Lack of Ice

[Yousek]

I got big water consumption due the size of the ship but i can't get enough ice to melt it. 3k ice remains like 5min. There's a better way to get water in space?

[argrond]

??????
How does size of the ship correlates to water consumption? What exactly consumes your space ice->water so much you cannot refill it? Quantity of thrusters? Quantity of grabbers? Quantity of chems which convert water to ice?
My ship at 80 km/s with 820t mass and 16 common grabbers is overfilled with ice, I do not consume even 20% of income. Nauvis<->Fulgora route. And this ship is so much not efficient. Just for a example...

[Fel]

Not really, sending barrels from the surface is also a bit limited (100 filled barrels per launch).

You should be getting plenty of asteroids if you catch all of them, especially when moving but anywhere other than in orbit around Nauvis should give you quite a bit.
There are also a lot more of the oxide asteroids (the ones that make ice) when you go towards aquillo.

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by argrond:

??????
How does size of the ship correlates to water consumption? What exactly consumes your space ice->water so much you cannot refill it? Quantity of thrusters? Quantity of grabbers? Quantity of chems which convert water to ice?
My ship at 80 km/s with 820t mass and 16 common grabbers is overfilled with ice, I do not consume even 20% of income. Nauvis<->Fulgora route. And this ship is so much not efficient. Just for a example...

Nuclear reactor running all those things probably.

[Serendipitous]

There are two things that can help - using quality collectors on your front part of the ship. If you are using regular ones, they can't catch all those chunks left after destroying larger asteroids before those are destroyed by your ship moving through them. Second is proper filtering on collectors. Ice asteroids for the most part are minority so if your collector tries grabbing everything, they are probably missing most of the ice chunks while collecting iron and carbon that you already have in abundance. Either make some dedicated ice catchers or set filters based on how much chunks you already have on the belt. You will notice increased quantity of the ice asteroid chunks going to your crushers i can guarantee it.

[Avloren]

There's also a crusher recipe that can 'reprocess' asteroids into different types, you unlock it on Vulcanus. So when there's an imbalance of asteroid types, reprocess the unwanted types until you have the ones you need.

There's pretty much always going to be an imbalance of asteroid types, but which ones you have excess of will vary. It's not just about how much of each type you're using, but also about where the ship is going - for example ice is rare near Vulcanus, common near Aquilo.

[argrond]

Originally posted by Serendipitous:

Originally posted by argrond:

??????
How does size of the ship correlates to water consumption? What exactly consumes your space ice->water so much you cannot refill it? Quantity of thrusters? Quantity of grabbers? Quantity of chems which convert water to ice?
My ship at 80 km/s with 820t mass and 16 common grabbers is overfilled with ice, I do not consume even 20% of income. Nauvis<->Fulgora route. And this ship is so much not efficient. Just for a example...

Nuclear reactor running all those things probably.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384553915
2 epic nuclear reactors running, 1550t ship (pretty big imo). I'm throwing ice aside like crazy due to overflow. So unless there is more info about the issue I still wonder about the ice shortage age on topic starter's platform...

[Quillithe]

Well, each heat exchanger uses 3 ice/second and using 3k in 5 minutes is using 200 ice/sec so the rate isn't necessarily impossible - but a ship that size should be able to grab a bunch of asteroids normally and do reprocessing.

Maybe idling it around Nauvis would drain you out I guess, the low density there can be a problem. But of course if it's mostly idle then what's using the power. Also personally sticking some solar on there is a good plan even for ships going to Aquilo, may as well cut down on nuclear usage.

[Yousek]

Originally posted by argrond:

Originally posted by Serendipitous:

Nuclear reactor running all those things probably.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384553915
2 epic nuclear reactors running, 1550t ship (pretty big imo). I'm throwing ice aside like crazy due to overflow. So unless there is more info about the issue I still wonder about the ice shortage age on topic starter's platform...

Heh so i always goes big that's why my ship has around 4k t and if you look how much i done already it seems i already started dlc... Got 4 basic nuclear reactor and like 20 engines. And yes i didn't need that much and cover edges on lasers and collectors are chery on the top this messy cake.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Yousek:

Originally posted by argrond:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384553915
2 epic nuclear reactors running, 1550t ship (pretty big imo). I'm throwing ice aside like crazy due to overflow. So unless there is more info about the issue I still wonder about the ice shortage age on topic starter's platform...

Heh so i always goes big that's why my ship has around 4k t and if you look how much i done already it seems i already started dlc... Got 4 basic nuclear reactor and like 20 engines. And yes i didn't need that much and cover edges on lasers and collectors are chery on the top this messy cake.

"Well; there's your problem(s) then."

Starting off on the big one: lasers are useless in space.
Medium asteroids have 90% laser resistance.
Big asteroids have 95% laser resistance.
And huge asteroids have 99% laser resistance.

