rocket layout What I love about DLC (rocket interior tweaking) - my design (not only)

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

Hello all,

my first post here  I am enjoying DLC very much (honestly I got attracted to ONI only after learning about DLC mechanics, as they are very attractive to me, more than one big planetoid) and one of my favourite thing is to tweak rocket interior as much as possible.

So, I present you my luxurious two people rocket module and i am very interested of your opinion about it:

Vents and pipes pictures are in attachment, as they are very simple.

I know there are lot of very interesting designs all around, however I wanted my version, with enough morale for two member colonizing team. It's based heavily on designs of other people (theFlyRoper with his Orca travel pod gave me idea for small pump on right side for example), with my final touch.

For liquids, i use (small) tank set to hold only 4k of clean water (as water never runs out before oxygen), so clean water/polluted water are sorted automatically at main base.

Same goes with oxygen and carbon, sorted automatically through (small) gas tank. I know i could get rid of gas tank with use of oxylite, however then i would need way to get rid of carbon (maybe skimmer in place of pilot seat while on the ground) or find a way to fill atmo suit docks (when using them).

Electricity is drawn from battery module. While ship is in transit, power is produced by ship engine (which kind of make me interested in steam engine). While on the ground, there are usually two solar panels connected to battery (or build very soon after ship lands on planetoid for first time).

Regarding luxury - majority of rocket is taken by Great Hall (+6 Morale), then Lavatory and Sink (+2) and some stress release with use of carpeted tiles). I've totally ignored barracks as their morale boost is way too small.

What made me proud last time i was using this design is that 3x3 space for suit docks and checkpoint can be easily swapped for other uses. You can easily put telescope there or orbital microlab+storage bin for plastics. At one point I was even switching between these during the flight (as I used steam engine and its veeeeeryyyyy sloooow :-)) so my dupes wouldn't waste their time. Even though deconstructing fully filled atmo docks was kind of stressfull for few days because od Popped airdrums

Sorry for long post, but I am very proud of this design and I really wanted to share it with you and get feedback

EDIT: Thread name change (as they are not only my layouts and others are incredible :-))

[gigamoi]

HI!

 

Great design. I might steal it if you dont mind. ^^

 

I am, however, quite confused as to why you would use a steam engine with this design. (It's really painfully slow.)

If my calculations are correct, the stack of modules required by your design is only 14 tiles tall. (gas (3) + liquid (3) + battery (2) + living module (4) + nose cone (2)) If we exclude the big petro and hydrogen engines that leaves you with three options

• Steam (indeed) + 1 free height
• Small petroleum engine (4) +  Small solid (or liquid) oxidizer (2)
• Radbolt + 1 solar (no power otherwise)

You mention power as the reason for choosing the steam engine but I don't understand why so much power would be needed while in flight. (I assume power is provided by some other generator while not in flight.) If i am counting correctly, while in flight, you only need a bit of power from time to time to sporadicaly run the two outlet and the gas pump.

I may be wrong about it (I which case, I would like to know) but it seems to me that a single solar panel is plenty enough for that (if you were to use the radbolt engine).

Besides, if you dont or wont produce masses of radbolts, the small petro + small oxidiser provides 240W of power and has just as much range as a steam rocket. 6 tiles isn't much if that for the entire back and forth trip, so refueling once you arrived may be what you had in mind with the steam engine. However, since you have a liquid tank, you might store enough petroleum in there to refuel the enfine with (only 450Kg a pop!) and the oxidiser tank can hold enough oxylite for 2 full trips (4 with liquid oxygen), which may be enough for what you envisioned.

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

Please, ofc, use it if you like it

Regarding power numbers - I did small test with having only 60W power available. To be honest, in this test pump in the left worked constantly (even though theres gas element sensor above dining table), as i like to remove carbon immediately and not after enough acumulation. This means pump is constantly removing not just carbon, but oxide too. Which is reintroduced trough gas output (where's filter). During this test, air pressure in cabin went constantly down (I tend to pressurize it to 2.5 kg to prevent offgasing). After one day, pressure in upper corners was just 2.0 kg.

Then I realized crew could be using telescope during flight to and microlab during flight back. That immediately took out radbolt engine from possibilities.

You are certainly not wrong about petroleum engine. As this is one of most interesting part od DLC I tend to fly rockets much earlier than colonizing "boring" planetoid trough teleporters. In one of my previous games this rocket was even used to colonize oil planetoid, since I turned off teleporters. Thats why i started to like steam engine, however i certainly find petroleum/hydrogen engines as upgrades.

