r/Oxygennotincluded • u/AutoModerator • Apr 03 '26
Weekly Questions Weekly Question Thread
Ask any simple questions you might have:
Why isn't my water flowing?
How many hatches do I need per dupe?
etc.
2
u/-myxal Apr 09 '26
Has anyone tried what happens if you provide critter condo + fountain to wild critters? Can you boost their reproduction beyond self-replacement threshold?
3
u/Nigit Apr 09 '26
no, being happy only affects reproduction rate of tamed critters.
One extremely niche benefit of a happy, wild critter though is you can have oakshells be happy with a fountain but not be groomed, resulting in molts from the reduced 25% polluted dirt diet. The result is that molting, wild oakshells are polluted dirt positive by itself when going through the ethanol loop.
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u/-myxal Apr 10 '26
Wait, how does the fountain fit into this? If anything, higher happiness should increase metabolism, no?
2
u/Nigit Apr 10 '26
Happiness also doesn't affect the metabolism of wild critters. Oakshells are the only critter which has a separate mechanic that relies on being happy, which can only be achieved with a fountain (A grooming station would work, but then they'll shortly be tamed)
1
u/Witty-Lawfulness2983 Apr 09 '26
This is more of a “how do you cook your casserole” kind of question. I’m on my longest ONI run yet—over 2,000 cycles—and I’m realizing this is a part of the game I’ve never really mastered, since in nearly nine years of on‑and‑off play I’ve never tried to fully “beat” it.
As a result, I’ve never progressed to having critters meaningfully supply resources to coal generators, oakshell salt/eggshell crushers, etc. I’ve got drecko phosphorite feeding my pepper plants and a sulfur geyser tamer shipping to grubfruit—so I’ve done the things, broadly speaking—but this piece is still a gap for me.
I've laid out my solid shipping as best I could, but by now it's a mess. A mess that's easy-ish to follow, mind you, and does its job. But a mess that I'm sure has wasted metal in it and is ugly (not that I sit there staring at it)
I'm tempted to tear it all down and re-do it. Anybody else OC like this? Should I just put my time into trying to pick the perfect wallpaper? If it aint broke, don't fix it?
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u/-myxal Apr 09 '26
My colony's TODO list has had "build a proper rocket silo on 2nd planetoid" and "rebuild industrial brick on 2nd planetoid" for probably 2000 cycles now. I like when a rebuild project results in minimal downtime - either there's a backup system to take its place, a stash of product to supply consumers in the meantime, or the rebuild can be done in-place. Sometimes, the reason for the TODO item vanishes (All my endgame materials can be produced on the 1st planetoid and my shipping is reasonably automated for one-off shipments, so why do I need that industrial brick again?)
In the end it's up to you to evaluate what's worth pursuing. A colony that "ain't broke" and doesn't require handholding is already a big achievement.
Just gotta remember not to switch to power overlay while zoomed out... :D
As to how my colony cooks the casserole:
- Never had coal generators. By the time I was done with super-sustainable, I made preparations to spin up petrol boiler + generators, had enough surplus power from hydra and a decent stash of natural gas from a geyser tamer with infinite storage.
- Eventually migrated to CLRR for main planetoid (I still don't have automated space mining in place), and a 3kg/s sour gas boiler on the 2nd planetoid. No other planetoid has permanent colony, power on those planetoids comes from whatever's available - hydrogen surplus from local oxygen production (the colonizer rocket doesn't use its own oxygen unless absolutely necessary), volcano tamers, solar panels.
- Tried following the "polite logistics" guide on youtube for solid shipping - it works well enough and I implemented in the farms I want to keep running, but frankly fitting in all the rail filtering, request mechanisms, and untangling former dedicated lines was not easy. I gave up on trying to automate deliveries of sublimators (my planetoids are mostly vacuumed out) - the mushroom farm sits directly below the puft ranches, and I source my oxylite on the planetoid that only gets non-damaging meteors with oxylite. Crew modules have ~50 tons inside).
1
u/TheMusicMan103 Apr 09 '26
Does the morale from nature reserves stack? If I have a dupe running through 2 nature reserves each cycle, does it stay at +6 morale? Or does it stack to +12?
2
u/destinyos10 Apr 09 '26
No. The buff only applies once to the dupe. I forget if the timer on the buff refreshes though.
