Liquid lock issues.

[myxal]

23 hours ago, arvenil said:

What is a "several step-down bead locks"?

Probably the most ghetto/quick way of producing a vacuum-insulated separation between areas:

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 2/7/2026 at 12:28 PM, Frustrated said:

It would truly be nice if I could find the space to build any sort of ranch.  I'm annoyed with myself.  I somehow managed to excavate germy slime and dump it into my algae distiller.  Had to completely restart but I'll keep that in mind as I build my new place out.

Here's a pic of the 3-fluid lock I've been using.

 

Slime, oxylite, bottles of polluted water, etc, can off-gas while the dupe is carrying them.  This can happen at the moment the dupe is passing through the water lock because of pressures.  For example, if your atmosphere is at 1800g or higher pressure, then you won't have any off-gassing.  Your upper two liquids in your lock are at 30g, which means the pressure is low enough that your items have the opportunity to off-gas.  When a material that can off-gas goes from a grid where it can't to a grid where it can, it triggers the chance to do so -- such as moving from 1800g oxygen to 30g water.  If they do, and the gas isn't immediately adjacent already, then the liquid will either get displaced or destroyed depending on certain factors.

Lets say your dupe is carrying a ball of slime when it hops through the lock.  Lets also say that you've cleaned up the polluted oxygen so both sides are either oxygen or CO2.  When the dupe steps through the lock, the slime has the chance to off-gas.  That off-gas does not have any polluted oxygen nearby to go in to, so instead it needs to push a material out of the way.  The priority will be the closest, lowest mass material.  In this case, one of the two liquids in the lock.  The liquid can't be compressed up because that's a different material, so it gets compressed down.  If you're using three different liquids, then it can't be compressed down either and gets destroyed.  If the bottom two liquids are same (1000kg salt water with 30g salt water above), then it will get compressed together to open up space for the polluted oxygen.  Now your lock is water, polluted oxygen, salt water.  Water can not sit above a gas, so it swaps places with the polluted oxygen.  Now you have water sitting atop very slightly over-pressure salt water.  It will stay that way.  You can even do tricks where you intentionally over-compress liquids that way, but that's a different topic. One method to handle the off-gas problem is to set up a lock like this:

Spoiler

This isn't the best example, because all the liquid should be the same type.  This was all brine, but some super-cold stuff caused freezing and now the middle is water.  However, stuff that off-gasses won't break this lock.

Another method of failure is the hot/cold carried item vs low density liquid.  Lets say your dupe is carrying 200kg of nearly molten metal because you didn't lock off direct access to the geyser (yes, it happens. Ask me how I know).  They step through the lock.  On one side of the lock is vacuum. On the other side is gas of some sort.  In the middle you have a small amount of liquid.  The 800kg of metal is very hot and will easily transfer heat to both the gas and the liquid.  The liquid will vaporize instantly because the 1000g or 1800g or whatever of atmosphere on one side can not bring the liquid back down to a reasonable temp before there is enough heat for the liquid to boil.  Or, on the other side, you have a dupe carrying a block of -40 ice.  In this case, your liquid instantly freezes rather than boiling, for much the same reason.  The result in both cases is that now your water lock is destroyed.

The best solution to the last problem are liquids that have either a very high boiling point or a very low freezing point.  Or both.  Visco-gel is the best, hands-down, but its annoying to actually get some until you're at a point where you don't really actually need it anymore.  Crude and naptha are decent, supercoolant and nectar are also pretty good.

 

On 2/15/2026 at 1:29 PM, myxal said:

Probably the most ghetto/quick way of producing a vacuum-insulated separation between areas:

Hey, if its stupid and it work, it isn't stupid.  I've done this a lot.

[Frustrated]

That was from a previous playthrough, but I'll discuss from the point of view of both that one and my current colony.  I don't carry anything nearly close enough to those temps.  I haven't opened the Iron Volcano yet because I want to be able to develop tubes first (I know that plastic has a very low melting point, I don't intend on running tubes anywhere near the volcano) and I need to get my drecko farm going before that happens.  In terms of the liquid lock, I found the 3-fluid lock on YouTube.  He went over multiple types, that was one of them.  The big plus was that it blocked gas transfer while also not giving the "Soaking Wet" debuff.  It also takes significantly less volume of fluid to form than the V-step lock.  I've stopped bothering with it, though.  I'm not even close to the oil or magma biomes, I just recently explored the far sides of the asteroid.

[KittenIsAGeek]

32 minutes ago, Frustrated said:

The big plus was that it blocked gas transfer while also not giving the "Soaking Wet" debuff. 

