feature request Synthetic oil plant

[Vincie]

Well... For now, we can filtrate our polluted water, using sand, or use it to produce fertilizer and natural gas. What I suggest is turning it into clean water and crude oil. Lets take a look at the 120W water purifier firs. It's using 5kg of water and 1000g of sand, providing us with 5kg of clean water and 200g of poluted dirt, with sand magically disappearing. What I suggest is and implementation of a divice, using 1-10kg of polluted water and providing us with analogically 20-200g of crude oil. To ballance it, it should consume at least 90% of energy profit from the oil - so the oil is made by 1/2 into fuel and analogically again, into 6-60g of natural gas. Every 20g of fuel and 0,6g of natural gas is being turned into (2000W/3kg of fuel/s gives 1/150 of this power per 1kg of processed polluted water, same calculations for natural gas) 13,(3) oil generator watts and 8W from a gas generator, so it gives us 21,(3)W/1kg of processed polluted water. For 10kg/s of water it would give us 213,(3) watts of power. And so, since it's a perpetual thing, it does not actually need to bring us  an energetical profit, so a 10kg/s processing plant powered with 240W would be actually ballanced - not a self sustainable, but still usefull route of energy. Or rather an energy saver, requireing additional industrial installations. And clean water!

[NurdRage]

There is a REALLY roundabout way to convert coal, natural gas or polluted water into oil: burn the coal in a coal generator to make carbon dioxide, burn the natural gas in a natural gas generator to make carbon dioxide, and convert the polluted water into natural gas which is in turn burned. 

Then the carbon dioxide is convert into oil using slicksters. 

I do like the synthetic oil plant. But if game already provides the components to essential make our own should klei really make it for us? or keep it as a challenge for us to do ourselves?

[trukogre]

1 hour ago, NurdRage said:

There is a REALLY roundabout way to convert coal, natural gas or polluted water into oil: burn the coal in a coal generator to make carbon dioxide, burn the natural gas in a natural gas generator to make carbon dioxide, and convert the polluted water into natural gas which is in turn burned. 

Then the carbon dioxide is convert into oil using slicksters. 

I do like the synthetic oil plant. But if game already provides the components to essential make our own should klei really make it for us? or keep it as a challenge for us to do ourselves?

This is not the correct way to look at it.  E.g., you can convert polluted water to clean water by boiling it with an aquatuner, or by using sand in a water purifier.  either way, we are using the components that Klei has given us, not having "Klei do it for us".  Deciding that one way is "klei doing it for us" is loaded terminology that determines the answer prior to any logical argument being made, and has no place in a real discussion.  That said, there are currently two ways to make oil, and before we think about a third, we should probably look at attempting to balance the first two.  Oil well caps seem to produce not nearly enough given their requirements, and compared to slicksters, as just a few slicksters match the production of a well and with much less cost.  Once well caps are properly balanced, we can see if a synthetic oil maker benefits the game.

[NurdRage]

59 minutes ago, trukogre said:

loaded terminology that determines the answer prior to any logical argument being made, and has no place in a real discussion. 

Okay... let me try again:

There is a REALLY roundabout way to convert coal, natural gas or polluted water into oil: burn the coal in a coal generator to make carbon dioxide, burn the natural gas in a natural gas generator to make carbon dioxide, and convert the polluted water into natural gas which is in turn burned. 

Then the carbon dioxide is convert into oil using slicksters. 

The seems to be an in-game method to convert existing resources into oil. Interestingly enough they are for the most part net energy producers. Would this fulfill the needs of a synthetic oil plant?

 

 

[trukogre]

3 hours ago, NurdRage said:

Okay... let me try again:

There is a REALLY roundabout way to convert coal, natural gas or polluted water into oil: burn the coal in a coal generator to make carbon dioxide, burn the natural gas in a natural gas generator to make carbon dioxide, and convert the polluted water into natural gas which is in turn burned. 

Then the carbon dioxide is convert into oil using slicksters. 

The seems to be an in-game method to convert existing resources into oil. Interestingly enough they are for the most part net energy producers. Would this fulfill the needs of a synthetic oil plant?

 

 

No.  

[NurdRage]

Why not?

[trukogre]

1 hour ago, NurdRage said:

Why not?

"Would this fulfill the needs of a synthetic oil plant?"

This sentence is ambiguous.  Taking it strictly, synthetic oil plants don't have 'needs' because only living things have needs.  Perhaps you meant something more like "Would this make synthetic oil plants unuseful", or possibly something like "Would this duplicate the effect of synthetic oil plants?"  So, we have a number of possible meanings for your question, and then we have the added uncertainty of referring to "synthetic oil plant", which could operate with a huge array of possible costs and values; furthermore we notice that for some of the possible meanings of your question, the answer depends largely upon the exact choice of inputs and outputs for this proposed plant, which are still up in the air.  Thirdly, we have the added problem that most of the possible meanings for your question only bear tangentially upon the question "should the synthetic oil plant be added to the game?".  E.g., if we take the third meaning listed above, "would this duplicate the effect of synthetic oil plants?", even if the answer is yes, so what?  Many tasks in ONI are possible to do in multiple ways.  I listed one above, but there are many more.  There are multiple ways to generate oxygen, power, food, etc.  Each update tends to increase the number of options, not decrease them.  This third problem, although the least relevant to your limited question quoted above, is the most relevant to this thread in general.  As I said before, my personal position on the matter is that we should look at balancing slicksters and oil wells before returning to this idea. as well as perhaps looking at the power production of petroleum generators compared to their total cost of operation, and seeing how they compare to hydrogen and gas generators.

