Water Airlock

[makoto2]

Currently the door based airlocks are leaky and destroy gas, even the powered one.

I've created a water based airlock that conserves air and is traversable even when one side is under vacuum. You can exploit this to create large rooms under vacuum, for example a large bank of batteries, so that the machines don't heat up the air.

 

You can actually get away with just the top left and bottom tiles with minimal amounts of water, but sometimes a heavy gas pocket displaces the puddle, breaking the seal. This won't happen if both sides have uniform gas composition. The gas permeable tile helps trapped pockets escape.

The main disadvantages are that it takes quite some time for dupes to pass through, though I could have built it lower and flush with the ground, saving on climbing operations. Dupes also will take water for crafting operations, so make sure that you don't use terraniums, cooking, or hydrofans, and make sure that all the research is completed before building them.

[Oatmeal]

I was not aware that the airlocks destroyed air. If that's the case, then couldn't you make a bunch with only 1 space apart, then use them to destroy carbon dioxide?

Also. How did you make a vacuum? Or did you use that diagonal trick with tiles?

And this looks like you could make a large U shape and store water inside while also using it as an airlock. That way you don't have to worry about your dupes taking water from it.

 

PS: That water is about to burst through the mid-bottom there.

[Saturnus]

Yup. Water locks are incredibly useful. The incredible and totally unrealistic thing is that you can have high pressure steam on one side, and a large vacuum on the other side. I'm also thinking about using it to generate water from steam. Build up high pressure steam in one room, and have a vacuum in another much larger room, connected via a water lock. Once steam pressure is very high. Destroy a tile in the water lock, and steam should rush into the vacuum and condensate almost instantly. Drain water out. Rebuild tile. Refill water lock. Repeat.

[MarkusReese]

How do you keep them from snagging the water?

Also airlocks destroying air, I have not confirmed but theorized.  Is this tested anywhere?  Reason I ask is I had a base that was turning into  a vacuum and I theorized it was the airlocks since base was working well before I added em.  I took em out and air seemed to stabilize again.

[Czeraphine]

3 hours ago, MarkusReese said:

How do you keep them from snagging the water?

Also airlocks destroying air, I have not confirmed but theorized.  Is this tested anywhere?  Reason I ask is I had a base that was turning into  a vacuum and I theorized it was the airlocks since base was working well before I added em.  I took em out and air seemed to stabilize again.

When airlocks close, they destroy whatever occupied the two blocks of whatever was there previously by creating a vacuum at that location. If you time it well enough, whenever you have the gas overlay open, pause the game the second the airlocks open. You will see a vacuum in the location where the airlocks were.

[MarkusReese]

I had noticed the vacuum, I just could not verify if gas displaced or deleted.

[Oatmeal]

 

Yep. Made a water seal where they can take water from it. Although, the issue I ran into was that I had to manually move them into that vacuumed room. Luckily, I had a dupe with high athletic and construction, good ol' Pierre. And the good thing was with it being in a room full of Copper, I could have just built more and more batteries.

[Oatmeal]

17 hours ago, Czeraphine said:

When airlocks close, they destroy whatever occupied the two blocks of whatever was there previously by creating a vacuum at that location. If you time it well enough, whenever you have the gas overlay open, pause the game the second the airlocks open. You will see a vacuum in the location where the airlocks were.

That wouldn't be enough evidence. It could be theorized that this is caused by the gas being moved out of the way before closing, since a vacuum would be created if the gas was moved.

But really though. This is all easily tested by just having a dupe run back and forth through a whole line of airlocks, spaced 1 apart to let the air between them, then see if the gases start depleting; preferably Carbon Dioxide.

To which I will test right now.

[mrbunnyban]

10 minutes ago, Oatmeal said:

That wouldn't be enough evidence. It could be theorized that this is caused by the gas being moved out of the way before closing, since a vacuum would be created if the gas was moved.

But really though. This is all easily tested by just having a dupe run back and forth through a whole line of airlocks, spaced 1 apart to let the air between them, then see if the gases start depleting; preferably Carbon Dioxide.

To which I will test right now.

or keep opening and closing a door in water and checking if the water level is dropping

[Oatmeal]

1 hour ago, mrbunnyban said:

or keep opening and closing a door in water and checking if the water level is dropping

Or that. But I also wondered if it were possible to make a vacuum from this, aaaand, yes. Yes you can.

