Hermit Base

[Occam Blazer]

Been considering my next challenge and I think I want to focus on sustainability for the next playthrough. My goal is to build a separate living quarters for each of the three starting dupes. Each base should run on the barest minimum of inputs. The dupe should be able to work outside the living quarters.

I have a design that only needs 1.34kg of filtration medium per cycle to sustain one dupe infinitely (in theory). But I want to see your ideas. You can use any tech level. Power, dupe time and cooling are considered inputs. The design needs to work on at least one asteroid type - I started off thinking about bristle blossom and oxyfern, but those don't exist together on any asteroid.

Spoiler

Here's a peak at the design. Blurred so I don't bias y'all.

 

 

[2tallyGr8]

Two things

1) I get bristle blossom + oxyfern on terra all the time, by getting the oxyfern seed from the printing pod.

2) Is the picture just a bunch of pixels for anyone else?

[ghkbrew]

55 minutes ago, occamrazor said:

But I want to see your ideas.

Arbor trees are the king of sustainability.

A 24x4 pip ranch can hold 9 wild arbor trees and 8 pips.  Those 9 wild tree fed into an ethanol -> water -> O2 chain produce 208g/s or oxygen (ideally).  8 domesticated pips produce just over 2000kcal of bbq or about 2800kcal of omelets per cycle.  It's like they were made to support 2 dupes each.

Perfect sustainability can be achieved by feeding the pdirt to a pokeshell for sand to use as filtration material.  Or boiling pwater convert it clean water.  (You can also liquify pO2 to convert it to O2 without filtration medium, if you need to).

If you're playing on the DLC, the pdirt alone provide the oxygen needs for 2 dupes with the sublimation station.

31 minutes ago, 2tallyGr8 said:

2) Is the picture just a bunch of pixels for anyone else?

me too.

[JRup]

45 minutes ago, 2tallyGr8 said:

2) Is the picture just a bunch of pixels for anyone else?

It's 16 bit ONI for SNES...

(btw, seeing pixels too)

[2tallyGr8]

If everyone is having trouble seeing the picture, could you upload a higher-res version @occamrazor? Thanks!

[TheMule]

1 hour ago, ghkbrew said:

feeding the pdirt to a pokeshell

And the rest you can feed to sage hatches, for 4000 kcal of BBQ per egg.

Assuming you don't want to go shove voles starvation ranching, that is.

The challenge kind of clashes with dup specialization tho... I mean one rancher can take care of all critters. Having all dups take care of their own critters (or crops) is weird, in a way.

But it's an interesting challenge. I'd build the bases in space (zero heat transfer). Figuring out the minimum input is a bit different than figuring out the minimum number of types of materials. For example, a toilet loop requires filtration media, but reduces water requirements. But if water is abundant, it's possible not to have a loop at all, and vent  p water to space (or use it differently). No sieve, no sand, it's one fewer material (at the cost of more water).
 

I wonder if I can be done with water only. Electrolyzed for oxygen, and hydrogen, hydrogen powers the living cell.

Power is needed to cook food, but technically they can live on raw meat from voles.

Let's assume 95 water from a geyser (lower temp water makes it too easy too cool down the cell, of course), is cooling needed? Oxygen would be 95C so a bit of cooling is needed, but it's leaks from the suit system. Machinery? CO2 can be either destroyed at the cost of more water or vented with a pump... but I guess the dup can be made to stay in suit permanently (and the switch can be done in the vacuum of space), so no CO2 at all in the cell. Or O2 for what matters. 

I've had atmosuit docks take overheat damage in the past but I don't remember if they were the source of heat. If not they can be kept in a vacuum too.

 

 

 

[Occam Blazer]

On 1/4/2021 at 1:54 PM, 2tallyGr8 said:

If everyone is having trouble seeing the picture, could you upload a higher-res version @occamrazor? Thanks!

I blurred it so I didn't spoil ideas for everyone. I'll attach some images to this post below.

On 1/4/2021 at 12:33 PM, 2tallyGr8 said:

1) I get bristle blossom + oxyfern on terra all the time, by getting the oxyfern seed from the printing pod.

A single dupe needs about 12 wild oxyferns and getting them all from the printing pod would be tedious. You can propagate bristle blossoms, so starting on a asteroid with a lot of ferns and waiting for the pod to offer some blossom seeds would work.

