More fuel options for petroleum engine

[DazyCat]

EtOH & CH4

  As far as I know, ethanol and methane are the only elements other than petroleum that can be burned for power in this game. Since they are both viable rocket fuels in reality, why not make them the same in game? Ethanol and liquid methane both need heavy industry and careful heat management to be massively produced for space commute, and that makes them good petroleum substitutes without breaking game balance. As always for combustible propellants, oxidizer is required for all of them. The flight range and carrying capacity per mass should be adjusted for different ones, like the highest for liquid methane, medium for ethanol, and lowest for traditional petroleum based on the difficulty to acquire. If those changes are adapted, the engine should be renamed as "hydrocarbon engine" to prevent misconception (Petroleum generator should be called hydrocarbon generator indeed.

 

N2H4

 Hydrazine (liquid) is a better rocket fuel with higher specific impulse than those mentioned above. Please add a crafting recipe for it in molecular forge： 100kg fertilizer + 500g gold -->  100kg hydrazine

Fertilizer is rich in ammonia which can be refined to hydrazine, in multiple steps in real life though. With some high-end future catalysis science ("magic") in ONI world, hydrazine should be fairly accessible while costing a decent amount of power (1200Wx80s/100kg in molecular forge) to balance off. If we can have this in game, those redundant natural fertilizer blocks will be out of demand after a few flights. The fertilizer synthesizer will be mandatory to continue space exploration, making it useful again other than solving the colony's food supply problem.

[kisukin]

Maybe something similar to the petroleum generator . A fixed ratio ( in this case , travel ratio ) for X combustible liquid. Souds a little more simple instead change ratios based on fuel . If we think in a target ratio ( for example , lets say petroleum is the main way to fuel the rocket for X tile travel ) , give other options to players use other fuels ( even less eficiently ) sounds less imbalance , because ( potentially ) generate ethanol sounds more benefitial to the colony ( extra dirt and water , plus the fact is more simple balance the production even in asteroids lacking of  water related geisers )

[AndreyKl]

On 9/24/2021 at 6:42 PM, ONI_Chemist said:

The flight range can be adjusted for different ones, like the highest for liquid methane, medium for ethanol, and lowest for traditional petroleum based on the difficulty to acquire.

Ethanol is easier to get than petroleum. You need to plant a tree and process tree's output, temperatures are high (Distiller outputs at 73 degrees), but not so high that it will require steel machines. And if you pip-plant a tree, it becomes a free fuel, doesn't even need any labor if you let the wood fall.

Oil is mostly bound to oil planetoid, so if oil wells are your main source of fuel, you will have to set up delivery to main (or any other) planetoid. It is possible to set up a molten slickster farm, but that requires higher temperatures and usually dupe-time, plus source of CO2, in competition with trees that just grow when pip-planted and can use ethanol's byproducts when not pip-planted, I think ethanol wins.

But I agree that petroleum engine needs more options, more fuel options sounds nice, from my point of view petroleum engine is the least appealing engine at the moment or in a tie with sucrose engine in usability.

[NeoDeusMachina]

5 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

Ethanol is easier to get than petroleum. You need to plant a tree and process tree's output, temperatures are high (Distiller outputs at 73 degrees), but not so high that it will require steel machines. And if you pip-plant a tree, it becomes a free fuel, doesn't even need any labor if you let the wood fall.

Not only that, but you can find decent amounts of ethanol in some biomes, so you could simply harvest that and launch quite a few rockets without having to set up any sort of ethanol production. Those biomes are usually cold and very easy to access compared to the oil biome. I hope this would be considered if they allow ethanol as fuel for petroleum engines when balancing things.

[DazyCat]

On 9/26/2021 at 9:53 PM, AndreyKl said:

Oil is mostly bound to oil planetoid, so if oil wells are your main source of fuel, you will have to set up delivery to main (or any other) planetoid. 

For me petroleum is the easiest and quickest resource to get and there's plethora of them. Cuz my first discovered neighborhood asteroid is always the one connects the starting planetoid through teleporters, and is destined to have oil biome. All I need to do is having dupes dig up that oil field in atmo suits, pick a reservoir to build a well, then hook the pipes to an oil refinery and boom, you got petroleum. The starting planetoid usually has a cold pwater slush and a cold brine geyser to satiate water demand, so you can teleport as much piped petroleum home as you wish. As long as you keep the oil field sealed for temperature and gas, you'll never run into a problem with temperature since the oil well overheats at least at 2273 deg C. 

