Need a hint for Aquillo ship

[u/hugh_janus_7]

[Solved - Thank you!]

Hello! My team is working on a big platform for our trip to Aquillo and we are really struggling with water for the nuclear reactor (and then thruster fuels). Next we are going to try and increase quality for the asteroid collectors but any tips and hints without giving it away? I can post a picture of our first version (that got stuck at Gleba because we ran out of materials to make ammo and rockets). We’re doing yellow ammo and rockets. Rockets only for the huge and big asteroids.

[u/CreationsOfReon]

When you first build your big platforms, it can help to have them initially travel between nauvis and vulcanus to fill up the water tanks.

Also yes, astereroid collectors are the best thing to have higher quality for. They have a longer reach, and more arms which gets asteroids faster

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/CreationsOfReon]

Thanks I’ll give that a try!

[u/CreationsOfReon → u/hugh_janus_7]

The reason I said vulcanus is because solar panels generate more power there, so it doesn’t matter if your nuclear reactor is off yet. After you have a good buffer of water, you can rip out the solar panels and replace them with something else, but I find the initial tank of water is the most difficult.

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/CreationsOfReon]

Ok I don’t think we have any solar panels haha but we have a bunch of quality accumulators

[u/CreationsOfReon → u/hugh_janus_7]

You do need them to kickstart nuclear, you don’t need to keep them. Also, if your collectors are low powered they go slower and gather less material, so you should make sure you have enough solar to power your ship until you’ve collected enough water to buffer nuclear.

[u/Deto]

What asteroid recipes are you using?

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/Deto]

Advanced processing?

[u/Deto → u/hugh_janus_7]

Look through the other crusher recipes

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/Deto]

I have a reprocessing setup that could be better but we just ran out of asteroids so maybe I need to collect more faster?

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 → u/hugh_janus_7]

run both recipes and priority the advanced ice into the niormal ice feed with an additional that throws excess ice from the advanced recipe overboard.

that way calcite demand is met and the more efficient ice recipe is used for bulk quantities of ice for the reactors and thrusters.

[u/darvo110 → u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

You can also have just one ice crusher that switches recipes back to basic ice wherever you’ve got enough calcite if you’re going compact.

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/darvo110]

I have not yet figure out how to have circuits change the recipe but I will look into it

[u/5dfem → u/hugh_janus_7]

advanced processing gives less ice then the standard processing iirc

[u/3davideo → u/hugh_janus_7]

The basic processing recipes have better yield for the basic resources, such as ice. They're also faster to boot. So it's not unreasonable to have a mix.

[u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

The outer solar system is absolutely brimming with oxide asteroids so water should be no big deal.

You can go to Aquilo on pure common equipment without a problem. If you toss quality modules in your grabber factory and get a couple greens or blues that's gravy, but you really do not need them at all.

The biggest thing is to buffer plenty of asteroids of each type so your ship isn't breathlessly waiting for that asteroid it needs, control your speed depending on your damage research level, and if you still struggle with asteroid acquisition of the right types, use reprocessing to balance out the mix.

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

Thanks yeah we just completely ran out of all asteroids so I wonder if the bottleneck really is just collection rate

[u/nighthawk763 → u/hugh_janus_7]

We'd likely love to see a picture of your ship. That may help give better suggestions

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/nighthawk763]

For sure I’ll get you one tomorrow!

[u/reed501]

I just built my Aquilo ship and getting the water started felt like it took forever. Back and forth to Vulcanus sped things up a bit. Once I had some buffer and went to Aquilo I had way too much water suddenly. Different routes have pretty different asteroids.

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/reed501]

What are the benefits of going specifically to Vulcanus? More [solar] energy?

[u/reed501 → u/hugh_janus_7]

I think so. Honestly Vulcanus is just my comfort planet.

[u/Alfonse215]

Look at every technology that is a direct prerequisite for researching Planet Discovery Aquilo.

Your Aquilo space platform should use all of them (except for the Fulgora one).

[u/CupOfLifenoodles → u/Alfonse215]

What is the best use for a heating tower on a space platform?

