I got the steam engine working !

[mathmanican]

2 minutes ago, avc15 said:

Why should it be lava free? I mean, you need to get steam around 500g, so isn't magma a pretty reasonable choice?

The steam has to be 226.9C or greater (if I remember right). It's great for initially cooling recently made petroleum. The closer to this temp you can get the initial steam, when it drops to 159.1 C (475K), you loose the least heat.  So for a petro cooker, the steam turbine has huge potential. I'm guessing lots of petro cookers will use these in the future.  

[babba]

Lava - Mhh, is there some good build which makes it possible to create magma ? A lava powered steam engine which a "Normal" average player is able to build in survival mode ? How hard or easy is it to create lava in survival mode ? Whats the best way to generate lava ? Mathmanican has posted a great link for steam engines builds. The game is truly a great simulation.

[heckubis]

obsidian my friend and an iron geyser. steam has no top end obsidian can handle any heat in the game. that steam is just starting to gather heat from the iron. now its just time and deciding to not burn my algae. with in a few cycles fromthat shot its was over 300 across the board a couple dozen its should be melting gold  when its at the temp of the volcano it should make magma.

on the onicalc that iron geyser is a 98%(lucky me)

that is the coldest corner so far and its only thermal conections to the rest of the forge are those few temp plates and the radiant pipes  other then that the regular tiles are all obsidian and the radiant pipes are wolfram.

start building with the vent still blocked, dormant or in a vacuum for safety purposes.

 imagine how hot i will be making spare steam for use in power production just with it as it is. will have to cool the steam down a bit before i can feed it to steam generators max heat on turbines is 1k im looking at 1500+ easy after its at thermal max.

there is about 50tons of obsidian in that shot most of it debris on the nutronium behind the iron chunks kind of like a thrrmal capacitor charging slowly but steadily the obsidian wont melt at the heat of the iron vent but will hold that heat even during a dormant cycle

cycle 399 update

currently way too hot to process algae into anything other than sand later glass. takes 3 ticks to go from algae to sand load box instant dirt sand before a dupe could ever reach the dirt. but at 800+ and climbing steadily will not be much time till the copper and gold in those boxes melts after that load is melted im switching it over to just making glass. and outsourcing the excess heat into steam generation. havent yet still dont need the extra power even for cooling till i reach the surface on this build. the lower half of the forge has a large section of ducts just for heating steam later just for that purpose though

we have gold at 419

[BlueLance]

4 hours ago, babba said:

Lava - Mhh, is there some good build which makes it possible to create magma ? A lava powered steam engine which a "Normal" average player is able to build in survival mode ? How hard or easy is it to create lava in survival mode ? Whats the best way to generate lava ? Mathmanican has posted a great link for steam engines builds. The game is truly a great simulation.

Molten glass can be created by anyone, and some builds work regardless of what heat source you use as long as it reached the teperature required.

I am building mine on top of a copper volcano (Not as amazing as a gold volcano but its closer to my AETN) but the build would also work with molten glass and lava. Pretty sure there is a build that uses meteors as well.

Also you can melt regolith into lava pretty reliably as well, I cannot remember who posted it but the build exists.

[babba]

Thanks for the very valuable Steam & Obsidian heat range tip, heckubis. This will help me on a lot of build designs. 

"...obsidian my friend and an iron geyser. steam has no top end obsidian can handle any heat in the game." 

Insulating obsidian around a volcanoe - Nice !

[TheGCat]

Absolutely awesome build! U did it! Don't know, why i haven't done it before like u The Dev's now know, how a map should look like to use the steam turbine. Great work man

[blash365]

16 hours ago, avc15 said:

Why should it be lava free? I mean, you need to get steam around 500g, so isn't magma a pretty reasonable choice?

Lava is not a reasonable choice for me, because it often involves to many exploit-ish elements:

• bottling of lava (seriously?)
• heating neutrinum with lava
• using naphta trick to pump lava into pipes

A completely reasonable choice of components would allow me to place my turbine anywhere and transport all the needed elements for my process via the various means granted to the player (conveyor, piping, manual delivery) to that place.

Since most setups need to employ tricks to get this "transport"-part to work, i do not consider them as ideal solutions yet.

17 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Its still exploity though.

Yeah right, i forgot about this one. It's the low-quantity gas-heat exchange thing, correct?

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, blash365 said:

Yeah right, i forgot about this one. It's the low-quantity gas-heat exchange thing, right?

Yep. Pretty much.

[blash365]

20 hours ago, bountygiver said:

if there are infinite possibilities with infinite amount of seed (somehow ignoring the memory location size constraint to store the seed for use) and like a lot of random generators where it goes crazy and start ignoring rules when it goes to an extreme numbers, there should exist a seed for this map.

