Wait. Now I get reactors that can onl remove or add bonds but not both? And I have to make Ethane? May the Gods have mercy on me...
Time for a Borderlands break.
EDIT: Oh my god, Im an idiot
I dotn have to break everything down into individual carbons and hydrogens... its so much simpler than that!
Honestly, the restricted reactors are for your benefit. They reduce the possible solution space so that you aren't flailing around with trying to figure out how to hook things together, it's just "Oh, input goes into breaker, then into combiner" because that's all you CAN do. It's basically tutorial.
There are BOSS FIGHTS? I have no idea what to do here. Its such a tone shift from how I've been playing that... ugh... Im half tempted to just look up a solution so I can just get on to the real puzzles.
I dunno... maybe Ill take a break and look at it again with fresh eyes tomorrow.
Ugh, all the talk after the recent sale just got me back into this game and it's broken my brain already in just over an hour. This game just gets so goddamn hard, but I know I can get the solution if I try. These random inputs will be the death of me (or the death of my sleeping patterns at least).
So, I finally beat the mission on the fourth planet where you get the recycler for the first time.
But my solution is HORRIBLY ugly. It doesn't help that our own @ShimShai has better cycles, symbols and reactor count than me.
So now all I can think about is how to make a better one. All last night and all this morning.
SpaceChem you are in my brain and I love you.
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
Don't worry, my solution was far from perfect. In fact if it had to run for 50 or so more cycles, it would have failed completely. I had to make one of the output pipes in the first reactor as long as I could possibly make it to prevent it backing up and breaking the reaction.
Strangely enough, that's the last level that I've actually completed. I need to get back into this game again, I loved it and then for some reason started playing something else, and never got back to it.
Don't worry, my solution was far from perfect. In fact if it had to run for 50 or so more cycles, it would have failed completely. I had to make one of the output pipes in the first reactor as long as I could possibly make it to prevent it backing up and breaking the reaction.
Strangely enough, that's the last level that I've actually completed. I need to get back into this game again, I loved it and then for some reason started playing something else, and never got back to it.
So, after my first day back at work after having the flu I was too exhausted to play last night.
So I've now spent all day yesterday and the whole day so far today thinking about how to do that mission better. I can definitely do better if I can figure out a better way to burn excess oxygen. Right now my third reactor does nothing but sort oxygen, sending half of it to the recycler.
I want to go buy a bunch of graph paper and make "reactor sheets" so I can sketch out ideas while away from my computer.
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
edited October 2011
I started playing this again, and decided to do it from the beginning. Took me about a quarter of the time to get to where I had stopped playing last time compared to the first time. I even managed to do No Ordinary Headache with a single reactor.
This game really makes you feel great when you come up with an ingenious solution to a problem.
Here was the solution I came up with. Slow as hell but it still works!
I haven't played in a good while, but I'm always up for SpaceChem performance comparisons. (MrBlarney on Steam) Looks like I've got nine whole issues of ResearchNet to catch up on...
It's not actually that complicated - pick up a molecule, if it's nitrogen, discard it and start again, if it's oxygen, put it down, pick up another molecule, if the second is also oxygen, discard both and start again. If the second is nitrogen, do the bond switching and then push both to output, then start again.
Naturally this ends up pushing lots of things to the recycler...
It's not actually that complicated - pick up a molecule, if it's nitrogen, discard it and start again, if it's oxygen, put it down, pick up another molecule, if the second is also oxygen, discard both and start again. If the second is nitrogen, do the bond switching and then push both to output, then start again.
Naturally this ends up pushing lots of things to the recycler...
Well yeah, I thought of that a long time ago. But there is ALOT more Oxygen than Nitrogen - makes sense with an earthlike atmosphere - so I'd like to not waste any Nitrogen
I think my solution took whatever element it got and then held it until the other one game along, which made for some really horrible designs. I still wanted to cry every time two nitrogens came along in a row though. My account is also in my sig if anyone wants to compare scores
It's not actually that complicated - pick up a molecule, if it's nitrogen, discard it and start again, if it's oxygen, put it down, pick up another molecule, if the second is also oxygen, discard both and start again. If the second is nitrogen, do the bond switching and then push both to output, then start again.
