A few things I learned while accepting as many new dupes as possible

[loboflex]

I've read a lot of threads about sustainabilty (or the lack thereof), and the general consensus seems to be that you're in for a bad time if you let in more than 8-10-12 dupes. I used to think this aswell, but I figured I'd try to let in everyone, just to see how it would go.

My colony passed 50 dupes a couple of cycles ago and it looks like I'm about to have a combined food and fertilizer crisis, so I figured I'd shared a few of the things I've learned thus far before everything goes south, in no particular order.

Out of all the games I've played, this is the second colony that has actually gone anywhere. The first successful one had only 6 dupes, was surrounded by lots of nice, cool biomes and never really saw much drama. This one has had a new dupe joining every three cycles, has had several issues with heat and near-starvation, and has somehow been a lot more fun to play. I've tried to shy away from abusing any known exploits and generally keep things as clean as possible. There's only been a few isolated incidents with stress, and noone has died yet, but not for lack of trying.

Game performance

The game has slowed down quite a lot, but I haven't had much trouble with actual crashes. The biggest performance issue with this many dupes are the massage tables;  assigning a large number of specific dupes to the tables is a huge pain in the lower back. The dupe selection list takes a while to show up every time you click a table, and finding the correct dupe, some of which are duplicates (ha!) is just mind numbing busywork. Oh, and the Jobs and Vitals button takes a few seconds to react aswell, but you don't need to click those very often so that's fine.

The dupes

When starting a new game, I'd pick one dupe with as high a creativity as possible (11 or 12?), since you'll need atleast one to paint and sculpt, and it's not something that's easily skilled up.  Learning seems to be a good skill for everyone else, if it really increases the rate of skillgrowth as much as it says it does. As for traits, the only one I've really stayed away from is loud sleeper, so I didn't have to cater to their special needs. Since the Jobs dialog takes so long to appear, you don't want to have to assign different jobs besides art and research whenever a new dupe shows up, so just let everyone do everything.

The +20% "New friend" mood boost you get from every new dupe is great for lowering stress in general, and has been a life saver as far as not having to assign dupes to massage tables. Whenever stress did ramp up, it was usually due to lots of work in cold biomes full of polluted water, so that's something to look out for. I didn't get around to making dinner tables or warm clothes for anyone, and I've only got enough beds for two thirds of the population, but it's still worked out fine so who knows.

Having a lot of dupes is nice when it comes to large building projects, but if you've designated several things to do all across the map, they'll never focus on finishing one thing at a time and instead move between all of them constantly. It's usually faster to just let them finish work in one end of the map before telling them to do something new on the other side, even if it means some of them going idle for a while.

The food situation

Bristle blossoms seems to be the way to go in the long term, so if you've got trouble with high temperature, run some air ducts behind your plants and pump in some hydrogen through a couple of thermo regulators. I'd recommend against planting bristle blossoms and mealwood together though, since it's easy to forget about your cooling and suddenly your mealwood will start complaining about the cold. I'd consider using a closed loop for the hydrogen, but due to a bug the hydrogen will probably end up too cold, which isn't too ideal in the middle of your base.

I kept my outhouses around after building lavatories, and my fertilizer levels haven't really dropped or risen the entire game, except just after reaching 50 dupes. I've read that people have had trouble getting enough, but maybe that was all changed by one of the recent patches.

If you're going to have a lot of dupes, you'll probably end up seeing the food shortage warning a lot. Don't be a dumb butt like me and ignore it, be a smart butt and make sure you have way more food than you need. The plant's growth cycle might give you a lot of food one cycle, and then you're suddenly getting nothing the next 10 cycles.

The water situation

I've tried to conserve water as much as possible, and mostly used it for electrolyzers. Although the amount of fresh water has been fairly low at times, I've never had a lack of polluted water so I could probably afford a couple of algae terrariums if I wanted. I probably should've actually, since the CO2 levels have crept pretty far up at times.

I tried draining a geyser aswell, and since I wasn't sure what to expect, I went with the better-safe-than-sorry route. Cooling it down while it's still filling up is pretty much impossible, but once it's full and the geyser stops pouring out heat it cools down just fine.  A better solution would be to drain all the water out into a separate chamber and cool that down instead, so the geyser wouldn't keep heating it up all the time.  Oh well, I suppose it looks neat.

Oh and a note about lavatories, I thought dupes would prefer lavatories over outhouses? They still seem to use the outhouses more often though, I figure maybe they don't actually care and just goes to whatever is closest. After reaching a certain number of dupes I keep getting a "No restroom built" warning aswell, even though there are plenty of free toilets to go around. No idea what that is about.

