Lunar Survival Guide: Stationeer Tips pt 1

There's not a lot of documentation for Stationeers - here's some tips!

No hurry for Oxygen.

So you are on the moon, you need oxygen, right?

Don't Panic!

Firstly, your space suit comes equipped with a canister almost bursting full of sweet, almost-good-as-fresh O2 for you to breathe. It will last you for some time as you build your base and the atmospherics setup to make more.

But maybe you've taken your time, or gotten lost exploring, or who knows what else, and are getting low on oxygen before you've gotten your swank pressurized lunar holiday home ready.

No worries! Remember that big portable oxygen tank you started with? There's an easy way to get the oxygen out without making a room to vent it in or hoooking up a tank stand and a bunch of pipes.

There's a nifty canister slot on the top front (in front of the pressure indicator) that you can put a canister in. The tank and the canister will equalize pressure and you can then pop the canister in your suit. Or back in your suit if you used your suit's oxygen canister.



Because the volume of the canister is much smaller than the portable tank, you can do this several times if needed.

Warning: any gas in the canister will mix with the oxygen in the tank in this process. Be careful not to pollute your own oxygen supply! If you need to, you can drop a canister on the lunar surface, open it's valve (the pointy end twists, I guess?) and it'll vent to space. You can also do that in a room to release whatever is in the tank to the room - for example, open your waste tank in a room to add CO2 that you need for your hydroponics. Be warned, it may fly around a bit if the pressure in it is high!

Also note that if your suit functions stop working properly, you get low O2 warnings or temperature warnings, but the battery is fine and you have plenty of oxygen in the tank, the problem may be that the waste tank is too full. Ideally, you want to capture the CO2 for later use, but in a pinch you can drop the canister on the lunar surface and open the valve at the pointy end to release the CO2 into space, then pop it back in your suit.

Care and Feeding of Solar Panels

So there you are, on a moon. You need to survive! As noted before in this guide, you've got plenty of oxygen to last a while. But to survive, your suit needs power to regulate your temperature and filter your air so you don't choke on your own CO2. You need to recharge batteries, and soon!

You need power!

So, lay down a frame, stick a solar panel on top, put glass on the panel to complete it, wire the output to a power control, crowbar open the power control, stick in a battery and turn on the power. Use a wrench to point the solar panel more or less at the sun, and congrats! Now when you need to you can change your suit's battery so you won't freeze to death.

But pretty soon you'll have lots of devices set up that need power, and you've got better things to do than hover over your solar panel with a wrench to keep it aimed while the sun passes overhead.

Automate those panels!

Now, I almost didn't include this section, as there are already several good guides on how to set up solar panel aiming automation. I've looked at a bunch, and I'll outline my distilled, preferred set-up and explain why I did it this way for my own base.

Firstly, you can get a reasonably good tracking setup with fewer chips, and the chips will continually use power, and cost resources to create... but that setup cost is a one-time thing, and that power drain is a small fixed amount, and the difference between "reasonably good" solar tracking and "very good" solar tracking is a percentage, which means the power lost by less-than-perfect tracking gets bigger the more you extend your solar panel line. Admittedly, you can just add more panels... but as your base grows you'll need more and more panels, and it adds up.

For completeness, the reasonably good, cheap and easy setup is just this:

1. Logic Read sun sensor solar angle
   
2. Math divide by Memory 1.8
   
3. Batch Write to solar panel vertical

One solar sensor, one memory, one processor, two logic IO. Easy peasy, but like I said, a little off.

See, the sun's angle goes from 0 to 180 degrees. (and aren't you and I both glad it's not in radians?) The solar panel vertical setting goes from 0 to 100, but 0 and 100 are not completely vertical, instead being 15 degrees off. It's actually a 150 degree range of motion and not a 180 degree one.

Further, while you can set the panel to less than zero and it will sit still at the zero setting, if you set the panel over 100 it'll flip around instead of sitting at 100, so you lose out on the last 15 degrees of sunlight.

So here's the process for very good solar tracking:

1. Logic Read sun sensor solar angle
   
2. Math divide by Memory 1.5
   
3. Math subtract Memory 10
   
4. Min/Max less Memory 100
   
5. Batch write to solar panel vertical

One solar sensor, 3 memory, 3 processor, two logic IO. More wires, more hassle, better solar tracking.

And on the off chance this is the first guide you've read on the topic, you'll also need a whole lot of cable coils, wire cutters, and one screwdriver to adjust the settings on the logic chips. Maybe a drill if you need to change the position of a chip. Logic chips are made with the electronics printer, which is made on the autolathe. Cables can be made on either. The tools you hopefully already have on your belt.

