First of all, I love love love this simulator. It's taken me a couple of days to get the hang of using it, but that's okay, I enjoyed every minute of the learning process.
However, now I have got to the point of exploring for minerals and mining them and smelting them. However, there is no Iron Powder appearing in my inventory when I smelt minerals like hematite, kamacite or taenite. The Help pages indicate that these should produce Iron Powder. Does it go into a different inventory somewhere, or is it just disappearing?
Thanks,
johno
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Thx for writing us and showing your support and welcome to the world of MSP !
"Nature" has been kind to the settlers as Iron/Iron oxide is supposed to be everywhere in this dusty-orange world. I agree that the use and production of refined Iron Powder should be within their instant reach.
It may sound strange at the beginning of a sim that you don't see "Iron Powder" in your Inventory tab. Here's why.
Yes you can smelt various minerals such as goethite, hematite, magnetite, olivine, kamacite, taenite, chalcopyrite, etc, to extract Iron Powder.
However, these smelting processes needs tech level 1 and skill level 3. So your engineer needs to get promoted to level 3 to do smelting.
On the other hand, you can make Iron Powder from Iron Oxide by two other processes "carbon monoxide iron reduction" and "hydrogen iron reduction".
Since both of them are just a tech level 1 and skill level 1 process, a rookie engineer should be able to run this process in a Lander Hab, provided that a settlement has at least 50 kg of Iron Oxide to begin with as well as some hydrogen/carbon monoxide for either one of the processes to show up in the "Manu" tab.
So at the beginning, start mission to dig up regolith and then use the process "extract iron oxide from regolith" to get a lot of Iron Oxide. This way you will accumulate enough Iron Oxide to convert to Iron Powder.
Btw, a small amount (1 kg) iron powder is critical for "ethylene production"
After you get enough Iron Powder, you can manufacture iron ingot/sheet, steel ingot/sheet, etc.
Note: currently, we also have an Amount Resource called "Iron". To avoid overlapping usage, we may combine both "Iron Powder" and "Iron" into one and only one Amount Resource in the next version.
Do let us know any questions you may have in mind.
Warm regards,
Manny
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Just to clarify something, my engineer is material science level 3, and I am able to start a batch of smelting in my Habs. Also, I am getting Nickel from the smelting of some ores, just not getting Iron.
Hmm, perhaps the settler with level 3 in MatSci isn't the one doing the work on the smelting jobs.
thanks again,
johno
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note that i have iron oxide and iron powder (not iron though)
All my engineers have mat sci level 2 only. So I can't do smelting yet.
I have to go down the route of converting regolith into iron oxide and from iron oxide to iron powder. of course, regolith is very precious for making into a few other base material and there's trade and balance.
btw, it needs 50 kg of a mineral to start its smelting process. So it's good your settlers have done a bit of excursion already.
also it's possible that as soon as the Iron Powder is made available, it gets used up by being made into iron or steal ingot/sheet...
Perhaps if you check on the override box, you can have more granular control to see what's going on.
I understand that there is more than 1 process to create iron/steel. I was just asking why smelting isn't working as I expected it would. btw, the help pages in the simulator say that matsci level 2 is enough for smelting, and the tooltip that pops up over a kamacite smelting job says it requires level 2 as well.
I'm just going to assume that iron powder production is bugged and I will revert to producing iron from regolith even though it is a much slower process and requires much more raw material. I would prefer to use the regolith for gypsum/cement/mortar production instead.
Thanks for the screenshot and the input.
johno
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Note: this issue was filed as ticket #54 https://sourceforge.net/p/mars-sim/tickets/54/ and it was fixed in build 3219 on 2015-02-24. Thanks Johno and MusicKiller for documenting their tests and findings. Manny
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Hi there,
First of all, I love love love this simulator. It's taken me a couple of days to get the hang of using it, but that's okay, I enjoyed every minute of the learning process.
However, now I have got to the point of exploring for minerals and mining them and smelting them. However, there is no Iron Powder appearing in my inventory when I smelt minerals like hematite, kamacite or taenite. The Help pages indicate that these should produce Iron Powder. Does it go into a different inventory somewhere, or is it just disappearing?
