I'm stuck on making the red cubes

[kris44dad]

I'm at the point where I need the red cubes. I have an oil refinery that putting out hydrogen and refined oil. But I'm having a hard time figuring out what facilities I need to unlock to further process that into more hydrogen.

[BumpInTheNight]

I came looking for that answer earlier today - You need to build some red with what you've got, let the oil build up in a storage container. Then, research the X-Ray Cracking tech which gives you the recipe to reprocess Hydrogen and Oil using Refineries into more Hydrogen after that to start scaling your red cube production further and take care of the built-up oil reserves.

[JOKESTER215]

A friendly reminder that use all the space you got on the planet, it's limited but you should be able to get it fixed! Another reminder you can lift your belts up if you need to bring it over buildings :)

[9g6t7g967t]

I believe X-ray cracking allows you to produce more hydrogen. Also you probably just need to scale up your refinery operations.

[Awac]

You need alot of refinaries, both for Crude oil and then more for hydrogen 2 -> 3.

Build something like 15-30 refinaries to support a steady flow of Red cubes.

[kris44dad]

Originally posted by 9g6t7g967t:

I believe X-ray cracking allows you to produce more hydrogen. Also you probably just need to scale up your refinery operations.

That's what I thought. But according to the tech tree, you need red cubes to unlock that. Or am I reading it wrong? Do you have to make 200 red cubes by hand to get that unlock?

[kris44dad]

My problem isn't one of scale. I'm just at a loss as to what to build and what order to unlock x-ray cracking, I think.

[Lazard]

you dont need the x-ray cracking to make the red cubes... the normal plasma refining already gives you some hydrogen... and the graphite you get from coal... just make the red cubes in the research lab

[JOKESTER215]

Originally posted by kris44dad:

My problem isn't one of scale. I'm just at a loss as to what to build and what order to unlock x-ray cracking, I think.

Simply put: you need hydrogen and you need the oil pump and refinery to refine the crude oil to get residue of refined oil and the most needed hydrogen

[Gorezin]

you can put as much as 12 reffeneries per 6/sec oil production (a mk1 conveyer belt is 6 item/sec), so roughly 3 or 4 oil wells since they produce between 1.5 and 2 in average.
Then you can add in parallel some refineries for x-ray cracking and use the energy graphyte to power up some power plants, you'll never run out of power anymore and graphyte is more effective than refined oil for power anyway :)

[kris44dad]

Originally posted by Lazard:

you dont need the x-ray cracking to make the red cubes... the normal plasma refining already gives you some hydrogen... and the graphite you get from coal... just make the red cubes in the research lab

Finally got it. Thanks.

[Wish Maker]

Originally posted by kris44dad:

Originally posted by Lazard:

you dont need the x-ray cracking to make the red cubes... the normal plasma refining already gives you some hydrogen... and the graphite you get from coal... just make the red cubes in the research lab

Finally got it. Thanks.

Yeah took me a bit to figure this one too. I had to search the Tech Tree a bit, even stuff I didn't do yet -- THEN that is when I found it.

[Radioshow]

ya the research buildings both create cubes and do research depending on what you select

[ColStuckInMyTeeth]

honestly early on I tried xray cracking because hydrogen was so little out of the refineries I was using. But towards late game (I'm at purple cubes now) you end up needing so much refined fuel from the plasma process that you get tons of hydrogen out anyway. At this point I think I have somewhere around 15 refineries and I might still need more.

For the Hydrogen I ended up having to invent ways to get rid of it because once it topped out my tanks it stopped refinery plasma production, which stops refined fuel which stops all the 50 other buildings that depend on it. Early on it was a real problem and I just had to keep making new tanks. Then I tried using 3 Fractionators set up with mk3 conveyers out of (and back into) the tanks for the 0.5% chance for each to make Deuterium. Then I tried Hydrogen Cells. It was Particle accelerator that helped a ton when I finally got that.

TLDR dont EVER bother with xray cracking. There's too much hydrogen as it is, and just shy of building new tanks every couple of mins it will slow your entire production line down by stopping your fuel production.

[JOKESTER215]

Originally posted by GDICommand:

honestly early on I tried xray cracking because hydrogen was so little out of the refineries I was using. But towards late game (I'm at purple cubes now) you end up needing so much refined fuel from the plasma process that you get tons of hydrogen out anyway. At this point I think I have somewhere around 15 refineries and I might still need more.

For the Hydrogen I ended up having to invent ways to get rid of it because once it topped out my tanks it stopped refinery plasma production, which stops refined fuel which stops all the 50 other buildings that depend on it. Early on it was a real problem and I just had to keep making new tanks. Then I tried using 3 Fractionators set up with mk3 conveyers out of (and back into) the tanks for the 0.5% chance for each to make Deuterium. Then I tried Hydrogen Cells. It was Particle accelerator that helped a ton when I finally got that.

TLDR dont EVER bother with xray cracking. There's too much hydrogen as it is, and just shy of building new tanks every couple of mins it will slow your entire production line down by stopping your fuel production.

Fractionators suck imo. Just get a particle collider. That removes hydrogen by double.

[ColStuckInMyTeeth]

Originally posted by JOKESTER215:

Fractionators suck imo. Just get a particle collider. That removes hydrogen by double.

Well no kidding. I don't think you get what I was saying. When you're still progressing through the tech tree and you only have Fractionators, then you deal with what you got.