The power situation

A large number of dupes means a large number of warm bodies to run in the hamsterwheels, so provided they have oxygen to breathe you'll be less dependent on other power sources. I've only had one hydrogen generator running, the rest of the hydrogen has gone into various cooling projects across the map. 

Disabling combat for all your dupes and keeping some hatches around for coal generation is still a good idea though, coal power is neat and dandy if you've got a nice cold room full of hydrogen to put it in.

The air situation

I've placed several electrolyzers all over the base, and let the hydrogen flow wherever it wanted. In my previous game I made sure to pump the oxygen to other places in the base, but letting it flow around on its own seems to have worked just as well.

The CO2 has been a bit out of hand, so I've used algae deoxidyzers whenever dupes needed to do anything outside the base. If you can afford to not use algae in your main base, that seems like a much better use for it.

I did eventually finish a cold storage for the CO2 and chlorine, but pumping all of it inside is going to take a while, so I should've placed some scrubbers earlier.

So yeah

At this point lack of food is probably the thing that's going to mess everything up, but there're several things I could've done to prevent it. Still, I've had way more fun dealing with the continuous need to expand than just sticking with 6 dupes and calling it a day, and it's perfectly doable.

It would be nice if dupes could find their own way to massage tables if they were having a rough cycle though, or if the list of dupes were sorted by most stressed to least stressed.

Oh, and sorry for the wall of text.

[Vilda]

I can relate to the tables, I went as far as 24 and eve that was a pain in the posterior. 

Nice summary of the experience.

[Breizhbugs]

Hello,
I do agree with most of what you said! Before thermal update i run a 30 dupes base (~300cycles) that i gave up because i thought the "non save compatble" release version of TU was coming earlier, and in thermal update i am actually cycle 400+. However i still dont have a lot of machinery (still no gaz pumping / no coal gen ). In the beginning i focused on opening a lot of Polluted Oxygen pocket so i dont have to bother for the breathing excepted in some area where i put algea terrarium to contain CO2 and bring some O2 while digging.I am working on digging huge tunnels and chimneys so that i will try to oxygenate the whole asteroid! I have 27 dupes and plan to go up to 30 quite soon, but dont think i ll accept more for performance reason.
- The UI (massage table / Jobs / Vitals) is very badly done (it load default values, display and then load current setting where it should load current settings and keep them in cache and then display the windows)
- In the beginning i counted on Fertilizer Maker to get rid of Polluted Water, but because of the recent buff of it, i choose to mop initial pocket of PW and only recycle the PW i generate so i dont die under a pile of fertilizer! I think PW to steam is a too slow process not worthable since the addition of geyser (considering 30 dupes, a single shower and a single lavatory(in addition with outhouses) are constantly in use and produces a lot of PW)
- I dont care much of stress, it only rises when i do mopping and dangerous digging. A well-swept asteroid has a decor value that is not too negative, so high decor area compensate very well (its a shame phosporite is not storable, it would help a lot keeping stress low!). I use a lot of storage compactors though! Spreading the storage around the asteroid is important too. The asteroid is my base, not only the center. Its less travel for the dupes too.
- I plant my blossoms in a insulated Cold biome next to my base so i dont have to fear for temperature. However i made the mistake to bring hot water from geyser into my base and even with insulated pipe the reserver and the shower/lavatory really warm up the area!. I decided to make a huge reservoir in a corner of the asteroid so that i can cool it, before using it.
- I take only vomitter dupes, not for the water they give (i keep stress well below 50%), but but because i just dont want to deal with broken machinery if stress becomes a problem!
- I really have problem taking decision, that why i still dont have a lot of machinery. I think 600w for a coal gen is not enough for the annoying CO2 / Heat it produces, so i want to have a well shaped asteroid before using it. I dig a lot in the asteroid also so i wait to have broad chimneys and tunnels before hydrolising the whole asteroid. With a lot of hydrogen, i plan a cool chamber to get rid of PO2.
- Contrary to you, i think that past the 10 first dupes, its important to specialise them: i want several of them constantly auto sweeping to keep the area clean, i want some of them only digging to keep going on shaping the asteroid. I usually tick Builder and Deliverer together so that they can start building immediatly when they travelled through the wole asteroid for delivering. If i dont specialize like that, nothing get done if it is not prioritized! Also dupes usually prefer local task in the base (like constantly sweeping a few grams of clay from air depollutizer (forgot the name) instead of cleaning tons of clutter far from the base so it doesnt help). Hamster / sweeper is also a good job combination, if you overproduce energy.
- As i rely on PO2 for the asteroid, i have to keep a small clean (algae terrarium + desoxyder) and cold area to keep the food fresh and sterilized. You are true that food stock can raise fast and drop fast. Ordering to harvest regularly, instead of letting bristle berry fall down by themselves, is very important.
- I dig a lot, i think to myself i should spare some natural tiles for wheezewort to grow, just in case i need somme cheap freeze in the furure!
- For dupes trait, i try to choose +strength very important for sweeping/delivering! I exclude destructive and loud sleepers.
- I spread outhouses in corner of asteroid, so that they dont loose too much time traveling to center of asteroid when working near the edges.
- Decoration is important. statue + ( [cot | outhouse| hamsterwheel] + canvas) + statue + ([ ...   is my scheme. statue near floor edge cause they have a longer range. Canvas if the place is high enough to put them or too low  to put statue. I try to decorate around manual airlock too cause there is a little wait there too! I don't use automatic airlock event if they are faster when non powered though!
- I find that CO2 is really a problem in the beginning of the game (much more than before TU). Well placed algae terrariums really helps. At later cycles, i openned the map too much for it to be a problem in the living area. I have to put some algae terrarium while digging the the south however.
- As i am still on a stage where i rely mostly on PO2, i have tons of algae (~40t and ~60t slimes) i dont run biodistiler too much because i still dont want too much energy usage. My 4 fertilizer maker have hard time dealing with 1 shower / 1 lavatory but still produce more fertilizer than needed. But i will increase that in the future.
- The "no restroom built warning" is often here, but the "insuficient oxygen generation" too for me
- I have 4 hatches inside my base, i feed them with swept-only "liquifiable". Very handy but i would need 40 of them to get rid of all the ice/snow/PI i dug!
- I will try to destroy any heat biome. Its easy to generate heat, but its very costly to get rid of it!
- Relying on PO2 is very energy efficient. Cycle 400+ and still no ventilation
- Digging a lot and everywhere and medium/fast game speed is what kills dupe: i lost 3 of them due to having my concentration too much dispersed! But after a certain time you start to see which different ordrers are compatible together so that dupes can work risk free
- A lot of debris on the ground / broad sweep orders / the prioritize overlay when you have a lot of planned jobs are really performance killer at my stage (and i still dont have complex machinery) ...

