotivates me from playing on and instead i end up reading wiki articles how similar problems are handled in reality and how many approaches there are and which has which advantages...

3 hours ago, Rainbowdesign said:

It it possible to make mods for the dlc. I would love a mod that really makes sure there is no loss of matter.

Well if you want to get into it changing the water sieve might be as easy as (untested, no warranty it works of anykind):

Yeah, a mod that ultimately preserves most mass would be the goal. Given that there are geysers and vulcanos adding mass i find some loss of mass acceptable to balance it out a little. 

Hmm, the code fragment looks C# to me. great, that makes things quite familiar. but i'm curious: from this snippet it looks like even building and recipes stats aren't loaded from some sort of xml/json definition but all rather implemented via code? interesting choice. 

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1 hour ago, TheKilltech said:

building and recipes stats aren't loaded from some sort of xml/json definition but all rather implemented via code?

Yes its in the code.

1 hour ago, TheKilltech said:

Given that there are geysers and vulcanos adding mass i find some loss of mass acceptable to balance it out a little. 

It is acceptable in normal game play but if you do something like a game on a small map without geysers or want to survive in a space shuttle things are different. And it was your idea to keep masses the same :D

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11 minutes ago, Rainbowdesign said:

It is acceptable in normal game play but if you do something like a game on a small map without geysers or want to survive in a space shuttle things are different. And it was your idea to keep masses the same :D

Hehe, yeah. for these cases i want the loops to work without any mass defects at all. i just though that for some buildings like a coal generator/wood burner aren't the things you would normally go for to power a space station, so it might be okay if their loops have some mass defects... in part because i don't want to allow for a perpetuum mobile (energy from nothing). i could also try balancing for energy conservation but that's a whole level more of balancing complexity.

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6 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

Thank you for tending to this with a reply - I looked online for the numbers and couldn't find an up to date reliable source so I will provide them here shortly in this post. I'll post some current build screenshots of the buildings most likely in the water and oxygen loop. I think this might make a good reference. I don't recall which loop I was looking at when I made my first comment.

Yeah, there are many oxygen and water processing options so the amount of closed loops one can build for oxygen and water is theoretically quite large but in reality almost all are very mass negative which makes none really interesting for practical gameplay as of yet. 

when it comes to rebalancing those, i would go one by one and balance them (focusing on the critical elements only whenever it get problematic with in regard to other elements), starting with the most simple ones. given that sublimation is quite complex i think i would make it late on my list. and in the end there is no necessity to make every single building perfectly mass conserving. some may remain entirely specialized to certain environmental conditions and have only a use case there. 

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@TheKilltech, yes ( and ) on the topic of rebalancing in that manner I don't disagree with the charge ( the posit ), the method, I mean.

The whole mass conservation may only need slight tweaks in some areas where machines are concerned, while I have mentioned plants being rather hungry for losses - like absurdly so in other threads. I believe that what Klei has done with the resources is to inspire digging out and exploring for certain nonrenewable or harder to renew elements.

I think what we both want is for the machines to have a purpose, even in the end game. This sort of makes sense to the idea of sustainability, to perhaps have some truly awful wastes of resource type machines, and then to move away from them.

While this is possible later on, it's not always practical to get to that point in the beginning. If this isn't a genuine statement of the nature of our own time, then it's quite subtly leaning to that.

The rather humorous ways that they have made some machines function in haphazard or unmanagable without other equipment is sort of the barrel of monkeys approach to technology trees. Ground is given for function and then the player is left to their form.

Trying to perfectly balance the machines would also require balancing them over time, and not just by the second.

So machines that output a certain amount per operation, will do so intermittently and at also at frequency which takes into account the operators skill. So there is also that much to consider other than static numerical balances if you are to also consider turnover. It is possible that the machines were cycle balanced rather than second balanced. This type of balancing would inherently delete or create mass somewhere due to the operational time.

There are some parameters of machines that aren't so obvious, such as the water sieve can only operate at half the capacity of the pipe ( for whatever reason ). So it is technically only running half as often as it could capacity wise.

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