Carbon farm (also a pure ferrite farm)

[Malasuerte]

If you like to build bases in normal mode and need a steady supply of carbon you can build your own carbon farm.

1. Build 20 Oxygen harvesters
2. Build 10 Big or medium refiners. In a small 5x3 cuboid room for speed (5 refiners, middle aisle/door, 5 refiners)
3. Get 2000 condensed carbon (by refining carbon or mining crystals)
4. Feed 50 condensed carbon to each oxygen harvester. (you will be left with 1000 Condensed carbon in your inventory)
5. Wait a few minutes
6. When the Oxygen harvesters finish their work go one by one refueling it with 50 condensed carbon and then collecting the the 250 oxygen.
7. Go to your refinery room and refine all the oxygen into carbon. (By the time you feed the last refiner you can already collect the carbon from the first one and start the second batch of oxygen refining)
8. When you have collected all the carbon, refine 2000 units of it into 1000 units of condensed carbon.
9. Collect the condensed carbon
10. Store the carbon (not the condensed carbon) in storage boxes.
11. By this point the Oxygen harvesters would have finished collecting a new batch of Oxygen (or will be very close to finish if you are very fast during the refining process). If not just wait a lil bit
12. Go back to step 6

Repeat ad nauseam until you have no more storage space

(you could probably do it with just 6 or 8 refiners without wasting any time but I like to use 10)

Thanks to

Originally posted by MechWarden:

Carbon also helps with inflating ferrite as well.

for the information

If what you need is Pure ferrite for the cuboid rooms and other base components then it's time to use that carbon to multiply your Pure ferrite by a factor of 4

13. Get 250 carbon from storage and collect 250 pure ferrite (buy from trade terminals, mine it or mine ferrite dust and turn it into pure ferrite).
14. Feed a Big or medium refiner with 250 pure ferrite and 250 carbon. (The output will say 125 Magnetized ferrite, but this will only use 1/4 of the input materials)
15. Start the refiner. When it finishes refining collect the Magnetized ferrite from the output tray.
16. Hold E or click BEGIN again.
17. Repeat steps 15 and 16 until there is no more material in the input tray.
18. You now have 500 Magnetized ferrite
19. Feed the refiner with 250 Magnetized Ferrite. (The output will say 250 Pure Ferrite, but this will only use 1/2 of the input material)
20. Start the refiner. When it finishes refining collect the Pure ferrite from the output tray.
21. Hold E or click BEGIN again.
21a. Sometimes there is a bit of unrefined Magnetized ferrite left in the input tray, go ahead and refine it.
22. Repeat steps 19 to 21a.
23. You now have obtained 1000 Pure Ferrite from the oringinal 250 pure ferrite and 250 carbon.

To maximize your time do this in 4 refiners simultaneously, So you can turn 1k pure ferrite into 4k pure ferrite every 10 minutes aprox

[jonnin]

ok. but why do you need carbon in these volumes?

[Malasuerte]

Originally posted by jonnin:

ok. but why do you need carbon in these volumes?

If you like to build many bases. It looks like a lot but some bases can take over 10k carbon

[MechWarden]

Carbon also helps with inflating ferrite as well.

[spacedout]

And powering automated miners for copper and other good stuff.

[Malasuerte]

Originally posted by MechWarden:

Carbon also helps with inflating ferrite as well.

how?

[tkwoods]

Originally posted by Malasuerte:

Originally posted by MechWarden:

Carbon also helps with inflating ferrite as well.

how?

You can use oxygen added to various items in the refiner to replicate with bonus additions.

[PancakeWizard]

Originally posted by jonnin:

ok. but why do you need carbon in these volumes?

I guess he's talking about wooden/concrete bases.

If you're building your base out of metal or using the prefab modules, it's all about ferrite dust and pure ferrite.

I still don't know why you'd need them in the quantities OP is talking about though. It's so easy to get carbon, as you can find it condensed literally everywhere.

[Malasuerte]

Originally posted by tkwoods:

Originally posted by Malasuerte:

how?

You can use oxygen added to various items in the refiner to replicate with bonus additions.

I just did it!!!. Turned 250 pure ferrite and 250 carbon into 500 Magnetized ferrite and then into 1000 pure ferrite. I will never have to mine for ferrite again.

[Malasuerte]

Originally posted by MechWarden:

Carbon also helps with inflating ferrite as well.

Updated using this information, thank you

[Bubba Fett]

No limit on the number of oxygen harvesters you can have on a planet?

Cause when I tried to set up a bunch of atmosphere harvesters to produce nitrogen it said I was limited to 3 per planet.

[Malasuerte]

Originally posted by Bubba Fett:

No limit on the number of oxygen harvesters you can have on a planet?

Cause when I tried to set up a bunch of atmosphere harvesters to produce nitrogen it said I was limited to 3 per planet.

No idea about the atmosphere harvesters, I haven't build any of those. I haven't tried to build more than 20 oxygen harvesters so I can't tell if there is a limit there either.

[jonnin]

atmo has always been limited to 3 per. Its to control the # of big ticket item you can craft (the 18M stuff takes a lot of gas).

[lordoftheapes79]

I didn't know about the pure ferrite. That's a nice little trick.

[Bubba Fett]

Originally posted by jonnin:

atmo has always been limited to 3 per. Its to control the # of big ticket item you can craft (the 18M stuff takes a lot of gas).

It's more of an annoyance than a limitation. You can still go to a space station or trade post and buy massive quantities of gas for crafting with.

[david.smelser]

Change Step 7 to be:
Condensed carbon + Oxygen =>6 condensed carbon.
Then condensed carbon -> 2 carbon.
This is a more efficient use of your oxygen harvesters.