New change about sand/quartz is concerning

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

i like it but...i dont like quartz change , as in current version sand is basicly free(crushed rock)

and this makes glass infinite/cheap resource , same as washing weaste from settlement

if sand is no longer made from rock , it means glass is made from quartz now? , cleaning pollution from settlement will need quartz too? , what

this also means any other consumers of sand (like copper smelting) will be consuming quartz i see this...as odd change as it wont make game easier like devs imply , but much harder as glass will become "hard to make" (who is used as building material and lots of recepies like making furniture and lots of other products)

[Kaery]

They could have worded that a lot better... Lets wait and see. Plus, maybe a dev will clarify!

Edit: Went and re-read it. Either we get a very early, very easy way to get at quartz... Or they changed a lot of the recipes that need sand.

[Wanderer]

Currently, you can get at quartz pretty early with your first quartz mine with the ship. They also adjusted the research tree relatively heavily with Electronics II and the speed of transition to research levels.

My concern, honestly, is the unity cost in the mine until you can transition to trade. Using local rock if necessary while working your way around the back of certain maps to get at the sea-side sand was necessary. This wasn't too bad with glass. This could get more significant with the switch over, since the idea is to "ease" the pain.

However, it will have a lot to do with the expected industry swap. Quartz currently goes directly into molten silicon. If the expectation is that it's pretty much the same industry, just sand turns into molten silicon and Quartz becomes sand... it's really not THAT big a deal. You just have to race to get to some of the sand.

I'm more concerned about the quartz trade for long term. At 2160/ship for 8 container trade (assuming 4->8 is accurate) there isn't going to be a solid way, at least mid-game, to feed it. You'll /have/ to use the mines. Vehicle Parts II takes a bit to setup, manpower and logistics wise. Coal is right out unless you're just shoveling the glass from Household goods back out as coal for the trade, or you've got spare research components for some reason... which might be a reasonable option, actually.

Solar for Quartz... maybe? I need to re-evaluate since they mentioned they've moved this around a bit, but laptops are right out, gold is going to be a huge issue for long term trade unless they re-adjust or there's more trades coming than what was in the screen shot. That diesel -> Gold ratio and it being the only item limits a number of top end loops and will force a significant change to refineries... but wrong topic.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Wanderer:

Currently, you can get at quartz pretty early with your first quartz mine with the ship. They also adjusted the research tree relatively heavily with Electronics II and the speed of transition to research levels.

My concern, honestly, is the unity cost in the mine until you can transition to trade. Using local rock if necessary while working your way around the back of certain maps to get at the sea-side sand was necessary. This wasn't too bad with glass. This could get more significant with the switch over, since the idea is to "ease" the pain.

However, it will have a lot to do with the expected industry swap. Quartz currently goes directly into molten silicon. If the expectation is that it's pretty much the same industry, just sand turns into molten silicon and Quartz becomes sand... it's really not THAT big a deal. You just have to race to get to some of the sand.

I'm more concerned about the quartz trade for long term. At 2160/ship for 8 container trade (assuming 4->8 is accurate) there isn't going to be a solid way, at least mid-game, to feed it. You'll /have/ to use the mines. Vehicle Parts II takes a bit to setup, manpower and logistics wise. Coal is right out unless you're just shoveling the glass from Household goods back out as coal for the trade, or you've got spare research components for some reason... which might be a reasonable option, actually.

Solar for Quartz... maybe? I need to re-evaluate since they mentioned they've moved this around a bit, but laptops are right out, gold is going to be a huge issue for long term trade unless they re-adjust or there's more trades coming than what was in the screen shot. That diesel -> Gold ratio and it being the only item limits a number of top end loops and will force a significant change to refineries... but wrong topic.

i mean this is my point mostly but i not layed it out

even if they would make more trades , you will need 2 or 3 ships with quartz (as glass is used in a lot buildings like farms

ill pick my last save as example im consuming

2176 sand every month?! , have population of 4600 woo is not that large all things considered

and consuming 2351 quartz

Sand is used: to make concrete bricks , glass/glass mix , filtering weaste , smelting copper , smelting gold ,


after the change im going to need atleast 2 trade ships

my other concern will be it will messup early game , as sand on some maps is tricky to get in big quantities early on so quite often i resorted to "crushed rock to supply most of the sand"

not to say you will need to start trading erlier then ever before

lifetime consumption of sand: 164281
Lifetime consumption of quartz: 190271

sustainability going to be much harder as sudently you need to trade 2x more quarts , trade it erlier then before and produce thingy it wants for trading as sand is used in some basic recepies (particularly waste water thing)

[Puls]

I have to much stone, so glass->coal-trade (deleted) is the most important for me. new reciepes for glass and other sand-consumers ? we will see.

in my opinion, a complex way to extract quarz from sand would be better.

in engame i only turn on and off all the different trade-routes and go afk.

[zytukin]

If you look at it realistically it makes sense. Most sand in real life is made of quartz.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by zytukin:

If you look at it realistically it makes sense. Most sand in real life is made of quartz.

you dont make glass from "milled quartz cristals" but sand

for electronics it made sense "Electronic-grade quartz crystal is used to make frequency filters, frequency controls, and timers in electronic circuits employed for a wide range of products, such as communications equipment, computers, and many consumer goods"

silica or even silica sand(who is sand who is mostly silica) is not used in glass production

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

New update hits , and it was all i predicted , sand now requires quartz to make , crushed rock sand cant be produced anymore , all other recepies who required sand , will run on quartz making on adverige your factory island consume 2-2.6 times more quartz then last version

i dont like this change

its unrealistic , noone makes sand from quartz.

i also dont like that this change makes staple recource(sand) now being more scarse (et all sand on island will last you 2-2.6 times shorter due it replacing quartz

but also its infinity of glass and all other recepies (like copper smelting) now requires quartz to function , who is recource who can only be imported outside of island , sand alweys been recource who gets used up incredibly quickly from existing deposits.

[Nargon]

Every map has a quartz resource. Most of them has 1.9M, so i think there is enough sand as the quartz to sand ratio is 1:1.
I am glad that concrete bricks is still produced from "rock-sand", because that was my only concern with the new "quartz-sand".

[Wanderer]

I'm still on the fence. While Manufactured Sand (Rock Sand) is useful for construction parts, it's not useful for the Glass / Electrical industries. They've lowered the overall glass requirements for the Household Goods, and that'll help overall, I still need to see how it really plays out.

Some of the maps (New Haven, for example) have absolutely buried that Quartz. I'm goofing with Golden Peak this round, that's another one where it's buried, but that's okay, it's supposed to be a challenging map. That placement on New Haven though...

As I said though, I'm holding judgement until I see where things actually land for usage. It's not like I put in 40 hours in the last 24... :D

[Nargon]

Then you can focus on recycling. If you have all edicts and research, you get back 90% of iron/copper/gold/glass spent on maintenance/research/city. This really helps and only 10% of the glass spent on household goods for the city is lost.
Only resources spent on construction or trade are lost.

[Wanderer]

Focusing on recycling at 90% level is a 5 unity cost, with a max of 22-24 (barring going bonkers with boosters for household and appliances + rockets). That's not something most players will do in early / mid game.

End game, sure. You dump a ton of unity in recycling, maintenance, diesel costs, etc. Just not early when you need to get TO the sand. As I mentioned, still working through it, I don't have an opinion either way yet of importance, and I won't until I go heavy on Elect II, which is where it'll matter. Honestly it'll probably be more important to see the costs of the Quartz mines on the map while I finally get over TO the local quartz to transition back OFF the boat.