Landing on the magma world

[psusi]

I found the magma world to try to get some niobium, but how do you land on it and get at the niobium?  There's only a tiny area of solid granite at the surface.  Maybe I can land a few robots there just to disassemble then have a trailblazer land and use their salvaged meta to build a platform to immediately land on?  But then what?

How do get rid of all of the magma in the way?  Do you have to do the thing where you melt some plastic to naptha to trick a pump into pumping the magma up to space exposure to void it?

 

[meekay]

I just finished my away mission to grab some. After work tonight I'll go back through my old saves and see if I can get you some screenshots.

[myxal]

3 hours ago, psusi said:

How do get rid of all of the magma in the way?  Do you have to do the thing where you melt some plastic to naptha to trick a pump into pumping the magma up to space exposure to void it?

 

The magma pump is not necessary, and in fact the 5kg/s variant is useless in trying to tackle the amounts you'll encounter.

But yes, dumping the magma into space is the simple solution - just build pitcher pumps above where you want the magma removed, and bottle emptiers (remember, 4 per dupe) on some tiles in the space biome, and have dupes empty whatever pool is in your way.

Further down, I'd stick to narrow channels, build igneous rock tempshift plates to delete the heat, and replace natural obsidian with obsidian insulated tiles.

Edited February 26 by myxal

[meekay]

As promised, here are some screenshots of the initial facility I build in order to recover my first Niobium as well as the artifact in the POI. I always send two dupes and a rover, but since everything is made of obsidian the rover is only really useful for fetching materials and maybe building some ladders. The planet gets 375 rads/day of radiation so you'll need to build enough shielding over ladders and common work areas to keep your dupes' exposure under 100 rads/day.

Make sure both your dupes wear Warm Sweaters to act as insulation and (ironically) help slow down how fast they get burned. They should both have Super-Duper Digging and Mechatronics, and have overlapping schedules so that at least one of them is awake at all times. 

@myxal suggested just pumping the magma out to space, and that's fine, but I don't like wasting all that valuable hot material.  I dig a shaft three tiles wide lined by obsidian insulated tiles as close to the POI and a vein of niobium as I can figure. The shaft contains (left to right): obsidian ladders, a steel power cable, and obsidian liquid and gas pipes. Magma comes up the shaft to a sump that is backed by six tempshift plates made of igneous, with a sweeper overhead to move hot igneous into low-priority storage bins. 

Steel auto-sweepers will overheat in a vacuum and steel pumps will overheat in magma, but both will last a decent amount of time before they do. In particular the pump should last about 2 cycles which is enough time to pump out six tiles of liquid magma. Rebuild it each time it breaks and make sure to turn off auto-repair so you don't waste material (I use a mod for this). 

While pumping the tempshift plates will slowly heat up and eventually melt, but before they do your sweeper should be able to scoot several tons of hot igneous out of the way. Have your dupes rebuild the tempshift plates with high priority. This requires keeping your focus on this planet for large amounts of time, so best to have your other colonies in a pretty stable mode where you only have to check in on them once a day.

Another alternative is to pump the magma to your rocket. At my home base I build a steam chamber and cooling pond close to my astroplex to receive hot metals from mining missions, and I can use it to receive the magma as well. But my rockets can only carry 36T of liquid max, and that much material can take more than six cycles to pump in, plus the travel time back and forth, plus six cycles to pump out. So to speed things up I take a half-and-half approach, and use the tempshift sump to solidify half the material on-site.

If your dupes get burned make sure there are triage cots nearby in the low-rad zone for them to recover.

You only need 5kg of niobium to jump-start your thermium economy. So once I have that, I can breach the POI, grab the artifact that's in there, and then clean up my machinery and clear out. Easiest way to deal with the sour gas pocket is to just expose it to space and let it vent out over a few dozen cycles.

After I get my resin planet up to a point where I have 6T of Insulite, I'll come back and build a tamer for the niobium tamer. But that's another story.