On 9/26/2021 at 10:04 PM, NeoDeusMachina said:

Not only that, but you can find decent amounts of ethanol in some biomes, so you could simply harvest that and launch quite a few rockets without having to set up any sort of ethanol production. Those biomes are usually cold and very easy to access compared to the oil biome. I hope this would be considered if they allow ethanol as fuel for petroleum engines when balancing things.

I usually spend all that up in petroleum generators to boost colony development during early game. It's the best hands-off intermediate power source to rapidly resolve survival issue and build enough infrastructure before I switch to more sustainable power options as the colony's power demand continue to grow. Petroleum engine is quite behind the tech tree and those ethanol would be long gone before I was able to build one. 

[NeoDeusMachina]

24 minutes ago, ONI_Chemist said:

I usually spend all that up in petroleum generators to boost colony development during early game. It's the best hands-free intermediate power source for me to rapidly resolve survival issue and build enough infrastructure before I switch to more sustainable power options as the colony's power demand continue to grow. Petroleum engine is quite behind the tech tree and those ethanol would be long gone before I was able to build one. 

It is an option, but if you had other options like rocket fuel, you might reconsider burning it away to make power. I personally never burned that ethanol in a petroleum generator, I never felt like I needed to or that it would speed up my colony's progress. I would definitely stock pile it for rocket fuel if it was an option. I think the most common thing I've used that ethanol for was to make cold liquid locks XD Which I wouldn't if I could use it as rocket fuel.

[kisukin]

That´s what i like this forum. 

I have tried both ways , let me talk about that experience :

Fist time i have made the regular setup ( i belive is the "intended way" ) - start in regular biome , use the teleporter and transfer water to the oil planetoid , as @ONI_Chemist do. It´s works and its simple ( and you could teleport back some petroleum back to the start colony without problems ) . Im a bit confused about the teleporter function , looks more to a simple way to new players move between a new asteroid , but looks a little overpower, because you could move stuff between asteroids with a very low cost ( tech , energy and resources ) ... i feel this mechanic slows down a bit the necessity to develop rocket and space travel at start , but give you a huge advance in mid and late game ( since you have some plastic to develop advanced tech more easily ). 

Second time i tried explore the adjacent planetoid without teleporter . Start with 2 rockets ( 1 sucrose engine and 1 co2 ) . Start a colony and plant some trees to start the ethanol setup ( i used this for a extra water , dirt and power production in this planetoid ) . Works nice at small scale. If you use wild trees , you have some sort of "free" basic materials, but if you scale up the production , this demands a considerable time and resources  (some water and duplicant time if you decide plant some trees, plus the ethanol production is a bit power consumer ). Looks a bit more timing consume , but very rewarding way in small scale.

After that , i decided explore the oil biome to take some slicksters to the planetoid without teleport. This is amazing. I combinated both productions and this give me a independent water geiser colony.  The co2 produced by the geisers ,ethanol and power production , feeds very well 2 96 room slicksters ranchs. I used ethanol to have some extra power and saved some petroil to plastic production( @NeoDeusMachina try once, is a fun setup ^^). With some heat management and refinement , you could use the polluted dirt and extra polluted water to keep a 5-6 duplicant colony without problems. The only issue in the process is power production at start , but if you have any renewable energy source ( steam or solar power ) its solved. If you need a little more CO2 , you could simply burn some wood without processing ( my fist steel wooden burner ) . 

Petroleum vs Ethanol : petroleum is usefull in power production , space travel , research and some buildings. Ethanol is a extra way to obtain power and food ( if you have the seeds ) ; if a planetoid have a oil source , petroleum shines ; razoable easy way to start the production and fast results. In other way, ethanol looks a little more colony sustentable way ( because the byproducs ). Very nice in small scale ( with pips planting ).

Methane : if you have a petroleum boiler or have a excessive(?) natural gas production ( in my mind i see a colony with a lot of flatulent duplicants XD ) , looks similar to the LOx Or Liquid Hidrogen production. If you have a boiler , we need find a razoable ratio ( even considering the process involved ). 

Ratios : Maybe the hardest point . If you have a oil vent , you probably have tons of oil (ideal for the start colony and adjacencies) , ethanol looks nice if you don´t have a better way to produce petroleum or transport it ; methane is a case to think better because of balace. 

Maybe it works well if we have a basic rocket working with the combustible fuels and the "ultimate combustion rocket engine" working with the high-octanage-fuel ( something produced in molecular forge with 1,2,3 of those plus extra materials - idk , maybe some rads or rare material in process ).

