Liquid fuel types, gas, oil. Portable Pump and liquid storage containers.

What I want to suggest - to add a new type of resources found underground - liquid fuel type (standart oil and liquified gases) and appropriate tools to handle them.

Contents:

New resources: Liquids

Water and toxic (green) water - already present

• Oil - Blackish liquid, can be pumped into containers and then refined into fuel for generators, ships, fueled tools (chainsaw for example) and advanced light sources (i hope those will be present someday...) (starts appearing in planets of threat level 2 and is frequently encountered in deserts, flammable, explodes into lava until it burns out if torch or gun bullet touches it)

Liqified gases (to actually aquire them player will need to keep the liquid pocket unharmed and use the Pump tool of appropriate tier from distance of 2 or 3 blocks, or gases will dissapear, poison you, or explode causing massive damage):

• Methane - (will evaporate if pocket is disturbed) (placement starts from planets of level 3 and on)
• Ethilen - (will cause strong poison 2-3 times of toxic water effect and evaporate if pocket is disturbed)
• Solarith - (will cause heavy damaging explosion if pocket is disturbed, placing starts on planets with Solarium ore)

Refining this liquids using refinery station will provide player with Liquid Fuel (4 oil - 1 LF, 2 methane - 1 LF, 1 ethilen - 1 LF, 1 solarith - 2 LF). This Liquid Fuel can then be used to power ships, fuel different tools - like pickaxe breaks, the laser tool, chain saws and drills (when it is implemented) will consume fuel instead. And of course the flamethrower (I really hope it will be in this game)

New tool: Portable Kinetic Pump

Will enable players to collect various liquids. (4 tiers - iron, steel, titanium and durasteel). I see it working somewhat like a vacuum cleaner - just suckin in liquids from tile that players is pointing his cursor on.

• 1 tier (iron) - will enable players to clear up water pockets and store them in inventory (using craftable bottles, buckets and barrels)
• 2 tier (steel) - will enable players to pump water, toxic green water and oil
• 3 tier (titanium) - players can pump water, oil, toxic water and liquified gases
• 4 tier (durasteel) - players can work with potentionally dangerous stuff like toxic water, oil, flammable and poisonous gases and lava.

New storage containers (We need to store this stuff right?):

• Bottles (crafted from standart glass) - storing ~1-2 blocks of liquid (can store water and toxic water)
• Buckets (wood, iron, steel, titanium) - storing ~5-10 blocks of liquid (wooden - can store water, iron - water, toxic water, steel - all previous +oil, titanium - all previous +lava)
• Barrel (wood, iron, steel, titanium, durasteel) - storing up to 20-30 blocks of liquid (4 first tiers can store like buckets but are larger, 5 tier durasteel - allows storage of liquified toxic and flammable gases)
• Liquid Tank (wood, iron, steel, titanium, durasteel) - requires much more resources to craft, but allows to store much more liquids - around 200 liquid blocks. In addition it cannot be filled until placed down on the ground and cannot be picked up once filled - stationary large liquid storage container.

Filled containers cannot be stacked in inventory, only empty ones.

Update (10.01.2014):​

New Refining Station: Fuel Processing Unit

Crafting\refining station that will process oil and liquid gas into Liquid Fuel (i really want to think of some futuristic cool name for it, but I have somewhat crappy naming sense):

• Oil (4 into 1)
• Methane (2 into 1)
• Ethilen (1 into 1)
• Solarith (1 into 2)

It would be nice if there was some specific plants, that can be processed into fuel, the way oil and gas can.

Maybe even make it capable of turning any extra organic material (food, crops) into fuel.

Probably someone already suggested liquid resources and maybe even many times, but still I hope, that someone will notice and spare a few minutes to read my thread through. If you have some additions and thougths on this subject, please speak your mind, I'll be happy, that someone paid attention and spent their time.

Also there was a nice suggestion about adding a drum-barrel backpack, it would look awesome with the Kinetic Pump. Maybe instead of necessity of having an empty vessel in the inventory use this new backpack as a temporary vessel, until unloading liquids from it into barrels and buckets in inventory or in tanks at ship or base. (i think it's even more cool this way)

 

I'd like the ability to move around liquids, if for nothing else than to make a scenic lake around a house (or nasty lava moat).
Being able to drain annoying water pockets while you dig would also be very nice.

I was also thinking about oil, but more in a biomass conversion. Basically a way to convert excess crops/animal meat into fuel. You could also have a "Gasification Staion" that could convert crops into "Liquid Fuel."

Liquid containers shouldn't be able to store more ethan one type of liquid. You shouldn't be able to put water and lava in the same container, and storing water and toxic ater just makes more... toxic water (albeit a more diluted version).

One last thing, this will essentially make deep mining very dangerous, as hitting a stray Ethilen/Solarith pocket could easily kill a player. Also, since these pockets dissapate on contact with air... how will they be safely extracted? As you have put it, disturbing these pockets will immediately cause disastrous results when opening up the pocket for "vacuuming." It would be better if the pump could safely pierce 1-2 tiles worth of space. Thus if you notice an Ethilen pocket, you don't get nearly killed by trying to extract it. You can stop and mine just to the outside of the pocket, set up your pump, and safely extract the substance with no risk to yourself. These could also be separate items. There can be backpack-like vacuum "pump" and a deployable ground mounted tradition pump (that can pierce through 1-2 tiles below it). The ground pump can then be interacted with to collect what it pumps up.

