storm6436 Posted September 16, 2018 Share Posted September 16, 2018 So this last game, I've managed to make it much farther before starting to get frustrated than I have in a long time.... made it to cycle 800ish and had half the surface bunker doored off. Thanks to this unexpected longevity I've seen how well (or poorly) certain facilities I've designed handle what's being thrown at them and as a result I'm refining a lot of those designs. Primarily I've been adding a lot of automation, adding reservoirs as buffers, and considering alternatives. Currently I've hit a few sticking points: 1. Water cooling I've split my water storage/cooling into 3 facilities/buildings. Sub-86 degree water gets stored in a spill protected space in my main basement. Fresh hot water, whether from condensed steam geysers or from my sieves, gets stored in a separate facility. Since my electrolysis and CO2 scrubbers (not really used once I open up the oil biome) are fed from this water, I've set it up where I can't accidentally dump my feed reserve into my chiller. This reserve is preserved by the fact my chill tank feed is actually a mechanical airlock offset a tile or two off the floor controlled by water level automation that dumps directly to the chiller below. I've done quite a bit to optimize things to minimize the time it takes to chill my hot water reserve, stuff like making sure the hot water dump lands in the far corner from my pumps so I don't end up with cold water I can't pump on the far side, etc. As it stands, my chiller still takes forever to bring sieve water down, which isn't helped by the volume of condensed steam. I've removed any insulating tiles from my hot water tank to help counter balance when my steam to sieve water ratio favors the steam side, but I'm still getting hung up on keeping the water moving because I get a lot more hot water in than I do cold water out most of the time. Relevant question: It used to be that you could chill the top layer of a liquid and that would chill the lower layers significantly faster than the same volume of cold refrigerant would be able to accomplish otherwise. Is this still true? I haven't really seen a significant increase in cooling capacity with my last chiller design, which used automation to select which tiles constituted the top block and passed my chilled hydrogen to only it, so I'm curious if they patched this or maybe I'm just blind and not noticing the increased efficiency. As it stands, only 2 alternative options come to mind: add a pre-chiller/heat exchanger to my hot water storage using slush geyser water, or redesign my wheezewort augmented AETN hydrogen chiller to drop the median hydrogen temperature even further. My oxygen production set-up is married to the chiller via metal tiles on the sides (+diamond temp shifts), so the chiller provides AC to my oxygen source and runs a single hydrogen line out to my water chiller. Median temp in the chiller drops to about -5F with air output in the 40s (ish) if I don't have my chiller line active.... sucking all that heat out of the water, median temp runs about 35 with air output in the 60s/70s. If I have to expand the wheezewort augmentation, I'm probably going to start mounting them atop mechanical airlock doors so I can automate them to be selectively shut off in the even I have to shut my chiller line down. I'm not sure I want to start dumping sub-freezing air everywhere. Anyway, I have more questions but I've got a meeting to fill out corporate registration paperwork I can't miss. Thanks for reading, your patience, and any advice folks care to offer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Plum Gate Posted September 16, 2018 Share Posted September 16, 2018 Wheezeworts will stifle at a certain temperature - this would probably be a simpler tactic - you can then assume that temperature as a metric for whatever system your designing around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonchvz Posted September 16, 2018 Share Posted September 16, 2018 3 hours ago, storm6436 said: It used to be that you could chill the top layer of a liquid and that would chill the lower layers significantly faster than the same volume of cold refrigerant would be able to accomplish otherwise. Is this still true? I think they patched this ~ranching II, though it's not one I was in the habit of using so not 100% sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
storm6436 Posted September 16, 2018 Author Share Posted September 16, 2018 1 minute ago, simonchvz said: I think they patched this ~ranching II, though it's not one I was in the habit of using so not 100% sure. Well, crap. I was hoping I was imagining things. More wheezeworts and a pre-chiller it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kabrute Posted September 16, 2018 Share Posted September 16, 2018 yeah they fixed the "drip cooling" bugs one by one, so for now we used fixed temp items like Sieve and Scrubber, feed them +40c liquid, get 40c exactly out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
storm6436 Posted September 17, 2018 Author Share Posted September 17, 2018 GG. Really the only other snags that I've hit aren't ones with easy solutions. Managing a gulp fish farm where you only need to feed one is... problematic since there's no easy way to transfer eggs automagically. Similarly, handling surplus NatGas isn't an easy automation fix either. Map I'm on this time around has only 1 NatGas geyser that averages about 110g/s output over its lifespan, so I can keep 1 NG gen running constantly. Have enough buffer space via reservoirs to survive the drought if I don't run a 2nd gen too terribly long. I'm also still fiddling with trying to find a decent set up to capture the natgas coming off the refinery as I haven't mastered oil boiling to petrol just quite yet... but I figure surviving 700+ cycles and getting to space race stuff is as much of a "I beat the game!" achievement as one can get at this point in development. Yeah, I know a lot of what I'm doing is heresy by a lot of folks standards. *shrug* I also use algae distillers. *gasp* Here's hoping they add automation outputs to reservoirs and an easy way to auto-drop eggs or something to that effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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