Screenshots behind the spoiler-accordion.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited February 27 by meekay

[blakemw]

My solution to the magma base is to make a "Portable Base" Spacefarer Module, with atmosuit docks and everything 2-3 dupes need to be happy for dozens of cycles. I send the rocket ideally with a Steel Rover and Steel Trailblazer, land both, deconstruct the landers, and build a Landing Pad. So now there's a portable base on the surface giving a place for the Dupes to retreat to.

The Steel Rover can be used for magma-spelunking, building a column of obsidian tiles to make a tunnel through the magma (magma crushers can also be useful). You can use door restrictions to limit where the Dupes can go while still letting the Rover through. Unfortunately Rover restrictions aren't possible (other than a few quirks like Rovers being unable to use Transit Tubes) and you'd like to keep that thing out of the Spacefarer considering it'll be magma-hot! Just try to make sure it has no reason to go into the Spacefarer. The Rover can also rescue dupes who get scalded to incapacitation while magma-spelunking.

[myxal]

22 minutes ago, blakemw said:

(other than a few quirks like Rovers being unable to use Transit Tubes)

Ouch, that's quite a tall order to build and support on a fresh planetoid. Can rovers also climb up firepoles?

[blakemw]

8 minutes ago, myxal said:

Ouch, that's quite a tall order to build and support on a fresh planetoid. Can rovers also climb up firepoles?

Yep. So there are ways to keep only Rovers out but they aren't very practical.

One of the best ways of course is simply the locked-for-real pneumatic door, Dupes and the Rover can reach through the door to a Storage on the far side (Storage Tiles are also great), so Dupes can supply the Rover with Obsidian (which it cannot mine) but it keeps the Rover and Dupes physically segregated.

[Gurgel]

The small granite area is enough. Ship some more stone for ladders and the material for a rocket platform there (interplanetary launcher or the equivalent from a rocket) and just ignore that a lot lands in the magma. As soon as you have enough, land a dupe, build a rocket platform, retrieve the dupe with the rocket. Then use the rocket as a basis. Best with long-term food and lots of oxylite in the rocket. Easy for one dupe, a bit tricker for two because the suit stations need space. I think I dimly remember a design that could even do 3 dupes and atmo-suit docks. Remember to ship tons of atmo-suits as well (50 or so), because you initially cannot repair them. Oh, and make sure dupes do not run through lava for longer stretches. Short runs are fine when in atmo-suits.  

As to magma, pitcher pump and dumping into space is best. I once did cool it down to solidify it using solar power. That was a >> 1000 cycle project. Not worth it unless you want to see whether you can do it. 

[psusi]

I guess I have never sent dupes into magma before assuming it was an instant death sentence, but I guess it just does scalding damage, so they can take it for a minute or two as long as you can heal them after.  Then it's a a matter of cooling the magma ( which seems like it would take forever ) or moving it to space to be voided.  I am leaning towards the voiding option.  Are pitcher pumps really better than a tricked liquid pump for moving that much magma?  I didn't want to try dropping space cargo as it would randomly land in the magma and melt or be voided.

[myxal]

13 hours ago, psusi said:

Are pitcher pumps really better than a tricked liquid pump for moving that much magma?

Ahem. And those 70 cycles included ~15 where I wasn't running the bottler. TBH I never built the tricked pump in survival, and am not super-familiar with building down into magma, which is why I used pitcher pumps in the first place. If you can spare the dupe labour I'd say a single dupe can easily outperform a 10kg pump, as long as the run between the pump and the emptier isn't too long.

[nessumo]

BTW, on that topic - how do you reliable get materials for rocket platform? When sending Trailblazer and Orbital Carbo with additional metal I often have a problem that upon landing package heats up very fast and when dupe opens it liquid metal is immediately evaporating into space. 

[myxal]

11 minutes ago, nessumo said:

BTW, on that topic - how do you reliable get materials for rocket platform? When sending Trailblazer and Orbital Carbo with additional metal I often have a problem that upon landing package heats up very fast and when dupe opens it liquid metal is immediately evaporating into space. 

Use steel. (Or tungsten). Niobium and thermium also work, but you probably don't have them at that point in the game.

