wesleybruce

I have a design for a recycler. 30 cm X 30 cm pad mill, 12 cm high ramp sides. Folding Canister receptor one end, folding solar cell the other end. Place move-able rocks or junk on top add empty canister or attach to printer input. Has an internal buffer of 20 units. Mars Rock = iron, silicon. 20/ 80 chance. 10 units Moon Rock = Silicon, aluminium. 50/ 50 chance. 15 units Asteroid rubble = Iron, Magnesium. 70/ 30 chance. 15 units Ice lump = Water, methane. 50/ 50 chance. 10 units Metallic scrap = iron, aluminium. 50/ 50 chance. 30 units Empty water pack = carbon, Hydrogen. 60/ 40 chance. 5 units. Empty emergency air tank. = 90% of its aluminium. 39 units. Plastic = carbon, Hydrogen. 50/ 50 chance.50 units. Ceramic debris = Silicon, Aluminium. 60/40 chance. 10 units. Empty or Broken Oxygen Tank = 100% of ingredients. Damaged parts = 10 units of any base resource element. Oxygen, nitrogen, Carbon, iron, aluminium, silicon, etc The idea is that it's grinding and pyrolizing the result wasting all but one majority element. It's highly inefficient. This gives you the base elements to make the small resource units in the smallest printer. It has a plug that is compatible with the 3d printers canister input point under the solar cell. It can fold up and fit in one suit inventory slot. i'll knock up a mesh in wings or something.

There is still a chicken and egg problem with the smaller 3d printers and the small resource machines. I've waited for the new printers and crafting recipes before re-suggesting the fix. We need a man portable Algae farm that makes polymer and O2 is self powering. We also need a recycler that turns small rocks, plastic, ceramic and metal, into silicon, Iron, aluminium and carbon. Allowing you to scrap debris and fill an empty tank with starting feed stocks. And the recycler needs to fit into the small resource tank socket on the smallest printer. We already have small movable rocks but they are not on all maps and can't be picked up. Some grab-able debris is needed too.

They still have a starting resource chicken and egg problem for a true zero resource start. You still need the creative printer to get started. I'm planning a suggestion as a fix. I have already made a variant. If you use the creative printer to get started your OK but I don't think there is a new map yet optimised for the new printers. I'll have to create one. I'm not a dev though. Should fix that.

Has anyone noticed that the 3d printer shows a light or beacon in the preview and not the folded poptent. Idealy it should show the folded tent.

No no no that will cost money and Take on mars is older than his script. Make him call us and then he can pay the devs here for saving him all the trouble of making a game of it. No one will leave mars without leaving a dozen backup communication systems and two of everything else. No one will go there without a way to cope with the giant, slow motion dust storms. The pressure from a 50 mph wind on mars would be a light breeze. Wind force is mass times velocity. In an atmosphere so thin the air + dust mass is tiny.

Will we always start with a 3d printer or are you thinking of a more compact/ portable resource start option? I have a few ideas. As always there is an interesting chicken and egg problem. A Portable hole. Place down and drag rocks onto it and it fills with starting resources & disintegrating the rocks. It becomes a fabrication tile when its full. It then produces one of three things depending on size. Another portable hole 1 x 1, a resource canister of whatever the next resource harvester is made of 1 x 2 and a poptent 2 x 2. Put together a 3 by 3 grid of fabrication tiles and it makes your 3d printer. The portable hole will recycle junk, other holes and because it makes a resource cylinder if feeds into later systems. An empty portable hole fits in your inventory must be dropped to then grab and deploy. In zero g the rock may be carried slowly and it may recycle space junk. Its a crude von neumann machine.

"The Cargo Transport does not yet have slots for methane/oxygen, but it will be in the cabin." If we are adding fuel in the cabins we will need an easier way to get resource canisters into and through airlocks. Its very cumbersome. They block doors and roll out when you're not looking. I've even 'tripped' on one and glitched into a wall. Perhaps a grabber tool that allows you to move a canister in and out of your held inventory so you can then move it into your internal inventory. With suitable weight limits. I presume that that is what the held inventory slot is for but canisters don't show up in there at this stage. Tried rocks etc too.

Another landing option that would work on mars is an aerostatic wing craft. The wing is a hydrogen filled balloon or inflatable lifting body. Inflate it using a chemical cartridge as the craft descends on a normal parachute. Because the wing has no weight in the atmosphere it can be very big and slow. Because it's aerostatic wing stays aloft above the landed payload it can take off and land freely. Very good for exploration. Hydrogen will leak out slowly so I won't last forever. It's particularly good for venus because you can harvest hydrogen from the acid clouds with a little fancy chemistry.

