A practical, no-exploit, steam turbine setup

[Nickerooni]

Constraints:

• Uses nothing that looks or feels like an exploit
• Can be made in a survival playthrough - not too big, no crazy amounts of rare materials
• Can still net power from practical heat sources - volcanos, if your map has any

Everybody said it could not be done. But, after months of exploring the forums, I've done it! This structure is only 3-4 times larger that a door-pump run turbine and is only slightly less efficient in terms of net power output for heat input. Nailed it!

The tricks:

• Take advantage of how heat conductive turbines are in order to reduce the amount of steam that needs to go through them. I do this by stacking turbines and re-using the same steam a few times before I recirculate it. Note: The extra turbines aren't for more power! They are there to reduce the steam throughput. Assuming only one turbine is running at any time, the steam won't come out the top until it's passed all 5 turbines. This cuts the amount of steam I need to push to the bottom by 1/5th. These 5 stacked turbines, with one running, means you get 2000W for ~4 MDTU/s input heat, but only 2 kg/s of steam.
• To re-circulate high-pressure steam, I didn't want to use any vent or door tricks, which means only a liquid vent can get the pressure high enough to be interesting. That means, turning it back to water.
• Use carefully placed heat circulation to recycle heat. This reduces the amount of power you need to turn the steam into water.
• Separate cold and hot steam by giving it small paths. A vertical column of gas transmits heat super slowly.
• Supercoolant is pretty good at moving heat around from volcanos, if you set it up right. (Not pictured below, but you can check out the save to see how that was done)
• Fill up the unused space with batteries, since this thing runs in spits and spurts and you can't shut it off.

Lessons learned:

• Gas still transmits a lot of heat to insulated tile. I should have double walled everything.
• It doesn't need to be quite as big, I could probably squeeze it in a 34 height x 30 width area.
• You need a lot of radiant piping running supercoolant to transfer all the heat out of it. I used iron radiant pipes, but maybe niobium could be used for better effect? I wouldn't want to waste tungsten or unobtainium on such a task

I built this thing and then let the game run overnight. I was happy to wake up to see my dupesweren't dead and all my automation was still running. Looking at reports, it took around 20 cycles to heat up to temperature (from about 150 degree steam). It was decently net power positive, but, it looks like what I set up is leaking a few 100kDTU/s of heat. Decent power positive to me means >500W from a major volcano, so maybe my bar is lower than others - but that seems balanced to me.

Here's the picture of it. It has some unused thermo aquatuners at the bottom. I boxed out a 40x40 vacuum space to build it. Although, I turned on sandbox mode to build it faster. The top of the turbine could be a bit smaller. Below the turbines could be a lot smaller. The zig-zag pattern in the lower steam portions is intentional to keep the cold steam and hot steam separate. It works amazingly well. The cold steam was around 150-170 degrees. The hot steam was around 250 degrees.

Here's how I get the power to the main line. Note: I power the liquid pump and thermo-aquatuner used to condense and transfer the water only from the power of the turbines. Not from my main power lines. I use a little vacuum seal on the high-watt power lines to get it out of the turbine area without leaking heat.

Here's all the tricky, circulating pipes that keeps heat moving around. There's hot supercoolant coming from my volcanoes - that comes in at about 300 degrees. The cold supercoolant leaves at about 260 degrees. There are 3 more loops:

2. behind the turbines to further increase conductivity

3. next to the steam turbine output and down to the cold steam. This pre-cools the steam a bit for

4. a condensing loop that uses a thermo-aquatuner to take that last bit of heat out of the steam

And finally, a simple pipe to put hot water into the cold steam bin. This is what keeps the cold steam cooled.

Crazy turbine.sav

[lunazone]

It's pretty cool, yet I think it's a bit too big to be practical

[Sasza22]

It`s not much bigger than a rocket setup if we consider hydrogen engines or even a steam engine. Looks doable just requires a lot of supercoolant so it will take time and many rocket trips to construct.

[psusi]

1 hour ago, Nickerooni said:

To re-circulate high-pressure steam, I didn't want to use any vent or door tricks, which means only a liquid vent can get the pressure high enough to be interesting. That means, turning it back to water.

How is 20 kg/tile not enough?

 

[Coolthulhu]

1 minute ago, psusi said:

How is 20 kg/tile not enough?

Probably because you need to stack those turbines on top of each other to get positive efficiency out of it. Each turbine needs 3kg/tile difference between input and output and gases take a while to equalize density.

[psusi]

Just now, Coolthulhu said:

Probably because you need to stack those turbines on top of each other to get positive efficiency out of it. Each turbine needs 3kg/tile difference between input and output and gases take a while to equalize density.

Yea, but you only need that difference in one turbine at a time.  Put 20kg/tile under the bottom one and it will suck it up and push it to the next.  As long as you keep adding steam to replace what it moves up, it will keep doing so until the steam on the top side gets to 17 kg/tile and by then the next turbine should start sucking it up to the next level.

