Experiences launching my first rocket (without debug)

[GrindThisGame]

The preview still has one more day before it goes live so any bugs/issues may be fixed before that.

If you don't want to read about rocket stuff until it comes out then STOP reading.

So while building the thing I noticed you can't stack it all up. You need to complete each section at a time or it has no foundation. I guess that makes sense.

I didn't assign a dupe and I didn't have the gantry out but a dupe magically was removed from my base and all lists (jobs menu, vitals menu etc). Turns out they were in the rocket.

Launched the rocket from about the middle of the map (depth) and it was fun to see it crash through all the stuff up to space.

I went to the ice planet. I thought I would get a bunch of sleet wheat and wheezeworts but you just get 1 of each.

I noticed all the gas you collect just vents out into your base on return. This is problematic because the bunker doors are open to space to let the rocket land and the gas just will vent out into space unless you somehow get the doors closed really fast. I guess you could have gas pumps close to the ship to try to grab those gases but the area after launch and return is very hot so pumps might just melt.

The dupe that left was wearing an exosuit which became invisible when they came back from the mission.

I'll report any bugs in the bug thread if they exist after tomorrow.

All in all it was pretty fun to build up to launching but the rewards seem lackluster. Maybe they will tweak this.

 

[BlueLance]

Does the destroyed tiles drop their resources to the bottom or are they just deleted?

[Jackblac]

26 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Does the destroyed tiles drop their resources to the bottom or are they just deleted?

Drop to the bottom so its like you mine the area

[BlueLance]

Maybe I will build a rocket at the bottom then XD let it rip up an entire area for my lava tube! Or does the rocket land back where it started?

[Saturnus]

8 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Maybe I will build a rocket at the bottom then XD let it rip up an entire area for my lava tube! Or does the rocket land back where it started?

Just deconstruct the rocket. They're completely useless beyond the ability to dig long tunnels to the surface with minimal effort.

EDIT: Forgot to stress that you also need to kill of the astronaut after the trip as the upkeep of a useless astronaut dupes is quite severe. 

[suicide commando]

For rocket mining, I refer you to Brothgar and his little 'mining experiment'

 

[chemie]

one wort and one wheat grain is OP!!!!  Totally balances the 500 cycles to make the eggs needed to make the steel for the rocket.  And that wheat grain can feed your useless astronaut for at least one cycle.

[AndreyKl]

5 hours ago, GrindThisGame said:

I didn't assign a dupe and I didn't have the gantry out but a dupe magically was removed from my base and all lists (jobs menu, vitals menu etc). Turns out they were in the rocket.

+1 You also can't remove the dupe from rocket and dupe forgets all food/job preferences once rocket land and dupe leaves

5 hours ago, GrindThisGame said:

Launched the rocket from about the middle of the map (depth) and it was fun to see it crash through all the stuff up to space.

It definetely should issue a warning when not under open sky. Also landing now does the same

5 hours ago, GrindThisGame said:

I went to the ice planet. I thought I would get a bunch of sleet wheat and wheezeworts but you just get 1 of each.

That's 'per container', so you can get more if you add containers. Also wheezeworts are OP as is) it's saving grace was that it was limited in quantity and now we have infinite supply of them (at least temporary).

5 hours ago, GrindThisGame said:

I noticed all the gas you collect just vents out into your base on return.

Mine sits tight in cargo as solid as it was on delivery, but my rocket is in vacuum so hot CO2 dissipates by the time rocket returns.

Also of note: I still fail to empty rocket in any way except by deconstructing containers

[scaldinghotcarl]

It seems like they have a lot to fix in the next 24 hours. I know how these project can be, and we all signed up for this knowing it's alpha/beta so whatever. As long as they make consistent forward progress do we really care? 

So the cargo hold holds one wort and one sleet wheat seed? Doesn't it have a capacity of hundreds of kilograms? How much fuel was consumed on this trip?

The gas cargo hold should have an outlet, and should dump it's contents through that. Since we won't be able to put a pump in the rocket we will assume that there is a transfer pump on board. This might be the first use of the air reservoir that makes sense. Offload into that tank and then have the output go to a five-way valve system to direct which ever gas you return with.

 

Clearly there is more work to be done on this so maybe the RU.1 shouldn't be pushed out as mandatory tomorrow.

[AndreyKl]

30 minutes ago, scaldinghotcarl said:

So the cargo hold holds one wort and one sleet wheat seed? Doesn't it have a capacity of hundreds of kilograms? How much fuel was consumed on this trip?

It can hold more per cargo module, but it just gets one per hold per trip.

To get to ice planet you need at least two tanks, 900Kg petroleum each. All petroleum is used regardless of distance.

[scaldinghotcarl]

So you trade 1,800kg of fuel for two plant seeds? 

I don't like this upgrade so I haven't got it yet, and not much is up on the wiki. What about the liquid hold. How much would that hold?