Thanks,
johno
Hi John,
Thx for writing us and showing your support and welcome to the world of MSP !
"Nature" has been kind to the settlers as Iron/Iron oxide is supposed to be everywhere in this dusty-orange world. I agree that the use and production of refined Iron Powder should be within their instant reach.
It may sound strange at the beginning of a sim that you don't see "Iron Powder" in your Inventory tab. Here's why.
Yes you can smelt various minerals such as goethite, hematite, magnetite, olivine, kamacite, taenite, chalcopyrite, etc, to extract Iron Powder.
However, these smelting processes needs tech level 1 and skill level 3. So your engineer needs to get promoted to level 3 to do smelting.
On the other hand, you can make Iron Powder from Iron Oxide by two other processes "carbon monoxide iron reduction" and "hydrogen iron reduction".
Since both of them are just a tech level 1 and skill level 1 process, a rookie engineer should be able to run this process in a Lander Hab, provided that a settlement has at least 50 kg of Iron Oxide to begin with as well as some hydrogen/carbon monoxide for either one of the processes to show up in the "Manu" tab.
So at the beginning, start mission to dig up regolith and then use the process "extract iron oxide from regolith" to get a lot of Iron Oxide. This way you will accumulate enough Iron Oxide to convert to Iron Powder.
Btw, a small amount (1 kg) iron powder is critical for "ethylene production"
After you get enough Iron Powder, you can manufacture iron ingot/sheet, steel ingot/sheet, etc.
Note: currently, we also have an Amount Resource called "Iron". To avoid overlapping usage, we may combine both "Iron Powder" and "Iron" into one and only one Amount Resource in the next version.
Do let us know any questions you may have in mind.
Warm regards,
Manny
Thank you so much for the prompt reply Manny.
Just to clarify something, my engineer is material science level 3, and I am able to start a batch of smelting in my Habs. Also, I am getting Nickel from the smelting of some ores, just not getting Iron.
Hmm, perhaps the settler with level 3 in MatSci isn't the one doing the work on the smelting jobs.
thanks again,
johno
Pls see attached pic.
note that i have iron oxide and iron powder (not iron though)
All my engineers have mat sci level 2 only. So I can't do smelting yet.
I have to go down the route of converting regolith into iron oxide and from iron oxide to iron powder. of course, regolith is very precious for making into a few other base material and there's trade and balance.
btw, it needs 50 kg of a mineral to start its smelting process. So it's good your settlers have done a bit of excursion already.
also it's possible that as soon as the Iron Powder is made available, it gets used up by being made into iron or steal ingot/sheet...
Perhaps if you check on the override box, you can have more granular control to see what's going on.
Thanks again Manny,
I understand that there is more than 1 process to create iron/steel. I was just asking why smelting isn't working as I expected it would. btw, the help pages in the simulator say that matsci level 2 is enough for smelting, and the tooltip that pops up over a kamacite smelting job says it requires level 2 as well.
I'm just going to assume that iron powder production is bugged and I will revert to producing iron from regolith even though it is a much slower process and requires much more raw material. I would prefer to use the regolith for gypsum/cement/mortar production instead.
Thanks for the screenshot and the input.
johno
Okay,
So I ran a couple of batches of reducing iron oxide with hydrogen. My iron oxide and hydrogen disappeared but no iron or iron powder appeared.
It's a shame this isn't working. If there's anything I can do to help submit a proper bug report, can someone please let me know.
thanks,
johno
Hi Johno,
Thx much for being thorough. You are right about smelting requiring only mat sci skill level 2, not level 3.
Do by all means please create a ticket for us so that we can troubleshoot follow through. Here is the link: https://sourceforge.net/p/mars-sim/tickets/new/
We'll need it to replicate the circumstances so that we can track down the culprit as to why it's not producing iron powder and in what cases.
Appreciate much for your enthusiasm! We'll nail that down.
-Manny
Last edit: manny kung 2015-02-24
Note: this issue was filed as ticket #54 https://sourceforge.net/p/mars-sim/tickets/54/ and it was fixed in build 3219 on 2015-02-24. Thanks Johno and MusicKiller for documenting their tests and findings. Manny