Venus

Venus

Gravity	-8.87 m/s2 ≡ 90 % Earth
Solar Energy	100 % Earth
Solar Inclination	0°
Atmosphere
Temperature	737 K - 737 K
Pressure	250 kPa
Carbon Dioxide	93 %
Nitrogen	7 %
Pollutants	<0.1 %

Description

Venus has an extreme atmosphere as its main challenge. High pressure of 250 KPa (2.5 times that of Earth's standard) at roughly +460 °C, it contains mostly Carbon Dioxide with some Nitrogen and a small amount of Pollutants. Extreme temperatures persist through day and night, and prevents the containment of mineable ice, therefore Venus has none. Surviving on Venus is a race against ever-present heat, that has to be isolated or eliminated using the various atmospheric devices. Nonetheless, having a thick atmosphere with occassional storms, being closer to the Sun than Earth, and featuring ample deposits of Coal, Venus makes Wind Turbines, Solar Panels, and Solid Fuel Generator equally effective sources of power, which makes it readily abundant.

Just like with Vulcan, Stationeers starting on Venus are provided with a full Hardsuit kit in order to survive the irregular atmosphere, and most tools are of Mark 2 model. The gas-fed Welder cannot be safely used in Venus's environment and thus replaced by an Arc Welder version. Similarly, the lack of access to frozen gases and water is compensated by a minimal set of trading equipment - Small Satellite Dish kit, Computer kit with Motherboard (Communications) included, Vending Machine kit, 10x Kit (Landing Pad) with Steel Sheets for building and powering a small (3x3) landing pad, as well as additional Iron Frames and Cables.

Standard construction package is modified to allow for making a bivalent airlock using the Circuitboard (Advanced Airlock) and two Active Vents. No farming seeds are included on the Landing Pod, but a more extensive package of preserved food and a full portable liquid tank of clean water are provided instead to last longer until self-sufficiency can be reached.

Early Challenges

• Immediately on arrival, the external heat will begin to bleed into the suit, which will be isolated by AC into the waste tank. Waste tank's Gas Canister will fill within 5-10 minutes using the suit's oxygen supply. Essentially, more Oxygen will be spent on capturing the waste heat, than on actually breathing it. Since Venus has no mineable ice to replenish oxygen, simply venting waste tank is not advisable and should be only done as last resort, if the delay threatens you taking lethal lung damage. Immediately reducing the Hardsuit's target pressure to ~30 KPa and increasing target temperature to ~30C will help minimize the convection rate between atmosphere and the helmet's head space, thus making the external heat more manageable.

• You are advised to quickly grab the building components from landing pod and assemble a standard airlock room as soon as possible. Install the Power Controller unit, cable it to both Active Vents inside the airlock, and attach all available gas pipes to them - 16-18 pipes to vent leading outside, and last 2-4 pipes leading inside. Use the first vent to evacuate atmosphere from the airlock, then vent the waste tank into vacuum and use the second vent to store its contents inside the pipes. You should be able to repeat this process at least twice again before pipes will become overpressurized. You can further extend the lifetime of this setup by quickly removing external pipes inward-out, which will empty the collected pipes, and installing them again, although some pipe segment can become damaged in the process.

• During the time allocated by the airlock, setup the Solid Fuel Generator, a Solar Panel, Arc Furnace, and Autolathe. Mine and smelt enough Iron, Copper and Gold ores for printing the Hydraulic Pipe Bender. While it is being produced, expand from the airlock using Iron Frames to create a living room. Use Pipe Bender to produce two Passive Vents, and attach them to the pipes, so that atmospheric gas could be released back outside, and stored waste gas would be let loose into the living room. Make sure the room is completely vented through the exterior vent before attaching internal passive vent. You will have to choose whether you will keep production machinery in the room for increased gain of waste heat and needed interior space, or keeping all of them outside, where you will spend Oxygen faster while feeding and operating them.

• Detach and carry the Portable Oxygen Tank from the Pod into the living room. Vent your Hardsuit Jetpack Nitrogen tank into the room (you're better off using the waste tank as jet fuel if needed), then add some oxygen from the Portable Tank up to a pressure of ~30 KPa - together with the waste gas, this will create a comfortable, breathable atmosphere, where you now can eat, drink, replenish oxygen tank and release waste tank to preserve the oxygen. At this point, you'd be able to take a respite and set up the next goals. Add storage solutions, move the remaining supplies to appropriate places, install the available devices to automate the airlock and recharge batteries, unpack the Portable Air Conditioner to maintain temperature, and so on.

Main Game Objectives

• Eventually, Portable Oxygen Tank will lose pressure, making it hard to replenish your suit's oxygen canisters by just plugging them into it. You'd also have to ocassionally refill the water bottles given to you from the Portable Liquid Tank. A single Portables Connector linked to a Water Bottle Filler and a Gas Tank Storage via appropriate pipes can accomodate both needs interchangeably, as the Connector handles liquids and gases separately. Make sure to power the Bottle Filler with cables, and have a powered Pressure Regulator leading into Tank Storage to pressurize the Oxygen into the canister to 10,000 KPa.

