My review of DLC Space out and nuclear power

[catrue]

It's a long time since I visited the forum and did not share my thoughts on the development of the game and its improvement. I want to tell you what I think at the moment and what I would like to see in the future.

The first thing I would like to say is that the development team Klei, this is one of the few teams that really listens to feedback from users and not Streaming to earn more money sacrificing their community. Many thanks to them for that.

So let's begin. My review of the DLC Space OUT on the eve of its release.

I have played a huge number of hours in the DLC and what can I summarize

1.The radbol development branch is implemented just great...the last update with the increase in radiation emission is just mind blowing. Big thanks for that.

2.Worlds generation - made all super, probably should add more fine-tuning world options - such as geysers, fallen satellites volcanoes, and so on, but even at this point it's brilliant. The balance of the new generations is impressive. Thanks for the great job.

 

3. The development branch Nuclear Power. Specifically your nuclear reactor and energy production with it is a failure. Everyone has been waiting for it to apply ... and ... There is no end to the disappointment. What can I say. The steam turbine which was in the beginning of development was also disappointing, but you have perfected it and now not a single video on the internet is without it. It is practical and handy (great implementation). What are the disadvantages I saw in the nuclear reactor. The first is incomprehensibility of production and scheme of construction, the second is bulky construction scheme, which is unacceptable and causes one of the main problems - not practicality of this construction. And the main disadvantage of your nuclear reactor is that there is no reason to build it. I understand that people on the forum have long asked for nuclear power, but at this stage and with this implementation it is a failure. Besides, there is not the most important reason to want to build this energy source. There are so many ways to produce energy in the right quantities with much less effort and much less space to put it in. I have several suggestions on this subject. They will be outlined below (I hope you will listen to them and the community and make a number of corrections to the technology and it will play in a new way).

4.This plant mutants - I did not expect the mutants, it is interesting and really new - but the difficulty of growing them and even more so to maintain their growth with the help of radiation makes me question - and why. Why suffer so long to get a double crop. It's not a problem with conventional plant cultivation either. Well, to me it is at least impractical. Complicated scheme, the danger of overexposure of the duplicate farmer, and the benefit is minimal. Branch mutants need to finalize, and radiation to make the cause of mutation, not a factor in cultivation. Well, this is just my opinion I hope the community will support me.

5. Outer space - it's great. Excellent implementation and almost exactly what I described in my review at the beginning of the DLC.

6. And special praise, of course, deserves new mechanics of building missiles. It's 10 out of 10, the best implementation I've seen so far. As before you have made perfect from a ridiculous blank but great idea. And it really is. Ease of construction, practicality, compactness, error-free operation. That's really something to be proud of. Thank you very much.

Okay, I'm a little long with the introduction just wanted to write my review of the Space OUT DLC. And now, as promised, I will move on to my suggestions, perhaps they will like the community and you and you implement them in the future and prolong the life of this great game.

 

I will begin, of course, as promised with Nuclear Power. Before I start, I want to say this. To make nuclear power a really valuable tool in the game world of Oxygen not included, you should first set a goal that the introduction of nuclear power would solve. For example, the way I see it, there are three main reasons to build it.

The first is the introduction of energy-intensive production into the game. For example arc melting of metals in large volumes, creation of refractory alloys applicable in the game in the later stages of building super productive or super-efficient structures. Perhaps the secrets of creating superconductors, or the creation of unique technologies that would require building such a powerful energy source.

 The second is peak power consumption on a huge scale for a short period of time, which I will talk about below.

 The third is the use of reactor radiation, which is not realized at the moment.

Now I will tell you how I see it on the scheme with pictures. The artwork is not mine so please don't judge too harshly. I just used some of them for more accessible understanding of the scheme.

So.  The scheme will consist of three phases.

1.            Mining enrichment and creation of fuel assemblies

2.            Scheme of building a nuclear power plant

3.           Storage and disposal of nuclear waste

 

First.  Mining and enrichment.

So as you can see from the figure the chain of production is very different from what is in the game at the moment. Now by stages.

