Irritations with Water Filtration Machine (build #50032, Stable)
Tarkannen
North Carolina Join Date: 2016-08-15 Member: 221304Members
North Carolina Join Date: 2016-08-15 Member: 221304Members
Okay so, I'm playing the new update (version Jun-2017 50032) and I finally built my base in the Grand Reef like I normally do (position: -405.5 -291.3 -845.9). It's mostly kitted out with the basics, I've got the Fabricator, Battery Charger, Moonpool etc. I had issues yesterday with the WFM after scanning it in the Jellyshroom Caves. I go to install it in my base, and it quickly outstrips my power source of two Bioreactors. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just go work on upgrading to Thermal Plants" - so I Deconstruct the WFM and make a point to get what I need.
So I go out, hunt for fragments and unlock the Thermal Plant - I then go out farming for Titanium to make Ingots, hunt down Magnetite in the JSC and craft the Lubricant. I get enough items to craft two Thermal Plants and go install them outside my base; before now two TPs would be enough to power one WFM and slowly store energy... not anymore it seems. "Okay so, the changes to the power distribution means it takes more power to make water, I guess..." I mean, I can't understand why suddenly these machines need more power than they did before, but I suck it up, Deconstruct the WFM again and get more materials to make two more TPs (four TPs in total).
After I do all that, I'm sitting at 2000 total storage ability and my current value number is ticking upwards rapidly. I go to craft my single WFM and suddenly I see the available power tick downwards faster than it's going up. I can't understand why this is happening - two TPs could juice a single WFM in the past, and even if it was recently changed I don't see why four TPs can't even maintain the drain, let alone cause it to go down. By now I'm frustrated, so I use the console command RESOURCESFOR THERMALPLANT repeatedly to see how many TPs I need to be "cost-effective" with just ONE WFM. As it turns out, you need NINE Thermal Plants running full-blast to cause energy levels to slightly increase while a single Water Filtration Machine is running (just eight TPs won't cut it, as you'll lose energy unless nine Thermal Plants are running - really, what the hell?)
SERIOUSLY, why do these things need so much power to run now? I can get behind them being "large appliances" but holy hell, not even the Moonpool
needs that much power to do its thing (even more so, after this update the Moonpool drains base power far less faster than it did in the past). I like the WFM and realize that its convenience comes at a cost, but why was it so badly nerfed? At its current design, you'd likely need a Nuclear Reactor in order just to maintain it's insane power demands now, and it's really not worth the effort to make WFMs anymore at this point. And while we're at it, why does the WFM distill salt faster than it does water? I realize Planet 4546B's water is of an oceanic nature and likely salinated, but it would appear that there is a far higher water content than salt - otherwise the water would be murkier than it appears in game (due to the water and salt being nearly equal concentrations). I don't know much about desalination, but I'm inclined to believe that extracting salt from ocean water would result in higher water content (i.e. faster water creation) than that would be of salt content.
I'm all for more challenge in the game, and maybe this is a good kick in the pants for stronger resource management. But honestly, do something to fix the WFM. It needs far more power to run than what's justifiably needed, and the point of it filtering seawater at all is to have drinking water. Salt is fairly abundant in many biomes, and in the Grand Reef those Purple Pinecones only give Salt - so why do we need a machine to give us something abundant with no other use? Magnesium was removed as an item since it's not needed anymore, and curing fish is only useful to a point, so can we remove Salt completely from the Water Filtration Machine and just have it dispense four Big Water now?
So I go out, hunt for fragments and unlock the Thermal Plant - I then go out farming for Titanium to make Ingots, hunt down Magnetite in the JSC and craft the Lubricant. I get enough items to craft two Thermal Plants and go install them outside my base; before now two TPs would be enough to power one WFM and slowly store energy... not anymore it seems. "Okay so, the changes to the power distribution means it takes more power to make water, I guess..." I mean, I can't understand why suddenly these machines need more power than they did before, but I suck it up, Deconstruct the WFM again and get more materials to make two more TPs (four TPs in total).