 

This would be absolutely wonderful ! I think water storage would be great if implemented for machine and even ship cooling at some point when combat is implemented.

 

Firstly - of course if the container is already filled with one type of liquid - that means you can't add another type. I just assumed anyone would think so)) (In case of water and toxic water - water is just converted to toxins, yep).

And secondly - when I talked about pockets not being disturbed I meant that Kinetic Pump should be able to suck it out through 1-2 blocks thick walls, something like matter manipulator can place torches in little gaps in earth, but with much less length of effective range. So the player will have to dig his way close to the pocket, stop 1-2 blocks away from liquid itself and use the pump.

About danger - without it exploration is no fun. Ethane pocket will deal about 2-3 posions worth of damage and that is about 1\3 of health, but won't kill prepared adventurer. And about solarith - it can be quite rare for one, and for two - players won't encounter it until Solarium Ore starts spawning and when players get there - they'll be far better equipped to die from one or two explosions. And of course it will be dangerous - everything that comes easily will not be treasured

By the way your idea about placeable pump is good too - player can place the pump 2-3 blocks away, lay a pipe blocks right over ground\stone using Matter Manipulator - get the liquid and then dig the pipe out along with the ground the way we do ores.

I am just happy, that someone noticed my suggestion

 

Damn, it seems similar suggestion was already added to the list, since the suggestion bot didn't leave a usual response here. Or is it that I did something wrong when created a thread and there is a special trick for registering suggestion in suggestions tab of the site?

 

Only if I can carry a drum barrel on my back would I want liquid fuel. Just.. don't use any flammable weapons when swimming in it... otherwise you're going to regret it.

 

The drum would be cool... kind of like quiver (maybe a bar beneath energy could show you how much fuel you have left). But again I'd really like to see the ability to create your own fuel out of biomatter. It would easily be an upper tier tech, but if you require the drill to need fuel, then we should be able to make our own fuel for it. Otherwise, you could easily get stuck having to revert to pickaxes to find more fuel for your drill. That and we can already create fuel for the starship proper (wood into coal).

 

Well, I was thinking that drills would need to be "recharged" much like pickaxes now need to be repaired, so if the drill runs out of fuel it will work, but somewhat slower. Making it stop completely without fuel seems more realistic and will require player to always have pickaxe, some spare barrels of fuel in inventory. It also will make these new liquid resources more valuable since mining is a big part of the game. (I think they need to make the drills a little more efficient though, it takes to much time to mine through magma rock and obsidian, while it costs too much to craft them. And if using drills will require fuel as well, the drill needs to be much more powerful to justyfy the time player spent looking for something to fuel it with.)

By the way I like the idea about barrel backpack - I think it would look awesome, if it was part of the Kinetic Pump tool - sorta autoequips every time when you take Kinetic Pump in hand.

 

Its why I said we should be able to MAKE liquid fuel out of crops. Ethanol and such. Thus we won't be stuck out of fuel for our tool to get fuel.
And yes, the drill would need to be buffed. Drill isn't strong enough to warrant a resource atm.

 

I don't know about ability of turning all crops into fuel, but the idea of a specific plant that can be processed into fuel sounds rather cool. Like Rapeseed can be processed into biodisel.

Something like this: Add a new Fuel Processing Station capable of turning oil, methane, ethilen, solarith and this new plant into new Liquid Fuel, which then will be used in charging drills, fueling generators and ships.

Pity that Suggestions Bot still didn't give a damn about this thread - I think those are quite interesting ideas and can be implemented rather easily too...

 

I think it would be cool to have a pump running into a massive oil pool to collect fuel while you go about your space business. However, it would also be necessary to have the pump stay on while you are off planet. I don't want to turn it back on every time I come back planet side. Ain't nobody got time for that.

 

I suggested this on reddit, but you did it 100 times better! Support!

 

Glad you,ve liked it Feel free to add something interesting to the thread if you have any ideas)

 

Updated the thread, added some new stuff based on suggestions in replies

 

Any other ideas anyone? (I feel somewhat bad about just bumping the thread up, but I really don't wanna see it buried in the archives just yet...)

 

YES, please make sure plastics are a usable resources for oil.

Also acid makes some good batteries, don't you think?

 

That's a good one actually!) Somehow I didn't think abouts acids (probably because of toxic green water, that already present)

Give it a separate new type of damage (like it deals high damage you only while you touching it, but if you leave its pool it does not cause continuous damage, but applies debuff armor corrosion instead.

As for uses - batteries and accumulators, consumables that can automatically recharge player's energy (while firing for example) if it runs out, this way the always present problem about hook, and ranged weapons consuming too much energy will be resolved too and a new reason to mine and explore will be introduced.

What do you think?)

 

YOU CAN!!!!!

http://starbounder.org/Toxic_Waste
http://starbounder.org/Dangerous_Barrel

kinda

 

This thread was quiet for some time now. Someone please speak your mind about liquid resources idea: i think its rather unique one (at least Terraria doesn't have liquid resources... Well, it kinda does, but they do not require mining and are pretty much endless and thats not cool.) and I refuse to just let it sink into the Depths of Forum without anyone from the dev team at least looking throught it.

 

I honestly think powering a spaceship with coal is ridiculous! having to find liquid fuel sounds MOE BETTA