[1.0] Sea Block Pack 0.4.10

[randomdude]

I was a bit enthusiastic yesterday how well it worked (...and when I saw the glowing heat pipes...)
In the meantime, I think its a bit too OP.
I mean 135W vs 350W, that is x2.6 with lowest tier (I have 135 fuel oil/sec., maybe some other tech before is better, but i sticked to ks power oil burning boiler, which gives me the 135W).
If it was like only x1,4 or x1,5, it would feel more fitting.
The investment is pretty high, though. boiler 3, steam engine 3, heat pipes, heat exchangers, steam turbines. Needing invar, cobalt steel, brass, alu.

Enriched fuel is just so boring to setup, the heat source setup is a lot more interesting.

As you can see in lower part of the image (output ratio of heat sources vs other ways to use the fuel oil) they pretty much fall off after 100 farm s(using elendilomone farms with swamp upgrade, which is one of the bests for fuel oil imo) because more and more sources are on the outer part of the square of heat sources and that setup will require 260 turbines or 520 steam engines 3 (same working temp, so you might be able to save some resources that way). So considering both resource cost and space for each build, you might be better off doing 2 builds of normal bob oil burners (or enriched fuel even better) for lower cost and pretty much the same power in the midgame, which removes the OPness factor of heat sources till you have 'i don't care about resources' level of production and leaves them as an alternative to grow into a potential path vs nuclear, which imo is the actual boring power setup

[Psyramics]

So I think, its a better alternative to enriched fuel, which is also a bit more compelling.

@Trainwreck: Thanks for the update.

To be better then enriched fuel you only need 20% more fuel value(less when you take processing into consideration). You have that with two heat sources.

Enriched fuel can be used with burner heat sources. You shouldn't be comparing regular boilers with heat sources, because that's a no contest. You need to be comparing a perfect square of Oil Burning Heat Sources to a 2xN stack of Solid Burning Heat Sources or multiple 3x3 blocks with the middles missing.

And I already did the math. At small scales, enriched fuel is still better. A 2x8 Tier 1 stack burning liquid fuel produces 205MW, a 4x4 square produces 216MW. Meaning you're better off making that liquid fuel into fuel blocks and adding 2 more rows to the stack.

At T3, the same stacks produce 540 and 576MW, respectively. Fuel Blocks win again. I haven't calculated larger setups than that since one of those should last until any base unlocks Deuterium which absolutely demolishes everything else no contest.

[randomdude]

Enriched fuel can be used with burner heat sources. You shouldn't be comparing regular boilers with heat sources, because that's a no contest. You need to be comparing a perfect square of Oil Burning Heat Sources to a 2xN stack of Solid Burning Heat Sources or multiple 3x3 blocks with the middles missing.

And I already did the math. At small scales, enriched fuel is still better. A 2x8 Tier 1 stack burning liquid fuel produces 205MW, a 4x4 square produces 216MW. Meaning you're better off making that liquid fuel into fuel blocks and adding 2 more rows to the stack.

At T3, the same stacks produce 540 and 576MW, respectively. Fuel Blocks win again. I haven't calculated larger setups than that since one of those should last until any base unlocks Deuterium which absolutely demolishes everything else no contest.

You can go bigger than the 2x8 at blue science with all inserter techs and substations 2



This one keeps being 20% better than the 10x10 oil burning square (1.3GW+ vs 1.1GW+), powered by 95 farms of elendilomone and can be tiled as long as you leave one empty square every N tiles so substations reach the inner inserters, but might be too annoying to do instead of easier shapes. The good part is you can replicate this for nuclear reactors too (if you have turbo undergrounds), so you can get stupid amounts of power

[Psyramics]

Enriched fuel can be used with burner heat sources. You shouldn't be comparing regular boilers with heat sources, because that's a no contest. You need to be comparing a perfect square of Oil Burning Heat Sources to a 2xN stack of Solid Burning Heat Sources or multiple 3x3 blocks with the middles missing.

And I already did the math. At small scales, enriched fuel is still better. A 2x8 Tier 1 stack burning liquid fuel produces 205MW, a 4x4 square produces 216MW. Meaning you're better off making that liquid fuel into fuel blocks and adding 2 more rows to the stack.

At T3, the same stacks produce 540 and 576MW, respectively. Fuel Blocks win again. I haven't calculated larger setups than that since one of those should last until any base unlocks Deuterium which absolutely demolishes everything else no contest.

