AWESOME Sink

*Got excess resources? Fear not, for FICSIT does not waste! The newly developed AWESOME Sink turns any useful part straight into research data, as fast as you can supply it!
Participating employees will be compensated with Coupons to spend at the AWESOME Shop.*

## Ingredients

### Made in

Build Gun

**15×**  Reinforced Iron Plate

**30×**  Cable

**45×**  Concrete

The **AWESOME Sink** is a special building that produces  FICSIT Coupons for use in the AWESOME Shop by destroying items inserted into it, converting them into points based on their value or complexity, which in turn are used to print the aforementioned Coupons. Each successive Coupon requires more points to be printed.

The Sink can consume as many parts as the connected conveyor can supply, therefore its maximum capacity is 780/min using a Conveyor Belt Mk.5 or Conveyor Lift Mk.5.

Multiple Sinks can be constructed. Accumulated points will be shared between all Sinks and Coupons can be printed from any. If all Sinks are deconstructed, the amount of points and accumulated Coupons is stored.

AWESOME is an acronym, which stands for "Anti-Waste Effort for Stress-Testing of Materials on Exoplanets".

## Items not allowed to sink

Some items cannot be fed into the AWESOME Sink and will clog the input. If that happens, it is advised to pick up these items or reconstruct the belt to allow other items to be sunk.

* Consumables such as Beryl Nuts, Bacon Agarics, and Paleberries (does not apply to Medicinal Inhalers)
* Special items such as HUB Parts, Power Slugs, Power Shards, Hard Drives, Mercer Spheres and Somersloops
* Alien Remains and Alien Protein
* Uranium Waste and every derived item, with the exception of Plutonium Fuel Rods, but including Plutonium Waste, which will show a warning that radioactive items are not allowed for contaminating the results
* SAM Ore, likely because it is unfinished
* Cups, Statues and the Boom Box
* Quantum Computers, Superposition Oscillators

## Coupon cost

Coupons increase in point cost as more are acquired. The first three coupons cost 1,000 points. After that, the cost for the n-th coupon is calculated as `500 * (ceil(n/3)-1)2 + 1000` or `500*POWER((CEILING.MATH(N/3)-1),2)+1000`. When the current cost of a coupon is known, then the number of coupons that have been printed is `(sqrt((cost-1000)/500)+1)*3`.

In mathematical terms, the cost of the *n*-th coupon is given by:

cost
(
n
# )
500
×

(

⌈

n
3

⌉

−
1

)

2

1000

{\displaystyle \text{cost}(n) = 500 \times \left( \left\lceil \frac{n}{3} \right\rceil - 1 \right)^2 + 1000}

Given the current cost *c* of a coupon, the number of coupons that have been printed is between

3
×

c
−
1000

500

{\displaystyle 3 \times\sqrt{\frac{c - 1000}{500}} }

and

3
×

c
−
1000

500

2

{\displaystyle 3 \times\sqrt{\frac{c - 1000}{500}} + 2}

(inclusive)
The cumulative cost for printing the first *n* coupons, if *n* is a multiple of 3, is given by:

C
(
n
# )

500
27

n
3

−

250
3

n
2

3250
3

n

{\displaystyle C(n) = \frac{500}{27}n^3 - \frac{250}{3}n^2 + \frac{3250}{3}n}

It takes 1,813 Coupons to purchase every non-producible item in the AWESOME Shop, which would require 110,085,192,000 AWESOME points. This would take about 10 hours and 29 minutes at the current theoretical max awesome points per minute of 175,095,848.32 (see  Farming Points). However, it only takes 208 Coupons to unlock every unique crafting recipe, which equates to 163,289,500 AWESOME points.

Patch notes and in-game dialogue suggest further items will be added to the AWESOME shop in future releases.

### Coupon cost from Alien DNA Capsules

Alien DNA Capsules have a separate point counter. Unlike the standard coupon cost, it increases linearly by 1000 points for each group of coupons.

In mathematical terms, the cost of the *n*-th coupon is given by:

cost
(
n
# )
1000
×

⌈

n
3

⌉

{\displaystyle \text{cost}(n) = 1000 \times \left\lceil \frac{n}{3} \right\rceil}

The table below shows the points required per coupon when sinking Alien DNA Capsules, which are worth 1000 points each.

### Printing

Once sufficient points are accumulated to print at least one Coupon, the option to print it is made available. As the 'Print' button is pressed, an animation is played, where a Coupon comes out of the slot with the actual Coupon items. These coupons must be retrieved by dragging them into the inventory or using (`⇧ Shift` + ). Coupons have a stack size of 500, so if the amount of accumulated coupons exceeds 500, the remaining coupons will remain in the Sink, and they can be printed out next time. In the AWESOME Sink UI, click the 'Print Coupon' button then drag or `⇧ Shift`+ the Coupons into the Inventory to retrieve them.

* If coupons are printed but not taken out and the UI of the Sink is closed, those coupons can be re-printed the next time the AWESOME Sink UI is opened.
* It's also possible to put Coupons back into the Sink using this mechanic by printing Coupons and instead of taking any, moving Coupons in the inventory into the Sink slot. This is only possible if at least one Coupon can be printed and the sum of Coupons in the Sink and the inventory does not exceed 500 (if it does, less than a full stack or no Coupons can be inserted back).

## Points generated per item

*This table is compiled using the data from Template:ResourceSinkPoints.json via Module:AwesomeSinkItemsTable.*

The first time a FICSIT Coupon is inserted, the Cyber Wagon is made available for purchase in the AWESOME Shop, and no points are generated. Items not listed in this table will clog the input.

