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NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Sprinkler kinda worth

So I did the rundown on sprinklers kinda the way I did for plows. Although the initial cost of making and expanding a sprinkler system is quite steep, the operating costs are very low, just 0.0666 kero per run:

1÷24+0.025 = 0.0666

The bowl of water costs 0.025 kero to make in a diesel well, and the sprinkler takes 1/24th of a kero to run. To be worthwhile the minimum length a sprinkler system must be to pay off the operating cost is:

(1÷24+0.025)÷0.025=2.666

So for just 10 steel, an engine and a bit of work you can lay the foundation for a future sprinkler system, without worrying about it wasting water on the crops it works. Once it's built it'll never waste water compared to NOT using it. This would serve as a good learning tool for new players to figure out how to operate it, and shape the layout of the farm over time. It'll never pay off the cost of even the sprinkler pipes though:

3 steel = 0.6 kero
Piston blank = 0.04166 kero (water)
2 Rods = 0.08333 kero (water)
2 pipes = 0.0625 kero (water)
Precision piston = 0.03125 kero (water)
Steel valve = 0.03125 kero (water)
Nozzle body = 0.03125 kero (water)

Total: 0.85

This breakdown shows the cost of one sprinkler segment, assuming you get 6 operations out of each "hot" process, and 8 operations out of each "cold" process. The "hot" processes are the piston blanks and rods which require hot steel. These don't stack and are trickier to handle than "cold" processes that just take normal steel. I think 6-8 is a fair allotment, but it doesn't make up much of the cost, as steel takes a bunch of kero.

Each sprinkler segment makes 1 bowl of water per operation, so the break even point is as follows:

0.85÷0.025=34

That's a lot! Sprinklers take generations to pay themselves off, but unlike plows they work for gooseberries and milkweed, so it's a realistic number of runs. That's not counting the cost of operation:

(X*0.85)÷((X-2.666)*0.0025)

simplified:

34X÷(X-2.666)

Here we have arrived at the profit per run for a given length of X. The curve is fairly sharp, flattening out at around lengths of 15 to slowly approach the limit of 34. It's a promising curve until we take into account the cost of the engine:

((X*0.85)+5.17)÷((X-2.666)*0.025)

Now the curve has flattened quite a bit. The dropoff in cost is slow and we'll never get to that limit of 34. That's what we're left with though. There's nothing more to do really besides tweak the cost of the engine or maybe the cost of the pipes by adjusting how many operations you get out of each newcomen firing, or perhaps account for tool use. I think this is good enough though, so I've made a graph:

Some notes:

Basically don't purpose-build an engine for sprinklers unless you really, REALLY have nothing better to do. It might just kill your society. Instead go look for a spare engine from dead towns. If you can find one, hell yeah build it.

Never plant gooseberries on both sides of a sprinkler pipe, as you'll restrict your options for watering if the gooseberries are harvested unevenly, which is inevitable.

Pipe bends to redirect flow are inefficient and should be minimized. Each U-turn takes 4-5 steel, but the first U-turn compresses the length of the farm much more than a second or a third. If the sprinkler pump is on one end of the farm, the U-bend on the opposite and points of interest like the well, roads or buildings are at the midpoint of the sprinkler length then pathing can be minimized without excessive U-bends. Consider extending the opposite end of a sprinkler instead of bending it around, or move the first bend further out before adding a second bend.

Last edited by NoTruePunk (2020-10-22 15:45:27)

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

The "hot" processes are the piston blanks and rods which require hot steel. These don't stack and are trickier to handle than "cold" processes that just take normal steel.

I think piston blanks and steel rods stack these days, and that's what I recall seeing after some of the stacking updates.  They didn't use to though.  It's getting harder and harder to find a veteran I think who hasn't made this sort of mistake at one point in time I think.  For example, Tarr recently said on the discord that sandals didn't decay.  Though, they had gotten changed to decaying, if I recall correctly, this past April.

I might be wrong on the above easily, or misunderstood your intended meaning, of course.

---

Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

The "hot" processes are the piston blanks and rods which require hot steel. These don't stack and are trickier to handle than "cold" processes that just take normal steel.

I think piston blanks and steel rods stack these days, and that's what I recall seeing after some of the stacking updates.  They didn't use to though.  It's getting harder and harder to find a veteran I think who hasn't made this sort of mistake at one point in time I think.  For example, Tarr recently said on the discord that sandals didn't decay.  Though, they had gotten changed to decaying, if I recall correctly, this past April.

