A home for my collection of builds (some my design, others not) since the bblueprint website keeps breaking. Maybe some others will stumble upon this and find it useful!
This is obviously best done on a Ceres world, but if you have access to powerful cooling, you can build it anywhere.
I used a mod to build dirt tiles for the wild plumesquash. There are harder non-modded ways; I'll leave that up to you. Obviously, you'll need to throw some pips in there to plant them. It needs to be cold enough for the plants, but not so cold the pips die. Also, make sure you set the squash to be auto-harvested.
In this build, I kept the room at -20C. The pips aren't happy but they don't die, and fortunately happiness doesn't seem to affect whether or not they plant things. I recommend throwing multiple pips in there so it doesn't take ages.
The bammoth stable holds three. They eat a lot. You'll have some leftover squash but only a little. But three bammoths produce quite a lot. Each egg, if hatched, will provide a whopping 22,400kcal.
With three bammoths, you'll be getting an egg every 4 cycles. That's 5,600kcal per cycle (7000 when cooked into bbq, so enough for 7 dupes). Their food is wild and requires no resources. Resource management is automated with conveyors. The only thing your dupes have to do is harvesting and grooming.
**When I made this build, the Frosty DLC was fairly new and the bammoth's internal temperature vs. air temperature was bugged in a way I didn't understand. Idk if this has been fixed but it probably has. In any case, it needs to be cold in there (I have it set to -20C). Their info page says their ideal temp is 30-70C, but that's their body temp, not the air temp. Their thick coats will keep their body temp up in cold environments.
In that vein, here are the cooling loops:
I've got mine connected to a multipurpose cooling system, with two of the cooling pools set to -20C. The squash farm will not take much power to maintain temp, but the bammoths produce a decent amount of heat and need active cooling.
The weight plate is set to 0.2kg. Occasionally, the bammoths will step on it but that's fine. It's just to keep too much food from being dumped in there.
The conveyor meter is set to 0.3 units, and the timer sensor is set to mode: seconds, 0.1 green duration, and 100 red duration.
You can ignore that extra wire that's not connected to anything.
I did the math, which may or may not be correct. Use at your own risk. Each farmed pip should produce 280kcal (barbecue) or 396kcal (omelets) per day. They also produce a bunch of dirt so you could use that for mealwood if you wanted, plus a small surplus of wood.
Each stable can hold up to 8 pips, so that would support 2 or 3 dupes (bbq or omelets, respectively) per stable, with a little left over.
In total, this large farm can support up to 8 (bbq) or 12 (omelets) dupes, which might not seem like a lot for how much space and refined metal it costs, but it's fully sustainable, costing no ongoing resources except for grooming labor + a small amount of power for shipping (the incubators are unpowered).
I've got a mod for insulated doors here because my world was frozen. You could also use double liquid locks for the same purpose. Or regular doors if the outside is temperate.
The arbor trees are wild planted. Either leave natural tiles when you build this, or use one of the tricks to create natural tiles. Or take the easy way out like I did and get a mod for building dirt tiles hehe.
Pips also eat thimble reed and bonbon trees, so you could use those instead. I'm not sure how many they need, though.
You could power the incubators if desired. Their purpose is to make sure enough eggs are kept to populate the farms. I believe you need 1 unpowered incubator per 5 pips.
These pipes are for temp management, if that's an issue in your world. The room needs to be maintained between 15C and 40C.
The liquid reservoir isn't part of the build.
The three filters, from top to bottom, are set to dirt, wood, and egg shells. One of the shipping line sends excess eggs to an 'evolution chamber' for meat, though you could send them to an egg cracker instead. (There's an unused vertical strip of conveyor that was left over from an old pathway.)
Make sure to set the incubators to a higher priority than the conveyor loaders near them, so that eggs will be placed in them for hatching. Incubators should be set on continuous.
I have a separate post that just includes the cross section of this build, plus some explanation on settings and such. This post will go more in depth on how to build it from scratch.
This is not my design, but I've modified it a little. Original design by Gamer43.
I'm building this in dev mode for convenience, but this tutorial is for people wanting to build it in survival mode.
The first thing you need to do is make sure you have enough space around your volcano. To start with, measure 4 tiles to the left, 33 tiles to the right, 19 tiles from the bottom, and 22 tiles from the top. I've marked this off with wire; this is a simple counting trick as the game gives you a small counter as you plan wires or pipes. Don't actually build the wires! It's just a guideline.
In this seed, I just barely have enough space above the iron volcano. As it is, I wouldn't be able to use it effectively without modifying the boiler's design.
Next, measure and mark the entire structure's dimensions. It's 48 tiles high and 51 tiles wide. I've added the remaining part to the left and top as I have no room on the bottom and right.
The ladders represent the infrastructure you might already have in place from digging out your world.
You won't use all of this space. Scroll down to see if any existing builds will be in the way.