1.1 Enrichment of uranium beta bees (standard technology), in addition, as you can see in the diagram is the second option. This is the Ore Enrichment Complex. (depleted uranium turns into enriched uranium). Enrichment at this plant requires even more investment (as a variant recipe can be considered pumping water to wash the rock and get the output of enriched uranium dirty water + of course the energy consumption of at least 680 watts).

1.2 After obtaining the purified uranium we need to produce a fuel assembly for the reactor (so called - TVEL). It consists of pressed uranium pellets which are assembled into cylinders to be transported to the loading area of the reactor. It is made on a high-pressure machine to build which we need steel and leaded glass, which can be produced on a diamond press with radballs + glass + lead (additional recipe). To make the fuel assembly (TVELA) in the recipe you can use 100 kg of steel and 300 kg of uranium. In addition, you can add such a structure as a storage facility for finished fuel assemblies for safe storage of the produced fuel and its stockpile.

At once I want to remind you that, as now, all these machines are in the dirty zone of radioactive contamination and require work in suits of radioactive protection.

 

Now let's move on to the second stage. The diagram of the nuclear power plant.

As you can see on the image it doesn't consist of one huge chamber like now, which is very inconvenient. And it is implemented as a three-level construction in 4 standard cells each floor.

 2.1 Top floor - This is the loading area of the Nuclear Plant. Here the loading of the new fuel assemblies and the extraction of the spent waste is performed.

 2.2 The second floor consists of several buildings - the reactor vessel (A), two circulation pumps - generator (B) and the transformer substation (C). We should elaborate on these buildings. The reactor vessel is just an extension of the reactor from the loading area - its recipe should consist of a large amount of steel - for example 3000 or even more. Automated outlets can be placed here to control the pumps and the reactor as a whole. A recirculation pump is a unique construction which should serve as a kind of analogue of a steam turbine, but which can only be built when connected to the nuclear reactor vessel, to the steam separator cells (to avoid cheating mechanics). In addition the condensed water outlet pipes have to enter the reactor vessel and flow through it into the steam chamber as indicated in the pipe diagram. It can operate at higher temperatures and produce an enormous amount of energy by the standards of the game. This unit will circulate the steam generated from the heat of the reactor back into water and return it back into the steam chamber for re-evaporation. Last is the transformer substation this unit works as a condenser to smooth out the energy release peak and store a certain amount of energy. Although with the transformer substation I am not sure whether it is needed as an intermediate element. You can play with the characteristics of these plants to balance the amount of fuel consumed and energy output as a result. Well also it is necessary to take into account the cost of the production cycle of fuel assemblies and disposal of spent fuel. Well as for me the figure of 3000 to 6000 watts for one installed pump would be the most reasonable. And would be interested in the implementation of this production chain for the settlement

 2.3 And of course the bottom floor is the reactor core and on both sides of the steam generation chamber with steam release cells. I think we should make this floor one module with a limited number of interaction cells with two recirculation pumps.  I want to say that to be more realistic, perhaps we should consider building this chamber with thermal protection and radiation protection with ultra-high pressure walls. For example as an option to add a new element of boron and create a recipe for boron steel. Cells of which would protect the surrounding space from radiation, temperature and high pressure. And for ordinary protection from radiation create lead-graphite walls and lead-glass so as not to build huge piles around such buildings as is happening now (example).________ These are currently exhaustible resources so are valuable and will be spent with caution especially graphite.

Stage Three. Storage and disposal of nuclear waste

Well, we got to the third part of the technology, namely the disposal of waste. I would like to say that in my opinion a big disadvantage is sufficient safety of these wastes in the existing version of the game. I think you should make them really dangerous in addition to make them contaminate the surrounding space, so that they soak into the rock and everything in contact with.

