Beyond the Sand Barrier, 150+ cycles

[gaxx]

When playing a game of finite resources, you eventually come to a factor that limits further progress. Most people have said that Sand is the first non-renewable resource to run out, preventing you from getting clean water. However, this can be overcome:

Dig to the bottom of the map and clear the magma off of the rocks there. Build mesh tiles directly on top of the unbreakable rocks at the bottom to prevent the formation of igneous rock. Build a solid wall tube leading up from there  and let contaminated water run in through the mesh tiles at the bottom. That way, the system will never clog, and the tube will fill only with "steam" which cools into pure water, which you can catch with vapor permeable tiles. This process eliminates the need for sand.

The next barrier I run into is dirt. Converting algae into mush bars requires dirt. As far as I know, that only exists in a limited quantity in the starting area. Am I missing something related to food production?

If there's a way to produce dirt, you could theoretically last forever since "Puffs" produce (quite a lot of) slime from contaminated air, which in turn can be converted into water and algae. I managed to trap 3 in a room to try and go for the longest run possible, but ran out of dirt at just over 150 cycles and was unable to make food from algae after that.

 

[Vilda]

For food, as current situation stands, don't cook at all, it just wastes water. Just plant a lots of Meal Plants and eat them raw.

[HabdomeRaider]

I have seen dirt occasionally in the phosphorus biomes.

[Radje]

7 minutes ago, HabdomeRaider said:

I have seen dirt occasionally in the phosphorus biomes.

Dirt seems to be a by product of something (I think phosphorus) that gets evaporated by the magma. I made a steam filter to save on sand and in my heating room, there is dirt being build up.

[DNsingbanana]

Doesn't evaporating the contaminated water into steam drop the "contamination" in form of dirt?

[Radje]

3 minutes ago, DNsingbanana said:

Doesn't evaporating the contaminated water into steam drop the "contamination" in form of dirt?

I'm not sure honestly. If that would be the case I would have expected to get some dirt in my first try where I just used electrolizers to create heat, but I don't recall seeing any dirt.

I can't test it currently, but will look into it later today if noone can clarify this.

[DNsingbanana]

1 minute ago, Radje said:

I'm not sure honestly. If that would be the case I would have expected to get some dirt in my first try where I just used electrolizers to create heat, but I don't recall seeing any dirt.

I can't test it currently, but will look into it later today if noone can clarify this.

From what i have seen valrun doing, it does drop dirt, and he used batteries to heat things up

[gaxx]

7 hours ago, Radje said:

Dirt seems to be a by product of something (I think phosphorus) that gets evaporated by the magma. I made a steam filter to save on sand and in my heating room, there is dirt being build up.

I was just getting liquid phosphorus from this. I didn't notice any buildup of dirt. Will have to give it another shot.

7 hours ago, DNsingbanana said:

Doesn't evaporating the contaminated water into steam drop the "contamination" in form of dirt?

In the current patch, the contamination seems to just vanish into nothing

[gaxx]

7 hours ago, Vilda said:

For food, as current situation stands, don't cook at all, it just wastes water. Just plant a lots of Meal Plants and eat them raw.

How do you get enough meal plants to generate enough food without having them all eventually die? They seem to have a limited number of harvests and then disappear. I see some randomly pop up around the starting area even late game, but those die eventually too. Do they require certain conditions to stay alive and produce seeds?

[Vilda]

6 minutes ago, gaxx said:

How do you get enough meal plants to generate enough food without having them all eventually die? They seem to have a limited number of harvests and then disappear. I see some randomly pop up around the starting area even late game, but those die eventually too. Do they require certain conditions to stay alive and produce seeds?

I never had a trouble with that. Every time they "die" they produce a seed to put in next pot. They even drop the fruit themselves after some time so with sufficient overproduction you only have to worry about putting new seeds in.

[Radje]

32 minutes ago, gaxx said:

How do you get enough meal plants to generate enough food without having them all eventually die? They seem to have a limited number of harvests and then disappear. I see some randomly pop up around the starting area even late game, but those die eventually too. Do they require certain conditions to stay alive and produce seeds?

So you need 2.2 mealwood plants per duplicte when you harvest them as soon as ready.