[Nickerooni]

12 minutes ago, psusi said:

How is 20 kg/tile not enough?

 

Every turbine needs 3kg more pressure than the one above. I felt that cut it a bit close, since gas moves so slow! That said, I didn’t try it. Mostly, I think condensing the steam takes less energy than gas pumps. It scales better too - this system can handle more heat than one turbine worth. It should work up to 2-3. Although, that’s a lot of heat.

[wachunga]

I like the idea of stacking the turbines for the purpose of reducing average steam throughput rather than increasing power. A novel and inventive solution. I wonder if using automation to enforce strict running times on each turbine has any benefit over letting them do their own thing. Neat.

[Nickerooni]

27 minutes ago, wachunga said:

I like the idea of stacking the turbines for the purpose of reducing average steam throughput rather than increasing power. A novel and inventive solution. I wonder if using automation to enforce strict running times on each turbine has any benefit over letting them do their own thing. Neat.

Ever since turbines have been changed to only transfer steam when powering up and “green”, automation tends to just make it less efficient. It’s actually better to get them to a full bar of green and let them go down again. Less heat consumed. This setup already makes pretty good use of that feature.

[crypticorb]

Honest question: why do you feel door pumps are too close to being an exploit? Do you think that pressure-immune doors is something that will be removed in the future?

Outside of that, it looks like a functional build, if very complex and only endgame accessible. 

[babba]

I expected a lot of doors looking at the first images, before reading any comments. No doors = Big plus from me.

After reading the comments, we'll technically players can build whatever they like. Some players call certain things exploit, where others say its fine. 

I play in debug. Some will call that exploiting, others not. Same with mods.

Its not a competitive game like Battlefield, where some players use developer forbidden code hacks to lawnmower 100 players to their disadvantage, killing the fun for those players and wasting their money and time investment. Even if someone builds Perpetuum Mobile(s?) with 100 doors, I'm fine with that...as long as the game doesn't force me to build such things.

Im no door expert, so others like crypticorb can judge about door builds. I only judge doors in the way that they often affect pathfinding and therefore game speed, otherwise I'm a door noob.

HAPPY ONI everyone

[Nickerooni]

1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

Honest question: why do you feel door pumps are too close to being an exploit? Do you think that pressure-immune doors is something that will be removed in the future? 

To me, the doors feel like an exploit because using them to move gas seems like an accidental and bizzare side effect, not an intentional one. There are all sorts of door-based changes that could be made that aren’t game breaking, but would prevent their use in a wide range of applications.

* Require power to use automation

* No buildings next to doors

* Or, more extreme, you can’t build foreground buildings within one square next to a door.

* Or, simple, like make them breakable by temperature or pressure.

These changes wouldn’t break the game in any way that I can see and would remove a lot of newbie-unfriendly, unnatural uses of doors. But. Who knows. Maybe Klei will legitimize the usage by renaming them to suit the purpose.

Of note: closed circuit gas/liquid loops probably fall into this category as well, and I use that here. I think heat management is a big pain without closed loops and I don’t think they’d be trivial to remove from the game mechanics, so I don’t feel as strongly about them.

As to he complexity of the build? It was fun, but it’s nonsense the lengths I had to go to. The turbine should just output water and require a coolant. It would make its usage far more natural. But, it’d need different coolant mechanics than currently exists, so maybe it’ll come later. I heard it was like that for a short time.

[crypticorb]

3 minutes ago, Nickerooni said:

To me, the doors feel like an exploit because using them to move gas seems like an accidental and bizzare side effect, not an intentional one. There are all sorts of door-based changes that could be made that aren’t game breaking, but would prevent their use in a wide range of applications.

* Require power to use automation

* No buildings next to doors

* Or, more extreme, you can’t build foreground buildings within one square next to a door.

* Or, simple, like make them breakable by temperature or pressure.

These changes wouldn’t break the game in any way that I can see and would remove a lot of newbie-unfriendly, unnatural uses of doors. But. Who knows. Maybe Klei will legitimize the usage by renaming them to suit the purpose.

I'm glad you've put some thought into why you believe doors pumps are borderline exploit.

I agree with the automation part, but the building restriction would be a bit much, because that would exclude ladders and a huge range of other buildings that would greatly limit players in needless ways. What I believe you meant was buildings that objects cannot pass through, such as tiles, doors, steam turbine bases, hydroponics, etc.

I don't have any particular love for door-based gas/liquid movement, but other than conflicting gas exploits, 16 gas pumps, or incredibly complex builds such as yours, there isn't really any legitimate means to move steam from the top to the bottom. Until there is, I'd say door pumping is the least exploit-based method that can be accessed at the same level of research/knowledge that the steam turbine is available.

[Doddler]

1 hour ago, Nickerooni said:

* Require power to use automation

This would probably be enough to make them feel more balanced, having them work the way they do without power is really what pushes them over for me.

