help me improve my base

[stasswonk]

well hello there!°

it is my first base over a hundred cycles and i proceeded very carefully. which means i did´t use any coal before i had smart batteries for example.

my top priorities are

1. energy

2. oxygen

3. food

i have a main power grid setup which is fueled by 2 natural gas geysers, which are located pretty close to my base. i had 5 or 6 subgrids which ran oxygen, oil, alg/slime and water sieve. as there is nearly no coal left on the map, i just started to connect all subgrids to the main grid, but i wonder how long i could sustain my base when the natgas goes dormant.

i started to build a steam turbine, but i abondand the project. currently, i am puzzeled about my priorities, as i am still new to the game. it seems that i should setup a backup petroleum powered grid, but i don´t know if i should set it up close to the oil or if i should pump petroleum towards the power grid.

my main food supply is water depended, which demands alot of pipe-building and refinement. i´d like to switch to a more easily sustainable solution.

then, what long term goals do i have to keep in mind? research stalled cause i have no datapads, but i had tons of other things to do before thinking of rocket building.  there is one geyser my dupes just won´t analyze...minor annoyance is, that i have more atmosuits and docks than dupes. but they won´t always dock correctly and leave the suit on the ground. how can i check if a dock does not have a suit attached or if a dupe is roaming around and will return it. an empty dock looks the same as a dock which has it suit in use...

zoo 689.sav

[Nitroturtle]

Personally, I've taken a liking to building transformer/battery rooms around my base that I use to power up to 8 circuits.  It makes it very easy to run power lines efficiently and to switch things around easily as my base grows.  I usually have my first one setup and hooked to 3 coal gens and 2 hydrogen gens by cycle 100.  Then I work toward getting NG and petro setup, then I go for full solar.  Obviously everyone's approach is different, but this has been working for me.  Keep in mind, I have nearly 2k hours played 

For food, I've always been partial to mushrooms, because they are so easy and there's not a whole lot else to do with slime.  

For the atmo-suit issue, I've always split my base into a left and right side and I don't let dupes go from one to the other outside of the base.  Then the base gets two exits, one for each side.  Anytime I've tried to allow them multiple entry/exit points with docks, they end up throwing suits on the ground and I have to micro-manage them.  Limiting them to one entry point fixes this issue, but can get a little tricky to manage. 

Anyways, here's my current save if you're interested in how the power setup looks:

Planet5.sav

I'm currently in the process of setting up a third base exit that leads only to space, but as you'll see it's still a work in progress.

[ONIfreak]

I would move all nat gas to reservoirs (like 30-40 of them) to get max nat gas when active period. (geyser stops even if in active period if pressure is 5kg).You can daisy chain them and connect to generators at the end. For me also it is easier that way to monitor how much power i use by looking how many reservoirs are empty.

 

Ah and it will prevent for unnecessary hassle when you power temporally goes down so the pump stop working and needs to be powered from outside source (gas will still move from reservoirs)

[Kabrute]

condense sour gas to natural gas for more power

[ChickenMadness]

(lmao I went total OCD mode on this post imma just post it before I end up writing a novel. My ADHD meds make me like this )


lol is this really around 100 cycles? You've mined the entire map, that was fast



I'll just point out a few random things I noticed. Some of it will only be relevant if you restart a new colony.
-Your Exosuit problem: Simple solution. Make sure there is only one exit / entrance between the two sides of the exosuit dock. If there are multiple entrances to your base. Duplicants will walk around the exosuit docks to this second entrance. And it **** everything up basically.
-food wise I can't really see what you're growing or ranching from those screenshots, but you'd want to phase out mealwood and switch to mushrooms asap at the start of the game and start growing your dirt stockpile for sleetwheat later in the game.
-You have alot of fertilizer snythesizers. Dirt is very valuable and you should only use fertilizer on sleet wheat because this will reduce the overall dirt consumed (by the sleet wheat).
-Dreckos are also a good source of food if you ranch them on a large scale. In my current base I have 4 rooms of dreckos and they provide my colony of 20 dupes along with the mushrooms easily.
I'm about to add some more rooms full of balm lily flowers and normal dreckos. This means free food because balm lilys cost no resources to grow. So you'll end up with a free source of meat.
-Pacus are a must-have because they are also free resources and require no duplicant interaction. You only need to feed them until you have the maximum number of fish (before they get cramped debuff) and then then you can stop feeding them and they will stay at this population for ever, laying eggs and dying to give free meat. You can put a sweeper arm in the tank to pick up meat from the dead fish.
-If you have more than one slush geyser on the map consider setting something like this up (gulp fish / sleet wheat farm)
Slush geyser polluted water is -10C > gulp fish turn the polluted water into water > water freezes at 0C which gives you a constant supply of ice which you can melt down and use for the sleet wheat. Or build ice sculptures around your base for cooling etc.

 

 

 

 

-Energywise
-this is purely personal playstyle choice but what I'm about to suggest is very helpful for beginners and conserves alot of resources. I see you have power generators and power consuming buildings dotted all over the map.
-you have no transit tubes. This is more of a playstyle preference. But you can transition through the game very smoothly if you dig out of your base towards all the geysers etc. after you have transit tubes. And then you would be building your transit tubes at the same time as you dig towards the lava biome and towards geysers etc.  If you get your glossy drecko farms running as one of your first priorities at the start of the game you'll have a very large stockpile of plastic for whatever you want in later stages of the game.



-It's possible to have your first glossy drecko egg round about the same time you put duplicants into the 'rancher' job. If you see a wild drecko on the edge of the starting biome dig it out and let it walk into your base, then just build a box around it with some mealwood farm tiles.

The way you've built around that water geyser in the screenshot below is a huge waste of water. once it gets to 2 tiles of water high the geyser gets 'over pressured' and stops producing water. You need to make a box underneath the geyser to catch the water. Usually when I find water / slush / polluted water geysers, even if I don't plan on using them any time soon I dig out loads of space underneath them and just leave it to overflow so I can have excess water on the map. Water (polluted water moreso) is the most valuable resource.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll post a screenshot of my current base to give you an idea on alternative ways to set up your base. (kind of just want an excuse to share it because I'm proud of it lol. I've been trying to come up with a stackable / modular sky-scraper design for ages and finally landed on one)

Random examples of fun things you can try from my current colony

edit: eh weird. I typed out a load of stuff here but it got deleted when I posted the post. Nvm lol

 

[ONIfreak]

1 hour ago, ChickenMadness said:

 

Is therr any particular reason of making 4 bed barracks instead of 1 bed bedroom? Is it due to space requirements? I think 1 bed bedroom gives bigger morale bonus.

[ChickenMadness]

Just now, ONIfreak said:

Is therr any particular reason of making 4 bed barracks instead of 1 bed bedroom? Is it due to space requirements? I think 1 bed bedroom gives bigger morale bonus.

it still counts as a 'bedroom' with 4 beds. Thats the maximum size.

I used to think you could only have 1 bed in a bedroom as well before someone pointed it out on the forum lol. It's worded badly in the game.

[ONIfreak]

Just now, ChickenMadness said:

it still counts as a 'bedroom' with 4 beds. Thats the maximum size.

I used to think you could only have 1 bed in a bedroom as well before someone pointed it out on the forum lol. It's worded badly in the game.

Awesome info - thx for that

[ChickenMadness]

Built my base up a bit more. Really flexible way to setup the power cables. I'm starting to make the left side identicle to the right side and that new block of transformers will be attached the the main heavy watt line going through that horizontal reservoir.

Really flexible design you can pull wires out going all over the place as needed from those transformer 'towers' .