Naturally this ends up pushing lots of things to the recycler...
Well yeah, I thought of that a long time ago. But there is ALOT more Oxygen than Nitrogen - makes sense with an earthlike atmosphere - so I'd like to not waste any Nitrogen
Not to get technical, but earth's atmosphere is majority N2
Alkonost's, on the other hand, is apparently mostly oxygen...
@APODionysus - yeah, I recall figuring out halfway through that I should probably have discarded oxygens more aggressively instead of nitrogens, but I was too lazy to switch by then. :P
Argh, after optimization, my solution to "Nothing Works" is 1004 cycles. I've even already optimized reactor placement. I may have to fundamentally redesign something.
Is this game refusing to load for anyone else? I'm getting display driver crashes immediately upon booting, and the game just hangs on a white screen upon launch. Checked the Steam forums for fixes and none of them work. I have the sneaking suspicion that it's due to having the 11.10 beta drivers for my 6870.
Argh, after optimization, my solution to "Nothing Works" is 1004 cycles. I've even already optimized reactor placement. I may have to fundamentally redesign something.
1004 cycles sounds like a solution you can optimize by moving your Sync and Start instructions about.
Tip: run the reaction and see which reactor is holding it up; for mine it is the methane processor but it's still getting to 940 cycles without any particularly non-intuitive optimization. I suspect dismantling methane is the generally slow bit. Granted, I abuse the heck out of the peculiarities of the In/Out mechanism (you can toss output atoms anywhere, and more than one at a time, for instance)
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
Argh, after optimization, my solution to "Nothing Works" is 1004 cycles. I've even already optimized reactor placement. I may have to fundamentally redesign something.
1004 cycles sounds like a solution you can optimize by moving your Sync and Start instructions about.
Tip: run the reaction and see which reactor is holding it up; for mine it is the methane processor but it's still getting to 940 cycles without any particularly non-intuitive optimization. I suspect dismantling methane is the generally slow bit. Granted, I abuse the heck out of the peculiarities of the In/Out mechanism (you can toss output atoms anywhere, and more than one at a time, for instance)
Got the game from the Humble Bundle, just passed this mission, not sure if I should feel smug about using only 862 cycles to do it, but if it can help, spoilering because this is going to be kind of thorough about how I did it:
If we want to get technical, both the methane disassembler and the cyanide assembler are the slowest reactors of the bunch, both clocking at 22 cycles per loop once they get going. What slows down the methane disassembler for me is the alpha loop has to travel to both output quadrants, first to omega to split and deliver hydrogen, then to psi to deliver the methine radical produced from the split. Doesn't help that this reactor also does some arranging to help the assemblers, in fact that's the beta loop's entire job in that one, to rearrange the hydrogen in something a bit more manageable for the H2 assembler. If I ever get back to this I should see if I could use beta as a second identical loop to cut the cycles by half, I'm just not sure if it'll change anything in the end. In fact it might just make the entire process slower since after a while the only matter is how fast the slowest reactor go.
In my case that's the damned cyanide assembler. That things uses a lot of time being idle because it's basically hard sync all the way - wait until both nitrogen AND methine radical are ready, then engage, then wait until cyanide is combined then go. That's the slower part of the process, and if my remake of the Methane disassembler works the thing could use a good remake for functionality.
Otherwise the last two reactors are superbly working, with the H2 reactor clocking at a very nice 14 cycles/loop. The secret on that one is to only accept two In per cycles and plan accordingly knowing you can have three possible hydrogen configurations (mine are all in a row, yours might be harder if you didn't arrange them beforehand). Funnily enough the nitrogen disassembler was the thing causing me trouble until I realised it needed some safeguard syncing to prevent overflow.