Alien DNA Capsules have a separate point counter, see above

## Recipe point improvement ratios

As mentioned earlier, recipes usually yield more points than their ingredients. However, the point increase when using alternate recipes varies widely; the output from most recipes is worth between 1.5 and 2.5 times as many points as the combined input, but exceptions exist in both directions (as alts use either cheaper or more expensive ingredients, which affects how effective using the alt is point-wise). Six alternate recipes actually provide less points than all of their ingredients combined: Compacted Steel Ingot, Coke Steel Ingot, Rubber Concrete, Steel Coated Plate, Coated Iron Plate, and Radio Control System. The most "profitable" recipe as of Patch 0.3.3.0 is Silicon Circuit Board, which generates items worth 7.19 as many points as the input items. Other notable recipes can be found below.

## Tips

* Other than farming points for Coupons, the AWESOME Sink is very useful to get rid of solid by-products, which is quite useful for any setup involving Refineries. Connect a Smart Splitter with an Overflow setting, with the Sink connected to the overflow output. An AWESOME Sink is also useful for forcing the factory to run 100% of the time as the output item will never have a chance to back up, with the cost of increasing power demand.
	+ *Further reading: Smart Splitter*
* AWESOME Sink does not consume power if it is not doing any work, much like other buildings.

### Farming points

Some items can be used to effectively get lots of points for comparatively little effort:

* Concrete: Only requires one step to manufacture from limestone but generates decent points for low energy costs.
* Cables: Can be automated almost immediately and generate a decent amount of points for early game.
* Raw Quartz: If a resource node is found early, lots of points can be generated with minimal effort.
	+ Converting them to Quartz Crystals once possible doubles point yield.
	+ Converting them to Silica more than doubles point yield.
* Uranium: If the player is willing to accept risk of death from enemies as well as radiation, the Uranium ore itself can be sunk at any stage in the game for a lot of points due to its high base value and lack of a need to process it.
* Object Scanner, Blade Runners, and Xeno-Basher give a lot of points early on, but can't be automated.
* Quickwire: Given how much can be manufactured from just a single node, sinking excess can be effective.
* AI Limiter: Similar to Quickwire, but considerably more effective.
* Excess Space Elevator parts: Have no use if not demanded by the Space Elevator.
* Some combination of Assembly Director System, and Thermal Propulsion Rocket are used to farm points in the end-game. Assembly Director Systems are favored because they use less resources to produce.
* The maximum amount of points that can be generated while using all available resources and energy without underclocking any buildings was about **184,168,000** points per minute by sinking 296.46/min Assembly Director System and 31.6064 Thermal Propulsion Rocket. This requires a 46% Uranium-Plutonium setup involving 23.2/min Uranium Fuel Rod and 10.3/min Plutonium Fuel Rod at 547 GW. This will max out the usage of every raw resources except Uranium (2% left), Limestone (20% left) and Nitrogen Gas (45% left), which leave no buffers for producing other high end items. One coal node has been added since then that is not considered (map limit for Coal used 30,120 instead of the current 30,900).
* If allowing for underclocking limited production buildings (i.e. Miner, Resource Well Pressurizer and Oil Extractor) - which generally doesn't increase the required total number of buildings built - and considering the new coal node, this increases to **177,066,380.81?** points per minute. The only buildings actually utilizing underclocking in this configuration are Miners on impure Limestone nodes and Resource Well Pressurizers on Water wells, which are more energy efficient than 100%-clocked Water Extractors up to some clock setting between ~12.86% to ~40.94% depending on the well. Otherwise the configuration is very similar, the same three items are ultimately sunk. This requires building over 33,840 buildings.
* The theoretical maximum if additionally allowing for underclocking of unlimited buildings (Water Extractors and all processing buildings) down to **1%** clock speed is **189,873,115.77** points per minute. In this configuration, fewer Plutonium Fuel Rods are sunk, instead some Concrete and raw Uranium are sunk as well. Even under these generous power conditions, the map's Limestone and Nitrogen Gas resources aren't fully utilized in the optimal configuration. Note this configuration is practically infeasible since it requires building around 3,274,000 buildings and will affect the FPS negatively.

## Trivia

* The maximum amount of points per minute the chart will display is 2,147,483,648, the signed 32-bit integer limit plus one. This is only a visual limit. Since points come in on a per item basis and not all at once it will not affect the actual amount of points the player gets.
* An early concept for the Sink had considered using the Space Elevator for sinking items, but this was discarded due to concerns about getting all the resources to one central location.
* It takes about 2.31  MJ to sink a single item, assuming Mk.5 belt is used and it is saturated with items.
	+ For lower tier belts, from Mk.4 to Mk.1, the energy spent for sinking is 3.75 MJ, 6.67 MJ, 15 MJ and 30 MJ respectively. Thus, it is least efficient to sink items with Mk.1 belts.

## Gallery

* Using AWESOME Sink to remove excess Packaged Fuel to prevent Refineries from clogging up.
* Maximum amount of points per minute.
* The old UI of the AWESOME Sink

## History

* Patch 0.7.0.0: Added a separate point counter for Alien DNA Capsules
* Patch 0.4.0.0: Points for Tier 7 and 8 items were rebalanced
* Patch 0.3.7.7: FICSMAS items can now be sunk for 1 point each
* Patch 0.3.4.14: Now capable of processing more than 600 items per minute
* Patch 0.3.3.0: Point values for all items were changed and re-balanced, generally reducing the amount of generated points. Most Equipment items gained point values.
* Patch 0.3: Introduced

## References

1. ↑ Twitch Clip of Dev Stream - Max Points Per Minute is Visual Only
2. ↑ YouTube - June 8th, 2020 Livestream - Q&A: How about repeatable Space Elevator shipments to make more use of it?

## See Also

* FICSIT Coupon
* AWESOME Shop
* Smart Splitter