I might be wrong on the above easily, or misunderstood your intended meaning, of course.

The blanks and rods do stack, but not while they're hot. That's what's hard about it, the newcomen process is time sensitive and you've got to have the forge running too. When I prep for this I usually clear out as many empty tiles around the forge that I think I'll need, then fire the forge right before the newcomen, since the newcomen has a shorter run time.

Cogito

Member

Registered: 2020-03-09

Posts: 192

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

The "hot" processes are the piston blanks and rods which require hot steel. These don't stack and are trickier to handle than "cold" processes that just take normal steel.

I think piston blanks and steel rods stack these days, and that's what I recall seeing after some of the stacking updates.  They didn't use to though.  It's getting harder and harder to find a veteran I think who hasn't made this sort of mistake at one point in time I think.  For example, Tarr recently said on the discord that sandals didn't decay.  Though, they had gotten changed to decaying, if I recall correctly, this past April.

I might be wrong on the above easily, or misunderstood your intended meaning, of course.

The blanks and rods do stack, but not while they're hot. That's what's hard about it, the newcomen process is time sensitive and you've got to have the forge running too. When I prep for this I usually clear out as many empty tiles around the forge that I think I'll need, then fire the forge right before the newcomen, since the newcomen has a shorter run time.

You should test that, because I think they stack hot if they stack cold (can't recall off the top of my head about these).

NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

oh shit

https://onetech.info/4128-Stack-of-Hot-Steel-Rods

Spoonwood

Member

Registered: 2019-02-06

Posts: 4,369

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

oh shit

https://onetech.info/4128-Stack-of-Hot-Steel-Rods

They didn't use to stack when hot.  Hence, your source of confusion, I think.

---

Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

I've gotta get heuwt to let me click through again with X and try this.

NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

I'm going to remake the graph for if the iron is free. Building might be viable for families with 3-4 iron mines, and begging for or finding an engine is possible. The kero equivalence still holds no matter what though! Every iron you use pre-diesel brings the mine one step closer to collapsing.

NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

Each mine that a fam gets generates on average 70 kero-free iron to use. Assuming villages need 140 of their starting iron for basic needs then 3-mine towns can basically get a "free" sprinkler system that's 17 pipes long. Pretty good. The mythical 4-mine town can afford 40 pipes and still have the same amount of iron for other stuff as a 2-mine town.

((x*0.85)/((x-2.666)*0.025))-6.384
((x*0.85)/((x-2.666)*0.025))-34.85

Basically a sprinkler system will never impact your kero budget in a 4-mine town. Build it like, yesterday. A 3-mine town is still a bit of an investment, but more affordable. If your town only has 1-2 mines then you're F*cked and need to import iron, lots of kero and materials.

Last edited by NoTruePunk (2020-10-20 04:25:57)

Cogito

Member

Registered: 2020-03-09

Posts: 192

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

I like your analyses, and they are similar to work I've done before (posted in discord from memory), but I'd caution about the conclusions you draw.

Any comparison of strategies needs a basis on which to compare them; in OHOL strategies are typically compared based on how much water they use, for the same outcome. Kerosene cost can be used the same way, as can iron cost.

I think this is generally a good way to compare strategies, but it breaks down in a few ways that are important.

The key factor to a family's survival is a stable supply of all key resources: babies, food, water, and iron. If any of these four resources runs out the family is either dead or about to die unless drastic action is taken.

A food source that uses less water is good, but is useless if it can't feed the entire family. It is also useless if it exhausts the family's entire supply of iron.

The amount of the key resources available to a family fluctuates naturally over time, due to players online, exhaustion of wells and mines, and creation of technology that unlocks more resources like kerosene.

The value of investing in infrastructure is that it allows the family to weather (or avoid completely) shortages of resources.

If I have a modest sprinkler system set up, say 9 sprinklers, I only need 1 bowl of water, 2/24 kerosene, and some seeds to produce a huge amount of food - and I can do it all by myself in a matter of minutes.

This is the value of the sprinkler system.

If we are low on water, I can produce a lot of food until we manage to secure more water. If we are low on players, I can single-handedly produce a lot of food to get us through till more people are online. If we are low on iron, I can avoid using tools to grow food.