Argh, after optimization, my solution to "Nothing Works" is 1004 cycles. I've even already optimized reactor placement. I may have to fundamentally redesign something.
1004 cycles sounds like a solution you can optimize by moving your Sync and Start instructions about.
Tip: run the reaction and see which reactor is holding it up; for mine it is the methane processor but it's still getting to 940 cycles without any particularly non-intuitive optimization. I suspect dismantling methane is the generally slow bit. Granted, I abuse the heck out of the peculiarities of the In/Out mechanism (you can toss output atoms anywhere, and more than one at a time, for instance)
Got the game from the Humble Bundle, just passed this mission, not sure if I should feel smug about using only 862 cycles to do it, but if it can help, spoilering because this is going to be kind of thorough about how I did it:
If we want to get technical, both the methane disassembler and the cyanide assembler are the slowest reactors of the bunch, both clocking at 22 cycles per loop once they get going. What slows down the methane disassembler for me is the alpha loop has to travel to both output quadrants, first to omega to split and deliver hydrogen, then to psi to deliver the methine radical produced from the split. Doesn't help that this reactor also does some arranging to help the assemblers, in fact that's the beta loop's entire job in that one, to rearrange the hydrogen in something a bit more manageable for the H2 assembler. If I ever get back to this I should see if I could use beta as a second identical loop to cut the cycles by half, I'm just not sure if it'll change anything in the end. In fact it might just make the entire process slower since after a while the only matter is how fast the slowest reactor go.
In my case that's the damned cyanide assembler. That things uses a lot of time being idle because it's basically hard sync all the way - wait until both nitrogen AND methine radical are ready, then engage, then wait until cyanide is combined then go. That's the slower part of the process, and if my remake of the Methane disassembler works the thing could use a good remake for functionality.
Otherwise the last two reactors are superbly working, with the H2 reactor clocking at a very nice 14 cycles/loop. The secret on that one is to only accept two In per cycles and plan accordingly knowing you can have three possible hydrogen configurations (mine are all in a row, yours might be harder if you didn't arrange them beforehand). Funnily enough the nitrogen disassembler was the thing causing me trouble until I realised it needed some safeguard syncing to prevent overflow.
426 cycles 8->
All the reactors have red and blue waldos running the exact same path, except for the N2 disassembler because only half as many are needed. All paths are simple rectangles that are as small as possible for a given reaction (technically it might be possible to reduce the size of my H2 assembler by changing how the Methane disassembler works, but it can't be the bottleneck anyway). The H2 assembler deals with its own sorting, excluding one extra cycle by the Methane disassembler.
One thing I find interesting, looking at it now (I did this a while ago), is that my Cyanide assembler doesn't actually sync at all. It relies on the fact that the cycle is able to clear the input area before the next CH is delivered from the Methane disassembler, so the "input alpha" acts well enough for synchronization.
This is actually NEARLY as fast as it could possibly be completed: my Methane disassembler literally has to wait one cycle for input. I suppose I could shave off a couple cycles if I were somehow able to use that one cycle to move the CH closer to the right edge, but I don't think I can.
Well, you guys've caused me to sink even more time into SpaceChem these past couple days. I've updated my personal scores... and there's still so many more problems to solve.
My solution is the stuff nightmares are made of though. Four reactors... something in the neighborhood of 3600 cycles. Incredibly ugly, but whatever... its done.
Picked this up as part of the latest indie bundle, and it is wonderful. A nice side effect of coming into this thread is seeing the unlisted youtubes you all have been uploading. I'm sitting on the lava looking planet but got sidetracked trying to do the 3 TF2 challenges. The first 2 were easy, but the third one is kicking my butt. It's my first time trying to build something that big, and if I just had 2 more bonders I'd be gold. I think instead of trying to build the lattice and then messing with the bonds I'm going to have to build this beast in 2 halves and then fuse them together.