[Gurgel]

17 hours ago, psusi said:

I guess I have never sent dupes into magma before assuming it was an instant death sentence, but I guess it just does scalding damage.

For 10 tiles or so with "wet feet", not full immersion, it is not even any damage at all. It does start to scald if dupes travel longer ways, get fully immersed for a much shorter time, or start to dig or pick up stuff while standing in Magma.

[meekay]

A dupe wearing a suit can go a few seconds immersed in magma without getting burned, or only burned a little, as long there is no superheated atmosphere so they can get back to homeostasis quickly. Their body temperature will heat up more slowly if they are wearing a Warm Sweater under the suit. If you can keep their upper body out of the magma the temperatures will average out and they can go even longer.

Dupes that get severely burned will move extremely slowly and seek out a triage cot. If a dupe's health drops to zero they will be incapacitated and fall unconscious. But another dupe can rescue them and bring them back to a triage cot. That's why it's important to always bring a buddy!

If a dupe on a triage cot receives treatment from another dupe, they will fully recover in a bit more than one cycle (accounting for time spent peeing/eating) and also lose 10% stress.

 

 

[psusi]

On 2/28/2024 at 11:53 AM, meekay said:

Their body temperature will heat up more slowly if they are wearing a Warm Sweater under the suit.

What?  I always thought that the atmo suit was just a type of clothing, so they could either wear the atmo suit, or a sweater, but not both.  Crazy!

[melquiades]

3 hours ago, psusi said:

What?  I always thought that the atmo suit was just a type of clothing, so they could either wear the atmo suit, or a sweater, but not both.  Crazy!

You can have them wear a snazzy suit or some of the new special suits for some decor inside the base. But you can't both snazzy and sweater.

[Gurgel]

On 2/28/2024 at 5:53 PM, meekay said:

A dupe wearing a suit can go a few seconds immersed in magma without getting burned, or only burned a little, as long there is no superheated atmosphere...

Ah, yes, very important: Always makes sure your magma is in vacuum or all hell will break lose and not just dupes getting fried!

[Kderosa]

I've found that the easiest way to conquer these hostile planetoids is using a two rocket design.

The first rocket sleeps 3 or 4 and has atmosuit docks.  All crew are assigned to this rocket upon landing. Replace the two mess tables with a power wheel upon landing if you want a four man crew design.

The second rocket contains a great hall and storage.  The atmsouit dock(s) are turned off upon landing and crew is unassigned. Store food in this rocket as well.

Supply O2/water as you see fit.  Either use rocket cargo cannisters, stored oxylite and snaked pipes of water, or a combination.  I find storing O2 in a rocket cannister for the atmosuit docks combined with a carbon skimmer is very power efficient.

The amount of infrastructure required is one rocket platform initially. Land the supply rocket first. Build a second connected rocket platform and land the second rocket.  That is the extent of the infrastructure you'll need. One large rocket gas cannister of O2 and one small liquid cannister of H20 along with a storage tile full of rad pills and another full of dehydrated food buys you about 250 cycles of time for a four man crew. 

If you want to stay longer, upgrade your planet infrastructure to add a payload opener and start sending over all the O2, H2O and solid supplies you need.  The payload opener can store an absurd amount of liquid and gas before it needs to be emptied and it is easier than you might think to launch over all the O2, H2O, and solid materials you might need from your home planet(s). (Add the interplanetary launcher later on if you are strip mining the planet.) Slap on a few solar panels or use the solar panels on/power wheels in your rockets for power.  Add rocket port loaders/unloaders to connect your rockets and share their cargo tank storage.  (Fun Fact: you can store clean H2O and germy PWater in the same cargo container and they won't cross contaminate or interchange temperature).  This is the extent of the infrastructure footprint you need.  There is generally enough raw minerals on any planet for any building you need to do (I generally bring 20T of igneous & obsidian and another 20T of Steel and Plastic just in case along with some glass and reed fiber).

Of course, you could just build a small caretaker base if you wanted.  But there's really not much of a need.

