Mechanoid Toxic Waste Question

[HunterSilver]

Is there a quick way to tell how much pollution a mech will produce on average via charging? Is there a quick reference list anywhere by chance? Wastepack atomizers are energy hungry and I'd like to put spare capacity towards Toxifier Generators but I'm not sure exactly how much waste I need to be ready to destroy just to maintain my current mechs.

[The Blind One]

depends on how much you use the mechs.

They only produce waste when they are charging and they only need charging depending on how long you use them during a day. You can often shut down mechs when they aren't necessary such as shutting down agrihands when there's nothing to plant or constructoids when there's nothing to build, etc. This will save you in a lot of waste down the road.

For ease I just keep 2 control groups for this purpose alone, 1 = work, 2 = recharge. If they are working they will cost energy and thus produce waste over the long term, if they are recharging they will shut down if they can't charge any further, hence no further pollution.

I think it's something like 1 waste per day for a day's worth of a mech's labor, at least for the labor mechs. I personally keep all the military mechs on recharge/idle and only activate them when needed so they vastly produce less waste than the labor mechs.

Build a small (3x3 to 5x5) sized freezer is what I'd recommend initially. It doesn't need to be that big at the start. They don't produce that much waste initially anyway.

I think the atomizer are balanced around this idea of 1 waste per mech per day. They need recharging around every 5th day if I'm not mistaken and that produces about 5 waste in a recharge cycle which one atomizer will destroy in 2.5 days time.

So about one atomizer per two fully active mechs

[HunterSilver]

That's more brutal than I was hoping for. I wanted to run about a dozen little laborers/cleaners and if they're putting out 12 waste a day, that's 6 atomizers, which is 4800w drain.

That's a good tip for the combat mechs though, I'll keep all of my centurions and centipedes on charge mode until there's a fight.

Thanks!

[TTV-Hallow_Hound]

You could always just dump the waste with a drop pod as well

[The Blind One]

What kind of setup you running?

Personally for mechanitor start I'll get;

2 lifters, 2 constructoids, 2 agrihands, and the rest militors, but you could realistically do with 1 of each and go full militors to stay safe.

[HunterSilver]

2 Centurions, 4 Centipede Blasters, 4 Legionary, 8 Lifters, and 4 Cleaners. Was thinking of building a couple of War Queens but I blew up a few nano chips in my last fight so I don't have the resources for them at the moment. Multiple Apocriton's showing up for fights makes them super annoying. I thought Apocs could only revive 1 unit at a time, but their effect seems to be an AoE, so you have to deal with all of them at them simultaneously, and sometimes that means things explode.

My primary goal is making all of this self sustaining and then using excess atomizing ability for some power generation, just because I can never have enough power.

[The Blind One]

You really need 8 lifters and 4 cleaners? Sounds excessive. Imagine if those were actual colonists ...

How many of those do you have (colonists that is)?

You sure your guys aren't 'wandering' and being lazy with that many lifters and cleaners? Optimizing your base layout may also save you a lot of needless worktime. Especially workbench layouts can be highly optimized nowadays using the shelves.

[HunterSilver]

I'm running a smaller colony of 16 colonists currently. I'm always short on hauling labor and having mechanoids handling it means I can skip disease immunities to avoid rot lung when manhunters attack. It's honestly tempting to add more lifters.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

I'm running a smaller colony of 16 colonists currently. I'm always short on hauling labor and having mechanoids handling it means I can skip disease immunities to avoid rot lung when manhunters attack. It's honestly tempting to add more lifters.

16 isn't small, it's about average to largish. A small colony is about 6 to max 12 colonists I'd say. The storytellers will try to kill off pops once you reach 18 as they'll consider that ''too many'' lol.

I could maintain my entire base of 12 (vanilla) with just 1 cleaner. Make sure you have everything tiled between workstations and ensure that pawns that walk over dirt don't drag it into the rest of the base. You should be able to cut down on sweepers but hey idk how you organized your base lol.

[HunterSilver]

Yeah, everything is about as efficient as can be. Hauling and cleaning labor is always in short supply for me. Being able to shift labor away from hauling/cleaning and implant genes to specialize those colonists into high value labor is actually really nice.

Also having a little swarm to help me clean up after raids is a huge boon.

I just don't want to have to trade one mess for another any overproduce toxic waste.

[Jaasrg]

small colony of 22mechs and 16pawns

Interesting.

[HunterSilver]

Okay, I finally figured it out. So each mech has a drop of 10% energy / active day
Every 1% energy = 1% waste production
So effectively you just divide their toxic waste production by 10 and you get their average waste output.
Then atomizers destroy 1 toxic waste per 12 hours
Finally base waste output is 5/Recharge for every unit, multiplied by their Bandwidth.

Therefore the waste output per day for each mechanoid is:
Millitor 0.5 / Day
Lifter 0.5 / Day
Constructoid 0.5 / Day
Agrihand 0.5 / Day
Cleansweeper 0.5 / Day
Fabricor 0.5 / Day
Paramedic 0.5 / Day
Pikeman 1 / Day
Scorcher 1 / Day
Scyther 1 / Day
Tunneler 1.5 / Day
Lancer 1 / Day
Tesseron 1.5 / Day
Legionary 1 / Day
Centipede 2 / Day
Diabolus 2.5 / Day
Centurion 2.5 / Day
War Queen 2.5 / Day

But realistically for combat mechs, the real cost is for repairs.

Interestingly, larger mechs such as Centipedes are actually cheaper to repair in terms of toxic waste / energy than smaller mechs. Lifters cost a whopping 66% energy to go from 0 to 100% HP, meanwhile Legionary are 33% energy, and Centipedes are 20% energy.