Late game players: how do you deal with how dumb and inefficient dupes are?

[Dalkun]

I've got a modest number of hours in ONI so far (about 63) and I have never gotten to the "late game". In every game I seem to hit a point at which I "stall out", because my dupes are no longer capable of achieving any task in a reasonable timeframe, and problems start seeming impossible to fix because the structures or repairs required just don't get done. 

Once I start building stuff far away from base, like in the oil or cold biomes, dupes just can't seem to juggle the far away tasks with the close to base ones. They go out to the furthest area of the base, build one thing, and then run all they way home to fertilize a plant or flip a switch when there's another dupe who could easily do that job seconds later. Almost the only way to get them to actually finish anything is to lock them outside the base, which I have to micro so they don't starve and suffocate. I've tried building "outposts" but they're a huge investment since you can't order some set quantities of food or oxygen to get moved, it's all storage priority, and that just ties into the chaos even more. 

I keep thinking of tools I feel could help me out - if I could lock dupes to only work in certain regions, for example, and have other dupes periodically restock their bases with a set quantity food and oxygen materials. Or if there was something like a biometrics checkpoint, that would only allow dupes to pass if their hunger, stress, oxygen or health was below a certain level. I don't think they need better AI or anything, I understand why they work the way they do. But as it is, I'm totally overwhelmed dealing with these little idiots and keep coming back to the game every update just to quit for the same reason. 

Any suggestions from the people consistently hitting 200 cycles? 

[Cypher-7]

Do you use the auto prioritize based on jobs selection on the top right corner of the jobs screen? If not check that, open the priority screen and hit reset(top right corner I think, name might be wrong) should help with tasks

[hpongledd]

i would recheck your priority system, if you really fail at such tasks. Also "Enabling Proximity" should help. Between cycle 200 - ~600 its usually the period where i get most stuff done. My dupes are very fast in this period, after 600 they start to slow down again.

[Lilalaunekuh]

2 hours ago, Dalkun said:

They go out to the furthest area of the base, build one thing, and then run all they way home to fertilize a plant

This is a result of generalized duplicants, you let everyone do every job and you prioritize some "important".

If one "important" task close to your base pops up the "next" (time not proximity based) duplicant done with it´s current tasks will take the job

=> Try to specialize your dupes:

-Maybe let someone just dig/build, so he can stay away from your normal base.

-Or let your farmer do research or give them some operate jobs close by (with the right permission you can setup manual generators to keep just your farmers working)

=> Try to create "bulk" tasks:

- Build a row of composts but only give access to this room once a day. (The travel time is less important if your duplicant can flip multiple composts at once instead of one each time a task would pop up.)

- Use an autosweeper/storage compactor close to your water sieve and block the duplicant access using a pneumatic door

(So your dupes will never do a task that could be done by the autosweeper)

 

...

If you want something more detailed or tailored to your base, just post your priority screen and maybe a report of your duplicant work-/travel-time.

(PS: My biggest time sink were always my farms because I try to keep a high priority on my harvest tasks and after each harvest the growing cycles of my plants got more and more desynced, resulting in an increasing amount of trips to my farms / long travel times.)

 

 

[SharraShimada]

You have to set priorities the right way. For example, if you have problems with food stocks, you need better (and faster) cooks. And you have to prevent them from leaving the base, going on a long journey, just to deliver 100mg of slime, getting sick in the process. Thats what door permissions are for. Your cook has to cook, as long as your stock isn´t as big, allowing the cook to attend to other tasks as well. 

 

And this counts for nearly everything in the game. Either do your homework, and learn to make really efficient designs, freeing dupes from doing most of the work, or make dupes work one task in perfection, and do nothing else.

[Genetic Ooze]

somethings i think about:

1. the priority system is nuanced but powerful.

Carefully read each task in the priority list. Look for where different tasks rely on each other: for example, to build something fast one first needs to 'dig' away any blocking material, then construction materials must be delivered using a 'supply' errand, then the 'build' errand can finally be assigned. It may be best to divvy up this work among several dupes rather than have one/all with high dig, supply, and build, to achieve speedy completion.

If something breaks down, you need 'tidy' set high to repair it promptly, but this means your dupe will also spend a lot of time running around picking up stuff, so not something you want all your dupes doing if you plan on getting many other things done this cycle. 