[KonfigSys]

you could use ethanol instead of oil in the vanilla game as I recall. 

The problem was when you mixed them together.

Ethanol engines could be nice to have or a possibility to use ethanol instead of oil.

[JaxckLl]

On 9/26/2021 at 7:04 AM, NeoDeusMachina said:

Not only that, but you can find decent amounts of ethanol in some biomes, so you could simply harvest that and launch quite a few rockets without having to set up any sort of ethanol production. Those biomes are usually cold and very easy to access compared to the oil biome. I hope this would be considered if they allow ethanol as fuel for petroleum engines when balancing things.

The right way to do it would be to give Ethanol lower fuel efficiency. Or alternatively, add in Kerosene as the fuel for the Petrol Rocket instead of Petrol. Kerosene can be produced from Ethanol, Petrol, Crude, Natural Gas, or even CO2 under the right circumstances. Each input material would have different ratios, with Petrol being the best input followed by NatGas & Ethanol. Kerosene would be less efficient for power than NatGas, Petrol, or Ethanol, meaning it's only real use would be as rocket fuel or a CO2 sink.

The advantages of the Kerosene approach:

• It's more realistic to how rockets work in real life, meeting player expectations.
• It fits the same model as power or calorie generation, in that it is a single valuable & purposeful resource with a variety of acquisition methods.
• It adds a step into processing Ethanol for rockets, while also allowing for a more standardized fueling station for your rockets. While this would also mean adding a step to the end of Petrol, allowing direct generation of Kerosene from NatGas & Oil would open up Petrol processing as there'd be more than one thing to do with your Oil. It would allow for non-Petrol bases, which is an interesting challenge that's currently not practical due to how powerful & essential Petrol is for late game sustainability.
• The material properties of Kerosene could be adjusted to be more favourable for rocket use than for other. Perhaps it has a resistance to vaporization when under pressure, such as when in a pipe, one of the main reasons it's used as a rocket fuel (this resistance allows you to be very precise with how much fuel you are allowing into the combustion chamber since it will remain liquid all the way up until it hits the engine nozzle. Additionally, it prevents gas bubbles from forming in the tank, something that would happen with gasoline under similar rocket-engine circumstances)
• A late game machine that uses radbolts & CO2 to produce Kerosene would allow for hybridization of Radbolt & Petrol rocket infrastructure, encouraging interchangeable use of both engines rather than commitment to one or the other. Additionally, this would serve as an alternative to Slicksters for power-positive handling of CO2 in the mid game, varying progression. Such a machine would also satisfy the missing link of real world rocket science, namely the fact that CO2 capture is an effective means of producing rocket fuels.
• A Kerosene Lamp would be a cool little mobile decor piece for miners, allowing them to keep their morale up even though they're spending their time surrounded by debris.

[r4d6]

Personally, I do not think that ethanol should be that less efficient than petroleum. Maybe 20-30% less, but not much.

I feel that Ethanol and Petroleum are pretty much the same in term of labor & other resources needed.

Petroleum only require a duplicant to empty the oil wells from time to time, and another dupe to operate the refinery if there isn't a petroleum boiler.
That's 10 kg/s of petroleum with minimal duplicant labor. Not counting the natural gas that is also coming out of the oil well. All for some water.

Ethanol require arbor tree and distillers. To get a 10 kg/s stream of Ethanol, you need 20 distillers and either 144 wild or 36 domesticated arbor tree to support those distillers,  so that's an additional 360 kg/cycle of dirt and 2.52 ton/cycle of P-water to support those tree. The P-dirt produced by those distillers also need ~144 compost piles to convert that P-dirt back to dirt and/or a lot of sage hatches/pokeshell to eat it all.
The trees also require a duplicant to harvest the branches if you don't want to spend an additional 1.44 ton of dirt and 10 ton of P-water on the trees.
In any case, to match Petroleum in output, it require a lot more resources, labor and mostly space for ethanol to do, and then you have to deal with the massive heat and CO2 output.

Looking at it now, Ethanol would require way more space and resources than petroleum need to match the petroleum output. Sure you could go with less, like 4 distillers and 8 arbor trees, but then you wouldn't be able to match the Petroleum's output, and if an ethanol rocket engine was really added in, that setup probably wouldn't be able to handle many rockets going back and forth, though I never really messed with them, so I can't be sure, but at the very least you could sustain a lot more rockets out of petroleum than on ethanol for the "same" amount of effort and space.

