Arcospheres

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Arcospheres are mysterious orbs found floating in interstellar space. An Arcosphere is a solid physical object around 30cm in diameter and does not appear to be a natural formation. Each sphere contains a knot in spacetime. The spacial knot is somehow anchored to the sphere, so the sphere can be used like a handle to move the knot around. Collections of Arcospheres in close proximity moved in specific patterns can weave spacetime into useful shapes.

Arcospheres are a very late-game resource which are needed for some advanced components such as Naquium processors, or in some Deep Space Science. Arcospheres are not consumed in these recipes, but used as catalysts. They can only be obtained by launching an arcosphere collector, a special satellite from an Asteroid field.

Before it can be used, an arcosphere must first be polarized in a Gravimetrics facility. There are eight polarizations of Arcospheres:

  • λ Arcosphere lambda λ Arcosphere lambda
  • ξ Arcosphere xi ξ Arcosphere xi
  • ζ Arcosphere zeta ζ Arcosphere zeta
  • θ Arcosphere theta θ Arcosphere theta
  • ε Arcosphere epsilon ε Arcosphere epsilon
  • φ Arcosphere phi φ Arcosphere phi
  • γ Arcosphere gamma γ Arcosphere gamma
  • ω Arcosphere omega ω Arcosphere omega

The polarization recipe will randomly switch between the two variants, randomizing the arcosphere polarizations produced. The recipes that use arcospheres as a catalyst will also randomly switch which ones they output back.

There are patterns to the polarizations of Arcospheres and how they interact.

There are several recipes to change the polarization of a pair of Arcospheres.

There are also two recipes to invert the polarizations of 4 Arcospheres.

The challenge with Arcospheres is that they are finite but constant, with all recipes changing a Arcosphere's polarity instead of consuming them. However, the polarity changes are sometimes random and require careful management to be returned to a useful configuration. A smarter processing setup gives you more processing capacity. A naive setup can make a system that gets clogged. Try a few approaches yourself first. If you get stuck ask for a hint, not a blueprint. If you are still struggling then try the Guide: Arcosphere Balancing or there may be blueprints on the blueprints page, otherwise there are some on Discord.