More Oxygen-consuming buildings and facilities are needed

[Jon_Smith]

Planet terraformed to breathable air

I came to that conclusion aswell and already uploaded it to Steam.

I've been play testing it now to try to get a good idea of how many Sols to set for the Perfect Time as I set it pretty high for now.
Its pretty easy to be honest, Moxies pump out loads of Oxygen already so with Algae you have nothing to worry about.

Here it is, feedback is welcome.

Steam Workshop::Challenge Map - One MOXIE

steamcommunity.com

 

[Jon_Smith]

Steam Workshop::Challenge Map - One MOXIE

steamcommunity.com

Play test is complete. Expect this to be a hard challenge to perfect. I did it in 142 sols so set the perfect time as 150 and completion time at 180.

You must have a breathable atmosphere and 500 colonists (otherwise its too easy to ignore the Moxie limitation and just have a few domes).

 

[Daedwartin]

Disagree. O2 isn't a serious issue on a planet like Mars where it's as accessible as it is. It'd be a major issue in space where recycling is key and more complicated, but not on a planet with easy access to power like you have in the game.

It's a good middle ground where O2 isn't a major resource to obtain but can be problematic with leaks where it understandably would be.

It give people an idea how easy it is to find oxygen, randomly select any rock on the surface of earth. You have a 10% chance of picking up something primarily made from Silica, aka Silicon Dioxide. Oxygen makes up half the earth's mass. It is likely pretty similar for mars. Not only that, you need water for colonists...aka another source of water. You have plenty of oxygen to go around.

 

[Xeorm]

It give people an idea how easy it is to find oxygen, randomly select any rock on the surface of earth. You have a 10% chance of picking up something primarily made from Silica, aka Silicon Dioxide. Oxygen makes up half the earth's mass. It is likely pretty similar for mars. Not only that, you need water for colonists...aka another source of water. You have plenty of oxygen to go around.

Yeaaaa. Oxygen really isn't that complicated. If anything it'd be more fun to track CO2 production too. As too much of that will do damage same as not enough oxygen.

 

[ChoGGi_2]

Yes...you would think that in space, oxygen management would be a pretty critical component, but currently it really is "1 MOXIE, 2 if you're feeling fancy".
And especially after watching the expanse, I love the idea of managing your oxygen via plant life, but that also currently does not appear to be worth it at all in this game.
Some changes I would very much like:

• reduce standard MOXIE production to 2 oxygen, increase upkeep to 10 power
• Increase algea oxygen production to 2, kelp to 1 (this could be the hydroponic farm niche we need)
• factories cost additional ~2 oxygen (even if they do not run on coal, we can assume something in there is not good for the air, at least to the same degree as a fungus)
• Currently, MOXIEs are freely available from the start, while vaporators are a potentially pretty late tech. You could consider making MOXIES prefab/tech dependent like the vaporators, say by switching the MOXIE upgrade tech with a MOXIE building tech. And/or add a polymer cost?
• you could consider additional oxygen cost per colonist, though I assume there is a reason water and O2 are currently calculated per dome instead of per inhabitant.

Steam Workshop::Oxygen Management

steamcommunity.com

 

[CrazyJ]

Yeaaaa. Oxygen really isn't that complicated. If anything it'd be more fun to track CO2 production too. As too much of that will do damage same as not enough oxygen.

even in space excess co2 is not really a concern for the imple reason that you can just vent any unneeded gas into space

 

[Xeorm]

even in space excess co2 is not really a concern for the imple reason that you can just vent any unneeded gas into space

Uhhh, no. Not at all. Apollo 13 famously had an issue with their CO2 scrubbing equipment that necessitated some improvising. Separating out gasses isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world at times, so no, you can't just "vent' gasses like that. You'd have to separate them first, which would be one challenge. Which may not be a good idea, because carbon and oxygen are pretty important to long term space travel.

 

[CrazyJ]

Uhhh, no. Not at all. Apollo 13 famously had an issue with their CO2 scrubbing equipment that necessitated some improvising. Separating out gasses isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world at times, so no, you can't just "vent' gasses like that. You'd have to separate them first, which would be one challenge. Which may not be a good idea, because carbon and oxygen are pretty important to long term space travel.

due to the extremely abundant supply of available oxygen on mars(silicates) the filtration system doesn't need to be perfect, even if it takes a good chunk of the 02 with the CO2 it really doesn't matter.

