ideas Algae grower

[Madbro]

Hello, greatest developers and players! (•ω•)/

Probably everybody knows about algae renching using morbs and pufts.

But do you want a faster and more sensible way?

Let’s do this. Why not grow algae yourself?

 

The Algae Grower needs refined metal and some soil to build one. It consumes water and algae (and power as well), outputs same mass of polluted water as fresh water inputed but DOUBLES your algae!

Sounds like this would be the advanced agriculture stuff.

But I think players would like it

My ugly proyotye drawing provided.

Comment please (•ω•)/

[Gwido]

It doubles the amount of algaes without consuming anything else than power !?!! O_o

Ouch !!

Good bye balance !

 

Maybe it would be better if it use polluted water (that have more nutriment for the alguae), and reject clean water (because you need to filter the liquid to get the aguaes). But still less than the input. 

 

But I'll also had a carbone dioxyde input.

Alguaes are plants. And plants grow with carbon dyoxide.

 

But in all the cases, beware to the building that increase amount of a material. It's a big problem of balance, because it's an auto-supplying building : you put some alguaes in it, and don't have to re-supply it.

So it really need to consume more than some electricity.

[Madbro]

23 minutes ago, Gwido said:

It doubles the amount of algaes without consuming anything else than power !?!! O_o

Ouch !!

Good bye balance !

 

Maybe it would be better if it use polluted water (that have more nutriment for the alguae), and reject clean water (because you need to filter the liquid to get the aguaes). But still less than the input. 

 

But I'll also had a carbone dioxyde input.

Alguaes are plants. And plants grow with carbon dyoxide.

 

But in all the cases, beware to the building that increase amount of a material. It's a big problem of balance, because it's an auto-supplying building : you put some alguaes in it, and don't have to re-supply it.

So it really need to consume more than some electricity.

Nice point. And thanks for further suggestions (•ω•)/

[Gwido]

No problem

 

Your artwork is great.

 

For the animation, I suggest you make a flow of alguae like in lava lamp.

So it would be also "beautifull".

[Sasza22]

I`d say for balance sake give it a direct sunlight requirement. It would make sense for the algae to need natural light. Then maybe give it an input pipe with CO2 that would get consumed and converted into extra algae.

[crypticorb]

Why not require the algae grower to require a constant flow of some raw material? Clay would be a good example, as clay is basically useless once past mealwood growing stages, and there's loads of it lying around. Sedimentary rock would be another useful material that the players usually have too much of. Requiring some base material would balance the mass gain of just producing algae from nothing, which doesn't feel right.

Some means of producing food for pacu farms is needed currently, b/c by the time a player gets to electrolyzers, they've burned a large portion of the algae stock available on the map, and setting up non-exploitative pacu farms is... very difficult.

[InternetGuy]

11 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

Why not require the algae grower to require a constant flow of some raw material? Clay would be a good example, as clay is basically useless once past mealwood growing stages, and there's loads of it lying around. Sedimentary rock would be another useful material that the players usually have too much of. Requiring some base material would balance the mass gain of just producing algae from nothing, which doesn't feel right.

Some means of producing food for pacu farms is needed currently, b/c by the time a player gets to electrolyzers, they've burned a large portion of the algae stock available on the map, and setting up non-exploitative pacu farms is... very difficult.

I would say feeding it polluted water is a realistic feature since polluted water does make algae grow wild. Adding fertilizer would be a nice touch though. Not sure with bathing it directly in sunlight due to UV damage but I assume the dupes have the technology to get around this. I don't think it breaks the balance if it is constantly supplied with carbon dioxide, polluted water and some fertilizer. I think this would get me to care on making a paku farm finally.

[Rainbowdesign]

Well the existing algae grower works a little different but maybe it would be enough? https://github.com/Cairath/ONI-Mods/blob/master/modfiles/AlgaeGrower.dll

[Algaernon]

Thanks for posting this idea with great art!. I love algae. I hate that the algae terrariums are so bad right now since they take more dupe labor than they are worth and stink up the place. If autosweepers could deliver and autobottle water then it might be a little different.  

Also consider this: many algae farms use glass tubes to circulate the algae and mix it up so that the entire mass gets plenty of light for photosynthesis. In game this could lead to a mechanic where you could expand the algae production by adding more and more glass pipes.