Phosphorus FAQ

Do I need Space Age?
You need to own it: spoiling is a Space Age feature. It does not have to be enabled; Phosphorus works in vanilla.

My chest caught fire. Why?
White phosphorus that waits 15 minutes anywhere ignites (startup setting "White phosphorus ignites after": 2 to 120 minutes). Keep it moving, keep buffers small, burn the surplus in a combustion tower, or ship and store it as red phosphorus.

How do I stop a fire from spreading?
Walls keep their full fire resistance and stop it; so do gaps of a few tiles. Wooden buildings burn better and can carry the fire a few hops.

Is anything safe from it?
Space (Space Age platforms, SE orbits and asteroid fields), thin-air worlds below 10 pressure, and under water on Maraxsis: white phosphorus still turns to ash there, without fire. The combustion tower's fuel slot never spoils.

Why won't my kiln run?
It needs heat of at least 300 °C through heat pipes, such as a combustion tower's. Place it directly against a tower: long heat-pipe runs take minutes to warm up. Without heat it stops, and its batch will burn.

How long does my glow marker have left?
Point at it: the time left appears above it. In your inventory the item's spoil bar shows it. A marker dims for its last 8 hours.

What do I do with all the ash?
Dissolve it into phosphoric acid (batteries, phosphate concrete), fill land with it (20 ash + 20 stone), ship it to Gleba as fertilizer, or, with SE and similar mods, put it into heat shielding.

Why are my plastic, lubricant, processing unit, battery or heat pipe recipes different?
They need phosphorus (heat shielding too, where a mod adds it). Each change can be switched off in the startup settings.

Can I void white phosphorus in an incinerator or crusher?
No. Phosphorus removes such recipes from other mods so that nothing destroys white phosphorus without dealing with it. Burn it in a combustion tower instead: you get heat and ash for phosphoric acid.

Does it cost UPS?
Hardly. The script runs only when white phosphorus spoils, plus a small slice of glow markers and combustion towers once a second: about 0.003 ms per tick with 5,000 markers and 500 towers.