Yes, the 3 liquid lock does have that advantage, but the disadvantage is that it is susceptible to off-gas events and phase changes.  I'm not saying its bad, I was just telling you how liquid locks fail since this thread started because of a liquid lock failure.

I can't find it now, but one of my absolute favorites was an escher pump waterfall lock.  Down side was sometimes breaking during game loading from gasses swapping places and breaking the pump.  Maybe I'll try building one again in my current map.

[Frustrated]

That sounds pretty interesting.  If it's Escher, it must run upwards.

[KittenIsAGeek]

The water falls, then pumps itself back up and around to fall again.  No power, no pipes.. just a river flowing into itself, Escher style.

[Frustrated]

Since I'm getting close to the oil bone, can you explain how to make an "oil bead" lock?  Someone mentioned it earlier as being more effective for hotter climates.

[Charletrom]

On 2/15/2026 at 3:29 PM, myxal said:

Probably the most ghetto/quick way of producing a vacuum-insulated separation between areas:

Like this. Make some “stairs”, then spill oil down them

[Frustrated]

...How does that block gas transfer?  I don't get it.

[Charletrom]

red tiles contain liquid. Any liquid will work, but to avoid boiling/freezing you want to use something like oil or naphtha. Gas can’t pass through these tiles. Look at the gas overlay (or liquid) and it will be a bit more obvious.

The blue tile should ideally be vacuum (construct and then deconstruct a tile to achieve this) to prevent temperature transfer between the liquid blobs in the red tiles.

[myxal]

On 2/19/2026 at 7:18 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

Slime, oxylite, bottles of polluted water, etc, can off-gas while the dupe is carrying them.

TL;DW:

1. Sublimators are not a problem unless a dupe drops it while in the middle of the lock
2. Heat exchange does occur even when a dupe visibly jumps through the lock

I fired up debug mode because intuitively, if oxylite is allowed to off-gas during dupe transit, filling up the oxylite tanks in a space-exposed rocket silo should be impossible. Dupes taking extra material to account for losses during transit isn't a thing, is it?

And sure enough - in dupe transit, sublimators DO NOT sublimate:

 

On 2/19/2026 at 7:18 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

Another method of failure is the hot/cold carried item vs low density liquid. 

The 3-high locks are implemented to avoid the sopping wet debuff - dupes are said to teleport from one side to the other without getting wet. It then follows, in my mind, that whatever they're carrying is teleported with them, and thus should not exchange heat when carried through the lock. However, when testing this with 3x30-gram lock and carrying magma bottles, this is NOT the case - magma instantly boils the liquid bead, even when the dupe visibly jumps through the lock:

 

 

[Frustrated]

I was working with objects well below magma in terms of heat.  I was just transitioning into the mid-game and hadn't even found the oil bone, let alone magma.  It might have been transporting ice, but that's unlikely since it's regular ice or polluted ice, so it's not likely to flash freeze the water.  Put an ice cube into some water and it doesn't all turn to ice instantly, or even part of it, because of SHC.  So if it wasn't temp, wasn't off-gassing, the only thing it could have been was something melting nearby and the liquid coming into contact with the lock, which would 100% have broken it.

 

EDIT: or an off-gassing item getting dropped in the lock.  Hadn't thought about that.

Edited February 26 by Frustrated

[Charletrom]

41 minutes ago, Frustrated said:

It might have been transporting ice, but that's unlikely since it's regular ice or polluted ice, so it's not likely to flash freeze the water.  Put an ice cube into some water and it doesn't all turn to ice instantly, or even part of it, because of SHC.

Don’t be so sure, the amount of water in the lock is only going to be ~30 grams, which will reach an equilibrium temp very quickly with whatever passes through it. Although the SHC is high, the actual amount of heat energy contained the water is low due to very low mass. Ice and especially polluted ice can be way below the freezing point of the water in the lock and pull the heat out of it super fast. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 2/26/2026 at 11:45 AM, myxal said:

And sure enough - in dupe transit, sublimators DO NOT sublimate

Thanks for running that.  I've had it happen, but maybe that's something that has changed at some point.  I mean, I've been here since forever,  but I'm not ALWAYS playing...  Steam says I've only put 8500 hours into this ga... ummm.  Huh.  OK, so I've played way too much.    Anyway!  Your little demo was awesome.  Thanks!!

[Zarquan]

On 2/26/2026 at 11:45 AM, myxal said:

          The 3-high locks are implemented to avoid the sopping wet debuff - dupes are said to teleport from one side to the other without getting wet. It then follows, in my mind, that whatever they're carrying is teleported with them, and thus should not exchange heat when carried through the lock. However, when testing this with 3x30-gram lock and carrying magma bottles, this is NOT the case - magma instantly boils the liquid bead, even when the dupe visibly jumps through the lock:

That's a rather strange interaction.  I noticed in the video that it was the middle tile of the liquid lock that vaporized at almost the end of the jump animation (when they might have already arrived.  The debris is on their back...could that mean that dupe carried debris might be one tile behind them? 