The investment cost is high, but the marginal cost to run the infrastructure is low - and this is extremely valuable.

It's hard to compare strategies directly on these factors, but I think as a start it is uesful to call-out the marginal costs vs the initial fixed costs, and to consider how the strategy responds if any key resource is restricted. Different strategies will be optimal in different situations.

I'd also like to point out that the diesel engines are not consumed, so it's even harder to account for their cost. Once you've used the sprinkler 24 times it becomes a normal diesel engine again. You still would rather have three engines available (one general purpose, one plough, one sprinkler) but if you didn't you can get the engine back if needed.

NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

I like your analyses, and they are similar to work I've done before (posted in discord from memory), but I'd caution about the conclusions you draw.

Thanks

If I have a modest sprinkler system set up, say 9 sprinklers, I only need 1 bowl of water, 2/24 kerosene, and some seeds to produce a huge amount of food - and I can do it all by myself in a matter of minutes.

This is the value of the sprinkler system.

If we are low on water, I can produce a lot of food until we manage to secure more water. If we are low on players, I can single-handedly produce a lot of food to get us through till more people are online. If we are low on iron, I can avoid using tools to grow food.

The investment cost is high, but the marginal cost to run the infrastructure is low - and this is extremely valuable.

I'm sorry, the initial cost isn't just "high" it's EXTREMELY high. From scratch if you have 0 iron and just the tools needed to mine and fabricate you'd need just over 20 doses of kero to make a sprinkler system that's 17 pipes long. That's more than 3 tanks of kero. That's 80 buckets of water worth of kero. That's 20 straight hours of running a truck, or 100 iron mined.

When you run the sprinkler you're not generating resources, you're effectively just recouperating the cost of building it. Up until the point it pays itself off you're just converting resources and labor spent in the past to create food now. If it's way past the late game then you're turning kero used to mine and manufacture the sprinkler into food. If it's still midgame then you're likely still running on the starter eve manual mined iron, which is good if they had 3 or 4 mines. Whether you're converting steel into food or kero into food it's still just a conversion. The kero runs out. The starter steel runs out. Before the sprinkler pays itself off those resources would have been better spent making food directly.

Yes it runs for dirt cheap but building the damn thing is a massive resource sink. The only way it's justafiable is if there's a big imballance in the types of resources you have avaliable or if your society is stable enough to live the days and days it'll take to pay off. That's why I did a comparison based on early manual mining. In the early stages of a village there's an abundance of iron and a scarcity of water and kero. Iron going towards such a big project is unlikely to impact the village's kero budget for mining later on because it's so early, but only if they survive that long and only if they really do have a lot of iron. So if they somehow get their hands on a tank of kero then a long sprinkler system is a good use for it, often better than pumping, though they'll still have to do some of that too.

And no, I don't know how to account for a difference in labor costs. I'm sure a farmer equipped with a sprinkler works more efficently than one without, even if you don't count the efficency of the sprinkler itself. But that's really too complicated and really abstract and amorphous to even pretend to quantify. It might be just the opposite for all I know, or only explainable due to some differences between the types of farmers who use sprinklers and those who don't. Who knows.

Last edited by NoTruePunk (2020-10-21 17:17:31)

Gogo

Banned

Registered: 2019-10-11

Posts: 589

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

I don't like such analysis, because you can just bring water from ponds which I sometimes did when using newcomen to make pipes + nozzles. Such analysis sounds like computer is playing OHOL. xD Second, real issue with sprinkler is that people don't replace old farm with sprinkler farm, so they still waste water in old way.

NoTruePunk

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 321

Re: Sprinkler kinda worth

I don't like such analysis, because you can just bring water from ponds which I sometimes did when using newcomen to make pipes + nozzles. Such analysis sounds like computer is playing OHOL. xD Second, real issue with sprinkler is that people don't replace old farm with sprinkler farm, so they still waste water in old way.

Importing resources doesn't count. Just import kero if you're going to import. That'll get you iron or water or run machines.

I think it's OK to do spots of certain things you need manually farmed on occasion. It's just really hard to remove hardened rows. If it's a full row then you've got to plant, water, wait for it to grow, harvest, wait for debris to despawn and then dig the hardened row into flat ground. Being able to pick soil back up off a shallow tilled row and into a bowl might help. Reversible recipes are always nice to have.