Colonies

After claiming a deed on a planet that you have decided to colonise, you may use the blueprints that you acquired from Deep Six for Environmental Domes, Automated Fission Power Plants, as well as the traditional Transport Grids.

Deed Placement

Before claiming a deed, ensure that the land under the deed has suitable resource levels, using the show mb.coresample command on various areas within a 100km radius (about 2-3 squares of a show mb.samplemapoverlay). Note that actual deposits of minerals do not correspond to the mb.samplemapoverlay. There is always some overlap. You do not want to invest your limited supplies of Graphene, Superconducting Coils, Titanium, Carbon and Aluminium on a dome when the land under the dome lacks development potential.

Dome Placement

Upon claiming a deed, you will want to place your first dome. Ensure the land it is being placed on is flat, or close to flat. Domes should not be built at all on extra-hilly moons and should be built on hillsides only if necessary.

On worlds with oceans the dome may be built either above or below sea level, but they will not work correctly if built partially underwater. Either entirely underwater or not in the sea at all. Note that in a H₂O-only ocean, you will have difficulty finding sufficient nitrogen for your undersea dome, and it cannot presently be transferred from other domes on land. It must be obtained from the blue section of a Gas Giant.

Upon placing your dome, you will notice a structure at the centre of the dome, at ground level. This is the dome control tower. The commands you can use with the dome control tower console can be found in the latter part of this article.

Transport Grid Placement

After placing your dome and supplying its materials, the first thing you will want to build are Transport Grids. Keep them three squares apart on one axis, and combine them at least once, preferably twice, on the other axis. The three square separation allows for two squares of land to be developed inbetween each Transport Grid. The intersecting grids can be located within the dome boundary, but they do not necessarily have to be.

Energy Supply

The next thing to build are your Automated Fission Power Plants. You will need approximately 2-3 power plants before construction is finished to manage the dome's atmosphere, approximately 6 power plants for a single dome farm colony, and substantially more power plants for mining colonies. As these power plants are designed for rough environments, they can and should be built outside the dome, though they must be connected using Transport Grids.

For obvious reasons there should be two independent paths for energy to reach the dome control tower from your power plants. This may mean building power plants on two sides of your colony, or by adding a transverse grid alongside the dome control tower.

Environmental Management

Click on the dome control tower to manage the dome's computer. You will see a console. Commands that you can use to set up your dome's atmosphere are listed below.

You will want the Radiation, Gravity and Pressure as close to 1 as possible. The Radiation and Gravity are managed in their own right. The pressure is a function of the quantities of gases present within the dome. You will need the gas amounts and water vapour (N2, O2, CO2 and H2O) to sum up to approximately 430,000 tons. They will need to be at proportions similar to Earth's atmosphere.

del

Deletes the specified command line. Each line is numbered. Syntax: del 12 (where 12 is the line to be deleted).

polarize

Sets the level of radiation shielding occurring within the roof glazing of your Environmental Dome. This prevents the radiation, where applicable, from cooking your dome's residents.

modgrav

Changes the level of gravity within the dome. Ideally this should be set to the difference between external gravity and 1.

heat

Heats the air/gases within your dome. Can and should be made conditional. All temperatures are in degrees Kelvin. This value should be the coolest you want your dome to get during the night.

cool

Cools the air/gases within your dome. Can and should be made conditional. All temperatures are in degrees Kelvin. This value should be the warmest you want your dome to get during the day.

vent

Separates and expels specified gas (including NH4 and CO2, as well as useful gases such as Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide etc) out of the dome atmosphere. Can and should be made conditional, so that these gases are only expelled above your preferred upper limit for each gas.

All Carbon must be vented. The dome's computer does not do a very good job stabilising the carbon in its molecular form. The technology to achieve this is unlikely to ever be developed during our lifetimes.

All surplus gases must be conditionally vented above the levels you want in your atmosphere. Where a gas is also needed for split or combine functions, make the vent command conditional at a slightly higher quantity than the condition set on the split or combine function. The technology to save and store unwanted gases from the dome into a warehouse is presently unavailable.

split

Separates out the molecular bonds between various atmospheric gases, to yield potentially useful gases. For example, you can create a conditional rule to split NH4 into Nitrogen (required for atmosphere) and Hydrogen (which cannot be stored at this time and will need to be vented or recombined into water) when your level of Nitrogen is too low, or when your level of water is too low (though not both).

combine

Recombines split gases or gases obtained using intake. For example, if you have H2 from an intake or a split command, and you have O2 from another split command, you can combine the two to make water. Can and should be made conditional.

intake

Sets the dome controls to retrieve a specific gas from the atmosphere. Can and should be made conditional.

unload

Allows a player to drop Hydrogen, Oxygen, and any other atmospheric elements, directly into the dome from your ship's cargo hold. Most domes will not use this feature as it's infinitely more efficient to intake and use gases that are present locally. You would normally only use this command if your dome is on a planet with no atmosphere or where a specific element is missing from the atmosphere. This is a one-off feature: it will not continue to raid your ship's hold for atmospheric gases the next time you visit your dome.

Sample Environmental Controls

Johneaux-19 Rocky Planet 14 has a number of colonies present.

This planet has an atmosphere of:

H2O (Water): 0.2786489
CH4 (Methane): 0.1218335
NH3 (Ammonia): 0.0965018
N (Nitrogen): 0.03136308 (Don't ask why this isn't listed as N2)
O2 (Oxygen): 0
CO2 (Carbon Dioxide): 0.4716526

Its gravity is 4.044g and its temperature (at (notional) sea level) is 1111.674k, though it has no ocean.

While some changes may be required depending on the local placement of your dome, the following commands work to make a dome habitable at (or below) its (notional) sea level:

polarize 0.9041
modgrav -3.044
heat temp < 286
cool temp > 296
vent ch4
vent nh3
intake n2 n2 < 332000
vent n2 n2 > 334000
split co2 o2 < 92000
split h2o o2 < 92000
vent o2 o2 > 93000
intake co2 co2 < 100
vent co2 co2 > 190
intake h2o h2o < 500
vent h2o h2o > 4500
vent c
vent h

Environmental Controls - Known Issues (as at May 2014)

Dome control systems work very slowly, if at all, except under supervision. If your dome is not making sufficient progress towards habitability, spend more time watching your colony.

Dome cooling works approximately three times faster if the cool command is unconditional. Cool is one of the few commands you can list twice, once conditional and once unconditional. Try adding an unconditional cool command to the end of your code, and then remove it later.

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