Small asteroids -- which are only formed when shooting apart medium ones -- have 20% laser resistance and are the only type where lasers can be actually effective.

In short, because of 90%+ resistance you have to overbuild your defenses by roughly a factor 10 compared to using plain gun turrets with plain ammunition. Plain gun turrets scale faster with damage upgrades as well; as both the ammo and the turret itself are upgraded. It double-dips.

All those lasers eat a ton of power. And power is in short supply on platforms.
Gun turrets do not consume power at all. (Sure -- the furnaces and assemblers to make ammo do. But those can be effiency-moduled down to 20% nominal consumption.)


Next on the table: the tendency to 'go big' is at odds with your tech capabilities.
Going big means more power consumption.
Which means more turbines spinning.
Which means more water needed.
Which means ice shortage.

You're not meant to go big on platforms until you have unlocked fusion power.
Fusion plants don't need water. And the fluoroketone they use is heated up and cooled back down in a fixed, lossless loop. Fusion cell goes in; and that's it.

[makemakey]

An alternative in the meantime (while still on nuclear) is to request Ice from surface planet(s) with your that ship.
Then have a lot of storage (hub/tanks) for ice/water on the ship.
Rocket capacity, strangely, for ice is actually decent: 1000 ice per launch. (which is ~ 24k water after conversion with prod modules.)
(barrels would be 10k per launch)

To have sufficient Ice on surface planet(s), I have build a simple solar powered orbital station dedicated to only grab ice asteroids, crush them and send the ice continuously to the surface.

[MoDon]

Originally posted by Avloren:

There's also a crusher recipe that can 'reprocess' asteroids into different types, you unlock it on Vulcanus. So when there's an imbalance of asteroid types, reprocess the unwanted types until you have the ones you need.

There's pretty much always going to be an imbalance of asteroid types, but which ones you have excess of will vary. It's not just about how much of each type you're using, but also about where the ship is going - for example ice is rare near Vulcanus, common near Aquilo.

Although true, I have literally never done this and I have ships farming the promethium chunks. My ships suffer from abundance, and are literally throwing excess crap off the back of the ship while it is flying.

There is no part of space in this game where anyone should be in a deficit on resources. They are literally everywhere for the taking.

[god bless you]

My 5k tons ship.
https://i.imgur.com/t0B0lLU.jpeg
Traveling speed is about 420km(43 legendary thrusters).

You should try to design a ship which can hold as many asteroids as you can when traveling.
You can process them later, so that you will not face the resource problem.

This is my plan.
I place 62 legendary collectors side by side in front of ship without any filter.
Insert will only pick chunks to belt based on what kind of chunks is the most one inside every single collector storage. This can be done by selector combinator.
I won't let belt to be blocked. So inserts will be disabled if there are too many chunks on belts. (I set it as 1.5k)
I have over 4k storage buffer of asteroids with these settings(62 collectors * 64 storage size + belts length * 4).

I do asteroids reprocessing with quality module if any kind of chunks over 400.
This is a balance process. So I will have 400 chunks in all kinds of asteroids in anytime. Resource is not a problem.

One more benefit is the high quality asteroids byproduct.
They will become legendary finally.
Legendary ores are really easy to use.
Legendary coal can produce legendary plastic.
Legendary calcite can produce legendary stone(with lava).

I don't quite like to do recycling with quality modules.
Legendary asteroids by reprocessing make me free.
https://i.imgur.com/VITEGVw.png

[GAMING_Alligator]

Nauvis orbit is a pain for these. Your best bet is to buffer a bit of fuel, then set out for somewhere else for a "shakedown cruise" and wait there to fill up your tanks. By the time you come back, you'll have full belts of ice.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by GAMING_Alligator:

Nauvis orbit is a pain for these. Your best bet is to buffer a bit of fuel, then set out for somewhere else for a "shakedown cruise" and wait there to fill up your tanks. By the time you come back, you'll have full belts of ice.

I'm contemplating the merit of creating a small stockpile of asteroid chunks on Nauvis, just so they can be sent up to newly created platforms to accelerate the initial launch. Or, I suppose, the processed resources.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Originally posted by GAMING_Alligator:

Nauvis orbit is a pain for these. Your best bet is to buffer a bit of fuel, then set out for somewhere else for a "shakedown cruise" and wait there to fill up your tanks. By the time you come back, you'll have full belts of ice.

I'm contemplating the merit of creating a small stockpile of asteroid chunks on Nauvis, just so they can be sent up to newly created platforms to accelerate the initial launch. Or, I suppose, the processed resources.

Yeah I've got a tiny water barrel operation (just 1 machine and using bots to bring the metal over and take the water barrels) set up for feeding ships. It's slightly wasteful (since I throw the barrels into space) but it's such a tiny part of the whole operation