EDIT:  This doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can tell.  It appears that there is thermal conductivity happening between the debris and the liquid halfway through the animation.  Maybe it isn't a teleportation from a thermodynamics perspective.

EDIT 2:  While the debris transfers heat in the animation, the dupe themself does not appear to.  This kind of implies to me that this is almost a special interaction added to make it so things like this would happen.  

EDIT 3:  If I had to guess, the debris the dupe is carrying is considered in the middle tile for the duration of the animation.  I believe I have confirmed that the debris is not at the beginning or end of the jump with this setup.  What we are looking for is when the falling liquid uranium stops gaining heat.  This phenomenon definite

EDIT 4:  Something very strange is going on.  There appears to sometimes be a mid-tick heat transfer.  Makes me wonder whether it is hard-coded that there will always be an instance of heat transfer between the debris and the waterfall during a jump.  You can see it near the end of the video below.  Without a new uranium puddle appearing at the bottom, the temperature of the uranium in the waterfall increased.  Interestingly, two tiles increased.  Unfortunately, I don't know how to make a high athletics dupe in debug or sandbox and I'm too lazy to send Marie to a gym.  (EDIT:  I think the droplet tick might be out of sync with the thermal tick.  I did another test and it was in sync with when thermal transfers happened.  But it is still weird that both the upper and lower tile changed temps.)

EDIT 5:  The decor overlay definitely indicates teleportation.

Edited March 1 by Zarquan

[myxal]

9 hours ago, Zarquan said:

Unfortunately, I don't know how to make a high athletics dupe in debug or sandbox and I'm too lazy to send Marie to a gym. 

I haven't actually tried, but - maybe spawn a bionic, skill them up, and load them up with boosters that increase athletics?

10 hours ago, Zarquan said:

The decor overlay definitely indicates teleportation.

Teleportation of the dupe, or the carried item? (Did you suit up the dupe, or did you have them carry a mug or something?) (I'm not actually sure if carried items emit decor, but I'm fairly certain that light-emitting items - shine bugs, quartz, incapacitated glow sticks - do emit light while carried.

[Zarquan]

12 hours ago, myxal said:

Teleportation of the dupe, or the carried item? (Did you suit up the dupe, or did you have them carry a mug or something?) (I'm not actually sure if carried items emit decor, but I'm fairly certain that light-emitting items - shine bugs, quartz, incapacitated glow sticks - do emit light while carried.

The dupe teleported.  Debris is, to my knowledge, not measured on decor overlay when carried by a dupe.  But light is!

This indicates that it is just acting like normal debris and I just didn't know the thermal behavior of debris in a waterfall. 

This indicates that while carrying it, it is in the dupe's top tile and while they are putting it down, it moved to the bottom tile, and while hopping it is in the middle of the hop (for about half the hop duration I think).

I would love to double check these results with another mechanism, but I don't know of another mechanism that would work.  Is there any debris that is radioactive?  Things like uranium, nuclear waste, and even material contaminated with radioactive contaminants aren't radioactive as debris.  (On no, I know what I have to do....get a glowstick dupe, incapacitate them, then have Marie carry them....)

Edited March 2 by Zarquan

[myxal]

1 hour ago, Zarquan said:

Is there any debris that is radioactive?

As mentioned already, an incapacitated glow-stick 

But it seems like the radiation overlay is updated less frequently or just suffers from best-effort scheduling, or my dupes in this played-save are just too fast, the radiation origin skips cells as the dupe is being carried on level floor. And through a lock, I got it to skip the first time but subsequent 4 tests all showed radiation source being inside the liquid.

Spoiler

         

 

EDIT: Actually, a shine bug also works:

 

 

Edited March 2 by myxal

[Zarquan]

46 minutes ago, myxal said:

As mentioned already, an incapacitated glow-stick 

I didn't see that part of the post.  Apologies.  I read the first half of the sentence and remembered lumen quartz and got excited.

That's some weird behavior on the radiation.  

I do notice that the radiation didn't move up like it did with the lumen quartz light.  That makes me think that carrying a dupe is treated as a special case.  But yes, we are definitely seeing the radiation source being carried through.

EDIT:  Nevermind, lumen quartz is just weird.  If you drop it from above, it's light characteristics are different from when you place it on the ground.  Sometimes.  I think I need one of those space artifacts that glow that appear to behave more rationally.

Edited March 2 by Zarquan