Tips to efficiently refine oil and generate a steady stream of hydrogen
If you've played games like Factorio or Satisfactory, you might like a lot about the Dyson Sphere Program - a game where you build conveyor belts to automate the construction of components from raw materials like hydrogen. All while working towards a bigger goal: creating a Dyson Sphere.
Despite having an in-game tutorial, the Dyson Sphere program can be a bit obtuse, especially if you're new to the genre. We highly recommend checking out the Dyson Sphere Program Beginner's Guide for tips on how to get started, from how logistics tools work to effective ways to conduct research.
Speaking of Matrix Labs, there comes a point in the Dyson Sphere Program where you will need to collect hydrogen to create an Energy Matrix, a material that is required to research mid-level upgrades and technologies such as photon frequency conversion. It's not obvious how to produce your first hydrogen, so we'll go over the requirements needed to unlock the necessary facilities, as well as the best way to extract hydrogen to create a steady stream of resources.
DYSON SPHERE PROGRAM OIL
To get hydrogen in the Dyson Sphere program, you must upgrade your tech tree to unlock the ability to build an oil extractor and refinery. Here are the tech tree updates to upgrade to and some recommended additional items:
- Refined plasma extract: 100 electromagnetic matrix
- Fluid Storage Encapsulation: 50 Electromagnetic Array
- Improved logistics systems: 100 electromagnetic matrix
Oil extractors must be placed in crude oil seeps. Each one generates a certain amount of crude oil every second. We recommend turning the building with the R key so that the rear is facing the direction you want to transport the oil. Transfer this to an oil refinery, making sure to give it a sorter at the end to load the crude oil into the refinery.
Next, you need to separate the crude oil. Click on the oil refinery and then click on the gear to select the material you want to refine. Select the refined oil (it's the brown drop). This will mainly generate refined oil, but it also generates a hydrogen block for every two drops of refined oil as a by-product.
To make your life easier, we recommend that you have a pipeline leading from the refinery and a splitter with an outlet that gives priority to the outlet of hydrogen or refined oil. Have the two paths lead to the fluid storage tanks to store the generated resources.
HYDROGEN FROM THE DYSON SPHERE PROGRAM
First things first, you need to unlock Energy Array Crafting in the Tech Tree. Here is the requirement to unlock the energy matrix:
- Energy matrix: 200 electromagnetic energy
To make an energy matrix, you must take the hydrogen you generate to a new matrix laboratory. Build one in empty space, map it to create energy arrays, and lay a path from your hydrogen storage tank to the array lab. You also need to run energetic graphite in the same die lab. This can be created by extracting and melting carbon, but it is also a by-product of X-ray cracking (more on that in a moment).
Once you have 400 power arrays, we highly recommend investing in the vertical stacking upgrade and then creating more array labs in addition to your existing ones. This will speed up the rate of generation of your power arrays as well as the array lab research.
EFFICIENT WAYS TO GENERATE MORE HYDROGEN AND HOW TO GET DEUTER
Lastly, you likely want a steady stream of hydrogen to fuel your energy matrix generation desires, so here are some tips for getting tons of this valuable resource:
- X-ray cracking allows you to further refine the oil and hydrogen to create more blocks of hydrogen, as well as a steady stream of energetic graphite, the other ingredient you need to make Energetic Matrices. We recommend building a dividing path that goes both to the parent laboratory and to a second oil refinery.
- To get even more hydrogen, it is a good idea to build fractionators that lead back to the storage tank. 99% of the time the fractionator will just produce hydrogen, but 1% of the time it will give you deuterium.
- When designing your oil refineries to refine crude oil, you can have multiple refineries in a row to speed up the process of producing refined oil and hydrogen. You can also have a bunch in a row to speed up X-ray cracking.
- You can also use the energetic graphite produced by refining the refined oil to generate thermal generators.
And this is how you get hydrogen in the Dyson Sphere program. There are many ways to efficiently generate rare resources, so stay tuned for more information on the trickier resources to find in the game.