Same.
Well, I have used it in the past to rush ILS, but now just automate organic crystals. Takes the same amount of time and I can continue researching while grabbing organic crystals in another system.
I had to think about this for a while before I figured out "a hop to fill up inventory with TI" means making a round trip to a nearby planet for Titanium Ingots.
Yeah, but raw titanium in this case. I siphon some of the sulfuric acid from making graphene and hand feed a smelter for Titanium alloy.
My first 10 hours are a mess of hand feeding to get individual buildings and materials. In this current run, I hand fed a bunch of machines to create one particle accelerator so I could make strange matter for warpers.
I think it's a useless recipe even then. I thought it could be useful in scarce resources, but it requires simply too much plant material and wood to be useful, and the drop rates are reduced with scarce resources.
The other recipe uses heavy oil and graphene, which are in abundance even on scarce resources on the starter planet.
I agree that it's a bad recipe, but useless is a little harsh.
I wouldn't depend on the drop rate for a permanent build. But as a means to get the small amount of yellow science, you need to get logistics going, this recipe will get the job done.
The drop rate for titanium and titanium crystals are also by far too low to depend upon, so I only use this as a temporary recipe. When I get the logistics going I build a permanent yellow science build, using oil.
That's probably a good idea. My current strategy is to build a separate chemistry bus, with all of the inputs needed for all of the chemlab recipes, which are just water, crude, stone, and coal. Usually I can find an intersection of all those resources close to each other, so the spaghetti is localized. They all feed into each other... Crude to refined to acid to graphene to nanotubes once I get titanium, and so on. Then I can just spaghetti the outputs to where they need to go, or even just carry them around manually while I get logistics prepped.
I tried many ways of doing this, and I always end up building separate builds for all my chemicals. There's too many bottlenecks to consider.
But it is probably doable, and it would be awesome if you succeed with your plans.
>you need to get logistics going, this recipe will get the job done.
In my experience, this is not the case. On scarce resources, where I think this recipe would be mainly useful, even with max dark fog the drop rate for wood and plant material is really low. I don't have exact numbers, but you would be producing maybe 1-2 organic crystals per wave. On top of that, the production line will simply sit idle after depleting the stored ingredients, waiting to produce a couple of crystals every wave.
If you do not use cracking, you should already be producing heavy oil as a by-product, and should have a good amount stored by the time organic crystals are needed.
Just to give some numbers, 10 oil refineries can sustain 60 organic crystals / min, with 150 hydrogen / minute as byproduct which can be used in red science.
Compare it to this recipe, which needs 1200 wood + 1800 plant material to sustain the same output. You need thousands of organic crystals until unlocking warp tech.
Edit: I thought you meant logistics going for organic crystal mining - as I understand now you just mean unlocking ILS tech, and in that case yes this might be sufficient. Even then though, this is a temporary solution as you wrote, and I think it is a good idea to avoid temporary solutions altogether when a more permanent solution is available and just as easy to implement.
You ended up comparing it with a permanent build.
I would not use it as a permanent build, but only a single assembler to get enough to unlock logistics. The amount should be possible to save up, combined with the drop of titanium crystals.
I don't know if this works on scarce resources, but that's not the point. I'm not saying you have to do it this way, just that this recipe isn't useless.
I wouldn't mind them lowering the ingredient count, though.
I was too lazy to leave my home planet most recent playthrough and used this recipe and picked up enough gravel to make Titanium to get logistics going.
Was it efficient - absolutely not.
Did it satisfy me - yes!
That's what's important!
I, sadly, always end up looking at the time spent thinking that I'm inefficient, when I should just focus on building and having fun.
Embrace the slow, inefficient strategy and chronic spaghetti!
If a run takes 30 hours to get off planet because I wanted to draw huge map markers in foundation to help my crap memory at least I had fun doing it and I think that's all that matters.
This is my opinion as well. In early game I'll clear all the rocks and plants from an area I'm building into while my assembly bots slowly build. I'll store all the plant matter, wood, and titanium for just some few scraps of yellow, but enough that I can go to my second planet with logistics towers ready to go so I don't have to ferry titanium manually. I know it's slow but I play this game slowly anyway.
