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Sustainability - Thermal Update


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So, I started my first colony with the new update and ran into one of the first interesting new mechanics that I was not aware of...Mealwood is quite finite (and seemingly intentionally so).  This lead me to sit back and think of long-term survival under these new mechanics.

We can use Blossoms for sustainable food (supposedly they drop seeds when eaten) now as an alternative to the Meallice we were all used to using.  However, these require both fertilizer and a cool temperature to grow.  As such, it will require essentially setting up an HVAC system specifically for your farm.  Alternatively, we could use Fried Mushbars as the new primary food medium.  However, these take dirt and water to produce.  Dirt also being a challenge to renew effectively.

This all said, I feel it is most definitely still possible to sustain indefinitely.  However, the methods to do so have become a whole lot harder to manage.  I am making this post as a method of brainstorming to get people thinking of methods to achieve stability under the new mechanics.

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As long as we can take advantage of vomiters, we have plenty of "water." I'm just curious if they will add a way to convert some of our crops into seeds, as a way to sustain a farm while having a draw-back. That just means you have to be able to support a much larger farm, and with both cooling and atmospheric pressure being an issue, they just have to add bugs to make it a challenge :)

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6 minutes ago, dakre18 said:

As long as we can take advantage of vomiters, we have plenty of "water." I'm just curious if they will add a way to convert some of our crops into seeds, as a way to sustain a farm while having a draw-back. That just means you have to be able to support a much larger farm, and with both cooling and atmospheric pressure being an issue, they just have to add bugs to make it a challenge :)

I would not assume we can endlessly take advantage of vomit/urine as a resource.  The developers mentioned that they are aware of the abuse and will likely be looking into it.  We should have a reasonable amount of water still, given that we have the new steam vents and we can melt down the ice biomes.

As for sustainable crops.  We do have a sustainable food crop in the form of Blossoms, as they supposedly drop seeds when eaten.

Supposedly sand is renewable via superheating dirt.  Dirt is renewable by heating contaminated water into steam.  This just leaves the power needs to be able to effectively process these materials and we should be able to keep our air clean.  To produce fertilizer for the blossom farms, we can also convert contaminated water into fertilizer, or utilize dirt via outhouses and compost heaps to make fertilizer.

The main issues I can see are power generation and heat management, under the new system.  Heat management should be fairly reasonable as long as you have power.  However, since many powered devices would be needed to maintain a stable base, I fear generating enough power to keep everything running will really be a challenge.  Currently I'm thinking hydrogen generators will be the primary power source.

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Yeah, i understand that's an issue they will deal with later, but that's because it's not like we can just vomit endlessly either. With the Blossoms, I've never messed with those, but I will have to try this thermal update. Just like with mealwood, can't abuse it forever :) (sentence isn't in a great spot, but was referring to abuse-able things like vomit).

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3 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Nope. Mealwood does not drop new seeds anymore. Bristle Blossom does however.

Yeah.  The long term choices for food are either produce dirt to create mushbars (and then fry them into fried mushbars), or produce fertilizer (there are multiple methods to make it) and grow bristle blossoms.  Both of these require more complex setups to sustain, but I feel like it can definitely be done.

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Fertilizer is reasonably straightforward to make in large quantities with the fertilizer maker that converts contaminated water into fertilizer. Just not sure if that alone is enough to make a sustainable base. Outhouse/compost is certainly not anywhere near enough.

It's also imperative to keep dupe count as low as possible while you still have mealwoods in order to have enough time to set up the various systems.

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Just now, Saturnus said:

Fertilizer is reasonably straightforward to make in large quantities with the fertilizer makes that converts contaminated water into fertilizer. Just not sure if that alone is enough to make a sustainable base. Outhouse/compost is certainly not anywhere near enough.

In another thread, someone was saying that it takes too much contaminated water to produce enough fertilizer to run a Bristle Blossom farm.  As I haven't tested this out yet myself, I cannot say for sure.  However, I know it is rather easy to create infinite dirt and therefore either use it to make fertilizer or Fried Mushbars.  Either way, we can definitely sustain...just ends up being a whole more challenging to achieve.

It also makes expanding (more dupes and such) interesting as even a single additional dupe can throw off your ecosystem and cause you to have to rework things.

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5 hours ago, Ecu said:

In another thread, someone was saying that it takes too much contaminated water to produce enough fertilizer to run a Bristle Blossom farm.  As I haven't tested this out yet myself, I cannot say for sure. 