[hpongledd]

11 hours ago, crypticorb said:

I don't have any particular love for door-based gas/liquid movement, but other than conflicting gas exploits, 16 gas pumps, or incredibly complex builds such as yours, there isn't really any legitimate means to move steam from the top to the bottom. Until there is, I'd say door pumping is the least exploit-based method that can be accessed at the same level of research/knowledge that the steam turbine is available.

Then maybe this approach will get some love from you:

Top two rows are filled with 20kg/tile of hydrogen, the rest is filled with around ~900kg of water. Its, in my opinion, even easier to set-up compared to door steam turbines and in my opinion feels less exploity. 

To make something like that in survival mode:

1. Build a room for a steam turbine and leave 1 tile row left, on top and right of the steam turbine, bottom can be > then one row
2. Vacumize the room
3. put a high pressure vent somewhere on the top two rows and close them off.
4. fill the top two rows with a random gass thats stays on top of steam.
5. put around 450kg of water in the room (adjust according the size of the room)
6. remove the tiles you made for sealing of the top two rows.
6. build the steam turbine and heat up the room.
7. ta daaaaa! you got a steam turbine room which can be endlessly expanded and no doors

Its funny how almost no one here uses this approach but i think in the asian community this is the equivalent of door steam turbines.

edit: 

Quote

 but other than conflicting gas exploits

hmm just realized, you most probably know this approach already. Pardon. Its still early  anyway maybe it can be of use for somebody else

[Dapperdog]

A little too advanced for me, I hope you can help with a few inquiries;

- How to get the turbine rooms to a high enough temperature to change water to steam, at the beginning I mean? of course, theres radiant pipes around the place, but where do they go to and how do you maintain the room at that temperature?
- Would this be possible to do with the technology & materials available before building your first rocket and sending it to space?

[Nickerooni]

5 hours ago, Dapperdog said:

A little too advanced for me, I hope you can help with a few inquiries;

- How to get the turbine rooms to a high enough temperature to change water to steam, at the beginning I mean? of course, theres radiant pipes around the place, but where do they go to and how do you maintain the room at that temperature?
- Would this be possible to do with the technology & materials available before building your first rocket and sending it to space?

The radiant pipes run to a heat source. In this case a volcano. That’s a bit tricky, too. You can check out the save file in the original post. Crazy turbine.sav

You can do this with pre-space materials, but when I did that I made it a bit bigger :/. I haven’t optimized the size, so maybe it was unnecessary. You fill the pipes with petroleum instead of super coolant. Except for the condensing loop - that one uses polluted water.

Moreover, it’s easier to tap a volcano with super-coolant. 

[Nickerooni]

9 hours ago, hpongledd said:

Its funny how almost no one here uses this approach but i think in the asian community this is the equivalent of door steam turbines.

I agree, it is a bit funny. This was popular very briefly and then doors took over. I’m not sure why. Maybe early experimenters were having trouble with gas deletion or gas transmutation - which tended to be a problem with early iterations. I agree that it’s super easy to build.

Anyway, in my opinion, this is an even more blatant exploit, although one less likely to get patched out. It’s in the same vein as overpressure tricks. I’ve filed a bug report to give Klei advice on how to fix this class of exploit. Maybe it’ll just be part of ONI physics. Who knows

[Craigjw]

I really like this design.

[hpongledd]

1 hour ago, Nickerooni said:

I agree, it is a bit funny. This was popular very briefly and then doors took over. I’m not sure why. Maybe early experimenters were having trouble with gas deletion or gas transmutation - which tended to be a problem with early iterations. I agree that it’s super easy to build.

Anyway, in my opinion, this is an even more blatant exploit, although one less likely to get patched out. It’s in the same vein as overpressure tricks. I’ve filed a bug report to give Klei advice on how to fix this class of exploit. Maybe it’ll just be part of ONI physics. Who knows

Well, **** you too!

[Dapperdog]

10 hours ago, Nickerooni said:

The radiant pipes run to a heat source. In this case a volcano. That’s a bit tricky, too. You can check out the save file in the original post. Crazy turbine.sav

You can do this with pre-space materials, but when I did that I made it a bit bigger :/. I haven’t optimized the size, so maybe it was unnecessary. You fill the pipes with petroleum instead of super coolant. Except for the condensing loop - that one uses polluted water.

Moreover, it’s easier to tap a volcano with super-coolant. 

Thanks man
never thought about using volcanoes as a heat source

[Lancar]

Instead of constantly tempting people to use door pumps, Klei could just make us a giant fan. A 1x4 building that blows gas from one side to the other.
Then they can kill the airlock doors viability for door pumping using whatever nerfs they come up with.

[tzionut]

Quote

Klei could just make us a giant fan

Or a regular compressor.. new building but i prefer for now the lag prevention setup...instead of new buildings.