And my one reactor solution to "No Ordinary Headache" is super inefficient, but I really like the look of it. I'll have to see if I can figure out the youtube stuff next time I'm playing so you all can laugh at how slow and dumb it is.
I can't get Hydrogen to TWO Fusion reactors quickly enough. My current setup is
Reactor A: Splits Water up . Sends Hydrogen to Reactor B, Oxygen to Recycler
Reactor B: Sends half the Hydrogen to Reactor C, other half to Reactor D.
Reactor C: Takes Hydrogen and Krypton. Makes Y and Zr. Sends Y to Collector, Zr to Reactor D.
Reactor Takes in H and Zr. Sends half the Zr directly to its Collector. Uses the other half to create Mb. Sends that to its Collector.
Its just all too complicated and gets backed up. Not sure how to fix it. Its got to be simpler than this... a way to do away with Reactor B entirely.
Maybe I can make use of the Oxygen better....
APODionysus on
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
"No Ordinary Headache":
Oh dear. Too much time spent on how I should get two NO out of a O2 and N2 only to go "FUCK THIS" and scrap one of each to just make one NO each time and have it run correctly. And yes I know it's more efficient to trash the O instead of the N.
Here's my "No Ordinary Headache." Like I said, it's inefficient, but I'm proud of how neat it looks. Also, I'm too stupid to get a Steam screenshot to show up in my post so it's just a link. Sorry.
I can't get Hydrogen to TWO Fusion reactors quickly enough. My current setup is
Reactor A: Splits Water up . Sends Hydrogen to Reactor B, Oxygen to Recycler
Reactor B: Sends half the Hydrogen to Reactor C, other half to Reactor D.
Reactor C: Takes Hydrogen and Krypton. Makes Y and Zr. Sends Y to Collector, Zr to Reactor D.
Reactor Takes in H and Zr. Sends half the Zr directly to its Collector. Uses the other half to create Mb. Sends that to its Collector.
Its just all too complicated and gets backed up. Not sure how to fix it. Its got to be simpler than this... a way to do away with Reactor B entirely.
Maybe I can make use of the Oxygen better....
I'll spoiler it in case you want to figure it out on your own, but here's a description of what I did:
Instead of sending oxygen to the recycler just keep fusing it until you have zirconium - it fits perfectly since 8*5 is 40. Then you shunt hydrogen down to another fusion reactor to make yttrium. In that reactor I sent 1 yttrium to the transport and then one yttrium and 2 hydrogens to a final fusion reactor to make niobium.
I keep wanting to go back to my solution to make it more efficient, but I'm not sure how to combine what I'md doing to split water with what I want to do in the zirconium fusion reactor.
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
Here's my "No Ordinary Headache." Like I said, it's inefficient, but I'm proud of how neat it looks. Also, I'm too stupid to get a Steam screenshot to show up in my post so it's just a link. Sorry.
It's actually fairly easy to link Steam screenshots directly once you know how. Take this link and stick ?.jpg on the end, and stick the whole thing in img tags, and you should get this:
I should comment on how neat your solution to this problem is. Far far nicer looking than mine halfway up the page.
I can't get Hydrogen to TWO Fusion reactors quickly enough. My current setup is
Reactor A: Splits Water up . Sends Hydrogen to Reactor B, Oxygen to Recycler
Reactor B: Sends half the Hydrogen to Reactor C, other half to Reactor D.
Reactor C: Takes Hydrogen and Krypton. Makes Y and Zr. Sends Y to Collector, Zr to Reactor D.
Reactor Takes in H and Zr. Sends half the Zr directly to its Collector. Uses the other half to create Mb. Sends that to its Collector.
Its just all too complicated and gets backed up. Not sure how to fix it. Its got to be simpler than this... a way to do away with Reactor B entirely.
Maybe I can make use of the Oxygen better....
