[1.0] Sea Block Pack 0.4.10

[jodokus31]

On my older SeaBlock game I made train stations for lots of simple things doing just one step. E.g. turn sulfur into sulfur dioxide. Another station to turn sulfur dioxide into sulfuric acid. While this allows balancing simply by setting priorities for LTN and is very flexible I run into congestion problem on the rail network. The mineral sludge production just has too much throughput.

So my next game I made the whole mineral sludge production mostly self contained. The sulfur loop internal with just the excess going to train stations. Internal charcoal and power production too with basically no crushed stone excess. Great for reducing train traffic. But with the latest changes this goes into the extreme on the other side. Not enough exports.

The sulfur loop has to stay internal to the geode washing, there simply is too much throughput there to carry that around the main train system. I think the oxygen consumption is too high to carry by train comfortably too. But the needed nitrogen might be little enough to export by train. Or maybe mix air splitting and water splitting to produce and export ammonia directly. Something to think about.

Last time, i had several geodes to mineral sludge modules, which exported excess sulfur, excess crushed stone and excess nitrogen. sulfur loop and charcoal filters was internally. Later i flared sulfur from washing plant, if its enough
The throughput was only problematic for mineral sludge in barrels. Should have been better with fluid wagons.

I think, next time, i'll crystallize it to ores and crush it directly, let LTN do the ore balancing, and produce wood pellets for export. Or i export mineralized water, not sure yet. With fluid wagons it seems better than exporting crushed stone.

[minno]

Just hit a major milestone in my 100x science cost run:



I've been running off of about 280 MW of algae power to make 28 r/g/b science per minute. Now I've almost finished laying out a 1.8 GW nuclear plant, with plenty of room to extend it. Next up is to research and then mass-produce speed/productivity 1 modules, mostly because I'm sick of killing worms and want to be able to make everything way more compact.

[minno]

I'm trying out the new Bob's Mods updates to see what will need to change. None of my main production lines (r/g/b science, geode washing, charcoal from algae) were broken, and it doesn't look like any of the ratios changed either.

Bob's Power and Intermediates added higher-tier heat pipes that appear to let heat flow more quickly. It adds its own higher-tier nuclear chain with thorium fuel cells and plutonium, which is separate from the one that the Nuclear Fuel mod currently adds. It also makes uranium fuel cells use lead plates instead of iron plates. There's currently no way to make thorium ore, but that will probably be in Angel's Refining where all of the other ore sorting recipes come from.

The next pack should decide whether to remove Nuclear Fuel, remove thorium processing, or somehow merge the two processes. With Nuclear Fuel, you get plutonium from used uranium cells that you can use instead of U-235 to make new uranium cells. You can also make plutonium cells that give a lot of extra plutonium. Bob's thorium lets you make cells with U-235 and thorium, and those cells produce plutonium when reprocessed that can make more thorium cells. It looks like it's balanced around having Kovarex processing, since it replaces U-238 with thorium in the advanced chain but still uses U-235.

Bob's Personal Equipment is a new mod that takes all of the personal equipment out of Bob's Warfare, so that will need to be added to the pack. No actual changes as far as I can see.

[alercah]

Playing my first game, and it's very frustrating that a lot of early techs that require steel to be of any use (because you can't use the buildings without it) are not locked behind the steel tech. It misled me down several paths and I wasted a lot of resources trying to do stuff that I couldn't until after steel, and had to wait a lot for production to catch up as a result. I don't know where in the chain of mods is responsible for this, but in the end, it's frustrating.

[mrvn]

On my older SeaBlock game I made train stations for lots of simple things doing just one step. E.g. turn sulfur into sulfur dioxide. Another station to turn sulfur dioxide into sulfuric acid. While this allows balancing simply by setting priorities for LTN and is very flexible I run into congestion problem on the rail network. The mineral sludge production just has too much throughput.

So my next game I made the whole mineral sludge production mostly self contained. The sulfur loop internal with just the excess going to train stations. Internal charcoal and power production too with basically no crushed stone excess. Great for reducing train traffic. But with the latest changes this goes into the extreme on the other side. Not enough exports.

The sulfur loop has to stay internal to the geode washing, there simply is too much throughput there to carry that around the main train system. I think the oxygen consumption is too high to carry by train comfortably too. But the needed nitrogen might be little enough to export by train. Or maybe mix air splitting and water splitting to produce and export ammonia directly. Something to think about.

Last time, i had several geodes to mineral sludge modules, which exported excess sulfur, excess crushed stone and excess nitrogen. sulfur loop and charcoal filters was internally. Later i flared sulfur from washing plant, if its enough
The throughput was only problematic for mineral sludge in barrels. Should have been better with fluid wagons.