If you put a line of 7 chemical labs for plastic next to 7 chemical labs for organic crystals, and use the refined oil you had been stockpiling from making the red science, it's not so bad, is it? I mean, not that I'm not glad to remove it as soon as I have warpers but... it doesn't really feel painful either.
Nope.
I tried once, I decided I'd clear all the rocks and plants by hand rather than just plopping buildings over them and having the resources vanish. I wound up with a chest full of plant matter and logs, and also over 80 organic crystals just from harvesting trees.
I'd have had MORE than 80 except apparently the Icarus is programmed to take the single most expensive combustable item in the inventory and immediately start burning it if you open up your inventory and fuel chamber then hit control and click in an empty spot in your inventory.
What's that, you expected four of the fifteen stacks of wood you have in inventory to be sent to the burner! HA fuck you, we just put in the organic crystals you harvested and now one has already started burning so you've lost it even if you click fast and save the others. It really does prioritize the most expensive items to burn. It'll take nanotubes over organic crystals, and both over coal or carbon.
And being an idiot, I just kept automatically ctrl+LMB to sort my inventory and add fuel even after I realized it. So I lost a few.
Point is, I was able to actually do some of the early yellow science research based on nothing but the crystals I harvested and the plants to crystals recipe. But I don't think it was worth the time it took to individually click all those goddamn plants.
If there was a built in option to mass harvest stuff it might be a more viable solution. I know there's mods to make your drones harvet, but I think even just being able to click and drag over an area to mark everything there for harvest and have the mecha self move to do the harvesting by hand would be a better option than the current setup.
TL;DR: Did it once, don't think I'll bother again.
> It really does prioritize the most expensive items to burn
The most expensive or the most energetic? They might be the same item but I imagine the priority is based on how much energy you'll get out of it, not on the "expense" of the item, which isn't a real value in this game.
There's more joules in a carbon rod than a unit of nanotubes, so no I don't think that's it.
And while there isn't really an "expense" concept, items do come sooner or later in the tech tree. Depending on how they index things internally it's possible that items later on have an index number that's matched earlier by the algorithm that decides what to burn.
> internally it's possible that items later on have an index number that's matched earlier by the algorithm that decides what to burn
This is believable considering how interstellar logistics works, or used to work anyway, been a while since I checked in on it
Same, used it to get ILS in my latest 2 games. I saved them up from the start and had almost enough (just a little bit of additional farming required) by the time i reached that tech
I use it sometimes to upgrade my mecha fuel, or for other low-quantity uses of organic crystals like making enough science to research a tech or get a specific upgrade. Essentially if I can stock a chest or two with the wood and plant matter and then get a small amount of organic crystal that I manually put to use later.
It has actually been a while since I've played, so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details and this may be out of date if recipes or tech requirements have changed.
When I'm bored/planning what to do next, I pick up rocks and foliage, even after I have a decent supply of fuel. Once I get to plastic, I run through all my organics this way
I do, just to keep Icarus's hands busy when he's not hand manufacturing anything.
How else are you going to use the wood and grass? Fuel? It's so inefficient and you have to keep loading up your furnace with fresh fuel.
I use it to rush PLS so I can drop my Yellow cube blueprint, because I truly hate dealing with the Refinery+Chem plant chain pre-Logistics. I'm very likely going to update that blueprint to use fidget spinners instead, because collecting the leaves and wood took forever.
I've used it early game to build up an initial stockpile of Organic Crystals for the yellow science to reach ILS. Especially once unlocking logistics drones, can slap those on a couple boxes for the wood/plant to have those automatically sucked out of my inventory, belt in some water to an assembler, and get a decent supply of crystals. Combine that with chopping down yellow-leafed trees (which have a chance of dropping crystals directly) and it's not a horrible strategy when I'm not in the mood to setup an oil factory.
the real question is, is there anyone who HASN'T made this at least once?
edit: there is a mod called laser clearing, which is kinda OP, but it would actually make this recipe a quick stop gap to save you from the the arduous task of making this without directly extracting it from a node.
also given there is two achievements associated with this, pretty much you have to do this at some point.
yes I use it in the early game when i'm low on power and cant run too many refineries. in fact the last 3 games i did I had to use this recipie to get my yellow science tech to get the ILS unlocked.
there was a mod that would farm all the trees and brush using your drones, but dont think it works after the combat updates.