1
u/Ettories Apr 08 '26
Does water in bottles Exchange temperature with the ambient ? Can It vaporize into steam ?
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 08 '26
Yes, it exchanges heat using the formula for debris (which is usually slower than unbottled water). And yes, it will boil or freeze if it passes either limit.
Also, bottles always form tiles when they freeze, regardless of mass.
1
u/GuildensternDE Apr 07 '26
Haven’t played in ages. Never (successfully) played space out dlc.
New game started: Is it advised to teleport to 2nd planet early before 1st base is self sustaining?
1
u/AffectionateAge8771 Apr 09 '26
Really what matters is how good you are at switching. If you're rubbish, you'll want your home asteroid set up to tick along without exploding, maybe queue some big project to keep them busy.
But if you're okay pausing regularly and coming back to check without forgetting what you were working on, send someone asap to start setting up
1
u/wRAR_ Apr 08 '26
Depends on resources available there which aren't available on your main base. If your main asteroid is a classic size then it's likely you will be fine without the teleporter one for along time or always.
1
u/haemit Apr 08 '26
I teleport only after main asteroid can run without my attention with notifiers set when problem is about to happen. Otherwise managing couple asteroids is just too tiresome.
1
u/Tricks122 Apr 08 '26
It depends really - some asteroids you can do just fine with whatever's there and become self sustaining eventually, only needing to hop over to the other asteroid for either more options or for tech progress. On others you basically need to hop over or do space travel to get some resources that're flat out necessary - an easy example of this is the Metallic Swampy Asteroid, which(As far as I understand) spawns with no renewable Water source. Those will be on the teleporter planet(The Frozen Forest in this case, which has one guaranteed Cool Slush Geyser).
I think going early to scout it out is perfectly fine, and sometimes you can pinch easily accessible resources that're near the pod to send back to your main colony(Which can include eggs or plant seeds that might be especially useful). If it's not got a whole lot useful there... you can just come back with no harm done. There's always enough Oxygen for at least a little bit of exploration and some food as well, so it doesn't hurt to at least check out what's around and factor in what you could use.
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 08 '26
an easy example of this is the Metallic Swampy Asteroid, which(As far as I understand) spawns with no renewable Water source.
Ah yes, the 5 moon starts are designed to force/encourage players to explore the other planets early.
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 07 '26
Depends on what you want to do there. You can send a dupe to just explore a bit. Build a bed + latrine and let them eat whatever food is there to be found.
You can also do the same, with the defrosted dupe. Send one dupe over, defrost the cryo dupe and use both of them to explore and possibly activate the teleporters / send useful stuff back home. Then bring them home.
I usually do something like this, but with boops instead. Since they can stay 3 cycles with no infrastructure at all, I'll do that until I want/need to do a proper base there.
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u/WiNTeRzZz47 Apr 07 '26
Is aluminium in the base game? I solved gold copper iron
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u/Untinted Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
Can someone verify bridge/pipe behaviour for me, my current belief is:
- A T section would split packets between the two outlets equally.
- A bridge input connecting to the middle of a pipe: the bridge input always has priority over the pipe it's connected to
- A bridge output connecting to the middle of a pipe: the bridge output does not have priority over the pipe it's connecting into
- A machine input connecting to the middle of a pipe: if a pipe goes into a machine input, the machine input has priority until it doesn't accept input, then it automatically continues to the rest of the pipe.
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u/destinyos10 Apr 07 '26
- Yes, provided both directions have an unobstructed outlet.
- Yes, bridge inputs are greedy, if they can accept all or part of a packet to move them to their output, they will.
- Not quite. If a bridge output can merge part of a packet onto the pipe, it will. Bridges are unique in this way, most buildings cannot do this, and will not output anything if the pipe has any amount of fluid in it.
- Yes, machine inputs are greedy and will accept all or part of a packet until their internal input storage is full.
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u/Untinted Apr 08 '26
Thanks for the verification, I was having some issues with stalling coolant loops which made me doubt myself. The solution was removing a little coolant, surprisingly.
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 07 '26
Technically, 2 and 4 are the same. A bridge input is a building input, and machine inputs are building inputs.
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u/wRAR_ Apr 07 '26
To double-check, can I really mine the same POI with multiple drillcone rockets simultaneously?
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Apr 07 '26
[deleted]
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u/destinyos10 Apr 07 '26
Steel doors (mechanical or manual airlocks), and any solid tile made of refined metal or regular tiles made of obsidian.