I'll spoiler it in case you want to figure it out on your own, but here's a description of what I did:
Instead of sending oxygen to the recycler just keep fusing it until you have zirconium - it fits perfectly since 8*5 is 40. Then you shunt hydrogen down to another fusion reactor to make yttrium. In that reactor I sent 1 yttrium to the transport and then one yttrium and 2 hydrogens to a final fusion reactor to make niobium.
I keep wanting to go back to my solution to make it more efficient, but I'm not sure how to combine what I'md doing to split water with what I want to do in the zirconium fusion reactor.
Yeah, I figured that out last night. Needs optimization, but I'm gonna wait until I finish the planet, then go back and work on making all my old solutions better.
Speaking of finishing the planet, holy HELL the Kraken stage.
Making Plutonium out of some combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen is just... mean. It would be a cinch if I could have sensors and fusers in one reactor... but...
As it stands, I think I'm going to have make liberal use of switches and flip them to control the reaction to produce Plutonium.
I can't get Hydrogen to TWO Fusion reactors quickly enough. My current setup is
Reactor A: Splits Water up . Sends Hydrogen to Reactor B, Oxygen to Recycler
Reactor B: Sends half the Hydrogen to Reactor C, other half to Reactor D.
Reactor C: Takes Hydrogen and Krypton. Makes Y and Zr. Sends Y to Collector, Zr to Reactor D.
Reactor Takes in H and Zr. Sends half the Zr directly to its Collector. Uses the other half to create Mb. Sends that to its Collector.
Its just all too complicated and gets backed up. Not sure how to fix it. Its got to be simpler than this... a way to do away with Reactor B entirely.
Maybe I can make use of the Oxygen better....
I'll spoiler it in case you want to figure it out on your own, but here's a description of what I did:
Instead of sending oxygen to the recycler just keep fusing it until you have zirconium - it fits perfectly since 8*5 is 40. Then you shunt hydrogen down to another fusion reactor to make yttrium. In that reactor I sent 1 yttrium to the transport and then one yttrium and 2 hydrogens to a final fusion reactor to make niobium.
I keep wanting to go back to my solution to make it more efficient, but I'm not sure how to combine what I'md doing to split water with what I want to do in the zirconium fusion reactor.
Yeah, I figured that out last night. Needs optimization, but I'm gonna wait until I finish the planet, then go back and work on making all my old solutions better.
Speaking of finishing the planet, holy HELL the Kraken stage.
Making Plutonium out of some combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen is just... mean. It would be a cinch if I could have sensors and fusers in one reactor... but...
As it stands, I think I'm going to have make liberal use of switches and flip them to control the reaction to produce Plutonium.
This is gonna be the death of me.
I want to redo mine to not use switches (right now I use one to tell one waldo to grab either oxygen or hydrogen) by beefing up my sync string on the other waldo to include inputs. Then it's just a matter of making the assembler waldo go over two grabs instead of one (still only picking one molecule up). But yes, I very much want a fusion reactor that has a sensor in it, too.
I can't get Hydrogen to TWO Fusion reactors quickly enough. My current setup is
Reactor A: Splits Water up . Sends Hydrogen to Reactor B, Oxygen to Recycler
Reactor B: Sends half the Hydrogen to Reactor C, other half to Reactor D.
Reactor C: Takes Hydrogen and Krypton. Makes Y and Zr. Sends Y to Collector, Zr to Reactor D.
Reactor Takes in H and Zr. Sends half the Zr directly to its Collector. Uses the other half to create Mb. Sends that to its Collector.
Its just all too complicated and gets backed up. Not sure how to fix it. Its got to be simpler than this... a way to do away with Reactor B entirely.
Maybe I can make use of the Oxygen better....
I'll spoiler it in case you want to figure it out on your own, but here's a description of what I did:
Instead of sending oxygen to the recycler just keep fusing it until you have zirconium - it fits perfectly since 8*5 is 40. Then you shunt hydrogen down to another fusion reactor to make yttrium. In that reactor I sent 1 yttrium to the transport and then one yttrium and 2 hydrogens to a final fusion reactor to make niobium.
