Fertilizer synthesizers and natural gas

[Reaniel]

4 hours ago, Oozinator said:

Holy cow, some of you take it serious. Massive wall of text.

80?
I play with an I2500k, above 70 it starts to lag..

 

It's just theoretical number crunching, but I did hear from a few people that say large area with air constantly flowing around causes more resource drain than dupes.

 

[Oozinator]

9 hours ago, Reaniel said:

 

It's just theoretical number crunching, but I did hear from a few people that say large area with air constantly flowing around causes more resource drain than dupes.

 

Yes, "feels" so. I started to vacuum big empty zones, but not sure about the positive effect. Had someone tried it out?

[Botaxalim]

1. What is your opinion on fertilizer synthesizer power plants?

make them 3x input, output and power. 

i know it wont fix people for spamming ferti.synth. but i know for sure dupe wont gather the fertilizer produced from machine back and forth every 3 seconds, like dupe gather slime from puft

i know there a way to do, such as locking the room, so dupe wont enter

or maybe balance the net power gain, so people wont using fert maker - NGGenerator for self sufficient base power plant

their main purpose is recycle ph2o to fertilizer, not power plant, this will make natgeyser more precious

[KAL_9000]

Wait, you guys don't just dump your Polluted Water into a purifier or The Void?! 

I HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN

[Whispershade]

41 minutes ago, Botaxalim said:

or maybe balance the net power gain, so people wont using fert maker - NGGenerator for self sufficient base power plant

their main purpose is recycle ph2o to fertilizer, not power plant, this will make natgeyser more precious

What is the bigger balance problem? An effectively useless building or a misnamed one?

It seems the big hangup is that it is called a fertilizer maker. But converting polluted water to natural gas is not all that different an idea than converting crude oil to petroleum.

[Oozinator]

It's an option, to use them. Don't forget about the workload/cycles it takes, to construct such a fertilizer thing..
I like to have many options.

[Michi01]

23 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

What is the bigger balance problem? An effectively useless building or a misnamed one?

A machine with the primary purpose of turning polluted water into fertilizer won't be useless once fertilizer is made useful again, which I'm sure it will be at some point. If the primary purpose of fertilizer synthesizers wasn't meant to be fertilizer production, they would've probably been renamed to something that doesn't involve fertilizer when their name was changed for the release of the Outbreak Upgrade.
I don't think I really clarified this when I made the thread, I don't want them to be changed in the current version of the game, I want them to be changed when fertilizer is made useful, water recycling viable and when they've added other ways to generate power on a large scale.
As I've said I don't even think that they're that overpowered and it's not just the name, I just dislike that processing toilet water, be it expensive or not, is tied to producing power on a large scale. It would make a lot more sense if the purpose of processing toilet water was making fertilizer for plants.
While it includes an expensively high amount of clean water, I'm doing nothing but processing the water from my dupes' bathrooms to power my entire base and industrial area in my current save file.
I'm not saying that it is too easy to use fertilizer synthesizers for power production, I'd just prefer if it was replaced with more logical ways of producing power (yes I'm aware that waste can be used to generate natural gas, but the scale on which it works in ONI is unrealistic).

[Oozinator]

17 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

..but the scale on which it works in ONI is unrealistic).

Realism..
^^
 

[Michi01]

9 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

Realism..
^^
 

I don't think realism is more important than balance if that's what you're trying to get at, I only included that in my response because Whispershade seems to be considering it to be somewhat realistic.

[The Plum Gate]

I would rather it produce polluted oxygen as it's byproduct - since we now have a reasonably sound path from which natural gas is derived via the Oil -> petroleum -> natural gas heating decay route. Having inputted polluted water and its byproduct being natural gas makes very little sense. The heating byproducts for polluted water is steam + dirt -> sand. I'm not sure what fertilizer decays into when heated. but this makes it look like natural gas is dissolved in polluted water - however this is absent in the boiling of polluted water.

Right now it's a magic box with parameters that don't make sense when considering the evolution of oil in the game.

edit: if they were to make heating PW produce natural gas + steam - then I would have far more tepidizers in play.

[Whispershade]

29 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

I don't think realism is more important than balance if that's what you're trying to get at, I only included that in my response because Whispershade seems to be considering it to be somewhat realistic.

I was not making an appeal to realism, but rather arguing against what appeared to be arbitrary double-standards. Additionally my comments weren't intended to challenge you directly, but address a theme from multiple people in this thread who shared some of your concerns, though with different perspectives.

I can, however, be more specific later.

[Michi01]

6 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

I was not making an appeal to realism, but rather arguing against what appeared to be arbitrary double-standards.

Ah, I misunderstood and thought you were considering it to be as realistic as extracting petroleum from crude oil but you said "converting", my bad.
On the topic of that, while I don't think we'll ever get the full spectrum of substances refined from crude oil in the game, I hope that naphtha will be produced by oil refineries in the future. I'm sure they didn't add it just to have something special that plastic can melt into that can't even be used for anything, maybe it's meant to be a product of oil refinement and didn't make it into the update as that because they haven't added any uses for it yet.

[Oozinator]

4 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

I can, however, be more specific later.

I am very interested in everything!

[Botaxalim]

2 hours ago, KAL_9000 said:

Wait, you guys don't just dump your Polluted Water into a purifier or The Void?! 

I HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN

we recycle it, going to pincha pepper plantation is the best
here my old pictures from other thread, sorry for repost
and dont take the calculation seriously, there many wrong math here
just showing @KAL_9000 how power generation currently , beside hydrogen generator, manual generator and coal generator

[KAL_9000]

*math intensifies*

[trukogre]

 

2 hours ago, Michi01 said:

Ah, I misunderstood and thought you were considering it to be as realistic as extracting petroleum from crude oil but you said "converting", my bad.
On the topic of that, while I don't think we'll ever get the full spectrum of substances refined from crude oil in the game, I hope that naphtha will be produced by oil refineries in the future. I'm sure they didn't add it just to have something special that plastic can melt into that can't even be used for anything, maybe it's meant to be a product of oil refinement and didn't make it into the update as that because they haven't added any uses for it yet.

Just FYI for anyone here who's making the same mistake as michi is responding to here, IRL crude oil and petroleum are the same dang thing, you don't extract, or convert, petroleum from crude oil, petroluem IS crude oil.  Based on physical properties, petroleum in ONI seems like maybe something close to diesel fuel would be. If we go with that, then some crude oil irl is already diesel fuel, and some other percentage is cracked down to diesel fuel, depending on whether they're using the european or US style of refinery.  Plum Gate's comparison of boiling polluted water is quite apt, since what happens in an oil refinery is basically just adding water and heat, which would of course just end up being boiling polluted water if you applied that technique there.  Obviously, what would happen in a fertilizer maker IRL is not just heating, but using microbial growth to accomplish the change, the methane in RL compost is just that, bacteria farts.  The scale of nat gas and fertilizer production from the fertilizer maker is quite unrealistic, but a RL version wouldn't eat 100% of the water either, so you have to account for that when looking at game balance instead.  Oddly enough, if you had to run a water purifier and a fertilizer maker at the same time, the combination would be both more realistic and more balanced, but people actually run many more FMs than purifiers, or so it appears.

 

[The Plum Gate]

23 minutes ago, trukogre said:

Oddly enough, if you had to run a water purifier and a fertilizer maker at the same time, the combination would be both more realistic and more balanced

 This.

If they put a clean water out on the fert maker and and nixed the natural gas - you would then be left with cutting the compost heap out of the water distiller equation to produce the same effect deleting some poluted water and saving sand.

So they have it set up such that you can get energy at the cost of poluted water with some return of PW + heat. One assumes fertilizer is consumed as a sort of zero sum game mechanic. Yet, not everyone is to thrilled with having it unless they need it...

 

[Reaniel]

4 hours ago, KAL_9000 said:

Wait, you guys don't just dump your Polluted Water into a purifier or The Void?! 

I HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN

There's no wrong way in terms of resource management, but there are ways that yields more beneficial output than others.

The hydrogen that's produced from electrolyzers can be used in a hydrogen generator to make power, but it can also be destroyed with various ways.  The same for almost any other product/byproduct of various machines/creatures in the game.

Polluted water can be used in irrigation, or it can be used in fertilizer synthesizer to make fertilizer and natural gas (which can in turn be used to generate power).  It can also be used  in a purifier to make water, which can be potential source for oxygen and more power.  Just choose whatever system you want to use and come up with ideas for a sustainable base.

[Lifegrow]

4 hours ago, Michi01 said:

A machine with the primary purpose of turning polluted water into fertilizer won't be useless once fertilizer is made useful again, which I'm sure it will be at some point. 

I stopped posting in this thread a few days ago as things were seemingly going in circles - and lo and behold here we are again

Fertilizer is only useless to you because you maybe aren't using it? If you had a base where sleetwheat was your primary food source, you might think differently.

As ever - it's relative. Personally without fertilizer synth builds, i'd be unable to build a lot of the things I like to, without increasing dupe numbers massively to allow for coal generator banks, and constant hatch food production/handling to maintain the coal usage.

I'm currently on a cycle 1000ish colony on OI, i'm producing ~7000 kj of energy per cycle, and wasting ~250kj - depending on liquid o2 production. Without fert builds, this base wouldn't exist.

I will say that incorporating/graduating to petroleum generators really can avoid the need for spamming fert synths, however as slicksters are still a little bugged (well, very bugged) it's hard to get a real idea on how effective CO2 farming will become at this point.

[Michi01]

13 hours ago, trukogre said:

Just FYI for anyone here who's making the same mistake as michi is responding to here, IRL crude oil and petroleum are the same dang thing, you don't extract, or convert, petroleum from crude oil, petroluem IS crude oil.

In my defense, in German (which is my mother tongue), "Petroleum" is the name of kerosene and I had assumed that it's the same in English. If you research Petroleum in German, the first thing you're told is that it is extracted from crude oil through distillation. I didn't know that it means something different in English until just now when I looked it up, so while I admit that I was wrong, I couldn't have known any better.

12 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

I stopped posting in this thread a few days ago as things were seemingly going in circles - and lo and behold here we are again

Fertilizer is only useless to you because you maybe aren't using it? If you had a base where sleetwheat was your primary food source, you might think differently.

I should've worded my response better, I don't have any strong opinion on the usefulness of fertilizer, I don't consider it to be useless. I was responding to Whisphershade calling it useless, it was more of a "You're saying it's useless but it definitely won't be if/when they make more plants require it". It would've made more sense for you to aim your response at Whispershade who was the one saying that fertilizer synthesizers will be effectively useless without natural gas production and thus calling fertilizer useless instead of me who was trying to say that fertilizer will probably have more uses in the future but whatever.

12 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

As ever - it's relative. Personally without fertilizer synth builds, i'd be unable to build a lot of the things I like to, without increasing dupe numbers massively to allow for coal generator banks, and constant hatch food production/handling to maintain the coal usage.

I'm currently on a cycle 1000ish colony on OI, i'm producing ~7000 kj of energy per cycle, and wasting ~250kj - depending on liquid o2 production. Without fert builds, this base wouldn't exist.

As I said (I probably should've included it in my original post when I made this thread though), I don't actually want fertilizer synthesizers to be nerfed until we are given alternative ways to produce power on a large scale.
Part of the reason why I even want them to be nerfed is that I don't think processing toilet water should rival with other ways to produce power on a large scale that will be added in the future.

[Whispershade]

12 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

Fertilizer is only useless to you because you maybe aren't using it? If you had a base where sleetwheat was your primary food source, you might think differently.

This is a little unfair to Michi01 as I'm the one that doesn't consider fertilizer for fertilization all that terribly useful because if you took away the Fertilizer maker's ability to produce net power through natural gas I would suspect a dramatic decline in the people who even built one let alone large arrays. So don't be too hard on him regarding this particular issue.

[Whispershade]

17 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

As I said (I probably should've included it in my original post when I made this thread though), I don't actually want fertilizer synthesizers to be nerfed until we are given alternative ways to produce power on a large scale.
Part of the reason why I even want them to be nerfed is that I don't think processing toilet water should rival with other ways to produce power on a large scale that will be added in the future.

The problem here is that polluted water represent more than just 'toilet water'. It represents all sorts of industrial waste of various kinds. Even if you include showers a dupe produces only about 45kg of polluted water a day. That's only enough to fuel 1/2 a fertilizer maker. With a colony of say, 10 dupes, that's 5 fert makers, so not even enough for 2 natural gas generators. You would get more power just sending 4 of them to the hamster wheels. You did say it made sense to extract power from waste, but how much is too much? It is hardly 'powering your entire base on a large scale'. The rest of the polluted water isn't 'toilet water'. It is a generic catch-all of by-products of carbon skimmers, natural gas generators, petroleum generators, swamp algae, etc.

Again, I think it is a matter of getting hung up on labels.as Reanial said, the Dev roadmap is largely about creating externalities and giving us ways to exploit them for advantage. I personally wouldn't be surprised if, as more power generators come on line, that the net power gain from Fertilizer Makers remains but is diminished. I'd see the easiest way to accomplish that would be to increase the power consumption cost of the factories themselves.

[Whispershade]

20 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

In my defense, in German (which is my mother tongue), "Petroleum" is the name of kerosene and I had assumed that it's the same in English. If you research Petroleum in German, the first thing you're told is that it is extracted from crude oil through distillation. I didn't know that it means something different in English until just now when I looked it up, so while I admit that I was wrong, I couldn't have known any better.

I normally organize posts better, but I want to say something about this after thinking about it. It isn't unreasonable for you or anybody else to think of petroleum as something refined ad usable while *crude* oil as something not. So I would say you have no need to defend yourself here and that I am jealous of the quality of your poly-linguistic ability.

[Reaniel]

55 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

In my defense, in German (which is my mother tongue), "Petroleum" is the name of kerosene and I had assumed that it's the same in English. If you research Petroleum in German, the first thing you're told is that it is extracted from crude oil through distillation. I didn't know that it means something different in English until just now when I looked it up, so while I admit that I was wrong, I couldn't have known any better.

 

Interesting.  Makes me think about how it is in Chinese and Japanese for Petroleum vs Crude Oil.

They both uses the same Chinese characters/Kanji for the two phrases (原油, or Origin + Oil for Crude Oil, and 石油, or Rock + Oil for Petroleum).  However, in Chinese, the two are used interchangeable the way it is in English, while in Japanese, Crude Oil means exclusively the unprocessed form while Petroleum includes both processed (but not separated/filtered) and unprocessed form of the stuff.

[SkyNet_65]

You can already adjust stress and immune systems at the start of each map.

I would say, let the player decide how many resources are available in his world and how efficient he wants the machines to be. That way everyone's happy.