 

[YertyL]

due to the extremely abundant supply of available oxygen on mars(silicates) the filtration system doesn't need to be perfect, even if it takes a good chunk of the 02 with the CO2 it really doesn't matter.

The thing is: Energy requirement. I researched this a little.
According to NASA, the average human needs 0.84 kilograms of oxygen to survive. The current MOXIE experiment produces 240 grams per day for 300 watt power, so you would need roughly 840/240*300=1050Watt~1MW to produce the oxygen needed by one human.
If you want to generate that e.g. by solar power, this medium article puts peak solar surface energy on Mars at 593W/m² and approximates effective average solar power as that number times 20% times 35% for variance in radiation and solar cell efficiency, so 41.5 W/m². So you would need about 1050W/(41.5W/m²)~25m², e.g. 5 times 5 meter, of solar panels to generate oxygen for a single person on mars (and also much much more for fuel, but that's beside the point). Which makes the extremely low power requirement of vanilla MOXIEs pretty optimistic

My point is: You cannot just neglect energy requirements, especially when talking about breaking up chemical compounds into atomic components.
Also, realistically the best (only?) power option on mars seems to be nuclear, so maybe fusion reactors could finally get a buff?

 

[Jon_Smith]

Stirling and fusion reactors don't need a buff, but Moxies would benefit from using more power and producing less oxygen perhaps simply cause they are too easy and boring right now.
We also cannot be totally fair in comparing the game to reality aswell remember by crunching the numbers of how many solar panels it would really take etc or there is a rabbit hole we can go down, for example how do they make a dome, which has a transparent roof, out of only metals and concrete (micro dome)?

Some things need to be adjusted from reality for gameplay reasons and thats fine as, like solar panels, Wind power would also generate extremely low amounts of energy on Mars.
The kind of storms we see at the beginning of 'The Martian' which have the power to knock over a man are pretty much the one scientifically inaccurate thing in that book/movie.
Mars doesn't contain a dense enough atmosphere it order to generate strong or high winds, they do however contain a huge amount of dust and not alot of topography to stop or slow down the wind so you do get huge dust storms that can last a long long time, but if you were to stand in them they could not push you over at all and a wind turbine would not be pushed with very much force.
Also worth noting, they use nuclear power in that book too, its definitely the most logical power source there for a long time.

 

[YertyL]

Steam Workshop::Oxygen Management

steamcommunity.com

I finally got around to playtesting this a little. A few thoughts:

1. First off: It's awesome that you actually took the time to implement these changes!
2. Bug: Electronics and machine factories seem to currently consume 10 water
3. 0.1 per colonist might be a bit harsh, as even just your 12 founders will already put you above e.g. 1 algea farm/ununpgraded MOXIE + 1 "normal" crop hydro farm (2.1 oxygen). Maybe 0.05?
4. My original idea was to make hydro algea a real alternative to MOXIES and make MOXIES more like moisture vaporators. However, the obvious difference is you cannot import MOXIES, and in vanilla you do not have algea from the start, which makes the early game extremely dependent on the atmospheric filtering tech, as you effectively cannot build your first dome without it. So I think it might be better to just increase MOXIE upkeep and reduce production instead of locking it behind a tech.
5. On the other hand, after you get that tech, hydros in their current form might still not be competitive with MOXIES, as the 10 power cost of a MOXIE is not enough to make the 5 power 3 worker cost of vanilla hydro farms attractive. To combat this, I would heavily recommend combining the oxygen management mod with the rebalanced food production mod which reduces hydroponic farm workers by 1, gives you algea crops from the start, and reduces fungal farm O2 consumption to make fungal a viable option even with more difficult O2 production. It also increases MOXIE upkeep to 2 polymers, which IMO works better to make hydro farms competitive compared to "just" a 10 power cost.
   
   The combination of both -- increased oxygen consumption from factories and colonists but much easier oxygen production from hydroponic farms -- really gives O2 management a much better feel though, from my experience so far.

 

[ChoGGi_2]

2. ahh that's probably a default when I made them life-support consumers

The rest should be doable easy enough.