I keep wanting to go back to my solution to make it more efficient, but I'm not sure how to combine what I'md doing to split water with what I want to do in the zirconium fusion reactor.
Yeah, I figured that out last night. Needs optimization, but I'm gonna wait until I finish the planet, then go back and work on making all my old solutions better.
Speaking of finishing the planet, holy HELL the Kraken stage.
Making Plutonium out of some combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen is just... mean. It would be a cinch if I could have sensors and fusers in one reactor... but...
As it stands, I think I'm going to have make liberal use of switches and flip them to control the reaction to produce Plutonium.
This is gonna be the death of me.
I want to redo mine to not use switches (right now I use one to tell one waldo to grab either oxygen or hydrogen) by beefing up my sync string on the other waldo to include inputs. Then it's just a matter of making the assembler waldo go over two grabs instead of one (still only picking one molecule up). But yes, I very much want a fusion reactor that has a sensor in it, too.
I don't see how the Kraken is possible without switches. There is no way that I can see to build Plutonium without them. I suppose I could make plutonium across multiple reactors... I think I see a way to do it.. maybe... in my head.
It should all take too long though. How many missiles do I have to fire at that Kraken before it dies, anyway?
I can't get Hydrogen to TWO Fusion reactors quickly enough. My current setup is
Reactor A: Splits Water up . Sends Hydrogen to Reactor B, Oxygen to Recycler
Reactor B: Sends half the Hydrogen to Reactor C, other half to Reactor D.
Reactor C: Takes Hydrogen and Krypton. Makes Y and Zr. Sends Y to Collector, Zr to Reactor D.
Reactor Takes in H and Zr. Sends half the Zr directly to its Collector. Uses the other half to create Mb. Sends that to its Collector.
Its just all too complicated and gets backed up. Not sure how to fix it. Its got to be simpler than this... a way to do away with Reactor B entirely.
Maybe I can make use of the Oxygen better....
I'll spoiler it in case you want to figure it out on your own, but here's a description of what I did:
Instead of sending oxygen to the recycler just keep fusing it until you have zirconium - it fits perfectly since 8*5 is 40. Then you shunt hydrogen down to another fusion reactor to make yttrium. In that reactor I sent 1 yttrium to the transport and then one yttrium and 2 hydrogens to a final fusion reactor to make niobium.
I keep wanting to go back to my solution to make it more efficient, but I'm not sure how to combine what I'md doing to split water with what I want to do in the zirconium fusion reactor.
Yeah, I figured that out last night. Needs optimization, but I'm gonna wait until I finish the planet, then go back and work on making all my old solutions better.
Speaking of finishing the planet, holy HELL the Kraken stage.
Making Plutonium out of some combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen is just... mean. It would be a cinch if I could have sensors and fusers in one reactor... but...
As it stands, I think I'm going to have make liberal use of switches and flip them to control the reaction to produce Plutonium.
This is gonna be the death of me.
I want to redo mine to not use switches (right now I use one to tell one waldo to grab either oxygen or hydrogen) by beefing up my sync string on the other waldo to include inputs. Then it's just a matter of making the assembler waldo go over two grabs instead of one (still only picking one molecule up). But yes, I very much want a fusion reactor that has a sensor in it, too.
I don't see how the Kraken is possible without switches. There is no way that I can see to build Plutonium without them. I suppose I could make plutonium across multiple reactors... I think I see a way to do it.. maybe... in my head.
It should all take too long though. How many missiles do I have to fire at that Kraken before it dies, anyway?