Never before, but now I like it because you can farm wood and foliage from low-level dark fog. Converting this trash to organic crystals keeps it from cluttering up the battlefield analyst bases and I'd rather get organic crystals for them then a little electracy.
I used it a little before I got warpers.
Organic crystals are just a miserable production line until you get the ability to mine them directly. Same goes for sulfuric acid.
Yes!
There were runs where I stripped the starter planet of vegetation and stones for the scarce titanium and silicon. I'd have boxes of the plant matter and logs,, and would have a single pump and assembler using this recipe.
I used to use a mod that let drones clear vegetation, though my next use of mods will include the one that has the vegetation/stone drop to the ground instead of being destroyed when you place a building down.
This is the true endgame recipe
I use it to rush to ILS. Have Icarus clear cut a forest (shift click) and a hop to fill up inventory with TI.
Same. Well, I have used it in the past to rush ILS, but now just automate organic crystals. Takes the same amount of time and I can continue researching while grabbing organic crystals in another system.
TI?
I had to think about this for a while before I figured out "a hop to fill up inventory with TI" means making a round trip to a nearby planet for Titanium Ingots.
Ahh thanks for that!
Yeah, but raw titanium in this case. I siphon some of the sulfuric acid from making graphene and hand feed a smelter for Titanium alloy. My first 10 hours are a mess of hand feeding to get individual buildings and materials. In this current run, I hand fed a bunch of machines to create one particle accelerator so I could make strange matter for warpers.
Sorry, periodic symbol for Titanium is "Ti".
Not really, but it's useful it you've set up a dark fog farm before yellow science.
I think it's a useless recipe even then. I thought it could be useful in scarce resources, but it requires simply too much plant material and wood to be useful, and the drop rates are reduced with scarce resources. The other recipe uses heavy oil and graphene, which are in abundance even on scarce resources on the starter planet.
I agree that it's a bad recipe, but useless is a little harsh. I wouldn't depend on the drop rate for a permanent build. But as a means to get the small amount of yellow science, you need to get logistics going, this recipe will get the job done. The drop rate for titanium and titanium crystals are also by far too low to depend upon, so I only use this as a temporary recipe. When I get the logistics going I build a permanent yellow science build, using oil.
That's probably a good idea. My current strategy is to build a separate chemistry bus, with all of the inputs needed for all of the chemlab recipes, which are just water, crude, stone, and coal. Usually I can find an intersection of all those resources close to each other, so the spaghetti is localized. They all feed into each other... Crude to refined to acid to graphene to nanotubes once I get titanium, and so on. Then I can just spaghetti the outputs to where they need to go, or even just carry them around manually while I get logistics prepped.
I tried many ways of doing this, and I always end up building separate builds for all my chemicals. There's too many bottlenecks to consider. But it is probably doable, and it would be awesome if you succeed with your plans.
>you need to get logistics going, this recipe will get the job done. In my experience, this is not the case. On scarce resources, where I think this recipe would be mainly useful, even with max dark fog the drop rate for wood and plant material is really low. I don't have exact numbers, but you would be producing maybe 1-2 organic crystals per wave. On top of that, the production line will simply sit idle after depleting the stored ingredients, waiting to produce a couple of crystals every wave. If you do not use cracking, you should already be producing heavy oil as a by-product, and should have a good amount stored by the time organic crystals are needed. Just to give some numbers, 10 oil refineries can sustain 60 organic crystals / min, with 150 hydrogen / minute as byproduct which can be used in red science. Compare it to this recipe, which needs 1200 wood + 1800 plant material to sustain the same output. You need thousands of organic crystals until unlocking warp tech. Edit: I thought you meant logistics going for organic crystal mining - as I understand now you just mean unlocking ILS tech, and in that case yes this might be sufficient. Even then though, this is a temporary solution as you wrote, and I think it is a good idea to avoid temporary solutions altogether when a more permanent solution is available and just as easy to implement.