Unless a mapseed is not completely random (strangely there are always biomes on the maps) and there is a ruleset by which the map gets created.

One of those rules might include "not place 20 vulcanos next to each other".;)

[babba]

Hey blash  I would love a "Cluster spawn" option for map generation ! Do I think it will ever be implemented ? - Sadly no  ...but I would be fine if there is an option "Output 20x higher resource values" from Geysirs etc. 

Will place some nice 20 oil supply spots for my future mass rocket fuel production.

British Petroleum wishes you a nice time in the game... Yours, Doctor Factorio

P.S. The size of my new Oil Reservoir, under construction ( top area ). Wish we could have metal work tool accident sparks or overheating of petro & oxygen for kaboom accidents, epic fire & firefighting...

 

 

[blash365]

20x output = 20x output thermal energy = bad

[avc15]

6 hours ago, blash365 said:

Lava is not a reasonable choice for me, because it often involves to many exploit-ish elements:

• bottling of lava (seriously?)
• heating neutrinum with lava
• using naphta trick to pump lava into pipes

Well for you, is corner-building to heat a tungsten wall with lava exploity?

Because that's the most intuitive thing. You just put a wall of metal tiles on the floor of your boiler, the lava goes under that. When the magma cooled into rock and even further to the point where you can't boil enough anymore, then just dig out the rock and that's your waste heat.

 

[blash365]

8 hours ago, avc15 said:

Well for you, is corner-building to heat a tungsten wall with lava exploity?

This violates my other argument "should be able to build anywhere". Since there is no clean way to move lava at the moment (apart from bottling). You are restricted to build the device, where the lava is set.

Of course you could just build a "heat conveyor" or a steam exhaust across the entire map. But nobody really does that, right?

You might say that being restricted to natural lava/geyser locations is one of the few constraints that are part of the concept, but this feels weird to me. Why cant i just split the "steam production" and the "steam conversion" in two parts and build my turbine whereever i want?

There also is the problem that lava is limited and will eventually cool down as you said. The term "renewable energy" does not apply to something that is limited and cannot be renewed.

[babba]

Being a more casual players myself, or at least trying to maintain a beginners view on to the game, I felt in the past that the steam engine is too hard to be able to get running...Without studying various concepts in detail from the internet, which often includes the challenge of handling lava. I know my saying is not popular with the game experts and its easy be be bashed down by so called game experts, but I spent hundreds of cycles in the normal game mode to try to get the steam engine working ( just by gathering information from within the game ) and also toyed with lava.

Im not asking to artificial dumb game elements down, but shouldnt the steam engine allow for a more of beginners approach ? At least it would be better to give the player a simplified small version, with small energy output and a little tutorial animation how this is going to work in 5 steps. What, no such animation can be done as tutorial ? Well, thats maybe because there is no simple machinery version of it in the game. We can keep the pro version in the game ( still feels broken for me and little joy ), but please help some beginners with their learning curve.

At least placing a basic battery and connecting it to other things in the game is doable by anyone, the basic steam engine concept ( and how people imagine it in their head from the real world, maybe thinking of trains first ) is also over a hundred years around.

Making coal > Heating water in a boiler > Parts move through heat exchange and pressure and generate electricity or machine movement. Baby style thoughts.

Im glad running a battery is more simple than running a steam engine in the game. It would be possible to make a battery much more complicated, taking it apart with producing and filling the acid, building electrodes, messing with polarity etc.

Would that be fun ? Yes, for a more and more niche audience. Nonetheless, personally the "Atomic age" consisting of 20 parts which interact each other would be great joy for me trying to get running, with the potential to go terrible wrong.

Now shoot me ;D

 

[avc15]

2 hours ago, blash365 said:

There also is the problem that lava is limited and will eventually cool down as you said. The term "renewable energy" does not apply to something that is limited and cannot be renewed.

Don't think i'm bullying you into trying this, I just want to let you know something you might not know right now.

Because of thermal properties of regolith you can use it to create magma at any location you want with only a small amount of sustained heat input.

Hmm, let us see if someone shared a build for that somewhere....

[blash365]

11 hours ago, avc15 said:

Because of thermal properties of regolith you can use it to create magma at any location you want with only a small amount of sustained heat input.

Hmm, let us see if someone shared a build for that somewhere....

Are you talking about the regolith melter from @Sevio? I know that build very well, but that build would bring another problem: It uses far more advanced elements than the tech and progression level that the steam turbine is one provides.

