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I have a bit of an issue with Algae in general. Ive been reading a lot about various so-called renewables(that actually are more harmful to environment  than any coal, not to mention nuclear, based energy production, if one looks at actual data in terms of costs, production, efficiency, pollution, life span, recycling etc) lately, preparing for a debate.

And way that algae is implemented in the game struck me odd. I fully understand that were dealing with "space algae" so it may well be an opposite of what we have down here, but id like to share a few thoughts anyway.

Currently algae is a passive resources that can be used in "Algae whatever" structures to generate oxygen. My specific interest is terrariums and algae in general. Right now terrariums consume water and CO2 and produce oxygen and polluted water.

Personal take on how id like to see things. Instead of consuming clean water and producing polluted, it should be the other way around - algae terrariums should consume polluted water and produce tiny amount of clean water. Next, algae terrarium production should be heavily dependent of amount of light it is exposed 2 - without light it metabolism should be almost non-existent, more light should equal great efficiency, one light source is good, two are better, three are perfect.

Algae, as living organism, should degenerate after being mined, if its not exposed to nutrients. Similar to slime or bleach stone. As it dies it should "produce" dirt instead. Placing algae in clean water should slow down process. Placing algae in dirty water, should result in algae actually growing slowly(again, light is important) and gradually filtering out pollutants out of that water.

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I agree the Algae terrarium is still not an effective tool to supply ones air needs.  As it is now it feels like the design is just aping the CO2 scrubber + Electrolizer combo.  Fresh water and CO2 in, oxygen and Polluted water out.  The terrarium just doesn't produce hydrogen, but neither dose it use any electricity directly, though it uses excessive amounts of labor instead.

The terrarium needs a redesign to make it more interesting and switching the polluted water to an input and clean water as an output is a good idea, it might also actually yield solid algae as an output in proportion to the CO2 absorbed.

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One thing to remember is that what the gam call 'polluted' water and oxygen and even 'slime' are kind of abastractions, I mean technically, dirty or not, water is water, even if different things are dissolved, it's still the same liquid, it should mix.

And there can be plenty of different polutants, not all that are good for the proliferation of organic life. But by default "polluted" here sems to be "favorable to the proliferaion of germs", aka oranic life, so we an easily imagine that the 'polluted water' output from terraiums simply contain microscopic algae and spores in it. In fact that most alagae used in game are microscopic kind would also explain why you can get algae from distilling 'slime'. (ecept that the bit you mine around look pretty big but once gain, abastractions)

Anyway, maybe the algae terarium when exposed to light long enough could produce slime (since slime contains algae by the game logic) on top of polluted ater thus effectively making it source of renewable algae.when distilled.

(To make it even more inetresting, maybe small patchs algae and slime  could naturaly 'grow' on tiles or pipes around large bodies or water and terrarium, even cauing inconvenients like being slippery to Duplicants or pratialy blocking the flow of pipes

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Who said that developers are aiming to make the game realistic?(your statements are only useful if developers are striving to make game realistic) Let realism go and just imagine that it is a parralel universe with it's own laws. If something looks unlogical to you remember it's another universe and if it happens how it happens in the game then there are logical and out of this universe reasons for it to happen.
P.S. Seems like developers only get inspiration from real world but create their own world\laws and rules in game and that is totally OK. 

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Basically, algae terrariums should produce algae...

Consuming CO2 means creating carbon based organic matter, ie growing. If we are talking about photosynthetic organisms, this could only happen when exposed to light (consuming CO2 & growing).

So perhaps the algae consumption could be removed from terrariums ? Instead it could produce algae and efficiently process CO2 only when exposed to light ? When kept in the dark, very weak CO2 consumption and no algae production ?

Perhaps adding some reluctance to polluted oxygen for the flying light critters (glum + avoid behavior) could avoid too much power free exploits ?

 

 

 

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On 5/21/2018 at 12:10 PM, Mabnite said:

Perhaps adding some reluctance to polluted oxygen for the flying light critters (glum + avoid behavior) could avoid too much power free exploits ?

Maybe it takes light, polluted water, and CO2 and converts it to solid algea and water... but also produces germs? Both in the water and the algae? So, if you're looking to produce algae for fish farms or algae distillers then there is the risk that the germs could contaminate things and cause problems if you don't also set up something to purify the output first?

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On 5/21/2018 at 3:10 PM, Mabnite said:

Basically, algae terrariums should produce algae...

