Fractionator vs Fusion in late game?

[Electric Donkey]

I definitely used fractionators when my factory was small and I had to watch how much power I was using - but after building out a sphere I have more energy available than I can use. Do fractionators have advantages over particle colliders other than low energy consumption?

[Kyrros]

Fractionators create 1 Deuterium from 1 Hydrogen, you only get half that amount (5 Deut from 10 Hydrogen) from a collider but requires much more power - albeit at a faster rate.

Though, with chains of Fractionators (10-15 in a loop), speed becomes much less an issue as you can easily blueprint several loops of fractionators to fill a green belt, or a few more loops to saturate a blue belt.

If you want a green belt of Deut, you need to feed 2 green belts or 1 blue belt into colliders, where if you use several fractionator loops, you get the same amount out that you put in.

[josmith7]

Well if you use stacked belts and proliferators Fractionators also have significantly higher deuterium production per grid square than particle colliders.

Personally I go with fractionators early and then later get all my additional deuterium via orbital collectors on gas giants -- never bothering to scale up fractionators nor switch to particle colliders

[Kyrros]

In addition to what Mr. Smith said, with the Oct 2021 patches, they added gas giants with different H2/FireIce/Deuterium ratios. So finding a gas giant with the highest Deuterium ratio then maxing out orbiters (40 per Giant) is always a good way to go as well. Vein Utilization upgrades also increase orbital extraction rates!

[musizlover2008]

Deuterium from Gas Giants is often the common move, but even with full 40 Collectors, it is still a slow method even with mining upgrades, and most of your Deuterium is spent in making Strange Matter and Fuel Rods, which is consumed very quickly seeing that a lot is needed for making Carrier Rockets and Green Matrixes. When scaling up your industry you will need Fractionators to increase Deuterium production. The developers will have to tweak the Particle Collider's output if they want it to still be a useful method of making Deuterium.

[Dragonmaster]

Since belt stacking has become a thing, using particle colliders is pretty much obsolete for making deut since the fractionator can process the entire stack at a time letting it process 7200/min now.

[Fritou]

and sprayed hydrogen has more chance to convert into deuterium

[mrrvlad]

As others mentioned, Fractinators for both early and late game. They consume more power, but are more space efficient. Make sure to stack the input to 4. Spray is optional. I usually have up to 25 fractionators in the same loop if not sprayed - more will saturate blue belt output.

[Electric Donkey]

Thanks for the info. I'll definitely give stacked and sprayed fractionators a try.

[MechBFP]

When you need 50 orbital collectors worth of hydrogen just to make deutron rods, trust me, you don't want to waste any of it.

[kris44dad]

Originally posted by Electric Donkey:

I definitely used fractionators when my factory was small and I had to watch how much power I was using - but after building out a sphere I have more energy available than I can use. Do fractionators have advantages over particle colliders other than low energy consumption?

Yes. Eight fractionators will give you 1000 units per minute.

[SmoothCrimnl]

deuterium from gas giants is too slow. i've mined every gas giant in my star cluster and it doesn't provide enough. i like fractionators for the footprint. you can fit 4 builds across the prime building area of your planet.

my setup provides about 7k deuterium/min per ILS. 30 fractionators per loop. 3 loops per ILS. only new hydrogen entering the loop gets sprayed.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1812141389582281993/548269F3D02B974EF3584DE7DBBA461E152B8E3D/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

[Koro]

You can get enough from gas giants if your vein utilization is high enough. Depends on how fast you scale up though.
In previous patch I was doing some 58.000 white cubes per minute without any extra production of deterium. So time to go out and harvest some gas giants :)

[SmoothCrimnl]

Originally posted by Koro:

You can get enough from gas giants if your vein utilization is high enough. Depends on how fast you scale up though.
In previous patch I was doing some 58.000 white cubes per minute without any extra production of deterium. So time to go out and harvest some gas giants :)

how? my VU is at level 100 right now and it's nowhere close to supporting it. you would need something like 300k deuterium/min collection to support that.

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by SmoothCrimnl:

how? my VU is at level 100 right now and it's nowhere close to supporting it. you would need something like 300k deuterium/min collection to support that.

I mentioned it above, but it was mixed in with a bunch of other info. October 2021 patches introduced Gas/Ice Giants with varying ratios of harvesting - so some seeds will simply have better Gas Giants to harvest Deuterium from.

Usually in the .05 to .12 Deut range, but I've very rarely seen it go as high as .30 - so with a decent VU, that could actually sustain production - even better if you have multiple high Deut-ratio Gas Giants.

Don't be afraid to shop around your cluster for decent Gas Giants, especially if you don't want to deal with Fractionator loops. (I personally don't mind - I made myself a nice/tidy x15 looped Blueprint)