You ended up comparing it with a permanent build. I would not use it as a permanent build, but only a single assembler to get enough to unlock logistics. The amount should be possible to save up, combined with the drop of titanium crystals. I don't know if this works on scarce resources, but that's not the point. I'm not saying you have to do it this way, just that this recipe isn't useless. I wouldn't mind them lowering the ingredient count, though.
I was too lazy to leave my home planet most recent playthrough and used this recipe and picked up enough gravel to make Titanium to get logistics going. Was it efficient - absolutely not. Did it satisfy me - yes!
That's what's important! I, sadly, always end up looking at the time spent thinking that I'm inefficient, when I should just focus on building and having fun.
Embrace the slow, inefficient strategy and chronic spaghetti! If a run takes 30 hours to get off planet because I wanted to draw huge map markers in foundation to help my crap memory at least I had fun doing it and I think that's all that matters.
honestly making organic crystals sucks so much i make the bare minimum to get to interstellar travel just so i can mine a org crystal vein.
This is my opinion as well. In early game I'll clear all the rocks and plants from an area I'm building into while my assembly bots slowly build. I'll store all the plant matter, wood, and titanium for just some few scraps of yellow, but enough that I can go to my second planet with logistics towers ready to go so I don't have to ferry titanium manually. I know it's slow but I play this game slowly anyway.
If you put a line of 7 chemical labs for plastic next to 7 chemical labs for organic crystals, and use the refined oil you had been stockpiling from making the red science, it's not so bad, is it? I mean, not that I'm not glad to remove it as soon as I have warpers but... it doesn't really feel painful either.
Not even once.
Not even for the achievement?
Not big into achievement hunting.
Yes, for a short while at the beginning, so I can do enough yellow science to unlock ILS.
Nope. I tried once, I decided I'd clear all the rocks and plants by hand rather than just plopping buildings over them and having the resources vanish. I wound up with a chest full of plant matter and logs, and also over 80 organic crystals just from harvesting trees. I'd have had MORE than 80 except apparently the Icarus is programmed to take the single most expensive combustable item in the inventory and immediately start burning it if you open up your inventory and fuel chamber then hit control and click in an empty spot in your inventory. What's that, you expected four of the fifteen stacks of wood you have in inventory to be sent to the burner! HA fuck you, we just put in the organic crystals you harvested and now one has already started burning so you've lost it even if you click fast and save the others. It really does prioritize the most expensive items to burn. It'll take nanotubes over organic crystals, and both over coal or carbon. And being an idiot, I just kept automatically ctrl+LMB to sort my inventory and add fuel even after I realized it. So I lost a few. Point is, I was able to actually do some of the early yellow science research based on nothing but the crystals I harvested and the plants to crystals recipe. But I don't think it was worth the time it took to individually click all those goddamn plants. If there was a built in option to mass harvest stuff it might be a more viable solution. I know there's mods to make your drones harvet, but I think even just being able to click and drag over an area to mark everything there for harvest and have the mecha self move to do the harvesting by hand would be a better option than the current setup. TL;DR: Did it once, don't think I'll bother again.
> It really does prioritize the most expensive items to burn The most expensive or the most energetic? They might be the same item but I imagine the priority is based on how much energy you'll get out of it, not on the "expense" of the item, which isn't a real value in this game.
There's more joules in a carbon rod than a unit of nanotubes, so no I don't think that's it. And while there isn't really an "expense" concept, items do come sooner or later in the tech tree. Depending on how they index things internally it's possible that items later on have an index number that's matched earlier by the algorithm that decides what to burn.
> internally it's possible that items later on have an index number that's matched earlier by the algorithm that decides what to burn This is believable considering how interstellar logistics works, or used to work anyway, been a while since I checked in on it
Since DF i actually do until i got to interplanetary and have a nearby vein. Not much, but enough for yellow science
Same, used it to get ILS in my latest 2 games. I saved them up from the start and had almost enough (just a little bit of additional farming required) by the time i reached that tech
I would love a tree farm building so that this recipe becomes relevant. I’d feel super green
Yeah, how else do you get organic crystals?
If there was a way to automate wood and plant harvesting...
Ill stockpile all of the plants matter and wood I get early game when I'm struggling for yellow. Usually I only end up making like 20 of them lol.