They work like this: when planted it takes 5 days to grow until maturity, when then harvested it will take another 2.5 cycles to regrow to maturity again, you harvest it again and it will once more take 2.5 cycles to grow to maturity. But now when you harvest it the plant will be destroyed, don't worry however because at this harvest it drops both food and the seed, sometimes even a 2nd seed it seems. Your duplicate will auto replant the mealwood and the whole process starts over with the 5days growth time until first maturity.

This all only happens under the right circumstances tho: enough air pressure (doesn't seem to matter what kind of gas) and a temperature roughly between 20 and now I'm not sure but I think 37 degrees Celsius. It shouldn't be too difficult to keep the conditions just right, but I would still advise to go for at least 2.5 plants per duplicate because you will not harvest them instantly anyway.

Now... If you think your duplicates shouldn't spend any of their time harvesting the crops. You can actually let the mealwood plants grow long enough to automatically drop the food and restart the 2 regrowth cycles (still has to be replanted by a duplicate every 3 harvests). You do this by just not harvesting the plant when it matured. It will take 2 cycles to turn into a brown plant, which is different than a withered one as its big and no warning pops up. Now it will take another 2 cycles for this brown mealwood to just drop the food on the floor and start the next phase. If you go down this path you would theoretically need at least 3.11 plants per duplicate. But again I would go for a couple more.

That all said, you might not want to go full out with the amount of plants you make, as it does seem that they do use up the atmosphere.

[ShaTiK]

8 hours ago, gaxx said:

Dig to the bottom of the map and clear the magma off of the rocks there. Build mesh tiles directly on top of the unbreakable rocks at the bottom to prevent the formation of igneous rock. Build a solid wall tube leading up from there  and let contaminated water run in through the mesh tiles at the bottom. That way, the system will never clog, and the tube will fill only with "steam" which cools into pure water, which you can catch with vapor permeable tiles. This process eliminates the need for sand.

Could you provide screenshots of this contraption? Because, well, unbreakable rocks have 0 heat transfer to the best of my knowledge. And I did my fair share of playing with magma and heating water to no practically useful result. Happy to be wrong though.

And cooling steam down requires something for steam to heat up instead - so at some point "cooling shaft" will no longer cool steam down

[ShaTiK]

1 minute ago, Radje said:

This all only happens under the right circumstances tho: enough air pressure (doesn't seem to matter what kind of gas) and a temperature roughly between 20 and now I'm not sure but I think 37 degrees Celsius. It shouldn't be too difficult to keep the conditions just right, but I would still advise to go for at least 2.5 plants per duplicate because you will not harvest them instantly anyway.

Great to know the exact number for food per dupes, but few corrections:

-it requires oxygen, and breatheble amount. And not only it requires - it actually consumes oxygen. A guy on forums did a test - made fully sealed farm. In some time it run out of oxygen and stopped growing completely. 

-in the long term you will need some air cooling so air around plants is less then 28.9C. Which isn't that high

-it take 5 (not 10) days to grow, but 2.5 to regrow (no correction here).

And I would argue that having 2.5 per dupe take a lot of space, oxygen and hassle for cooling them down if you want to have somewhat decently-sized colony (of more then 5 dupes)

[Vilda]

Do you have a link to that? I am running the same scenario and after one plant cycle there is no drop in oxygen levels.

[Radje]

 

Ah yeah it definitely is 5 days, the 10 days is for the blossom plants. The calculations were made with 5 days so they still stand. Thanks for pointing it out! I corrected my post.

Are you sure it needs oxygen ? I thought I've seen my plants do fine in hydrogen. Did the guy test it with multiple gasses or just that there is enough of an atmosphere? Just curious, because in the case it doesn't matter what gas, you can use plants to get rid of unwanted gasses.

[Radje]

36 minutes ago, ShaTiK said:

Could you provide screenshots of this contraption? Because, well, unbreakable rocks have 0 heat transfer to the best of my knowledge. And I did my fair share of playing with magma and heating water to no practically useful result. Happy to be wrong though.

And cooling steam down requires something for steam to heat up instead - so at some point "cooling shaft" will no longer cool steam down

You can do this easier. Use your own machines (batteries/energizer) to create a hot room, use insulated walls of course, and pump contaminated water into the room. Be sure the room is hot enough and that there are machines below  and in the water line to create the best effect. Now this contaminated water will turn into steam and rise. You pump the steam out and into your water tank. Voila Just not sure yet if you will loose any water in the process because of how the game handles moving fluids currently.

