Heating Aquilo - Problems (a rant)

[megamagicmonkey]

So I have multiple heat towers to warm up all the heat pipes on Aquilo that keep my very small factory running. Now I need to get fuel to these heat towers, so I brought in like, 3 roboports and a small contingent of bots. Apparently this makes me a dumbass, because whenever a bot flies over a cold area, it immediately loses all power, not only slowing down, but draining the grid of massive amounts of power, and keeping that fuel from reaching the heating elements it's aimed at. Furthermore it's wrecking my ability to dispose of excess ice into recyclers, so my ammonia production backs up.

Now, Aquilo is the big mama of difficult factory demands, so this point it's all difficult, but fine. I'm having a hard time managing heat pipes and regular pipes (which are either moving 500 degree fluids themselves and shouldn't be freezing, or moving below freezing fluids and its frozen state shouldn't matter), but ok, thems the breaks. So I move stuff around and have placed over 2000 heat pipes just to warm a factory with 6 cryogenic plants just so my bots can move ice to disposal and fuel to heat towers. Apparently, though, I am still a dumbass because some of these buildings are so big that in spite of being completely surrounded by heat pipes, not at all frozen themselves, or even pumping 500 degree fluids through them, the ground under them is still frozen. This means when a bot does a quick fly-by "bam". No electricity. So I'm dumping huge resources to solve a problem that won;t be solved.

Now I'm mostly here venting, but let these points also serve as a guide and warning to those coming to Aquilo for the first time. There are no easy solutions. I lost two rockets because I had to move a rocket pad because it covers a huge area. I have to repipe everything and find a way to move all my cryogenics to the outskirts of this little square of robo-network so I can feed heat pipes on the edges of my factory that are warming fluid inputs. And the more pipes means the more fuel I have to spend to keep them warm.

I've struggled a lot in this game but persevered and made it to this place, but damn I'm genuinely pissed about this on Aquilo. Everywhere else allows creativity to solve its problems but you're stuck using a few big buildings here and everything goes to pot. Just don't use logistics network I guess.

Edit: Apparently it's not warm vs cold that drains bots, they just deplete extremely fast. This can be worked around.

[Hurkyl]

You missed a key mechanic: bots consume 5x power on Aquilo. They are not 'freezing'; they just run out of power very quickly, and thus have a very short operating range as compared to normal.

[megamagicmonkey]

Ah. A heads up in the game about that would have been nice. Ok, so the layout isn't the issue then? I could have sworn I saw them instantly drain anytime they flew over a non-heated area.

Also, Hurkyl, you need to get some love. Always helping folks out in the discussions.

[megamagicmonkey]

Ran some tests, and you are correct!

Salvaged my run, good sir.

[Hurkyl]

It was alluded to in the briefing, although it doesn't explain exactly what it means for bots to be "much weaker here".

If you're interested, you can see the actual data for the various planets in their Factoriopedia entries, to see how they differ.

(also a minor correction to my info: it's 5x, not 6x)

[megamagicmonkey]

Yeah, weaker isn't exactly clear, also it's been about 40 hours since I got that briefing and actually landing on the planet. I needed to redesign a platform from the ground up to handle the trip and I also took the time to develop some of the other planets a bit more.

[Liro Raériyo]

the best you can do is get higher quality bots as they have a higher energy capacity, rare bots have triple energy as an example, while legendary have 6X the energy of a standard one.

[Nero]

Its the last planet and designed to be the most difficult (as in, the biggest puzzle) surface you land on.
Bots trivialize most of the game so they take a big hit in effectiveness.

[AlexMBrennan]

There are no easy solutions

But is that really true?

There are no production chains to worry about so you don't really need to move stuff around (you only need ammoniacal solution to make fuel so just remove some ice platforms and make the fuel next to the heating tower).

The tiny amounts of resources you need for science and quantum processors can easily be handled by robots given that fusion tech gives you infinite power.

It's an annoying planet (if I wanted to play Seablock then I could have done that years ago) but it's not difficult.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Liro Raériyo:

the best you can do is get higher quality bots as they have a higher energy capacity, rare bots have triple energy as an example, while legendary have 6X the energy of a standard one.

Nope.
The best you can do is set up a minimal heat/power plant with solid fuel from ammonia, voiding excess ice via two recyclers facing each other, and connect the whole thing by belt.

Then set up ice platform production -- which will be ammonia positive; so you'll need the dynamic recipe switching trick to void fluids and keep it running -- and then just leave Aquilo be for a few hours while it fills up a few dozen chests with ice platform.

Just work on other things instead. Start retrofitting for epic quality for all I care.
(Though really; don't do that. Legendary is only one additional research away, making epic the singled-out 'skip-over' tier.)

Then you return and start slapping down a full continent of ice platform so you have enough room to breathe and plonk down a decent heat/power plant and can start on a roomy main bus design to help avoid having to use bots as a crutch.

Instead, you can keep bots isolated to a mall and adjoined silo and science area.

[Nero]

Originally posted by megamagicmonkey:

Ah. A heads up in the game about that would have been nice.

I had to confirm but there IS a heads up in the map of the solar system when hovering over Aquilo

[SMJSMOK]

Originally posted by Nero:

Its the last planet and designed to be the most difficult (as in, the biggest puzzle) surface you land on.
Bots trivialize most of the game so they take a big hit in effectiveness.

IDK about others, but Aquilo was still easy for me compared to Gleba. But it's possible that it was easy because Gleba made me a better player. It's hard to tell.

[Defektiv]

Three ammoniacal solution separation processes, one solid fuel from ammonia and two ammonia rocket fuel, the water for the rocket fuel comes from the ice and the oil is native to Aquilo. Only the heat exchangers need to be above 500 degrees so build your heat pipes wherever you need but put down a heating tower close to the exchangers and make sure the exchangers and turbines are isolated on one side of the heat tower from everything else so they get buffered when you lay down new cold buildings. Recycle the ice you don't use to not block the process and you have self sustaining power on Aquilo that also defrosts a large area. When you find its limit, copy and paste it to make more power and/or extend defrost range.