I don't remember exactly what I did, but my first solution is only one switch, and I think I could get it down to no switches. Right now my plutonium fusion reactor takes in oxygen and hydrogen in a decent (not great) ratio, and the blue waldo grabs an oxygen, puts it on the target, and then directs the red waldo to add 7 more oxygens (I think) and then 14 hydrogens. The switch just tells the red waldo which input/grab pair it's going over before dropping on the fuser. If I change my blue line from "sync, sync, sync, sync" to "sync, in a, sync, in a, sync, in b, sync, in a" in the right proportion to grab 7 oxygen and 14 hydrogen it should be possible without a switch. Ungainly? Yes. But I don't like switches.
Oh, and you just have to shoot 1 rocket and the kraken.
Posts
Honestly, the restricted reactors are for your benefit. They reduce the possible solution space so that you aren't flailing around with trying to figure out how to hook things together, it's just "Oh, input goes into breaker, then into combiner" because that's all you CAN do. It's basically tutorial.
There are BOSS FIGHTS? I have no idea what to do here. Its such a tone shift from how I've been playing that... ugh... Im half tempted to just look up a solution so I can just get on to the real puzzles.
I dunno... maybe Ill take a break and look at it again with fresh eyes tomorrow.
But my solution is HORRIBLY ugly. It doesn't help that our own @ShimShai has better cycles, symbols and reactor count than me.
So now all I can think about is how to make a better one. All last night and all this morning.
SpaceChem you are in my brain and I love you.
Strangely enough, that's the last level that I've actually completed. I need to get back into this game again, I loved it and then for some reason started playing something else, and never got back to it.
So, after my first day back at work after having the flu I was too exhausted to play last night.
So I've now spent all day yesterday and the whole day so far today thinking about how to do that mission better. I can definitely do better if I can figure out a better way to burn excess oxygen. Right now my third reactor does nothing but sort oxygen, sending half of it to the recycler.
I want to go buy a bunch of graph paper and make "reactor sheets" so I can sketch out ideas while away from my computer.
This game really makes you feel great when you come up with an ingenious solution to a problem.
Here was the solution I came up with. Slow as hell but it still works!
e: 9628 cycles, the first N=O is made sometime around cycle 1800. Probably because I'm discarding almost all incoming molecules...
In my defense, I had written most of it before figuring out a lot of the tricks to speed things up.
I still can't beat the last level though...
Naturally this ends up pushing lots of things to the recycler...
Well yeah, I thought of that a long time ago. But there is ALOT more Oxygen than Nitrogen - makes sense with an earthlike atmosphere - so I'd like to not waste any Nitrogen
Not to get technical, but earth's atmosphere is majority N2
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
@APODionysus - yeah, I recall figuring out halfway through that I should probably have discarded oxygens more aggressively instead of nitrogens, but I was too lazy to switch by then. :P
Tip: run the reaction and see which reactor is holding it up; for mine it is the methane processor but it's still getting to 940 cycles without any particularly non-intuitive optimization. I suspect dismantling methane is the generally slow bit. Granted, I abuse the heck out of the peculiarities of the In/Out mechanism (you can toss output atoms anywhere, and more than one at a time, for instance)
Got the game from the Humble Bundle, just passed this mission, not sure if I should feel smug about using only 862 cycles to do it, but if it can help, spoilering because this is going to be kind of thorough about how I did it:
In my case that's the damned cyanide assembler. That things uses a lot of time being idle because it's basically hard sync all the way - wait until both nitrogen AND methine radical are ready, then engage, then wait until cyanide is combined then go. That's the slower part of the process, and if my remake of the Methane disassembler works the thing could use a good remake for functionality.
Otherwise the last two reactors are superbly working, with the H2 reactor clocking at a very nice 14 cycles/loop. The secret on that one is to only accept two In per cycles and plan accordingly knowing you can have three possible hydrogen configurations (mine are all in a row, yours might be harder if you didn't arrange them beforehand). Funnily enough the nitrogen disassembler was the thing causing me trouble until I realised it needed some safeguard syncing to prevent overflow.