The number priority system works within the task at hand. if you request a job with priority 9, but its task priority is set low for all your dupes, then the job won't get done for a while. Similarly, if the task priority is set high, then even priority 1 jobs of that task will get done before priority 9 jobs of a lower priority task.

2. operation overhead is a b!tch

Use automation and mechatronics wherever you can. You may need to harvest crops manually, but do your dupes really need to gather and deliver the goods themselves?

Do not underestimate how much time may be lost to sweeping up egg shells...

3. hours of operation

Sometimes it's best to restrict all access to a region until a better, more fruitful, time.. 

4. materials on hand

A well-managed resource storage system can save TONS of time. planning a huge project? Have materials nearby! Minerals, metals, refined goods, and sand are typically what I always have as close as a Starbucks to anywhere on the map... Just cracking into a new biome? Perhaps using the local metals and minerals would be better than shipping any in, for now at least.

Be careful using priority numbers on resource storage: dupes will shuttle resources from lower priority bins to higher priority bins, wasting a ton of time especially if you carefully moved around materials. I generally only use higher than 5 for when a material MUST be moved to this bin BEFORE any other (cooling refined goods, collecting ice for melting, etc.). Also, one time I had a dupe move several tons of glowing hot iron from the comet surface to inside my main base! Noticed it just in time (from the glowing red spot on the heat map) before it started cooking anything. I had set my iron cooling bin to "sweep only" but forgot I had another high priority storage bin for refined metals in my base... not recommended...

 

These are some things I focus on for very smooth gameplay.

I usually run crews no bigger than 8, only taking on more dupes simply because I can, rather than because I need to (someones gotta eat all this BBQ!!). I have very little issue manning operations across the entire map, even when I opt for wild foraging over farming or have several rockets in flight. When I want something done I don't have to wait long ever, even when well beyond 2000 cycles.

[Gurgel]

Never, ever use prio 9 except for critical life-support (emptying outhouses, e.g.) and a small number things you need to get done fast. Keep storage at 7 and regular tasks at 8. But that is only half of it. You need to automate energy generation and make food generation efficient. This means fire-poles, plastic ladders, the tube transfer system, solar power and other no-dupe power generation, using transport automation, etc.

ONI is a "catastrophe" game and the stealthy catastrophe that gets you is that dupe labor is a finite resource. 

[Lilalaunekuh]

19 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Never, ever use prio 9 except for critical life-support (emptying outhouses, e.g.) and a small number things you need to get done fast. Keep storage at 7 and regular tasks at 8

If you try to manage everything just using the assgined priorities you will fail most of the time ...

=> Better use the priority screen and lower all tasks for a selected category

(I never use priority 9 on continuous tasks, just for emergency orders: suffocating duplicants, blocked pathways ...)

 

-Why not set storage on every duplicant to the lowest possible priority ?

-Why not use only one duplicant for all toggle tasks ?

-Why not schedule work using a larger "work cycles" instead of the "normal" 600s ?

(Farm till you stocked food for several cycles, then "deactivated" (=cut supply of) them till you run low on food again.

For my base it means farm till I got ~1.000.000 kcal stored, then stop farming till I got just 200.000kcal left.)

[avc15]

A lot of talk about priorities here, but there's more. Organize your builds for efficient motion.

It's a really basic sounding thing, but if you start tracking your dupes' motion you will realize some things. 

This isn't a very sophisticated example, but in this very young colony, I need to add on a mushroom farm. Goals should be (a) make sure the farmer  and dupes doing "deliveries" (fertilizing) don't have to go far (b) make sure "delivery" errands don't spread slimelung all over the place (c) trap CO2 in the farmThen also (d) that errands to carry mushrooms to the kitchen to be cooked have a short direct path, and also (e) that dupes don't go out of the way much at all to pick up their food and bring it to the great hall.

You will realize that shortening these travel distances for really repetitive tasks can make the difference between a colony that never has labor to spare for building and digging, and a colony with 5 dupes idling all the time.

Lastly, some really repetitive tasks eat up dupe time and provide less benefit than you might realize. It's VERY easy to ranch too much and paralyze your base, for instance - that could mean you're not getting enough benefit from your ranch.

[Miravlix]

Sound like an Error 40 as in the problem is 40 cm from the monitor.

 

My dupes aren't dumb, though nothing prevent me from being dumb when using them.

[Gurgel]

3 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

If you try to manage everything just using the assgined priorities you will fail most of the time ...

