[Feature Request] Configurable oxygen/power rates

[WesCook]

Hope feature requests are okay!

I'm currently working on a self-sustaining Galacticraft lunar base. The plan was to use advanced solars for power, a wheat farm (with Thaumcraft golems) for oxygen, and scale them up as necessary for the rest of the base. Then I looked at the numbers.

My farm room alone requires 4 sealers (unfortunately within ~10 blocks of only needing 3). Each sealer requires 8 oxygen collectors, so 32 total. Each oxygen collector requires about 75% the output of an advanced solar panel, and that's assuming it's running 24/7. In reality I'd need more solars and energy capacitors.

So in total, my single farm room requires 4 sealers, 32 collectors, and ~50 advanced solars. I'm sure I could be more efficient by using trees for oxygen and a tree/charcoal farm for power, but I thought this would be more interesting. It seems almost unfeasible though.

It's possible I've done my math wrong or these machines are still being balanced, but I'd like to be able to tweak the numbers via configs so I can stick to the original plan. Would that be a possibility to add in the future?

Thank you.

[WesCook]

I have since figured out oxygen collectors can scale up higher than I initially realized... My mistake. Will redesign my systems and see if the numbers work out better (configurable multipliers would still be rad, though!).

[radfast]

1 Advanced Solar Panel in sunlight should be able to run 3 collectors, so I guess taking account dark time, 65-75% of the average output of an advanced solar panel is a good estimate.

1 collector with plenty of leaves or farm blocks around it (in an 11x11 cube centred on the collector) can collect a lot of oxygen, enough to keep 2-3 sealers busy. Let's say 2 collectors, 4 sealers.

You should be able to power that whole setup with 4 solar panels, if not then something is wrong.

I do not want to add yet another config. If you are having problems get enough power for this type of base then other players are going to have the same problem.

So definitely interested in your feedback after you re-do the numbers. Please do come back to us on that.

[WesCook]

"I do not want to add yet another config. If you are having problems get enough power for this type of base then other players are going to have the same problem."

Ah, fair enough. Will close the issue.

In this case I think my problem was simply that I assumed there was a ceiling on the collectors. I didn't realize it scaled up to such high numbers, and the rest of my math failed as a result.

You can barely see in the picture there, but the collectors were on the sidelines of the farm. I've since made it a vertical farm and put them down the middle.

(Bubble distributor around landing pad as that can't be sealed)

4 columns with 5 collectors each is 20 collectors. Each is now pumping 320 oxygen for a total of 6,400 oxygen per second (a bit confusing as some machines use ticks, others use seconds). I needed 1,280 to keep the farm room maintained, so that's easily enough now. Just need to scale up power at this point and I'm good to go. Also need to wait on that sealable pipe fix mentioned in #1085, but no rush there.

Thanks for putting in the time to answer my Issue and math it out with me. Much appreciated. Really enjoying this mod so far.

[radfast]

That's a nice compact design - and <3 the lilypad on top of the water so you don't fall in, I do that in my builds.

Compact farms in space seem important, as there is a cost to maintaining the sealed environment:
http://rack.1.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzA0LzIyLzNmL01hcnNPbmVGYXJtLjBmMWQyLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTg1MHg4NTA-CmUJanBn/f50b92f3/972/MarsOne-Farm5-BV.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/12/04/article-2242792-16584F00000005DC-820_634x428.jpg

Like I say, please do come back again with the number of Advanced Solar Panels you have to use to maintain this setup. If it's an unreasonably large number of panels needed then we can look at re-balancing something, in the interests of all players.

[WesCook]

Very cool photos, thanks for sharing.

"Like I say, please do come back again with the number of Advanced Solar Panels you have to use to maintain this setup."

Power is a bit hard to calculate because not all machines show power usage. From what I can tell with my current setup of 20 collectors, 1 bubble distributor, and 4 sealers, it's costing about 20K gJ in power per second.

I'm generating 5x the oxygen I currently need though, so two columns of collectors are currently disabled.

Now I currently have 17 adv. solars set up, and that is enough to keep the system fed just fine during the day, and it fills up my capacitors quite quickly too. I could probably get away with ~12 or so solars to just break even. But of course I need twice that to keep it filled during the night.

So here's my current issue. I can generate energy just fine, but storing the energy needed to make it through the night is prohibitively expensive. I have two Energy Storage Clusters set up, and they each drain in about 125 seconds, or two minutes. I'm not sure exactly how long night is, but it feels like it lasts about an hour. Some quick napkin math shows I need 25-30 Storage Clusters (upgraded ones) to keep the everything powered through the night.

I still have some experimentation to do, but that feels like the bottleneck right now. Storing power for a moderately complex system requires a ton of storage clusters. I'm going to resist the temptation of setting up a tree farm and simply using a charcoal generator, because I want to see if this can work.

---

Also, I found a temporary solution to the sealable pipes problem. Just move them down one.

They seem to attach to oxygen collectors just fine, it's only the sealers that were giving me trouble.

Cheers.

[radfast]

The sealable pipes still need some attention.

Napkin maths is the kind of maths I like.

Looks like some tweaks are definitely needed here so I really appreciate the details you are giving me - I have not taken a day to build a Moon base myself in 1.7.10. My thoughts at present are:

1. sealers, collectors and distributors draw way too much power (relative to power-hungry machines like furnaces) bearing in mind they are needed to be on all the time, and also you are likely to need quite a lot of them - especially if you add the overhead of sealing the farm area where you create the oxygen (as is realistic)
2. Energy Storage Cluster does not store enough energy, considering it's a Tier 2 machine - the ratio should be something like 1 Energy Storage Cluster per 2 Advanced Solar Panels, to get through the lunar night (which is long)