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Sea Block Pack -- Speed up the first hours [0.5.7]

Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 7:09 am
by Bauer
It took me quite a while to get Sea Block going. I'd like share a few insights that might help you moving a little faster than I did (as a guide).
I was told that sea block is designed to go slow. But there is no need to let your factory build up landfill or plates while you binge your way through you favourite soap.

Power:
0. The wind turbines are just enough to power the first 4 electrolysers.
1. Once you have one algae farm, set up mixed algae farming and an assembler to turn the green ones into fibers. Hand-craft wood bricks and turn them into coal for a quick auxilary power (2 steam engines). Stock pile the brown algae. Turn them slowly but surely all into wooden boards.
2. Once you have green algae 2, setup a line of farms with direct insertion into assemblers turning the stuff into fibers.You can put this on one side of a single belt with assembers processing the stuff and putting the wood pellets on the other lane. A "final" length is 18 farms into 6 charcoal furnaces.
  • One 90° inserter from the farm to an assembler is just not enough. This will build up green algae in the farm that I regularily collect and supply to my wooden board setup that I mentioned in 1. That'll give you more fibers and more fibers is more coal. Nice.
3. This should be sufficient for the "good intermediate step" below. As soon as you need more, double the setup. Rinse & repeat. All other energy options are way down the tech tree (plants -> vegetable oil -> fuel oil).

Landfill:
0. Your metal processing produces crushed stone and later also slag. Turn this into landfill or stone->bricks. No point bothering inserting it up front. You need the landfill anyway.
1. After your first 30 minutes, you've probably figured out that you'll need lots of landfill. After your first 4 electrolysers that should be set up for manual operation, start setting up an automated setup with your favourite design. Use all slag for landfill as a start. Once you have about 24-30 electrolysers, still use 50% for landfill. Increase the energy and electrolyser setups step-by-step as you get more metal.
2. Switch to washing ASAP. 10 washing plants produce more landfill than I tought. This is quite an invest but the energy efficiency will pay out really quickly.

Metals:
0. Don't make copper pipes. This seems tempting but stone pipes are cheaper and you have better use of the copper soon enough. (Cu pipe are no option from an aesthetic point of view anyways.
1. The first setup (slag into crushed stone into min water into mixed ores) is really inefficient. However, you still need to priortise algae processing 2 in order to get your energy production going. You also need washing before you can do the next step.
2. Go for filtering next. Your washing plant gives you free sulphur. You really only need 20-30 sulphur. Burn the rest, there is better use for the chem plant. Use the sulphur for H2SO4 and switch to the filtering process. The metal yield of your electrolysers will increase dramatically.
3. Build a sorting plant or two. Just do saph-ore. I'm not sure if you should priortise this over the previous point.
  • A good intermediate step would be 48 electrolysers, 4 chem plants to dissolve the slag in H2SO4, 7 filtering machines. This gives you theoretically about 117 mineral sludge. "Theoretically" because you're chem plants will not work full-time bause you'll need too much slag->min water for your algae farms. However, 12 crystallizers is still a good number. They will produce up to 4.5 saph-ore. This is a good basis to go green and target washing for geodes.
4. Washing for geodes.

Re: Sea Block Pack -- Speed up the first hours [0.5.7]

Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 5:24 pm
by mrvn
Note: charcoal filtering has a sulfur positive loop.

But you can draw out some waste water for blue algae. Or later sulfuric acid is needed for the better ore to metal recipes. So I wouldn't burn any sulfur. Store it for later. A warehouse or some tanks aren't that costly. Even just a chest will let a washing plant run a long time before it's full.

Re: Sea Block Pack -- Speed up the first hours [0.5.7]

Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2021 6:05 am
by Bauer
mrvn wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 5:24 pm ... So I wouldn't burn any sulfur. Store it for later...
I agree, I also hate wasting stuff. So in fact, I initially stored sulfur in a box.

However, long before being in a position to be able to actually use it, I removed the mud->landfill factory (to build a bigger one that is also close to the (also temporary) place where I produce brown and green chips (saline water --> brown algae).
As a results, I had to transfer the sulfur to the water treatment plant (taking yellow waste water from rinsing of H2SO4 dissolved slag) that also has a box for excess sulphur. There I figured out that this process accumulates sulphur much faster.

My conclusion: The sulphur from the washing plant doesn't matter much. If I had tossed it in the first place, it wouldn't have made a difference.