Survival Kit tested

When I came back to this game, I foundsome new blocks. One of them was the survival kit. After figuring outhow it worked, I wanted to test it in a game.

I noticed that most of the respawnships were missing, so I decided to make one of my own. This ship wasgoing to be a something of an escape pod. If you had to make yourescape in one of these, could you survive? Would the survival kit beenough to make a new base?

Because you could make survival kits onsmall grids, I started building small ships. After going through manyversions, the one I would use for this test was a ship with a normalcockpit, survival kit, O2/H2 generator, a beacon, a battery, andconnector. The ship would use ion thrusters. I didn't want a largehydrogen tank on my small ship. The batteries were fully charged, andthe cockpit was filled with oxygen. I put some basic tools on theship, just in case you get spawned into a game without some.

I started a lone survivor map as ithad the conditions I wanted. I used some admin tools to spawn in myship, and then off I went.

My first goal was to find some ice. Ididn't know how long the oxygen and hydrogen was going to last. Idon't have much first hand experience with this topic. I expectedstone to be everywhere. I found some ice on the second asteroid Ivisited. Despite the fact I would need it at some point, I decided tokeep the O2/H2 generator offline. I wanted to see how long I wouldlast without them. I wanted to know if I should include some bottlesor other changes on my ship design.

The next thing I did was shovel somestone into my survival kit. This quickly became tedious, so I triedto build a drill on my ship. This didn't work well because I had noability to build large steel tubes. Without it, I couldn't finish mydrill.

The solution to my problem was to builda basic assembler. I needed plenty of power for this. There was areason I put a connector on my ship; once I connect my ship'sconnector to my base's connector, my ship's battery could supply thepower needed to run the basic assembler.

This didn't work. It turns out that Ineeded small steel tubes to build the connector, which my survivalkit can't make. I couldn't power my basic assembler with my ship'sbattery. I therefore needed to build enough solar panels to providethe power I needed. Once I got my basic assembler online, I was ableto finish building the connector and my ship's drill.

I should have built a battery for mystation next, followed by a basic refinery. The battery was needed tostore power and provide a high power output. It turns out that abasic assembler does not work without enough power. I couldn't makeit run slower or anything like that to reduce power demands. As forthe basic refinery, it could refine stone faster than my survivalkit. I didn't know that at the time (hence another reason to do thesetests), so I continued to rely on my survival kit for raw materials.

Instead, I was too concerned that Iwould run out of oxygen, so I started building a few oxygen farms andan oxygen tank. The farms needed plenty of bullet proof glass, whichin turn needed a lot of silicon. Refining stone does not yield muchsilicon, about 2 kg per 500 kg of stone, so it took a while tobring one oxygen farm online. The oxygen farm needed power to work(little surprise), but it was enough to cause my basic assembler tonot work. I had to turn off my oxygen farm to operate my basicassembler.

I then turned my attention to buildinga battery. It was built with little hassle. I then tried building asmall cargo container on my station, but I couldn't because I needsome cobalt for the metal grids. I had to use my connector forstorage. Next, I built a basic refinery, then a conveyor block toconnect my blocks to the connector. With everything hooked up, Icould collect stone with my ship, connect to the station, have therefinery pull stone from my ship and refine it, then my assemblercould make things using the raw materials. It was at this time Ifound out that my basic refinery was faster than my survival kit, soI cancelled all refining orders in my survival ship.

With a basic refinery and basicassembler built, and some power to make them function, I knew I had succeeded with my goal. Building a refinery and assembler was the nextlogical step, with adding some more solar panels as a secondaryobjective. I would need some cobalt to the refinery and assembler,but that was outside my scenario. I had power so I wouldn't freezeand oxygen so I wouldn't suffocate.

I took a step back to evaluate mycurrent state. I had deliberately kept my O2H2 generator offline tosee how much oxygen and hydrogen I would need. I was running low onhydrogen but I was not empty. I could continue to do more work flyingaround with a welder. A spare hydrogen bottle would be a nice thingto have, but it was not needed. I could go so far as to place a shipwelder to my ship, make a few connections, then I wouldn't have toget out of my ship any more. However, oxygen wasn't a problem. Enoughso that I wonder if I was experiencing a bug. The cockpit made nosign that its supply of oxygen was ever getting low.

My battery on my survival ship lastedthe whole time. It was less than 25% when I was finished. Something Icould have done was put some solar panels on my ship. Back when Istill relied on my survival kit to produce raw materials, there weremany moments where I had to sit around doing nothing. My drill workedfaster than my survival kit. During those idle moments, I could havebeen using solar panels to charge my ship's battery.

I found that when I filled my ship tothe brim with stone, that the survival kit would hold on to the stonethat was stuffed into it. The basic refinery would not touch it.