stop using my damn tungsten

[avc15]

2 hours ago, Vilda said:

thanks for info. That's pretty weaksauce buff, given the amount of coal the hatches produce and the need to build actual room for it.

it's really quite strong when your base is bottlenecking on ANY other resource.... you can use the tune-up buff to reduce your water consumption, pwater, crude, or more directly any fuel type at all.

of course only bases with a metal volcano should allow it to be used completely willy nilly.

The thing does have an automation input - if you don't have a volcano, you should be enabling or disabling the power control station based on a liquid level, gas pressure, or smart storage reading. Unfortunately that won't be terribly precise since microchips can be stored, and used inside ANY power plant room (not just the same one).

[KittenIsAGeek]

I don't know about weak.. it means that two generators provide as much power as 3.   Or that they run 30% less frequently, producing 30% less heat and 30% less CO2.  Which is good when you're just starting out and don't have systems built up to manage those yet.

[goboking]

On 4/1/2018 at 6:10 AM, Vilda said:

thanks for info. That's pretty weaksauce buff, given the amount of coal the hatches produce and the need to build actual room for it.

It allows you to get the same power out of two natural gas generators that you'd normally get out of three.  That means you need less natural gas, less heat management, less waste disposal, etc.  Of course your mileage will vary depending on your power consumption and whether or not you need the byproducts for other systems, but a 50% production boost for a bit of refined metal and a little dupe time is nothing to sneeze at.

[Vilda]

I understand your arguments, but when you are at the point where you have access to refined metal, you can spent it better on smart batteries (that alone saves a ton of power generating resources) and automation.

Honestly can't imagine scenario where you would be deciding whether to build 2 or 3 NG generators. You can run several of them from just one geyser and fertilizer makers sucking the produced PW. It makes more sense with saving coal, but that was made moot by Ranching update.

[vonVile]

There needs to be an option to only have Dupes deliver to Storage, but not be allowed to remove from it.

[Supraluminal]

8 hours ago, Vilda said:

I understand your arguments, but when you are at the point where you have access to refined metal, you can spent it better on smart batteries (that alone saves a ton of power generating resources) and automation.

Honestly can't imagine scenario where you would be deciding whether to build 2 or 3 NG generators. You can run several of them from just one geyser and fertilizer makers sucking the produced PW. It makes more sense with saving coal, but that was made moot by Ranching update.

On my latest map, the only NG geyser I've found so far supports less than half of one NG generator full-time. And smart batteries, unless you're doing something pretty dang fancy you only need about 3-5 of them to run a complete power grid. Automation isn't that expensive either in terms of metal. You want to talk metal-intensive systems, look at wire; I have probably 15 tons of refined gold locked up in conductive wire.

Meanwhile, I have a copper volcano that produces about 250kg of copper per cycle on average. That's enough to keep 150 generators tuned up full time. I would be dumb not to use the control station.

Even without a metal volcano it's a pretty nominal cost for a huge reduction in fuel use and waste outputs, unless you plan to play for many hundreds or thousands of cycles. But certainly, if you wind up with an abundance of NG/hydrogen/oil sources, you might reasonably choose not to use the control station. It really depends on your map and how you're setting up your base.

[cpy]

I play with copper, gold and iron volcano, I have so much of it erupting all the time i'm building temp shift plates out of gold!

Current volcanoes provide way too much refined metal but not in ore form which I "lack". If only I could downgrade refined metal to impure ore state. Hmm maybe metal+sand mix.

If you win epic water geyser 1 metal and 1 normal volcano, that's all you need for your game.

[Supraluminal]

I feel like it be possible to build anything that can be built out of raw metal with refined metal instead. It does feel a bit silly that you have to avoid refining too much ore just to make sure you can still build doors and stuff.