Your volcano may be in a slightly different place, but it should fit as long as you did the initial measurement right.
Now you can start adding the bones:
**Make sure any anything that will come into contact with magma is made from obsidian! And the window tiles must be diamond.
Here I've built everything necessary to start vacuuming out the space, including liquid locks (I used oil and petroleum but viscogel works, too). The space between the double locks need to be vacuumed as well.
The ladders aren't necessary for the build, they're just scaffolding.
I've gone ahead and built the tempshift plates now, as they're easier to see before everything else gets added in. Some of them must be made from diamond:
-the two bottom-most single tiles and the 2x2 spaces directly above them
-the horseshoe shape near the top
The rest can be anything with a melting point above 600C.
Once all that is done, build pumps and the necessary pipes/power to vacuum out the space. Now is a good time to set up your large transformers that you'll need for the build (six of them) and connect to your main power grid:
I've left out the joint plate for now, just to make it easier to walk through the area. You won't need it until you're ready to siphon power from the turbines.
I won't build the gas pumps/pipes for vacuuming in this tutorial. You can just do that as you like.
While you're waiting on the vacuuming process, you can start filling the coolant pool with supercoolant. And while you wait on that, you can build all the inner workings in that area:
The top radiant pipe snakes can be anything (they're just for cooling the turbines), but the bottom ones must be thermium. There are going to be more below them but we'll come back to those.
Set the thermo sensor to above -178C.
Fill in that row of insulated tiles in the steam room, add the aquatuners, and add just enough water to force the gas from the corner tiles:
Now you can close off the steam room and get rid of those ladders that are in the way of where the turbines will be built.
Go ahead and connect up to your power grid if you haven't already.
Next, we want to get the first coolant loop up and running. Build the rest of the loop and fill it with supercoolant. I've also added the bottom row of diamond window tiles so that more ladders aren't necessary:
To the right, build the ventilation:
Those pipes will supply up to 44 natural gas generators if this rig is run at full capacity. Ofc, doing so will require six or seven of them lol.
The next step will be the remaining plumbing in the middle section. I'll leave out the liquid vents and valves for now, as it's easier to see without them.
**I realized after the fact that there are two small mistakes here. These are the missing pipes:
Now the power and automation:
Sensor settings:
-left atmo sensor = below 20,000
-right atmo sensor = above 1000
-hydro sensor = above 0 (not really necessary but there just in case)
-filter gate (in between the and-gate and the not-gate) = 30
Also, you'll want a shipping line out:
I've run it past the turbines and transformers for a little bit of cooling, but that's optional.
Let's assume the space is fully vacuumed out now. Get rid of the unnecessary pumps/pipes/wires and add in [most of] the remaining tiles/machines/etc. (You might have noticed already I filled in some of the insulated tiles in this middle section, mostly for ease of access.) Machines need to be made out of steel or better.
Liquid valve settings are as follows:
-Bottom row, left to right: 5000, [your desired input, max 9900] (first one on oil line, 3000
-Lower right side: 7000
-Upper left side (x2): 1500
-Upper right side: 1500
-2x 1500 (middle coolant loop)
-1500 (upper coolant loop)
Finally, build your steam turbines, add the joint plate, and close up that room.
And that's it for that section! Hopefully your build is still vacuum sealed and no random gasses have found their way in. Your aquatuners should be working hard to get the freezing room the right temp, so we'll move on to the other section.
**Again, anything here that could possibly have a chance of being touched by magma must be made out of obsidian, steel, or diamond (or something with a melting temp above 1727C).
I've filled in the right-most vertical shaft, added the mesh tiles at the top of it, and added some more of the basic structure to to the rest.
You'll want to unblock your volcano soon, to start collecting magma, so next we'll do the automation so you don't have any accidents with the doors.
(I added this picture after finishing the build because I messed up the automation switches. Both need to be OFF right now.)
The square gates are memory toggles, the ones above them are filter gates (left:50, right:45), and the two at the top are not-gates.
The thermo sensors on the left should be set to below 500 (lower) and above 350 (upper). (We'll change that second one later.) The ones on the right are below 800 (lower) and above 540 (upper).
Hydro sensor should be set to above 500.
Once all of that is done, you can unblock your volcano.
Next, we'll add plumbing and power.
**The radiant pipes must be aluminum, except for the last two at the top left must be gold.
At the bottom I've added a reservoir, shutoff, and valve. Those are optional. They're for controlling the in-flow of oil into the part of the build that creates petroleum. The shutoff is connected to the reservoir via automation.
From the left, the vertical pipes are: robominer cooling loop, oil in-line, petroleum out-line, robominer cooling loop, and oil in-line for the sour gas boiler. Ofc you could also use petroleum in the sour gas boiler, but it would be silly to waste your magma making petroleum only to turn it into sour gas.
The cooling loop for the robominers probably isn't strictly necessary, as a drop of supercoolant on top of each of them will probably last hundreds of cycles, especially if you make them out of thermium. But better to plan for the worst imo.
