Mutant plants farming ... anywhere

[sirloxley]

Here's my take on farming (exuberant ^^) mutated plants. It's probably common knowledge, I just post it here for reference.

The idea/requirement is that this should work without

• radiation from above
• radiation lamps ("energy intense" / requires refilling)
• nuclear reactors
• Wort seeds
• Shinebugs (lagfest)

So how else can we create (a lot of) radiation? - (solid/liquid) Nuclear waste!

Note that this build is not for mutant seed farming, there are other methods for that.

 

Show me the thing, please

Caveat first, it took me quite a moment to build this in survival, mostly because of the massive amount of material required and the loong time spent in cooling it down ... and also because initially I didn't know some of the nuclear waste delicacies (see below).

But once done, here's my solution for e.g. a dusk cap farm:

Radiation view:

Yes, I should build airflow tiles beneath the waste tiles; if it ever becomes too warm in there it will turn into a liquid mess. Also I should have used hydroponic farm tiles (for reasons see below).

 

Nuclear waste is toxic stuff, even in ONI

Nuclear waste is a delicate material and also the reason why this is not an easy build:

• Beneath 1500kg/tile liquid nuclear waste will solidify to debris
• Its default mass is 1000kg/tile, ie. given above fact it requires a certain level of compression to work
• Liquid nuclear waste is a highly viscous liquid; it behaves very similarly to lava and exposes a 10 tile blade:
  
  
   
• Liquid nuclear waste has a very high THC of 7.4 kDTU/g (in comparison water is at 4.17)
• It solidifies/liquifies annoyingly around 300K/26.9C
• The radiation radius of a nuclear waste tile is exactly 2 tiles, that means the farm tiles need to in contact with the radiating material (see picture of my built farm above).

Having said that it can be done, I built above farm in survival.

How to build it / how does it work?

First of all, for this to work, it needs to emit 250 rads/cycle at the plant's bottom tile. To achieve this there needs to be at least around 2100kg of (solid) nuclear waste/tile next to the hydroponic farm tile, better use a bit less than 3000kg/tile.

Regular farm tiles cannot be used if the nuclear waste remains in liquid form, as these will take pressure damage: this starts way below 2000kg/tile. Hydrophonic farms pressure damage starts at exactly 3000kg/tile, independently from the building material.

And with that, here's how to build the radiation layer (pictures are from sandbox):

1. Have a steady source of liquid nuclear waste like a research reactor, you need a lot of that stuff. Also have your mutated seeds ready.
    
2. Build a containment unit and the vents. If you want to use this for Dasha Saltvines or Pincha Peppernuts, your bottom layer has to be hydroponic farm tiles. Due to the high viscosity this requires several vents in close proximity to fill it properly. To get to the desired mass/radiation level there needs to be at least about 2 and a bit tiles filled with nuclear waste.
   
   In this case that's about 30t of liquid nuclear waste in total:
    
3. Next step is to compress it. Corner building to the rescue, which is why it's probably easier to use airflow tiles instead of doors.
   
   Doors on the bottom layer can be useful to solidify it, though since airflow tiles do not exchange heat (in vacuum) with any pipes going through it.
   
   Contrary to the picture above, your final layer should be hydroponic farm tiles instead of airflow tiles.
    
4. ... And it is done.
    
5. Optionally the doors can be cooled to solidify the nuclear waste for plants with lower temperature requirements (sleet wheat, dusk cap, ...) and/or to support regular farm tiles.

This view should demonstrate the minimum required amount of material:

Note that with 2100kg/tile the corners are not usable for planting due to the radiation level being too low.

To have the corners also available for planting it will require 3000kg/tile.

Edited April 22 by sirloxley
spelling / some facts about tile pressure damage

[Tigin]

From my experience, solid nuclear waste is great for wild exuberant farms, but I'm still having trouble finding optimal radiation layouts for regular farms. In your screenshot, you use 18 tiles to supply radiation to 16 plants, but you could have alternatively used 4 wheezeworts which take up 8 12 tiles. (To be fair, you could have also alternated tiles and used more compressed solid waste so it only takes 8 tiles as well but the space left behind is not very usable). There might be some combination of wheezewort+nuclear waste that's more space-efficient where you use the massive radiation radius of wheezeworts and then use the nuclear waste for the extra kick needed in some areas, or some esoteric non-rectangular design.

As a fun fact, you can submerge ~760 kg of nuclear waste directly on thimble reeds (which takes up 0 buildable space) Similarly, you can use compressed nuclear fallout for gas grass

 

Edited April 22 by Tigin
miscalculation