SE/K2 resource question

[Jeffreyac]

Hi again, folks,

My first try at SE/K2, used default SE settings. No mods installed that affect resource yields (as a matter of fact, generally only using mods required/recommended for SE).

I've noticed significantly more issues than I'm used to keeping up with resources. Iron and copper I can find more of - it's tough, as I'm fighting for those new outposts and the biters are getting frisky, but it's doable. Even rare metals, I seem to have a lot of options.

But stone and uranium seem to be extremely rare. I've scanned out (advanced radars) from my base and existing outposts, and to date have found one small additional stone patch (that is almost gone already), and one uranium patch (also almost gone). There is a tiny flyspeck uranium I found, like less than 200k - honestly not sure it's worth an outpost, but could get me a little more fuel; 200k raw ore would, on average, get me 70 units of nuclear fuel, which would last me another 4 hours in my humble single reactor nuke setup.

I guess my question is - is this normal for SE? I've got a lot of time invested, and hate to have to scrap it, but I use a lot of stone in my various lines, and I don't know that I'm ready to push past nuke power at this point - so when the uranium runs out, that will be bad (not to mention hurting research...)

So, am I just unlucky, or does SE have a more punishing resource distrobution (or both?)

A note - I kind of like it in some ways, I've had more pressure to push out for more outposts compared to what I'm used to... but that only applies when there's a patch to expand to!! Anyway, not really complaining, just curious if this is a fairly standard SE experience.

[cainboy]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

...I may be missing something, but aren't the little guys I use to carry items in my factory logistic bots?

the no-worries-for-less-than-50-bots thing is good though, as I rarely have more than that in my little networks.

I would go crazy with so few bots!!! My smallest amount of either logi or construction bots I'll run is 1000, atm in K2, i've got 11000 logistic bots, and 2000 construction bots (mostly because my automation wire failed and was not reading the network? kept shoving more and more logistic bots inside T_T)
Technically both bots can carry, but the guys specifically for carrying are logistic bots. (i'm more worried about how SE nerfed them early and early/mid game, both researching upgrades, and general capacities :( )

at least iirc, SE had researches later on that would increase your limits of bots in the network before damage would be caused from crashes.

If you are using so few bots, you shouldnt have much of a problem I would think. Just set up a green wire from an inserter to a robo port to only put in logistic bots up until X amount, and let the automation do its thing. IMO the resource costs with the maintenance of the bots are a small price to pay for the amount of benefit they bring, even on planets with interference of 10+ (Keep in mind i never got out of my initial solar system)

[RiO]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

SE+K2 gives you 3 recipes for wood:
800 water => 20 wood in 120s
200 water + 10 sand => 40 wood in 60s
400 water + 5 sand + 1 fertiliser => 80 wood in 60s

Because the basic recipe is incredibly slow you probably want to use sand because mining and crushing a little bit of stone uses a lot less electricity than running 4x as many greenhouses (assuming you have stone deposits; your mileage may vary if you have to use core mining)

K2 alone is more generous with its 2 recipes:
200 water => 40 wood in 60s
200 water + 1 fertiliser => 80 wood in 60s

Dollar to donuts, Earendel made these changes to discourage the closed loop for wood -> biomethanol -> gas power plants that can give you a self-sustaining net 80 MW of power out of the wood from 10 greenhouses in normal K2.

He always plays the negative reinforcement game, so it's no surprise that rather than improving his own offering; i.e. doing something about the abysmal solar yields for planets further out in solar systems that basically all but require you to cargo in uranium instead, because the microwave power beaming tech comes in super late, he'd bust down the sane early-game alternative offered by K2.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by RiO:

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

SE+K2 gives you 3 recipes for wood:
800 water => 20 wood in 120s
200 water + 10 sand => 40 wood in 60s
400 water + 5 sand + 1 fertiliser => 80 wood in 60s

Because the basic recipe is incredibly slow you probably want to use sand because mining and crushing a little bit of stone uses a lot less electricity than running 4x as many greenhouses (assuming you have stone deposits; your mileage may vary if you have to use core mining)

K2 alone is more generous with its 2 recipes:
200 water => 40 wood in 60s
200 water + 1 fertiliser => 80 wood in 60s

Dollar to donuts, Earendel made these changes to discourage the closed loop for wood -> biomethanol -> gas power plants that can give you a self-sustaining net 80 MW of power out of the wood from 10 greenhouses in normal K2.