I think, next time, i'll crystallize it to ores and crush it directly, let LTN do the ore balancing, and produce wood pellets for export. Or i export mineralized water, not sure yet. With fluid wagons it seems better than exporting crushed stone.

I revised my geode washing plant to just plain geode washing, crushing and filtering and the sulfur loop. Oxygen (LFFFFLLFFFFL) and charcoal (LC) goes in on one end and Mineral Sludge (LFFFFLFFFFL), Sulfuric Waste Water and Purified Water (LFFFFL) comes out the other end. Haven't had time to try the Ammonia production for Oxygen yet. At 200k Mineral Sludge per train the turn around time is low enough for now. And it doesn't have to go far. I've organized my base in colums with rail loops and a depot between each. So the train leaves the depot, picks up the Mineral Sludge, keeps going in the same direction on the loop, drops it of at the crystalizer and finished the loop returning to the depot.

Each module produces a yellow belt of crushed stone and with 800 stack size it takes quite a while for a cargo wagon to fill up. I don't think Mineralized Water is more compact although it might be faster to load/unload. Did you check the math on that one?

I also crush the crystalized ore directly. There really is no point in anything else. The only use for saphirite is to crush it so why wait? But I do ship the Mineral Sludge around first. Do you want to crystalize directly at the washing plant? That would mean you need more crystalizers, enough to keep the washing plant busy even if some ore isn't used as much.

[jodokus31]

Each module produces a yellow belt of crushed stone and with 800 stack size it takes quite a while for a cargo wagon to fill up. I don't think Mineralized Water is more compact although it might be faster to load/unload. Did you check the math on that one?

I also crush the crystalized ore directly. There really is no point in anything else. The only use for saphirite is to crush it so why wait? But I do ship the Mineral Sludge around first. Do you want to crystalize directly at the washing plant? That would mean you need more crystalizers, enough to keep the washing plant busy even if some ore isn't used as much.

I didnt do the math with mineralized water vs. crushed stone. But I intend to turn all of the crushed stone into mineralized water anyway. First to produce power and secondary to produce basic saphrite/stiratite, which is not much waste in marathon mode and should be easier than crushed stone to mineral sludge. I could also do landfill, which is probably the best use.
I think, that crushed stone takes more space on belt than mineralized water in pipes and is therefore better for UPS, if direct insert the crushed stone to liquifiers. But again didnt do the math yet.

Mineral sludge export vs. direct crystallize. I want experiment with it. Last time i had one or two big crystallization stations, which exported the crushed ores and crushed stone. But i also had to overbuild the crystallizers for each ore to dynamically balance the ore per need.
I imagine, that i can do it also decentralized for each washing setup. Maybe stations, which priotize a certain ore and produce others, if full. But it also needs to be overbuilt. Or i give all ores the same prio and let backup the unneeded ore, the excess mineral sludge goes to other ores
In the end, i think, a certain amount of overbuilding is needed. It can be reduced, if you imagine, which ratio the ores have in the long run and buffer a bit. But i think buffering too much doesnt help.
The biggest problem with overbuilding crystallizers is, that you may waste precious modules and beacons for idling machines.
Another approach could be to use the mod crafting combinator to switch recipes dynamically, but i'm currently not willing to try it.

[jodokus31]

Playing my first game, and it's very frustrating that a lot of early techs that require steel to be of any use (because you can't use the buildings without it) are not locked behind the steel tech. It misled me down several paths and I wasted a lot of resources trying to do stuff that I couldn't until after steel, and had to wait a lot for production to catch up as a result. I don't know where in the chain of mods is responsible for this, but in the end, it's frustrating.

Bobs recent changes to steel moved it a bit further down in the tech tree. Before it was not such a big problem, because it was researched faster. Maybe metallurgy and such could be dependent on steel

[jodokus31]

Just hit a major milestone in my 100x science cost run:

I've been running off of about 280 MW of algae power to make 28 r/g/b science per minute. Now I've almost finished laying out a 1.8 GW nuclear plant, with plenty of room to extend it. Next up is to research and then mass-produce speed/productivity 1 modules, mostly because I'm sick of killing worms and want to be able to make everything way more compact.

Very impressive. May I ask how long it took? And do you use Basic Algae or Advanced Algae?
I just reached geodes in my marathon after 50h. It could be faster, if i built more basic algae and mineral sludge, but thats too boring. And didnt want to build to much, which i have to remove later

[minno]

Very impressive. May I ask how long it took? And do you use Basic Algae or Advanced Algae?
I just reached geodes in my marathon after 50h. It could be faster, if i built more basic algae and mineral sludge, but thats too boring. And didnt want to build to much, which i have to remove later

It was at 246 hours. Not all active play, since I usually left it running on the other monitor while I was doing other things at the computer (but not overnight). The algae power cells were all using advanced algae, with 16 copies of this: https://i.imgur.com/T6LuqLO.png.