[NeoDeusMachina]

1 hour ago, r4d6 said:

Personally, I do not think that ethanol should be that less efficient than petroleum. Maybe 20-30% less, but not much.

I feel that Ethanol and Petroleum are pretty much the same in term of labor & other resources needed.

Petroleum only require a duplicant to empty the oil wells from time to time, and another dupe to operate the refinery if there isn't a petroleum boiler.
That's 10 kg/s of petroleum with minimal duplicant labor. Not counting the natural gas that is also coming out of the oil well. All for some water.

Ethanol require arbor tree and distillers. To get a 10 kg/s stream of Ethanol, you need 20 distillers and either 144 wild or 36 domesticated arbor tree to support those distillers,  so that's an additional 360 kg/cycle of dirt and 2.52 ton/cycle of P-water to support those tree. The P-dirt produced by those distillers also need ~144 compost piles to convert that P-dirt back to dirt and/or a lot of sage hatches/pokeshell to eat it all.
The trees also require a duplicant to harvest the branches if you don't want to spend an additional 1.44 ton of dirt and 10 ton of P-water on the trees.
In any case, to match Petroleum in output, it require a lot more resources, labor and mostly space for ethanol to do, and then you have to deal with the massive heat and CO2 output.

Looking at it now, Ethanol would require way more space and resources than petroleum need to match the petroleum output. Sure you could go with less, like 4 distillers and 8 arbor trees, but then you wouldn't be able to match the Petroleum's output, and if an ethanol rocket engine was really added in, that setup probably wouldn't be able to handle many rockets going back and forth, though I never really messed with them, so I can't be sure, but at the very least you could sustain a lot more rockets out of petroleum than on ethanol for the "same" amount of effort and space.

Except there are tons of ethanol in rust biomes that only require a pump and will be enough for many, many rocket trips. It's cold, so dupes can get there without atmo suits and it can be pumped with copper cause it'll never overheat vs the challenges associated with the oil biome. Last time i saw someone pump all the ethanol from their spaced out map in one place, there was like 100t of it, not kidding. You can probably live off of that until you get liquid hydrogen rockets tbh. Even with 2 fuel tanks, that's 50 rocket launches - with a copper pump and no atmosuits.

[r4d6]

6 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Except there are tons of ethanol in rust biomes that only require a pump and will be enough for many, many rocket trips. It's cold, so dupes can get there without atmo suits and it can be pumped with copper cause it'll never overheat vs the challenges associated with the oil biome. Last time i saw someone pump all the ethanol from their spaced out map in one place, there was like 100t of it, not kidding. You can probably live off of that until you get liquid hydrogen rockets tbh. Even with 2 fuel tanks, that's 50 rocket launches - with a copper pump and no atmosuits.

True, but after those 50 launches, you run out of easy fuel, and that assume you use the ethanol *only* for the rocket. For the petroleum you can get enough to power your base, turn into plastic, use as coolant and power your rockets, forever, while the Ethanol won't renew itself that easily without investment on your part.

And anyway my post was about producing a constant stream of ethanol from nothing to match the constant stream of petroleum, and some maps may not have that much ethanol or any.

It would be just as easy to use the petroleum that way if it was just, laying around in lakes and puddles.

But once the ethanol runs out, you either have to switch to the Liquid H2-O2, Radbolt or petroleum rocket, because it isn't sustainable long-term without using a lot of space.

And also players will still have to deal with the challenges of the oil biome for plastic and lead, unless they get lucky with dreckos, but at that point it is about glossy dreckos, not ethanol.

[NeoDeusMachina]

2 minutes ago, r4d6 said:

True, but after those 50 launches, you run out of easy fuel, and that assume you use the ethanol *only* for the rocket. For the petroleum you can get enough to power your base, turn into plastic, use as coolant and power your rockets, forever, while the Ethanol won't renew itself that easily without investment on your part.

And anyway my post was about producing a constant stream of ethanol from nothing to match the constant stream of petroleum, and some maps may not have that much ethanol or any.

It greatly affects progression and balance if there is that much ethanol accessible that can easily be tapped into for rocket fuel, since spaced out is a lot about moving out in space and getting access to new resources on other planets (except classic starts where you pretty much have every resource you need on the starting asteroid except a few rare resources). I don't know how much you've played with rockets in the DLC so far, but from my experience, you can do a LOT with 50 petroleum engine launches (2 fuel tanks). Some of them would only require 1 fuel tank, so that's even more rockets launched. Could colonize the entire cluster with that amount of fuel tbh.

