Blowter vs Flue Coral Math

[Wharflord]

Both the blowter and flue coral require 20kg/cycle of salt water - the flue coral directly and the blowter through 2 waterweed plants. However, a single blowter gives 15kg/cycle of oxygen, while the flue coral gives 90kg/cycle. If you were to run the same amount of salt water through a desalinator and electrolyzer you would get about 16.5kg/cycle of oxygen.

The blowter seems balanced. You take a 10% efficiency loss compared to electrolysis in exchange for some food production.

The flue coral seems wildly overpowered. Yes, it requires light and a small amount of lime, but gives you 5.5x the oxygen of electrolysis. This blows every other method of oxygen production out of the water. Oni generally plays fast and loose with conservation of mass, but this just seems like an error.

[Tigin]

Blowtor gives you quite a bit of food too.

[SkunkMaster]

The flue takes up a lot of space, compared to the amount of oxygen it makes.

Compare it to an algae electrolyzer, which makes 500 oxygen/sec and takes 2 tiles and no real infrasctructure, or the electrolyzer at 4 tiles and also very little infrastructure. 

The flue needs both a solid and a liquid, light and 6 tiles of space, all for a meager 150 oxygen/sec. 

It also must be submerged. even the algae terrarium has that optional. 

 

 

[fullerfamily]

I agree it is overpowered. Even if it was half as good, it would still be my preferred method.

[Gurgel]

Flue Coral can be planted wild at 100% density (still 1/4 production). I do think it should consume more saltwater to bring it very roughly in line with what an electrolyzer would produce. 

[Paperbag]

10 hours ago, Wharflord said:

The blowter seems balanced. You take a 10% efficiency loss compared to electrolysis in exchange for some food production.

I feel like Blowters should be adjusted to 20KG/Cycle of Oxygen tbh. They do also produce food, but there's a huge space efficiency loss compared to the Electrolyser. 1 Electrolyser is 36 Blowters, or 272 ranch space, and food is barely an inconvenience tbh. It doesn't really make up for the space requirements imo.

(also blowters are such a missed opportunity to add fugu lol)

[GluttonyMain]

Also electrolyser also produces power. I would not use Blowters over electrolyser right now.

[stedam]

The argument pro corals as they are right now: 

* There is hardly any other source of O2 on the map for the early game and it limits the game pace.
    -> Very little algae and H20 are generated by worldgen in almost every seed. 
    -> I have not seen wild Blowters generate any O2 despite eating wild plants (I have not ranched them yet, possibly only then it kicks in)
    -> whatever free early H20 is present by worldgen, needs to be balanced between research, toilets, and now even the Salty Sticks food debuff
    -> Wild Corals are not conveniently placed in your starting biome, rather you have to venture out.
    -> Due to the limited amount of wild corals, your dupe count has to stay low longer, until desalination and electrolysis comes online. 

Overall, on paper corals may be most water efficient, but the context makes their overexploitation in the early game inconvenient, and by the time you can mass build corals water is no longer a bottleneck for the colony. If anything, I would like to see wild Blowters bloat after feeding. 
 

[Tenedas]

18 hours ago, Wharflord said:

However, a single blowter gives 15kg/cycle of oxygen, while the flue coral gives 90kg/cycle. If you were to run the same amount of salt water through a desalinator and electrolyzer you would get about 16.5kg/cycle of oxygen.

i tend to agree with @stedam but i'd like to give some more mats inside as food for thoughts:

• 1 blowter can run on a single domesticated waterweed plant with farmer's touch
  • => 10kg of water per cycle + fertilizer 5kg per multiple cycles depending on the farm agriculture skill
  • Byproducts (if you keep them happy and get 0.5ish egg per cycle):
    • 800calories of raw egg
    • 1400 calories of omelette
    • 500 calories of fish fillet
    • 800 calories of cooked seafood
• 10kg of salt water can be converted into regular water with heat at 93% efficiency 
  • => electrolyzer will convert into oxygen at a 88% efficiency for a total of 81% efficiency (0.93 salt conversion x 0.88 oxygen conversion)
  • => electrolyzer setup can cap at 532.8 Kg of oxygen per cycle if running with 100% uptime
  • Byproducts:
    • Salt at 7% efficiency for wides uses from table salt to sodicane or whatever
    • Hydrogen at 11% efficiency (0.93 salt conversion x 0.12 hydrogen conversion) for SPOMs or else 
• 1 flue coral consume 8w of light that we can exclude given you can use tidal turbine or beakons
  • => converts 20kg of salt water into 150g/s of oxygen for a total of 90kg per cycle
  • => same water into an electrolyzer get converted at 81% efficiency and produce 14.4kg of oxygen per 16 seconds, meaning 37 TIMES faster
  • => flue coral requires lime that requires at best 0.5 slogo to be ranched at the cost of -5 kg per cycle of salt.
  • Byproducts: None

Looking it by a more math based prospective probably helps understanding that flue corals better in terms of balancing.

they are not good at time efficiency => convert water 37 times slower than an electrolyzer
they are not good at space efficiency => 3 of them sustains 4.5 dupes and take the space of a SPOM that can satisfy 9ish dupes
they are not good at byproducting => they require external system (ranch of slogos to be sustainable) and don't produce any byproduct
they don't have seed chance => you need to use princeptor to mass cultivate them

so i think it's ok they are good at conversion rate and the final result is they helps the early game in a fresh way. is more like the swampy asteroid polluted oxygen from all the polluted water in the surrounding.

edit: consider the conversion rate of polluted water into polluted oxygen, it is 100% and you can lay infinite water on the floor to off gas as many as you want , still you have to setup infrastructure to keep pressure ideal for offgassing and so on. I don't think pollued water is OP tho 

Edited May 27 by Tenedas

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, stedam said:

The argument pro corals as they are right now: 

Overall, on paper corals may be most water efficient, but the context makes their overexploitation in the early game inconvenient, and by the time you can mass build corals water is no longer a bottleneck for the colony. If anything, I would like to see wild Blowters bloat after feeding. 
 