Edit. Forgot to mention that you pump steam out with the gas pump.

[ShaTiK]

14 minutes ago, Radje said:

 

Are you sure it needs oxygen ? I thought I've seen my plants do fine in hydrogen. Did the guy test it with multiple gasses or just that there is enough of an atmosphere? Just curious, because in the case it doesn't matter what gas, you can use plants to get rid of unwanted gasses.

Nah, he made an airtight room filled with O2. And O2 levels went down to almost vacuum. Curious if it could grow on high pressure CO2, but I kinda doubt it. Need to test that

15 minutes ago, Vilda said:

Do you have a link to that? I am running the same scenario and after one plant cycle there is no drop in oxygen levels.

 

[Vilda]

Interesting, I started this to test it and after two cycles the oxygen is still the same and after 3rd I would have to break the containment. On the other hand, something is eating contaminated oxygen at the bottom of my base where I keep plants...

[Tamedwilds]

you dont suppose your plants could be a natural air filter ? that could be nice...

[ShaTiK]

9 minutes ago, Vilda said:

Interesting, I started this to test it and after two cycles the oxygen is still the same and after 3rd I would have to break the containment. On the other hand, something is eating contaminated oxygen at the bottom of my base where I keep plants...

Well, you need more than 1 plant and at least one crop to be able to tell if there is any impact

[Vilda]

3 minutes ago, ShaTiK said:

Well, you need more than 1 plant and at least one crop to be able to tell if there is any impact

Not really, if there was a measurable impact, one should be enough. But after it finishes, I'll add two more.

[benkeiaa]

hi after playing 200 cycles i came to the conclusion that:

The only thing you need are plants well spotted (in a place where temperature won´t f*ck them up) and besides that atleast 2 more back up places where you can put them at.

- you don´t need clean water for anything fundamental if you have already a steady source of food

-you don´t need algae, if you play with contaminated oxygen and only digging trough green stuff, you will get so much oxygen that you won´t need to covert carbon dioxide.

-you don´t need sand, there is no need to purify oxygen or purify water for anything fundamnetal

In my experience as the game is right now, the only thing you need to do is dig trough the green colored soil, you will get enough oxygen that way, and make a bottomless pit where all your CO2 can fall.

For what i saw in your message if you realize that clean water is just a commodity, the next thing that will trouble you will be temperature, i saw a video of a guy with 300+ cycles avoiding purple zones, now at 200 cycles i realize why he did that. Temperature f*cks your plants, and once the  high temperature make contact with your main base a doomsday clock starts, where you eventually will run out of places to plant stuff.

Insulating tiles are just as good as almost any natural game tile so building around a place for your plants with this tiles is kinda useless

 

[Radje]

9 hours ago, benkeiaa said:

hi after playing 200 cycles i came to the conclusion that:

The only thing you need are plants well spotted (in a place where temperature won´t f*ck them up) and besides that atleast 2 more back up places where you can put them at.

- you don´t need clean water for anything fundamental if you have already a steady source of food

-you don´t need algae, if you play with contaminated oxygen and only digging trough green stuff, you will get so much oxygen that you won´t need to covert carbon dioxide.

-you don´t need sand, there is no need to purify oxygen or purify water for anything fundamnetal

In my experience as the game is right now, the only thing you need to do is dig trough the green colored soil, you will get enough oxygen that way, and make a bottomless pit where all your CO2 can fall.

For what i saw in your message if you realize that clean water is just a commodity, the next thing that will trouble you will be temperature, i saw a video of a guy with 300+ cycles avoiding purple zones, now at 200 cycles i realize why he did that. Temperature f*cks your plants, and once the  high temperature make contact with your main base a doomsday clock starts, where you eventually will run out of places to plant stuff.

Insulating tiles are just as good as almost any natural game tile so building around a place for your plants with this tiles is kinda useless

 

In my experience a single tile thick insulated wall will not transfer heat. My engine room was well in the 900 degrees Celsius and the tiles staid the same temperature (no tile in the game changes temperature btw, but they do influence the surrounding air) with no heat leaking.

All you need is to insulate your food room and you can dig up the entire map without any fear.