Having a terrible time with transformers, valves..and bonus electrolyzer question

[SusanMcO]

I'm new to this game and doing fairly well (I think) I have figured out how to recycle water, gotten past the starvation risk, kind of gotten gas management right....

But for the life of me, I'm having issues with circuitry, figuring out how to effectively use the transformers in particular, and how to power my larger generators without asking my manual generator to power everything else.  I feel like I am just not getting the concept.  I'm not even sure I'm doing batteries right. I have them to absorb excess power of course, but I'm not sure if there's a better way to utilize them then just sticking them next to the generator and letting them charge.

Next question - valves.  I've had issues with pressures with gas and water and tried to install valves to manage that, and it always seems to make it worse. Is there a dummies guide to pressure dynamics in this game? *L*

Bonus question: I've been playing with putting electrolyzers in a sealed room to gather hydrogen, do you know the best ratio of electrolyzers to pumps?  Or is it more a function of the amount of space in the sealed rooms? 

Thanks fro the tips!

[Michi01]

35 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

But for the life of me, I'm having issues with circuitry, figuring out how to effectively use the transformers in particular, and how to power my larger generators without asking my manual generator to power everything else.  I feel like I am just not getting the concept.  I'm not even sure I'm doing batteries right. I have them to absorb excess power of course, but I'm not sure if there's a better way to utilize them then just sticking them next to the generator and letting them charge.

Basically you're supposed to put all generators on a heavy watt wire circuit and connect a transformer to it for every 1 kW of consumers, for example like in this image:

Batteries are only really useful if you don't have a steady power production, for example if you're still using manual generators.

38 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

Next question - valves.  I've had issues with pressures with gas and water and tried to install valves to manage that, and it always seems to make it worse. Is there a dummies guide to pressure dynamics in this game? *L*

What problems are you having exactly?

38 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

Bonus question: I've been playing with putting electrolyzers in a sealed room to gather hydrogen, do you know the best ratio of electrolyzers to pumps?  Or is it more a function of the amount of space in the sealed rooms? 

An electrolyzer produces 112g/s of hydrogen and a pump consumes 500g/s, so one pump can handle four of them if you have them inside of your base. If have them in a seperate room and pump both oxygen and hydrogen out of that room, you need two pumps per electrolyzer, as it produces 888g/s of oxygen and with that 1000g/s of gas in total.

[Ciderblock]

2 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

Batteries are only really useful if you don't have a steady power production, for example if you're still using manual generators.

They are also useful for systems that take a lot of power when running but don't run all the time, like polluted water boilers or polluted oxygen condensers.

[Michi01]

1 minute ago, Ciderblock said:

They are also useful for systems that take a lot of power when running but don't run all the time, like polluted water boilers or polluted oxygen condensers.

I should've put it like this: They're only useful if you don't have a steady power production and consumption.

[chaos0720]

59 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

I'm new to this game and doing fairly well (I think) I have figured out how to recycle water, gotten past the starvation risk, kind of gotten gas management right....

But for the life of me, I'm having issues with circuitry, figuring out how to effectively use the transformers in particular, and how to power my larger generators without asking my manual generator to power everything else.  I feel like I am just not getting the concept.  I'm not even sure I'm doing batteries right. I have them to absorb excess power of course, but I'm not sure if there's a better way to utilize them then just sticking them next to the generator and letting them charge.

Next question - valves.  I've had issues with pressures with gas and water and tried to install valves to manage that, and it always seems to make it worse. Is there a dummies guide to pressure dynamics in this game? *L*

Bonus question: I've been playing with putting electrolyzers in a sealed room to gather hydrogen, do you know the best ratio of electrolyzers to pumps?  Or is it more a function of the amount of space in the sealed rooms? 

Thanks fro the tips!

I'm sure other people on here will have their own suggestions and favorites - but two people I watch on youtube have been really helpful with understanding the game -  Brothgar - directly because of his tutorials/experiments; and CrypticFox indirectly from watching how he plays the game.