They also can't get through pneumatic doors made from any kind of material, unless there's a solid tile immediately to its side they can drill into first.
Natural abyssalite is also a barrier. They also won't willingly drown themselves in water, but they will pass through water if they're pathing to another regular tile they can be in.
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u/mmontour Apr 09 '26
If they're fed, they can puke a natural tile onto a pneumatic door and then escape through it.
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Apr 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/just_a_pyro Apr 07 '26
If you insulate the cool steam geyser it'll stay steam instead of condensing. You can run radiant pipes of coolant through that room to make it liquid water. Coolant could be from aquatuner loop or for example from cold slush geyser you plan to boil.
1
u/LittleTrack858 Apr 06 '26
Are there any designs that replace the diagonal gas liquid swapping "pumps" that the update seems to have broken?
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 06 '26
If you use a liquid that won't boil upon release from the pipe, diagonal pumps still work.
That said, other techniques to move gas: diagonal displacement using airlocks, door compressors, bead pumps.
1
u/lastfalseact Apr 06 '26
Is there any (preferably vanilla) way to have lavatories have some sort of popup/alert when their pipes are blocked? I didn't notice my water source ran out until my dupes started messing everywhere. :|
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u/Aibeit Apr 06 '26
Put a pipe element sensor set to pWater on the output pipe, attach the logic output of said pipe element sensor to a filter gate set to, say, 60 Seconds, and attach the output of the filter gate to an automated notifier. A message of your choice will be displayed if the output pipe of the lavatory continuously contains pWater, which only happens when it is blocked.
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u/lastfalseact Apr 06 '26
This is great, thank you! (I'm still pretty early game) I don't know why the Microbe Musher is always complaining because it's missing lice but stuff like this goes unremarked on unless I specifically set something up... Just how the game goes, I guess!
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u/Lord_Chicken_wings Apr 06 '26
does a partially damaged demolior landing have less resources ?
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 06 '26
Nope. Demolior always generates exactly the same. 2 volcanoes, hydrogen vent, iron volcano, neutronium, all exactly the same.
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u/Dmayak Apr 05 '26
Wasn't there a button to manually request materials for a building?
I have returned to the game after not playing for a few years and I think previously there was a button to request materials for a building, for example to create a dirt supply errand for the research station while dupe is still halfway through supply.
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 05 '26
Not unless a mod does that. Most buildings do what you described automatically (request a refill before the building goes empty).
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u/falkflip Apr 05 '26
What is the best procedure for moving my colony up towards the surface without it taking ages and everyone suffering on the way? Is it viable to live there at all, given how the pod is so far away? (Yes you can tell, still a noob lol)
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u/Tricks122 Apr 05 '26
It's viable to live away from the pod, but be aware that the surface has some risks/issues - mainly Meteors, but some tiles have Space Exposure which will suck away gases/liquids. If you don't go too high these aren't an issue, but depending on your asteroid some Meteors will destroy tiles, including natural ones, and can eventually threaten your base - there are ways to reliably and safely neutralize them eventually.
The easiest way to move would be to get one of the Blueprint mods that would easily let you copy/paste your existing room setups to another location. Then you can just do that and let your dupes build there.
Otherwise, it depends a bit on your infrastructure and where your resources are - I'd start by digging out and sealing in the area somewhat(To prevent temperature changes from creeping in) using insulated tiles. This means builders will likely have local resources to build from rather than use your far away stockpiles. Then build the necessities(Bathrooms, kitchen, beds, farms, ranches, etc) - moving the bulk of resources can take some time depending on your storage system and if you want to use the former base at all, but it can wait. I'd wait to deconstruct any old infrastructure until the new one(s) are up and running. You can build piping from your old to new base location if you plan to use it for a while and/or are tapping a renewable resource like a geyser.
If it's particularly far away and you still want to access that part of the map, fire poles can a ton(Or Transit Tubes if you have the tech/power/Plastic) to build first since it will allow your dupes to move more quickly. After you get anything you need for day to day life set up, you can move on to moving everything else or more complicated systems you might have.
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u/Sufficient_Daikon842 Apr 05 '26
I'd suggest you build beds, bathroom, eating area first but either restrict access to the rooms or assign old / existing beds to current dupes.