He always plays the negative reinforcement game, so it's no surprise that rather than improving his own offering; i.e. doing something about the abysmal solar yields for planets further out in solar systems that basically all but require you to cargo in uranium instead, because the microwave power beaming tech comes in super late, he'd bust down the sane early-game alternative offered by K2.

Yeah, and sadly the nuclear problem is (apparently?) worse in those K2 playthroughs due to the increased rate at which K2 recipes eat U-235. So if you get RNG'd and have little in the way of available uranium. . . You just can't go to low-solar planets? I mean, I guess if it has water and coal/oil/vulcanite you can make a decent-size local factory, but IME planets with both of those things in useful quantities aren't that common and usually have little else to offer.

It also bugs me (and maybe only me?) quite a bit that basically every SE recipe, aside from some base resource refining, needs to be made in space. Like those upgraded solar panels? It's not just that the mirrors need to be made in space, but the entire panel has to be for some reason. If you just needed to ship in 1-2 parts and could produce the rest on the ground it'd make, for example, upgrading the Nauvis grid more economically feasible.

Another minor gripe: water ice. Why does it only exist in space? Why do the icy-yet-watery planets have zero ice to mine? Why is there no recipe for using water and electricity to make ice? I get that such a recipe would be very inefficient, but it still seems like it should at least exist as an option.

[Jeffreyac]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Yeah, and sadly the nuclear problem is (apparently?) worse in those K2 playthroughs due to the increased rate at which K2 recipes eat U-235. So if you get RNG'd and have little in the way of available uranium. . . You just can't go to low-solar planets? I mean, I guess if it has water and coal/oil/vulcanite you can make a decent-size local factory, but IME planets with both of those things in useful quantities aren't that common and usually have little else to offer.

...well, crap, I didn't even think about other planets - was assuming I'd find more uranium on them.

The good news is, I've got 12 hours of nuke fuel stored, and kovarex up and running.

The bad news is, eventually, I'll run out of dark green uranium and will no longer be able to sustain kovarex (or research, or other stuff needing uranium) and that's trouble. To date, on this map, after getting advanced radars up on several outposts, I've discovered 2 additional patches of uranium - one is 5.5k (yes, 5500 ore.... ) and the other is 159k. Hardly worth the trip....

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

Originally posted by shadain597:

Yeah, and sadly the nuclear problem is (apparently?) worse in those K2 playthroughs due to the increased rate at which K2 recipes eat U-235. So if you get RNG'd and have little in the way of available uranium. . . You just can't go to low-solar planets? I mean, I guess if it has water and coal/oil/vulcanite you can make a decent-size local factory, but IME planets with both of those things in useful quantities aren't that common and usually have little else to offer.

...well, crap, I didn't even think about other planets - was assuming I'd find more uranium on them.

The good news is, I've got 12 hours of nuke fuel stored, and kovarex up and running.

The bad news is, eventually, I'll run out of dark green uranium and will no longer be able to sustain kovarex (or research, or other stuff needing uranium) and that's trouble. To date, on this map, after getting advanced radars up on several outposts, I've discovered 2 additional patches of uranium - one is 5.5k (yes, 5500 ore.... :rshocked:) and the other is 159k. Hardly worth the trip....

Other planets are a mixed bag; many will have less uranium than Nauvis, but hopefully there's one nearby that is fairly rich in it. Uranium, even in K2, is quite energy-dense, so shipping it isn't that bad. Oh, it's worth noting that not all planets actually have biters on them, so those ones are definitely easier to expand to.

Sounds like you might have to either start expanding off planet, get lucky in securing a larger uranium deposit, or begin supplementing your power supply with something that doesn't rely on uranium. Not having enough to secure your energy future is bad enough, but it also means you can't really afford to use it offensively either, which could get ugly as the biters start evolving. . . Though I don't know what K2 tech you've got available that I didn't have in SE.

[AlexMBrennan]

He always plays the negative reinforcement game, so it's no surprise that rather than improving his own offering

To be fair I think that the mods have polar opposite goals: SE adds unique challenges (e.g. generating power on waterless planets) while K2 mainly adds OP tools to make the game easier (e.g. a singularity reactor which generates 2GW without any need for water which just needs "matter" which reddit loves to mass produce by spamming greenhouses). There is no way to maintain to intended challenge of SE without disabling most of K2.

I am honestly surprised that Earendel didn't just blacklist Krastorio2.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

I am honestly surprised that Earendel didn't just blacklist Krastorio2.

On that, at least, we agree. Given what I know of him, it's weird that he'd want SE to be even remotely compatible with any other overhaul mods.