Edited March 10 by Kderosa

[Gurgel]

Yep, takes more preparation, but makes the actual landing very easy. I always went with one rocket and two dupes and occasionally used a second rocket to deliver supplies. But your approach works very nicely and overcomes the rocket space limitations. 

Edited March 11 by Gurgel

[sheaker]

I made a video on how I landed on flipped asteroid.
It is not perfect - it was not prepared. I just figure it out how to do this and recorded it. Hopefully it is not obsolete yet.

 

[Kderosa]

It's been an evolutionary process.

I started off using  two identical rockets that could house 2 or 3 dupes, but that resulted in way too micromanaging since the dupes would get stuck in the rocket constantly and once the exosuits started getting worn it became a nightmare of trapped dupes. I solved this problem by bringing enough extra exosuits to last the trip (about 30-40  cycles) and by cutting back to one rocket.

In my less experienced days I would build temporary infrastructure on a newly landed planet in order to save room in the rocket.  Put oxygen diffusors in a sealed room, run gas ducts, now hook up power lines, slap down a power wheel, now slap down an exosuit forge, now add some coal generators because of the power requirements.  A giant waste of time where you're not accomplishing the mission.  So, goal one was to have a zero footprint landing zone where everything was contained in the rocket.  Doing this was a huge improvement.  So I started doing things which apparently aren't very popular - I use a carbon skimmer/gas cannister rocket module design instead of the more popular gas pump/mechanical filter design (which I went back to in my current game because I was using a CO2 rocket and I quickly remembered how power hungry this design is).  One dupe would get stuck on the wheel much of the trip to keep the "lights on" so a 3 dupe team meant you only got maybe 2.5 actual workers. This led me to replacing the gas pump/mechanical filter design with the carbon skimmer and rocket gas cannister which is much more energy efficient removing CO2 and getting O2 into the atmosuit docks. Ideally you want to power your rocket with one or two rocket solar panels which keeps your dupe off the wheel and working.  Energy efficiency is the name of the game. This got me more labor power and extended my trips long enough that I started running out of building material on a planet like the magma planet where you only have some igneous rock and obsidian at your disposal. 

But one self-contained rocket doesn't provide enough dupe power for big jobs like strip mining a planet or pumping out tons of magma.  So, you'd wind up having to make multiple trips which is also a time waster. This led me to start using specialized rockets.  One more for dupe living and one more for material storage. While the move to command is very helpful, nothing beats having enough storage tiles and compactors that get filled automatically by the dupes back at the home planet to the exact amounts you want. 

This method turned out to be very workable, but it's still difficult to fit more than 3 dupes in a rocket with enough storage and room bonuses unless you want to waste time melting rocket walls.  My inspiration for the split sleeping/bathroom  and the great hall/bathroom design came from watching too many dupes use the rockets to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom while back at home after I forget to set the rocket to "grounded."  If the dupes could sleep back at the base and run up to the rocket to eat berry sludge at the base why couldn't they do the same at another planet.  That insight led to the split design and allowed me to expand to a 4 dupes expedition with the morale bonus of a great hall.

And two rockets is a natural number to use since you need two lander modules to place your first rocket pad. Why send the second rocket back home when you can use it as a cargo container and great hall.

This design has proven so effective that I can colonize every planet with just these two rockets once you get the small petroleum engine.  Upgrade to the radbolt engine and you can reach every planet in the game.  I even keep the lander modules on the rockets even after I stop needing them since I really don't need other modules unless I need to store liquid chlorine or scalding niobium.

I am hoping that the new DLC's increase the size of the universe having planets that are greater than 10 hexes away.  Because as crazy long as this game is, it still feels incomplete.

16 minutes ago, sheaker said:

It is not perfect - it was not prepared. I just figure it out how to do this and recorded it. Hopefully it is not obsolete yet.

I'm impressed that the dupes survived without suits on. (On the harder difficulty settings, your dupes would have radiation sickness and heat stroke without some shielding being built. And one little mistake and the stress levels skyrocket)

Pretty sure you can no longer build through doors in the latest builds.

