[MOD 1.1] Sea Block Pack 0.5.16

[arrowcircle]

Oh, latest update broken a lot of thing on my base. Also, I found, that sorting of purified materials for platinum and tungsten with latest tier of facilities is pain in the ass. I also found, that manganese powder and plates have no use at all. Is it intended?

[KiwiHawk]

Oh, latest update broken a lot of thing on my base. Also, I found, that sorting of purified materials for platinum and tungsten with latest tier of facilities is pain in the ass. I also found, that manganese powder and plates have no use at all. Is it intended?

Breaking changes are listed here, if that helps? https://seablock.fandom.com/wiki/Breaking_Changes
Manganese powder and plates should both be hidden. Where do you see these? Can you post a screenshot please? If it's in FNEI, make sure you have Show hidden items and Show hidden recipes unticked.

[vaendryl]

so, this isn't really a complaint at all, but an observation I've been chewing on for a while.

I remember in previous versions of seablock electrolyser electrodes were something I could research but I would never use as I didn't feel they were worth the hassle at all. I don't quite remember the specifics but at the very least it used to be that you'd have a 1% chance per use of losing the electrode. I think there were other reasons why all in all it didn't feel worth it to actually use them.

in this version it certainly seems they've gotten a serious buff somewhere along the way. no more chance you lose them. they cut down the processing time by a whopping 50% (effectively halving the power cost of producing slag, quite significant in the early game) but on top of all that - cleaning them gives you absolute metric F.loads of mineral water.

SO much mineral water that a rather modest slag farming setup of about 20 tier2 electrolysers using the electrode recipe (which produce a total of 15 slag per second, precisely filling a yellow belt) also require 15 cleaning operations per second which nets you 150 mineral water per second - completely for free as just a side benefit. adding in further slag processing and cleaning the waste water gives another bonus 30 min.water per second, but you already got that - nothing too special.

great, free mineral water is a sweet deal right? so what am I on about, you ask?

well, that 150 bonus free mineral water can be pumped straight into a gaggle of algea farns. it's enough to keep almost 20 tier3 alg.farms (which aren't cheap but still require only very basic materials) constantly busy making green algea. that translates into a pretty impressive 19.4 nett. charcoal per second. assuming you don't even bother enriching those with hydrogen that translates to about 3.6 charcoal pellets per second (even after deducting some charcoal for filters and blast furnaces related to the 15 slag/s you're producing). that's 86,4MW of power worth. keep in mind that running the entire slag operation from water to copper/iron plates (plus the algea farms) takes a total of 30MW to keep functioning, and this power is completely free as an extra bonus just from using electrode cleaning.

"normally" using algea farms for power production is something you do at the beginning because you have to. it's really annoying because you have to have a separate set of (power hungry) electrolysers and some infrastructure just to supply your alg.farms with min.water. no longer the case. your primary interest in seablock - producing as much mineral sludge as you can - now not only fully powers itself, it does so almost three times over.

so why invest so heavily in getting farms running so you can squeeze some of that juicy fuel oil? the confounding hell that is petrochem sure doesn't sound very appealing other than getting the bare minimum for science packs.

for plastics you say? might I introduce you to our lord and saviour min.water -> cellusose -> methanol -> propane -> plastic? why use anything more complicated than that? mineral water is basically free!

now, I know it certainly sounds like I'm whining that this recipe is far too OP but the truth is I'm really not even sure. it's certainly far better than it used to be. maybe it got buffed a little bit too much. I dunno. in the long term power gen disappears as a real concern anyway so whatever?
in reality I'm just curious to know if other people think it's OP or really no big deal.

[vjbone]

And i am voiding all min.water... Time to rethink my plans...

[jodokus31]

getting slag2 is a turning point in early game. Suddenly you have power and double slag output. You will need all the charcoal you can get at a certain point, so algae2 will be remain useful even with farming power. Also mineralized water can be crystallized to sapharite/stiratite to get rid of it fast, without the need to void it.
Also geode processing is a good alternative to slag2, which uses less power, but doesn't produce so much mineralized water, but more sulfur (not sure, if it's still more positive, bc sulfur from washing plants got reduced)
Algae2 for power is not so scalable like farming power and nuclear is yet better.

