Powering 46 distant pumpjacks remotely

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Gergely
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Powering 46 distant pumpjacks remotely

Post by Gergely »

I have an oil field outpost with 46 pumpjacks with maximum speed modules. I transport the oil via trains on two tracks. It was kinda easy to set up a wall to protect the Big Electric Poles all the way, but the evolution factor has reached 0.9 and I need an alternative solution.
-There is no water arround. It's a dry biome.
-The distance between the permitter of my factory and the outpost is very big... like very big. :(
-My Factory relies on 720 Accumulators, 576 Solar Panels, and 240 Steam Engines
-All my steam engines run on Solid Fuel from Light Oil or Heavy Oil cracked to Light Oil.
-My Oil Refineries are all at max Productivity.
-I have completed the technology tree but I still don't have a rocket silo.

I need to find a way to power and protect the Outpost day/night. Have anyone got any good ideas to work this out?
Last edited by Gergely on Fri Oct 21, 2016 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Rockstar04
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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by Rockstar04 »

I'd say your options are to bring in water and fuel with a train for steam, or build enough solar/accumulator to run it.

Koub
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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by Koub »

Theoretically, you could use heavy oil as liquid to boil intoboilers, and let it go through steam generators to generate power, but I don't know if you'd still be able to net some oil for the rest of your base's needs.
Because you can use any fluid in boilers/steam engines, not only water.
I would advise, however, to use solar/accus located around your pumpjacks.
Koub - Please consider English is not my native language.

orzelek
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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by orzelek »

Looking at changes I'd wait for next build.
There was a decision by devs that biters should not attack directly chunks that have no pollution producers. It should make them much less inclined to eat rails.

aka13
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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by aka13 »

I use the fllowing setup in heavily-polluted scenarious with evolution factor close to 1 - I have minefields around the outpost, together with roboports. As soon as a mine goes off, robots fly to replace it, which acts as a condition to a switch to the laser turrets. Alternatevily you just need walls + robots, so as soon as robots fly to repair damaged walls, turrets get turned on. Obviously this implies taht your outpost logistics network is separate from you main one.
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Acarin
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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by Acarin »

And that kinda requires power. The OP's question was how to power his pumpjacks :-)

darkwolf
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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by darkwolf »

I regularly build far out outposts.

However, I don't just build them to bring in resources, I also build them to bring in energy. (solar power requires a lot of space)

I usually run power lines alongside every train track. That means any outpost is immediately supplied with power to get it up and running, since it will be connected to the main grid.
Furthermore, once the outpost is up and secure I will proceed to ramp up solar power production and storage that will then be fed back into the main grid.

Since biters mainly go for bases your tracks and power lines should be relatively undisturbed.

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Gergely
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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by Gergely »

darkwolf wrote:I regularly build far out outposts.

However, I don't just build them to bring in resources, I also build them to bring in energy. (solar power requires a lot of space)

I usually run power lines alongside every train track. That means any outpost is immediately supplied with power to get it up and running, since it will be connected to the main grid.
Furthermore, once the outpost is up and secure I will proceed to ramp up solar power production and storage that will then be fed back into the main grid.

Since biters mainly go for bases your tracks and power lines should be relatively undisturbed.
Yeah... until the evolution factor gets over 0.9 when they start attacking everything that can serve as an obstacle to them. I can't just go and build laser turrets all the way there. Every Big Energy Pole would require at least 20 turrets to defend. The turrets require repair packs( and ammunition for gun turrets). Because of that, It's expensive and time consuming to maintain no matter what. The Behemoth Beasts also start appearing and they are ten times tougher than the Big (Blue) ones.

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Re: Powering 46 distant pumpjacks remotely

Post by darkwolf »

I am over 0.9 in my current world. :)
And yes, I've encountered the problem you mention here. All I had to do however was to slightly re-route my power lines, away from trouble or through generally "save countryside" between my bases. (After a while you will know which direction most attacks come from, so you can re-route accordingly)

Of course you will have to regularly sweep up any new alien bases at this evolution level. (Over 0.9 you'll have to become more hands on in cleaning up the surrounding area anyways)

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Re: Powering 46 pumpjacks remotely

Post by Frightning »

Gergely wrote:
darkwolf wrote:I regularly build far out outposts.

However, I don't just build them to bring in resources, I also build them to bring in energy. (solar power requires a lot of space)

I usually run power lines alongside every train track. That means any outpost is immediately supplied with power to get it up and running, since it will be connected to the main grid.
Furthermore, once the outpost is up and secure I will proceed to ramp up solar power production and storage that will then be fed back into the main grid.

Since biters mainly go for bases your tracks and power lines should be relatively undisturbed.
Yeah... until the evolution factor gets over 0.9 when they start attacking everything that can serve as an obstacle to them. I can't just go and build laser turrets all the way there. Every Big Energy Pole would require at least 20 turrets to defend. The turrets require repair packs( and ammunition for gun turrets). Because of that, It's expensive and time consuming to maintain no matter what. The Behemoth Beasts also start appearing and they are ten times tougher than the Big (Blue) ones.
It might seem expensive to put down several dozen laser turrets and a roboport with conbots and repair packs, but tbqh it's really not that bad. I've built a base w/ my cousin where in less than 30 hrs we've already walled in our main, and built a laser turrets all along that wall and we have np power it all with just lots solar+accumulators (not even using steam power). The other big advantage to having the outpost power connected to your main is that as long as your main is powered (and the line intact) you know your outpost is fine.

The alternative is solar+accumulator at the outpost, and it's not hard to math out how much you need:
You need 46x(pumpjack cost after module adjustments) continuous power, a 25 solar panel, 21 accumulator 'unit' produces 1.05MW sustained power and has exactly enough storage to maintain that through the night. Math out how much power you need and figure out how many 25-21 'units' you need (round up!), and voila, power problem solved.

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Re: Powering 46 distant pumpjacks remotely

Post by Acarin »

You may also want to allow extra accumulators if you are using laser turrets, in case the biters attack at night :-)
This, of course, is another argument in favour of gun turrets. Also consider that, with a convenient local source of crude oil, you can use flamethrower turrets for the outpost defense (but you will need some others as well,as FTs have a minimum range and a long 'flight time', which means that the first enemy in a group can quite often get to the walls and inside the range of the flamers, so have gun or laser turrets handy as backup.

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