As far as I know, rust biomes are present on the oily asteroid no matter what start you pick in the DLC (spaced out style), which happens to be the planet with teleporters. It might be present in lesser quantities in the upcoming new smaller asteroid starts next patch, though. I don't know how that will affect the amount and accessibility of free ethanol for that type of cluster, but from what I could tell, the 5 asteroids are all in very close proximity on the starmap.

I do agree with you that ethanol production has its own challenges, but it also has advantages over petroleum production in its by products. For example, polluted dirt is produced in very large amounts and can be used to ranch pokeshells for lime and boost steel production, but I would personally feed it to sage hatches in the DLC to turn it into coal with 100% efficiency to make diamond for space mining. That would mean a sustainable stream of diamonds, which opens up sustainable space mining of all the resources available out there.

I understand your post was about comparing production chains for ethanol vs petroleum, but using it as rocket fuel has consequences not only in that context, but in other contexts. I just think it would need to be balanced to take into account all relevant contexts, which means their production chains like you have mentioned, but other things too, like how easy it is to have access to it because it appears naturally in large quantities.

2 minutes ago, r4d6 said:

It would be just as easy to use the petroleum that way if it was just, laying around in lakes and puddles.

Yes, but it's not, on any currently available starts, base game and DLC included, as well as on the incoming smaller asteroid starts from what I could see. so this is sort of irrelevant in our discussion.

2 minutes ago, r4d6 said:

And also players will still have to deal with the challenges of the oil biome for plastic and lead, unless they get lucky with dreckos, but at that point it is about glossy dreckos, not ethanol.

Imo, no one "has to" deal with the challenges of the oil biome in spaced out. As things are standing now, there are alternatives to every resource you will find in there. You can even mine oil from space - and you don't need to be "lucky" to get plastic from dreckos, it's very easy to get from mealwood and then swap their diet to bristle blossom. Water is easily made renewable. But you're right, this is a bit off topic.

[AndreyKl]

On 10/17/2021 at 2:50 PM, r4d6 said:

True, but after those 50 launches, you run out of easy fuel, and that assume you use the ethanol *only* for the rocket. For the petroleum you can get enough to power your base, turn into plastic, use as coolant and power your rockets, forever, while the Ethanol won't renew itself that easily without investment on your part.

Petroleum power isn't water positive early on (requires rare resources or volcanoes). Small pip->tree farm to get some initial amounts of power and water is a lot easier to set up. I'm running a small tree farm to supply my dupes with oxygen and sand trough distillery.

On 10/17/2021 at 6:34 AM, r4d6 said:

The trees also require a duplicant to harvest the branches if you don't want to spend an additional 1.44 ton of dirt and 10 ton of P-water on the trees.

That can be fully automated. I think it produces full amount of lumber when water-harvested. Even if it doesn't, with ethanol you can vacate an asteroid and it will keep producing fuel, even if at halved capacity.  

On 10/17/2021 at 6:34 AM, r4d6 said:

The P-dirt produced by those distillers also need ~144 compost piles to convert that P-dirt back to dirt and/or a lot of sage hatches/pokeshell to eat it all.

Personally I convert that to sand via pockeshells, no dupe-labor required. You can also boil pwater and pdirt dupe-free, but I did not bother setting it up (most planetoids have volcanoes, so it easy to do).

On 10/17/2021 at 2:50 PM, r4d6 said:

But once the ethanol runs out, you either have to switch to the Liquid H2-O2, Radbolt or petroleum rocket, because it isn't sustainable long-term without using a lot of space.

Been sustaining my dupes for a while on ethanol byproducts. Seems to be sufficiently sustainable.

Single distiller produces 300kg of ethanol per cycle. Large petroleum engine uses 90kg of petroleum per hex. If engine starts to use ethanol and if consumption will be doubled for ethanol (to 180kg per hex), single distillery will still be able to support at least two large 'petroleum' rockets 24/7.

2 domesticated or 8 wild trees for a distiller is not that much space (but depends onto how much you need).

Petroleum grants a lot more fuel once properly setup, but it also requires a water source, oil source, properly enclosed and insulated space, more dupe time and at minimum gold amalgam for some of the machinery (I think my refinery was at 90+C). If I haven't went for radioactive asteroid first, I wouldn't have had access to gold amalgam and even with that I needed a fair bit of refined materials and time. Ethanol distillery is dirt-cheap in comparison, can be build far earlier resource-wise (still requires a radioactive asteroid to unlock pips and trees, but isn't tied down to single asteroid like oil).  