I'm not sure, if its too OP. In late, late end game, you might even switch back to slag1, because it has better beaconing options, when power is not a concern anymore.

[Bauer]

SO much mineral water that a rather modest slag farming setup of about 20 tier2 electrolysers using the electrode recipe (which produce a total of 15 slag per second, precisely filling a yellow belt) also require 15 cleaning operations per second which nets you 150 mineral water per second - completely for free as just a side benefit. adding in further slag processing and cleaning the waste water gives another bonus 30 min.water per second, but you already got that - nothing too special.

We might even want to bring this forward a bit.

I started a new sea block pack map yesterday. After about 3 hours, I had 24 electrolyser up and running (without too big power drops). That's about 6 slag/s. (I write "about" because the production stats show a little less than 360/min and I can't find the reason -- energy is fine.) This is now powered by 14 green alg.farms leaving not much head-room for expansion. The 6 slags go about 50/50 into min water and landfill. This is way too little to even supply one crystallizer (still turning min-water into saph and stir).

Boy, this is slow!!!

I priortised growth over science. Growth requires lots of landfill, which ate up a huge chunk of my slag production. I had to handcraft truck loads of wood bricks to support feeding the beast with energy.

So, is it IMBA or do I suck?

[jodokus31]

SO much mineral water that a rather modest slag farming setup of about 20 tier2 electrolysers using the electrode recipe (which produce a total of 15 slag per second, precisely filling a yellow belt) also require 15 cleaning operations per second which nets you 150 mineral water per second - completely for free as just a side benefit. adding in further slag processing and cleaning the waste water gives another bonus 30 min.water per second, but you already got that - nothing too special.

We might even want to bring this forward a bit.

I started a new sea block pack map yesterday. After about 3 hours, I had 24 electrolyser up and running (without too big power drops). That's about 6 slag/s. (I write "about" because the production stats show a little less than 360/min and I can't find the reason -- energy is fine.) This is now powered by 14 green alg.farms leaving not much head-room for expansion. The 6 slags go about 50/50 into min water and landfill. This is way too little to even supply one crystallizer (still turning min-water into saph and stir).

Boy, this is slow!!!

I priortised growth over science. Growth requires lots of landfill, which ate up a huge chunk of my slag production. I had to handcraft truck loads of wood bricks to support feeding the beast with energy.

So, is it IMBA or do I suck?

Seablock is slow (If you are fast, you reach green science in about 6 hours), but well balanced. Maybe some tips:
- Landfill from washing plants is a lot more energy efficient. They can be chained to only get salinewater as voidable byproduct.
- Green Algae processing 2 is a lot more space efficient (I can't see if you are using that already)
- Slag processing is a big jump in slag productivity.
- If you plan in editor/creative mode, you can minimize landfill usage

[Bauer]

Seablock is slow (If you are fast, you reach green science in about 6 hours), but well balanced. Maybe some tips:
- Landfill from washing plants is a lot more energy efficient. They can be chained to only get salinewater as voidable byproduct.
- Green Algae processing 2 is a lot more space efficient (I can't see if you are using that already)
- Slag processing is a big jump in slag productivity.
- If you plan in editor/creative mode, you can minimize landfill usage

I will look into landfill from washing plants this evening. I was scared away by the required foot-print. The process is more engery efficient but less efficient in terms of building materials, especially if you take land-fill into account.

Yes, I do Green Algae 2. Otherwise it wouldn't work.

[jodokus31]

Seablock is slow (If you are fast, you reach green science in about 6 hours), but well balanced. Maybe some tips:
- Landfill from washing plants is a lot more energy efficient. They can be chained to only get salinewater as voidable byproduct.
- Green Algae processing 2 is a lot more space efficient (I can't see if you are using that already)
- Slag processing is a big jump in slag productivity.
- If you plan in editor/creative mode, you can minimize landfill usage

I will look into landfill from washing plants this evening. I was scared away by the required foot-print. The process is more engery efficient but less efficient in terms of building materials, especially if you take land-fill into account.