I got construction bots fairly quickly so that I could tear down, rebuild, and duplicate pieces without too much work. It goes a lot faster when you have the entire base covered in roboports and 3000 bots in the network.

[DerHeiligste]

It was at 246 hours. Not all active play, since I usually left it running on the other monitor while I was doing other things at the computer (but not overnight). The algae power cells were all using advanced algae, with 16 copies of this: https://i.imgur.com/T6LuqLO.png.

That's a really beautiful design!

[vaendryl]

So. I just downloaded 0.3.5 to have a new attempt at the pack, but I wanted to play without any worms because I think they're just annoying. setting enemy bases to low or disabled didn't seem to do anything in map generation, so i went ahead and opened data.lua from the base seablock mod and deleted the lines that spawns them. that works just fine, and I don't have any worms in my game as far as I can tell.

any reason doing this could bite me in the arse later down the line? only thing I can think of is alien artifacts not dropping but that should be okay as you can make those from spores/bacteria too.

[equitime77]

The last time I played Seablock I cant remember getting so frustrated. It seems that the path between different items are either blocked or really hidden. Or you research things that you cannot use. Im currently trying to work out how to make and use bobmodium. There seems to be many blocks, for instance, how do I make mineral sludge, how to I actually make bobmodium? Helmoid? planner doesnt show how things can be used, even FNEI doesnt show how things can connect. And that is with me looking really hard.

Now granted, Ive had a bad week with the old ME/Fibro so have got brain fog, but I dont think it should be this hard?

I really enjoyed playing it before as I like a good challenge.

Edit, example: In red science we can research how to make a tree, without any recipes shown how to use a tree. I would expect an arboretum to output wood? Else what is the point this early in the game, should it be later in the research tree?

Edit 2 farms should be put behind green, you cant use them before. Mine says no recipe.

[mrvn]

Each module produces a yellow belt of crushed stone and with 800 stack size it takes quite a while for a cargo wagon to fill up. I don't think Mineralized Water is more compact although it might be faster to load/unload. Did you check the math on that one?

I also crush the crystalized ore directly. There really is no point in anything else. The only use for saphirite is to crush it so why wait? But I do ship the Mineral Sludge around first. Do you want to crystalize directly at the washing plant? That would mean you need more crystalizers, enough to keep the washing plant busy even if some ore isn't used as much.

I didnt do the math with mineralized water vs. crushed stone. But I intend to turn all of the crushed stone into mineralized water anyway. First to produce power and secondary to produce basic saphrite/stiratite, which is not much waste in marathon mode and should be easier than crushed stone to mineral sludge. I could also do landfill, which is probably the best use.
I think, that crushed stone takes more space on belt than mineralized water in pipes and is therefore better for UPS, if direct insert the crushed stone to liquifiers. But again didnt do the math yet.

Mineral sludge export vs. direct crystallize. I want experiment with it. Last time i had one or two big crystallization stations, which exported the crushed ores and crushed stone. But i also had to overbuild the crystallizers for each ore to dynamically balance the ore per need.
I imagine, that i can do it also decentralized for each washing setup. Maybe stations, which priotize a certain ore and produce others, if full. But it also needs to be overbuilt. Or i give all ores the same prio and let backup the unneeded ore, the excess mineral sludge goes to other ores
In the end, i think, a certain amount of overbuilding is needed. It can be reduced, if you imagine, which ratio the ores have in the long run and buffer a bit. But i think buffering too much doesnt help.
The biggest problem with overbuilding crystallizers is, that you may waste precious modules and beacons for idling machines.
Another approach could be to use the mod crafting combinator to switch recipes dynamically, but i'm currently not willing to try it.

Train volume wise mineralized water is a total loss. One fluid wagon holds 25000 mineralized water. Thats 2500 crushed stone, or 0.08 cargo wagons.
Belt vs. pipe might be different. But nothing for long distances. Better to turn the crushed stone into ores locally and transport that.

Crystalizing mineralized water gives 1 Saphirite + 0.64 Stiratite for 18.19 crushed stone and 303.1kW power.

Crystalizing the same through mineral sludge uses 16.4 crushed stone, 0.17 charcoal, 26.25 purified water, 18.45 oxygen and 1.3MW power. It outputs 2.58 Sulfuric waste water and 6.05 mineralized water (from the sulfuric acid loop). So pretty much a looser. The only advantage I can see is that you get to choose which ores to crystalize. But who doesn't need some Saphirite and Stiratite? Just produce less of them from geode to balance it.

