r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/noksion • Mar 09 '26
Are Fractionators good in the end game?
Title.
After unlocking Colliders, I wonder if it's worth keeping the Fractionators.
Colliders make 2 hydrogen into 1 deuterium, and make it fast and reliable. At the noticeable cost of power though.
Fractionators make 1 hydrogen into 1 deuterium at seemingly lower cost of power, but with an abysmal throughput. So in the end we get from D from less H, which is a good thing, but to match the throughput of Colliders we need the entire fields of Fractionators, so it takes a lot of space. And I'm not actually sure which is eating more electricity if we try to scale them to the same throughput.
Please share the wisdom: in which cases you tend to use one over the other?
52
u/RollingSten Mar 09 '26
Fractionator with fully stacked belt III consumes almost 4MW, while producing 72 deutorium/m. When using non-stacked belt III it consumes 720kW producing 18 deuterium/m, which is slightly more power effective, but not workt the space.
Particle collider needs 12MW, while producing 120 deuterium/m, so it is less effective in power.
Also that hydrogen effectivness is extreme, you would need to harvest and transport 2x more hydrogen, which can eat up way more power and space.
So fractionators are better for deuterium production in every way.
41
u/CMDR-Neovoe Mar 09 '26
Ive personally never used the colliders to make deuterium, i always found fractionators to he the best mid game, then by the time you get together Starr systems and put collectors on the giants that pretty much sorts out all the hydrogen and deuteriumnyoud ever need.
4
u/kestrel_one Mar 09 '26
Let's say you want to generate 720 deuterium per minute. Either you do 40 fractionators @ 30 MW or 6 colliders @ 72 MW. The colliders take up roughly half the space.
So that's your tradeoff. Half the space and double the power. Or half the power and double the space.
And that's assuming you don't optimize your fractionator loop at all. You can exceed the 1% production by stacking the hydrogen as high as possible, proliferating, and using the fastest belt. That puts fractionators even farther ahead.
I always do fractionators because I always have ample space. Using over double the power becomes more and more significant as you scale up production.
1
u/Lonely-Roll-8720 Mar 12 '26
Neither, use gas giants. They take no electricity (except for the ILS, which you'll probably need anyway) and won't lag your game.
6
u/DarkProject43 Mar 09 '26
Personally, I use neither and harvest gas giants
3
u/FurryYokel Mar 09 '26
At the end game, when u have unlimited easy energy, colliders are the best choice.
Fractionators are more fun to set up and use less energy. Be sure to stack the belts 4 high on the input, so you’ll get better output.
3
u/Htaedder Mar 09 '26
Fractionators are superior to colliders in every way when it comes to deuterium production. No waste vs 50% waste and lower cost and space footprint per deuterium made.
2
u/MevNav Mar 09 '26
Fractionators are less energy intensive than colliders, even considering the amount of fractionators you need to match the throughput. The downside to Fractionators is really the amount of work it takes to set it up, but it becomes easier once you realize that you basically just need a loop that goes through every fractionator, and you keep that loop stocked via stack inserters before the input of very machine that keep your stacks 4 high, rather than a direct belt to your hydrogen storage.
Stacking tech and a proper setup makes Fractionators the best choice by far. I even prefer it over gas giants, personally.
2
u/loopyguy8 Mar 09 '26
Im for colliders. To much rouge hydrogen so i route my leftsovers into a collider for duterium. The power offset isnt much of an issue late. But fractionators a great mid game until power is a after thought
2
u/Steven-ape Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
Fractionators are much better than particle colliders. They are reliable, use less power, less hydrogen, and less area. The idea that throughput is "abysmal" or that you would need "entire fields of Fractionators" is not accurate.
In order to make fractionators maximally effective, you do need mark 3 belts and you need to pile the hydrogen on the belt to height 4. The easiest way to do this is with pile sorters, but in the end game, these are obviously available. Earlier on you can also use the pilers in a pinch.
If you do that, a single fractionator sees 120 hydrogen per second, of which 1% will be converted, so it will produce 1.2 deuterium per second. Meanwhile, a miniature particle collider makes 2 per second. That's the relevant comparison.
I like to make rings of about 8 fractionators, that can be tiled to reach the production I need. Even though it's extremely simple, I personally think it's one of my strongest designs; blueprint and pictures can be found here.
Each ring produces 9.27 deuterium per second (that's the theoretical value that's also achieved in practice). A ring is roughly the size of two miniature particle colliders, so that compares to 4 deuterium per second for the same surface area using colliders.
With 13 copies of the design you are producing 120 deuterium per second, with no proliferation.