 

[timohl]

Hi.

I am happy to see that we both use very similar rocket designs. The Cargo Tanks make really nice and clean designs possible without any dirt toilets. If you dont mind I would like to share my two designs with you. There are some minor differences to get more space, so I could also get the Barracks/Bedroom bonus.

For me, the steam rocket was also a really good research/exploration rocket in the beginning. I switched between Telescope and Microlab inflight as well. However, I designed this for just one dupe.

To make things really compact I do not use ladders but just doors to move between floors. Also for the Great Hall I build the Water Cooler and then deconstructed one tile below to make space, but it still counts for the room bonus. Same for the Aero Pot, which functions as the +20 decor item (must be made from Diamond). You can see that it is partly inside the tile, but it does not matter.

For the rocket I uses this: Steam Engine -> Spacefarer Module -> Liquid Cargo Tank -> Gas Cargo Canister -> Basic Nosecone. That is 17/20 height, so I switched between the Battery, Orbital Cargo Module, Rover Module and Trailblazer Module depending on the requirements of the mission. I found the Battery only useful if I wanted to land somewhere, so I can charge my rocket externally. The range is 6 tiles, so for exploration you can fly 3 tiles and scan 3, which already revealed 5 other asteroids for me.

Besides Carpet Tiles I also used Buddy Buds as a stress reducer (currently dead on the floor because I pumped in O2 with low temperature). For pressure control I just use a normal Gas Vent since it overpressures at 2kg.

Here you can see my first design

 

My second layout is designed for two dupes. I use this design as a mobile base to colonize other asteroids.

Here, I even removed both tiles below the Water Cooler. For more decor I use Pixel Packs made of Gold.

Since I now have access to petroleum, I use the big Petroleum Engine instead of the Steam Engine. It basically doubles the range to 12 and increases the speed very much (about 1.1 Tiles/Cycle). Because of the big fuel tanks it still leaves just 3 height for free use, but if range is not important the fuel tanks can partly be replaced by other modules.

 

Since I found Graphite for Super Coolant production, my next goal is Liquid Oxygen, which has oxidizer efficiency of 4x to free up more height (Large Solid Oxidizer Tank -> 5 Height vs Liquid Oxidizer Tank -> 2 Height).

Shortly after that I will have a look at Liquid Hydrogen.

The Radbolt Engine has to wait until my Nuclear Reactor is finished.

 

Good luck with your future space endeavours.

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

This is exactly what I like so much - while designing your rocket, there's always one step more how you could improve. Must say, timohl, your designs are incredible. And i thought i couldn't improve mine again

I am definitely stealing your research/exploration rocket design, but with one change in mind (i quickly built in game to show, but did not tested yet):

Ofc it means you must built food storage, bring food on board (berry sludge in my case), then deconstruct and built real thing again. And you need to manually put suit down/up from dupe (if you already are using suits) while boarding/disembarking. But I like the idea that you don't need to manually build either telescope/microlab.

About leaving out battery module - I don't see any use for Orbital Cargo Module, Rover Module and Trailblazer Module in this rocket (ofc from my point of view). I can imagine sending one mission with cargo (refined metal), another with rover (to build ladders, open cargo pods and bring material to landing pad) and third with trailblazer (to build pad and colonize planet), however i rather use two dupe version where i switch from lavatory/washbin to latrine/sanitizer and replace both battery and liquid cargo module for trailblazers (as deconstructing two trailblazers gives enough refined metal to build landing pad).

What I can see is replacing battery module with another 2 solar panels and using radbolt engine (for long range exploration). That would however either introduce need to have battery inside (because you can use up to 240w at given time) or use timer to turn on liquid output only during the time research sleeps (and is not using telescope).

Regarding two dupe version - your version is pretty nice, i especially like that you too have pump and door next to airlock (same inspiration for both of us? :-)) as those doors can be usefull when using more than one rocket for colonization (for more than 2 dupes, btw in that case you don't even need to trade liquid module for second trailblazer).

However I think i will enhance my version with your ideas. I'll show what I was able to made then

Thank you very much for sharing your nice designs and inspiration

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

So, you got me thinking. Seeing timohls designs made me realize i'll be able to squeze some more space out of my two dupe version. And then I got thinking "What If i'll be able to leave battery module out of it?"