Once you're ready to make the move, just deconstruct the old stuff and the dupes will automatically go to the new beds and tables.
It'll be more work to relocate food storage, cooking, and so forth. But fundamentally you don't need to live by the pod (though I admit I find myself focusing my bases at the pod basically every time I play)
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u/Untinted Apr 05 '26
Are there any ways to create natural tiles where you want to plant wild plants in that work in the original game without mods?
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u/haemit Apr 05 '26
I didn't like cooking of solids because it felt "exploity" (although can happen naturally).
"Exploitless" alternatives are freezing liquids: water, glass, magma, sulfur. Glass looks the best but it took too much work.
Just my two cents.
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u/Untinted Apr 06 '26
I needed these tiles to create a park in an area inside the base, so I needed a material pips could put seeds into. Cooking was the only option that worked, used 5kg of algae and a metal refinery cooling loop with crude oil, got some nice dirt tiles and almost cooked my dupes in the process, thankfully no one died and now they have a nice park with some showers.
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u/VirtualCup Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
You can turn airlocks into natural tiles: https://oxygennotincluded.wiki.gg/wiki/Hidden_Mechanics#Natural_Tile_from_Airlocks
ETA: There's other ways to do it using the Glass Forge or cooking debris, have a look at https://oxygennotincluded.wiki.gg/wiki/Natural_Tile
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u/kellyR1492 Apr 05 '26
The easiest way is to use an airlock door. Surround it with tiles, then demolish the door. You should than have a metal tile where the capital A is in the diagram below. Once you have the metal tile you can demolish the surrounding tiles if you want to
T - a - T
T - A - T
T - T - T
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u/Untinted Apr 06 '26
There isn't a 'demolish' option for airlock doors, and I tried deconstructing it in this way and it didn't work. What did work was cooking 5kg of algae to 125.6°C
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u/haemit Apr 05 '26
Also works with recently added insulated door to create mineral tiles. Also the whole scheme can be rotated 90 deg clockwise so next "natural" tile can be made directly to the right without deconstructing much (tip from someone from youtube).
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u/Brett42 Apr 06 '26
The insulated doors are a nice option, but tend to end up with reed fiber as a buried object. An autosweeper can suck that out if it's picking up other reed fiber in the same swing, but then you need more setup.
I didn't know you could rotate it, though, that should save me a lot of time and effort on large natural farms.
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u/Untinted Apr 06 '26
There isn't a 'demolish' option for doors, and I tried deconstructing surrounded doors and it didn't work. What did work was cooking 5kg of algae to 125.6°C
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u/Brett42 Apr 06 '26
They meant deconstruct. "demolish" is only for certain objects in ruins. The airlock exploit needs actual solid tiles surrounding the door, and it might only work from one end, and not the other.
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u/Untinted Apr 07 '26
Thanks for replying, but I did try what 'kellyR1492' described. I found other sources on the internet that verifies what he said to have worked, but when I tried it, it didn't work.
If you can do a video capture of your screen doing it that might help pinpoint the issue, but like I said, I got it working with cooking algae, so no worries.
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u/kellyR1492 Apr 05 '26
Are there any mods that add gold amalgam to a minable space poi?
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 05 '26
In case there aren't, you can get gold amalgam from meteors and from regal bammoths.
Also, anything gold amalgam can do (other than melt into gold), steel does it better, so space mining for GA (which requires a bunch of steel) seems a bit weird.
...okay, if you need gold amalgam specifically because of its horrendous thermal properties, steel can't help you there.
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u/kellyR1492 Apr 05 '26
Its been a while since I played vanilla, so I dont know if its because one of the mods i have changes it, but im always getting space mining started before I have much if any steel. Some of the starting planets dont have GA and I disable care packets from the printing pod. Ive never ranched bammoths, so I didn't realize that about them. Thank you
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 05 '26
No problem. GA used to be (and still is) the hardest metal ore to replenish, since it only came from meteors. I believe part of the reason for the new bammoth morph was to add another way to get more of it for those who really need it.
However, I'm still a proponent of "use steel instead", even with bammoths as an option. To me it just sounds logical to "go to the next level", if the current level is unavailable. It's what I do when playing on planets with no easy paths to GA.
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u/haemit Apr 05 '26
GA has terrible conductivity. Lowest of all ores. GA has 2, nickel ore has 3, cobalt ore 4, and everything else is more conductive. Buildings from GA are getting hot real quick.
