Frackin Universe Fission Reactor

[No Manz Guy]

We just made the reactor and put in an enhanced plutonium rod; that lasted about 1 minute. How am I supposed to keep a base up and running with that kind of time frame on power?

[serker31]

By throwing more rods into it, obviously.
Seriously though, e.plutonium rod should last for 3 minutes on average, and you can keep up with it if you increase your production a little. Also using better fuels is always worth it.

[No Manz Guy]

Pardon my unintuitiveness, but further reading on the subject clarified that I was supposed to store energy in batteries for economic distribution. It made no sense to me that I could only power my base for minutes at a time on an enhanced plutonium rod; the amount of minerals I would have to continually extract and refine would be hideously time-consuming.

By increasing production, do you mean having mining machines? I downloaded this mod to play with my son; he enjoys boss battles and the aesthetic of base building, not devising complex engineering systems, which I'm beginning to think is the only way of running a functioning base. Will the batteries help?

[serker31]

Originally posted by DRASTICONTRAST:

...which I'm beginning to think is the only way of running a functioning base. Will the batteries help?

First, you don't really have to run a base to get anywhere in game, but having a surplus of resources can make things much less tedious to grind for. And certain things are very expensive, but totally worth it. Mostly you have to mine stuff first to process it, but there are ways to completely automate it, like running atmospheric condensers or pumps and centrifuge stacks. How far you want to go - up to you.
Second, yes, batteries can help with reactor fuel consumption, since reactors always work at 100% power and batteries do not have to. So if you make a large enough stack of batteries, you can use it to store energy and make it automatically turn the reactor off when it's full. It takes some wiring, but nothing too complicated. Solving such tasks is its own type of fun.

[No Manz Guy]

Originally posted by serker31:

Solving such tasks is its own type of fun.

It is fun for a certain subset of people. I tried to make clear that my boy and I are in it for the boss battles and cosmetic base-building. I'm trying to get past the grind of all this engineering, because we don't find that fun.
Crushers, extractors, etc all require power to get the most use out of them, and they've been the easiest way to get rarer resources at this point in our play. Powering them has been a real hassle. I hope the batteries solve this issue.

[serker31]

Originally posted by DRASTICONTRAST:

Originally posted by serker31:

Solving such tasks is its own type of fun.

It is fun for a certain subset of people. I tried to make clear that my boy and I are in it for the boss battles and cosmetic base-building. I'm trying to get past the grind of all this engineering, because we don't find that fun.
Crushers, extractors, etc all require power to get the most use out of them, and they've been the easiest way to get rarer resources at this point in our play. Powering them has been a real hassle. I hope the batteries solve this issue.

Then it might be easier to push for quantum reactors and get metallic hydrogen from gas giants. It is essentially free power.

[No Manz Guy]

I'll look forward to it; hope we find the resources we need to upgrade to that soon.

[tougherwolf]

This may be way late but this is for anyone who searches this subject. Liquid irradium seems to work for me to fuel my fission reactor. ore does not work. bars also do not work. it was on the wiki but in the items crafted tab only for some reason. i did not realize

[serker31]

Originally posted by tougherwolf:

This may be way late but this is for anyone who searches this subject. Liquid irradium seems to work for me to fuel my fission reactor. ore does not work. bars also do not work. it was on the wiki but in the items crafted tab only for some reason. i did not realize

Yeah, apparently wiki is not complete on this, although it is not that effective. 12 units of power is nothing for this material and research investment.

[CyberBatty7]

How do we turn on the reactor?

[tougherwolf]

one moment let me boot up the game it has been a while and some updates happened

[tougherwolf]

it should start up automatically or you could use a switch on the left input. also it seems i restarted my save so can't check in game

[serker31]

Originally posted by GoingBatty:

How do we turn on the reactor?

Make sure that there is viable fuel in at least one fuel slot, and it is not actively turned off (left blue node in wiring is its on/off control).
By the way, placing a reactor at least 16 tiles away from anything and wiring a switch to it is good idea, because it will emit quite a bit of radiation when working. You might want to be able to turn it off safely for refueling and getting rid of waste.