What's the best way to hoard deuterium?

[Dragon]

My head's too flat today to do the math myself (take a guess what caused my lack of sleep...) so, I was wondering: What's the best way to produce deuterium? Orbital collector, particle collider or good ol' fashioned fractionators?

Particle colliders use a lot of energy but, I have a central power distribution setup with plenty of accumulators circulating between the planets so, it's the one I'm considering. Is it the best choice? I haven't touched orbital collectors yet (I have an ice giant nearby) and I don't have need for the excess H2 at the moment.

I suppose I'll end up using both but, not that far yet.

[Fabiaville]

fractionators. use tier 3 belt and it produces deuterium like no tomorow. put about 20 on a loop on tier 3 belt. fractionators get much more deuterium for the same amount of energy to build a couple colliders.

[hoe]

Originally posted by Fabiaville:

fractionators. use tier 3 belt and it produces deuterium like no tomorow. put about 20 on a loop on tier 3 belt. fractionators get much more deuterium for the same amount of energy to build a couple colliders.

Completely agree with this fellow chap. But I just want to mention that Fractionator loops get less efficient as you put more Fractionators on it. So, personally, I would put in 10 Fractionators. :D

[Dragon]

Ok thanks. I'll go for fractionators. Colliders can then focus on producing strange matter instead.

[Mowglia]

If you have access to a gas giant you might as well help yourself? I try to get my hydrogen from a giant (either type) to start because it's free after the orbital collectors are set up, and it can't back up. Don't need it atm? Just leave it there, no issues.

Assuming power is effectively unlimited, the determining factor for me would be how much deuterium I actually need. Don't quote me on the figures, I'd have to check to be certain, but I think my gas giant has 0.06 deuterium/s (x1 resources). I worked out (by timing extraction) that to produce 1,800 deuterium per minute I'd need Mining Upgrades 200%-210%.

Obviously producing much more than that would require another method, but considering I already tap giants for ice and hydrogen, not taking the deuterium would be crazy (given it's just sitting there) :)

[DaBa]

If you have space, fractinators are the way to go. But like other people have already said, the bigger the loop the less efficient it will get since the amount of hydrogen on the belt will keep decreasing as fractinators successfully produce deuterium, reducing the further deuterium production. 10 fractinator loop is probably a good mid point between efficiency and complexity of the setup.

FYI, 10 fractinators plugged to a single t3 belt should produce you, on average, almost 3 deuterium a second. Almost because every new fractinator added to the same loop will have a slightly lower performance.

Of course, don't forget to tap your gas giant first, it should have some deuterium. But I'm assuming you have A TON of spare hydrogen byproduct like everybody else so that'll be your main source.

[Dragon]

Thanks for the tips.

I've gone for two rows of 6 fractionators for now, which I can expand to rows of 10 and/or ice giant collectors later as production picks up. I've only just entered purple matrix territory and want to get a basic warper production line running for logistics vessel supply. There's a juicy black hole 3ly away.

Things are still going somewhat slow at the moment. I built up to drive engine 4 and warpers on my starter planet, learning the game and checking out all the features, then packed up my entire factory and moved to another system. Here, I decided to go for a multiplanet setup right away, not nearly as efficient as my single planet plate of spaghetti I had on my starter planet and slow to get up and running but, I like it. It's a large system (planets being up to 15AU apart at times) so production should pick up once I got some logistics vessel speed and cargo space research under the belt.

A multiplanet setup does give me loads of space to expand though.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Thanks for the tips.

I've gone for two rows of 6 fractionators for now, which I can expand to rows of 10 and/or ice giant collectors later as production picks up. I've only just entered purple matrix territory and want to get a basic warper production line running for logistics vessel supply. There's a juicy black hole 3ly away.

Things are still going somewhat slow at the moment. I built up to drive engine 4 and warpers on my starter planet, learning the game and checking out all the features, then packed up my entire factory and moved to another system. Here, I decided to go for a multiplanet setup right away, not nearly as efficient as my single planet plate of spaghetti I had on my starter planet and slow to get up and running but, I like it. It's a large system (planets being up to 15AU apart at times) so production should pick up once I got some logistics vessel speed and cargo space research under the belt.

