Can we used compressed air to drain balast tanks.

[BadlyCroppedFish]

If I fill a gas tank with air, then pump that air into a ballast tank, will it help me to drain the ballast tank when im deep down and the pressure is high?

[George_Johnson02]

I don't think so, with the way stormworks fluid physics work I believe you'd just be pumping the air out. Plus storm works tanks only have one port.

[wubbelflup]

Originally posted by George_Johnson02:

I don't think so, with the way stormworks fluid physics work I believe you'd just be pumping the air out. Plus storm works tanks only have one port.

i think he means with custom tanks?

[ElfBossHogg]

I don't think Air in any tank will work unless they implement a method to manually pressurize a tank to a level that approximates the pressure at depth. It appears that any tank that is internal is consider to be at 0 altitude/depth. If you had a tank with air (not custom) right now you would still be fighting water pressure at depth vs air pressure at surface. Wouldn't offer anything.

The only thing I found useful for carting an empty tank to depth is that you can use it in an airlock type of system. You go to depth with an empty airlock and a holding tank of water from the surface. When you want to exit the sub you fill the airlock with the water from the holding tank and don't open the outer door until it's full. When you are ready to reenter the sub make sure the airlock is filled with water. Enter the airlock, close the outer door and then pump the water to the empty holding chamber. That way you are dealing with pressure at equal level and not fighting dumping water out of the vessel. The result is an airlock that will empty at the same rate irregardless of level. I implemented the system on my SCARAB sub.

[BadlyCroppedFish]

Originally posted by ElfBossHogg:

I don't think Air in any tank will work unless they implement a method to manually pressurize a tank to a level that approximates the pressure at depth. It appears that any tank that is internal is consider to be at 0 altitude/depth. If you had a tank with air (not custom) right now you would still be fighting water pressure at depth vs air pressure at surface. Wouldn't offer anything.

The only thing I found useful for carting an empty tank to depth is that you can use it in an airlock type of system. You go to depth with an empty airlock and a holding tank of water from the surface. When you want to exit the sub you fill the airlock with the water from the holding tank and don't open the outer door until it's full. When you are ready to reenter the sub make sure the airlock is filled with water. Enter the airlock, close the outer door and then pump the water to the empty holding chamber. That way you are dealing with pressure at equal level and not fighting dumping water out of the vessel. The result is an airlock that will empty at the same rate irregardless of level. I implemented the system on my SCARAB sub.

if you get a fuel tank, and have a pump you can actually force air into it, and the tank level will fill up.
I know the air can be used to power an engine underwater so its definetly a thing
but yah i dont think it works for draining tanks

[CodCape]

This has nothing to do with using air to pump out the water, but I was reading the last comment and you said that you don’t think you can use air to powers an engine underwater that is enclosed, and that made me think: how do you get air from the surface to the engine in a sub? What if you had a cable that you could release that was hollow and would act like a pipe where, you could put a pump on it and a fluid port on the end. Now, going off of that, you could create a little buey that uses and altemeter that controls how much cable is released, that way the air would be able to enter the engine at any depth unless someone creates a custom map that goes below 250 meters. So yeah that was completely off topic but idc I just wanted someplace to share my thoughts.

[izmebee]

as an underwater dweller, there is no need for custom maps to go deeper than 250 meters, I havent found out yet how deep these worlds might be. But 250 is hardly scarping bottom in the "game"

[cranky corvid]

Originally posted by Cod_Cape:

What if you had a cable that you could release that was hollow and would act like a pipe where, you could put a pump on it and a fluid port on the end.

That's a component in the game, it's called the Hose. It has a maximum length of 16 metres, though you could chain multiples together if you wanted.

In real life, diesel subs use electric propulsion when underwater and surface when they need to recharge the batteries. In the game, running a hose system from 250 metres to the surface would require about 400 mass in hoses alone (~16 hoses), half the weight of (and definitely less compact compared to) a large electric battery. But I'm too new to the game to have a frame of reference yet for how good batteries are.