As far as K2 "mainly adding OP tools," I'm not sure that the singularity reactor is a compelling example. Yes, I know how that sounds, but it's a late-game tech clearly intended for building very large bases. . . And the "end goal" in K2 is to provide that galactic transmitter with something like 30 TJ of power. Have fun doing that with boilers. Joking, because obviously you'd use nuclear instead. . . Hmmm. . . Wait a sec, K2 actually nerfs uranium power compared to vanilla. Weird. Almost like K2's authors actually have put effort into balancing their mod beyond "let's throw a bunch of OP stuff into the game." Though I suspect they balanced it more around PvP than PvE, so if you want a proper singleplayer challenge you'll probably need a biter-enhancing mod, among other things.

I mean, it's totally fine if you don't think K2 is perfectly balanced--I'm sure it isn't--but complaining about it's balance while praising SE in the same post is kinda funny. Speaking of double-standards, you remember that SE has late-game energy-beaming, right? Y'know, where hyper-efficient solar is beamed to turbines with massive output? Oh, and I'm pretty sure it has an antimatter reactor too, though I don't remember how good it is.

[kremlin]

K2 adds three more science packs after the space science pack and all of them are required for that end-game tech. The tools it provides don't feel OP after what you have to build to get them. Early game, you have better personal defense options than you do in vanilla, late game you get alternatives to artillery. They all take enough resources to research and feed that it balances out. By the time you get to Singularity tech you are literally at the *end of the game* and yeah you better have gear that's relatively OP by that point in the game.

[Jeffreyac]

...well, at least the reduced resources is pushing me in new directions. I'm ending up with more outposts than I usually do - and I'm trying a new direction in that I've never really done large scale solar before, but with the low amount of uranium I've spotted so far (coupled with a medium stone deposit of 500k or so that might last for a bit, and give me sand for glass) I've decided to give solar a try.

Just about ready to begin construction on my first rocket, to start exploring space... :)

[cainboy]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

...well, at least the reduced resources is pushing me in new directions. I'm ending up with more outposts than I usually do - and I'm trying a new direction in that I've never really done large scale solar before, but with the low amount of uranium I've spotted so far (coupled with a medium stone deposit of 500k or so that might last for a bit, and give me sand for glass) I've decided to give solar a try.

Just about ready to begin construction on my first rocket, to start exploring space... :)

ngl. this is really getting me pumped about trying it out. Just double checking, i dont need a mod to balance the 2 right, just have both K2, and SE both installed same time?

In K2 I just finished up with blue/green/red/military tech cards, so i'm probably only a few hours away from a victory, then i'll prob try out the SE/K2. There are things I like in one that the other does not have, so i'm really interested in how they play together if they've been 'balanced'. K2 has better power poles, bots, military etc, but I like SE's early game mobility, armors, and endgame concepts.

Just one of the things I'd be super curious about is if you can use K2 transporters to jump to different planets without the fuel cost of rockets from SE. <3

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

...well, at least the reduced resources is pushing me in new directions. I'm ending up with more outposts than I usually do - and I'm trying a new direction in that I've never really done large scale solar before, but with the low amount of uranium I've spotted so far (coupled with a medium stone deposit of 500k or so that might last for a bit, and give me sand for glass) I've decided to give solar a try.

Just about ready to begin construction on my first rocket, to start exploring space... :)

The odd thing I've noticed about people's perception of solar, especially from interacting with friends, is that they often think of solar as an all-or-nothing endeavor. For example, the aforementioned friends got excited that I was starting to build out a solar farm on Nauvis about the same time we got space science and were quick to point out the optimal ratio of accumulators to panels. . . Which only matters if you are running entirely (more-or-less) on solar. Given that our factory was gulping down large amounts of nuclear power, that wasn't going to happen without putting down thousands and thousands of panels, which was going to take some time--and wouldn't even fit in the designated solar farm area. When I tried to point this out, and that the nuclear plants were basically our accumulators, I got a great big "huh?" from a group of pretty smart people who have (had?) more experience with the game than I do (did?).

The way I see it, solar works nicely as a supplemental form of energy production, almost like a different form of efficiency modules--while solar can be used exclusively, it's simpler and far more achievable to simply have it as a major producer of daytime energy that reduces the resource (and possibly pollution) burden of your other forms of energy production. Well, at least at a very large and power-hungry base; outposts are a little different.

