Sponge Slug suggestion

[Cmagik]

Plugsug alternative form are usually considered useless, most notably the Sponge Slug. SmogSlug can have interesting use early on, such as gathering bottom/top rogue gases without any work if wild, clean rocket interior from CO² without taking a single cell worth of equipement. Also, because *usually* Plugslug will be in contact with air rather than liquid, when fed to the Flux-O-Matron, you'll get a SmogSlug making it really easy to get as a wild critter (and I love it!)

However, SpongeSlug... I have tried many times but they just don't seem to work. Sponge Slug don't have the easy yet useful case of rogue CO² packet that always need to be purged. Unless you entirely avoid making bathroom, you usually don't end up with random liquid drop everywhere. In term of saving energy, they're not super interesting. A SmogSlug can theorically inhale 50kg/cycle worth of gas, which would be the equivalent of 100 gas packet from a pump. Sponge Slug however take 1t per cycle which would also be 100 liquid packet, except that the night isn't long enough and the Sponge will only be able to release 750kg over night (assuming it managed to hang fast enough). 

This make Sponge Slug less useful, harder to obtain as wild (with FLux-O-Matron) and less energy-saving interesting. 

 

In order to fix this, an easy way would be to allow SpongeSlug to unload at a rate of 20kg/pipecell but I don't know if this would be easy to implement or cause a bunch of problems.

Another suggestion which would make them *much* more interesting, possible at a stepper cost.

*If ranched* Sponge Slug transforms of the intake liquid into whatever it becomes once boiled. If any solid material were to be part released in the process, the Sponge Slug would have a small animation, vomitting the by-product upon waking up and *eating* 25% of the liquid. 
As compensation, Sponge Slug do not need to eat metal anymore but can instead get calories from the liquid they destroy.

For pure liquid turn back into themselves, there would be no mass deletion. The liquid stays at its regular temperature unless this would turn it solid upon transforming back (brine to water basically).  The liquid is always at least 5° above its freezing point while doing so. 

1 water -> 1 water
1 p.water > 0.75 water + 0.01 dirt (and clean)
1 brine > 0.5 water + 0.3 salt
1 crude oil > 0.75 petroleum
1 magma > 1 magma (if it survives somehow)

Basically, they would work a little bit like Smooth Hatches. Not 100% efficient, but free. (energy wise). It woudn't be very effective on p.water as the WaterSieve is a rather cheap engine (tho it takes a lot of space...)

It could have some interesting early game use to use brine, refine crude-oil etc.

Similar to Smooth Hatches, where you kinda have 3 step of refining process: Rock Crusher, 50%, Smooth, 75%, Metal Refinery 100%.
For things like crude oil this could be seen as a mid-step option, Refinery 50%, Sponge 75%, Boiler 100%.

The advantage would be that it's "free", but you it requires a bit more work to set up than a basic refinery, water sieve or whatever. But not as much as a boiler / geotuned geyser.

 

On a similar note, we need a phyto-oil and snow critter.

I vote for Snowy Rhex and Spigot Seal sucking PhytoOil from Seakomb. We also need something other than Puff making Slim...

Edited February 10 by Cmagik

[KittenIsAGeek]

I ran a build once where I kept slugs in a pool of water that was from a geyser.  They were prevented from leaving the water by mesh tiles.  They latched onto pipes that fed into a couple liquid reservoirs.  The reservoirs sent the liquid down pipes to various areas in my base where it was used.  I don't really remember the particulars but I do remember that it worked well enough.  I didn't ranch them or anything, just let them do their thing and give me a power-free water supply.