Hydrogen bottleneck?

[Michaelus]

I'm in my 1st playthrough and it takes ages to make red cubes, because of so small amount of hydrogen.... how do you get more? just build more refineries? I get a lot of fuel in the process, but mech can only have 20 per slot, so I have to commit more inventory to it, which is quite inconvenient

tl;dr: how to get more H?

[Knottypine]

What I do early on is designate an area for x-ray cracking. You can easily set it up so all refined oil is used up and generate a decent amount of hydrogen and some bonus energetic graphite. I burn off the excess energetic graphic and/or use it elsewhere in production. The hydrogen is fed into making red cubes, and whatever else I need it for. Depending on the size of your setup, you may end up with extra hydrogen. I'll find my most recent x-ray cracking setup and upload my screenshot.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2735795705

Note that the first couple refineries are offset so they can supply the first x-ray cracking refinery. The hydrogen produced is used to feed the next one, etc... At the end, you have a dozen hydrogen every few seconds.

[LorDC]

If you are still on red science, just tap more oil deposits, build more refineries and consider doing X-ray cracking in addition to plasma refining.
If you have too much oil, just dump it into tanks. You'll use it up later for plastic.

[Veg]

Orbital Collectors are also a good way.

[Cheet4h]

Originally posted by Veg:

Orbital Collectors are also a good way.

Although usually not available when you're still at red cubes.

[Coops]

Don't use your inventory to store fuel oil. Don't even use it to power your mecha. Collect it in a liquid storage tank (hydrogen too) then burn the excess in thermal reactors.
You should be burning energetic graphite until you transition to hydrogen fuel rods. By then you will be looking for ways to get rid of all the hydrogen you can collect from the gas giant you are orbiting.

[Xilo The Odd]

best bet is to try and stick to using oil to make hydrogen. once you can go off world, see if you have any Ice on any of your worlds, its a great thing to process as it'll cut the need for sulphuric acid for the product it makes AND its byproduct is more hydrogen.

later when you get orbital collector access you can use those to supplement the hydrogen you get from oil and ice, but i wouldnt make them a primary source or go over board or you'll wind up with too much hydrogen backing up in your oil fields.

if you need a temp boost setup a x ray cracking plant for some of your refined oil to be broken down into hydrogen. this isnt something that should be permanent mind you as later you'll need refined oil for yellow science. x ray cracking is more of an emergency way to break backed up refined oil down.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

this isnt something that should be permanent mind you as later you'll need refined oil for yellow science. x ray cracking is more of an emergency way to break backed up refined oil down.

While I agree that it is not a permanent solution, it's a viable option early on. The starting planet has several oil deposits, and dedicating one of those for x-ray cracking in the early game is an option I've used when starting a new game. It provides ample hydrogen and energetic graphite early on. There is enough energetic graphite to feed into a few other productions, and excess can be transported off for thermal power, which basically runs the setup. The same goes for excess hydrogen.

Your emergency measure does not make sense. Break down backed up refined oil? X-ray cracking requires both refined oil and hydrogen.

[Xilo The Odd]

Originally posted by Knottypine:

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

this isnt something that should be permanent mind you as later you'll need refined oil for yellow science. x ray cracking is more of an emergency way to break backed up refined oil down.

While I agree that it is not a permanent solution, it's a viable option early on. The starting planet has several oil deposits, and dedicating one of those for x-ray cracking in the early game is an option I've used when starting a new game. It provides ample hydrogen and energetic graphite early on. There is enough energetic graphite to feed into a few other productions, and excess can be transported off for thermal power, which basically runs the setup. The same goes for excess hydrogen.

Your emergency measure does not make sense. Break down backed up refined oil? X-ray cracking requires both refined oil and hydrogen.

yeeeeeeeesssssss but you can continually feed the hydrogen from the x-ray cracking back into the process with a sorter set to prioritize hydrogen back onto the belts the refineries are grabbing from. once you got hydrogen on a belt there is no point in feedin it more hydrogen. its 2 hydrogen and 1 fuel for 3 hydrogen and a graphite. net gain on the hydrogen of 1 (barring any use of sprays, which i also avoid on oil until their output is all crap.) so 1 hydrogen per refinery leaves the loop along with 1 graphite per refinery.