As i am french, i hope what i said is fully understandable. Sorry for any mistakes.

edit: I rush science research in the first 30 cycles. Einstein was also my only hamster, so his "sport time" was also "cool time" for the supercomputer, that was built not far from cold biome if i remember correctly...

I will not put pictures of my base cause, despite my 400+ cycles, it doesnt look very advanced compared to the one shown by loboflex, because i constantly hesitate on how i will build things, so i keep digging until things have the shape i want...

[loboflex]

Like you said, giving dupes specialized jobs would probably reduce the number of problems I've had with dupes running across the map between different tasks. It all comes back to performance though, after a certain point I just don't have the patience to deal with the Jobs dialog delay.

I wouldn't go so far as to call them badly made though; the game is still in alpha after all, and there's something to be said against optimizing too early. For all we know the developers might have plans to revamp either massage tables or the UI or whatever, which would from their point of view make all the time spent on optimizing those dialogs wasted. They're perfectly servicable as is with a smaller number of dupes (which seems to be more common in most games played), but I'm sure we'll see improvements if larger colonies becomes some sort of main focus.

As for everything else; the biggest difference in our playstyles is probably the use of polluted oxygen. Even though I know the dupes seem perfectly happy breathing it and diseases don't make much difference, I wanted to keep it out of my main base for what I guess boils down to "gameplay aesthetics" or "RP" or whatever you want to call it. It took a while to get around to clearing out enough pollution to be able to expand fast enough, so I didn't allocate much room for storage bins. I've made sure to scoop up anything valuable, but there's a huge amount of raw minerals lying around everywhere. I'm really not sure how much they mind the clutter though, or if I would see a noticable drop in stress if I sweeped it all up.

Thank you for your writeup though, it was interesting to read your perspective on things.

[Breizhbugs]

Yeah, for sure i never see youtuber use the PO2 as i do and i think most player try to keep the base "pollution free". When i 'll try to exygenate the whole asteroid, i think i will have a hard time because the concentration of PO2 is usually >2kg with some peak at 7/8kb per tile...

