Oxygen farms... still not working

[Steeleye]

I have seen past threads where people report about issues. Does anyone use them or rely on finding enough ice to get moving? I would like to set up a big oxygen/solar farm to provide basic stuff while I re-design space :-)
Still on Earth I set up a few oxygen farm blocks connected via conveyors to my other devices, I can see them produce some litres of oxygen but I still can't get my tank meters to show ANY increase. Restarted the game (my own dedicated server), relogged into it... no change here. Is there something I need to provide/configure or is it just buggy and did not get developer love?

[TheVipersFang]

The oxygen farm is VERY inefficient in producing oxygen in any kind of useful amount. They require a lot of power and space for adequate exposure to sunlight. I think someone did the maths on it but I do not recall the exact numbers, but, you need lots of them to actually fill a single O2 tank.

[Steeleye]

I do not intend to fill up tanks but between travel I would at least like to take care of my own need of oxygen plus a little bit extra. Anyway, the point is that the tank level does not AT ALL change even though there are 15 oxygen farm blocks with a total of a few litres/min attached. Waiting and checking for a few minutes is just looking at the same number without any change.
I am aware of the energy need and I will take care of that of course...

[ShadedMJ]

Originally posted by steeleye11:

... Still on Earth I set up a few oxygen farm blocks ...

Last time I checked, it took 3 oxygen farms to offset oxygen use be an engineer. THAT's how inefficient it is.

But WHY are you using oxygen farms on earth-like. That's inefficient. Make an oxygen tank and an air vent set to depressurize. Suck in all the surrounding air to the oxygen tank and done.

[frag2k4]

As others have said, 3 farms at four green blocks efficiency are required to sustain a player, and half the time you will never have 4 points on the farm green, you will barely move the number on even a small grid O2 tank with a bunch of farms. As ShadedMJ stated slap an air vent somewhere and set to decompress and fill the tank in a few moments.

[Steeleye]

ok, let me go into some more details...
First, I will not stay on Earth as this is only the starting place and I am testing a set up for travelling space, that's why I set up an oxygen farm. I thought I made this clear in my original post.
Then, I am aware of the inefficiency but I am thinking about 20-30 oxygen farm blocks aligned to the the sun together with the solar panels (using ISY's Solar Alignment script of course).

What bothers me is that it does not work...

[fabricator77]

I can see two possible reasons the Oxygen Farms aren't filling tanks.
1. There isn't a direct Conveyor link between the Farms and the Tanks, even a simple Cargo Container will block the flow of Oxygen.
2. The O2/H2 system update bug, for whatever reason Keen 'optimised' the code so it doesn't check for certain conditions that trigger oxygen/hydrogen transfer. I know tank to tank transfer does this, maybe Oxygen Farms filling Oxygen Tanks also do this.
Anyway the fix is to refill your suit's O2/H2 at the nearest Survival Kit/Medical Bay, this forces the game to read all the tanks/sources and update everything.

[frag2k4]

Originally posted by steeleye11:

ok, let me go into some more details...
First, I will not stay on Earth as this is only the starting place and I am testing a set up for travelling space, that's why I set up an oxygen farm. I thought I made this clear in my original post.
Then, I am aware of the inefficiency but I am thinking about 20-30 oxygen farm blocks aligned to the the sun together with the solar panels (using ISY's Solar Alignment script of course).

What bothers me is that it does not work...

It works but as everyone has said they are completely useless for any level of play, early you have better uses for resources and late game when resources are abundant they still don't work well enough to warrant building.

Here are some numbers to help work it out.

Large grid O2 tank capacity 100,000L
Oxygen farm production at full efficiency 1.8L/m (0.03L/s)
It will take around 800 hours to fill a tank from 1 farm
Conversely a O2 gen will produce 250L/s with ice

You would need several tousand to equal 1 O2/H2 gen, bare in mind the O2 gen number goes up if you shut off any H2 tanks/engines before hand.

There is nothing about their stats that tell me they are worth using, they are heavier than the alternative of the O2 gen for no benefit.

[Buzzard]

While the farms appear to be nice cylinders, they actually have 2 sides, just like solar panels. That 'line up the side' is the split between the 2 sides. If you've got that split pointed towards the sun, you're not going to get much, if anything.

As for aligning with ISA, use a nice Advanced Rotor so you'll have conveyor linkage, and put the solar panels out beyond the farms. If you do it right, the solars should be able to keep the farms supplied with more than enough power, as well as helping to keep your ship's lights on.
S - solar
F - O2 farm
c - conveyor

SSSFcFSSS
SSSFcFSSS
c
adv
rotor

[Steeleye]

I still did not decide if it's worth using them, this depends on the amount of O2/H2 I will need when working and travelling in space.
Right now my setup is:
base components (+tank) -- conveyors with attached oxygen farm blocks -- hangar with ships (one carrying some more oxygen farm blocks and a tank)

I can move tank content from the base to the ship and I can transport stuff from base to ship and back. With the oxygen farm blocks sitting in between I thought it should work but I will set up a few extra blocks to the side with a small tank and a few oxygen farm blocks and a survival kit to check if I really can't have any other production (or cargo) block between tank and oxygen farm block.

[Steeleye]

My test setup works as intended it seems...

OK, I now rebuilt the oxygen tanks and double checked their functionality with a vent and now it seems to work just fine, can't tell what prevented it to work in the first place.

[Mollymawk]

O2 farms are very low yield, I've never found them useful other than decoration, find ice, and fill tanks.

I have used the space balls method before. fly into an atmosphere and suck air, then take it back to space. A few full tanks can last ages, if your just breathing it and don't vent room to space very often. this method entourages efficient air locks too.

[Mojo]

If you are wanting farms that bad and want to figure out why they are not working, share your save file to the workshop. Let people take a look and see if they can figure out why it isn't working.


But no need to get defensive when people tell you how inefficient Oxygen Farms are, it is just a plain simple fact they are pretty useless.

[Steeleye]

Originally posted by Mojo:

If you are wanting farms that bad and want to figure out why they are not working, share your save file to the workshop. Let people take a look and see if they can figure out why it isn't working.


But no need to get defensive when people tell you how inefficient Oxygen Farms are, it is just a plain simple fact they are pretty useless.

Defensive? It seems I had to say a few more explaining words as people kept trying to explain the inefficiency when the actual question was why it would not work in my scenario.

Anyway, it is working now.

[muffins]

Originally posted by steeleye11:

I have seen past threads where people report about issues. Does anyone use them or rely on finding enough ice to get moving? I would like to set up a big oxygen/solar farm to provide basic stuff while I re-design space :-)
Still on Earth I set up a few oxygen farm blocks connected via conveyors to my other devices, I can see them produce some litres of oxygen but I still can't get my tank meters to show ANY increase. Restarted the game (my own dedicated server), relogged into it... no change here. Is there something I need to provide/configure or is it just buggy and did not get developer love?

Oxygen farms produce enough o2 for your bottles, but an oxygen tank has HUGE storage. You could have more oxygen in the tank than you would ever need and it might still only show 1% full.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2101116214

A full oxygen tank will fill 1000 bottles. 1% is 10 bottles.

[Steeleye]

I did not care about the percentage, it shows actual litres, I should have seen an increase there but I didn't. Anyway, it is working now.