There are a number of recipes that produce mineralized water and a number that produce crushed stone. I'm going to make a station that accepts both, turns the crushed stone into mineralized water with a underflow walve and then crystalizes that. A Liquifier mk III take 300 Mineralized Water per second so you do not need many of them before the pipe or train becomes the bottleneck.

[jodokus31]

Train volume wise mineralized water is a total loss. One fluid wagon holds 25000 mineralized water. Thats 2500 crushed stone, or 0.08 cargo wagons.
Belt vs. pipe might be different. But nothing for long distances. Better to turn the crushed stone into ores locally and transport that.

Crystalizing mineralized water gives 1 Saphirite + 0.64 Stiratite for 18.19 crushed stone and 303.1kW power.

Crystalizing the same through mineral sludge uses 16.4 crushed stone, 0.17 charcoal, 26.25 purified water, 18.45 oxygen and 1.3MW power. It outputs 2.58 Sulfuric waste water and 6.05 mineralized water (from the sulfuric acid loop). So pretty much a looser. The only advantage I can see is that you get to choose which ores to crystalize. But who doesn't need some Saphirite and Stiratite? Just produce less of them from geode to balance it.

There are a number of recipes that produce mineralized water and a number that produce crushed stone. I'm going to make a station that accepts both, turns the crushed stone into mineralized water with a underflow walve and then crystalizes that. A Liquifier mk III take 300 Mineralized Water per second so you do not need many of them before the pipe or train becomes the bottleneck.

Ok, thanks for the math. So, its seems to me, that its better to process mineralized water on side, either to wood pellets/charcoal or basic crystallizing. Or else export it in shape of crushed stone if ever. Later probably only basic crystallizing, if power is solved, because its takes less space. Of course an additional station to process crushed stone/mineralized water from various other sources should not hurt.

[jodokus31]

Very impressive. May I ask how long it took? And do you use Basic Algae or Advanced Algae?
I just reached geodes in my marathon after 50h. It could be faster, if i built more basic algae and mineral sludge, but thats too boring. And didnt want to build to much, which i have to remove later

It was at 246 hours. Not all active play, since I usually left it running on the other monitor while I was doing other things at the computer (but not overnight). The algae power cells were all using advanced algae, with 16 copies of this: https://i.imgur.com/T6LuqLO.png.

I got construction bots fairly quickly so that I could tear down, rebuild, and duplicate pieces without too much work. It goes a lot faster when you have the entire base covered in roboports and 3000 bots in the network.

Definitly a nice mode compared to marathon.

[minno]

Definitly a nice mode compared to marathon.

I mentioned why I like this setting (100x science cost, normal recipes) better than marathon (4x science cost, expensive recipes) here. Marathon results in something like 20x the raw materials for research (4x number of packs, 2x mineral sludge for metals, 2.5x metal for science), but it also makes buildings a lot more expensive. When it's only the research cost that increases, it's a lot easier to build up to the scale that you need to progress.

[jodokus31]

Definitly a nice mode compared to marathon.

I mentioned why I like this setting (100x science cost, normal recipes) better than marathon (4x science cost, expensive recipes) here. Marathon results in something like 20x the raw materials for research (4x number of packs, 2x mineral sludge for metals, 2.5x metal for science), but it also makes buildings a lot more expensive. When it's only the research cost that increases, it's a lot easier to build up to the scale that you need to progress.

Yeah, I did read it. I like the marathon, because it also offers different builds/ratios and the buildings feel much more valuable. But i can see the charm. Maybe I'll try it, if I get too frustrated with marathon

[alercah]

Another similar tech tree issue: there's no way to get titanium ore before blue science, near as I can tell, but titanium smelting is green science, as are several buildings (e.g. crystallizer 2) that require titanium. Oof, what a waste of research and planning.

[mrvn]

Another similar tech tree issue: there's no way to get titanium ore before blue science, near as I can tell, but titanium smelting is green science, as are several buildings (e.g. crystallizer 2) that require titanium. Oof, what a waste of research and planning.

I always get frustrated by the crystalizers and filtration plants mkII. They look so nice in my crafting menu but I can't craft them for the longest time.

[vaendryl]

has anyone found a clever way to fool the new 0.17 fluid system where you can't connect different kinds of fluids to the same system so you can fuel oil burners with either fuel oil or naptha based on what you've got more of? haven't managed it myself.

I know it's not important later on but right now I don't even have blue science going.