Orehull and Tower Kelp Material Loop Now Has a Gap

[UISSD]

Currently, there is a gap in the material loop between Orehull and Tower Kelp. Previously, they formed a perfect material cycle, but now an additional input of Polluted Dirt is required. I don’t think this is a good change, as Polluted Dirt is not easy to obtain. Pacu can produce Polluted Dirt, but at a very low efficiency. If fed Algae, it takes 32 Pacu to supply just 3 Tower Kelp. If fed seeds, it takes as many as 80 Pacu to supply a single Tower Kelp. While Seakomb can produce Polluted Dirt at a higher efficiency, growing Seakomb itself requires Polluted Dirt, and it cannot form a positive loop with Pacu — an external source of Polluted Dirt is still needed.

I suggest reducing the Polluted Dirt consumption of Tower Kelp so that it can form a material loop with Orehull again. Even if a perfect loop isn't possible, at least don't make it require so much Polluted Dirt. Honestly, the previous version that only required Polluted Mud was perfectly fine.

 

Edited 23 hours ago by UISSD

[Twiki]

There's also turning wood into ethanol, sieves, and rotting food to get pdirt from.

Wood seems to be an intended part of the loop if you want to ranch orehulls now.

[UISSD]

2 hours ago, Twiki said:

There's also turning wood into ethanol, sieves, and rotting food to get pdirt from.

Wood seems to be an intended part of the loop if you want to ranch orehulls now.

As a DLC with an ocean world as its main theme, The Aquatic Planet Pack feels very incongruous when its material loop requires participation from non-ocean-themed biomes. A material loop can be long, but all the participants in the loop should come from the same thematic biome. I don’t think the current design is good. It could easily be designed to require more Polluted Water instead of Polluted Dirt — for example, change it to require 50 kg of Polluted Water + 20 kg of Polluted Dirt per cycle. Although the loop would still have a gap, that gap would be in Polluted Water, and now with the Polluted Brine Vent, that gap can be filled.

[Tigin]

Not really buying the whole resource loop philosophy but the gum tree is a perfectly serviceable source of wood, just slightly overshadowed by how overtuned arbor trees are

Edited 17 hours ago by Tigin

[Wharflord]

This has been discussed at length in other threads. The original loop in which the orehulls produced more polluted mud than the tower kelp needed was far too simple to justify the immensely powerful reward of sustainable iron ore. In addition, the leftover polluted mud could be used to make nori for high quality food, or pressed into polluted water and polluted dirt, both extremely useful resources on their own.

The new loop is slightly more involved, but still easily resource positive. You simply use a sludge press to refine the polluted mud into polluted dirt and polluted water, then feed those back into the tower kelp. A ranch of 8 orehull and 6 tower kelp requires 80 kg/cycle polluted dirt as an external input and produces 60 kg/cycle of extra polluted water. The polluted water is almost enough to support a domestic arbor tree, which gives polluted dirt as a byproduct when refining the wood into ethanol. This gives 96 kg/cycle of polluted dirt, more than enough to support the tower kelp. It's one of the strongest loops in the game, and pairs perfectly with the pip+arbor tree loop - the strongest loop in the game.

[UISSD]

8 hours ago, Wharflord said:

This has been discussed at length in other threads. The original loop in which the orehulls produced more polluted mud than the tower kelp needed was far too simple to justify the immensely powerful reward of sustainable iron ore. In addition, the leftover polluted mud could be used to make nori for high quality food, or pressed into polluted water and polluted dirt, both extremely useful resources on their own.

The new loop is slightly more involved, but still easily resource positive. You simply use a sludge press to refine the polluted mud into polluted dirt and polluted water, then feed those back into the tower kelp. A ranch of 8 orehull and 6 tower kelp requires 80 kg/cycle polluted dirt as an external input and produces 60 kg/cycle of extra polluted water. The polluted water is almost enough to support a domestic arbor tree, which gives polluted dirt as a byproduct when refining the wood into ethanol. This gives 96 kg/cycle of polluted dirt, more than enough to support the tower kelp. It's one of the strongest loops in the game, and pairs perfectly with the pip+arbor tree loop - the strongest loop in the game.

As I mentioned above, The Aquatic Planet Pack is a DLC with an ocean world as its main theme, so it is unreasonable for its material loop to require participation from non-ocean-themed biomes.

 

Moreover, the Arbor Tree is one of the few creatures in the game that achieves mass multiplication (consuming 80 kg of material per cycle while producing 333 kg of material), which is precisely why it is so overpowered. In other words, as long as there is a resource gap in any material loop in the game, most of the time it can be filled by the Arbor Tree loop system. This is a bad habit, because it means that when game designers create a new ecological system, they don't need to consider whether that system is logically self-consistent or whether materials can cycle within the system itself — since there is always an overpowered Arbor Tree system to back it up. It's like designing a water-themed park where visitors are forced to go to a desert to refill their water bottles — the core theme is broken by an external, ill-fitting dependency.

 

As for the improvement I mentioned earlier — changing Tower Kelp's consumption to 50 kg of Polluted Water + 20 kg of Polluted Dirt per cycle — that would be equivalent to sustaining one Tower Kelp and one Orehull at the cost of 20 kg of Polluted Water per cycle. In comparison, in The Frosty Planet Pack, 75 kg of Snow per cycle can sustain 0.75 Bonbon Trees + 1.5 Spigot Seals + 4 Plume Squash Plants + 1 Regal Bammoth. I think such a change would be quite reasonable.

Edited 6 hours ago by UISSD

[Carib94]

Gum wood can turn into ethanol so the dirt can be made there without arbor trees....ofc early on you want rubber but by mid game gum wood should suffice in pdirt production...arbor trees just goes well since they consume pwater. 

[gigamoi]

Also (I am unable to do the math at the time of writing.) isn't it the case that an arbor tree's polluted water requirements can mostly, but not quite entirely, be fulfilled by burning the ethanol in a petroleum generator? If so, combined with orehulls, the loop should be resource positive, quite involved, but plainly and simply resource positive.

Edited 49 minutes ago by gigamoi