Dear Stormworkers,
The Oil Disaster Major Update is our next major update and arrives on the 23rd of June!
Oil spills and slicks are introduced in this major update. Oil that leaks from wells, ships, pipelines, or anything else will pollute the ocean. This pollution will create an oil slick that sits on the surface of the ocean, and will disperse and be carried by ocean current over time.
The environment can be cleaned up by pumping this damaged sea water out of the ocean and through the new centrifugal separator. This separator takes in the mixture of oil and water, and uses an impeller to spin the fluid, pushing the less dense oil to the centre of the vortex, and the more dense water to the outside. One output port then filters off a more oily mixture, while the other outputs more water. The separator does not completely separate the fluids, so a multi-stage system is recommended as the most efficient.
New missions introduce oil leaks to rigs, ships, and pipelines, and these damaged systems will slowly leak oil until repaired. Significant leaks will create new missions to clean up the pollution, and these missions are tracked across the ocean as the current disperses the spill.
Further improvements are also introduced for the previous major update, including a small pivoting rod cap for simpler and more convenient interaction with rods, and other fixes and improvements.
Thanks to all the players who contributed oil industry ideas and suggestions! We have had a lot of fun working on this update and look forward to releasing this new major update soon!
Next week we have a minor update focused on the industrial frontier, and we continue work on compressible gasses (thank you for all your feedback on that!) which we hope to share in the next couple of months.
Much love <3,
The Stormworks Developers