Slime

This article is considered accurate for the current version (U51-600112).

Slime is a resource found mostly in the Swamp Biome and in planetoids with the Slime Molds World Trait. Slime tiles in nature each carry hundreds of thousands of Slimelung germs. Slime is most often used as a secondary resource for oxygen production.

Properties[]

Slime sublimates (emits) Polluted Oxygen once dug up, losing mass in the process, even when in a Storage Bin. This can be prevented by storing it submerged in a Liquid or under a Gas pressure of at least 1.8 kg/tile.

The Liquid method is much more reliable, but poses a small difficulty in layout planning, especially when the layout has to be changed.

Slime turns into Dirt when heated to above 125 °C. If Slime in the form of debris reaches this temperature, it forms a natural tile of Dirt.

Usage[]

Algae Distiller can produce Algae from Slime. 600 g/s Slime = 200 g/s Algae + 400 g/s Polluted Water.

Dusk Cap domestic growth requires 4 kg/cycle Slime. It reduces Dusk Cap growth length from 30 to 7.5 cycles.

Sage Hatches can eat Slime and excrete Coal.

Slime can be used as bait in Airborne Critter Bait to attract Pufts and Puft Princes.

Slime can be intentionally left out to sublimate into Polluted Oxygen.

If heated, it can be converted into Dirt

Production[]

Slime exists in the Swamp Biome and also in ruins. Random placed Slime balls can be found in maps with Slime Molds World Trait.

Pufts and Puft Princes breathe Polluted Oxygen and excrete Slime.

It can be harvested on rocket missions to renewable Space POIs:
- In Organic Mass Fields at a rate of 162 kg – 486 kg per cycle.

Excavating Swamp Biomes and Decontaminating Infected Slime[]

Slimelung multiplies in Polluted Oxygen and Polluted Water. When Slime is dug up, it will emit Polluted Oxygen with Slimelung germs present in the Polluted Oxygen, rapidly contaminating all nearby tiles of Polluted Oxygen. This creates a challenge for excavating any Swamp Biome.

There are three main approaches towards excavating a Swamp Biome without risking contamination:

Option 1: Ignore and dig around the Slime. With few exceptions, Slimelung will not already be present in Polluted Oxygen or Polluted Water. If undisturbed, the Slime can be safely ignored until you have the desire or ability to disinfect it.

Option 2: Disinfect the Slime tiles before digging via temperature control. Slimelung germs will die at temperatures below 20°C and above 90°C.

Option 3: Disinfect the Slime after digging. First clean the area of all Polluted Oxygen or Polluted Water, then dig the Slime and quickly store it in a sterile environment. Chlorine is the most effective way to rapidly kill any germs. Unless the environment is pressurized or underwater, Deodorizers will also be necessary to capture the off-gassed and germy Polluted Oxygen made by the newly-dug Slime until it is transported.

Be very prepared — Restricting access and having Duplicants move through Sinks will be important when excavating infected Slime.

Note that Deodorizers do not directly disinfect the Slimelung germs, but indirectly help because germs will slowly die off in regular Oxygen. During Deodorizer's filtration the germs will be transferred to the Clay the Deodorizer creates in operation. Unless dealing with a small quantity of Slime, you should expect the Clay dropped to also be infected.

The Thermal Conductivity of the Slime is comparable to Algae and Sedimentary Rock. Slime tiles usually also have a relatively low mass (<200kg). Expect Slime tiles that are adjacent to each other to exchange heat quickly.

Below are more detailed methods and descriptions of disinfection:

Temporary Storage in Chlorine[]

Storing Slime in a Chlorine atmosphere can kill all Slimelung after a full cycle. However, this means that Duplicants have to come into contact with the infected Slime and get it over themselves, eventually contaminating any bottled Polluted Oxygen and Slime that they come into contact with. This is the most common disinfection approach.

Deodorizers need to be cleaned up as they contain infected Polluted Oxygen; the Clay made from the Sand also has germs. This may result in the need to store the Clay in Chlorine as well.

In the late game, such inconvenience can be eliminated with Atmo Suits and the disinfection of Slime can be automated with the use of Germ Sensors. Cleaning out a Slime biome still involves a considerable amount of labor.

Flood/Contact with Chilled Water or other Liquids[]

Chilling method — An insulated cavity has to be made around the slime before filling the gaps with chilled water.

This is a method that can be carried after gaining the means to chill liquids with Thermo Aquatuners and Steam Turbines. However, the slime has to be surrounded by an insulated cavity, which can be tricky to build if the seam of slime has awkward shapes.

The disadvantage of this method is the containment of the Liquid and its disposal:

Firstly, the liquid has to be chilled. Thermo Aquatuners and Steam Turbines can only do this up to above the freezing temperature of the liquid; any further attempt at chilling the water would cause the water to freeze, thus damaging the pipes.
The liquid then has to be channeled and spilled into the cavity. This can take a while.
- This should be done before the cavity is sealed; doing this after the cavity has been sealed may cause any trapped gases to be pressurized, which in turn might pressurize the liquid that is poured in.
  - The trapped gases linger at the vent, meaning that the vent will keep releasing liquid and will not be flooded itself; this causes the aforementioned pressurization of the liquid.
The walls of the cavity can be stressed by the liquid that they are containing in; in the case of the aforementioned pressurized liquid, this risk is much more significant. See Liquid: Pressure Damage.
The liquid has to be re-chilled afterwards, making this already slow method even slower.