Consuming CO2 means creating carbon based organic matter, ie growing. If we are talking about photosynthetic organisms, this could only happen when exposed to light (consuming CO2 & growing).

So perhaps the algae consumption could be removed from terrariums ? Instead it could produce algae and efficiently process CO2 only when exposed to light ? When kept in the dark, very weak CO2 consumption and no algae production ?

Perhaps adding some reluctance to polluted oxygen for the flying light critters (glum + avoid behavior) could avoid too much power free exploits ?

 

 

 

Having algae terraria make algae and algae deoxydizers consume it would be a neat design, but it would detract from the electrolyzer system that is now so central to the flow of the game.

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6 hours ago, Rossum said:

Maybe it takes light, polluted water, and CO2 and converts it to solid algea and water... but also produces germs? Both in the water and the algae? So, if you're looking to produce algae for fish farms or algae distillers then there is the risk that the germs could contaminate things and cause problems if you don't also set up something to purify the output first?

Not bad. But photosynthesis literally consumes H2O so terrariums could'nt produce clean water (just like the game electrolysers, plants O2 comes from H2O, but H is used to synthetize glucids from CO2 so they don't produce H2), and couldn't even produce water at all. But from a gameplay point of view they could produce polluted water in much smaller amount than H2O processed, and a very small amount of germs that would be a pain if accumulated in large farms?

4 hours ago, Ciderblock said:

Having algae terraria make algae and algae deoxydizers consume it would be a neat design, but it would detract from the electrolyzer system that is now so central to the flow of the game.

Yes, the drawback could be the large difference in consumption of clean water implied by deoxydizers and terrariums vs electrolysis. I think the rate is already appropriate since i don't use terrariums and deoxydizers at all if i can and go for the electrolyzer asap. In fact i never use terrariums in the long term, i thought that was a shame, so some sustainable use with drawbacks could be imagined if they instead produced algae...

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On 5/23/2018 at 1:56 AM, Mabnite said:

Yes, the drawback could be the large difference in consumption of clean water implied by deoxydizers and terrariums vs electrolysis. I think the rate is already appropriate since i don't use terrariums and deoxydizers at all if i can and go for the electrolyzer asap. In fact i never use terrariums in the long term, i thought that was a shame, so some sustainable use with drawbacks could be imagined if they instead produced algae...

What I mean is that you're just about guaranteed to only want one or the other except possibly in dig shafts that you don't want to permanently pressurize. So a tweak will either affect only the early game (which is already pretty much fine, because the map contains tons of minable algae to get you started) or cause a full-blown meta shift in favor of algae (which is probably a bad thing, because electrolysis is a core feature now).

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On 27/05/2018 at 7:08 PM, Ciderblock said:

What I mean is that you're just about guaranteed to only want one or the other except possibly in dig shafts that you don't want to permanently pressurize. So a tweak will either affect only the early game (which is already pretty much fine, because the map contains tons of minable algae to get you started) or cause a full-blown meta shift in favor of algae (which is probably a bad thing, because electrolysis is a core feature now).

Ok. Does any long term utility of terrariums exists in the game ? (It's a newbie question, i just can't see one from my candid perspective)

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On 5/27/2018 at 7:08 PM, Ciderblock said:

cause a full-blown meta shift in favor of algae (which is probably a bad thing, because electrolysis is a core feature now).

Just because it is established doesn't mean it can't be improved on.

The only really bad design is when an option exists but is completely overshadowed by something else. If algae was slightly better than electrolysis except for something, it would be much better than what we have now - algae terrariums having a very tiny niche of generating small pockets of O2 away from main colony, while being much worse as main O2 generators than deoxydizers or electrolysis.

Algae and electrolysis could easily coexist without meta mandating use one over another if:

  • Both were viable. Currently not true for algae, which are both hard to renew and incredibly labor-heavy.
  • The weaker option had useful side effects. For example, making more algae to feed the voracious pacus (140kg/cycle!). Currently electrolysis has extra energy generation as side effect, while algae have cooling. Removal of very tiny amounts of CO2 doesn't really count.
  • The stronger option had nasty side effects. For example, a new disease that doesn't die in oxygen and requires complex processing to remove. Currently electrolysis generates a lot of heat.
  • There was some way to cancel out weaker option's side effects. For example, having gulp fish consume pwater from terrariums and satisfy their hunger and happiness that way, so that you only need to add more algae and water to get both fish eggs and oxygen.
  • One of the options was less labor heavy, the other more efficient. Currently electrolysis takes no labor, but unfortunately algae are not anywhere near efficient enough to be viable.
  • One of the options required colony specialization. For example, algae could only be better if you ranch pufts and gulp fish. Currently not true because algae are always worse, no matter your colony specialization.
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19 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

The weaker option had useful side effects. For example, making more algae to feed the voracious pacus (140kg/cycle!). Currently electrolysis has extra energy generation as side effect, while algae have cooling. Removal of very tiny amounts of CO2 doesn't really count.