Yes, I do Green Algae 2. Otherwise it wouldn't work.

On thing, i forgot. the 1. stage of washing also has hydrogen-sulfide as by-produce, which can be combined with oxygen to get solid sulfur.
I don't want to spoil more, so don't click, if you don't want to know more

Actually it's the only available source of sulfur to get sludge processing kick-started. You don't need much of it, but it also doesn't hurt to stockpile sulfur. mineral sludge processing is a sulfur positive loop, which slowly accumulates sulfur or sulfuric waste water.

[live22morrow]

Saying that power is free doesn't really mean much, since all power is "free" in Seablock. If you want to judge power setups at all, the most reasonable methods would be by space footprint or by efficiency (power out vs power in). By both of those metrics, algae farms are one of the weakest power sources, even assuming you get the mineral water for free. Not that efficient methods matter, since even algae farming to charcoal pellets can be scaled up to endgame level without getting too ridiculous.

And mineralized water isn't a particularly important fluid anyways outside of early game. Aside from algae farms, its main use is filtering crystal slurry, but you get most or all of the mineral water you need from the geode washing, so there isn't that great a demand.

[vaendryl]

Saying that power is free doesn't really mean much, since all power is "free" in Seablock. If you want to judge power setups at all, the most reasonable methods would be by space footprint or by efficiency (power out vs power in). By both of those metrics, algae farms are one of the weakest power sources, even assuming you get the mineral water for free. Not that efficient methods matter, since even algae farming to charcoal pellets can be scaled up to endgame level without getting too ridiculous.

And mineralized water isn't a particularly important fluid anyways outside of early game. Aside from algae farms, its main use is filtering crystal slurry, but you get most or all of the mineral water you need from the geode washing, so there isn't that great a demand.

it's free in the sense that you don't need to worry much about the input side of things.

yeah, you can build fields of windmills but that's really poor use of space and resources. you can build fields of solar panels and that works, but again. uses up a LOT of space and no power and night. so the real comparison is algea->charcoal or farms->fuel oil. how space efficient is one over the other? (disregarding how annoying farming is to unlock with the alien life science tokens etc)

farms are a lot smaller so can be stacked close together but if you want the really good plants like mushredtato you need to generate fertilizer which means you're gonna deal with sourcing urea. have fun with that. you're also gonna have to deal with tonnes of washing plants to get the amount of mud you need. just 10 farms require ~20 washing plants (mark 2). washing plants aren't as big as algea farms are but damn, they're still pretty big!
in the end, I'm not quite convinced farms are much more space efficient when you add in all the required infrastructure around them, but they're for sure a lot more complicated.

if you bother to use the hydrogen generated in my original example the total power generated by that bonus 150 mineral water comes to 111,6MW. generating 250MW with just 10 farms is perfectly possible, but how much space does the input stuff require?

[jodokus31]

Saying that power is free doesn't really mean much, since all power is "free" in Seablock. If you want to judge power setups at all, the most reasonable methods would be by space footprint or by efficiency (power out vs power in). By both of those metrics, algae farms are one of the weakest power sources, even assuming you get the mineral water for free. Not that efficient methods matter, since even algae farming to charcoal pellets can be scaled up to endgame level without getting too ridiculous.

And mineralized water isn't a particularly important fluid anyways outside of early game. Aside from algae farms, its main use is filtering crystal slurry, but you get most or all of the mineral water you need from the geode washing, so there isn't that great a demand.

it's free in the sense that you don't need to worry much about the input side of things.

yeah, you can build fields of windmills but that's really poor use of space and resources. you can build fields of solar panels and that works, but again. uses up a LOT of space and no power and night. so the real comparison is algea->charcoal or farms->fuel oil. how space efficient is one over the other? (disregarding how annoying farming is to unlock with the alien life science tokens etc)

farms are a lot smaller so can be stacked close together but if you want the really good plants like mushredtato you need to generate fertilizer which means you're gonna deal with sourcing urea. have fun with that. you're also gonna have to deal with tonnes of washing plants to get the amount of mud you need. just 10 farms require ~20 washing plants (mark 2). washing plants aren't as big as algea farms are but damn, they're still pretty big!
in the end, I'm not quite convinced farms are much more space efficient when you add in all the required infrastructure around them, but they're for sure a lot more complicated.

if you bother to use the hydrogen generated in my original example the total power generated by that bonus 150 mineral water comes to 111,6MW. generating 250MW with just 10 farms is perfectly possible, but how much space does the input stuff require?

you should check binafran. Almost no bio tech requirement, not very big and quite efficient.