[uraharakisuke]

1 minute ago, scaldinghotcarl said:

So you trade 1,800kg of fuel for two plant seeds?

for 1 really. only the wheezewort is of any value, wild sleetwheat will give you 18 per harvest so the 1 you get from ice planet is worthless.

[AndreyKl]

1 minute ago, scaldinghotcarl said:

So you trade 1,800kg of fuel for two plant seeds? 

I don't like this upgrade so I haven't got it yet, and not much is up on the wiki. What about the liquid hold. How much would that hold?

No, 2-tank ice planet rocket can hold three cargo holds. So it can be 3 special cargos thus 3 wort seeds. But personally I'm more interested in liquid methane, ice e t c, you get 70-90Kg of each per trip per cargo hold.

[scaldinghotcarl]

But still this seems to really be a poor trade-off. 1800kg of fuel for 180kg of liquid goods?

What about the closer planets? Any instances where you come out mass positive?

 

maths: 900 kg of petrol is 1800kg of crude that was extracted with 540kg of water

[AndreyKl]

15 minutes ago, scaldinghotcarl said:

But still this seems to really be a poor trade-off. 1800kg of fuel for 180kg of liquid goods?

What about the closer planets? Any instances where you come out mass positive?

4 types of cargo (or was it 3?), 70-90Kg each. So around 320Kg per cargo hold. If it is a rocket with 3 cargo holds, you will get 960Kg from trip, for 1800Kg of petroleum.

In case of trip to closest asteroid it will be 3 types of cargo (coal, refined coal, diamonds) - 240Kg per cargo hold, with same 3 cargo holds - 720Kg of cargo for 900Kg of petroleum

Rockets to metallic (20Mm) asteroids should have 2 fuel tanks as well, but due to lower distance they can fit more cargo holds (at least 4, might be 5), and 'raw metalic' asteroid has 4 cargo types, so 1280Kg of return mass (half of that - rocks) for 1800Kg of fuel.

Additionally it looks like there will be second fuel type (likely liquid methane, potentially plus oxydizer) and it should be more efficient.

[scaldinghotcarl]

Not too bad. But I don't need any of that. Diamonds are handy when making tempshifts, but what I started with has proven to be more than enough. Especially since you can't choose what cargo you bring back this whole rocket thing is just something that I'll give plenty of time to mature.

 

I just found this:

It seems that they updated some of the topics that I was addressing in this thread. It's almost as if they listened to us..

[AndreyKl]

13 minutes ago, scaldinghotcarl said:

Not too bad. But I don't need any of that. Diamonds are handy when making tempshifts, but what I started with has proven to be more than enough. Especially since you can't choose what cargo you bring back this whole rocket thing is just something that I'll give plenty of time to mature.

Also just checked this:

• Cargo bays now return a total of one tonne of resources.
• Cargo bay has an empty storage button.

Looks like now it will be 1t regardless of amount of cargo bays and distance. And a way to empty the bay.

Time to do a retest...

[Saturnus]

8 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

Time to do a retest...

I'd wait for a hotfix on the gas/vacuum problem.

[scaldinghotcarl]

53 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I'd wait for a hotfix on the gas/vacuum problem.

OK Go

[AndreyKl]

20 hours ago, Saturnus said:

I'd wait for a hotfix on the gas/vacuum problem.

Fixed.

1t regardless of distance and amount of cargo bays seems relatively reasonable (haven't tried seeds and creeters yet)

Of notes: When you click at 'empty', content just drops onto ground (which is rather inconvinient in case you are returning with hot or cold cargo), drop can be intercepted by auto sweeper, but no other automation options yet.

Overall rocketry seem rather 'raw' at the moment...

[Steve Raptor]

5 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

Fixed.

1t regardless of distance and amount of cargo bays seems relatively reasonable (haven't tried seeds and creeters yet)

Of notes: When you click at 'empty', content just drops onto ground (which is rather inconvinient in case you are returning with hot or cold cargo), drop can be intercepted by auto sweeper, but no other automation options yet.

Overall rocketry seem rather 'raw' at the moment...

So is it not possible to automate the process of unloading the rocket? do you need to click empty storage every time it comes back?

[AndreyKl]

53 minutes ago, Steve Raptor said:

So is it not possible to automate the process of unloading the rocket? do you need to click empty storage every time it comes back?

It should be possible to pump out gasses with pipes now, but neither sweepers nor dupes can access solid cargo at the moment, 'empty' is the only way, but taking into account that there is still an engine type missing I hope there will be rocketry expansion later that will fix this issue as well.

[BlueLance]

23 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

Additionally it looks like there will be second fuel type (likely liquid methane, potentially plus oxydizer) and it should be more efficient.

One of the updates mentioned liquid fuel (Petroleum) and solid fuel (Unknown as far as I am aware) probably something to do with oxyllite

It would be cool if the compartments from the rocket slid out along a rail and empty when at their destination, same goes for fuelling etc.