In theory this could change in the future. I've long scratched my head at the tiny amount of CO2 produced by a duplicant compared to the amount of O2 they use.

Besides that I'm not really sure how the other stuff could fit into the framework of the game nicely. The heat issue is definitely there, but you have to deal with heat from other sources anyway, so you may as well tank the hit from electrolyzers too if that's the only problem.

That said, I have never really understood why Klei took the direction of "take resources flowing into the environment". It would make more sense to focus on recycling the resources you have. This would have two different intuitive approaches, a chemical one and a biological one. The chemical one would be based around CO2 + 2H2O -> 2O2 + CH4 in combination with 2H2O -> 2H2 + O2. The biological one would be based around CO2 + H2O -> food + O2. It has always seemed to me that the game should start out with chemical life support (to get a bare bones environment stabilized) before switching over to biological in the long run.

On 6/4/2018 at 7:46 PM, Mabnite said:

Ok. Does any long term utility of terrariums exists in the game ? (It's a newbie question, i just can't see one from my candid perspective)

Prior to Cosmic, about the only point of terraria was to make temporary dig shafts a bit more breathable. Besides that, early in the game your main living area was better off with deoxydizers (less labor, higher yield, no water cost, less space needed). By the midgame you'd be entirely on electrolysis (generates power, infinitely renewable, can use the hydrogen as cooling substrate).

After Cosmic, terraria are significantly better (in part because they very nearly consume no water in net), but they still have an issue with labor and the limited renewability of algae.

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1 hour ago, Ciderblock said:

That said, I have never really understood why Klei took the direction of "take resources flowing into the environment". It would make more sense to focus on recycling the resources you have.

It's much harder to design a system with meaningful energy balance than with meaningful inputs and conversion losses. The latter is naturally self-limiting and thus more stable, more resistant to inefficiencies and losses early on (imagine fussing over every bit of water that evaporated to space because you can't replace it), doesn't require all reactions to have very exact formulas, and allows much more artistic freedom in design.

Low-mass-input (say, 10% of what we have now) ONI could work, but no-mass-input ONI would be a much blander game where solar energy would be the only one viable in long term.

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1 hour ago, Coolthulhu said:

It's much harder to design a system with meaningful energy balance than with meaningful inputs and conversion losses. The latter is naturally self-limiting and thus more stable, more resistant to inefficiencies and losses early on (imagine fussing over every bit of water that evaporated to space because you can't replace it), doesn't require all reactions to have very exact formulas, and allows much more artistic freedom in design.

Low-mass-input (say, 10% of what we have now) ONI could work, but no-mass-input ONI would be a much blander game where solar energy would be the only one viable in long term.

Not if you break energy conservation, like we already do. Dupes are essentially perpetual motion machines provided access to water, and in a recycling-oriented version of ONI, you would hope to never lose any water. You could also have some much more limited mass input, like unpredictable meteors/comets. For the shorter term, you could have much larger reservoirs of usable material built into the map, like pockets of a millon kg of steam. In the end it's kind of silly to think of this game as infinite anyway; there isn't enough content to keep you entertained for 10,000 cycles in the same colony.

I'm just saying that a form of ONI oriented primarily around recycling of mass (not energy, because then the game becomes The Second Law of Thermodynamics : The Game) is appealing to me.

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I think we ultimately want biological (plant&animal) based life supports to be fully competitive with mechanical options.

But each needs to have it's trade offs, biological should require more space and more working mass to buffer.  While mechanical systems are more power hungry and produce more waste heat.  The point is that at every point in developing and expanding life support you have an interesting choice to make because both are viable and you need to weight the particular quirks of your situation, map and resources.  Creating a hybrid system of both mechanical and biological life-support needs to be possible so your never locked in by previously built systems.

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