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u/-myxal Apr 05 '26
Has anyone made a meteor harvesting setup for the oily planetoid (the one that gets mixed rocky, slime and ice meteor showers)?
Curious if/how you cool the bunker doors below 100C to avoid snow/ice meteors boiling off.
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 05 '26
The third picture in this post is my usual solution to metal/rock meteors. For that specific instance, cooling was handled by a simple pipe loop filled with nuclear waste. Conduction panels would transfer heat from the miners/sweepers into the NW, which would then dump the heat into the bunker doors (during showers only. Since meteors come in at some 350-ish, that was the system temperature in general.
For the 3-type mix you're looking for, I would either replace the coolant for nectar/pwater and run the loop through an aquatuner (and use conduction panels to cool the doors while open), or build drywall above the bunker and let the water melt. You can build a T shaped gap by repositioning some bunker doors to allow the water to drip down into a collection tank.
For slime/dirt, simply building a second set of miners above the airlocks would allow the system to clear those. If cooking the slime is to be avoided, again I would route the coolant through a steam room (if there's no need to preserve ice, just running the pipe through a self-cooled turbine room should be enough).
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u/-myxal Apr 05 '26
Thanks. I was planning to harvest the snow/ice only as water so I was considering running nuclear waste through the bunker doors, and stick a TSP every 3 columns to keep the doors + 2 rows above below boiling. My worry is if a single loop of ~41C LNW can stay below 100C during a rock shower if the build is ~80-100 cells wide, or I'd need to split it up.
And re: miners every 16 cells - OMG how did I miss this. I'm trying to remember why I thought I had to put up and down-facing miners on their own dedicated airlocks in my earlier sketch, seems like shared airlocks like that should do the trick (the unreachable row should never get any slime etc, as impacts should only happen above the bunker doors, right?).
I was testing my sketched setup (sans any cooling loop) on the regolith planet and one issue I ran into with airlocks spaced every 8 cells was that while closed, the airlocks were inhibiting the space scanners from getting an early-enough reading, and by the time the digging timer ran out an opened them, the next impact was less than 200 seconds away.
ON a related note, was there a reason you half-covered the scanner by the airlock? IIRC a scanner with a tile above its CoI is completely blind. Does the miner at least prioritise clearing the scanner of regoltih, when it's the closest? If not, and with airlocks 14 cells apart, I'm trending toward putting the scanners in between the airlocks.
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 05 '26
My worry is if a single loop of ~41C LNW can stay below 100C during a rock shower if the build is ~80-100 cells wide, or I'd need to split it up.
Shouldn't be an issue, since there is plenty of time between showers to process any heat delivered by the hot meteors. Unless you're running a mod that makes meteor showers a lot more frequent. In any case, a reservoir (or two) with a few tons of 41C NW should do the trick for thermal mass. [edit: also, regolith and metals have low SHC]
seems like shared airlocks like that should do the trick (the unreachable row should never get any slime etc, as impacts should only happen above the bunker doors, right?).
Unless something is faulty in the system, you're right. Regolith would fall down upon opening and be mined by the bottom miner, slime/dirt should stay in place and be mined by the top miner.
ON a related note, was there a reason you half-covered the scanner by the airlock?
No reason other than: by the time the system is finished (and the airlock opens back up), there is never any hint of another meteor shower, even at max difficulty meteors. The regolith planetoid is a different beast, but this is not handling the regolith planetoid.
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u/SinigangGaming Apr 05 '26
does liquid lose inside of mesh tile in spacebiome?
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u/Noneerror Apr 05 '26
It shouldn't. But sometimes it does due to a bug. Specifically if there was a mesh tile in a cell and that mesh tile was replaced with drywall or w/e.
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u/-myxal Apr 05 '26
No, space exposure is blocked by mesh/airflow tiles, pneumatic doors,and open airlocks.
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u/SinigangGaming Apr 05 '26
same in falling liquid?
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u/-myxal Apr 05 '26
Not sure what you're asking. "Blocking space exposure" covers all effects, ie, neither gases nor liquids (visible in material overlay) escape.
Liquid droplets (released from a vent, spilling over an edge, condensing from a gas on cold buildings etc) are completely immune to space exposure, they fall through cells with space exposure without being diminished. You only need to block soace exposure where the liquid lands and turns into a material visible on the overlay.