Well, if "most of the time" is something that never happened to me so far, then yes. In other news, assigned priorities work nicely if you do them right.

Of course there are other ways to do it as well.

1 hour ago, avc15 said:

A lot of talk about priorities here, but there's more. Organize your builds for efficient motion.

I completely agree. If you do not optimize travel time and repetitive tasks as well, you will not get anything done after a while. Probably most failures to get past cycle 200 or so have the main issue in this area. This should also include prioritizing dupes according to skill. Let the best digger do digging, the fastest cook do the food, etc.

[Daxterr]

Priorities will help you do stuff more efficiently but most priorities are not that necessary except for cooking  and art. And using door permissions all the time certainly isn't necessary.  Make sure that your dupes aren't taking out and filling storage containers all the time etc etc. Look for small things that are wasting your time over and over again and fix them.  Also, train everyone as a courier.

[Xuhybrid]

22 hours ago, Dalkun said:

I've got a modest number of hours in ONI so far (about 63) and I have never gotten to the "late game". In every game I seem to hit a point at which I "stall out", because my dupes are no longer capable of achieving any task in a reasonable timeframe, and problems start seeming impossible to fix because the structures or repairs required just don't get done. 

Once I start building stuff far away from base, like in the oil or cold biomes, dupes just can't seem to juggle the far away tasks with the close to base ones. They go out to the furthest area of the base, build one thing, and then run all they way home to fertilize a plant or flip a switch when there's another dupe who could easily do that job seconds later. Almost the only way to get them to actually finish anything is to lock them outside the base, which I have to micro so they don't starve and suffocate. I've tried building "outposts" but they're a huge investment since you can't order some set quantities of food or oxygen to get moved, it's all storage priority, and that just ties into the chaos even more. 

I keep thinking of tools I feel could help me out - if I could lock dupes to only work in certain regions, for example, and have other dupes periodically restock their bases with a set quantity food and oxygen materials. Or if there was something like a biometrics checkpoint, that would only allow dupes to pass if their hunger, stress, oxygen or health was below a certain level. I don't think they need better AI or anything, I understand why they work the way they do. But as it is, I'm totally overwhelmed dealing with these little idiots and keep coming back to the game every update just to quit for the same reason. 

Any suggestions from the people consistently hitting 200 cycles? 

More dupes. Or more automation. You can only handle a certain amount of tasks per dupe, per day. So realistically if you can't keep up with work, you need more dupes or less work. Balancing one of those will help you.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Well, I today learned the value of putting my dupes on supply jobs. So I'll stick them to their priorities like miner, builder, etc, but the perks of gofer, courier and exosuit engineer jobs give them massive increases in speed and carry capacity. It massively helps their efficiency.

To effectively limit duplicant traffic and keep particular dupes around particular places on the map, you will need to build forward bases and restrict acess to said bases. If you accept the inefficiency of dupes chooses which dupes goes were at random, you can also cut down on travel time through use of transit tubes. On my old map I kind of used a bit of both, restricting duplicant access to the asteroid surface to only a handful of dupes assigned to a surface base, while dupe travel is freely allowed between bases with transit tubes. I am going to refine that model for my current map.

[fishoutofwater]

agree with all about prioritizing the dupes not the building, but one thing I hate about prioritize supply job is when builder waiting for supply, I think supplying for building stuff should merge with build job, I mean builder dupes should supply their own work errand rather than waiting other specialized dupes with specialized supply job.

[Dalkun]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys, I appreciate it. 

23 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

...Build a row of composts but only give access to this room once a day. (The travel time is less important if your duplicant can flip multiple composts at once instead of one each time a task would pop up.)...

...block the duplicant access using a pneumatic door

This sounds like a very useful concept, grouping whole regions of tasks to be done at once once everything inside has finished (like a farm), but I don't understand entirely what you mean. How exactly do you automate the opening and closing of rooms without risking dupes getting trapped and starving? And do you have all items inside on a really high priority so that the dupes will make sure to do them when the room is "open for business"? 

How did you end up solving your farm problem? That sounds related. 

23 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

You have to set priorities the right way. For example, if you have problems with food stocks, you need better (and faster) cooks. And you have to prevent them from leaving the base, going on a long journey, just to deliver 100mg of slime, getting sick in the process. Thats what door permissions are for. Your cook has to cook, as long as your stock isn´t as big, allowing the cook to attend to other tasks as well. 