Finally, we'll add the rest of the machines/tiles/etc. Don't forget that the window tiles need to be diamond. The metal tiles need to be steel.
Let's take a look at the entire rig's plumbing system and get the other cooling loops going:
Don't overfill the supercoolant loop that has all of the pumps/valves. Just give it enough to have a steady flow going.
The other cooling loops (turbines and robominers) will go out to wherever you have your cooling system(s) set up.
The final step is to activate the boilers. This requires caution and, in my experience, luck.
Before, we set one of the thermo sensors on the left to 350C. That'll need to be higher, but if you set it too high to start out with, the oil will flash to sour gas and ruin your day.
Start by piping 1000kg of crude oil to each of the 2x2 tempshift squares. Each tile should have around 500kg. Now cross your fingers, say a prayer, and activate one of the automation switches. Let in a couple tiles of magma and turn the switch off. Make sure you let in enough to form igneous rock tiles. If it's not enough, the magma will turn to debris and it'll take a lot longer for the heat to transfer.
The oil should heat up quickly and some of it will flash to petroleum. Check to make sure there's no sour gas. Once the door opens and the temp settles, start slowly bumping the temp up until all of the oil has turned to petroleum.
Once that's done, you can continue piping in oil. Wait until that 2x2 area is full, then you can raise the temp to it's final value of 400C.
The reason for this caution is that two things can go wrong:
There isn't enough oil mass and the temp spikes too high too quickly and flashes to sour gas.
Half the oil changes to petroleum and what's left is trapped between petroleum and tile, creating an overpressure that damages the tile.
So you don't want too much to start with, and you don't want too little. You want enough mass that the temp goes up slowly, but not so much mass that the oil still under-temp has nowhere to go.
Fortunately, getting the other side of the boiler running is much easier, since sour gas is the goal. Simply activate the switch, wait a few seconds, and turn it off.
Once the oil flashes you can go ahead an start pumping in more oil at your desired flow rate (up to 9900g/s). And that's it! Congrats on getting all the way to the end.
*This behemoth was originally made by Gamer43 and featured on FrancisJohn's youtube video 'Base Lovin 22'. I made a few small adjustments but the design is largely unchanged. Mostly because I barely understand how it works.
*The two parts of this mainly work separately, aside from the magma being needed for both. The left side will turn crude oil into petroleum; the right side will turn crude oil (or petroleum) first into sour gas, and then into large quantities of sulfur and natural gas.
*At full capacity, you could run 44 natural gas generators and feed 98 sweetles (or 39 grub grubs or 196 grubfruit plants).
*Thermium and super coolant are vital to this build, though not an excessive amount. The only things you must build out of thermium are the radiant pipes in the freezing room (with the diamond tiles). The coolant pool and the coolant loops (except for turbine and robominer cooling) must be supercoolant.
*Some of the tempshift plates must be made out of diamond. Those include the two single-tile ares, both 2x2 areas, and those in the freezing room. The rest can be made out of regular mineral, though the bottom-most vertical shaft needs to be something that can withstand 600C without melting.
*When in doubt, use obsidian and steel for building around very high heat. Anything that comes into contact with magma must have a melting point above 1700C. All machines must be made from steel or better (except turbines). Robominers could be made with lesser metals if you choose to actively cool them.
*This visual best explains how it works. Purple is sour gas and orange is natural gas. The mesh tiles force liquid (that's what the gray squares are, in between the colors) to the edges and send the gas up. It's known as a liquid bead pump and is an extremely effective mechanic. The natural gas chamber will never overpressure, so it double as infinite gas storage.
*You'll need 6 large transformers. They don't have to be where they are here; it's just an example. At full capacity, the whole rig will use around 5700W of power (extremely conservative estimate), including the power to pump natural gas out (and including the subtracted bonus added by the turbines). If my maths are right, that means it'll use about 16% of the power it's capable of producing with natural gas generators.
*In the left picture, those empty insulated pipes are for a cooling loop. In my test example, I used a drop of super coolant over each robominer. It's a long-lasting but still temporary solution to keep in the miner cool. You can do this if you want, but you might also want to put the cooling loop in place (using conduction panels) just in case.
*For the oil input, I first have a valve to control flow, and then a shutoff connected to the storage tank via automation. Ofc you can set up your storage however suits you.
*The second picture has a lot going on. Starting at the bottom, we've got the oil line in (black). It's goes through a shutoff that's connected to a bunch of automation, then through a valve set to your desired flow. The system can handle up to 9900g/s (at 10,000, the aquatuners won't be able to keep up long term). The oil then exchanges heat before dripping down the first bead pump. It goes through one more valve to split it, this one set to 5000.
