Friday Facts #432 - Aquilo

[Sneak555]

My immediate thought is "will we get ways to delay/pause spoilage"? Because it'd be really useful if so...

ooh, actually; it'd be pretty cool to use cryogenics from the other planets to improve production lines on the gleba planet....

[Violet_Scarelli]

Maybe items on Aquilo don't spoil, but there's also "freezing" recipes that let you basically add a buffer spoilage timer to items as they "defrost". So you can choose between working on a planet with more readily available resources by using cryogenics plants to freeze items on Gleba for easier transport, or you can bring your perishables to Gleba to be able to buffer them.

[Terrahertz]

On the freezing induction furnaces. Would there even be a reason to build them? There are no raw materials (for the furnace) on the planet and everything would have to be imported. The more limited space and all the logistics make me think of a compact, specialized base rather than a megafactory. Even if there were some strange reason to fly raw materials to the planet for processing.

I'm curious if there is no way to produce rockets locally on the planet. If there are no sources of iron, copper and stone, that means that in addition to needing to import essentially every building (and likely many intermediate resources used in the construction of buildings that do use local resources) that you want to place, you also need to import tremendous amounts of concrete for covering your platform.

On top of that, every rocket you launch would need each of it's resources to be imported, this effectively means you'd need to launch rocket's from other planets containing the resources needed to launch rockets on Aquilo, which starts exponentially growing the number of rockets you need to launch (due to the rocket equation like nature of this kind of resource dependency).

The alternative that comes to mind is potentially having a space platform orbiting above the planet responsible for harvesting these resources from asteroids. Iron is simple enough, and possible coal could be derived from carbon asteroids, but not sure how you would get the copper and more importantly the monstrous amounts of stone needed for all the concrete with this method. Perhaps there's a new asteroid that's not been disclosed yet?

Curious if anyone else has thoughts on this? It's possible I'm overthinking it and you just import everything and it's not a big deal, but I remember the devs mentioned something like 500 rockets should be enough to finish the game (although many more would be reasonable depending on the scale you want), but this doesn't seem achievable if all iron/copper/stone derivatives must be imported.

You can get copper from asteroids as shown in FFF-419


This has to be one of the more advanced asteroid cracking recipies you unlock on one of the 3 intermediate planets, but I am always a bit worried that you cannot just throw stuff down from Orbit that easily, as this would make some of the planets mechanics easy to circumvent, for instance:

• You could collect ice on your way to Fulgora or Vulcanus and throw it down with the rest of the cargo so you can ignore the local shortage of water.

• You could collect iron and copper for Fulgora to avoid recycling stuff like processing units

• Also I've seen multiple videos in the FFF where Foundries are running on space platforms, meaning there might be a way to get calcite from asteroids, could also be usefulll to collect and then send down

Maybe you can do this in the end as the amounts are too tiny to do anything needing industrial amounts of resources.
Anyway, 10 days till we find that out, cheers

[lxl]

- Refine water to get landfill to replace water
- death spirals that could freeze your complete factory

Feels like seablock and i like it.

[jakeit1111]

On the freezing induction furnaces. Would there even be a reason to build them? There are no raw materials (for the furnace) on the planet and everything would have to be imported. The more limited space and all the logistics make me think of a compact, specialized base rather than a megafactory. Even if there were some strange reason to fly raw materials to the planet for processing.

I'm curious if there is no way to produce rockets locally on the planet. If there are no sources of iron, copper and stone, that means that in addition to needing to import essentially every building (and likely many intermediate resources used in the construction of buildings that do use local resources) that you want to place, you also need to import tremendous amounts of concrete for covering your platform.

On top of that, every rocket you launch would need each of it's resources to be imported, this effectively means you'd need to launch rocket's from other planets containing the resources needed to launch rockets on Aquilo, which starts exponentially growing the number of rockets you need to launch (due to the rocket equation like nature of this kind of resource dependency).

The alternative that comes to mind is potentially having a space platform orbiting above the planet responsible for harvesting these resources from asteroids. Iron is simple enough, and possible coal could be derived from carbon asteroids, but not sure how you would get the copper and more importantly the monstrous amounts of stone needed for all the concrete with this method. Perhaps there's a new asteroid that's not been disclosed yet?

Curious if anyone else has thoughts on this? It's possible I'm overthinking it and you just import everything and it's not a big deal, but I remember the devs mentioned something like 500 rockets should be enough to finish the game (although many more would be reasonable depending on the scale you want), but this doesn't seem achievable if all iron/copper/stone derivatives must be imported.

You can get copper from asteroids as shown in FFF-419


This has to be one of the more advanced asteroid cracking recipies you unlock on one of the 3 intermediate planets, but I am always a bit worried that you cannot just throw stuff down from Orbit that easily, as this would make some of the planets mechanics easy to circumvent.

You could for instance collect ice on your way to Fulgora or Vulcanus and throw it down with the rest of the cargo so you can ignore the local shortage of water.