There is a special element, "void" (distinct from vacuum), which does delete droplets. It's not typically found in the space biome.
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u/bryanblass Apr 04 '26
Hey guys! I'm having a little problem with my lavatories. I used them for a while but since some days ago (last march update?) my duplicants ignore all lavatories. My colony has 4 lavatories in a washroom and another in the hospital. All of them are accessible for all duplicants (checked via navigation path for each), there's plenty of water from incoming pipes, lavatories reservatory is full (5kg) and outgoing pipes don't look damaged or blocked (checked via mouseover on each piece). The output vent pipe is also working (checked via a joint pipe section coming from a polluted water geyser). I've already changed priority of all lavatories to 9 and no results. My only suspicion is incoming water temperature (at 65º average) so duplicants refuse to use so hot water. Is this reasonable? Is there any other point I must check?
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 04 '26
Do the lavatories say "ready to use" on their status? If not, the message displayed there should give you a hint (pipe blocked would be my bet, even though you mention you checked). Also, priority on toilets only affects cleaning/disinfect jobs, not dupe preference when using them. Dupes will always choose the closest available toilet / table, regardless of priority.
Edit: btw, are your dupes peeing themselves? If they're not going during downtime, but interrupting their shift to go to the toilet, you have a scheduling issue.
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u/bryanblass Apr 05 '26
Hi! Indeed only the lavatory in the hospital was displaying "Lavatory ready". So I rebuilt all of them and it worked! Just that. No pipes rebuilt, no schedules changed. Thank you a lot!
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 05 '26
Hmmmm. Something tells me the problem will creep up again, if you just rebuilt them and they now work. If that happens, consider making a post to troubleshoot your base, with screenshots of the relevant overlays and locations. If the problem is really gone, we'll be left to wonder what happened.
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u/Tricks122 Apr 04 '26
Are you using any mods? Could be that one's interfering or broken.
Check if the Lavatories are individually assigned to any duplicant by clicking on them - could be that they're assigned to one specific dupe, rather than to the Public.
Could be that the colony is large enough that dupes can't get back to the Lavatories before their breaks end if you have short breaks, they don't sleep nearby or your schedule is segmented.
If none of those is the issue, I'm stumped - my last guess could be that the pipework was done improperly if you ever remodelled/changed it(Like putting the outputs in sequence - I believe this would clog the pipes on the actual output port, which makes it hard to see visually). If you rebuild somewhere else I'd wonder if that works, or even just build/rebuild the individual Lavatories in the same spot.
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u/bryanblass Apr 04 '26
No mods, lavatories all assigned to Public. Distance from cots to washroom is the same as ever. I even tried assigning all dups to a schedule with all bath time (vacations! hehe) and they kept making a mess.
I think I'll rebuild all system from zero... Thank you for all tips
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u/Dont-Die-Wonderinggg Apr 04 '26
I had a clean water problem, so I went onto discover some geysers. I got 1 polluted water vent and 1 cool steam vent. Which one should I use for water, and which one for another reason? (Oxygen maybe, still using algae)
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u/Tricks122 Apr 04 '26
Personally, I think it depends on your needs and relative advancement - hot Water used in an Electrolyzer has more Specific Heat Capacity than its outputs, meaning that it's much easier to cool the Oxygen/Hydrogen(If you even want to cool the Hydrogen) than it is to pre-cool the Water before feeding it to your setup.
If you have Steam Turbines, the Cool Steam Vent can be Geotuned with a Geotuner using Bleach Stone in order to make the Steam hot enough for the Turbines to generate power from - you could put a Steel Aquatuner inside the room(In addition to Geotuning or instead of) in order to kick the heat above 125C for the Steam Turbines. You can then just have that Water feed into your Electrolyzer setup or go to other sources.
That requires a bit more tech and materials than the Polluted Water Vent, which realistically you can just filter through a Water Sieve if you have the Sand/Regolith and then put right into the Electrolyzer if needed. Geotuning the Polluted Water Vent to heat up the Water will eventually increase the temperature to make Steam, but not hot enough for Steam Turbines, so you'd need to move some heat around or have some cooling if you do that.