Also, the sunlight sensor needs to be facing toward the sunrise and aligned up and down, and not in a place that is shadowed at sunrise. For some reason, it can read the solar angle when the sun is behind the wall it's mounted on just fine. High tech?

All right! Now you can get the most of all the solar panels you'll be setting up. But wait, there's more!

Solar panels have shadows.

A funny thing happens when one solar panel is in the shadow cast by another solar panel - it does not get full power.



This means that if you place them east and west of each other, you'll block sunlight to some of them for part of the day when the sun is low. Sure, when the sun is high the'll all be getting full sunlight, but you want all the power you can get, right? Build them in a line from north to south. And yes, mine down any nearby hill high enough to shade your panels! Of course, if you are far enough away east or west, the light lost will be minimal, so don't sweat it if you build an additional base or bases some ways away.

Fixing the horizontal

Hey, did you accidentally have the batch writer powered on when changing the output variable and acidentally point every solar panel in your base to some weird angle? Yes, I admit it - I did just that. Oops!

One memory and one batch writer, sending the correct horizontal angle to your panels will not only fix the problem, but any new panels you add to the network you won't have to wrench into the correct alignment. This is probably either 90 or -90. You did build them in a single-file line, north to south, right? It's just easier if the tracking data input is on one side and the power output is on the other, and you can place the panels side by side that way.

Lots of power means heavy cables

If you keep adding solar panels to your power system, you'll eventually have so many your cables will burn out. Use heavy cables on the power side of your solar farm so that you can keep expanding it as needed. Alternatley, you could make a new small farm for each section of the base you want to power, but that just seems like more work, especially as you would need to monitor the batteries separately.

Made in the Shade

Any Ice you are carrying has an alarming tendency to melt if it's not safely stored in your mining belt if it is exposed to sunlight or to any atmophere above 0 degrees C. (never mind the actual freezing point of oxygen or hydrogen)

Several guides on using a furnace suggest waiting for night time to get the volitiles and oxite inside to start smelting.

Why wait?

Put your furnace in the shade. Heck, -make- some shade and put your furnace room in it. Make sure the area is not pressurized - keep it open to space, but build a sun-block with fully filled-in frames. (they are both airtight and fully opaque once two appropriate metal sheets are welded in) You only have to block the light from the directions the sun will appear in - i.e. east, up, and west. You can leave north and/or south open. Walls do not seem to do the trick. Filled-in frames do.

You can even store ices in such an area. Even in a locker.



Warning: If for whatever reason (say, a furnace accident, canister blowout, or nearby pressure failure) there is suddenly an atmophere above freezing in temperature, any ice you have lying around will start to melt. If that ice and atmosphere combined include both oxygen and hydrogen - BOOM! This can also happen if a frame between the sun and your locker is opened up, letting sunlight heat up the ice. Wait for nightfall to do maintenance on the sunshade!

Use the furnace to melt ice.

So, you've gone and mined a bunch of oxite to start pressurizing your habitat with, but the silly chunks of ice just sit there because there's no heat yet in your yet-unpressurized room.

Use the furnace for more than smelting.

Pipe up the output of your furnace to whatever tanks, canisters, filters you want, drop in the ice, and instead of activating the furnace, just pump out the pressure to where you want it.

Because you never activated the furnace, it's not hot, and you can even mix welder fuel this way because you did not burn any volitiles.



Warning: Do make sure you don't overpressurize the destination of the gasses. Canisters are especially vulnerable as they are smaller in volume than the furnace.

Extra credit: You did make this in the shade and open to space, right? Hate to lose any of that icey goodness due to melting in daylight or warm atmosphere.

Light your way home with a battery

It's a big moon out there, and sometimes it's hard to see your own base - especially at night.

Light your way home.

Of all the various glowey-things, lights, signs, etc., the one that stands out for the draw distance of it's lights is the station battery that you build from a kit.

Stick one high up on top of a tower and you'll see it's lights even if there's a small hill in the way.



In this screenshot, you can just make out the blue dot front and center, it's much easier to see when playing full screen. Trust me!

Bonus, you really can't have too much battery power.

[Unknown]

Wish you could mark guides for deletion or archive.

[BlueFoot]

Alternatively you can use the blow torch to melt your ice

[Gregory Smirnov]

Thanks for the guide.

[CTH2004]

Okay, really helpful! Thank you! You are a (Literal) lifesaver!

[Sreen]

This was all so very helpful, much appreciated! Thank you