Without water you will not last long. The good news: in Stationeers water is an ordinary substance with fixed values. Know them, and you can plan your supply as reliably as your breathing air. All numbers come from Stationeers 0.2.6428.
How much you drink
At 20 °C the character drinks about 0.9 litres in 30 minutes. The Water Bottle holds 1.5 litres. A full bottle is therefore good for 1.5 / 0.9 · 30 min = 50 minutes.
So an hour outside takes 1.8 litres – more than one bottle. Always take a second one on longer trips.
According to the material data one litre of water is 1 / 0.018 ≈ 55.6 mol. The 1.8 litres of an hour are therefore 100 mol.
How thirst is calculated
According to the game code, hydration counts in units: 1 litre is 5 units. Your body holds 5 units, so 1 litre – but that measure depends on the quality of your food. With mostly raw food it is only 0.75 litres, with cooked food 1 litre, with canned food 1.25 litres and with elaborate dishes such as burgers or cakes up to 1.75 litres.
- Drinking fills you up in one go: the bottle gives as much as fits into your body, and that takes 1 second per unit. From empty that is 1 litre in 5 seconds.
- Warning comes below 2 units (0.4 litres in the body), critical below 1 unit. At zero you take dehydration damage.
- Heat drives thirst: the loss per tick is a base value times (1 + temperature in °C / 100), but at least 1.1 times. With the helmet closed the suit air counts, otherwise the surroundings. At 10 °C and below it is 1.1, at 20 °C 1.2, at 50 °C 1.5. While asleep the loss is halved.
Difficulty counts too: Easy halves consumption, Stationeer raises it by half, Creative switches it off.
Where the water comes from
Early on, almost all water comes from ice.
| Source | Contents per piece | melts from | Stack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ice (Water) | 20 mol water + 5 mol nitrogen | 0 °C | 50 |
| Pure Ice Water | 50 mol water | 1 °C | 50 |
20 mol of water are 0.36 litres, 50 mol are 0.9 litres. For one hour of drinking water (100 mol) you need five pieces of water ice or two pieces of pure ice.
Water ice brings nitrogen along. It does no harm to drinking water but ends up in the gas. The Ice Crusher separates the two cleanly: it takes ice through a chute, has a gas output and a separate liquid output, and needs 10 W when idle. According to the game code Setting is its target temperature in kelvin, 288.15 K (15 °C) from the factory. While its contents are colder, it heats with an extra 1000 W and melts no new ice; it only outputs once the contents are warmer than Setting − 1 K. So plan for the 1000 W as soon as it is working.
How much heat melting takes
According to the material data water has a heat of fusion of 1,600 J/mol and a heat capacity of 72 J/(mol·K). For one piece of water ice (20 mol):
- melting: 20 · 1,600 J = 32,000 J
- warming from 0 °C to 20 °C: 20 · 72 · 20 = 28,800 J
About 61 kJ in total – heat the ice draws from its surroundings. A full stack of 50 pieces needs a good 3 MJ. Melt larger amounts in a small room and it cools down noticeably.
Water as a substance
| Value | Water |
|---|---|
| freezing point | 273.15 K (0 °C) |
| boiling point at 100 kPa | 384 K (about 111 °C) |
| liquid only from | 6.3 kPa |
| critical temperature | 643.7 K (about 371 °C) |
| heat of vaporisation | 8,000 J/mol |
| volume per mole | 0.018 L |
Two rows matter most. Below 6.3 kPa water cannot be liquid, so there is no open water in the vacuum of the Moon and Mimas. And below 0 °C it freezes: according to the game code, liquid in a cold pipe solidifies into chunks of ice in the world. On cold planets you are better off moving ice and melting it indoors.
The counterpart is Polluted Water. It freezes at 3 °C already, is toxic and has to be purified.
Moving and storing
Liquids run in pipes of their own. According to the game code a liquid pipe holds at most 6,079.5 kPa – a tenth of a gas pipe. For carrying there are canisters and tanks:
| Container | Volume | Water, completely full |
|---|---|---|
| Liquid Canister | 12.4 L | ≈ 689 mol |
| Liquid Canister (Smart) | 18.4 L | ≈ 1,022 mol |
| Portable Liquid Tank Mk II (Water) | 790 L | ≈ 43,900 mol |
With liquids, pressure tells you little about the fill level. According to the game code, liquid pressure only counts once the liquid fills almost the whole space – then it shoots up and the container bursts. So fill by amount and leave room. On a pipe network, the Liquid Tank Storage connects a liquid canister to the line.
Filling bottles
The Waterbottle Filler is the tap. It hangs on a liquid pipe, has two bottle slots and a combined power and data port, and needs 10 W. Through logic it can be controlled with On and Activate.
A simple setup: ice crusher, liquid pipe, bottle filler. The pipe in between is your buffer.
Purifying water
For polluted water there is the Water Purifier. It has a liquid input and a liquid output, a chute input with an import slot and ports for power and data; its base consumption is 50 W. Through logic it reports ImportCount and can be controlled with On and Lock. According to the game code it can only be built on a frame.
According to the game code only Charcoal belongs in the import slot; it does not process other items. Without charcoal it shows an error and does not work. It always takes one piece from the slot as soon as the carbon of the previous one is used up:
- 1 charcoal cleans 40 mol of Polluted Water, so about 0.72 litres.
- Per tick, 0.025 to 0.15 litres of liquid flow from input to output – the bigger the pressure difference between the two pipes, the more. The polluted water in it becomes Water; other liquids pass through unchanged.
A worked example: for 1.8 litres of drinking water, one hour's need, you need 1.8 / 0.72 = 2.5 pieces of charcoal. At a small pressure difference (0.025 L per tick) that takes 72 ticks, so 36 seconds.
Polluted water is toxic. Only connect the bottle filler to a line that polluted water cannot reach.
Next
- Food and cooking: nutrition, mood and shelf life – the other half of your supply
- Survival: the first minutes – water in the first minutes
- Atmosphere and pressure – phases, pressures and pipe limits
- Phase diagrams and material values of all substances: Gases