Bristle Blossom takes 10 cycles to grow, 2 cycles to regrow, has 5 harvests and drops one fruit worth 1000 kcal. That means it produces 278 kcal/cycle, essentially 4 plants to feed a Duplicant (3,6 to be more precise). Meanwhile it eats 20 kg of Fertilizer per cycle. That means 80 kg / Cycle per a single Duplicant.

And now fertilizer production: Compost produces 1000 mg/s out of Polluted dirt 1:1 (seems awfully low but it is what the tooltip says). Fertilizer maker takes 1333,3 g/s of Polluted water and produces 22g/s of Fertilizer.

I am not sure right now how many seconds per cycle, but I am reasonably sure there is not enough to offset that 80 kg per Dupe need. They just don't **** fast and often enough.

Cooking with current requirements is nowhere near sustainability, Mushbar takes 75 kg of water and Liceloaf 50 kg. One full water tile is 1000 kg so it sustains one duplicant for 13.3 cycles on mushbars or 20 on Liceloaf.

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16 minutes ago, Vilda said:

I am not sure right now how many seconds per cycle...

600 seconds. Of which about 440 seconds is available to do actual work in as they have to sleep, eat, and... well, you know. That's best case though. It's probably even less actual work time as they most likely also use a bit of time moving to and from mess hall and rest rooms.

But overall, it doesn't look promising for sustainable builds. Those Geyers and Chill Chili really have to be able to produce a staggering amount of water when combined to make it possible.

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Well maker can run without a dupe, compost just needs turn over now an then. So one  Maker will tun out 13.2 kg of fertilizer/cycle, and Compost 600 g ? I hope that tooltip is a typo or something.

So if you would try to fertilize polluted water, you would have to run 6.06 Makers nonstop to properly feed one Duplicant. Requiring 4848.36 kg of Polluted water per single Cycle.

You would be much better off just feeding him Mushbars.

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Actually dupes deliver 6.666... kg of contaminated dirt per visit. Still far from enough. Assuming we cut to the bone of 3.6 plants per dupe. That's 72kg fertilizer needed. Minus the compost it's exactly 5 fertilizer makers running non-stop per dupe but a single dupe can only make enough power to run 3.666... fertilizers non-stop.

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2 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Actually dupes deliver 6.666... kg of contaminated dirt per visit. Still far from enough.

Yes, but the problem is how fast will Compost turn that into a fertilizer. Because 600g per Cycle seems awfully low. 6kg would make more sense and that mg would be a typo.

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5 minutes ago, Vilda said:

Yes, but the problem is how fast will Compost turn that into a fertilizer. Because 600g per Cycle seems awfully low. 6kg would make more sense and that mg would be a typo.

Isn't that just a question of how many compost heaps you have? But yeah, it must be a typo.

Please note that in all this we haven't counted in the power requirements of the probably necessary in the long term air con for the Bristle Blossom. I'm sure in the short term you can solve it by having storage containers with melting snow but that's not a sustainable solution as I see it.

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3 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Isn't that just a question of how many compost heaps you have? But yeah, it must be a typo.

Having a 1000 Composts per Outhouse to turn it at the rate it's coming in would be ... weird :D

But even if we accept that Dupe will produce 6kg of his... fertilizer per Cycle, it still leave as with 74 kg to provide by other means.

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Just now, Vilda said:

But even if we accept that Dupe will produce 6kg of his... fertilizer per Cycle, it still leave as with 74 kg to provide by other means.

I updated a post above with this:

15 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Assuming we cut to the bone of 3.6 plants per dupe. That's 72kg fertilizer needed. Minus the compost it's exactly 5 fertilizer makers running non-stop per dupe but a single dupe can only make enough power to run 3.666... fertilizers non-stop.

 

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I think we can safely state that in the current build it is not possible to build a 100% sustainable base.

You can probably stretch a run to several hundred, maybe even a few thousand, cycles by having a very low dupe count, and being very frugal with resources but in the end you will run out of food.

We need the Puca Fish or some other source of either food and/or fertilizer to get us at least close to a fully 100% sustainable set up.

Of course, the gauntlet has been thrown. Prove me wrong, and make a 100% sustainable base :D 
EDIT: I can think of one way though. Set calorie intake to 600 per day and let your dupes die slowly, and keep accepting replacements. You just need to set it so one dupe dies every 3rd cycle, and hey presto... "sustainability achieved" LOL

EDIT2: I actually have a new idea but players with deep rooted feeling towards their dupes should probably not look when I'm ready to present the "Dupe slaughterhouse" build.