• Like on Vulcan, you will be required to establish a Trading infrastructure early, in order to obtain fuel for the Furnace. Contacting trader vessels takes time, therefore it is recommended to set up the Computer with Communications Motherboard in the living room. In addition to the provided kits, you'd want to install a control system for the Small Satellite Dish using simple Logic devices (given the initial lack of Steel to print the Integrated Circuit (IC10) chip). Purchase what you deem useful and don't miss the chance to sell anything that you can produce from pure metal ingots if the opportunity arises. You will be provided with additional funds on a Credit Card together with the kits.

• Buying seeds from certain Traders would allow you to grow plants for food, which also will convert Carbon Dioxide back into Oxygen (avoid Mushrooms though, as they also breath Oxygen). This will also require you to expand the living room, so make sure you vent out the room into pipes (add a Pipe Valve before the Passive Vent to keep it from releasing it back inside) before removing Iron Frames, as the completed Frames will contain a volume of hot exterior gas captured when they were welded shut.

• While it is technically possible to set up the Recycler and the Centrifuge to extract little Steel from some starting items, it is greatly more plausible to construct an operational Furnace and trade for Fuel. You can seek either Welding Fuel canisters, Oxygen and Volatile canisters, or liquid oxygen and volatile bottles. Welding Fuel comes as prepared mixture, however it is rare (if at all possible) to buy more than one such canister from a single trader, and one such canister won't provide enough temperature to smelt Steel. Pure gas canisters are optimal, and would require a basic setup for attaching canisters to pipes leading into a Gas Mixer feeding the Furnace. Liquid bottles can work as well, however they come cryogenically-sealed and has to be kept idle to thaw - plugging bottles into a Liquid Bottle Storage as-is will cause them to rapidly depressurize, and the contained liquids to freeze, causing an immediate pipe rupture and loss of the contents. Gaining Steel is one of the most important milestones to gain access to many important machines and devices, which is relatively trivial on most other planets.

• Station on Venus inevitably requires a more advanced cooling solution to be prepared before the Portable Air Conditioner exhausts its functionality. As with other starting locations, you have multiple solutions for dealing with excess heat - Dumping the waste gases, convecting heat, or radiating it into the vacuum environment. Dumping requires an excess of otherwise useless gas, which absorbs heat and then is vented into the atmosphere - this however is problematic on Venus, as no gas is readily available other than one that is already heated beyond function. As an option, you can purchase Pollutants from a trader (which will also pay you for doing so) and use it as a dumping agent due to its high specific heat capacity - this will require a Landing Pad with Atmospheric modules attached. Convection into the atmosphere would require a strong chain of Air Conditioners, which will produce progressively hotter gas, until it is heated above atmospheric temperature, which will then be exposed to the outside through any kind of convecting Radiators. On top of a substantial power upkeep, this solution requires essential knowledge about optimizing the work of Atmospheric device. Finally, radiating the heat requires a completely isolated vacuum chamber, where a long pipe with impressive numbers of Pipe Radiators is compacted to allow the contained gas to radiate excess heat as passive EM radiation. This solution requires no power upkeep on top of pumping the gas into the pipe, but has massive upfront cost and is relatively slow.

Secondary Notes

1. Nitrogen Tank, which was suggested to be vented into the living space, can be used as secondary waste tank to double your time for external operations.
2. Building the station into the hill or underground can allow you to expand the living space simply by mining the ground, as long as you won't inadvertedly breach that space to the outside. Don't forget to Quicksave.
3. Iron Walls are plactically useless as such, as they cannot withstand the pressure differential, but can be used as catwalk panels or mounting surfaces where using Frames is unnecessary.
4. Due to high atmospheric pressure, regular Pipes will readily convect heat into themselves and out to living spaces. Minimize exterior-interior crossfeed before switching to Insulated analogues.
5. Once exhausted, Oxygen Tank can be reused as a storage medium for heated waste gas due to its good insulation and pressure capacity, until more advanced cooling and storing solutions are available.
6. Heat of the atmosphere can be used for an immediate production of Electrum and Solder alloys. Former can be smelted with just sufficient pressure pumped into the Furnace, while latter will need some cooling using the filtered and cooled waste gases (such as excess Carbon Dioxide). You can also smelt Copper, Gold, and Silver, or pre-process other ores to remove gases from them for more efficient smelting, on demand and free of charge.
7. Even Solar Panel(Basic) are very reliable sources of power. Always remember to dismantle and re-deploy them to restore their integrity and efficiency after a dust storm.

Real Venus

See Real Venus Save Venus has 9.1 MPa of Atmosphere at 460 °C.

The Hardsuit can survive more than 10 MPa of pressure, this file is only here as a reference for proof, even if the save is impossible.

Rules imposed by Engine:

• Items and Machines, including Power Controllers and Active Vents will degrade quickly outside, making a let's play impossible.
• It takes Eons to depressurize.
• Real Venus would require at the very least Blast Doors and all walls will have to be made with Iron or Steel Frames.
• Every voxel, above or below has 9MPa of gas trapped in it, you cannot dig a vacuum-base out without experiencing a blow-out, destroying the hardsuit.

Starting Locations

See Also

• Worlds - Venus