Conservation law violations

[Ciderblock]

This game is full to bursting with conservation law violations. The realism aspect of this does not bother me very much; it's a game at the end of the day. What does bother me is two things. The first is getting "something for nothing"; the second is enabling you to do things that appear impossible, but work anyway.

Examples of "something for nothing":

Hydrogen generators can power the electrolyzers that feed them without consuming oxygen, possibly with a small surplus to dump to the grid, which means water converts to oxygen almost for free.

Water ostensibly has an endless drip from geysers along with a very large initial supply of it on the map.

A Morb+Puft farm can convert any waste gas you want (probably either CO2 or chlorine) into oxygen and slime. This gives you a way to remove CO2 without water or sand.

A Hatch farm can convert excess rock into coal, which is near-free energy.

Bristle Blossoms are sustainable. They gobble up a lot of fertilizer, but you can cover a lot of that just outhouses and composting. Plus with oxygen scrubbing (either by air deodorizer or by making liquid oxygen), a compost heap is a net source of oxygen.

Plants don't require light and can consume low energy gas like CO2. So your dupes are basically fed by fertilizer alone.

Examples of counterintuitive possibilities:

Thermoregulators delete the vast majority of the heat that they remove. This means that in particular it is possible (albeit power-intensive) to make liquid oxygen, although the Thermal Upgrade makes it a bit more difficult. This provides a way to clean Polluted Oxygen without sand.

Batteries generate much more waste heat than the electrical energy that they discharge. This provides a way to clean Polluted Water without sand and without using nearly as much power as the analogous array of heaters would require.

 

I hope there are plans to fill in some of these gaps, because as it stands it seems that good base designs are all about heavily exploiting these mechanics.

 

[TheMetalMan]

Hatches gives coal?

[Developous]

2 hours ago, TheMetalMan said:

Hatches gives coal?

Yup... Sorta against this, but it's still a notable idea to me.