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10 hours ago, Ecu said:

I would not assume we can endlessly take advantage of vomit/urine as a resource.  The developers mentioned that they are aware of the abuse and will likely be looking into it.  We should have a reasonable amount of water still, given that we have the new steam vents and we can melt down the ice biomes.

As for sustainable crops.  We do have a sustainable food crop in the form of Blossoms, as they supposedly drop seeds when eaten.

Supposedly sand is renewable via superheating dirt.  Dirt is renewable by heating contaminated water into steam.  This just leaves the power needs to be able to effectively process these materials and we should be able to keep our air clean.  To produce fertilizer for the blossom farms, we can also convert contaminated water into fertilizer, or utilize dirt via outhouses and compost heaps to make fertilizer.

The main issues I can see are power generation and heat management, under the new system.  Heat management should be fairly reasonable as long as you have power.  However, since many powered devices would be needed to maintain a stable base, I fear generating enough power to keep everything running will really be a challenge.  Currently I'm thinking hydrogen generators will be the primary power source.

Dirt converts to sand at 700 K at 1:1 ratio.  Contaminated water can not be heated to steam using buildings as everything breaks at 75C except for the compost bin.  Thus you can provide the heat using the lower level's thermal reserves, but that too runs out.  The problem is that 1000g of contaminated water -> 30g of dirt.  While is is much better than 60g of contaminated water -> 1g fertilizer, the math still does not work out.  80Kg of fertilizer will still need 2666 Kg of contaminated water, clearly absurd.

Cooling isn't actually a problem.  Use hydrogen as the working fluid.  It is second only to steam but steam can not be used because it condenses below 97C and nothing operates at that temperature.

Base is simply not sustainable with the thermal update.  Please allow boiling of water with the liquid tepidizer...85C is ridiculous.

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2 minutes ago, Fatmice said:

Dirt converts to sand at 700 K at 1:1 ratio.  Contaminated water can not be heated to steam using buildings as everything breaks at 75C except for the compost bin.  Thus you can provide the heat using the lower level's thermal reserves, but that too runs out.  The problem is that 1000g of contaminated water -> 30g of dirt.  While is is much better than 60g of contaminated water -> 1g fertilizer, the math still does not work out.  80Kg of fertilizer will still need 2666 Kg of contaminated water, clearly absurd.

Cooling isn't actually a problem.  Use hydrogen as the working fluid.  It is second only to steam but steam can not be used because it condenses below 97C and nothing operates at that temperature.

Hrm.  Perhaps.  Though I would say that I still approve of the changes to Mealwood none the less.  Just means that currently endless sustainability may not be possible.  It still is rather reasonable to make probably get to 200 cycles rather reliably (and likely quite higher).  From what we've seen, fish may be added in the somewhat near future.  Currently when spawned via debug, fish are both a food source and a source of fertilizer.

While we can calculate things out like you stated, it is still worth giving it a run to see how it works in practice.  Have you personally tested the ratio for spoiled food to fertilizer?  If it is reasonable, perhaps you could use one crop to help feed a couple others.  Essentially using a bunch of combined means to provide enough resources to create sustainability.

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I did test the ratio.  It is 100 kcal -> 1kg rotted food -> 1kg polluted dirt.  It is only worth it if you clearly have a renewable food source, albeit slow, but renewable.  Using this on the flower gives you a net -350 kg fertilizer, clearly absurd.

It takes 8 days to rot, and 1 more day to become polluted dirt.

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5 minutes ago, Fatmice said:

I did test the ratio.  It is 100 kcal -> 1kg rotted food -> 1kg polluted dirt.  It is only worth it if you clearly have a renewable food source, albeit slow, but renewable.  Using this on the flower gives you a net -350 kg fertilizer, clearly absurd.

It takes 8 days to rot, and 1 more day to become polluted dirt.

Hrm.  Seems like we may indeed not see true sustainability until additional food sources show up.  However, I gather that with the current mechanics, you can make it quite a ways.  I would love to see someone come up with a method that works currently though and I'm likely going to be trying to do so myself.

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Just now, Saturnus said:

I'm sorry but how is letting food rot in order to make fertilizer to make food ever going to be sustainable unless there's a massive positive gain somewhere in the chain?

I agree, it is not with flower.  Maybe with fish.

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