now you can do this further so that when you have organic crystal and plastic chem plants that need this refined oil, they get it first again using a priority filter. but if your refined oil is backed up you can instead send it to an X-ray cracker setup that will make it into more hydrogen and keep things moving. i call it an emergency measure because if you tap enough oil nodes, and get it so your not backed up on crude oil and your refiery processes all of it efficiently, you'll never be short on hydrogen if anything you'll have an abundance just tapping 3 or 4 nodes. plus you dont want to over build till you get ILS towers unlocked or you'll spend a session or two cleaning up the mess to make it cleaner and more space efficient.

oil may never run out, but you'll eventually have a low production rate till you warp and find another world with it to ship back to your refinery world. so, i almost always advise not using refined oil for anything other than producing higher tier materials first then either burning it for power or breaking it down into hydrogen and graphite if your set for power generation. in the long run, you'll get further through your research tiers and get more stuff built for a sustainable factory to revisit, than if you simply turn refined oil into hydrogen constantly when the better solution is, go big till you have too much oil.

[Cheet4h]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

yeeeeeeeesssssss but you can continually feed the hydrogen from the x-ray cracking back into the process with a sorter set to prioritize hydrogen back onto the belts the refineries are grabbing from. once you got hydrogen on a belt there is no point in feedin it more hydrogen. its 2 hydrogen and 1 fuel for 3 hydrogen and a graphite. net gain on the hydrogen of 1 (barring any use of sprays, which i also avoid on oil until their output is all crap.) so 1 hydrogen per refinery leaves the loop along with 1 graphite per refinery.

Note that X-Ray-Cracking is one of the few recipes that can't get the Extra Products effect from proliferators, only Speedup.

[MaddogDino]

Originally posted by Cheet4h:

Originally posted by Veg:

Orbital Collectors are also a good way.

Although usually not available when you're still at red cubes.

Although flying to the gas giant and harvesting manually is an option.

[Michaelus]

thank you for all the replies

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

Originally posted by Knottypine:

Your emergency measure does not make sense. Break down backed up refined oil? X-ray cracking requires both refined oil and hydrogen.

yeeeeeeeesssssss but you can continually feed the hydrogen from the x-ray cracking back into the process with a sorter set to prioritize hydrogen back onto the belts the refineries are grabbing from. once you got hydrogen on a belt there is no point in feedin it more hydrogen. its 2 hydrogen and 1 fuel for 3 hydrogen and a graphite. net gain on the hydrogen of 1 (barring any use of sprays, which i also avoid on oil until their output is all crap.) so 1 hydrogen per refinery leaves the loop along with 1 graphite per refinery.

I know how it works. I took your statement literally. For example: If you just have a full tank of refined oil, you cannot just start the x-ray process without supplying a boost of hydrogen. That initial boost for x-ray cracking would normally just come from refining crude oil. Not sure what your emergency setup would look like, but it would need to include a system to burn off excess hydrogen and energetic graphite.

An emergency measure to me (for backed up refined oil) would be to have a splitter that prioritizes your main productivity and filters off excess to burn off.

[Xilo The Odd]

Originally posted by Knottypine:

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

yeeeeeeeesssssss but you can continually feed the hydrogen from the x-ray cracking back into the process with a sorter set to prioritize hydrogen back onto the belts the refineries are grabbing from. once you got hydrogen on a belt there is no point in feedin it more hydrogen. its 2 hydrogen and 1 fuel for 3 hydrogen and a graphite. net gain on the hydrogen of 1 (barring any use of sprays, which i also avoid on oil until their output is all crap.) so 1 hydrogen per refinery leaves the loop along with 1 graphite per refinery.

I know how it works. I took your statement literally. For example: If you just have a full tank of refined oil, you cannot just start the x-ray process without supplying a boost of hydrogen. That initial boost for x-ray cracking would normally just come from refining crude oil. Not sure what your emergency setup would look like, but it would need to include a system to burn off excess hydrogen and energetic graphite.