After I do all that, I'm sitting at 2000 total storage ability and my current value number is ticking upwards rapidly. I go to craft my single WFM and suddenly I see the available power tick downwards faster than it's going up. I can't understand why this is happening - two TPs could juice a single WFM in the past, and even if it was recently changed I don't see why four TPs can't even maintain the drain, let alone cause it to go down. By now I'm frustrated, so I use the console command RESOURCESFOR THERMALPLANT repeatedly to see how many TPs I need to be "cost-effective" with just ONE WFM. As it turns out, you need NINE Thermal Plants running full-blast to cause energy levels to slightly increase while a single Water Filtration Machine is running (just eight TPs won't cut it, as you'll lose energy unless nine Thermal Plants are running - really, what the hell?)
SERIOUSLY, why do these things need so much power to run now? I can get behind them being "large appliances" but holy hell, not even the Moonpool
needs that much power to do its thing (even more so, after this update the Moonpool drains base power far less faster than it did in the past). I like the WFM and realize that its convenience comes at a cost, but why was it so badly nerfed? At its current design, you'd likely need a Nuclear Reactor in order just to maintain it's insane power demands now, and it's really not worth the effort to make WFMs anymore at this point. And while we're at it, why does the WFM distill salt faster than it does water? I realize Planet 4546B's water is of an oceanic nature and likely salinated, but it would appear that there is a far higher water content than salt - otherwise the water would be murkier than it appears in game (due to the water and salt being nearly equal concentrations). I don't know much about desalination, but I'm inclined to believe that extracting salt from ocean water would result in higher water content (i.e. faster water creation) than that would be of salt content.
I'm all for more challenge in the game, and maybe this is a good kick in the pants for stronger resource management. But honestly, do something to fix the WFM. It needs far more power to run than what's justifiably needed, and the point of it filtering seawater at all is to have drinking water. Salt is fairly abundant in many biomes, and in the Grand Reef those Purple Pinecones only give Salt - so why do we need a machine to give us something abundant with no other use? Magnesium was removed as an item since it's not needed anymore, and curing fish is only useful to a point, so can we remove Salt completely from the Water Filtration Machine and just have it dispense four Big Water now?
Comments
I wouldn't mind salt if there was a source for coral samples other then just the giant coral tubes which are only in the Safe Shallows. That seriously limits the usefulness of having salt. Making coral plates (which occur in a lot more places) also drop coral samples would make salt (and bleach) a lot more useful.
Please mention what version of the game you are playing. Without that information, it very well may be your experience is different because you are playing the latest release / stable version of the game.
So I wanna thank you, @ssutcliffe for this idea and suggestion. You were right; moving the Thermal Plants onto a Foundation that's built right on top of the Thermal Spout (aka what some call "smokers") seems to have done the trick. Now my four TPs are able to power a single WFM with no risk of brownout, and I am still gaining power - although 2 WFMs will slowly drain my reserves, but not as fast I had been experiencing. I was still used to the older method (May update and before) of Thermal Plant production - so long as they were in an area with 15ºC or higher heat source, they would provide a constant source of power. Now, it appears that the higher the temperature, the more power they produce and the faster your reserves increase; where I had built the additional five TPs were in areas that tapered off from 35ºC to just shy above 15ºC temperature. This explains the drastic reduction in power output and why the WFM was not able to work properly anymore.
Now that I'm aware of this appropriate change in behavior, I approve of it since it's a more realistic approach and makes modular placements much more critical in base-building. However, I feel this change should have been addressed in the patch notes or mentioned in a blog somewhere on the website. I shouldn't expect a sudden variance of temperature change to affect power output of the Thermal Plant, when any temperature from 15ºC~50ºC or higher always granted the same output for over a year without change. In fact, the tooltip for the Thermal Plant in Stable #50032 still states:
Thermal Plant: Converts heat to energy (> 15 ºC) (50 power/min)
So the tooltip still reflects the old behavior, and indicates it gives a constant power output for any applicable temperature range. So, I apologize for my earlier response and am happy with this new change now that I am aware of it. But please devs... if you make a larger gameplay change like this, please let us know either with the patch notes or a blip on the forums. Or possibly a "Comprehensive Change Log" like you all did with the PRAWN Update; it was really neat seeing what small changes under the hood were made to the game that didn't make it to the official patch notes. Thanks again for your time, and as always thanks for all the hard work you all do!