A multiplanet setup does give me loads of space to expand though.

A tip from somebody who already went through this: It's best to manufacture warpers in the star system that will be exporting the goods. It makes things needlessly complicated if you automate warpers and then export them to other systems (and it will also waste warpers too). And you will have to expand to other systems soon, since you're at the point where you will start ramping up the silicon consumption by A LOT. So, don't bother automating warpers yet, especially with the basic recipe that's pretty inefficient. Best get to green science, and start setting up mining colonies with local warpers supply.

[Mowglia]

Originally posted by Dragon:

...then packed up my entire factory and moved to another system. Here, I decided to go for a multiplanet setup right away, not nearly as efficient as my single planet plate of spaghetti I had on my starter planet and slow to get up and running but, I like it. It's a large system (planets being up to 15AU apart at times) so production should pick up once I got some logistics vessel speed and cargo space research under the belt.

A multiplanet setup does give me loads of space to expand though.

This is exactly what I did, and I don't regret it. Although it slowed me down to start with it's paying off now. I used one planet for research, another for the rocket factory, and another (farthest out) just as a mine. I was going to use the fourth planet as a mall, and still might, but so much stuff is involved in the rocket production chain that it's tempting just to leech off that, lol.

[Vectorspace]

As others have said, the longer the loop, the less efficient as if the first Fractionator removes a hydrogen, there is now a gap in the line that passes through all the rest.

I did the maths. A loop of 10 Fractionators on a 30 belt will produce an average of 2.87 deuterium per second. The equation is:
belt_speed - (belt_speed * (0.99^fractionator_count))
=30-30*0.99^10
=30-30*0.904
=30-27.13
=2.87
(0.99 is the chance that a Fractionator will not convert a hydrogen)

You can always boost a longer loop by merging in new hydrogen after every few Fractionators to fill gaps left by the earlier ones

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by Dragon:

I suppose I'll end up using both but, not that far yet.

I've used all methods, and once you have several orbital collectors in place, I'm honestly not sure why anyone would continue to use other methods. I mean, fractionators are ok early game, or just for some bonus deuterium along a hydrogen highway. I find that later on in the game though, as your requirements change, so does the way things are gathered more efficiently. And the beauty of orbital collectors is they power themselves with the collected material. So you place them and forget about them, and let your logistic towers do the rest.

Also, later on you shouldn't have to worry about hoarding any if you have a good flow coming in from orbital collectors. I recently removed the belt from my tower so I could finally use the 80,000 I had unnecessarily stored in tanks.

[EmDriver]

Gas giants and fractionators!
This is an example of getting 30 deuterium per second from 100 fractionators:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2390165517

[Cakewalk]

Gas giant with mining speed research.
Since mining speed research is literally infinite, at a high level, orbit harvesters can be filled up instantly upon construction.

[umop-apisdn]

To all the people talking about the diminishing returns of deuterium production via fractionators because the hydrogen gets used when it procs a deuterium:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLT_9l4wQ0M&t=776s

[EmDriver]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

To all the people talking about the diminishing returns of deuterium production via fractionators because the hydrogen gets used when it procs a deuterium:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLT_9l4wQ0M&t=776s

Yea it's like nuclear energy from Factorio, odd setup. Need to replace the hydrogen every three fractionators to have them running at over 99% capacity.

[Markus Reese]

I found that deuterium is effectively infinite if you tap into an ice giant for fire ice.

I have a stand alone factory system pumping out constant rate of collectors and just surrounded the close giant.

My setup has three zones. 1st I have the logistics hub send it to the chem plants crack the ice, second zone is fractionators. Third zone is burners.

So after fire ice is broken up, the graphene has a primary splitter back to the logistics hub. If that is full, it goes off to the burners which are multiple daisy chained rows.

The hydrogen run a cycle to the fractionators. If the input is backlogged because cycle line is full, excess also goes to the burners, but enters from opposite end and daisy chains other way.

I could so the colliders too, but the closed cycle just seems more efficient. There is no specific math to it, the chem processing side is just maximum that can be fed from one tier 2 conveyor. So I can have up to three clusters per hub, just expand as needed.