On 10/17/2021 at 2:50 PM, r4d6 said:

It would be just as easy to use the petroleum that way if it was just, laying around in lakes and puddles.

My oil planetoid only had about 16-18t of crude oil in it (most of it contaminated with zombie spores). Two rocket trips to transport all that oil, couple airlocks, couple submerged aquaturners and I was out of crude oil.

Even if planetoid had entire lakes, I doubt I would have used it for rocket fuel. I would have used those lakes an puddles for my volcano taming setups, there are lots of volcanoes on radioactive asteroid, and there are a lot of metal volcanoes elsewhere and I was initially very low on crude oil for taming them.

Also of note: Petroleum rockets are hot! Like melt steel cables hot. And somehow there were almost no tungsten/wolframite around sans magma submerged volcanoes. There is no point in producing copious amounts of fuel from lakes and puddles if you can't use it. Sadly this is likely to be true for ethanol as well if it becomes rocket fuel.

On 10/17/2021 at 6:34 AM, r4d6 said:

To get a 10 kg/s stream of Ethanol, you need 20 distillers and either 144 wild or 36 domesticated arbor tree to support those distillers

Why would you need that much? If we get an ethanol rocket, you won't be able to use all that fuel, even a fraction of it. And that's copious amount of power or even water. I can see building something like that late game to sustain 20-40 additional dupes, but realistically 1-2 distillers + pip planted trees will be all that you need to make tiny colonies self sustainable and to get all the potential rocket fuel.

[r4d6]

30 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

Why would you need that much? If we get an ethanol rocket, you won't be able to use all that fuel, even a fraction of it. And that's copious amount of power or even water. I can see building something like that late game to sustain 20-40 additional dupes, but realistically 1-2 distillers + pip planted trees will be all that you need to make tiny colonies self sustainable and to get all the potential rocket fuel.

While I can't argue the rest, I mentioned a 10 kg/s stream of ethanol because that is what you would have been able to get with 3-4 oil wells and a petroleum boiler. Sure a single distillery would be able to support 2-4 Large Petroleum engine, but how many more would you be able to support with the constant stream of petroleum?

My point was that even if Ethanol was a rocket fuel as efficient as Petroleum, it would require a lot more space and more requirements in general compared to Petroleum. Sure it can be completely automated, but that doesn't mean that it won't take half of the asteroid to match the output of one petroleum boiler.

[babba]

On 9/24/2021 at 5:42 PM, ONI_Chemist said:

EtOH & CH4

  As far as I know, ethanol and methane are the only elements other than petroleum that can be burned for power in this game. Since they are both viable rocket fuels in reality, why not make them the same in game? Ethanol and liquid methane both need heavy industry and careful heat management to be massively produced for space commute, and that makes them good petroleum substitutes without breaking game balance. As always for combustible propellants, oxidizer is required for all of them. The flight range and carrying capacity per mass should be adjusted for different ones, like the highest for liquid methane, medium for ethanol, and lowest for traditional petroleum based on the difficulty to acquire. If those changes are adapted, the engine should be renamed as "hydrocarbon engine" to prevent misconception (Petroleum generator should be called hydrocarbon generator indeed.

 

N2H4

 Hydrazine (liquid) is a better rocket fuel with higher specific impulse than those mentioned above. Please add a crafting recipe for it in molecular forge： 100kg fertilizer + 500g gold -->  100kg hydrazine

Fertilizer is rich in ammonia which can be refined to hydrazine, in multiple steps in real life though. With some high-end future catalysis science ("magic") in ONI world, hydrazine should be fairly accessible while costing a decent amount of power (1200Wx80s/100kg in molecular forge) to balance off. If we can have this in game, those redundant natural fertilizer blocks will be out of demand after a few flights. The fertilizer synthesizer will be mandatory to continue space exploration, making it useful again other than solving the colony's food supply problem.

YUM YUMM YUMM, I instantly got in to orgasm state reading your great post  .

I have asked for fuel like Hydrazine in the past. YUMM YUMM YUMM !

[r4d6]

Well I wanted an Ethanol Engine, so I made one : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2634367806

It was a pain in the ass to do, but at least it is done and people can enjoy it.

[babba]

2 hours ago, r4d6 said:

Well I wanted an Ethanol Engine, so I made one : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2634367806

It was a pain in the ass to do, but at least it is done and people can enjoy it.

It would be so great if we could milk space cows and have a butter engine...That would be the cream of the crop

Butter fuel for "everything"