I got alveo vera To grow 5 times per cykle thats potential 180 kg of oxygen per cykle form just one plant

[PatrykC159753]

The electrolyzer produces 888 g/s of oxygen, which is 532 kg per cycle. With just 3 of my plants, I can get a bigger output than the electrolyzer, 540 kg. And there is more: the electrolyzer uses 600 kg of water per cycle while my 3 plants would use just 90 kg. So how did I do that? (It requires the "Spaced Out" DLC).

I used the forgotten mechanics of mutating plants, as well as Grub Grub and a farming station to create a god-tier plant (screenshot 1).

So what do you need to do to get it yourself? You will need to create a room with enough radiation near the plants to get 250 rads per cycle. You might think that in this case, it’s only a late-game thing, but you will be wrong. If you pick the "Crushed Satellites" world trait, you could easily fit at least 10 plant boxes (screenshot 2). Even if not fully optimized, each could provide more than 100 kg of oxygen per cycle. One dupe uses just 60 kg, so you could make quite a big colony with just those 10 boxes. And if later on it becomes insufficient, you can make nuclear waste and cool it down so that it becomes a solid tile. This way, you can place it wherever you want (providing lead suits, of course).

The next step is to get mutated seeds. Luckily, the radiation need of Aloe Vera is not high, and one satellite can provide you with enough seeds to start early on (screenshot 3—in just 70 cycles, I got 34 mutated seeds). Even if you get unlucky with the seeds you get, I have a Plan B for that. You see, there is only one "best seed": it's "Exuberant." But there are some seeds which will still provide an impressive 90 kg of oxygen per plant: "Bountiful" and "Leafy." So even if you get unlucky early on, you can still manage, and later on, when you get enough "Exuberant" seeds, you can just replace them. (If you decide to go with the other seeds, remember that they require light to grow and don’t go well with "Exuberant," which needs darkness, so keep them separated).

Next, after you get your mutated seeds, you need to wall off your planting area. It’s important to keep the temperature of this setup between -30 and 0 °C; otherwise, it won’t work. Use insulation for that and send in material with the correct temperature or make a cooling system. When you finish, you can start filling the place with CO2. It’s important to keep the air pressure above 2 kg so that oxylite stops emitting oxygen. It’s also important to keep the pressure below 10 kg per tile. If it gets higher, the plants won’t grow. The best solution for this is an atmo sensor connected to a high-pressure gas vent (screenshot 4). The easiest way to get plastic for the vent is by sending nectar from the new BonBon tree to the polymer press. The ice can be provided with conveyors and an auto sweeper or by dupes, depending on if you have extra watts to spare.

You will also need at least 2 duplicants on different schedules so that if one is sleeping, the other will harvest.

Lastly, there are special buffs to get maximum growth out of your plants.

The more powerful buff is the Farmer's Touch. To get it, you have to place a farm station inside a room of the correct size and provide it with fertilizer. Luckily, fertilizer is very easy to get in the new DLC, so you won’t have any problems making it. A good source of phosphorite is from Shine Bugs. You can farm it renewably with just a little wild planting. Same with the dirt; just use new Floxes. There is no new way to get polluted water, but the amount needed is so small that the excess from your toilets should be more than enough.

The next buff, Grub Grub, is harder to get if you don’t have a sulfur geyser on the asteroid, but it’s not necessary. Without it, the "Exuberant" plant will still grow 3-4 times per cycle and provide you with oxygen, which is still more than 100 kg of oxygen. If you are really late in the game, you can get sulfur from the "Sour Gas Boiler." When you get it, remember that you can’t make this area a stable; it’s already a greenhouse. You will have to breed them somewhere else, and to get your creatures into the farm, just use a Critter Drop-Off. It is a good idea to set it to 2 creatures so that if one Grub Grub dies, another can still give the buff. Don’t forget to feed them; they only give the buff if they are fed.

So what are the pros and cons of doing this compared to an electrolyzer setup?

Pros:

• The new oxygen farm is super water efficient. You can get more than 6 times more oxygen from the same amount of water. It can also help you colonize asteroids with no water source by saving lots of water.
• If you manage your temperature well, you can get oxygen that is -10 °C. It’s way easier to use than the 70 °C oxygen from an electrolyzer. It’s likely that you won’t need to even heat it, as the new oxygen can be a way to cool your base after you put in a lot of heat-generating stuff.
• It works really well in the late game with the sour gas boiler, as the boiler provides almost all materials it uses at the correct or really close temperatures. This way, you can save a lot of space and water.
• It can make you use forgotten mechanics and make the game fresh again. I don’t know about you, but I am really tired of building the same electrolyzer in every base.

Cons:

• In reality, you probably won’t get a perfect 540 kg of oxygen from 3 plants. A little more realistic hope is 500 kg. The duplicants take a lot of time before they come to harvest, and the buffs wear off, giving downtime.
• It does not provide power for itself like an electrolyzer.
• It takes a little bit more space.
• The random seeds are sometimes really unfun.
• It requires the "Crushed Satellites" trait to make it early on.

As a last note, I want to point out that this is just a prototype. I made it in sandbox mode, and I bet it’s not perfect. (I am already playing the survival game where I am trying to use my idea, but it might take some time before I post about it). If you decide to improve it or even make it, please tell me about it and send your design. I am really interested in the future of this design, and most importantly, have fun.

 

[NeoDeusMachina]

It's not a forgotten mechanic, it just requires a lot of effort and patience to set up thus and might create a strong "can't be bothered feeling". I use mutated plants every game, for instance. Good to see it used for something good.

I have honestly nothing against this new plant being a viable alternative to the electrolyzer setups, and I hope it doesn't get rebalanced to a point where they become so niche they barely ever get used.

The setup you describe above requires a lot of effort and time to achieve in a normal game outside of sandbox. "So what" if 1 plant is enough to sustain 2-3 dupes. Honestly, with the amount of time and resources required to get that 1 plant to sustain those 2-3 dupes, I'd say it's well deserved. It's not just about setting it up and getting the seeds, it's also about the different resources required to sustain that production rate. You have to have farmers, ranchers at least for sustainable phosphorite (dreckos and co.) and dirt (pip and co.) production for the fertilizer, possibly sulfur tamed and grubgrubs ranched unless you go for wild ones (on some clusters, they can be tricky to get especially without care packages and teleporters), a good source of radiation (satellites aren't always avaible, so wheezeworts or something else...), ice (cooling)/CO2 production for the plants themselves, etc. This whole resource chain will also end up costing indirect resources (food+O2 for the dupes, power, etc.). It is -so- much simpler to have a single source of water and a power positive electrolyzer setup.

You mention it goes well with a sour gas boiler - I would honestly be curious to know what fraction of the player base has ever built a sour gas boiler. My guess is that it's probably among the most end game stuff to build and one of the least built contraption along with regolith melters, abyssalite flakers (are those even still built with the tungsten volcanoes) etc. Alternative to ranching is maybe space mining? Again, quite late game.

Anyway, glad to see -maybe- that this could be a fun project to set up in the DLC, with increasing efficiency as later stages of the game are achieved.

[Hokaeru]

Cool setup ! Indeed alot of investing for oxygen, I may get bored and build an electrolyzer before I manage to finish this in a survival game