Heating Tower vs Nuclear Reactor

[Doomstrike53]

Made it to Aquilo recently and have been bumbling around trying to figure things out. There are 2 things I need before anything else: heat and power (which comes from heat). My question is what is the better option for heat, the nuclear reactor or the heating tower? They both basically do the same thing, except one uses every type of fuel (possibly even nuclear fuel and uranium fuel rods, not sure) and the other only uses uranium fuel rods which might be the most energy dense of all fuel types. Any advice here?

[kremlin]

Heating towers are quickly able to be fed entirely from local resources where the nuclear reactor will require importing the fuel. But nuclear reactors will also give you more heat energy with neighbor bonuses, where heating towers have a fixed bonus.

[Doomstrike53]

Interesting. So now I'm thinking nuclear might be best for now since I have such limited space and probably can't fit an oil refinery big enough to feed a bunch of heating towers plus whatever else I need if for. Later on though once I can get enough platforms to expand the island I could probably switch to the heating towers or, even better, fusion if I can.

[god bless you]

Heating Tower+1
It is easy to make infinite ammonia rocket fuels on Aquilo.
Infinite and local resource is the best choice.

After satisfy a basic setting at beginning, I make all ice into ice platform and place solar panels. I will let it be pure solar power planet someday.

[Ryan]

I found it easiest to import uranium fuel cells and make nuclear power. I had to jumpstart my base with some 1% solar panels, but once it was going it was good to go. You can make fuel locally, but I don't know how to do that on that tiny island without some good starter power which was easy with nuclear. Once I started nuclear I just kept going with it.

[Ryan]

Also, since everything requires heat pipes, your base must be much larger than normal. That tiny starter island is too small to make much of anything. Expanding the island became my priority.

[god bless you]

I take 1k rocket fuel with me when first landing.
It is enough to bring up a small ammonia rocket fuel and ice platform factory.
1 chemical planet for ammonia separation.
1 chemical planet for solid fuel.
1 chemical planet for ammonia rocket fuel.
1 chemical planet for melting ice.
1 assembler for ice platform.
1 heat exchanger with 2 steam turbine.
1-2 recycler to destroy overflowed ice.

Take some concrete or reinforced concrete with you.
Pave it on rough ice/smooth ice, then you can build machines on it.

[oyssoyss]

I use both. when you can go to Aquilo basically in this stage you don't worry about nuclear fuel. I shipped a whole nuclear power grid there.

in early stage before you figure out how to balance ammonia production nuclear helps a lot.

after that you are basically pumping rocket fuel from ammonia sea. you need to deal with excessive ammonia to prevent ice-to-water production get stuck. then you need to burn them in solid fuel.

[Torham]

I went nuclear. By the time I got to Aquillo, I had thousands of fuel cells just lying around, so nuclear is practically free, and it has a smaller footprint. The reactor neighbour bonuses give a lot of extra free heat/energy. I even set up 2 nuclear reactors JUST to heat the island. It was enough to keep everything nice and toasty. Empty fuel cell get shredded in the recycler.

[Kryten]

Originally posted by god bless you:

I take 1k rocket fuel with me when first landing.
It is enough to bring up a small ammonia rocket fuel and ice platform factory.
1 chemical planet for ammonia separation.
1 chemical planet for solid fuel.
1 chemical planet for ammonia rocket fuel.
1 chemical planet for melting ice.
1 assembler for ice platform.
1 heat exchanger with 2 steam turbine.
1-2 recycler to destroy overflowed ice.

Take some concrete or reinforced concrete with you.
Pave it on rough ice/smooth ice, then you can build machines on it.

Instead of destroying the excess ice, I just built more assemblers for Ice platforms (5 at the start). Those platforms are needed a lot and there is more and more ice produced (I started destroying it again now^^)