Water treatment Centers - Useful?

[Llucmk]

I've made one of these thinking it would help me out unchoke my farm sector, since the production of water is a bit down compared to food production.

Thought this building would create water from trash, but instead it just refills temporarily for just a single cycle... I don't understand the point of this building. The only buildings that use water are the farms and take about 10 cycles to fullfill the crops. What's the point of this building? It takes even 100 of energy and steals all the trash instead of giving it to the recycling plant which is waaaay more useful.

[Maxwell Trent]

I believe you need to click the auto cycle button. Then it will in theory keep you topped off with water

[Ed-209]

I've been scratching my head trying to figure out the same thing. I still don't really understand what the purpose of the Water Treatment Center is or what it does exactly. Also struggling to figure out what it's function -- "Water Compensation" -- entails... what is it compensating? I'm aware of "compensation water" as a legal term, but I don't think that's what's being referred to here.

I built one thinking it'd support/help out my Fusion Station (do we really need a fusion tech to... melt ice? I've been doing it wrong all this time!), but all it appeared to do was chew up waste, didn't notice any change in the water reservoir levels at all.

Anyway, couldn't find anything about this building (or "water compensation") in the tutorial and not much info out there on the internet. I'm just in sector 3 so far, so maybe it'll make sense later on?

[[DaXp]Nesmor]

It´s a complete waste in the state it is right now. As long as it has waste to recycle it fullfills all water needs of a sector no matter how much you need. But, and this is a big but, the amount of waste it needs is absoutly to much for one cycle of water. My advice is to skip that building and produce the water out of ice. You get enough out of that and in that production chain a water storage gets build up, which dosen´t happen with the water treatment center.

[Ed-209]

Ok, that makes sense. It basically provides your water needs in the sector for each cycle, no more, no less, at the cost of 50 waste/cycle and 100 energy. This is pretty steep... just thinking about it, even if/when I get to a point I'm generating that much waste, I'd probably have to reorganize my sector to ensure the transport shuffle could pick up and deliver that much waste every cycle.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by DaXpNesmor:

It´s a complete waste in the state it is right now. As long as it has waste to recycle it fullfills all water needs of a sector no matter how much you need. But, and this is a big but, the amount of waste it needs is absoutly to much for one cycle of water. My advice is to skip that building and produce the water out of ice. You get enough out of that and in that production chain a water storage gets build up, which dosen´t happen with the water treatment center.

You can upgrade the tech so it only need half the waste though.

[utilityguy]

Even in the situation I found myself in, having to stockpile a good 125(including the 25 in the building) waste and keep it turned off whenever I wasn't using my Algea Farms, the Recycling Water Center proved invaluable in having to save me from mining anything in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, especially since I had policies in place where one Harvest of Algea Farms would easily cover 3 meals for 5300 people... and in that situation I was eventually overflowing with waste that turning on the Water Treatment center was a requirement in order for me to burn through waste quickly enough haha

[Påsan]

i loved the water treatment center, as it removed my buildings need for purging waste. (this is a MASSIVE ISSUE lategame.)
and it also got rid of the waste super efficiently. as it takes very little space and eat a lot of waste.

making water was actually the least important part for me lol

[ParasiteX]

It drains too much power and drains too much waste (which is better used elsewhere), even with the upgrades, to be worth it.
There is more than enough ice on each map, that you would never ever need to use it.

[resonance]

It is a good building if you have a huge population, but is largely unnecessary if you don't. Having that huge pop (3000+) means needing a lot of food and insect farms won't cut it. So you want lots of crop farms and algae farms, but that means always needing water and ice which is annoying and takes up valuable space. Hence the water plant. Less space and it uses trash which you will already have in abundance with that many people.

The thing is, that if you don't have a lot of people, then your trash stockpile is better used in recycling as the water plant will eat it up too fast. Meanwhile, simply researching the mess hall upgrades will allow even a couple of farms to feed a moderate population effectively and leave the space needed for the fusion plant and ice stockpiles.

Oh, while on this subject: Not sure if anyone else noticed this, but the upgrades for the crop farms also apply to your algae farms. So increasing the production speed works on both.

[Påsan]

Originally posted by resonance:

Oh, while on this subject: Not sure if anyone else noticed this, but the upgrades for the crop farms also apply to your algae farms. So increasing the production speed works on both.

i never knew for sure, but i had a idea, since the upgrade text seemed pretty general.

[resonance]

Originally posted by Orbmaniac:

Originally posted by resonance:

Oh, while on this subject: Not sure if anyone else noticed this, but the upgrades for the crop farms also apply to your algae farms. So increasing the production speed works on both.

i never knew for sure, but i had a idea, since the upgrade text seemed pretty general.

Well the insect farm upgrade has the exact same wording, but only affects the insect farms, so it isn't very clear. I think the description in this game could use some work honestly. Also, mushroom farms are food production and it does not affect those either.

[Påsan]

Originally posted by resonance:

Originally posted by Orbmaniac:

i never knew for sure, but i had a idea, since the upgrade text seemed pretty general.

Well the insect farm upgrade has the exact same wording, but only affects the insect farms, so it isn't very clear. I think the description in this game could use some work honestly. Also, mushroom farms are food production and it does not affect those either.

you are right, i guess i came to the right conclusion based on bad logic ;)

i still call it a W :D

[RJM]

I ran one sector on water treatment, several sectors had waste treatment and all sectors had waste production. With the sector storages instructed to average out waste by only keeping 50 in each, there was a steady flow from overfull sectors to the water sector to keep the water going. Once you have a 3k+ population it would take a lot of ice mining to feed everyone using ice, unless you focus a lot of tech upgrades on mess halls, farms and water fusion.

[Nova]

Evene though i had a bug, where i don't get the additional 750 pods from Chapter 4, my populoation was at 52xx.

Thwe waste generated was just way too much. Even 10 recyclers were not enough.
This building eat through it, no problem.

At this point i had 3k on each resource, so no need for recycling any more.

[Ed-209]

Cool, thanks guys. Water treatment center makes much more sense now and, as I kind of suspected, it'll make more sense late-game when typically much more waste is being generated aboard the Tiqqun.