The most welcome advantage of this method is that after the Slime has been chilled, excavating it and having it drop into the liquid prevents its sublimation.

Cold conduits — Multiple bridges require greater reserves of material, especially that for the insulated tiles.

Insulated Heat Sink Bridge from Cold Biomes[]

A relatively easy method if the biomes are in close proximity and you have sufficient Refined Metal. A contiguous stretch of Metal Tiles, in contact with a cold biome (preferably with a rock tile made of material with considerable Thermal Conductivity) is made all the way to come into contact with Slime seams, with the sides bounded by Insulated Tiles. Sedimentary Rock can also be used as a **much** slower and shorter substitute to Metal Tiles.

The disadvantage is obvious; this takes a lot of materials, construction labor, and space. Furthermore, the further away the cold biome is, the less effective this method would be. This means it does not scale well for disinfecting large areas of Slime tiles. Spending the effort and time to make so much Refined Metal would be terribly unwise for any early-game colony.

Insulated Heat Sink Bridge from Volcano[]

Difficult: the inverse temperature control approach. For metal Volcanos this has the advantage of killing two birds with one stone as the molten metal needs to be cooled before it can be used, anyway. However, the high heats of the output material in excess of 2000°C will be difficult to evenly transfer to Slime tiles without also overcooking them into Dirt at 125°C. Slime tiles need a sustained time at above 90°C to kill all germs. If the temperature falls below 90C and any germs survive, they will rapidly restore their numbers to 450,000 per 100kg of slime. Fortunately, once a Slime tile is successfully disinfected, it will not become re-infected. Radiating heat both to the Slime tiles and also away from them to keep them within the 90°C - 125°C temperature range will be either be a careful challenge, or a slow-but-steady process.

Obsidian should be used for tiles in contact with the molten metal, with the other conductive tiles after them. Not doing so risks your heat sink melting.

Insulated Chilled Liquid Channel from Cold Biome and Metal Tile Heat Exchanger[]

Chilled pipe and metal tile method — This method is as complicated as this combined screenshot would suggest.

This method is reliable but easy to mess up, especially with regard to the layout of the piping at the heat-sink end and the chilling end.

The heat sink end is the edge of a cold biome, or whichever cold location in the biome. For moderated heat sinking, just two segments of Radiant Liquid Pipe made of Aluminum that are adjacent to something cold and solid is enough.

As for the chilling end, two segments of the same piping should be adjacent to the seam of Slime; then the piping is encased in Metal Tiles of either Aluminium or Gold (either is good; Gold has the advantage of having much lower specific heat capacity, and being more common than the former). Then, surround the Metal Tiles (and the Slime seam, if possible) with Insulated Tiles.

The segments of piping near and at the chilling end should be joined together with Liquid Bridges, so as to make changes to the direction of the piping easier later. (The Liquid Overlay will show a mess of input and output ports however.)

For the least fuss at re-channeling the pipes later, a Liquid Reservoir should be used to store the Liquid when they are not being circulated around. In particular, when chilling is not being done, all of the Liquid should return to the Reservoir - including the Liquid at the heat sink end.

To achieve this, the heat sink end should occur along the line that goes into the Intake port of the Reservoir. Therefore, whenever the player wants to stop the circulation of the Liquid, the player can remove one of the Bridges that occur between the Output port of the Reservoir and the chilling end. Any liquid that is out of the reservoir should occur after the Output port, and away from the heat sink end.

This is to avoid any freezing of the Liquid and breaking of the pipes; most cold biomes are cold enough to freeze most readily available Liquids.

Compared to the method of the Heat Sink Bridge (as shown previously), this method won't be chilling the slime as fast; this is due to the chilling being provided by packets of 10 kg of Liquid instead of contiguous lines of 100 kg Solids.

Tips[]

Storing Slime in multiple weight-limited Storage Bins with Deodorizers right above them can give you low power Oxygen without needing Algae Terrariums or Algae Distillers. However, Slime converts to Polluted Oxygen at a low rate (thus you need more Compactors) and at the Slime's original temperature (swamp biomes are at least 30+°C, you'll need a Wheezewort or two). Deodorizing Polluted Oxygen will result in 10% less Oxygen (more efficient than Deoxiders) and still infected with Slimelung (though the germs will eventually die off in pure Oxygen), and you'll lose out on the Polluted Water from the distillers.
- There is also the matter of over-pressurization. The sublimating Slime is very difficult to control.
The Slime tiles that are part of Ruins do not have Slimelung. You might also find Slime tiles near Steam Geysers to have their germs already cooked off.