So, returning to your original question, "why not?" The answer is "it depends."

 

[NurdRage]

You answered "No."

So it wasn't ambiguous to you for you to make such a statement. Asking "Why not?" is an invitation to explain your reasoning around your answer. 

[trukogre]

4 minutes ago, NurdRage said:

You answered "No."

So it wasn't ambiguous to you for you to make such a statement. Asking "Why not?" is an invitation to explain your reasoning around your answer. 

Yes, it was, and is, ambiguous.  Thank you for your invitation.

[NurdRage]

So rather than answering "No." it might have been better to answer "question is ambiguous"?

[trukogre]

Just now, NurdRage said:

So rather than answering "No." it might have been better to answer "question is ambiguous"?

Feel free to answer the question in such a manner, if you think that's the answer it deserves.

[NurdRage]

Do you?

[trukogre]

I've moved on.  Do you have any productive or relevant comments on the subject of Synthetic Oil Plants, or are we done here?

[NurdRage]

Okay.

 

There is a REALLY roundabout way to convert coal, natural gas or polluted water into oil: burn the coal in a coal generator to make carbon dioxide, burn the natural gas in a natural gas generator to make carbon dioxide, and convert the polluted water into natural gas which is in turn burned. 

Then the carbon dioxide is convert into oil using slicksters. 

I do like the synthetic oil plant. But if game already provides the components to essentially make our own should klei really make it for us? or keep it as a challenge for us to do ourselves? In thinking about it the oil plant could be balanced by having it consume something, like how the water purification plant consumes sand. The built up system, the aquatuner boiler, does not. Maybe the oil plant could have a similar issue to balance it out against the built up system of using generators/synthesizers/slicksters.

 

 

[trukogre]

The system as proposed does have a similar issue--the issue being that he proposes it be net power-negative to operate.  Oil wells are already nearly net-power negative to operate, which seems pretty silly, so hopefully that will be fixed going forward.  The thing about the nat gas out of polluted water vs crude oil out of polluted water is that generating methane from waste is something that's productively happening in the world right now, but crude oil from waste is comparatively in its infancy as a technology; and if it does occur it's likely to be through biosynthesis.  I'd like to see it take algae and either polluted dirt or maybe a crop that could be grown specifically to break down into crude oil?

[NurdRage]

Brilliant idea!

EXCESS FOOD!!!

A well-built colony will have millions of calories just lying around. Crude Oil is basically organic material that's been pressure heat-treated to become oil.

A new machine that takes in rot and dumps oil. It would be late in the tech tree. But it would make sense as a step up from the compost pile. By the time you get that far in the game, fertilizer is being produced by the megaton from your fertilizer makers. Shutting down the compost pile and redirect the rot somewhere else would fit.

 

[trukogre]

42 minutes ago, NurdRage said:

Brilliant idea!

EXCESS FOOD!!!

A well-built colony will have millions of calories just lying around. Crude Oil is basically organic material that's been pressure heat-treated to become oil.

A new machine that takes in rot and dumps oil. It would be late in the tech tree. But it would make sense as a step up from the compost pile. By the time you get that far in the game, fertilizer is being produced by the megaton from your fertilizer makers. Shutting down the compost pile and redirect the rot somewhere else would fit.

 

Well, most organic materials ends up as coal after heat and pressure treatment, which is why coal is so much more commonly found than oil, although now that we're using fracking and other techniques to extract 'oil' from shales and tar sands that ratio is equalizing a bit.  Obviously converting vegetable oil to crude oil is a lot easier than converting, say, the animal protein of meal lice to oil.  A hybrid idea would be for the machine to be able to use both rot, and a specifically designated crop that converts more efficiently into crude oil and doesn't have to rot first  A fun idea would be for the conversion to take place via a special bacteria as well as a special machine, and then that machine would be a source of a new especially deadly disease, how's that for a drawback?

[NurdRage]

Not sure, if it's that deadly then most players would probably avoid it. Drawbacks should be balanced with the potential rewards of accepting them. I'd be on board with such a huge drawback if they add more, very tempting, things to the oil tech tree that make it worth the risk.

 

BTW low-fat organics end up as coal. But high fat organics end up as oil. Vegetable oils are mostly derived from the seeds of those vegetables (which is very "fatty" biologically). It might be an interesting use for sleet wheat since it's main selling point is that it's a seed.

[trukogre]

1 minute ago, NurdRage said:

Not sure, if it's that deadly then most players would probably avoid it. Drawbacks should be balanced with the potential rewards of accepting them. I'd be on board with such a huge drawback if they add more, very tempting, things to the oil tech tree that make it worth the risk.

 

BTW low-fat organics end up as coal. But high fat organics end up as oil. Vegetable oils are mostly derived from the seeds of those vegetables (which is very "fatty" biologically). It might be an interesting use for sleet wheat since it's main selling point is that it's a seed.

yea, I didn't mean invariably fatal, just, worse than slimelung (which is fatal if untreated, of course)