• regolith (space biome)
• glass forge / metal refinery / kiln on more or less constant usage
• 2 steam turbines just for the cooker itself
• and last but not least LAVA - again

[tzionut]

You can use the excess heat of the regolith to heat your steam...no lava involved. Transport it whit rails trough insulated tiles (igneous minimum) for prevent heat loss. But in the end you will have piles of 225 degrees regolith. Or you can melt it using magma (or a volcano, iron, gold, magma), then transport it whit bottle (to be less exploitish), and drop it in the exchange heat zone for the steam turbine to work.

Until the devs make some kind of pump for lava transportation we are stick to the bottle option or the exploit version whit naphtha. 

I tested the glass melting in void variant without the heat transfer of the liquid cooper pipes, and it works for limited amount. But after the temp is drooping...you need more sand that regolith.

[SkunkMaster]

I made this not so long ago. no cheats.

 

except maybe the 1-tile funnel.

 

 

[blash365]

3 hours ago, SkunkMaster said:

I made this not so long ago. no cheats.

You are right. I totally forgot about that thread!

But apart from diversity, why would i build that turbine instead of a few solar panels?

[SkunkMaster]

6 minutes ago, blash365 said:

You are right. I totally forgot about that thread!

But apart from diversity, why would i build that turbine instead of a few solar panels?

Because you would have to make 15 solar panels to even compete with the turbines.

 

15 panels, then ofcourse all the bunker doors and radars required to keep them safe, and lets not talk about the maintenance.  

 

I would argue the turbine build is more simple and faster to build then setup 15 panels and all the required accessories.

[blash365]

@SkunkMaster:

Your points are valid. My aim was mainly that there should be some power alternative for solars for times when you have not yet reached the surface. This alternative seems to be the steam turbine. So it should be able to run without access to the surface.

Your build seems to be one of the cleanest builds that are currently possible, but unfortunately it still requires more or less the same path of progression in the game as solars.

It's nitpicking, ofc.

[SkunkMaster]

Well having turbines without the surface is possible. But really is impractical without a larger setup. 

 

That said, if you want power before you reach the surface there are always the gas geysers, usually enough to keep 1 or even 2 NGG's running continuously.

Seeing how that is with just 1 gas geyser, and the fact there is atleast 50% chance you get 2, and there is also a slight chance you find a random gas geyser.

 

Not only that, you can also make power with hydrogen, the whole oxygen loop can be made self-powered, self-cooled and with tune-up even give of excess power. 

 

Many farms of hatches and coal-gens. - Heck you can even mass breed shine bugs and have them run solar panels.

 

There are many ways you can create excess amounts of power before you reach the surface. 

[blash365]

Of course there are other energy sources. But the are not unlocked by researched Renewable energy.

To me it makes little sense to have 2 energy sources that unlock with the same tech level and share the best applicable scenario. In an ideal world they should have the same role (renewable energy) but different use cases.

Argueably there are different usecases for the steam turbine (lava, geysers, molten glass, etc.) and even some for solar panels (shinebugs). But when it comes to steam turbines, they require a great deal of exploits to get going (as stated above) and your one seems to be one of the cleanest (in terms of exploits) ones around, still shares the same spot as the solar panel.

This seems like flawed design to me.

[SkunkMaster]

It's a funny argument seeing as there aren't that many renewable energy sources to begin with. 

Even in real life, what else then solar and thermal is there, that is also useable in a game like oni. I would argue wind energy and kinetic energy (like wave generators) would be rather hard to implement as a game feature in oni. 

 

Maybe hamster wheels for tamed critters ? 

 

Also i would argue it's the turbine that is not correctly balanced, and that the 1-tile "exploit" is a way to balance it. I think 1kg/s = 1kw is balanced, and i would prefer if i could make 1-5kw of power with the turbine by controlling the amounts of vent that get steam, then what we currently have to work with.

 

I do think this change to the turbines will happen, once they get around to the "balance all things" part of the game. We've seen the NGG loop balanced out of the game and drip cooling, just to name a few. 

[babba]

Is it actually possible in the game to heat up sufficient steam in a pipe and then to run the steam engine with hot steam ?

The question is so simple, this is how I always imagined getting the steam engine working. The engine doesnt have to have an input connector, just by building a pipe to the steam engine, the outflowing steam underneath IMHO should be able to power the steam engine.

Would you guys like that ? What is your idea of how the steam engine should work ? 

Would the pipe`s steam outflow connector melt, because of the plastic ingredient its made off ?

Is the whole problem maybe down to the fact that a pipe can not carry enough steam kilo`s, not being able to build up enough temperature and pressure to get the steam engine running ?

I would welcome views and input on this  ...someone attempting such an steam pipe build and perhaps providing a picture would be awesome.