*Next is one of the cooling loops with super coolant (blue). It's pumped by the bottom pump, goes through a valve set to 3000, up to another valve set to 1500, and then drops down the right-hand bead pump. It's pumped back into the system and sent to two more valves, both set to 1500 (their inputs are connected to each other), where it drips down the third bead pump. Finally it's pumped back into the beginning of the loops. This is all for the purpose of heat recycling.
*The next loop is also super coolant. It goes through the aquatuners and exchanges heat with the coolant pool below.
*The orange line is liquid methane, which is one of the products of sour gas. It's sent to the bottom of a bead pump, where it heats up and turns to natural gas. The valve in this loop is set to 7000.
*Finally, there's one more coolant loop over the turbines. This doesn't have to be super coolant; crude oil or petroleum would be fine, used with a standard cooling system.
*The filter gates, from left to right, should be 50, 45, and 30.
*There are two thermo sensors hidden under igneous rock; they should be set to below 500 (left) and below 800 (right). The two other thermo sensors above the metal tiles should be above 400 (left) and above 540 (right).
*The bottom hydro sensor should be above 500 while the top one should be above 0.
*The atmo sensor in the cold room should be below 20,000. The one in the natural gas chamber can be whatever you want, but I usually leave it on default (above 1000)
*As mentioned before, you can pack as much natural gas into that room as you want. The liquid bead pump doesn't care about silly things like physics and overpressure.
*Eight pumps should be able to keep up with an oil flow rate of 9900 (the max). Probably.
*This is optional. It's just a little extra cooling for the turbines, since the sulfur will be -160C when it comes out. You don't even need to extract the sulfur if you don't want it, but it's super useful for farming/ranching.
*Anyway, that's the short version of this build (I said what I said). Getting it built and set up in survival mode is a challenge worthy of the endgame, and I'm working on a tutorial post for it.
*This is suitable for a first rocket to drop rover modules. You can upgrade the outhouse to a toilet+hand sanitiser once you have the necessary materials.
*Try to bring good food like pemmican or berry sludge for morale. There are no boosts from rooms here, and not much from decor. Don't forget the wallpaper!
*Make the storage cubes from lead, if you can. They will block a lot of radiation. If you don't have lead and don't need storage for anything, just build regular tiles with granite (or graphite, if you have it). Granite doesn't have a radiation blocking boost, but it does give a little more decor.
*The room will eventually fill up with CO2. One option is to pump it out after a few trips. The other is to fill your fridge with non-perishable food, deconstruct it, and replace it with an algae terrarium. You could use the 'relocate item' button to drop some water bottles on the floor before takeoff, and use storage cubes for algae.
*This part is designed to be used with a gas cargo canister module. Your air won't last long at all without that unless you overpressure the cabin.
*This is only necessary if you have a wall toilet instead of an outhouse. Fill the pipes with water before takeoff.
*I love designing rocket interiors. It's like building tiny homes in the sims lol. Every design in this post will give the morale benefits of a washroom + great hall (+6 total).
*This design has a few variations, depending on your needs. The picture above is for sending one dupe into orbit for the sole purpose of gathering data banks for research. You'll want to fill your storage space with plastic. The storage cubes serve an important purpose: blocking radiation, which means they should be made out of lead.
*You could replace the cot with a luxury bed if you prefer that, but you might want to add more radiation-blocking tiles above it.
*Your rocket will need a gas cargo canister, a battery, and at least 2 solar panels.
*Here are a couple of similar alternatives:
*This one is good for exploration and long haul drop offs. You can chart space as you go (interior telescope saves space on rocket height) and/or drop off a dupe with the trailblazer module (no need to land). If you only send one dupe on this rocket, just to chart space, you can put something else in place of the extra bed/dining table (small sculptures, for example; more decor is always good in space).
*This one is good for sending one or two dupes to an asteroid that has a rocket pad. It's designed to land so that they can exit, build, and return, using this module as a temporary life support base. It's especially useful on asteroids with hostile environments, like the magma asteroid, since they'll need atmo suits.
*You'll have more water than you'll ever need on one flight. Even with two dupes, it'll last well over 300 cycles when full.
*Fill these pipes by connecting a water line directly to the outside of the module. Make sure it's not hot. Heat will eventually leak out, even if the pipes are insulated.
*Oxygen will come from two sources here: the port on the exterior of the module, and the gas output fitting that connects to the gas cargo canister module. Again, be mindful of the temp of the oxygen.
*Cabin air + pipes will allow one dupe to survive for 4 cycles (plus whatever is stored in the atmo suit+dock, if you have that). With a full cargo canister, you'll have enough oxygen for an additional 60 cycles for a single dupe. So that's 64 cycles for one or 32 for two, assuming I've mathed correctly.
*Before takeoff, you'll obviously want to make sure all pipes + the cargo module are completely full. This is designed to use the cargo air first, and then what's reserved in the pipes.
*The pipe sensor isn't connected to anything. It's a visual indicator that your reserves are almost empty and you basically only have what's left in your cabin (about 2.5 cycles for one dupe).
