[B18] Coldest or Hottest Seeds!

[Hans Lemurson]

That's pretty cool.  Layers and layers of insulation are all that protect you from very rapid death.  You're basically living on Pluto.

It's a good thing Rimworld tech is so advanced that it doesn't need to obey the Conservation of Energy.  Refineries can turn food into enough fuel for your Generators to cover the growing-costs of that food, and still have surplus.  Space heaters can pump loads of heat into rooms while consuming 1/10th the power of a hair-dryer.  You can still breathe at temperatures where the atmosphere condenses, provided you're wearing enough wool.  Orbital traders can deliver supplies to vault dwellers and receive payment.

[Skyjorkko]

The collected data is truly ideal home that people come to see this size.

[Androsynth]

Pluto indeed. I mean it makes sense that the Rimworld you happen to crashland on isn't necessarily hospitable.

Have you actually experimented with using chemfuel produced directly from food to run generators and grow more food? That idea never occurred to me, just the boomalope thing. And there's actually surplus? Is it enough surplus to be worthwhile? Is it more worthwhile to use cooked or uncooked food?

Running outside to collect what the orbital trader sends down is a harrowing experience, let me tell you. I always keep a colonist on standby to run out and rescue whoever attempts it, and the corridor to the outside is so cold that the rescue dude is also suffering from hypothermia before he's even deployed. You almost need a second tier of rescuers in a warmer area - one guy to haul in the initial victim and one to haul the one that rescued him.

[SzQ]

@Androsynth
Wish you recorded that playthrough so i could watch it during long nights in work.
I thought about doing same with constant meteorites and tornadoes maybe flash storms but it turned out to be boring.

[Hans Lemurson]

Running outside to collect what the orbital trader sends down is a harrowing experience, let me tell you. I always keep a colonist on standby to run out and rescue whoever attempts it, and the corridor to the outside is so cold that the rescue dude is also suffering from hypothermia before he's even deployed. You almost need a second tier of rescuers in a warmer area - one guy to haul in the initial victim and one to haul the one that rescued him.

That sounds pretty bad-ass. 
Multi-staged hauling! 
Who hauls the haulers?

Have you actually experimented with using chemfuel produced directly from food to run generators and grow more food? That idea never occurred to me, just the boomalope thing. And there's actually surplus? Is it enough surplus to be worthwhile? Is it more worthwhile to use cooked or uncooked food?

I haven't actually put Infinite-Chemfuel to the test, but have run the numbers and the results are pretty unambiguous.
Using wood-fueled generators to grow trees just barely breaks even, and Chemfuel is vastly more efficient.  One Chemfuel Generator consumes only 4 Fuel/Day for its steady 1,000 Watts, which is a ridiculously low fuel cost (Wood Generators consume 22/day, for comparison).  Raw Food (and wood) convert to fuel at a 2:1 ratio; one production-batch takes 70 Raw inputs and gives 35 Chemfuel.

1 Sunlamp and 15 hydroponics basins take 4 Generators to sustain.  Each Hydroponics basin produces about 10 rice/day, so you can get about 150 rice/day from this setup.
4 Generators require 16 fuel/day to sustain, which creates a daily demand of 32 rice to be converted into Chemfuel.

An easier rule of thumb is that 1 Generator can be fueled by 1 Hydroponics basin.

So yeah, it's practical.  It's practical to the point of being OP (wood generators are useless in comparison), to say nothing of the clear violation of physics (extracting net energy from a closed system).  Its only down side is that it requires more space, components, and hauling than other power systems.

[Androsynth]

Thank you so much for sharing the numbers with everyone. I did a brief experiment last night and was shocked with the efficiency. Refining 4 simple meals yielded 35 chemfuel, filled a generator with 25 of that and it said it was good to go for 150 hours. So 70 raw food vs 4 simple meals, it looks like there's definitely a benefit to cooking the food first, which makes the closed cycle even more nuts. It's a lot of work growing, hauling, cooking, and loading, so it remains to be seen how practical it will be for a population that has a VERY hard time expanding, but still very good to know, in light of power production issues!

[Androsynth]

@Androsynth
Wish you recorded that playthrough so i could watch it during long nights in work.
I thought about doing same with constant meteorites and tornadoes maybe flash storms but it turned out to be boring.

It'd be a slow watch because I have to micromanage almost everything that's going on. Every construction project is a major risk to all involved, and if I don't keep peoples' zones constantly updated and keep an eye on their hypothermia level, someone will find a way to die within a few minutes. And I really can't afford to lose anyone - 2 years in, and not a single escape pod has crashed close enough to a base entrance that I could even dream about rescuing them, even if I had people right at that entrance waiting to go, which I most often don't.

[pekt99]

Androsynth,

I really enjoyed reading your posts and hope you continue to update us with your progress.

If you created a customer scenario I would be very interested in trying this out! I'm relatively new so I'm not sure if that is possible or not. Sounds like an interesting time when I get a free weekend.

[Androsynth]

Thanks pekt99, I read your post and decided to share the latest. This scenario is really simple to set up, just copy The Rich Explorer and add permanent Volcanic Winter, Solar Eclipse, cold snaps every 0.18 days (repeating), and play it on the coldest tile of sea ice you can find on the coldest world you can generate.

With that said, I don't think it's possible to survive here for long without save scumming. My whole starting strategy revolved around having an awesome artist, buying raw mats from orbital traders, and adding value by making sculptures.

I won't mince words. This plan did not work. I couldn't really make enough profit to buy food and replacement components, let alone expand the base. I save scummed to get some high value sculptures, and expanded the base using the proceeds. Orbital trade deals are just too lossy, and art doesn't add enough value to overcome the inefficiency of both buying materials at a premium, and selling the finished goods at a discount, not even with 20 art and 10 social (no way to practice social..). I'd really welcome suggestions for an alternative starter strategy.

Anyway here's the album:

https://imgur.com/a/t7UW6

[SzQ]

It was great. Thanks for taking your time to document this story.
You are my favourite masochist.

[Androsynth]

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words! This scenario honestly placates the control freak in me. If I were playing in grasslands, I'd be preoccupied with keeping trees from growing out of control, eliminating every last boulder from every meadow to maximize grass growth for a herd of combat rhinoceroses, walling off the entire map so that literally every land assault goes through the killbox without disturbing anything, and so on. It's all a bit much. Nothing really happens in the cold without my say-so. In real life, I'm signed up to be cryopreserved at -196C post-mortem, so you might say this is a theme for me.

[dkmoo]

Have you actually experimented with using chemfuel produced directly from food to run generators and grow more food? That idea never occurred to me, just the boomalope thing. And there's actually surplus? Is it enough surplus to be worthwhile? Is it more worthwhile to use cooked or uncooked food?

Check out my post

here,https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=37128.0

It summed up the power generation  potential of the hydroponic rice to chemfuel to power more hydroponics quite nicely. You can get upwards of 40,000 power from a single sunlamp setup.

[Androsynth]

Excellent analysis, dkmoo! Can't wait to hear what you find out about boomalopes, that one's a real point of curiosity since presumably milking a boomalope will be less labor intensive than operating the refinery. Plus in a pinch I think of them as a poor man's cruise missile.

[Hans Lemurson]

Wow, absolute zero is possible even on Sea Ice!  What did you do about mechanoids?

[Saint Lucifer]

Since we are talking of extreme temperatures, anyone have a hint on how you can make a tribal start work on a extreme hot map? At constant 80°c you can't grow anything at all and since you don't have coolers and sun lamps, you cannot make a greenhouse. So i'm kinda at a loss of how i can make it work or if it is even possible at all.