Friday Facts #420 - Fusion Reactor

[GregoriusT]

I still take it with a little bit of grain of salt that they gradually changed the fuel efficiency & requirements of the solid fuel & rocket fuel recipes in the 0.17.* updates.
I once did the math and using Productivity modules back then it made the Rocket fuel way more efficient. But ever since it also requires 10 light oil I don't know if it still is that efficient because I cannot find the excel sheet anymore where I did that math and I am too lazy to do it all over again. xD

But anyway you can totally go bonkers and use nuclear fuel in them as well. ;p

You make it sound terrible that i use efficiency Modules for the Oil Stuff, because Oil is infinite. xD

Also those 10 Light Oil made it only 1.1 times more expensive, which might be negligible. Though a bunch of random Reddit posts tell me Rocket Fuel for Boilers is just slightly inefficient, but for everything else Rocket Fuel is always better, such as Storage per stack, Storage per belt item, usability in vehicles, being ready for the Rocket Silo and Satellites, etc. Which alone makes it worth it for me to just instantly convert it on site, so I can ship it off to places like Outposts and the Refuelling Stations.

[vipm23]

Ohh I think this is a great change and I really like the new layouts, a prediction jumps out to me - This won't be the only use of fusion. I predict that there might be fusion thrusters in the end game.

This implies a midway upgrade from chemical rockets to nuclear thermal rockets, taking a heatpipe input and Hydrogen to produce thrust.

Or a rocket that takes high-temperature steam, for a water-based NTR instead. Though that leads inevitably to the extremely cursed coal-fired steam rocket.

[XT-248]

The fusion reactor art assets look like a top toy (the kind that you spin on the floor).

I would rather have a Lawrence-style Fusion reactor (hundreds of lasers pointing at something in the center to produce energy and produce plasma to be pulled out). That way, the Fusion Reactor won't look like a millennia-old toy.


I will reserve my gameplay feedback until I see more of the full picture: how fuel is manufactured, how coolant is made, and how coolant is cooled. Etc.

[bnrom]

What is the practical reason preventing having 6 neighbors connected to a central reactor? With all the pass-through connections it looks like such a setup would be possible.

Very cool work btw! Hyped as always for the release!!

Same problem as with fission reactors: you still need room to feed them fuel cells.

Silly me! Thanks for stating that!

[picklock]

I think the implementation (as far as can be seen from the FFF) is very nicely realized. Can't wait to play with the various possible combinations of a fusion reactor complex.

[BrainlessTeddy]

Maybe that's my OCD speaking but I'm not a huge fan of the fusion generators. They kinda look like they just want to make symmetrical builds hard to make.

[bnrom]

But what does it sound like? The sounds on the Foundry and Electromagnetic plant are so good. I'm curious what the fusion reactor and generators sound like!

[SirSmuggler]

Maybe that's my OCD speaking but I'm not a huge fan of the fusion generators. They kinda look like they just want to make symmetrical builds hard to make.

From what I can see, the builds they show us are all very symetrical. So...

[Doggoyy]

If the cooling facility, cools the hot coolant down
Like a refrigerator or ac unit, it could have a heat pipe output for that extra 3% efficiency if you’re willing to build that. I feel that it’s not complex enough. Currently, unless the crafting recipe for fuel cells is complicated. All you have to do is look up the optimal Fusion reactor layout and there’s no complications. One of my favorite parts about this game is there are so many slightly sub-optimal solutions, and thats enough to convince me to build my own setup because the ones online aren’t for my situation. Back to the point, if The coolant is cooled with liquid nitrogen or something similar without an output for the heat ignore this.

I just realized this post is stupid because cooling coolant with a coolant is just unnecessary steps.
But wait, that proves that it needs a heat output.
Or maybe it doesn’t. Probably a waste of time but,
Not complicated enough, and I thought that if hot coolant was a byproduct of fusion, why not take advantage of it because making hot things is the Point of nuclear reactors.