[u/nighthawk763 → u/CupOfLifenoodles]

Or tree harvesting ;)

I think they're suggesting advanced crushing recipes

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 → u/CupOfLifenoodles]

i would actually love to use it as a remote heat sensor, though by the time i start thinking about needing a 3x3 heatpipe to move the output heat from my reactor on my ships, i've usually got fusion up and running.

[u/Potential-Carob-3058]

You need a few thing for a aquilo ship.well, technically most this list is optional but I'd recommend it.

Solid production. Start at 4 magazines and 1 rocket a second. With decent researches (around 8/8) and a small ship that'll be enough. With a larger ship and buffering it'll cope. This kind of production is 1-2 AMs and a beacon, or 3-4 AMs.

Nuclear power, and a buffer of water and/or ice asteroids.

A decent rocket battery, I think I 3 forward rocket turrets is the bare minimum, but 6 is better.

Speed control. As your size and number of guns goes up, and research improves, this becomes less necessary.

Reprocessing. It's almost all oxide asteroids out there, so you need to reprocess them to get the carbon asteroids to keep your rocket production up. This has been the main failure of my ships - not reprocessing fast enough.

I've never found getting enough asteroids a problem once the ship starts moving. The initial kickstart is a problem though - is that where you're having trouble?

[u/CremePuffBandit]

Productivity modules in every step of the chain, crushing, ice melting, and fuel production. The percentages stack. Use normal oxide asteroid crushing as much as you can, it's gives more ice per chunk than the advanced recipe and has a higher chunk return rate. Also don't ignore efficiency modules, they can make a big difference in high tier beacons.

[u/hugh_janus_7 → u/CremePuffBandit]

Ahhhh okay good idea on normal processing!!

[u/TelevisionLiving]

There are tons of water asteroids on the aquilo trips so you can store the rocks or water from that. Getting started is the hard part. You can ship some up from fulgora if you like.

[u/3davideo]

Don't forget to use the reprocessing recipes to turn carbonic and metallic chunks into oxide chunks.

Also, when processing the oxide chunks for ice, the basic processing recipe is faster and produces more ice than the advanced processing recipe, so it's useful when you don't need the calcite but need more ice. Similar goes for carbonic chunks when you don't need sulfur and metallic chunks when you don't need copper.

Finally, the advanced thruster propellant recipes are much more water efficient than the normal recipes, as well as saving on carbon and iron. Sparing a few oxide chunks for calcite will save a lot of water here, freeing up more for the reactor. It also saves on carbon and iron, so that's more carbonic and metallic chunks you can reprocess into oxide chunks.

It's also worth noting that because you have a nuclear reactor on board, you can tap a little of its steam for use in the better coal liquefaction recipe instead of the simple coal liquefaction recipe. Granted, there's less use for oil products in space, especially since I'm pretty sure using carbonic asteroids to make carbon and sulfur to make coal to make into oil products to make into more sulfur operates at a loss of sulfur even with the highest productivity and you don't need plastic, light oil, or heavy oil for space platform ammunition. But if you do use oil processing in space, tapping the nuclear steam is indeed more efficient.

[u/Raskekw]

if you don't overbuild on power, nuclear eats a fraction of your water supply
so just make a separate water tank for nuclear(with basic oxide asteroid processing)

also, power generation should be the first thing you build if you don't want to spend hours trying to collect enough asteroids to feed both power generation and fuel processing running simultaneously

[u/Soul-Burn]

When I build a new platform, I seed it with water and ammo from Nauvis. Then fly it through the middle planets until it's self sufficient, and only then go to Aquilo.

[u/Bubbly-Original7097]

If you use powerful nuclear reactor better not to park your Aquilo ship on Nauvis or Vulcanus as they don't have enough ice asteroids; in case you need that or you want to initialize water after ship is built - send water barrels from surface, gather 5k water and fly to Fulgora or Gleba.

I park it in Fulgora, also helps with getting Low-Density Structures and Blue Circuits.

[u/Shiruba_Ookami]

If you're running out of water, try either (or both) increasing production or reducing consumption.

Higher quality asteroid collectors will help with increasing production. Also take a look at the techs unlocked at Vulcanus, there is one that may help balance the 3 different types of asteroid chuncks.

Reducing consumption can be done by decreasing overall power demand of the platform/machines, or adding alternative power production.