You can go bigger than the 2x8 at blue science with all inserter techs and substations 2



This one keeps being 20% better than the 10x10 oil burning square (1.3GW+ vs 1.1GW+), powered by 95 farms of elendilomone and can be tiled as long as you leave one empty square every N tiles so substations reach the inner inserters, but might be too annoying to do instead of easier shapes. The good part is you can replicate this for nuclear reactors too (if you have turbo undergrounds), so you can get stupid amounts of power

Yeah, I didn't want to math that one out. You also need to have 32 burners before it starts being better than other options. My point was that the adjacency bonuses on completely locked-in sources wasn't enough to outperform the 20% increase on fuel blocks.

[ukezi]

Did you take into consideration the amount of power needed to refine the oil to enriched blocks? You loose about halve to a quarter of the bonus power.

[jodokus31]

I was a bit enthusiastic yesterday how well it worked (...and when I saw the glowing heat pipes...)
In the meantime, I think its a bit too OP.
I mean 135W vs 350W, that is x2.6 with lowest tier (I have 135 fuel oil/sec., maybe some other tech before is better, but i sticked to ks power oil burning boiler, which gives me the 135W).
If it was like only x1,4 or x1,5, it would feel more fitting.
The investment is pretty high, though. boiler 3, steam engine 3, heat pipes, heat exchangers, steam turbines. Needing invar, cobalt steel, brass, alu.

Enriched fuel is just so boring to setup, the heat source setup is a lot more interesting.

As you can see in lower part of the image (output ratio of heat sources vs other ways to use the fuel oil) they pretty much fall off after 100 farm s(using elendilomone farms with swamp upgrade, which is one of the bests for fuel oil imo) because more and more sources are on the outer part of the square of heat sources and that setup will require 260 turbines or 520 steam engines 3 (same working temp, so you might be able to save some resources that way). So considering both resource cost and space for each build, you might be better off doing 2 builds of normal bob oil burners (or enriched fuel even better) for lower cost and pretty much the same power in the midgame, which removes the OPness factor of heat sources till you have 'i don't care about resources' level of production and leaves them as an alternative to grow into a potential path vs nuclear, which imo is the actual boring power setup

The odd thing with seablock is, and what I forget sometimes, that nothing is really finite. So if you produce twice the amount of fuel oil and use it inefficiently, it might be better. I was going from the fact, that heat sources produce 2-3 more power out of the same amount of oil and it's only green tech, which feels OP at the first glance. Maybe it is, but i'm not so sure anymore. It's a quite similar discussion, if solar is OP or not. Once you have a lot solar panels, they seem OP, but reaching that point is so much more expensive.

With higher tiers the neighbour bonus gets higher, but now also nuclear is in the competition.
I still think, that the neighbour bonus might a bit high for oil burning heat sources, but if it has to compete with nuclear, it might be OK.

to use enriched fuel in solid burning heat sources is something i missed and opens another spectrum of possibilities which is not boring. I meant only the plain enriched fuel into regular boilers path, which i think is boring, because i used it extensively in my 0.16 play through. Nuclear might be not as interesting for others, but i've never done it in the scope of seablock or AB, so it will be interesting for me.

[Psyramics]

Did you take into consideration the amount of power needed to refine the oil to enriched blocks? You loose about halve to a quarter of the bonus power.

Using standard boilers, the energy increase completely offsets the refinement cost. With the adjacency bonuses, the refinement cost stays the same while the yield increases, making the cost a less significant portion of the gain.

[kinnom]

How do you get access to elindolomone? I've only seen desert gardens.

[ramyalexis]

How do you get access to elindolomone? I've only seen desert gardens.

Just use what you have at the beginning. Swamp and temperate gardens are far away from your starting point. Like really far.
I get the first one when i already have almost all blue science technology researched to get you a time feeling.

[jodokus31]

How do you get access to elindolomone? I've only seen desert gardens.

Just use what you have at the beginning. Swamp and temperate gardens are far away from your starting point. Like really far.
I get the first one when i already have almost all blue science technology researched to get you a time feeling.

You can also explore the wider area between the worms.
The bigger challenge is IMO, that you have to multiply the garden(s), unless you find more than X (don't know, how much you would need to get it going). Overall a very slow process.

I'm on marathon, so the research is 4x, which made the research more of a problem. I found 1 swamp garden in a not so distant area, which was enough, because i used the multiply recipe first.

[ramyalexis]

[/quote]
I'm on marathon, so the research is 4x, which made the research more of a problem. I found 1 swamp garden in a not so distant area, which was enough, because i used the multiply recipe first.
[/quote]

Well...you are really have more luck then me ) I just finished my second run and can not even think about marathone. Looks like total hell to me at the moment.

[jodokus31]

Well...you are really have more luck then me ) I just finished my second run and can not even think about marathone. Looks like total hell to me at the moment.