This is a good point. w/ respect to copper, this does seem to be the case, not sure about stone, but definitely seems plausible that you can grab this from asteroids as well. While I agree with the concern re-ice and similar items for Fulgora and Vulcanus, I'm not sure how restricting cargo drops would work, as we already know it possible to drop items that have been processed on the space platform (space science crafting).

My suspicion is that the number of items where this would be beneficial is actually quite small. Ice is one (although given that you get ice from scrap at relatively high quantities, it's probably not a big deal to obtain on fulgora) but I don't see dropping raw resources at the rate that asteroids passively generate around the early planets as likely to keep pace with the resource generation you'd be able to obtain on the ground. Perhaps if there are items this is advantageous for, there are reasons why dropping them wouldn't work (such as ice melting in transit when being dropped by cargo pods on vulcanus).

The difference with Aquilo seems to be that, given there was a heavy emphasis put on the asteroid presence around the planet, that this resource generation rate may actually be enough to be useful, at least compared to the relatively smaller resource generation rate required for building machines and launching rockets.

[Terrahertz]

This is a good point. w/ respect to copper, this does seem to be the case, not sure about stone, but definitely seems plausible that you can grab this from asteroids as well. While I agree with the concern re-ice and similar items for Fulgora and Vulcanus, I'm not sure how restricting cargo drops would work, as we already know it possible to drop items that have been processed on the space platform (space science crafting).

My suspicion is that the number of items where this would be beneficial is actually quite small. Ice is one (although given that you get ice from scrap at relatively high quantities, it's probably not a big deal to obtain on fulgora) but I don't see dropping raw resources at the rate that asteroids passively generate around the early planets as likely to keep pace with the resource generation you'd be able to obtain on the ground. Perhaps if there are items this is advantageous for, there are reasons why dropping them wouldn't work (such as ice melting in transit when being dropped by cargo pods on vulcanus).

The difference with Aquilo seems to be that, given there was a heavy emphasis put on the asteroid presence around the planet, that this resource generation rate may actually be enough to be useful, at least compared to the relatively smaller resource generation rate required for building machines and launching rockets.

Maybe what you can get from orbit is just enough to build your base and a couple of rockets down there.
I was already thinking about building a slow moving platform in the orbit of another planet and sending it to Aquilo for asteroid farming in orbit.
But maybe you're also expected to send stuff over via the routes you need for getting planet specific resources there: If you have to send Tungsten from Vulcanus over, why not also send some of the stone surplus as well?

[jakeit1111]

You can get copper from asteroids as shown in FFF-419

Something else I noticed taking a closer look at the image you posted:

10-11-2024, 16-12-11.png (81.28 KiB) Viewed 429 times

There are clearly sulfur and calcite items on that belt, in addition to the copper. This to me could indicate a couple things:

• It's not possible to create copper from asteroids, but instead it (along with the calcite and sulfur) are imported from a surface and just being used to craft stuff
• It is possible to craft copper, as well as calcite and sulfur, and there is some crazy reason why you need them. (If this is true, than that makes Tungsten the only truly unique resource (but also kinda goes against what the dev's said about needing to import calcite if you wanted to use foundries for liquid metal on Nauvis).
• Some subset of these items are craft able from asteroids, and they are just being mixed up on the belt for some reason.
• I'm crazy and it means nothing

I'm curious if you're able to spot any other resources I'm missing.

[jakeit1111]

Maybe what you can get from orbit is just enough to build your base and a couple of rockets down there.
I was already thinking about building a slow moving platform in the orbit of another planet and sending it to Aquilo for asteroid farming in orbit.
But maybe you're also expected to send stuff over via the routes you need for getting planet specific resources there: If you have to send Tungsten from Vulcanus over, why not also send some of the stone surplus as well?

The main reason I can think of why this isn't likely the intended direction is the rocket cost. At 500 stone per rocket, that's a lot of materials to just send the materials for 500 concrete tiles. It feels like there's something missing from that equation, you know?

Anyway, you're right, we'll find out in 10 days, potentially less with the content embargo lifting on Monday, but it's fun to speculate lol.

[Terrahertz]

You can get copper from asteroids as shown in FFF-419

Something else I noticed taking a closer look at the image you posted:
10-11-2024, 16-12-11.png

There are clearly sulfur and calcite items on that belt, in addition to the copper. This to me could indicate a couple things:

• It's not possible to create copper from asteroids, but instead it (along with the calcite and sulfur) are imported from a surface and just being used to craft stuff
• It is possible to craft copper, as well as calcite and sulfur, and there is some crazy reason why you need them. (If this is true, than that makes Tungsten the only truly unique resource (but also kinda goes against what the dev's said about needing to import calcite if you wanted to use foundries for liquid metal on Nauvis).
• Some subset of these items are craft able from asteroids, and they are just being mixed up on the belt for some reason.
• I'm crazy and it means nothing

I'm curious if you're able to spot any other resources I'm missing.