For performance, i know that only the alpha, but there are programming choice that are known to be bad for performance. Anyway i wonder what is the average number of dupe the developper consider a reasonable amount. Its only alpha, but i am impatient to see what the dev have in mind for the future of the game...

They do mind the clutter: its easy for tunnels to go around -100decor value. My dupe at usually below 20% stress except 2/3 that do the cleaning (and stay quite a while in said tunnels). As i consider the whole asteroid to be my base, it will become important when my machinery will be spread in all those tunnels. Also, when i send a digging squad far away, hey do not stress to much while reaching the place, which can take a long time to travel the width/height of the asteroid.

Also one thing i learned is to not build machinery too close form each other or one machine ill heat the other and vice versa! (i see your too batteries next to each other in one of your screen shot!)

Thanks for your feedback on my feedback, as you said, its interesting to see others perspective on things...

[heckubis]

I find starting you need to be more conservative with oxygen consumption which leads to pressure loss and increasing food costs. but by my year point I can easily sustain 20. if your rushing your going to be on a constant low pressure trying to recover from a low state and never actually getting to a stable growth point.

slowing down your dupe acquisition to keep with what you can already cover in production. aiming for at least 10k calories stable per dup with food and air production that can actually put out the volume of the increased usage.

building your air supplies up early lets them scale with your base as you expand. 4 electrolysers  can put out small enough amounts  to be energy conserving most of the time and will increase its own production as the base drain increases. I'm running the same 4 electrolysers

my emergency spoilers (valve packs) shred the early or low pressure incoming air supplies out to the main living areas before proceeding outward with excess air. when rooms are sufficiently full of air the air continues to the secondary rooms.

I'm only now just setting up another air system in my base and have no food problems

that is still the starting biomes clean water for the most part the water filter leading back to it only takes excess runoff cleans it and puts it back in the supplies the only water from fresh is purely sanitation.

rushing too fast will kill your base and make you not able to keep up with your own production

[Falcahtas]

If you are going to have more than 20 dupes it is very useful to make sure they all have Diver's Lungs.

Oxygen is most efficient to generate with water as while water is technically infinite you have to be careful not to use the water quicker than the geysers can replenish. A 25% reduction of water usage is pretty nice.

Of course you can also generate oxygen by condensing polluted oxygen and algae by using slime but this often a lot of energy. Lower oxygen requirements also mean not as much power is required to sustain.

CO2 again also requires power/water+algae which is reduced due to Diver's Lungs.

[MoMuffins]

The issue with food is easily mitigated if you commit yourself to planting 1 flower per cycle with a 9 cycles lead before you start admitting dupes regularly.  This way half of your flowers are always ready for harvest everyday....hope I computed that math right in my head.

The CO2 issue is best mitigated by turning all of it into fertilizer (most energy efficient).

Pretty much the game is turning into a water cycle (we shall see of course...a little early for any pronouncements)

Water -> Oxygen (very important gas) + Hydrogen (very useful gas)...well steam is way more useful but can't use it yet due to overheat issues.  Mercury gas would be supreme...but again can't use yet.

Water -> Polluted Water (Hygiene: Shower+Toilet)

Hydrogen -> Energy + Heat; Hydrogen gas used as a working fluid doesn't count towards the energy/heat balance.

Oxygen -> CO2

CO2 + Water -> Polluted Water

Polluted Water -> Fertilizer -> Food -> Heat

Heat + Wheezeworts (Miraculous Energy Blackhole) -> Less Heat ; alternatively heat + sacrificial gas (oxygen) -> The Void (Another miraculous energy blackhole) -> No Heat.  Most excess heat will leave the system through these two routes.  There are two more routes, where one route is not automated.  You can capture heat in liquids and mop the liquid to destroy the liquid which will also destroy the heat.  The last route is through the dupes.  The energy/heat used to produce the food they eat is more than what they put out.  I've not computed the amount yet but it is likely the dupes themselves are walking blackholes.

Note I did not count Polluted Oxygen/Slimes/Algae because they are inconsequential intermediates.  They maybe very useful in the future though as energy storage medium.  Who knows?!  However, to be complete, polluted oxygen can only come from four sources: Morbs, slimes, polluted dirt, and polluted water.

Polluted Oxygen -> Oxygen (through liquefaction) + Heat

Polluted Oxygen + Pufts -> Slimes -> Algae + Polluted Water

Algae + Water -> Oxygen

Thus overall any and all polluted oxygen will eventually end up as polluted water which turns into fertilizer -> food -> heat.