426 cycles 8->
One thing I find interesting, looking at it now (I did this a while ago), is that my Cyanide assembler doesn't actually sync at all. It relies on the fact that the cycle is able to clear the input area before the next CH is delivered from the Methane disassembler, so the "input alpha" acts well enough for synchronization.
This is actually NEARLY as fast as it could possibly be completed: my Methane disassembler literally has to wait one cycle for input. I suppose I could shave off a couple cycles if I were somehow able to use that one cycle to move the CH closer to the right edge, but I don't think I can.
I think I know how to make it faster now but since I already have the cheevo, meh
My solution is the stuff nightmares are made of though. Four reactors... something in the neighborhood of 3600 cycles. Incredibly ugly, but whatever... its done.
And my one reactor solution to "No Ordinary Headache" is super inefficient, but I really like the look of it. I'll have to see if I can figure out the youtube stuff next time I'm playing so you all can laugh at how slow and dumb it is.
Reactor A: Splits Water up . Sends Hydrogen to Reactor B, Oxygen to Recycler
Reactor B: Sends half the Hydrogen to Reactor C, other half to Reactor D.
Reactor C: Takes Hydrogen and Krypton. Makes Y and Zr. Sends Y to Collector, Zr to Reactor D.
Reactor
Its just all too complicated and gets backed up. Not sure how to fix it. Its got to be simpler than this... a way to do away with Reactor B entirely.
Maybe I can make use of the Oxygen better....
Oh dear. Too much time spent on how I should get two NO out of a O2 and N2 only to go "FUCK THIS" and scrap one of each to just make one NO each time and have it run correctly. And yes I know it's more efficient to trash the O instead of the N.
No Ordinary Headache
I'll spoiler it in case you want to figure it out on your own, but here's a description of what I did:
I keep wanting to go back to my solution to make it more efficient, but I'm not sure how to combine what I'md doing to split water with what I want to do in the zirconium fusion reactor.
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/631854688391492598/EDC2C32D83110588FB3787FBF51EB46D02C26054/
It's actually fairly easy to link Steam screenshots directly once you know how. Take this link and stick ?.jpg on the end, and stick the whole thing in img tags, and you should get this:
I should comment on how neat your solution to this problem is. Far far nicer looking than mine halfway up the page.
Yeah, I figured that out last night. Needs optimization, but I'm gonna wait until I finish the planet, then go back and work on making all my old solutions better.
Speaking of finishing the planet, holy HELL the Kraken stage.
Making Plutonium out of some combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen is just... mean. It would be a cinch if I could have sensors and fusers in one reactor... but...
This is gonna be the death of me.
I want to redo mine to not use switches (right now I use one to tell one waldo to grab either oxygen or hydrogen) by beefing up my sync string on the other waldo to include inputs. Then it's just a matter of making the assembler waldo go over two grabs instead of one (still only picking one molecule up). But yes, I very much want a fusion reactor that has a sensor in it, too.
I don't see how the Kraken is possible without switches. There is no way that I can see to build Plutonium without them. I suppose I could make plutonium across multiple reactors... I think I see a way to do it.. maybe... in my head.
It should all take too long though. How many missiles do I have to fire at that Kraken before it dies, anyway?
I don't remember exactly what I did, but my first solution is only one switch, and I think I could get it down to no switches. Right now my plutonium fusion reactor takes in oxygen and hydrogen in a decent (not great) ratio, and the blue waldo grabs an oxygen, puts it on the target, and then directs the red waldo to add 7 more oxygens (I think) and then 14 hydrogens. The switch just tells the red waldo which input/grab pair it's going over before dropping on the fuser. If I change my blue line from "sync, sync, sync, sync" to "sync, in a, sync, in a, sync, in b, sync, in a" in the right proportion to grab 7 oxygen and 14 hydrogen it should be possible without a switch. Ungainly? Yes. But I don't like switches.
Oh, and you just have to shoot 1 rocket and the kraken.