In our game, we never switched to using solar-powered accumulators for nighttime energy, but solar did end up (barely) overtaking nuclear as the primary daytime producer during typical loads; when the factory production started backing up it was almost 100% solar power. Reducing the nuclear consumption by around 1/3 (remember: nighttime was 100% nuclear) may not sound like a lot, but in a game that can last hundreds of hours it adds up, especially if those uranium mines are shrinking and you aren't quite prepared to push through an entire continent or two of bugs just to reach the next deposit.

Originally posted by cainboy:

Just one of the things I'd be super curious about is if you can use K2 transporters to jump to different planets without the fuel cost of rockets from SE. <3

IIRC, the description specifically states that it teleports between pads on the same surface (=planetary body).

[Jeffreyac]

interesting use of solar - but, doesn't nuclear consume fuel all the time, even when not actually producing power, making it a poor backup choice? (Or, perhaps you had it circuited to only run steam to the boilers at night....)

[RiO]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

interesting use of solar - but, doesn't nuclear consume fuel all the time, even when not actually producing power, making it a poor backup choice? (Or, perhaps you had it circuited to only run steam to the boilers at night....)

There's a trick to it.

You can compute the amount of 500 Celsius steam that a cluster of reactor cores can get out of exactly one cycle - i.e one uranium fuel cell inserted into each reactor and ran until dry.

You simply create a storage tank buffer of that size, plus 20%.
Then you measure the total contents of the buffer and as soon as it has 20% remaining and the reactors in your cluster are idle, you insert one fuel cell simultaneously into all of them.

Your problem to solve then becomes: how do you know if/when the reactors are idle?
The answer is simple: kick start all of them with one fuel cell manually. For one of the reactors create an outserter that pulls out the spent fuel cell and places it in an intermediate chest.
Wire up that chest and detect its contents. If it contains anything, you'll know the reactor is idle, because it ejected its fuel cell. When that condition is met AND the contents of the steam buffer is low, THEN you empty that intermediate chest AND simultaneously insert ONE new fuel cell (cap the inserter hand size!) into each reactor.

And there you go: not a drop from the uranium fuel cells wasted.


This works without risk of black-outs because heat exchangers will shut down below 500 degrees Celsius, and will thus cease to consume heat. Heat does not decay either and thus the exchangers; the entire heat pipe network; and the reactors themselves will simply idle at 500 degrees.
The only time a heat network has to actually warm up, is the first time it starts up; when temperature has to climb from 25 degrees Celsius to 500 degrees Celsius. Passed that, there is no warm-up period and as soon as a new fuel cell is inserted, everything will immediately heat up to above 500 degrees and start working again.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

interesting use of solar - but, doesn't nuclear consume fuel all the time, even when not actually producing power, making it a poor backup choice? (Or, perhaps you had it circuited to only run steam to the boilers at night....)

As RiO explained quite well, you really want the nuclear plant to be self-limiting so that it doesn't waste fuel. It also means that you can build out large plants that take advantage of reactor bonuses and are future-proof in terms of potential output. . . Though you'll initially need to capture a lot of steam if you only use a tiny fraction of it's output at the time it is built.

Originally posted by RiO:

Your problem to solve then becomes: how do you know if/when the reactors are idle?
The answer is simple: kick start all of them with one fuel cell manually. For one of the reactors create an outserter that pulls out the spent fuel cell and places it in an intermediate chest.
Wire up that chest and detect its contents. If it contains anything, you'll know the reactor is idle, because it ejected its fuel cell. When that condition is met AND the contents of the steam buffer is low, THEN you empty that intermediate chest AND simultaneously insert ONE new fuel cell (cap the inserter hand size!) into each reactor.

That's an interesting variation of the method I've been using. Instead of having an intermediate chest, I've just been having the insertion arm reading the contents of the extraction arm (which in turn only activates when the steam drops below the set level). Slightly simpler, but in the unlikely event the insertion chest temporarily runs out of fuel the whole thing shuts down and requires a manual restart. . . Which is not ideal. Your way can be wired to ensure that it'll wait and insert the fuel once it's available, which would be useful if you happen to be on a different planet/distracted with something else for a long period of time, though I suppose if there's a hiccup in the nuclear supply chain it'll probably require your direct intervention anyways.

[RiO]

Originally posted by shadain597:

I suppose if there's a hiccup in the nuclear supply chain it'll probably require your direct intervention anyways.

The neat part of using an intermediate chest you explicitly have to empty, is that you can configure a trigger on the inserter that empties it. In my case, I use a hand pulse originating from the inserter that inserts the new fuel cell. This guarantees the spent cell won't be removed - and the signal conditions that allow for inserting a fresh cell won't be voided - until a fresh cell has actually been inserted.