An emergency measure to me (for backed up refined oil) would be to have a splitter that prioritizes your main productivity and filters off excess to burn off.

still working on setting up my new oil refinery world, but basically it'd be:

ILS receiving all crude oil from everywhere connected to refineries to process all of the income into refined (starter world has about 33/s so, enough for that). no filter on sorters just dump them onto a belt that feeds the products into another ILS #2, the ILS#2 in this case is both primary storage and filter sorter and with the new additions later on, a stacker. from here i have a couple belts that then feed tanks next to the tower, sort of an extra buffer so if im messing with stuff i have a lot of room to find my balance and not have my process halt. so long as i keep production use of hydrogen and refined oil balanced i can continue to dump both products from the refinery onto the same output belts. this saves space primarily.
the storage tanks loop back into the tower so they both take 2 ports each, if consumption of either product exceed output, it'll start to pull from these tanks. from there somewhere nearby i typically setup my deuterium fractionators. for a setup like this, i typically set it up so i have 4 belts for this amount of refining as input into the tower and 4 belts as input into the refinery, its a bit overkill but leaves room to grow. if there were logic circuits, i'd have a tank for the crude too to make a large buffer that triggers whenever the tower hits a certain stored amount, but that'll be later if they add it in.

now for the X ray fracking line. basically attached before the tank for refined oil is a sorter, with a priority aimed at filling the tank, if the tank is full, it diverts off to X ray which as part of my prep, i dump some hydrogen into the system and set it up to loop that hydrogen and output the extra. this means if there is a stop on my oil refining due to having too much refined oil i can break it down into hydrogen to make room. the graphite leftover gets fed into a seperate tower and shipped off to wherever or burned for power if the tower gets full. i'll run about 1 X ray facility for every 3 normal refining facilities, its not perfect math but it hadn't broken once in my old file. with how i set it up, the hydrogen loops in a way that it feeds the refinery next to it. when the belt is full it'll dump the extra out and directly into the big hydrogen tank.

in words it sounds complicated but in practice it works great and it keeps me from relying on X ray cracking by motivating me to not rely on it and balance out my oil consumption for more important things for progress, while at the same time acting as a fail safe process when my plan isnt quite working at that moment because im messing with stuff.

so literally for me, X ray cracking is an emergency relief valve system for over abundance of refined oil. or if i'm unlucky and get a system with very little coal or with how proliferator spray is made, chewing through my coal for that lol.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

ILS receiving all crude oil from everywhere connected to refineries to process all of the income into refined (starter world has about 33/s so, enough for that). no filter on sorters just dump them onto a belt that feeds the products into another ILS #2..........so long as i keep production use of hydrogen and refined oil balanced i can continue to dump both products from the refinery onto the same output belts. this saves space primarily.

Thanks for that explanation. One thing I would suggest: space is abundant, and it may be beneficial to have separate belts. Each product generally has different uses and you might want to use separate belts with a different system on each to control overflow. While your system is working great, if by chance one thing backs up your system may halt.

I do things a little differently. Early on I use refined oil for a few products, until I reach the point where I only use refined oil for manufacturing plastic. So I don't require a sophisticated system in place to control it. In my current game I'm one product away from diverting all refined oil into plastic, just need to get my sulphuric acid going which is probably the next thing I'll do. That way I can clean a lot of it up and simply divert all excess hydrogen into thermal power.

[Xilo The Odd]

Originally posted by Knottypine:

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

ILS receiving all crude oil from everywhere connected to refineries to process all of the income into refined (starter world has about 33/s so, enough for that). no filter on sorters just dump them onto a belt that feeds the products into another ILS #2..........so long as i keep production use of hydrogen and refined oil balanced i can continue to dump both products from the refinery onto the same output belts. this saves space primarily.

Thanks for that explanation. One thing I would suggest: space is abundant, and it may be beneficial to have separate belts. Each product generally has different uses and you might want to use separate belts with a different system on each to control overflow. While your system is working great, if by chance one thing backs up your system may halt.

I do things a little differently. Early on I use refined oil for a few products, until I reach the point where I only use refined oil for manufacturing plastic. So I don't require a sophisticated system in place to control it. In my current game I'm one product away from diverting all refined oil into plastic, just need to get my sulphuric acid going which is probably the next thing I'll do. That way I can clean a lot of it up and simply divert all excess hydrogen into thermal power.

i used to separate product, but ive found for oil with how i run things its just not necessary. if i absolutely needed to i could have each output belt have a sorter filter and shuffle all hydrogen off to the right. its also easier to spot if production is backed up with the mix of white and brown, so its visually also useful. this was back before the belt traffic monitors though. when i get around to making the mega refinery i'll nab some screenshots. i thought i had before but im not seeing them.