This is a really big question for me. How exactly do you get dupes to stop producing something once you've hit a certain quantity of it, without using micromanagement on the production-order side? I would LOVE to get dupes to max out the amount of calories they'll spend time cooking, or stop delivering food to an off-site base when it's got enough (or START delivering food once it's fallen low), but I don't see any mechanism in place for doing that. Am I missing something big here? 

16 hours ago, Genetic Ooze said:

The number priority system works within the task at hand. if you request a job with priority 9, but its task priority is set low for all your dupes, then the job won't get done for a while. Similarly, if the task priority is set high, then even priority 1 jobs of that task will get done before priority 9 jobs of a lower priority task.

I had not fully understood that, ty. I appreciate your other points as well, but I've got the same questions on above at them. You reference a) locking regions automatically, which sounds fairly lethal to me and b) making precision deliveries to certain locations, where a set amount of material is delivered to a site. 

 

10 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

-Why not set storage on every duplicant to the lowest possible priority ?

-Why not use only one duplicant for all toggle tasks ?

-Why not schedule work using a larger "work cycles" instead of the "normal" 600s ?

(Farm till you stocked food for several cycles, then "deactivated" (=cut supply of) them till you run low on food again.

For my base it means farm till I got ~1.000.000 kcal stored, then stop farming till I got just 200.000kcal left.)

Could you elaborate on these points a bit more? Are there consequences to keeping storage so low? What's the advantage to having one dupe manage these toggle tasks (and also, how many of those do you have/manage in your base, and for what?). And on the last point, again, I'm confused - do you deactivate this task group manually (you disable the grill or something with a switch) or do you have some method for automating based on food quantity? Smart storage containers seem like they could be a start, but they can't store food, and they're way too huge for storing a set quantity of food at an away base, for instance. 

Again, thanks for the suggestions. 

[6Havok9]

Hello, first post, long time player and lurker. My 2 cents, hoping to be of some help to the OP. Wall of text incoming, posting from mobile.

 

1) Set storage to sweep only. You can keep clean where you want by giving high priority sweep orders, while leaving debris around when digging. This allows for fast ladder/tile building when exploring, and having 100 kg of igneous rock nearby allows a stuck dupe to build himself a ladder and live another day, so he can get his head stuck in a ceramic tile.

 

2) Basic training and cross training. Even tho you may only need one cook or artist, make sure every dupe is trained as a courier, apprentice miner and tenured scientist, if possible and morale allows. Learning is an awesome stat, higher learning = more stats, faster. High athletics and high job related skills mean less time spent traveling and less time spent in toxic/deadly/low decor zones. Even an anemic smart dupe is gonna be a fast dupe eventually, and usually a fast dupe is happier and healthier. Carrying capacity increase from gofer/courier is pretty much needed as it will cut delivery time by a factor of over 9k, and you are inside a chunk of rock, gotta dig.

Cross train everyone once the basics are covered. If every dupe can do most of the common jobs they will follow the priorities you set on errands and buildings reliably. Usually. This leads to 3)

 

3) Priorities. The priority window is powerful, as dupes will follow what you set there before following building/errand priorities. IMHO Toggle should be a max priority for everyone, the rest is up to you. If you decide that cooking is a very high priority for Meep, he will keep on cooking even if Stinky's stuck in the ceiling with a priority 9 deconstruct errand on his face.

However, you can go just fine with the standard settings. If every dupe can dig, build and harvest, and you set your plants to e.g. 6 and a dig/ build errand to 7, they WILL dig/build first. Just keep the numbers low. The only thing that should be priority 9 are your "I want this done, NOW" orders.

 

4) Manage your gases. Go overboard on oxygen and start spreading breathable air in the asteroid as soon as possible. This will keep any co2 and hydrogen that may be around, either leaked or from a pocket you cracked open, compressed and out of the way. This prevents dupes from having to catch their breath, which is a massive, massive time loss. Massive. When you can, remove and store those gases.

 

5) Access control. Set permissions for critical areas: you dont want your anemic Otto and that other dupe you just printed to take your exosuits and go for a stroll in the oil biome. You want your 20 athletics Catalina there, and a couple more trustworthy dupes.