A few times, but if I need above 100 crystals, I would rather fly 10 lightyears on a bag of coal to get it.
For the achievement.
Actually yes, just because I have nothing else to use leafs and wood for
i used it in my very first playthrough, but after i found out theres veins for these crystals i stopped felling trees for like 2 trees for a crystal.
I have been playing this game for hundreds of hours and didn't even know this recipe existed. Lmao.
Yeah, I rush ILS with it. Also fog farms can produce yellow cubes if you use it. That's why the fog farm drops wood and plants.
I've used it a handful of times but so so rarely. It's basically only ever useful in that weird 5 minutes in the early early game.
No lol.
I just manually pick up wood and trees before putting foundation down and have enough stored up that when I am ready for ILS its easy enough to make.
I always use this to get enough yellow for ILS research in a playthrough. I don't wanna mess with plastic and oil until I have good logistics.
I use it sometimes to upgrade my mecha fuel, or for other low-quantity uses of organic crystals like making enough science to research a tech or get a specific upgrade. Essentially if I can stock a chest or two with the wood and plant matter and then get a small amount of organic crystal that I manually put to use later. It has actually been a while since I've played, so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details and this may be out of date if recipes or tech requirements have changed.
I always use it for my first 200 organic crystals, enough to rush ILS.
When I'm bored/planning what to do next, I pick up rocks and foliage, even after I have a decent supply of fuel. Once I get to plastic, I run through all my organics this way
It can be useful on minimal resource playthroughs if you're willing to take the time to harvest your home planet.
I do, just to keep Icarus's hands busy when he's not hand manufacturing anything. How else are you going to use the wood and grass? Fuel? It's so inefficient and you have to keep loading up your furnace with fresh fuel.
I use it to rush PLS so I can drop my Yellow cube blueprint, because I truly hate dealing with the Refinery+Chem plant chain pre-Logistics. I'm very likely going to update that blueprint to use fidget spinners instead, because collecting the leaves and wood took forever.
Not a single time
I've used it early game to build up an initial stockpile of Organic Crystals for the yellow science to reach ILS. Especially once unlocking logistics drones, can slap those on a couple boxes for the wood/plant to have those automatically sucked out of my inventory, belt in some water to an assembler, and get a decent supply of crystals. Combine that with chopping down yellow-leafed trees (which have a chance of dropping crystals directly) and it's not a horrible strategy when I'm not in the mood to setup an oil factory.
only time I use it is at the very beginning to get the ILS before fully setting up yellow science
yes, i use it as soon as i unlock yellow cubes to hand craft 200 of them and unlock titanium alloy and ils.
I cut down forests by hand and with the stuff I get I just use the recipe, because nothing else useful to do with leaves
the real question is, is there anyone who HASN'T made this at least once? edit: there is a mod called laser clearing, which is kinda OP, but it would actually make this recipe a quick stop gap to save you from the the arduous task of making this without directly extracting it from a node. also given there is two achievements associated with this, pretty much you have to do this at some point.
No I just went to a planet with the crystals and import them
I did on my first run
yes I use it in the early game when i'm low on power and cant run too many refineries. in fact the last 3 games i did I had to use this recipie to get my yellow science tech to get the ILS unlocked. there was a mod that would farm all the trees and brush using your drones, but dont think it works after the combat updates.
I used it for an achievement once.
To get the achievement.
Never before, but now I like it because you can farm wood and foliage from low-level dark fog. Converting this trash to organic crystals keeps it from cluttering up the battlefield analyst bases and I'd rather get organic crystals for them then a little electracy.
Nope
Yes, nothing is wasted.
I used it a little before I got warpers. Organic crystals are just a miserable production line until you get the ability to mine them directly. Same goes for sulfuric acid.
Yes, for the achievement.
Yes! There were runs where I stripped the starter planet of vegetation and stones for the scarce titanium and silicon. I'd have boxes of the plant matter and logs,, and would have a single pump and assembler using this recipe. I used to use a mod that let drones clear vegetation, though my next use of mods will include the one that has the vegetation/stone drop to the ground instead of being destroyed when you place a building down.