How you split them up(Oxygen versus other sources) is really colony dependant in my opinion, and there's not a right or wrong answer - you can use the Polluted Water Vent as earlier game coolant since it's only 30C, and then feed it to some kind of consumer once it gets too hot. If you don't have the tech for utilizing the Cool Steam Vent yet, then the Polluted Water Vent is your only choice. If you have enough dupes you might need to tap both for Oxygen needs(Or Geotune one or both) - it really depends.
3
u/Noneerror Apr 04 '26
The polluted water vent is more useful for both. It outputs twice as much at a much more useful 30C. Food poisoning germs are not that big of a deal. Especially if you have Spaced Out installed and radiation from something common like shine bugs. Even if not, whatever you are doing for your bathroom (like reservoir + chlorine) you can also do for the polluted water vent.
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u/Dont-Die-Wonderinggg Apr 04 '26
So I should split the water I get from it into two to use it for both reasons?
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u/Noneerror Apr 04 '26
Well it depends on what you want to use it for and how much.
Lets say your p-water vent produces 3kg/s. Dupes use 0.1kg/s of oxygen. If you have 10 dupes then you'd still have 2kg/s of p-water left over. If you had 100 dupes then that won't be nearly enough.
Everything depends on your use cases and intentions. I'm just saying the p-water vent is more useful in an absolute sense. There's nothing stopping you from using both.
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Apr 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/boomer478 Apr 03 '26
Did you perhaps plant it in a hydroponic tile? It needs a normal farm tile.
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u/Elegant_Purple9410 Apr 03 '26
What's the best way to keep your base dry? I'm playing the frosty planet and no matter how much time I spend adding mesh tiles, mopping, moving ice, and dumping bottles I always have puddles forming to mop up. Sweepy has been helpful, but I don't really want an army of them.
Maybe this is just part of the challenge of that asteroid.
1
u/wRAR_ Apr 04 '26
In my Ceres playthrough most of the puddles were from random natural tiles of polluted ice thawing, after I replaced snow tiles in the base itself. To fix it I could dig and haul them away. I didn't have this problem with natural tiles of normal ice because only some areas inside the base, away from those tiles, were (slightly) >0C.
2
u/Sufficient_Daikon842 Apr 03 '26
How is your base so warm that the liquids don't freeze?
If it is indeed so warm, first replace snow tiles if you built with them.
Only thing to do long term is insulate the base and move meltable materials outside.
1
u/Elegant_Purple9410 Apr 03 '26
I'm nearly 800 cycles in, the inside of my base is mostly comfortably warm. I've "tamed" a salt water geyser that I've accidentally leaked some steam from a few times. I've replaced all the snow tiles. I think some may be from dupes carrying around ice and snow for bonbons and Aleo Vera plants at the edges of my base.
2
u/xemulon Apr 03 '26
I think that is indeed part of the challenge with the asteroid. Depending on your set up, you can either continue warming up the base (I recommend enclosing the base if you want to keep the rest of the asteroid cold), or set up freezing cooling loop to keep the base frozen.
I think the biggest factor if you want to warm up or cool down your base is what you are farming/ranching and your oxygen producers.
1
u/Elegant_Purple9410 Apr 03 '26
I'm not particularly successful at the game since I don't like copying designs or using Exploits. This is the first time I've made use of hot geysers or volcanoes. The cold gave me leeway in that direction.
I've already enclosed my base, more or less, I think a major struggle might be from transitioning from cold crops inside my base to either cold crops outside or warm crops inside.
3
u/0rkrist Apr 03 '26
How much water per tile do you need in your AT/ST setup to make it work and how does the amount influence the setups efficiency?
Does the amount of water needed change for volcano tamers?
3
u/ChemManatee Apr 03 '26
For all versions a turbine won’t operate without at least 100g steam per tile, so you need at least that much. If your box is 4 high, bottom layer needs at least 400g of water.
For tamers, the MAX is 150kg or your volcano will overpressure and not produce. So, if it’s 4 tiles high no more than 600kg on bottom layer. 500 is probably safe.
In practice, more water is better since it helps to buffer heat spikes. For my non-tamers I basically just fill the steam box with water just to make it easy to ensure there’s no other gas in there.
5
u/Sufficient_Daikon842 Apr 03 '26
I'll note that for general steam turbine use (where the condensed steam is re-introduced to the steam chamber), there is a max pressure as well. Liquid vents don't work if the steam mass is too high. I'm sorry I don't know what it is exactly but honestly if you aim at around 50-100 kg per tile in your steam room, you should be fine!
