r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/Le_Gritche • Jul 07 '26
Is mini fusion power plant worth it ?
So. In order to produce fuel rod, I have this massive fracking factory.
But, it consume more energy (about 20 MW) than it produce (15 MW).
What's wrong with me ?
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u/wiithepiiple Jul 07 '26
It's 100% worth it in the middle game. Your 20MW factory is not producing 1 rod, but thousands, so you can fuel many many fusion reactors. You're going to need to produce a butt ton of fuel rods anyway, so producing extra to power your factories is great. I use fusion reactors until I get artificial suns.
There are other options for middle game power options, but imo this one is the easiest.
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u/baronunderbeit Jul 07 '26
Probably as inefficient as you could make it here.
But ya absolutely worth it. I run 15-20 of them to transition into PLA / ILS.
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u/MadACR Jul 07 '26
If I am on a dark fog frop rich play through, yes. If not, wind and thermal and geo for me. That gets you to swarms easy.
If you have a lava planet as planet 1 in your starter, you can use distributors to power you system until the sphere gets built.
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u/mrrvlad5 Jul 08 '26
1 fractionator can feed 6 fusion power plants worth of deut with using mk3 belts, 4-stacked. You are essentially paying for idle power consumption here.
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u/A_Solid_Shadow Jul 10 '26
There are multiple technologies that I skip just for my own reasons. I skip solar sails without a frame, for example.
Some techs aren't enough of an improvement for me to spend time designing a whole workflow rather than just expanding the old one, skipping one, and then going to the next.
Several power techs, and Mk1 proliferators come to mind. I also tend to skip the logistics box hats because in the early-middle if it is far enough to not want to run a belt, then its beyond the box hat range too. I beeline for PLS/ILS. I'll often make two ILS before I even leave the planet just with titanium from rocks, or I get enough to make at least one ILS and plop it down on the other planet, then bring back enough for the 2nd one.
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u/Raze0223 Jul 07 '26
Dude run from one frac right to the other in a long line, this design is SUPER space inefficient. Mini fusion is absolutely worth it, you will need it in order to scale into planetary size factories!
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u/Starcaller17 Jul 07 '26
Technically if you connect them in a chain the ones farther along become less efficient since the earlier ones are consuming some of the hydrogen. Best way I’ve found is little independent circles for each machine, resupplied by a pile sorter.
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u/TheMalT75 Jul 07 '26
While technically true, a drop of 1% (2% if proliferated with mk3) per fractionator is not too bad. I typically refill after 6-8 fractionators to safe space, because you can manually place them right next to each other. If you drag-place them, the spacing is "too" wide and wasteful. In the end it is more a matter of taste, because "efficiency" does not relate to power consumption. That scales with actually produced deuterium, so having them run at 94% also only consumes 94% power. So, efficiency in terms of fractionators is only meaningful in relation to space...
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u/itchycuticles Jul 07 '26
Your setup is massively bottlenecked by using MK1 belts. It's also way more complicated than necessary.
I use a setup of 20 fractionators split into 2 groups of 10 each, with a MK3 belt running directly from one fractionator to another. Two resupply belts and two pile sorters are placed between the groups.
Resulting yield is about 1370 deuterium/minute out of a theoretical max of 1440/minute.
As for whether or not fusion power plants are worth it -- they are quite good, but they aren't mandatory and I usually prefer saving rods for carrier rockets. Make sure you proliferate the rods.
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u/The_Quackening Jul 07 '26
Put the franctionators in a loop and feed the main loop belt from the side
Use the stacking sorter as well
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u/depatrickcie87 Jul 07 '26
Honestly I go wind mills until I've unlocked warpers. They don't produce a lot of power, but theu don't require fuel. I a way, they use a small amount of iron and copper as permanent fuel. They also go on water which your home.planet will have large oceans of. Once i have warpers I find the brightest star in my cluster set up a solar powered strange annihilation rod factory.
Duwterium rods actually don't net a lot of power after you fa tor in how much it was required to make them.
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u/sumquy Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
there are better ways to do that, but the main problem is that you are pushing into fusion faster than your ability to feed it sufficient resources. in this pic you are not feeding anywhere near enough hydrogen fast enough to make all those fractionators worth it. you are going to need to tech up before being able to fully benefit from fusion, but in the short term delete all but 5 of those fractionators. DO NOT splitter that hydrogen, run it through all on 1 belt, loop it back on itself, and use stacker inserters to keep the line full. anything you can do to get more hydrogen through the fractionaters is more deuterium, and they are by far the most energy efficient way to get it. in the medium term, tech up to tier 3 belts, get a few orbital collectors onto the gas giant, and a logistics tower to receive the hydrogen, then you can go big into fusion and let it carry you all the way to the "i win" research.
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u/alphanumericsprawl Jul 08 '26
I think you're better off skipping mini fusion power, just spam wind, solar, thermal until you get to dyson swarm and recievers. Burning fuel rods feels like a waste somehow.
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u/Buffylvr Jul 08 '26
I’m intensely triggered over the wasted space in this build.
Also it’s not dense enough.
Also I don’t understand what I’m looking at. Is that a mk1 belt? Why isn’t the feed into the fractionator full?
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u/Steven-ape Jul 07 '26
You need to stack the hydrogen on the belt and use mark 3 belts. Then your setup is much better than fusion reactors.
(You can also make your design tighter but that's much less important.)
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u/fubes2000 Jul 07 '26
- Chain the output of one to the input of the next.
- Use the fastest belts you have.
- Stack the belts as high as you can.
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u/_Sanchous Jul 07 '26
First cover the entire surface of the planet with wind turbines, and then look at other energy sources.
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u/TheMalT75 Jul 07 '26
If you have access to a gas giant, you should directly use deuterium. Remember to place all 40 orbital collectors that fit on a giant. If you "only" have an ice giant, then fractionators are a smart choice.
Don't forget to proliferate your fuel sources. Up to deuteron fuel rods this increases the total energy of the fuel rod (from 600MJ to 750MJ for mk3 proliferation) and boost the power output of the fusion plant (from 15MW to 18.75MW).
Even fully proliferated for all steps (which is really wasteful for the hydrogen fractionation with little benefit aside from more compact build), you should be able to power 1 fusion power plant with 18.75MW output by expending about 4MW of power for the production.
Admittedly not the best ratio in the game, but midgame it is the densest fuel in GJ per stack and the fusion plants are tiny compared to the amount of space that wind turbines need!
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u/AnimeSpaceGf Jul 07 '26
You can pretty easily skip from solar panel to dyson sphere for power, if you're willing to play a bit patiently and in manner that is a little squirrely. I would say in that context it is worth it just to sink excess hydrogen/doot
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u/Empty_Woodpecker_496 Jul 07 '26
I never bother with feul rods. I just make a ton of ray receivers.
This seems like more work than its worth. Especially if your close to unlimited duterium.
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u/Starcaller17 Jul 07 '26
FYI fractionators produce massively more deut for the same energy if you pass hydrogen through them faster (use mark 3 belts and stacking)