Air was what was always limiting operation time for my dupes. Just simple calculations (taking two dupes without +/- traits regarding consumption):

• Water: 4.500 kg (leaving second half of tank for PW from toilet) ..... 450 cycles
• Food: 100 kg Berry Sludge = 400.000 calories ... 200 cycles
• Oxygen: 3600 kg ... 30 cycles

Then it came to me - switch gas cargo and battery for large gas cargo. And voila:

• Oxygen: 11.000 kg ... 91,6 cycle

It still leaves one free space in case of Steam rocket (next time when i am on way to another planetoid I'll think about going over artefact as that solar panel is really redudant) or enough space to use small petroleum engine.

So I present you my newest creation and I am curious about opinions...

As i was able to squeeze "lot" of space, I've started to think about planting thimble reed inside (as i recently switched from PW chlorine cleaning and sieving to feeding PW to reed). I was thinking about building Aero Pot partially inside tile, however i too wanted Buddy Bud effect for my dupes (and i already needed temperature control for reed).

This BTW means I can fully pump liquid tank with water (9k kg of water = 900 cycles) or as gigamoi nicely suggested I could even pump 4.500 kg of Petroleum to create (overkilled) fuel reserve

I had to sacrifice storage bin, because I like Smart Battery (lowest power leak, lowest heat). But I suppose small battery would be enough and then storage bin could be added again.

There are few Cons - barracks morale still ignored (i found that +1 Morale so low to be usefull), need to manually deconstructed nosecone and replace it with battery while ships is landed (to connect to power grid) and temperature control must be maintained (externally trough water and oxygen) in prefered range of Buddy Bud and Thimble Reed, however I am really satisfied with these design improvement.

Many thanks to timohl for inspiration.

BTW sensor right to the battery is from current testing branch, it detects where rocket currently is (in the universe). Klei added very nice functionality to dissallow lot of usable assets (food storage, toilets, beds etc) while in user specified locations. We all saw dupes on main planetoid stealing food from rocket or using toilets while ship is landed

[timohl]

I am not so sure about the Battery inside. The main benefit I see from the external Battery is the ability to plug the rocket into the asteroids main power grid. The Stream Engine produces 600W, so inflight everything should be powered. I guess after landing it can power the atmosuit docks longer until you replace the nose cone with an external battery.

But I love the Thimble Reed in there! I play with low durability so Reed Fiber is always welcome. Will definitely steal this back

This gives me a cruel idea though While in space you could disable the Sink, so the dupes get food poisoning and pee more, thus producing +200% Reed Fiber.

I really like your new design and have no real ideas for improvement, but I can recommend the "Suppress Notifications" mod to remove the red warning signs, e.g. on the floating Water Cooler.

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

Well, battery is there for my good feeling, to be honest. Certainly not needed for steam engine, not that sure in case of small petrol engine (when you switch from atmo docks to telescope) and must have for radbolt engine (you don't in fact need reactor or exploits to fill radbolt engine) with 3 solar panels and just small gas tank.

Yeah, Reed Fiber (with already done temperature control) is really welcomed on newly colonized planetoids. Again, you can use rocket module to send second rocket with necessary resources:

You can split crew so while one (preferably researcher - i had space in upper right corner so i placed microlab to give pure dupe some work to do) is piloting this, second one is piloting modules we discussed above.

I replaced lavatory and sink with inferior versions as they can be used 15 times (which means you can fly 15 cycles without need to refill latrine) and filled liquid tank with polluted water to support reed fiber farm. As soon as both rockets land on new planetoid, transfer poor pilot from this module to luxurious one, deconstruct bed, pilot seat, storage box (it has 4 reed fiber seeds inside in the picture), plant reed fiber and voila, you have 2 fibers/day.

I know, i know, everything could be done on planetoid too, however i somehow like sending different modules already completed in main base... And honestly, you sometimes build things because you want, not just because you need to

EDIT: I forgot - I tend to switch between "release" and testing branch constantly, because of that I prefer to not use mods. Warnings doesn't bother me.

[QuQuasar]

This is my research rocket. Unlike the others here, it's a stubby Co2 rocket, which means the only module I had height to afford was solar panels. The three storage containers are for dirt, algae and plastic. Co2 is evacuated manually by plumbing it out from the pipes into canisters when the researcher starts gasping for air.

(Edit) I made the changes to the design as a result of noticing problems while posting it. This one should work better going forward.