The main issue with performance can't be helped...it is inevitable that your game will slow to a crawl with so many things going, popping, and pooping.  As long as you can sustain the water -> heat cycle and keep the heat under control, your game is sustainable at any dupes population.  Keeping heat under control means that you must use energy wisely and efficiently.

[loboflex]

On 3/29/2017 at 7:53 PM, Falcahtas said:

If you are going to have more than 20 dupes it is very useful to make sure they all have Diver's Lungs.

Oxygen is most efficient to generate with water as while water is technically infinite you have to be careful not to use the water quicker than the geysers can replenish. A 25% reduction of water usage is pretty nice.

Of course you can also generate oxygen by condensing polluted oxygen and algae by using slime but this often a lot of energy. Lower oxygen requirements also mean not as much power is required to sustain.

CO2 again also requires power/water+algae which is reduced due to Diver's Lungs.

If we're talking about infinite sustainability, then yeah, I guess it mostly boils down to how many dupes you can keep alive with the water that's being added to the world via geysers. I haven't paid close attention to the exact numbers, but I suppose you'd look at how much water and steam every geyser on the map was producing and figure out how much oxygen (and possibly fertilizer?) you can squeeze out of it. Diver's lungs and small bladders are probably the way to go then.

Or you could just fall back to the good ol' "everyone are sustained by an endless flow of vomit" act.

When I wrote that wall of text I was thinking more along the lines of "how large can a colony possibly get before it becomes impossible to manage" up until the point where all the resources on the map is spent and the number of geysers dictate how many can stay alive. The answer is way more than 50 though, and while diver's lungs is a very nice trait, I doubt it's the one thing that makes or breaks your colony. Provided the game holds together, of course.

[loboflex]

7 hours ago, Fatmice said:

[...]

Wait, how do you go about turning CO2 into fertilizer?

As for removing heat from the map; so long as the temperatures inside pipes are ultimately unaffected by the temperature outside (due to a bug) they effectively become black holes for heat as well. Also, I haven't looked at any actual numbers but since the thermo regulator applies a seemingly flat -14°C temperature drop, I bet they remove more energy than the actual heat they're outputting. Unless there's some sort of correlation between how much heat they output and the gas they're cooling; it's not my impression that there is.

Ultimately having to manage heat along with everything else is fun as heck though; I hope they're able to add even more stuff to complicate things. I noticed it's possible to spawn radium via the debug tools; does that mean we're dealing with radiation at some point?

[MoMuffins]

30 minutes ago, loboflex said:

When I wrote that wall of text I was thinking more along the lines of "how large can a colony possibly get before it becomes impossible to manage" up until the point where all the resources on the map is spent and the number of geysers dictate how many can stay alive. The answer is way more than 50 though, and while diver's lungs is a very nice trait, I doubt it's the one thing that makes or breaks your colony. Provided the game holds together, of course.

It probably will collapse before 50 not due to resource but just pure AI issues.  Currently dupes are very stupid.  They have zero self-preservation and this can cause issues with your well-oiled "machine."

13 minutes ago, loboflex said:

Wait, how do you go about turning CO2 into fertilizer?

Air scrubber combines CO2 + water into polluted water.  Polluted water goes into the fertilizer maker.

13 minutes ago, loboflex said:

As for removing heat from the map; so long as the temperatures inside pipes are ultimately unaffected by the temperature outside (due to a bug) they effectively become black holes for heat as well. Also, I haven't looked at any actual numbers but since the thermo regulator applies a seemingly flat -14°C temperature drop, I bet they remove more energy than the actual heat they're outputting. Unless there's some sort of correlation between how much heat they output and the gas they're cooling; it's not my impression that there is.

This is not likely to remain a bug for long.  As for thermo-regulator behavior.  Yes and no.  While it is true they remove a flat 14 degrees from gas, the pay-off depends on how much they put out for doing so.  It used to be net negative heat, but now it is not so clear that is the case.  The reason has to do with their heat output being tied to the temperature and amount of input.  I do not know if there is a bug in there somewhere that has change the net negative heat output to unstable heat output...sometimes negative, sometimes positive...it is currently trending slightly positive.  Perhaps it will help when we can use steam or mercury as a working fluid.  Their high specific heat will be very very useful for heat transformation.

13 minutes ago, loboflex said:

Ultimately having to manage heat along with everything else is fun as heck though; I hope they're able to add even more stuff to complicate things. I noticed it's possible to spawn radium via the debug tools; does that mean we're dealing with radiation at some point

Probably not, but maybe a nuclear option will be in the game to make energy.  Radiation may just be another gas that makes the dupes sick.