Rotor diameter would be a problem. Due to the low pressure a rotor on mars would need to be about 6 times the diameter of the one on earth. That makes the boom arms 6 times longer etc, etc. The whole thing becomes a spindly fragile leaf. NASA also used quadcopters to test the idea and all the non rocket components so this is not new. Remember if you send something to mars the launch forces will crush anything too fragile. You also need to fit whatever you send to mars behind a compact heat shield. You need to fold everything up into a ball and have it unfold first time every time. That's hard. However adding a parafoil to the top of a quadcopter and a despin hub below may allow you to do a cable and bucket delivery: Bucket drop. The parafoil flies a big circle high with a long cable to the ground. The despin hub negates the spin or tangling on the payload. A bucket on such a system was lowered to amazonian indians moved so slowly that things could be removed and replaced in the bucket and that was with a relatively fast cessna at the top of the line. Sadly, the inventor, Nate Saint, a missionary, was later murdered by some of those indians. The son Steve Saint also makes and sells a flying car. Here is Steve Saint doing a bucket drop demonstration a few years ago. Essentially a bucket drop is a monowing helicopter. No one has tried a slow parafoil yet. Add a few small control thrusters on the 'bucket' and you have very precise 'bucket' positioning.

I have five simple starting suggestions. 1. A six pack of empty resource containers on a fence mesh floor 1 x1. In addition to the single unit. This gives us six empties at once. I seem to be making empty resource containers half the time. Remove from the 3d printer as one unit and place in the ground like a fence or machine. Then you can remove the containers as required instead of going back to the printer six times. The empty mesh would not be a walkway or deck but would in zero g stop things drifting about and on mars could give you a outdoor audio indicator of location in the dark (or dust storm if they are included. ). A mars foot path. 2. A hot key to turn off the zero g EVA jet pack allowing you to do more precise hand movement in confined spaces. I've tried to maneuver in the capsule cargo section to get out a 3d printer. Earth orbit scenario. I just bounce around like a ping pong ball. Its not precise enough in terms of roll and pitch for tight spaces. This is not a glitch. The real thing can't be used in a confined space either. They use a robot arm to deploy it with its astronaut. The same off switch would be useful for the mars flying machine which is always trying to hover and move about (it's thruster flicker, even at a distance, is visually irritating and I don't have epilepsy. It must be causing unnecessary lag. ) 3. Unpressurised dust rooms with a gate or door. This is something discussed in real mars projects. These dust tight panels, screens and entries that keep at bay the dust, airflows and stop things rolling away on the moon and mars and stop things drifting off in zero G. They are not pressurised and don't show "leak". External decks with fences are useful but not as much in zero g and some just look wrong. These define an unpressurised space that is temperature and toxic dust controlled and when radiation solutions are added they are part of that. 4. Emergency supply drop beacon. A small 3d craftable item that is deployed to cause a skycrane drop of supplies. This drop should be imprecise within 200 m of the beacon. (spherical radius in zero g) The Pack contains 1 water bag,1 bottle of vitamins,1 potato seeds, 1 ration pack, 1 medical tool, 1 constructor tool, and any other seeds added later. This eliminates the need for scenario builders to need to micromanage the placement of these things and adds them to the old maps already created without them. 5. A ladder that can mount on the external walls so you can build up and don't break your legs jumping down from the roof you have accidently jumped up onto. [Alt is too close to space. lol. ] I have a few other suggestions but they are not as simple and require some work on my part to make up resources.

OK got the picture upon my block, with a few comments for my friends. This is gustave crater. That should not matter. Here are the pictures. Door and frame. Suit section and glass section. No leaks. Inside both doors closed, cycle button tweeps but no pressure change. mp on this side in the lock. Kp on the others side. can't refill the suit. I do have the little dome tent to survive in. inside the hab. I have air but loose it if I open the door to use the suit inventory. Died twice. lol. kp this side. mp in the lock with both doors closed. Airlock wall with an airlock door. I have tried to use the other door. It's no different. Otherwise good game. I am a successful martian potato farmer. Will do a playthrough soon. ps why is one pick bigger than the others????? http://appliedimpossibilies.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/take-on-mars-fun-and-games.html

I have the same problem the building pressurises but not the airlock. Both doors open outwards relative to the airlock and there are no leaks. Airlock door outer normal door inner. Working on screenshots but it's night. Clearly the bed mat in the little dome does not speed up time. We need an off door pressurization button like the airlock in the little dome. Perhaps above the suit inventory on the ceiling giving a fault analysis. Can the doors be back to front? Pictures in the following post.