My main problem with this design is that the orbital micro lab isn't high enough. Putting it on a one-high platform would solve a few problems

[Timotheeee1]

My design sacrifices beds for an exosuit forge which ensures you don't need to build one on the other asteroids. If you have a ton of frozen barbeque you can put some in the rocket using a temporary conveyor loader. the control station needs to be replaced by a carbon skimmer every so often. The liquid tank needs to be filled with 5 tons of clean water, and you an then remove the liquid tank from the rocket itself to make space for 2 fuel tanks.

[QuQuasar]

Another Co2 rocket design (I like Co2 rockets), this time for travelling between nearby planetoids. Looks like there's some convergent evolution going on between this design and OP's one.

Oh, and building a ventilation system that stacks packets together is absolutely necessary when you need to plumb Co2 and other trash gasses into canisters.

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

While I don't share your interest in carbon rockets (i use them only for moving cargos between first two planetoids), what I like is again the same - we all find designs tweaked to what we like

[Primalflower]

On 8/3/2021 at 11:11 AM, Timotheeee1 said:

the control station needs to be replaced by a carbon skimmer every so often.

do you think theres some way you could modify the design to have the air vent on the floor, so you don't have to do this?

[Omdev]

I wrote about our rocket here

[arvenil]

Unpopular opinion: I would prefer to have twice the space to make those interiors nicer, sci-fiction spaceship like looking rather than "hacky". Or allow additional capsules below the command one, with some airlock doors - this sounds actually better as would require taller rockets. When I watch current designs I want to cry. Feels like playing first diablo and trying to fit all equipment. Rocket only, compact (1w x 2h), sleeping station, where they would strap themselves would help also. Disallow beds. Compact (1w x 2h) human waste disposal. Disallow outhouse. Same as rocket only, compact, cleaning station (1w x 3h) - could use both water and bleach stone. Disallow wash basin, shower, sink. Dupes floating mid-flight would allow avoiding ladders, which means more space, items could float visually but stay in place until moved - to not make things to complicated. Cryotanks at the end of research tree for long journeys - but now I'm dreaming.

 

p.s. Thanks for sharing the designs, doing this alone, with trial and error is too painful currently IMHO.

[Orzelek]

I think that @arvenil is onto something.
I do get people like to fit stuff in cramped up spaces just to see what we can do.

But it doesn't feel like space rocket - it mostly feels like hacked up startup base.
Having rockets a bit bigger or preffereably set of special rocket only "space" equipment would be really nice.

(And maybe I would actually build a rocket.. right now when I reach that point I kinda los einterest looking at what hacking needs to be done to get some space research).

[Primalflower]

as much as an outhouse inside a rocket capsule doesn't necessarily look very spacey I feel like the challenges that one faces as a result of the cramped interiors are incredibly ONI and make sense for the video game

that being said i would love it if one could place more than one spacefarer module on a rocket and have them connect for various purposes

[QuQuasar]

8 hours ago, Orzelek said:

I think that @arvenil is onto something.
I do get people like to fit stuff in cramped up spaces just to see what we can do.

But it doesn't feel like space rocket - it mostly feels like hacked up startup base.
Having rockets a bit bigger or preffereably set of special rocket only "space" equipment would be really nice.

I do agree with the idea of space equipment. I would like to see a series of plastic 'mini' appliances to accompany the mini-pumps. Off the top of my head,

 

• Space-toilet. 3x1. Automatically vents polluted water into space if not connected to a plumbing system. Does not use water.
• Space-sink. 3x1. Same deal, but it does use water. Filled manually, like a washbasin.
• Bunk bed. Sleeps 2 dupes in a 2x2 space.
• Wall locker. 2x1 or 1x1 storage container mounted on the backwall that doesn't have the 'industrial machinery' tag.

[Jurij I. Gorkij]

I share your opinion there should be possibility to build more spacefarer modules and/or space equipment. Possibly with some downsides, as we should trade required space for another disadvantage. For example, idea for Space-toilet (one post above) seems too overpowered to me. Just quick example - while Bunk bed would certainly save space, sleeping in them would take significantly more time to restore stamina.

What I would even like is possiblity to have one unhabitable planetoid (gas giant maybe?) with very rare resource (even non attainable elsewhere or in finite quantite - for example graphite) where we would be forced to build space station (bigger interior than rocket) and deal with additional issue (high radiation coming from below station or excessive heating of lower portion of station) and need to leave at least operator there.