 The waste from the nuclear reaction could accumulate in the spent fuel assemblies as a solid, rather than flowing away as it does now. The duplicant, when loading a new fuel rod, would simply remove the old assembly and place it in storage in the Spent Fuel Storage Facility. Which in turn would generate a certain amount of heat and require constant water cooling. After that, a Spent Fuel Assembly Reprocessing Plant could be created where the currently existing waste could be applied. The duplicant, working at this plant, places the assembly for processing and at the output receives a certain portion of depleted uranium and liquid radioactive waste that eventually loses its radioactivity. This completes the production cycle.

I have described one possible implementation of nuclear power, showing a little imagination and technical knowledge of the process itself. I think with this implementation the player would be interested in building a Nuclear Reactor not so much to get energy but to see how it all works and have fun doing it.

There may be some errors as I use a translator. 

[Sasza22]

On 12/13/2021 at 12:01 PM, catrue said:

And the main disadvantage of your nuclear reactor is that there is no reason to build it.

Yes that`s the main issue. But your idea seems to make the construction of it more complicated without fixing this issue.

We don`t have enough radbolt consumers to warrant building the reactor most of the time and we got other heat sources to produce power.

But it`s a "research reactor". Things like this are used to make rare isotopes. IMO this thing should produce something more than just nuclear waste. Some kind of radioactive thing byproduct that could find new uses. Better fuel for radlamps, isotopes for RTG units (small portable generators for exploration or powering rovers). Something that can release stabile long lasting radiation for use in mutant crop farms. Still doesn`t sound like enough but would make the reactor unique and not just a source of heat and radiation.

[juni3227]

 

18 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Yes that`s the main issue. But your idea seems to make the construction of it more complicated without fixing this issue.

We don`t have enough radbolt consumers to warrant building the reactor most of the time and we got other heat sources to produce power.

But it`s a "research reactor". Things like this are used to make rare isotopes. IMO this thing should produce something more than just nuclear waste. Some kind of radioactive thing byproduct that could find new uses. Better fuel for radlamps, isotopes for RTG units (small portable generators for exploration or powering rovers). Something that can release stabile long lasting radiation for use in mutant crop farms. Still doesn`t sound like enough but would make the reactor unique and not just a source of heat and radiation.

I am not sure, but my 4 interplanetary launchers and 4 diamond press are hording all rad from two reactors. I am now agressively colonizing other asteroids and they consume like hell. they can send 20 tons in 3 cycles 5 tiles away with some extra diamond that I use for mining more Uranium. so.... Very useful?

I rather felt most of mutations are worthless. Rad requirements are making them .... not worth it. I get that it needs rad for geting mutation, but you still need rad for growing them? ... uhhh... so.... what is the point of 'wild' mutation or 'easy going' mutation?

25 rad, that is easy, but 250? That is dangerous and almost impossible to mass cultivate unless the reactor.

Although, if we can get isotopes, then I want to have some radiation emitting blocks. That will be very useful. More radvolt or mass mutation farm away from the reactors.

 

And also... um... catrue, your concept is ... making already a mega project building a giga project. ONI's implimentation is already very faithful to how real reactor works. You heat water with reactor, water boils, water become super pressurized steam, and that runs the turbine. Every single reactor does that. Even fusion reactor. And you have to take care of the waste. Although those waste seems... easy to take with the game's system. I just dump them into space. But you do not want to have those problem in the game, since the real estate is very precious.

 

 

[Sasza22]

3 hours ago, juni3227 said:

I am not sure, but my 4 interplanetary launchers and 4 diamond press are hording all rad from two reactors. I am now agressively colonizing other asteroids and they consume like hell. they can send 20 tons in 3 cycles 5 tiles away with some extra diamond that I use for mining more Uranium. so.... Very useful?

I guess the very late game is where it shines. I`m actually ok with that. I hoped it would see some play earlier but looks like the huge investment only pays off when you actually get the radbolt sinks in place.

[juni3227]

Yeah, I also want to emphsis that you do not really need a gas cargo for oxygen because of that. You just need to build can opener in the destination and just you know, integrate oxygen production with interplanetary launchers at main base. Turns out, they don't really have a limit how much they can hold. And even better, when you empty manually, its comes out in a bottle.