Your dupes ain't gonna do something that another dupe is currently doing, and if it takes that dupe 3/4 of a cycle to pick up a pile of diamond (a small one too, cause he's not a courier) just to go back 5 meters before arrival because "x schedule: downtime!"... It's gonna be bad. You now have a still pending task and a stressed dupe, cause he needed another half of a cycle to get from the exosuit checkpoint to the mess hall. Then he collapsed from fatigue and didn't even manage to eat, while a roaming hatch ate his mushrooms and pooped on his face.

 

If you have breathable air, fast dupes and appropriate dupe/building priorities, you can set any priority 9 errand anywhere and it will get done immediately. Keep your untrained dupes in check with doors and priorities.

I find outposts to be a novelty, not a necessity. You can do everything you want from the starting zone, far away bases are imho just "fun" and for rp reasons.

You can disable anything with automation by removing the ground it's placed upon (use a mechanized airlock as floor), sending a signal (if it has an input port) or just cutting off access completely if it needs duplicant operation. You can use e.g. a signal from a storage container/fridge to disable an electric grill. Experiment!

[avc15]

I know the question was specifically about the late game, but I hope it's clear why my example is about solving early game problems. Early game systems generate the bulk of your dupe's errands in every base, even your cycle 3000+ bases. Food production & storage is a perfect example. Late game systems usually don't use as much dupe time, even the ones that seem labor intensive (like refining petroleum)

Here's how I solved the problem I was discussing in my last example. See how I relocated the bedrooms to the other side of the base so that I could keep the entire farming, gathering, cooking & mess hall in the space of half a screen:

 

I haven't benchmarked how many errands I'll gain on something like this, but I do know that when I design my systems carefully to reduce walking distances I hardly have to do anything with priorities. Priorities become kind of an incremental thing you just tweak in small ways when minor things are going wrong. Instead of a stick you use to make them accomplish anything at all.

 

[Mr.Trueba]

Building an efficient base. (:

 

[Lilalaunekuh]

On 26.12.2018 at 3:53 AM, Dalkun said:

This sounds like a very useful concept, grouping whole regions of tasks to be done at once once everything inside has finished (like a farm), but I don't understand entirely what you mean. How exactly do you automate the opening and closing of rooms without risking dupes getting trapped and starving? And do you have all items inside on a really high priority so that the dupes will make sure to do them when the room is "open for business"? 

Most of the time I use just 2 doors, one door to enter and one door to leave

(I never go for personal door settings, the most I do is creating an "one-way-door")

Some example:

- My composts are supplied using automation, so the only tasks queued would be the farm task "flip".

I got at least one duplicant prioritizing farming tasks so when I open the door to get inside using a clock sensor for 20% of a day, I know one of my duplicants will go there after finishing his current task.

Considering the duration of access restriction, every compost in the room should be ready to "flip", if you had produced enough polluted dirt to fill the compost.

=> My exit can stay open all the time, because when a duplicant (farmer) enters, he will prioritize the composts

(Keep in mind my composts aren´t even close to running at full effeciency.)

 

-For farms I automate the both doors, to lock my farmers inside for roughly a full cycle.

(Most of the time it´s more efficient to have let´s say 100s idle time instead of a farmer traveling to each plant the full way.

If your like me an build big farms (my current one with locks got 46 plants), travel times are more important, even if the farm would be very close.)

I like weight plates and a buffer to lock the exit, but that could be done using better ways.

=> Most of the time the plants inside my farm should turn harvest ready one after an other in the order they were harvested the last time

 

On 26.12.2018 at 6:59 AM, Mr.Trueba said:

Building an efficient base. (:

The lessons I had to learn the hard way: Having no idle time isn´t an indicator of an efficient base

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Giving it some more thought, there are 5 important aspects to streamline dupe efficiency:

1. Jobs: It really starts with this because you want to get dupes to learn useful skills. Efficiency starts with the duplicant itself, as a higher skill will lead to less time wasted on the task. It is important to understand what each skill does, which traits it gives and which jobs can be combined. As a rule of thumb, the deeper you go into a particular job tree, the more specialized that dupe becomes and the more narrow the appliance of the specialized skill becomes. For instance, the metratronic engineer job is solely there to build conveyor rail systems, but a dupe assigned as a metatronics engineer should not be limited to just that skill. More applicable, a miner should not just be a miner, but frankly also a builder. One thing to note is that all duplicants, no matter what their role ultimately becomes, benefit from mastering the supply jobs.