*You could, if you wanted to, use a high pressure vent and overpressure the cabin before takeoff. Your dupes will hate it but it'll cram a lot more air in that space.
*I recommend disconnecting the gas pump until the lowest tiles are full of CO2. It and the filter will use a lot of power to run continuously. You could sacrifice one of the wall trims to add an automation switch, though it's not really necessary with the cutting tool available. Or, if you only need one bed, you could rig up an atmo sensor + a gas element sensor.
*Rocket engines will produce some power, but only when the rocket is in flight. This means that using the data bank machine while in orbit, or using the rocket as a base while on an asteroid, will require another source (solar panels+battery for nights).
*I didn't power the fridge because it's much better to just take food that doesn't spoil. Berry sludge and pemmican are excellent options.
*You could also leave the phone unpowered if power is a problem. It's mainly there to make the mess hall a great hall.
*For when your oxygen needs are over the top. Very handy when you're sending out lots of rockets.
*In theory, this should produce 6000g/s of oxygen at full capacity. In my experience, you'll be lucky to get 80% of that. But c'mon, who needs that much oxygen, anyway?
*Produces a metric butt ton of hydrogen to bolster you power grid.
*All machines must be made out of steel.
*As these are self-powered, their power lines aren't connected to anything. The vertical line in the middle is for you main grid, so that you can make use of the excess hydrogen. You could also send it to a high-powered freezer to make liquid hydrogen for rockets.
*Nothing complicated here. The water can be hot as the steel machines can handle it. However, hotter water water will produce hotter oxygen.
*Ignore that pipe on the far left side. It's part of something else. Also, the empty pipe section was something I built for a different water source.
*The radiant pipes will keep those machines from overheating.
*You don't really need the long looping insulated pipes in the middle. They just act as a small storage storage buffer for the generators.
*Any bridges you see that seem redundant all have purposes. Pipe routing follows certain rules regarding flow direction. Bridges will force the flow the way you want it, where you want it.
*Oxygen pipes fit nicely in a 2-turbine cooling loop setup. You just need to have 6 slots rather than 5 (which is what I have in my post).
*Set the 2 upper thermo sensors to above 250g, and the lower 4 to above 450g.
*See my metal refinery post for more info on what's not pictured.
*Don't forget the tempshift plates!
*This simple addition is designed to preheat a liquid for some other purpose. It works best for preheating polluted water before being sent to a polluted water boiler, or for getting it up to a specific temp for a farm.
*You can also use it to preheat oil for a petroleum boiler, but only do so if you're using the version where the aquatuners are cooling the turbines. The self-cooling version can't handle steam hotter than around 130C.
*You could also use this setup as a gas preheater by using radiant gas pipes instead of (or in addition to) liquid pipes.
*Also also, you could attach this setup to any room that gets hot enough, like an industrial sauna or a metal volcano tamer.
*Simply pipe your desired liquid through this small loop on the left side. Pay attention to your liquid's boiling point and make sure the loop's temp isn't higher.
***There's a mistake in the screenshot. The not gate before the turbines shouldn't be there.***
*I've added an additional thermo sensor to the steam room. The one in the attachment (far left) should be set to 'above' + your target temp. The next one over (left side of steam chamber) should be 'below' and just a little higher, say around 5C more.
*The square gate is an 'and' gate and the other is a 'not' gates.
*This automation serves two purposes: It prevents two-way heat transfer, and it keeps the steam turbines from activating too soon, thereby sucking out the heat you need for your preheater.
*The turbine automation is unnecessary if your target temp is below 125C, as turbines will not activate below that.
*Obviously, not meant for mass production. For that, you'll probably want an industrial sauna.
*Vacuum out the steam room after adding water (or polluted water works, too). You don't have to make the gas pump out of steel, but it will eventually break if it's not, and you'll have that annoying notification lol (unless you're like me and have the wonderful 'suppress notifications' mod).
*So there are basically two ways of going about this:
Use the aquatuner to cool the turbines, as I have in this picture. In that situation, you'll want to set your liquid pipe thermo sensor to whatever temp you want your turbine room to be. The colder you set it, the more the aquatuner will run.
Let the turbines self-cool, thus saving power. To do so, run radiant pipes directly from the turbines to the liquid vent, snaking them around the shape of the turbine. Adjust the insulated pip loop that comes from the aquatuner to connect straight across to the other side. See the automation cross section for more info on that.
*It's hard to see, but the pipes around the aquatuner are like this: into the input with an overflow to the input of the bridge, then out from the output into the output of the bridge. In other words, connect the white and green squares to their color matches.
*Option 1: If you use the aquatuner to cool the turbines, the only automation that's really necessary is the pipe thermo sensor to the aquatuner (and the light, ofc). Again, you'll want it to be 'above' whatever temp you want the turbine room to be. You can still use the other automation, too, especially if you don't want to micromanage the refinery work orders.