Though, by cycle 1900 you really one to be landing and working in atmosuits especially on this planet.  And beware of those gas masks, the dupes breathe with them on, expelling CO2 which will break all your vacuums.

You'd have a much easier time progressing to petroleum then to radbolts before colonizing all but the closest planets.  Makes for better and more useful rocket designs.

[Deltic]

On 2/28/2024 at 9:42 PM, nessumo said:

BTW, on that topic - how do you reliable get materials for rocket platform? When sending Trailblazer and Orbital Carbo with additional metal I often have a problem that upon landing package heats up very fast and when dupe opens it liquid metal is immediately evaporating into space. 

Use steel only. Tunsten is also ok but steel is much easier for massive collection and may needed fro Niboium Volcano developmnt.

As the platform building, I suggest such a procedure:

1.Build a trailblazer and a scout on the rocket before the flight. Use steel only 

2. Fly to the target astroid

3.Deploy the trailblazer pod and scout rover pod near the place expected to build the launchpad.Make sure the dupe landed can build.

4.Destruct the two pods.Now you have a dupe on the ground with 800kg steel nearby.

5.Build the launchpad with steel ,then land the rocket by give the order from the launchpad.

Futhermore, Stay away from the sunshine on this plantoid as much as possible, or they will get sunburn and can't work normally.

 

[Kderosa]

This is how it’s done. The radiation is fairly brutal as well. Do task one is building a two layer thick sky shield for protection. I bring along a storage bin of obsidian and another of obsidian for building. Then I scavenge the dug out raw minerals as I go until I can set up a  beacon and opener for supplies from the home plsnet(s). 

[myxal]

On 3/17/2024 at 1:23 PM, Deltic said:

steel is much easier for massive collection and may needed fro Niboium Volcano developmnt.

IMHO, just use locally-sourced niobium for the tamer build - no need to wait for steel, and you get more overheat temperature headroom, allowing for faster heat deletion.

[missasch]

My approach is to get really settled on my home astroid as well as the teleporter one. Once I am comfortably making steel and plastic I like to go straight to large petroleum rockets so there is enough height to fit everything. I make 2 rockets, 1 with 2 rover modules and 1 spacefarer module both made of steel. Then the other rocket has a large gas canister filled with oxygen for the suits and can fit 2-3 dupes with the atmosuit docks. When I first get to space I like to hit the magma planet for the minable niobium and then come back later to tame the volcano. I also around the same time like to go to a gilded astroid for fullerene and get something set up on the tree planet so that I am getting all the late game materials set up. Then I can settle any other asteroids I would like to at a slower pace while I have the things needed for the late game builds.

I used to really stress out about the magma planet but found that a few things set up it's not really a big deal. I land the 2 rovers first and deconstruct the landers, then I make sure my landing dupe is early in their schedule I land them and have them build the rocket platform. I land the living rocket and send the other one back home. I add the dupe to the living rocket crew and set up a few things before starting on the magma. 

I build shielding, and if I don't have enough power in my rocket I build a few solar panels. I then build triage cots and dig enough of the obsidian to have materials for the tiles. If there is magma in the way I use the pitcher pumps and bottle emptiers to dump it into space, but I try to leave as much as possible to use later if I want to. Then once I have the way cleared I put the crew back in the rocket and have the rovers build a 3 tile wide obsidian shaft pushing the magma out of the way until I can get my dupes into where the niobium is. I took a screenshot of my current game after I took all the niobium but before I tamed the volcano. (I use the tame 2legitcity came up with when I do)

There are no ladders because I was being cheaty and used the scaffold mod  but basically I have the shaft bricked in and have the dupes deconstruct a tile at a time and build ladders down. Then I mine out all the niobium and take it up to a storage container on the surface. I then build either radiant pipes or radiant gas pipes out of it to reset the temperature and load it in the rocket and go home. I usually close the shaft with a tile so that the rocket exhaust doesn't get into the cored out area so I still have a vacuum when I get back.