On 1/4/2021 at 4:08 PM, TheMule said:

The challenge kind of clashes with dup specialization tho... I mean one rancher can take care of all critters. Having all dups take care of their own critters (or crops) is weird, in a way.

Right, I think that I need to avoid active ranching (and farming too).

On 1/4/2021 at 4:08 PM, TheMule said:

is cooling needed?

Cooling is needed. My design appears to need ~700 DTU/sec which is easily attainable with one wild wort. The max cooling power of a wild wort in hydrogen is 3 kDTU/sec so there's a lot of room.

On 1/4/2021 at 1:07 PM, ghkbrew said:

If you're playing on the DLC, the pdirt alone provide the oxygen needs for 2 dupes with the sublimation station.

DLC is valid. A sublimation station looks like it takes ~100 g/s to keep a dupe oxygenated. Now, what about food?

On 1/4/2021 at 1:07 PM, ghkbrew said:

8 domesticated pips produce just over 2000kcal of bbq or about 2800kcal of omelets per cycle.

Ranching 8 pips and cooking them into bbq or omelets will take up a lot of dupe time. Eating meat is "ghastly [-1]" whereas uncooked mushroom or bristle berry is "terrible" [0] so there is some advantage in plants here.

On 1/4/2021 at 4:08 PM, TheMule said:

I wonder if I can be done with water only. Electrolyzed for oxygen, and hydrogen, hydrogen powers the living cell.

Sadly, a electrolyzer can't produce enough oxygen on pee alone. (5.95 kg of O2 per cycle per dupe). It's really, really, really close though, now that you mention it. Edit: derp

 

Here's what I've come up with for one dupe. The only input to this arrangement is filtration medium for the sieve.

Spoiler

The shine bug reactor needs bristle blossom to produce sun bugs, which can then be fed extra mushroom to sustain the population.

 

[ghkbrew]

4 minutes ago, occamrazor said:

Ranching 8 pips and cooking them into bbq or omelets will take up a lot of dupe time.

The nice thing about omelets is they can be cooked automatically. Let the egg sit in a storage compactor until it cracks the heat the egg yolk until it turns into an omelet. I think its the highest quality food that can be made without dupe intervention

You do have to groom the critters. You can't glum ranch anything for a net positive eggs. Though, you can get pretty close with pacu. In the DLC you even have easily renewable food for them with seeds.

If you're really min-maxing I'd say morbs for O2 (about 10 needed per dupe) and 30 starvation ranched pacu. The dupe can cook some fish every couple cycles (he won't have anything else to do). The pacu will keep the temperature around 35C so you can avoid cooling. You have to do something with the 2% chance gulp fish will spawn so either grow some balm lily for seeds to breed more or keep the gulp fish in a separate insulated pool that won't cook them to death.

CO2 can be dealt with power free by using a door pump to (infinitely) compress it.

[Occam Blazer]

9 minutes ago, ghkbrew said:

If you're really min-maxing I'd say morbs for O2 (about 10 needed per dupe) and 30 starvation ranched pacu. The dupe can cook some fish every couple cycles (he won't have anything else to do). The pacu will keep the temperature around 35C so you can avoid cooling. You have to do something with the 2% chance gulp fish will spawn so either grow some balm lily for seeds to breed more or keep the gulp fish in a separate insulated pool that won't cook them to death.

This is a good idea. I'll play around with it for the second hermit base.

[ghkbrew]

27 minutes ago, occamrazor said:

. (5.95 kg of O2 per cycle per dupe). It's really, really, really close though, now that you mention it.

They breath 60kg/cycle of O2. So not that close. But dupes can actually survive on significantly less because of how gasping works. They don't actually need to breath, just gasp in a tiny air pocket every once in a while. Francis John did a horrible/hilarious test build on his recent 100 dupe run where he was able to sustain dupes on just their own pee by keeping them constantly near suffication.

[Occam Blazer]

2 minutes ago, ghkbrew said:

They breath 60kg/cycle of O2.

Derp, off by a factor of 10. I saw FJ's pain hotel video, but I want the dupe to be able to do work too.

 

[TheMule]

9 hours ago, occamrazor said:

Sadly, a electrolyzer can't produce enough oxygen on pee alone. (5.95 kg of O2 per cycle per dupe). It's really, really, really close though, now that you mention it.

"with water only" I meant using external water as the only input

[QuQuasar]

This design is not very efficient, but it's sustainable.