*Option 2: If you want the turbines to self-cool, the rest of the automation is vital. The thermo sensor connects to both the refinery and the aquatuner (via and gate) and will shut them both down when the temp reaches the target setting, thus keeping the turbines from overheating.
I'm not 100% sure what that setting should be; probably around 150C ('below' option). I haven't tested it thoroughly because I typically go with option 1. Just play around with the setting until you find that the turbines are sitting comfortably around 98-99C. Keep in mind that the transformers are also producing heat and will undermine the turbines' ability to self-cool.
*Here, I have the pipe disconnected from the gas pump. If you leave it connected by accident, it will cause mayhem once the water turns to steam. Ask me how I know.
*The bottom one only works for copper and gold, in my experience. Everything else will need 3 turbines like the top one, otherwise they overheat.
*The liquid locks are in case your volcano is unburied and starts spewing before you're done, or if you need to go in to fix something. The space between them should be vacuumed out.
*Tip: You can 'turn off' volcanoes by putting a tempshift plate made from refined carbon behind the volcano. It should be on the tile that is two up and one right from the bottom left neutronium tile. (That tile is the only one that is 'active', so you can dig out all the other ones without the volcano activating.)
*These pipes should allow the turbines to self-cool, though there is a level a randomness to the volcanoes. It has to do with how much metal the release per second, how hot that metal is, and how long their active and rest periods are. Too much heat too fast will overwhelm the turbines. Someone better than me at math will have to figure out the exact numbers.
*I suppose you could use this to purify polluted water. Instead of a closed loop, pipe p-water in and pipe clean water out, no liquid pump needed. Just be sure not to overpressure the liquid vent (you could use a bit of automation with an atmo sensor for that). Liquid vents overpressure at 1000kg, which is the same as one full tile of water.
*This build is self powered
*The extra wires are for the pump and an additional pump to make vacuuming the volcano chamber faster.
*Set buffer gate to 1 second and filter gate to 25 seconds
*Set thermo sensor to 'below' and somewhere in the neighborhood of 130-140C. If you find that lots of metal is building up in the volcano chamber, set it hotter. If you want your metal to be cooler, set it colder.
*This design is to cool the metal to the temp of the steam. It's not 100% necessary.
*Here is my preferred way of setting up the build in a normal game. You can even do this early on, before you have the necessary steel and plastic, to get a head start for when you'll need it. Try to build it close to your SPOM and/or other things that will need cooling.
*Ideally, the tempshift plates will be made from diamond, but you probably won't have enough. You can make a few out of diamond (I recommend some in the far right chamber) and make the rest out of whatever you have a surplus of (rock mineral or dirt, for example).
*Notice in the top right area there are some extra pipes/bridges. These are for filling the pipes with coolant and filling the rooms with coolant/water.
*These pipes are for if you want to run a gas directly through the system. I don't recommend running both a liquid and a gas in the same slot unless they only need very minimal cooling.
*I like this setup as it harvests the turbine power directly for the aquatuner, but you could also connect the turbines and transformer directly to you main power line instead, if you wanted. The battery would be unnecessary in that case.
*Set thermo sensor to 'below' and your desired target temperature for cooling. Set the pipe thermo sensor to 'above' and at least 15C colder. Make note of your coolant's freezing temp and don't go below that.
*Once everything else is built, you can add the door (steel) and metal blocks (aluminum or steel), build the insulation tiles next to where the aquatuner will be, then fill the coolant chambers. I've used petroleum here. You can use polluted water if you don't have petroleum or crude oil, but it's not ideal.
*Fill in the insulation tiles below the steam chamber, build the aquatuner, then fill that room with water. You'll want one full layer (1000kg per tile), and then just enough to force the gases out of the second layer. You could also fill the steam chamber with polluted water instead. It'll purify when it turns to steam.
*Fill in the remaining insulation tiles, delete the ladders where the turbines go, and build the turbines and transformer.
*Finally, you can fill your pipes with coolant and delete the extra piping.
*Tip: You can get this running as long as you have sufficient power, even if you don't have the plastic for turbines yet. It'll take some considerable time for the water to reach 125C, depending on how hot it was when you put it in there.
*With this, you can have 7 different cooling loops, each with a different temperature (or all the same, if you want).
*I haven't.....fully tested the limits of this and just how much it can manage. It should be able to handle keeping farms at the needed temp, as well as cooling oxygen for a closed base. It won't handle, for example, significantly cooling water from a geyser/vent.
*See below for a picture of the most streamlined way to build this:
*I redesigned the top layer (with the power) after taking this screenshot, so refer to the first image for that. I also made a mistake with the ladders in one spot.
*Work from the bottom up after this shell is complete (see other pics for power/pipes/etc). Fill the bottom chambers with your desired coolant, then add the metal blocks and doors. The extra liquid vents are for this purpose. Simply use a bridge (and pipe cutting tool where necessary ) to connect to the pipes that are already in place. You can fix it later.
