speed hint on 'no thanks necessary'?

[rchandra]

I don't want to look at a youtube solution, especially since it will likely be crazy good, but I'd like a hint on speeding up this one for the achievement (world 4-5, I think - "No thanks necessary")
My basic design in 4 reactors:

N2/O2 becomes single N and O
N and O become NO3 (with the double bond)
from the other pump, I drop off the Cl/OH in the recycler and add the Na/H to the NO3
Final products are sorted and sent to the right place


does this design make sense and I need to work on speeding up the reactors, or do I need to do something else entirely to make it more parallel?
I think my solution would be fast enough if the salt and water were 50% each, instead of 33/67. currently around 2800 cycles.

I'm also concerned about how my programs behave if the random inputs don't cooperate. For ecample I could see this one breaking or stalling indefinitely on a string of 10 or 20 N2 in a row. Do you usually just ignore that sort of possibility?

[Nicuvëo]

Last question first: I do. Inputs are pseudo-random, which means they'll always be the same for everyone. I therefore ignore those degenrated cases, as they're "not part of the test". And if that ever happens, well, I'll adapt my code.

About your design: with the same design I'm currently around 1900 cycles. It's just a question of optimisation. Also, I added a fifth reactor that sorts the Na and H output: one on two H are recycled. That way I output one NO3Cl for one NO3H. I dropped to 1300 cycles, that way.

Hope that helps!

[Mr_Twister_242]

I managed to get this achievement just yesterday, with exactly the same process you described above. But you'll really have to optimize it to get below 2200.
- your N2/02 splitter, unless you made an inefficient design, is normally way faster than the NO3 builder. Besides thet starting phase, you should always have N/0 in excess
- you will also produce Na/H a lot faster than NO3, so the final reactor will be constantly waiting for the N03.

Conclusion : optimizing the NO3 builder is the key to an efficient design


About the mixed inputs, it's good to consider this to some extent, but don't exagerate. I'm not sure if it was with this level (earlier design), where I was building a chain of N, which only came in at 25%. When I was around 75% of completing the level, I suddenly had 4 consecutive N2's and my chain hit the border. The safety-check I had to add to avoid it, more than doubled my cycles, and my design had become totally uneffective. It happens. :(

[Balorn]

My uploaded video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSjTJu30pw4) has some commentary explaining how I managed to get it done for the achievement. One thing that helped a lot was forcing the seawater to alternate Na and H and tossing the rest.

[Bashy McFetus]

does this design make sense and I need to work on speeding up the reactors, or do I need to do something else entirely to make it more parallel?

Definitely doable. My first try at the level hit around ~1500 cycles using that setup. Optimization (still using that same setup) managed to knock that down to ~1100.

I think my solution would be fast enough if the salt and water were 50% each, instead of 33/67.

Well, you can throw excess water/hydrogen away.

I'm also concerned about how my programs behave if the random inputs don't cooperate. For ecample I could see this one breaking or stalling indefinitely on a string of 10 or 20 N2 in a row. Do you usually just ignore that sort of possibility?

You might need to add some extra length to your output pipes, but that's about it.

[Ebola0001]

my strategy for this level is to break the random inputs into known inputs. so i have a reactor in front of both the input pumps, whose sole job is to sort the incoming single mixed streams into discreet output streams(although my atmospheric sorter also breaks the bonds down to N-N and O-O). My sorters are labeled A1 and B1 respectively.

My working reactors then take those known streams and make the sub products of the final molecule, A2 producing NO2, it also arbitrarily dumps 1 O-O input per pair of NO2to balance the input flow, with the O's up and right. my B2 reactor is taking the inputs and building alternating Na-O, and H-O chunks, and dumping the Cl.

Finally my C1 reactor is taking those A2 and B2 output streams and bonding them (which adds the double bond between the N and O, and tacks on the B2 product... then they are dropped to the output collectors.

Here is a picture of my reactor layout... I'll let you build your reactor internals cause that's the fun part. Mine takes 992 cycles to complete.
Reactor Layout (https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fKU5epoXhCB-Kes5nohgAySZhgt1xbzOMr8qh5vKDb_Mz6yOrOP-oe8qVOw7K6aXBbEYhG9eLxrGxjburpN_4DgS5A=s1440)

If your curious to see it running, here is the Youtube link
Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1szPkwAAVLE)

[rchandra]

thanks folks. my computer died before I could try again, just up and running again now.

took me a while to get a working setup this time, for some reason, but the first working one was at 1650 - still only 4 reactors. balancing the Na/H to not waste any NO3s was the key.

[marciohuser]

Burned my brain out trying to solve that one and only got 6754 cycles!!!! :(