It could be improved: with a gas crusher, the slight amount of excess water could be burned for hydrogen power instead of leaked out to reduce the amount of time Otto needs to spend on the hamster wheel.

Like OP's design, it also needs a filtration medium. As soon as it runs out of sand everything falls apart.

[Occam Blazer]

14 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

the slight amount of excess water could be burned for hydrogen power instead of leaked out

Yah, probably couldn't hurt.

[ghkbrew]

4 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

This design is not very efficient, but it's sustainable.

Nice. I really like the dual pacu pools.

But, I don't see a source of filtration media.

[QuQuasar]

2 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

Nice. I really like the dual pacu pools.

But, I don't see a source of filtration media.

This is one possibility to solve both the filtration medium and the lack of power problems. Though I suppose you're technically no longer not taking any inputs at this stage...

 

[sakura_sk]

9 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

it also needs a filtration medium

Couldn't you make ceramic from clay and crash it to sand? Or isn't there enough clay produced..? I never tried making a sustainable brick

And some questions because I couldn't confirm from the screenshot...

Is the room with the bed a bedroom or barracks? Does carpeted tile count as decor item..?

 Also, how many pacu are there in the closed room? Aren't they getting crammed? If the door is always locked you could put one tile instead of a door to restrict dupe movement and have a bigger room for pacu. 

Cool build btw 

[Yunru]

Personally I'd kill the electrolyser for a MOGOM (much more efficient conversion to oxygen ratio), and run the power on a hamster wheel only.

Should reduce the water and cooling needed.

[ghkbrew]

8 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

This is one possibility to solve both the filtration medium and the lack of power problems.

See I was was going to suggest a pokeshell to convert pdirt to sand

2 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Couldn't you make ceramic from clay and crash it to sand?

You'd need a renewable source coal for that too. Unless, you're heating the clay to 926C.

[Yunru]

Are there any restrictions on dupes? Flatulent dupes, for instance, are more self-sustaining, as are Diver Lungs dupes on the consumption side. 

[Occam Blazer]

8 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Are there any restrictions on dupes? Flatulent dupes, for instance, are more self-sustaining, as are Diver Lungs dupes on the consumption side. 

Nope, go to town.

12 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

But, I don't see a source of filtration media.

This is an exercise in minimizing the colony inputs. A fully-sustained single dupe base would be best, but not requisite.

[ghkbrew]

1 minute ago, occamrazor said:

12 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

But, I don't see a source of filtration media.

This is an exercise in minimizing the colony inputs.

I'm pretty sure 0 input is the minimum But I get your point.

[Occam Blazer]

6 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

I'm pretty sure 0 input is the minimum But I get your point.

(-: The most important minimum.

9 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Couldn't you make ceramic from clay and crash it to sand? Or isn't there enough clay produced..? I never tried making a sustainable brick

A deodorizer makes slightly more clay than it consumes in sand, so with an efficient way to heat clay to ceramic, then crush it into sand you could run a pO2 setup. Maybe @nakomaru's new ceramifier is worth looking at.

On 1/4/2021 at 7:46 PM, ghkbrew said:

The nice thing about omelets is they can be cooked automatically. Let the egg sit in a storage compactor until it cracks the heat the egg yolk until it turns into an omelet. I think its the highest quality food that can be made without dupe intervention

Hands-off cooking is good. Where does the 187 kDTU to heat an egg from 20dC to 70dC come from? Can we find it in the base somewhere? My base generates about 420 kDTU per cycle and you only need to make 1 every other cycle. How dumb would it be to cool your base with raw egg? XD

[ghkbrew]

44 minutes ago, occamrazor said:

Hands-off cooking is good. Where does the 187 kDTU to heat an egg from 20dC to 70dC come from? Can we find it in the base somewhere?

I've never actually tried it. If the omelet spawns at 70C you could counterflow the eggs and omelets. If they spawn at 20C like most things made of genetic ooze, just use a tepidizer. They put out stupid amounts of heat for cheap.

[Yunru]

So got nothing working yet (as apparently Oxyferns lie about how much O2 they produce), but for water filtration, I found a pokéshell and a wild plant provides enough sand between it eating the polluted dirt and the rot pile, although I'm not sure if one plant's enough to break even or be positive.

5 minutes ago, ghkbrew said:

If the omelet spawns at 70C you could counterflow the eggs and omelets.

Having just tested, the egg retains it's heat when it cooks into an omelette.