 

Initial setup. Just the bottom though. The top half was used first, but then the Carbon Dioxide kept seeping down and it was hard to get a clear indication.

 

This was neat. There was so little Carbon Dioxide in there that the room was actually half vacuum and half Carbon Dioxide.

 

And then the final result was a vacuum.

 

I also ran into something that was completely bull. My main man Pierre there, the dead one not that smug one, actually ran to the toilet BEFORE he went to go and get air. He went out like Elvis; on the can.

 

This was also used in combination with the water-airlock on the bottom right of the pics to show that you can actually make a vacuum anywhere you want with both methods.

[Saturnus]

Oh neat. Let me exploit that before it gets fixed. How about battery chambers that never heat up due to being suspended in a vacuum. Or Coal generators for that matter. Make an outer wall first. Create the vacuum. Make inner wall with vacuum between inner and outer wall all the way round. Place coal generator in the room. Have 3 airlocks. Done. No CO2 can ever escape. Heat is only transferred to surrounding by 2 tiles which can be insulating ones, and the airlocks themselves but it's a set up that'll probably run without any significant heat transfer before you have long ago run out of coal.

[Oatmeal]

If your focus is a vacuum though, then the water seal would be a better bet. Just make the L shape, like in the bottom right of my pictures, in a pool of water. If you start digging/deconstructing under water, then no air will appear when you go above the water level on the vacuum side. Then you just build your stuff inside, and seal it off when you're happy with the results.

But yeah. That's one of the great and badly exploitable things in this type of style. There are no supports needed to keep things off the ground, thus, a resulting floating island is possible.

But the thing I take most from this is that about 3 airlocks is actually enough to have an uncontaminatable airlock system; maybe 4. But you just need the airlock on one end to close before the one on the other end opens; unlike how some people I have seen have an open space in between the two airlocks. Which, thinking about it now is pretty dang obvious.

[mrbunnyban]

43 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Oh neat. Let me exploit that before it gets fixed. How about battery chambers that never heat up due to being suspended in a vacuum. Or Coal generators for that matter. Make an outer wall first. Create the vacuum. Make inner wall with vacuum between inner and outer wall all the way round. Place coal generator in the room. Have 3 airlocks. Done. No CO2 can ever escape. Heat is only transferred to surrounding by 2 tiles which can be insulating ones, and the airlocks themselves but it's a set up that'll probably run without any significant heat transfer before you have long ago run out of coal.

... Vacuums in this game do not transfer heat? Because only gasses carry heat, is that it?

 

Edit: just read up on high school physics again haha. I guess ONI doesn't bother with EM wave heat trasnfer

[Saturnus]

Yup. Vacuums have zero heat conductivity just like abyssalite.

[mrbunnyban]

...But don't insulated walls have such low heat conductivity you only need to worry about the doorway anyway? .... The doorway can be made into the vacuum and sealed with one water seal.

[Saturnus]

Problem is that insulated walls have a starting temperature so they will heat up or cool their surrounds. Vacuums do not have a starting temperatures since temperature doesn't make sense for vacuums (no particles to move around). 

[Oatmeal]

Well I mean... There's no air in space, yet the sun gives us heat. You know. That delicious cancer-causing radiation. Yum-yum-yum.

But for the game's sake and its mechanics, heat needs air particles or 'things' to latch onto.

[Saturnus]

Space isn't a perfect vacuum, and it does have a temperature of 2.7K. A perfect vacuum is 0K.

But Sunlight doesn't quite work the same way though

[mrbunnyban]

30 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Problem is that insulated walls have a starting temperature so they will heat up or cool their surrounds. Vacuums do not have a starting temperatures since temperature doesn't make sense for vacuums (no particles to move around). 

The walls you place around the vacuum to keep the vacuum in have starting temperatures too?

[Oatmeal]

1 hour ago, mrbunnyban said:

The walls you place around the vacuum to keep the vacuum in have starting temperatures too?

Logically speaking, from ONI's perspective, the room that holds the energy source/batteries can get as hot as it wants, but since there is no air between the two walls, the heat can't latch onto anything to spread its heat. Though, I'd imagine this would be more difficult for the coal generators since they also generate CO2, thus giving any room they are in the capability of spreading heat, but only around that single room; which means that if they wanted to, the devs could explode the generator if it gets too hot, if they don't do that already.

That means, only things that do not produce waste can be in the vacuum. Even then, the wires are always subject to explosions or shorts.