*The next layer will have more coolant. You don't need to completely fill each tile. Fill the bottom layer, and then partially fill the next layer up. The shell is designed in such a way that you don't need to vacuum any gasses out, and there won't be any gasses trapped in the corners.
*The next layer is for water. Fill the bottom layer and then just add a tiny bit more to push the gasses out of the top layer.
*Fill the upper pipes with your desired coolants, using bridges so that you don't over fill them. The 'out' side should connect directly to the destination pipe.
*You can fill the lower pipes (the loops that go out to cool things) later on once you decide to use them.
*Finally, deconstruct the ladders/extra liquid vents and place the turbines. You only need the two vents that expel water from the turbines.
*It's a bit hard to see, but the bridges over the aquatuners have a pipe that goes up from the aquatuner 'in' port and towards the middle of the structure to connect to the bridge. This functions as an overflow so that the coolant continues to move when the aquatuners aren't running.
*These pipes are in case you want to run a gas directly through (like oxygen). Generally, liquid pipes are better for cooling loops, but gas pipes have their uses, too.
*Connect power out line to your main grid. This build will draw power until the battery is full, and then stop when it's empty. This way, the power from the steam turbines is harvested in a self-contained way and none of that bonus power is wasted.
*Alternatively, you could just run your main power line through the turbines and transformers. The only real difference is that the turbines will run whether or not your main grid batteries are full. And it adds an an inconsistent source for your main grid, like solar panels, so it's harder to know how much you're producing per second.
*Set thermo sensors to 'below'. The temp should be whatever your target temp is for each cooling loop.
*Set liquid pipe thermo sensors to 'above'. The temp should be at least 10C cooler than your coldest loop temp.
*I've used only 3 generators here, but you can use as many as you have the fuel for. You need 1 turbine for every 2 generators.
*This will produce a surplus of clean water to recycle back to the oil wells. However, you will probably lose some steam to space exposure, depending on how far up your chimney it is.
*Make sure the turbines have a good environment of hydrogen to keep from overheating. They should self cool, though I didn't test it for a crazy number of cycles.
*There's no complex automation or shipping here. The conveyor loader will send out dirt to wherever you want (the cycle sensor keeps the autosweeper from running constantly) and the gas element sensor is set to CO2.
*Of course, you'll want automation wires connecting to a smart battery somewhere nearby (I forgot to add this haha).
*Water out line will be hot (around 98C) and can be sent to oil wells. Excess can be pumped into space if you don't need it.
*The gas pump is there for 2 reasons: 1) to get rid of any polluted oxygen that offgasses while you wait for the petroleum generators to heat up to the point that the p-water instantly flashes to steam, and 2) to keep the CO2 from overwhelming the turbines.
*The filter is set to steam.
*The CO2 chimney will get rid of a large amount but you can also harvest it for slicksters or rockets if you want. This build is more geared towards those who just want it gone.
*If you find that the CO2 is still building up, add another chimney on the other side.
*Connect heavy wires to main circuit. Turbines will give a little extra!
*despite the sometimes intimidating notion of working with magma in the mid-game, this build is extremely simply and requires nothing more advanced than a small amount of steel + the use of atmo suits (which you should already have if you've tapped the oil biome)
*this build will convert oil to petroleum without the 50% loss of the refinery machine; it's also 'free' except for a very small amount of power for the pump and doors
*it will run forever, assuming you have enough oil and are not using petroleum at such a rate that you use the magma faster than it is produced
**important: setup and startup require some careful planning; interior (at least, the right side) needs to be vacuumed out first; once everything is ready, set the thermo sensor 'above 0' to ensure the door remains open, then fill only the four tiles around it with oil; reset thermo sensor to 'above 395' and the oil will soon flash to petroleum; finally, you can start pumping more oil in**
*because of its simplicity, this build does require periodic maintenance; as you can see in the picture, the magma will eventually turn into igneous rock, which will need to be mined out
*I recommend placing obsidian tempshift plates (if you have enough obsidian) and some obsidian ladders in the bottom magma chamber
*the upper door allows you to store roughly the amount of magma you'll need to refill the chamber below the volcano; it's manually controlled with a switch
*you could add in some basic automation to alert you when the igneous rock has cooled below ~425C (which means your petroleum production will soon halt)
*oil comes out of oil wells at 90C, so this build is designed to heat it up from a temperature somewhere near that
*the number of liquid reservoirs is up to you and how much reserve you want
*I recommend using a valve to limit how much oil goes through the pipes; here, I have the full amount for testing, but ideally you want to be converting roughly the same amount that you are using
*one petroleum generator running constantly will use 2000g/s; pipes accommodate 5x that amount; oil wells produce 333.33g/s, so 3 of them max out the pipe flow rate
*power requirements are minimal
*make the wires out of steel so they don't melt
