Most Optimized Setups?

[CrutchPunk]

I'm currently further in my current save that I've been in a while. My base is at a point I can either expand to new things, or optimize what I have. I've never really focused on efficiency and optimizing.. but I want to start. That's where y'all come in!

...what's some examples of your most optimized setups for specific tasks?!

[meekay]

One huge thing for me was when someone pointed out that you only need the egg incubators to be enabled long enough for your ranchers to lullaby it, and then they keep the buff for the rest of the day even without power. That means that if you set up a timer to only have it turned on for one 10% block of the day (and make sure your ranchers are awake during that time), you save 240W during the other 90% of the time. In Spaced Out I tend to have multiple ranches on each of my 3 main colonies, so that turned into a huge savings.

[tuxii]

I tried to make some of the most optimized builds possible. Links are in my signature.

There's also crazy stuff on Discord and Reddit.

[Fradow]

There's a lot of crazy stuff all over, I took tuxii idea and added my optimized builds in my signature.

 

[CrutchPunk]

Here's one... best way to optimize power? That's one I /always/ struggle with. (I'm decent with production setups, but power grids I struggle)

[tuxii]

Here is a great example of what not to do:

But seriously when it comes to power grids there really is no good way to optimize.  Often the approach is to have a main power line using 20 kW or 50 kW wire and slap down transformers as needed.  Using your power optimally is often not need and also not worth the effort, especially once you're not using coal.

[blakemw]

Okay, i have a great example: Hybrid Steam Turbines.

So most players are familiar with the ST/AQ combo, and probably also the self-cooled Steam Turbines, popularized for metal volcano tamers.

Well, the Hybrid Steam Turbine uses the exhaust water for cooling, but if the exhaust water by itself isn't enough, it can also tap some auxiliary cooling from an Aquatuner or another source. Also for a setup that is normally self-cooled but occasionally peaks too hot, the Hybrid Steam Turbine performs almost identically to a self-cooled Steam Turbine but can be run at the limits or above the limits without fear of overheating.

Why is this best optimized? When using the exhaust water for cooling you avoid paying the power cost to have an Aquatuner deliver the heat, it's only 85 watts (at most) but that is something. Also the auxiliary cooling does not have to be an Aquatuner, it could be the cooling loop of another unrelated Aquatuner, or water or pwater or brine or crude oil or anything that is flowing past and cool enough to use, it could even be Mechanical Airlocks that just dump heat into nearby terrain, especially if it's nearly always going to be self-cooling and the hybrid is just for rare peaks.

How practically is a Hybrid Steam Turbine designed? There are essentially two approaches. The constant temperature approach has the Steam Turbine running continuously on fixed temperature steam, as might be the case for a Nuclear Reactor or Geothermal Powerplant. The auxiliary cooling is Valved to a calculated amount such that the heat removed by the exhaust water @ say 99.8 C, + the heat removed by the auxullary cooling adds up to the heat produced by the Steam Turbine. One scheme I have used for the auxillary cooling is to feed the exhaust water into an Aquatuner (with no bypass), so the output of that Aquatuner will be exactly 81 C, or approximately 86 C depending on whether it gets the exhaust water before or it has been heated. The output from the Aquatuner is then simply released back into the radiant pipes behind the Steam Turbines as required, it's ultimately a closed loop system and the automation is very simple or even non-existent, as the water being fed into the Aquatuner is fixed temperature.

The dynamic temperature approach has the Steam Turbine running on steam that could be pretty much any temperature. In this case, a Temperature Sensor has to be used, either in the steam chamber or the Steam Turbine chamber, to couple the auxiliary cooling as required: this usually involves releasing a liquid packet using a Liquid Shutoff, but there are numerous possible schemes.

I freaking love Hybrid Steam Turbines but I haven't posted any builds because IMO it's more of an "optimization for the sake of optimization" rather than being "actually good".

Hybrid ST/AQ which isn't Aquatuned

Another "hybrid" build I use is to make a standard ST/AQ build but then use self-cooling instead of having the Aquatuner cool the Steam Turbine. Why???

Well this is an optimization for Gold Amalgam Aquatuners. When using GA your steam temperature is more limited so you cannot reach the full output of the Steam Turbine anyway. Using self-cooling avoids paying the Aquatuner power cost to cool the Steam Turbine. If I'm only going to be using 50% of the output of the Aquatuner anyway to cool my base or something, why should I pay that power when self-cooling is more than good enough?

This build is pretty simple because you just have a Thermo Sensor in the steam chamber and AND it to the Aquatuner to not run the Aquatuner if the steam is too hot for self-cooling, this also protects the Gold Amalgam Aquatuner from overheating itself.