Hmm. Good point. And it is not a map marked as hard either. 

Edited May 27 by Gurgel

[Wharflord]

Great breakdown @Tenedas. My main problem with your analysis is this line.

1 hour ago, Tenedas said:

same water into an electrolyzer get converted at 81% efficiency and produce 14.4kg of oxygen per 16 seconds, meaning 37 TIMES faster

It's not the rate of water use that is important but the rate of oxygen production. One electrolyzer produces 888g/s of oxygen compared to a flue coral at 150g/s, so 5.92x faster. Yes, it burns water 37 times faster, but that only illustrates how absurdly efficient the flue coral is. To my knowledge it is the most efficient oxygen producer in the game by a country mile. 

My central point stands. There has been no other plant or critter in ONI with this extreme an input to output conversion ratio imbalance. I agree that there are notable drawbacks - mainly the space requirement and inability to harvest seeds. However, in order to justify 90kg/cycle of oxygen production, the flue coral should consume at least 80kg/cycle of salt water. While this 4x increase in resource input seems dramatic, it would bring the H2O and O2 numbers close to parity and would not make the game much more difficult. Here is an outline of my thought process.

1.) Because the number of flue coral seeds is limited, each plant should feel impactful. Supporting 1.5 dupes feels appropriate.

2.) Water is abundant in the aquatic update. Running out of water is not a realistic threat to the colony.

3.) There exist complicated builds to squeeze more efficiency out of oxygen producers. Polluted water off-gassing achieves a 1:1 ratio. Applying farmer's touch and mutating exuberant variants of alveo vera achieves 2.1kg oxygen per 1kg ice. The same process for waterweed fed to blowters reaches 1.75kg oxygen per 1kg salt water.

4.) Flue corals require very little infrastructure to set up. They can easily be added to a ranch of beakons and starnacles to satisfy both the light and lime requirements.

5.) An easy early game setup should not also be more efficient than intensive late game setups. a 4.5x ratio is unreasonable.

6.) The salt water requirement should be increased.

 

[MasterZenII]

I'm not sure if some subtle Jawbo changes would affect the math from this, but before the beta if you used a loop of:

Blum Lumbs > Pacu > Jawbo > Rust Deoxidizers > glum but tame Plug Slugs > Rhex > boil brine ice

It produces oxygen in a way that is water positive...sure it takes like a quarter of your map for a sizable colony, but it still can be water positive.  So I think the argument of Flue Coral being so water efficient that it needs a nerf is missing the point a bit.  It sits fine in the trading size and dupe labor for water efficiency spectrum.

[Wharflord]

@MasterZenII Very cool setup! I fail to see how it has any relevance for the balance of Flue Corals. Builds that require critters from multiple asteroids, steel, plastic, large quantities of refined metal, and enough ranchers to keep up with hundreds of critters should be powerful. Builds that require connecting a hydroponic tile to a pump should not.

[MasterZenII]

tldr:  I agree with @Tenedas, the balance is fine between oxygen sources because of factors outside of water efficiency.

@Wharflord The complaint presented is that Flue Coral is unbalanced because of the water efficiency.
I may have only given the cliffnotes version of the explanation of my build, but the point in bringing it up at all is basically to say that it is completely possible to make a monstrosity that produces oxygen, produces more water than it consumes, produces excess power, and produces food in the form of Jawbo fillet.  The trade-off is dupe labor and LOTS of space.
My argument--and intended takeaway from the post--is that each source of oxygen has tradeoffs in comparison, and that only looking at water efficiency misses the full picture.

Electrolyzers are space efficient, self-powering, and dupe labor efficient--only require building usually and then require no labor past that.

Blowters aren't as space efficient as electrolyzers but in exchange for the space and dupe labor cost you can get a useful byproduct in fish fillet.

Blum Lumbs are comparable to Blowters in that while not space efficient you get tough meat in exchange for space and dupe labor.

Flue Coral is the most water efficient, but requires lime and light.  Lime requires at least one critter, some setups two.  The sources of lime, aside from Beakons, require crushing first.  Without renewable coquina, Beakons also require Bammoth ranching, Drecko ranching, or space mining.  So Flue Coral doesn't just "require connecting a hydroponic tile to a pump".  It ends up being one of the least space friendly options and one of the most dupe labor-intensive options.  If you take away Flue Coral having the edge in water efficiency then why bother using it compared to an electrolyzer outside of novelty?

[SkunkMaster]

2 hours ago, MasterZenII said:

Lime requires at least one critter.

Just wanna point out this is false. We have the fossilized critter Poi which can be worked for a endless supply of fossil. 

[Tenedas]

2 hours ago, SkunkMaster said:

Just wanna point out this is false. We have the fossilized critter Poi which can be worked for a endless supply of fossil. 

this is not false, to supply the flue coral you need 5kg of limes per cycle and when someone says "at least" means "at very minimum" and not excludes other possibilities.

now you can argue what is the minimum(easiest) mean to produce lime between:

1. half a slogo that eat some salt
2. some critter's cracked eggs that you can get from many of them just as byproduct 
3. a POI that requires 1kg of diamond. Furthermore is not give that the POI is activated in any map.

but the comment sounds a bit out of context imo