*automation is also minimal and needs to be made from steel (the hydro sensor doesn't have to be, but the pump DOES need to be)
*the purpose of this build is to turn polluted water into clean water without sand; it won't last forever but should last many hundreds of cycles
*any source can be used, but this design is primarily for cold water from a slush geyser, as it will cool the product slightly
**important: this build uses a mod for greater sensor ranges**
*to set up, build the shell first, vacuum all the air out (use water lock), build the magma/hot rock spike, and then finish building the interior
*any insulated blocks that touch magma must be made from obsidian, or they will melt
*window tiles must be diamond; door and any wires near magma must be steel
*metal blocks should be aluminum or steel; that pocket of vacuumed space is to prevent unwanted heat transfer from magma
*turbine and battery rooms need a gas like hydrogen for cooling
*top left room is vacuumed to prevent heat loss through joint plate
*water in-line valve should be set to 3500; I found this was the best for keeping everything balanced, but feel free to experiment with it to suit your needs
*if your polluted water source is hotter than 98C, there's no need to run it through the radiant pipes; it can go straight to the steam room
*you can also preheat your polluted water (up to around 115) using heat provided by machines like the metal refinery; this helps to siphon off some of that heat and will make your main heat source (i.e. magma) last longer
*this build is self-powered and will intermittently produce power (up to 500W but sometimes none) for your main grid
*an aquatuner cooling setup could be combined with this to make use of the excess power to cool the water
*set left atmo sensor to below 250,000
*set right atmo sensor to above 150,000
*set thermo sensor to above 122C
*set timer sensor to mode: seconds, green: 60, red 600 (the only purpose of this is so that the autosweeper only triggers for 1 minute every cycle, rather than running constantly)
*hydro sensor isn't necessary, just a way to control water output
(ignore extra automation wire at the bottom)
*this build produces a small amount of dirt; if you really want the far left tile to be collected, use two autosweepers, as one doesn't reach all the way
*this will produce an average of 1800W of power (which, granted, is not much considering the labor involved, but at least it's free)
*of course, it could always be extended if you have the space; just be sure to have one diamond spike for every three turbines
*magma is not required, just something that is hot enough to power the turbines (more than 130C); standard asteroids will usually have a core that is made of igneous rock just below melting temp
*the heat will eventually be used up, so this is not a permanent power solution; however, it will likely take several hundred cycles to burn out
*any tiles that touch the magma/super-heated rock MUST be made out of obsidian or something else with a higher melting temp (use diamond for window tiles)
*doors (above diamond tiles) must be steel
*this build requires some careful setup and atmo suits are a must; see below for a setup guide:
*first, build the outer shell with a liquid lock, then pump out all of the air until there is a perfect vacuum; DO NOT ENTER without an atmo suit, or CO2 will be released from dupes
*next, build the diamond window tile spikes; start with one column, then the other; use the corner trick if you are building into magma
*ladders must be made out of something that won't melt (i.e. obsidian)
*once those steps are complete, you can begin replacing ladders with the remaining inner floor tiles
*metal tiles should be made from aluminum or steel; machinery can be made from refined copper as it will be cooled to around 100C (except transformer, which needs to be gold or steel)
*once the turbines are built and the rooms are sealed up from each other, pump at least 2000kg per tile of hydrogen into the turbine and battery rooms; the more mass, the greater the hydrogen's heat capacity, which will make cool more efficient
*once the steam room is sealed up, use the pipes already in place to pump in water; a full tile along the bottom layer is a good amount (250kg of steam per tile for the whole room)
*connect to main power grid
*vacuum pocket along right side is necessary to prevent heat leakage from joint plates
*make radiant pipes from aluminum or steel
*keeping the generators cool is vital to their efficiency
*set atmo sensors to above 130
*steam generators are finicky: they will produce more power with hotter steam, but they will not efficiently cool themselves past 130C
*adding in an aquatuner for cooling negates any extra power you'd get from hotter steam (believe me, I tried)
*left version is for pre-plastic colonies; natural gas is heavier than oxygen, so not too much should escape
*be aware that the refinery has a 2:1 ratio with oil:petroleum; a high-heat-based solution is required to get a 1:1 ratio
*this setup allows excess natural gas to be used to supplement power elsewhere
*you could also connect the generators to the main power grid instead, if it was close enough
*CO2 outline can be used for rockets, slicksters, or vented to space
*excess natural gas could also be sent to additional generators, if desired; this setup will produce more power than it uses
*lines are for oil (in), petroleum (out), and polluted water (out)
*only a very small amount of polluted water will be produced
*atmo sensor in left build should be above [equal to the air pressure outside of the build]
*atmo sensor in right build can be default but change the button to 'above'
*the gas tank config can be set how you like; it will activate the transformer (therefore burning off excess) when it reaches the high setting, and deactivate the transformer when it reaches the low setting