I ended up with five of them around the rim of that geyser in the Safe Shallows, and while they couldn't quite keep up with two water machines, they were able to keep the power drain manageable. Gonna try that platform idea and see what happens.
Correct, and that behavior was never changed since i played SN. Tested ATM with one of my current save games... yes, a TP on a foundation is a own base, if this foundation have no direct contact to your base.
Well, it's fixed not in my current Stable build - but to be honest it wasn't an issue before until this update. See previously, I always built my base in a certain area that was perfect: the base was at 290 meters, right at that sweet spot where the Seamoth could enter/exit the Moonpool without taking damage (it of course has the Pressure Compensator Mk. I installed). I could deploy a parked Exosuit and it would land on a cliff instead of falling deep in the Grand Reef, and I had a Foundation extending from my base to a Thermal Spout that had four Thermal Plants on it, powering my base in the 35°C water.
Now... with the new power changes, I built a Foundation right over the Thermal Spout, which the TPs on top receive superheated power from. However, that solitary Foundation is about 20~25 meters above my base, and that power does not connect with my base (the Foundations are not physically connected). My first instinct was to build Power Transmitters, but they're apparently worthless now. No matter how many PTs I build ON THE FOUNDATION near the TPs,or how many PTs I put between that Foundation and my base - only one blue power line connects to the nearest PT, and NONE of the rest of the PTs light up showing power being delivered from that Foundation. In fact, if you watch the four TP you'll see the one line connecting the closest PT "dance" as it changes connection randomly between the four TPs.
The only way I could get my base to get power at all from that Foundation over the Thermal Spout, was to move every piece of my base up and over to connect to that single Foundation that had power. And that was frustrating as hell moving everything; you cannot put a 2nd-story MP Room on top of a MP Room unless it is EMPTY... Lockers, WFM, even a damn Fabricator inside a MP Room will red-lock construction on top until it's cleared out...
So @0x6A7232, it wasn't a problem for me before - I could build a separate Foundation with TPs to power my base, and use PTs to give my solitary base power. But I have used PTs a lot in the past; one time I funneled thermal power from the Grand Reef to a base deep inside the Deep Grand Reef. I can't honestly say what broke, but it broke BIG TIME. I won't use PTs anymore or start over a new game until they release a patch to fix the issues now.
They're kind of weird too... they look like gaseous airsacs held down with vines, but the vines have no collision and the balls have no bouancy. I mean, you can land an Exosuit on one and it's like a Bloodvine, but they should sway or even burst upon contact... I read once in an interview that they would indeed be destroyable but it likely won't happen now...
That's a shame! Those proposed designs would have made navigating the GR/DGR so much more exciting, as well as deadly if you tried to explore without being proper prepared. Heck, even if they gave them a 'sway' like Bloodgrass has, or a 'squirm' like Floaters have, it would be a nice change for after 1.0 launch. Because being able to park an Exosuit on top of what amounts to basically being a Creepvine with no adverse effect, is kind of a letdown.
https://trello.com/c/hizUKRoZ/1127-50366-water-filtration-machine-using-up-too-much-power
Also, those floating blue ball things make me think of some kind of weird lamp you'd get from Ikea.
Oh my gosh, a lot of the frustrations I've been dealing with from the last update and previous updates are listed on the Bugfixing Trello:
1. The offset PDA models found in the world
2. Fragment update progress is not correct
3. Crashfish are offset from Crashplants (this has been fixed in the current Stable build though)
4. The broken animation using the Laser Cutter
5. MP Rooms won't stack if items are built on lower levels
I'm really glad that #5 has been addressed at least; it's frustrating as hell if you want to expand your base and have move and rebuild everything. I've tried to 'prebuild' bases with future designs in mind, but since each MP Room takes away integrity, you can't have but so many laid out at a time without making the whole base look like trash.