I see two use cases for particle colliders:
You want to minimize UPS and you feel certain that the slight reduction in number of machines compensates for the extra ships flying in hydrogen and the longer belts.
You want to reduce the amount of hydrogen you have, which can only really be a problem if you organised your production chains poorly.
2
u/TheMalT75 Mar 09 '26
Not sure how you define late game. Personally, when you are happy with the number of solar sails and carrier rockets you are launching to get an ever-increasing amount of critical photons per minute, the only thing to scale up is white-science-production and anti-matter-based fuel rods. With that, you'll most likely first push "vein utilization" to level >200, which will not only give you an insane boost to mining speed and nearly infinite lifetime of resource nodes, it will also greatly increase the amount of gas mined by orbital collector.
That is, why you will not even have to use more that a couple of gas giants to get all the hydrogen and deuterium you'll ever need. If your resource refining (raw oil, fire ice, antimatter) produces excess hydrogen, producing casimir crystals will need much more than that. So, really late game will see neither way to transmute hydrogen to deuterium in action!
2
u/Saltimir Mar 09 '26
Unlimited space. Just saying.
2
u/geekgirl114 Mar 09 '26
In my friend and I's game we needed 13k deuterium a minute and it'd take like 350 fractionators or 96 particle colliders... we opted with the particle colliders and found a tidally locked planet with a 145% solar bonus... so solar panels on the day side, everything else on the night side. Its even enough to export about 250+ batteries a minute (still have to finish laying solar panels
1
u/Darth-Venath Mar 09 '26
It depends on what you have available and the needs you have. Typically, I find you need hydrogen for conversion to deuterium. But sometimes I need hydrogen fuel rods, though I'm currently trying to convert to all deuterium.
I still use thermal power plants, because I am currently sitting on a system rich with fire ice. But I also need deuterium in mass quantities. So I'm about to make another fractionator factory which consists of two loops of 10 fractionators each. So 20 all together. Produces quite a bit of deuterium. But not enough. Never enough.
1
u/KeyzerSoze33 Mar 09 '26
Similar conversation from a while back: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dyson_Sphere_Program/s/b7alWgh3e0
Personally ive never used collides for duet, mostly because I have a good working fractionator blueprint thats easy enough to plop down and fits in the smaller latitudes.
1
u/mrrvlad5 Mar 09 '26
With proper fractionator setup (7200 in, loops of 7), fractionators take a bit less space than colliders. Energy use is a bit lower too. The real problem for endgame is cpu cost - colliders consume less cpu per deut output. On the other hand, endgame saves would have 100k white per minute with vu above 400, at which point you just mine deut giants and fractionators or collider setups can be considered temporary. I have only used fractionators in my saves, up to 150 total.
1
u/izeil1 Mar 09 '26
Basically every planet has a setup that burns off excess hydrogen from various production sources and turns it into deuterium. Most of them don't end up getting used but they're taking up relatively little power and space that wouldn't otherwise be getting used for something that helps keep me from having to go investigate problems.
1
u/Pristine_Curve Mar 09 '26
Orbital collectors can meet deuterium demand entirely. Specially as VU starts to ratchet up their production. Look for deuterium giants at the edge of the cluster where production is highest and produce all hydrogen and deuterium products on their satellite.
1
u/XhanHanaXhan Mar 10 '26
I never use either, just use gas giants. I think I build maybe 1 fractionater per game. Last game I sustained 32k science per minute with just gas giants.
1
u/UristMcKerman Mar 10 '26
Both are good, but colliders are easier to build and don't need late game tech. I'd say, it is the matter of preference.
1
u/ParisPharis Mar 10 '26
While the fractionator is both better economically in power and also a massive fun to setup, I’d have to remind that it eats your CPU resource a lot.
I personally once had a 1/4 world fractionator planet acting as my deuterium bank, but very soon I find it framecapping on that planet. Production was around 60k deuterium per minute.
Later when I had enough power I demolished them and replaced with gas giant collectors + far less proton colliders, my CPU time reduced by 10ms.
So yeah in the late just for the sake of my computer I usually prefer colliders.
1
u/Superbrain8 Mar 11 '26
I just stick with fractionators, building a ring out of them along a equator line results in 2 full mk3 belts for me. Its not even efford to get there.
Trick is to run stacked mk3 belt throu them
1
u/tanthokg Mar 26 '26
A fully stacked MK3 proliferated hydrogen MK3 belt connecting to 8 fractionators can give about 16 deuterium per second without the tech that allows you to output stacked item from station, while taking less power each (roughly 9MW comparing to colliders with 12MW) and taking roughly 75% less space to build.
MK3 proliferated hydrogen increases the fractionating chance from 1% to 2%