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Are algae terrariums worth it?


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If you want to use them as your main oxygen source? I watch streams and it seems nobody is using them. Are they not efficient enough or is it just too much work for the dupes to keep delivering water and emptying them?

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Now that they have been reworked they are at least a relevant device for practical use.  Whether or not they are able to compete with Deoxidizors or Electrolyzors, though....  I'm not so sure.

You are very correct, though, they require quite a lot of Dupe interaction to function.  You can minimize this a bit, by simply standing them in a small amount of water.  They will draw it in as needed to continue running.  But you will still need to empty the P-H2O from them.  Which will then off-gas, so you also need Deodorizors in the area, or a location with a Bottle Emptier for P-H2O.

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4 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

If you want to use them as your main oxygen source?

There are a few people doing this and a few people have suggested reasonable designs.

I personally use terrariums to put small amounts of oxygen in unbreathable places early game... before exo suits.

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They're practical if you plan in advance.  You're looking at eight terrariums per three duplicants at your low end, if you toss lights and a water pump into the equation, you can manage three for seven, if you set your oxygen room up correctly, you can reduce the time spent for maintenance to only emptying the terrariums (which is necessary every twoish cycles) and hauling away the PH2O.  Alternatively, you can prioritize O2 production at the expense of reclaiming water from the PH2O, letting the PH2O offgas (perhaps supported with deodorizers.)  While more labor intensive, it's less power intensive.  

Terrariums end up saving you massively on algae, all things considered, compared to deoxidizers, and let you have a centralized storage and use of your algae, instead of setting up deoxidizers around your base to accommodate overpressure.  

This is how I setup my terrarium rooms, personally, as I prefer recovering the PH2O and value my dupe's time;
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The time to clean out the PH20 from the terrariums and refill them with algae is minimal.  I generally will keep one of these rooms around as I move to SPOMs to add to oxygen production with whatever algae I gain from the environment, and it helps cut back on overall water use.  The deodorizer isn't really needed, as the water prevents the PH2O from offgassing, but now and then there will be gaps in the water, so it doesn't hurt things, even if it doesn't see a ton of use, it keeps all my O2 looking happily blue, and it's not like it uses power or.. really anything when it's not filtering PO2.  

And here is a setup for a labor intensive approach.  It's more energy efficient, and can support seven dupes, eight with offgassing but pretty much requires one of those dupes dedicated full time to support it, ignoring the excessive loss of water.  If you recover the water, you're using one dupe full time to support the setup, but that may be worthwhile for the algae tradeoff versus the above to support six other working dupes, and still beats out the deoxidizer in algae and power efficiency.  

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But yeah, terrariums are viable, but they have their tradeoffs.  They're best used in a centralized location, with considerations to minimize your labor expenses - having your PH2O collection nearby, increased labor, keeping algae storage in the oxygen room, maintain plumbing, etc.  It all depends on your needs.  Still, I do prefer them to deoxidizers, personally, given how limited algae is compared to H2O and I don't like using more power than necessary - after all, terrariums keep working if something happens to your power grid, even if at a lower amount of efficiency.

It's all down to a time and space investment for more efficiency vs deoxidizers.  

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deodorizer (in my experiments) puts its O2 out above it.... directly into a tile that is not O2 in this case, the 2 would delete each other so the tile would lose mass = to the O2 lost

I am wanting to see if this is fixed yet without having to build something new by asking someone to check something the already have built.

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12 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

deodorizer (in my experiments) puts its O2 out above it.... directly into a tile that is not O2 in this case, the 2 would delete each other so the tile would lose mass = to the O2 lost

I am wanting to see if this is fixed yet without having to build something new by asking someone to check something the already have built.

No, there's no mass being lost as far as I can tell, it's 200kg like any other tile.  

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8 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

You can minimize this a bit, by simply standing them in a small amount of water.  They will draw it in as needed to continue running.

Yes i was doing this up to i think the 1st the ranching upgrade when it stopped working for some reason. I thought they removed the funcionality of the terrariums to pick the water from the ground. Good to know it still works. Thanks for your replies.

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Using algae and oxygen as fixed points the terrariums (with ceiling lights) uses 51% as much water as a deozidizer/electrolyzer combo.

Of course it is much more complex. Terrariums can possibly be good late game, but early I would stay off them to save manpower. At least wait until you have the sweeper to supply them algae.

Terrarium pros and cons:

+Uses less water for the same algae and oxygen

+Can save some carbon scrubbing

+Polluted water can be used to kill heat in a sieve and create dirt.

+From my testing it seems it outputs the polluted water at a fixed 30 degrees. This pro is lessened slightly by the fact that it overheats already at 75 degrees.

-Requires duplicant time

-Doesn't produce hydrogen for AETN

-Polluted water needs cleaning

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