Spoiler

Cryptic Fox - https://www.youtube.com/user/CrypticFoxGaming

Brothgar - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1BZnq-fX0Ea4ka4d8cnc0w

 

[Saturnus]

44 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

I should've put it like this: They're only useful if you don't have a steady power production and consumption.

That's not true either. If you put any consumer directly on a transformer you will see stuttering performance of everything that is connected to it. You should have at least one tiny battery on the output to prevent that. The stutter happens even if you have stable power production.

Clever use of batteries and transformers can also make sure that if you have a power failure, vital systems stay functional, and by using different battery capacities you can also make sure things turn off in a specific order. Like a pump shutting down before a consumer so there's no gas or liquid in the pipe. This is especially important if those pipes are subject to suffer phase change damage.

[SusanMcO]

Problems I'm having with valves - vent blocked, pressure too high.  I put a valve on to decrease the pressure - and another pipe with vent further down the line to continue venting the gas, and the pressure seems to be an even bigger problem.

The intake is from the pump, not the vent, correct?

[Michi01]

3 hours ago, SusanMcO said:

Problems I'm having with valves - vent blocked, pressure too high.  I put a valve on to decrease the pressure - and another pipe with vent further down the line to continue venting the gas, and the pressure seems to be an even bigger problem.

That means that there is too much gas surrounding the vent and reducing the pressure that comes out unfortunately won't help with that. The only way to reduce the pressure is to remove some of the gas that's surrounding the vent. Which gas are you trying to pump out through the vent and which gas is surrounding the vent?

[The Plum Gate]

21 hours ago, chaos0720 said:

I'm sure other people on here will have their own suggestions and favorites - but two people I watch on youtube have been really helpful with understanding the game -  Brothgar - directly because of his tutorials/experiments; and CrypticFox indirectly from watching how he plays the game.

And you can watch Biffa make all the right mistakes to help you learn how to run a cleaner base.

[SusanMcO]

Ok, here's where I'm running into issues with my transformer.  Again, I may be missing the concept. But a bunch of generators together, a transformer to siphon off some energy with a regular wire to a typical circuit.  Right?  Except, I keep getting a "no wire connected" error, but I think it's wired correctly.  Here's a screenshot of a very basic setup.

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

OK, first, I'd like to point out that coal generators are an intermittent source, so you'll want batteries on the heavy watt wire somewhere. Otherwise, the setup looks fine.  I've had some issues with the transformers stating that there isn't a power line connected, but otherwise they're running as they should.  The "fix" was to save and reload.  

As to some of your other questions... for generating oxygen, I made a post a while back that had some good info in it.  Basically, as per the numbers, one water pump will feed 10 electrolyzers.  Each electrolyzer produces 1000g/s of gas, and each gas pump will handle 500g/s.  Your theoretical max oxygen per electrolyzer is 888g/s, but you will not hit that.  With most economical builds, I get about 300g/s of oxygen.  I've gotten as much as 800g/s, but that was a very power-hungry build that added an incredible amount of heat to my base.

If you do an "open" setup for your electrolyzers and your base, one pump at the top with a gas pressure switch can handle delivering the hydrogen to a generator (provided the pump is fully immersed in the hydrogen).  If you prefer a closed setup, here's a post from the thermal update where I talked about my observations:

Now.. valves... Valves can be very useful in a number of different ways.  For example, I put a valve on the natural gas line for each of my natural gas generators, just before the generator, and set it to slightly more than 60g/s.  Now that we're able to type in a number, I usually set it to 65g/s.  This way when there's a problem with a generator (maybe I need to move it or something) I can shut the valve off and not disrupt my other generators. Another valve that I use a lot is when merging pipes or splitting pipes.  Say, for example, you have a shower and a toilet next to each other.  The toilet and shower output pipes merge, then merge again with the main line.  If you just run the pipes, then flushing the toilet either puts the toilet out of order until the shower finishes, or puts the shower out of order until the toilet finishes flushing.  Putting a valve just before they merge solves the problem.  Or perhaps you have a couple of thermo regulators on a gas line.  Thermo regulators heat up depending on several different factors, including how big a pocket of gas they're currently cooling.  So, to keep them from accidentally melting down, I generally put a valve just before their input so they get gas at a consistent rate.