You need sulfur for creating explosives for creating rockets as shown in FFF-410.
Also if you look close enough one of the arms is outputting copper from a rock cracker, so you are able to produce it up there. I guess it really boils down to the amounts not being usefull for the rest of your base.
Would still be interesting to see what people will do in space or what we have to do in space

[Terrahertz]

Maybe what you can get from orbit is just enough to build your base and a couple of rockets down there.
I was already thinking about building a slow moving platform in the orbit of another planet and sending it to Aquilo for asteroid farming in orbit.
But maybe you're also expected to send stuff over via the routes you need for getting planet specific resources there: If you have to send Tungsten from Vulcanus over, why not also send some of the stone surplus as well?

The main reason I can think of why this isn't likely the intended direction is the rocket cost. At 500 stone per rocket, that's a lot of materials to just send the materials for 500 concrete tiles. It feels like there's something missing from that equation, you know?

Anyway, you're right, we'll find out in 10 days, potentially less with the content embargo lifting on Monday, but it's fun to speculate lol.

Keep in mind you don't need a constant supply of concrete to run the base, you just need it to build the base. So 500 per rocket is not that bad, thinking about how heat pipes probably are way heavier and also needed in large quantities.

[Koub]

If the ice layer is only a few meter thick, on what is the rocket silo built ?

2024-10-11 22_33_17-Clipboard.jpg (241.38 KiB) Viewed 378 times

[Terrahertz]

If the ice layer is only a few meter thick, on what is the rocket silo built ?

2024-10-11 22_33_17-Clipboard.jpg

A few can mean a lot of things, if you compare the thickness to the 200km of amonia sludge below it even 100m could be called a few meters. And I don't really know how many you would need 20? 50?

[FasterJump]

Smelters can only create a Delta of temperature between the inside and the outside (assuming insulation and energy deperdition is the same).

If the smelter can create a 1600°C delta between the atmosphere (20°C) and the chamber (say 1620°C) in Nauvis the same woule happen in Aquilo: if the atmosphere is -80°C, the chamber would only reach 1520°C, thus external heating would be required.

However, if you consider that the furnaces could be powered with a higher voltage than their nominal setting in Nauvis, there would be no need for external heating.

In both case, I think that the furnaces should release heat to the neighboring buildings (a building connected to both a heat pipe and a furnace, to heat up 2°C, would only substract 1°C from the heat pipe, the other °C coming from the furnace heat deperdition.

[doktorstick]

If the ice layer is only a few meter thick, on what is the rocket silo built ?

[gnutrino]

If the ice layer is only a few meter thick, on what is the rocket silo built ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)

[FasterJump]

Using Pumpjack rather than offshore oil rigs and boats feels like a missed opportunity, but on the other hand I understand the gameplay choice of not having boats. Having a new massive building just for that would be a waste of graphic asset / RAM.

Pumpjacks are probably fine as long as it cannot deplete the source (reducing it's yield overtime). Since the fluids floats up (in a very straight line!) from 200km below, the extraction should not affect the source.

Conceptually, could there be a cristalline conduit (of ice or mineralised matter)? That would explain the straight line. The conduit could have been naturally created by chemical reactions from the fluid or microorganisms.

[ombus]

weird post didint appear...

Question now that i realize... vulcanus, fulgora and aquilo dont have water so no fish... no health back fast.. will there be a replacement ?

after reading aquilo i thought some things

1- could coolant be used less on aquilo as its an ice world... and more of it on vulcanus as its a lava word ?
2- maybe too much of a stretch but hot coolant could be used as a source of heat and get normal coolant back at a loss etc..

cant wait for the expansion !

[KeithFromCanada]

A cool mechanic which gets inspired by The Frostpunk game,
However, why an electric smelter (or any smelter) would need an external heat source is beyond my understanding of smelting.

I agree. To get it running, sure, but, after that, it should be a source of heat.

[KeithFromCanada]

An interesting idea for a planet that brings juicy new mechanisms.

That being said, the #1 thing I would add is in-floor heating tiles. (i.e. 1.5x concrete + 1x heating pipe?) For the cost of 50% more concrete, you wouldn't have to try to route heating pipes around structures but could build over concrete heating tiles, instead. You'd probably also need a transition tile. (i.e. 1.5x concrete + 1.5x heating pipe?)

[Koub]

If the ice layer is only a few meter thick, on what is the rocket silo built ?

2024-10-11 22_33_17-Clipboard.jpg

A few can mean a lot of things, if you compare the thickness to the 200km of amonia sludge below it even 100m could be called a few meters. And I don't really know how many you would need 20? 50?

You've got a point. However, we can expand this ice crust, and I doubt we would be able to do so if the ice was a couple hundred meters thick.
Anyway realism is not the main focus of a game, I just found the image mildly disturbing