How water compression saved my life

[jade]

Had to say thank you to the devs for making that a thing after what just happened to me.

Alright, so here's the setting. Going into the titanium outpost mission for the first time, unknowingly unprepared. I start building cryostations and placing mines when I realize I have absolutely no way to produce sufficient power for this mission.

Then I remember I have compressed water, which was needed for basically every power plant. So just because of that feature, I was able to run a nuclear power plant for it. Thank you devs

[son-goku]

Well, in the lava biome, it's easier to build an energy network with Lava power plants.

Once you get titanium, you can build the higher level ones, which give 1000 energy apiece

[Stimpacker]

Uh, as Ashley said, "you're basically surrounded by energy" in the Volcanic biome. If you don't want to get power from molten lava, you can build a geothermal and use its water output for a fusion plant for overkill.

[jade]

Originally posted by Stimpacker:

Uh, as Ashley said, "you're basically surrounded by energy" in the Volcanic biome. If you don't want to get power from molten lava, you can build a geothermal and use its water output for a fusion plant for overkill.

i was unprepared, like i said in the post. the only one of those i actually had was geothermal and there was no vents near me

[Paladestar]

Nuclear power is really bad in this game. Used it during one play-through, saw how bad it was and never used it again.

[jade]

Originally posted by Paladestar:

Nuclear power is really bad in this game. Used it during one play-through, saw how bad it was and never used it again.

yeah, i honestly have to agree. it just drains uranium way too fast when you have too many power plants

[Stimpacker]

I've never used nuclear fission power. Constant resource drain is a big no-no. Fusion power plants are great. See my Brutal 500% guide. With Mech Tools x4 equipped, not much is needed to build a fusion plant. Just need to supply it with 100 water.

[Paladestar]

Originally posted by GetDieRat8728:

Originally posted by Paladestar:

Nuclear power is really bad in this game. Used it during one play-through, saw how bad it was and never used it again.

yeah, i honestly have to agree. it just drains uranium way too fast when you have too many power plants

It could have been a viable stop-gap on the way to fusion if they didn't make the level 2 and 3 centrifuges require titanium.

With level 1 centrifuges (and level 3 extractors of course), 1 ore in the ground becomes 4 enriched uranium.

With level 3 centrifuges, 1 ore in the ground becomes 16 enriched uranium. Which makes running the nuclear power plants a bit more viable.

At that stage of the game though it means you already have access to cobalt, uranium and titanium. May as well just go unlock palladium at that point and go straight to fusion power...

It's also wasteful to burn up elemental resources in the first place. Same reason I'll never use Ionizers nor super-coolant refineries.

Also making the nuclear plants take up 6x6 space is just nuts too, should really have been 4x4 or maybe 5x5.

[bz-avatar]

Geothermal also provides x2 mud and power in the volcanic biome... 1600 power and 4 water is nothing to sneeze at when you get to the point where you're cranking out Fusion power or setting up Cultivators.

[sh3riff]

volcanic biome doesnt have geysers .. obviously .. cant have water when there is lava around, makes no sense

[YetiChow]

Originally posted by sh3riff:

volcanic biome doesnt have geysers .. obviously .. cant have water when there is lava around, makes no sense

That's... how geysers typically work IRL; steam geysers exist in regions with underground magma channels which typically means some level of volcanic activity. See: Yellowstone National Park in the US, Rotarua in NZ, various Japanese hot springs (there are a few which have small geysers, although most of of them are less "big rush of steam" and more "constant fountain of warm-hot water with a little bit of steam")

Hawaii is well-known for both volcanoes and waterfalls; it's a tropical island so it's wet AF (both precipitation and being a coastal region; which also means a lot of geologically-stored freshwater); NZ is similar and while Japan may not have many active surface volcanoes it has a lot of underground tectonic activity and magma channels (hence all the earthquakes.)

Yes there are a few 'sea geysers' around the world that are driven by wave action, but those are a rarity. In fact, even some of those ones are "hybrid" geysers where seawater flushes into magma channels, boils off and then shoots out as steam (possibly getting a bit of extra pressure boost from wave action; such geysers commonly have irregular spurts that fluctuate with tides/sea levels.)

Water and lava/magma are not mutually exclusive; if anything it's more common to find them together (after all, magma = tectonic activity and that's most common at the edges of plates, which also happens to be where islands and shorelines are typically located... the other big place you find lots of water collecting is at the base of mountains, which are also generally symptoms of having an active or recently active tectonic region)

As far as The Riftbreaker goes: the magma biome absolutely does have geothermal vents, and they're supposed to be more common than other biomes. The terrain generation may preclude them from being placed due to tile selection; and where they do form they might be hidden behind other features or harder to access. But every time I've gone through the magma biome I've used geothermal as my primary power source, taking advantage of the extra water and power output to run cultivators once I have some magma power plants going. This was before liquid compression existed (haven't played in a while because I'm waiting for co-op); but it wasn't challenging at all back then to find geysers and make use of them. I had carpeted most of my volcano map in cultivators and was growing all of the crystal 'plants' I had (I figured that made most sense in such a biome), with a special focus on the one that gives titanium, and a few of the titanium trees mixed in. Consequently, my magma biome outpost was generating more resources from plants than my "main" base in the jungle biome, or any other outpost! My typical strategy is that once I've done the outpost mission for a region, I turn it into a massive farm/garden since there will be a lot of unused space and once I'm back at my main base it's all passive income that I don't need to worry about protecting/repairing/etc. I might come back from time to time to apply upgrades or switch out species when I discover new/better sources.

[sh3riff]

ach, yes but no, you are talking about different thing and you literally confirmed my message in the first line you said .. funny you dont see it.
This is game, not irl .. dont care