It is, for the first 30-50 hours, but also very interesting, which route you choose and how it affects the progress. After getting geodes, it gets better. I will not think about the huge requirements for end game. I'm currently at 300 hours without much rush and approaching purple science, blue is done for the most part and blue circuits are producing. Those mk0 productivity modules are cheap and great in high tier machines with 4, 5, 6 slots (up to 24% productivity), mainly for uncoiling coils/sheets and science.

For gardens, if you have more luck with temperate I would go for quillnoa. It starts slowly to gather seeds, but now, i get 350MW out of ~17 farms by using the oil heat source mk1 (i have another 2 of those setups, which are waiting for heat source equipment)

[randomdude]

Did you get to use the steam and fuel based assemblers? When I tried my hand at marathon the biggest challenge to overcome early was actually saving enough resources to build steam engines, so I thought that the steam and fuel assemblers could help with that, cause getting everything for a boiler (including the farm and assemblers) were much cheaper than the steam engine itself.

But then again, most of the power is required for slag, and you still need steam engines for that.

[jodokus31]

Did you get to use the steam and fuel based assemblers? When I tried my hand at marathon the biggest challenge to overcome early was actually saving enough resources to build steam engines, so I thought that the steam and fuel assemblers could help with that, cause getting everything for a boiler (including the farm and assemblers) were much cheaper than the steam engine itself.

But then again, most of the power is required for slag, and you still need steam engines for that.

No, steam and burner assemblers weren't a thing, when I started. Interesting idea. I used burner crushers a long time, although they are slighly less efficient, but the inital cost for electric ones are big at that stage.
Steam engines were a pain to get. Also belts are kind of expensive. I did a lot of hand feeding and direct insertion.
I gathered, that it's also a good approach, to use geode crushing before geodes to mineral sludge is researched, and use that crushed stone and store crystal dust for later. If I should start again in a far future, i will give it a try.

[NeuralParity]

It is, for the first 30-50 hours, but also very interesting, which route you choose and how it affects the progress. After getting geodes, it gets better. I will not think about the huge requirements for end game. I'm currently at 300 hours without much rush and approaching purple science, blue is done for the most part and blue circuits are producing. Those mk0 productivity modules are cheap and great in high tier machines with 4, 5, 6 slots (up to 24% productivity), mainly for uncoiling coils/sheets and science.

I too found that things really started picking up at around 50 hours and the limitation became how quickly I could build stuff by hand (mk1 of course since mk2 anything requires so much steel). I like the power changes as being able to scale out with no tech meant the optimal build order switched betweeen tech and making more mk1 algae farms constantly (I ended up with 300 mk1 algae farms).

Geode crushing for just the crushed stone was a massive turning point as it's an order of magnitude increase in your capacity to make landfill. Not having to ration every square of space meant scaling up happened at a much faster rate. I think I still have a few hundred thousand crystal dust left over gathering dust in the many wooden chests required to hold them.

All up I think I placed over a thousand building by hand before I got bots. Currently approaching 200 hours with mk3 modules in my circuit production but I also have 150 hours in a parallel creative mode map that I use to design blueprints.

[jodokus31]

All up I think I placed over a thousand building by hand before I got bots. Currently approaching 200 hours with mk3 modules in my circuit production but I also have 150 hours in a parallel creative mode map that I use to design blueprints.

Yep, Im currently mainly limited by design-time for the builds (bots not so much, because i used Angels Construction Bots pretty soon, which are not part of the pack ). Sometimes even my mineral sludge is stalling...

[ukezi]

All up I think I placed over a thousand building by hand before I got bots. Currently approaching 200 hours with mk3 modules in my circuit production but I also have 150 hours in a parallel creative mode map that I use to design blueprints.

I have used nanobots. Building and hooking up hundreds of electrolysers by hand isn't fun for me. Nano bots have some cost attached so they don't feel like cheating so much.

[Megatron]

Is it still better to use electrolyzers (without the electrodes) than going with geodes?
I would miss the 'free' oxygen, hydrogen and water that comes with it.

[ramyalexis]

Is it still better to use electrolyzers (without the electrodes) than going with geodes?
I would miss the 'free' oxygen, hydrogen and water that comes with it.

It was never better to go the electrolyzers then geodes in normal game.
Or you are talking about marathone game ?

[Megatron]

Is it still better to use electrolyzers (without the electrodes) than going with geodes?
I would miss the 'free' oxygen, hydrogen and water that comes with it.

It was never better to go the electrolyzers then geodes in normal game.
Or you are talking about marathone game ?

I'm talking about the normal game.
It always seemed a bit more compact and less of a hustle. power was never really a problem, and the benefit of not producing any o2, h2 or purified water extra makes it even easier.
but now, I would need double the electrolyzers. it seems just wrong.