2. Priorities tab for duplicants: very important as this will let you make duplicants do their professions. For instance, a miner should actually have their highest priority on mining, but building should either be on an equal level, or right below that. This is important because if you have an architect with highest priority on building inside your base while your miner -without high priority on building- has done its mining errant to clear space for buildings, the miner will walk back and the architect will have to spend half a cycle to get up to the surface. Therefore, give your miners also priority (and preferable mastery in architecture) and let them handle it.

3. Priorities assignment: so the numbers. In a heavily optimized game you will actually barely need it and should only be used if you for instance have 2 dig errands and need one to be completed before the other. A duplicant giving high priority to mining will always do a priority 1 mining errand instead of a priority 9 supply errand. Priority level is useful for supply jobs however.

4. Finally we have door access: this will help you to keep for instance a cook running off to far away build operation. This helps a lot when your priorities tab is not set up properly, because if you disable your cook for mining and building, you will go a long way already to keep him from doing silly things.

5. Resources around far away points are crucial! For instance, building copper wires in the oil biome will force your duplicants to constantly travel. To avoid this, mine out iron near the place and build iron wires instead. This actually makes a huge difference.

[TOOK14]

Plenty of people here giving great advice, but I want to throw in my view on it, even if most/all of it has already been covered.  I find the most important things to optimize dupe work times are the priorities, sub-priorities, pathing restrictions, and one way travel like fire poles and tubes. 

It is important to use both the priority window and the sub priority tool wisely.  I try to keep all my work orders within 5-7 sub priority, reserving 8 and 9 for critically time sensitive and emergency dupe rescue respectively, while reserving 1-4 for complex build planning and conveyor setups.  As for how to set up the priority spread, everyone has their own way, and while some will work better than others, it's highly dependent on how you play, but I generally keep to a simple 5 setups, cook+tidy, research+operate, ranch+farm, build+dig, and supply+storage, and I put combat, toggle, care, and life support on high for EVERYONE(and disable art for all but the most creative dupe, once they train up).  I totally admit I could do better with priority, but I'm sticking to the K.I.S.S. principle on this one, and it's seen me reach sustainability past cycle 1,000 every time with little trouble.  Also, in case it has been missed, you should REALLY enable proximity once you start venturing out of the starting biome, which is a little mechanic hidden in the top right corner of the priority window.
 

As for pathing restrictions, doors of any kind are your friend, as are atmo suits and jetpack suits.  I personally don't use individualized restrictions much(but I do still use them), but one ways doors and temporarily making doors impassable have done wonders for me.  Aside from that, I find reaching out to access far flung resources like geysers and oil to be made much less headache inducing when you have a hearty atmo suit setup.  I have the core of my base set up to have only one entrance, so my dupes are always in a suit when traveling most of the map. Yes dupes move slower when in suits, but not having to worry about slimelung, cold, heat up to standing in lava, or pumping oxygen into every corner of the map, more than makes up for that, and they will get faster as they level athletics, which is leveled by walking around.  Also an atmo suit tends to give them a full day of air if they get stuck somewhere.  I find jetpacks to be a great convenience for the surface, so dupes can go gather iron freely without worry of being stranded by meteor strikes, but jetpacks are a set speed, which is pretty slow, especially compared to veteran dupes with a 10-20 or higher athletics skill.  In the pic above you can see a bit of my suit exchange room, so dupes hang up their atmo suits and don jetpacks when they want to go from atmosphere to vacuum, and vice versa.

The last thing I'd like to mention is how awesome fire poles are, and transit tubes to a lesser extent.  I always set up poles next to my highest traffic ladders, and it does drop dupe travel times in a very noticeable way.  Transit tubes look like they'd be the best way to move dupes around, but in my experience they are more trouble than they are worth in many circumstances.  Transit tubes cannot be built to overlap with any other building, so crossing ladders, or through rooms becomes troublesome, and plastic has a melting point of 150c, making them risky to use in space, the oil biome, or around most vents/volcanoes.  Past all that the transit tube entrances cost quite a bit of power, making it expensive to place more than a couple of them in terms of both power and metal to run the wires.  Overall it's better IMO to just run one tube from your base straight up a temperature stable shaft to somewhere around the surface, and just use plastic ladders and fire poles everywhere else you want to lower travel times.  Other things to keep in mind are plastic and refined metal tiles also increase move speed, and with metal tile's massive decor score I invariably end up spamming them everywhere once my income of refined metal builds up beyond my building needs(suuuuper late game).