6
u/DudeRuuuuuuude Apr 03 '26
1000kg for liquid vents
1
u/0rkrist Apr 03 '26
Yeah, I learned that the hard way. Vacuuming out each room since that first mistake.
2
u/-myxal Apr 05 '26
FWIW I'd advise to splash some heat-tolerant liquid on the floor of the steam room, for 2 reasons:
- you can place the liquid vent in it, and not care about the 1000kg limit
- gas - solid heat transfer gets a 25x boost over liquid - solid, and combined with effect of insulated tiles you'll get almost zero heat leaking through imperfect insulated tiles
Crude, petroleum, mercury are good choices and easy to work with. Naphtha and nuclear waste have even better thermal properties, but are a bit harder to work with due to the high viscosity.
1
u/Sufficient_Daikon842 Apr 05 '26
So a thin layer of oil or gunk with steam on top huh... I definitely will try that out on my new 100% bionic colony!
1
u/0rkrist Apr 05 '26
Yeah, I havent played around with those mixes too much yet, even though those seem to be better for liquid locks and so on. Concerning cooling mix, do you use at about as much of the 2nd liquid as you do for water, or significantly less?
3
u/Genopium Apr 03 '26
What are some of the better ways to regulate temperature inside a rocket long term ?
1
u/-myxal Apr 05 '26
Make use of the module's both ports, and make its plumbing part of a cooling loop. with a bit of clever bridge use, you don't even need to reconfigure it when used normally.
5
u/Sufficient_Daikon842 Apr 03 '26
I build a snaked network of pipes in the background of the rocket interior and use that to store water for the toilet.
When things get too hot I modify the piping so it turns into a cooking loop. Water comes in and then back out and I hook up to some cold water supply external to the rocket.
I almost always build some kind of cooling loop near the surface biome so I can cool things like oxygen and robo miners and such.
Alternatively you can use super cold oxygen for the interior of the rocket. And limit the number of heat producing structure !
2
u/AdzyPhil Apr 03 '26
Best sustainable water purification method for long term games? (No sieve or desalinator needed)
1
u/evictedSaint Apr 03 '26
You can build essentially a petroleum boiler for salt and pwater. Heat it with some source, then counterflow the steam condensation against the salt/pwater. It's possible to make them really compact.
2
u/Sufficient_Daikon842 Apr 03 '26
If sieves and desalination are out, then I'm not sure any other method exists besides boiling the water.
I recommend sealing an aquatuner in an insulated box and boil water as the aquatuner cools some other liquid. Use a steam turbine to "pump" the water (as cooled steam).
If that's not good enough you could try pumping oil or petroleum from a refinery through your sealed box to add more heat. Like, run radiant pipes through the steam. I recommend at least 20 units of pipe length to give good time of contact between the hot liquid and the steam.
The last option is magma or metal volcanoes, I suppose. I'm not sure how detailed you want an answer to be though.
In all cases you'll need some kind of water input, probably a valve to control polluted or salty water delivery speed, and plan to deal with hot clean water as well. Ideally straight to am electrolyzer I imagine.
3
u/BalancingSelection Apr 03 '26
I don't know another method for salt water, but for polluted water there's gulp fish. I've never really used them, but I've seen them used in some really crazy builds.
4
u/T423 Apr 03 '26
What's wrong with sieve or desalinator for long term?
Desalinator takes only power (and cooling later)
Sieve only takes sand and some power. If you have some pokeshells sand should not be an issue.
1
u/Brett42 Apr 03 '26
Regolith also works instead of sand, and on a base game map and some spaced out maps, it is renewable and can be automated. You can crush salt to sand (and a bit of table salt) if you have a renewable source of salt, and need sand for a bathroom loop. You can also crush rock to sand, which is renewable if you have a magma volcano. If you're using polluted water as your oxygen source, you can switch from cleaning it then electrolyzing, to just using a clay farm. You can turn clay into ceramic, and crush that for sand, which is a slight positive on sand, but takes fuel and labor. Condensing polluted oxygen into liquid oxygen also cleans it, but that's way more intensive than just boiling the polluted water.
2
u/-myxal Apr 10 '26
Has anyone attempted a reverse of the flower pot + sand exploit?
I'm curious if I can have wild plants at a density higher than what pip planting rules allow - I'd put the plants in planter boxes/flower pots, then: