passive plumbing and ventilation intakes

[renton555]

There should be cheaper but lower throughput ways to drain fluids from rooms based on the gravity/pressure of that room.  This wouldn't be cheaty and would open up more creative systems.  Suggested buildings:

1.  Liquid drain:  passive building that accepts liquids based on gravity and using the same physics that liquids currently use.  To make it inferior to pump systems, perhaps there would be a requirement that there be no upward piping (the fluid would just reach that pipe segment and not go farther.

2.  Gas drain:  same as 1) only based on the ambient pressure of the vent.  It will equalize pressure between itself and the tile it's built in.  To make it inferior to pump systems, gases piped in this way will not move through the system; instead, each pipe segment will equalize pressure with the adjacent ones so it would result in pretty slow throughput unless the source room has a ton of pressure.

3.  A louvered tile that can be toggled on and off to allow gases and/or liquids through.  And possibly an upgraded version that is active and can be toggled remotely via switches.

 

A couple of applications of the above:

- A gas or liquid tank that acts as a buffer.  Currently with buffers you have to spend 240W to pump the fluid into a room, then spend 240W again to pump it where it's needed, which is costly and tedious.

- Centralized oxygen distribution.  A room with deoxydizers/electrolyzers that create pressure which is then released into ducts without the need of spending 2-4 times as much wattage on pumps.

 

 

 

[Vincie]

1. This was mentioned before - would require to alternate entire pipe physics.

2. The same. Or well, maybe based on output vents' pressure they could behave like that, maybe. Still, would not do with separators and else.

3.  I would like to see it activated/deactivated by power flow.

[renton555]

8 hours ago, Vincie said:

1. This was mentioned before - would require to alternate entire pipe physics.

2. The same. Or well, maybe based on output vents' pressure they could behave like that, maybe. Still, would not do with separators and else.

3.  I would like to see it activated/deactivated by power flow.

For liquids, the easiest solution would be to require completely different low-level pipes that can't mix with standard pipes.  Though, I'm sure with a little finesse it would be possible to reconcile them with the normal pipe physics.

[sixsevensix]

This was something I was thinking about a while back. The way I see it would be like a liquid/gas bridge or valve with each connection being a new state called enter/exit or free passage. Basically it would take the tile or tiles with the passage and allow fluids to pass as if the tile were like a vacuum, but only within the tiles and at their connections; not outside... it could be possible but it depends on how they designed their piping system. This is all just hypothesizing since I can only guess at what their source looks like.

Given this can already be done with standard tiles; I think a type of free-flow piping/venting like this could help with more compact colony builds.