[Stefa168]

binafran

That's our current go-to for charcoal and anything else that needs pulp and similar stuff. Indeed, it is very easy to use!

[mrvn]

I think you are forgetting one factor when judging power generation: UPS

If the footprint is smaller because the entities are smaller but you need more of them then UPS wise it can still be a loss. Solar cells are the absolute UPS winner if it weren't for nights. I'm not sure how wind farms work internally? Are they like solar cells and get added up once by the game engine? Everything else has a UPS cost that rises as you scale it up. Something that has large fluid networks can be really bad. Lots of small fluid networks can multi thread and gain UPS there.

Other than the initial cost in landfill the footprint of a power plant is rather unimportant long term. That is if the footprint is larger just because the entities are larger, not because you need more of them. My experience with Sea Block was that at the time I had a choice in power generation I had crushed stone coming out of my ears and picking up 100k landfill to extend the island is just another day in Sea Block. My warehouse with landfill does get full. So it's more about how fast you can place that landfill. If the UPS drops everything will take longer.

PS: yes, I know, the crushed stone going into landfill could instead go into ore generation or power. But later in the game the percentage that goes into landfill becomes small.

[live22morrow]

One of the advantages of farming comes from design of Angel's. Setting up the urea chain just for farming is rather inconvenient, but once you're at advanced electronics, you want urea set up anyways for resin, and the urea needed for fertilizer is pretty small in comparison. And quillnoa farming gives you good amounts of fuel oil, but you also get equal amounts of nutrient pulp, which is useful for most of the animal recipe chains and for processing into the more advanced chemical recipes. The same goes with farming for charcoal which has many uses aside from just power.

Nuclear is the only power source that doesn't really go anywhere right now and is solely useful for power production. Though the Angel's Industries alpha Tech Overhaul uses fusion catalyst as a rocket component among other things.

[Bauer]

I hate to see that I have to burn all the hydrogen from electrolysis.
Wouldn't it be very useful to have fuel cells that convert O2 and H2 into power.
Of course, the process electrolysis --> fuel cell cannot be energy positive.

[jodokus31]

I hate to see that I have to burn all the hydrogen from electrolysis.
Wouldn't it be very useful to have fuel cells that convert O2 and H2 into power.
Of course, the process electrolysis --> fuel cell cannot be energy positive.

You are able to use h2 for solid fuel, but that's quite a lot of techs away.

I also thought, it would be cool, if o2 + h2 -> water + thermal energy (which is steam)

So, I added this recipe to https://mods.factorio.com/mod/seablock-evil-mode
Actually, it's rather complicated to use in the beginning, if you don't have valves

But be aware, its not the only change

[theMightyMan]

Since a couple of weeks (or more?) all alien science seems to be useless, and I cant find anything about this in the release notes.

I just ordered all the science production to be in a rainbow, I would be really sad if this is a permanent and deliberate change.

Looking at the FNEI listing, it seems to be hidden (probably by factorio).
It would be sad to have to host an (explosive) goodbye to my brand-new rainbow.

[KiwiHawk]

Since a couple of weeks (or more?) all alien science seems to be useless, and I cant find anything about this in the release notes.

I just ordered all the science production to be in a rainbow, I would be really sad if this is a permanent and deliberate change.

Looking at the FNEI listing, it seems to be hidden (probably by factorio).
It would be sad to have to host an (explosive) goodbye to my brand-new rainbow.

Yes, this was a deliberate change. A lot of the military techs have been disabled and hidden. The aim was to reduce clutter as they weren't needed in Sea Block just to fight worms.

[KiwiHawk]

The Sea Block pack has been updated. Check the first post for details. Much smaller update than the last one. A couple of breaking changes but nothing too major hopefully!