Documenting my first 1000-cycle base

[Sarkyn]

@ Newbs - feel free to ask for more details or more screenshots on any part of what you see.

 

@ Pros - feel free to offer tips or suggestions or to trash bits if I got it wrong and haven't noticed.

 

So I'm a designer in real-life and a long-term player, I think I bought the game before the Thermal upgrade. Really happy to see where it's going and to have been along for the update by update process. I've been coming back roughly every 2-3 updates to do a new base and explore the new stuff. Got roughly 400 hours in, which I know seems amateur to some of you

 

But this (!) is the first 1000-cycle base I've ever really managed to stick with. It's the first time I've found a reasonable equilibrium at end-game and been able to pursue basically whatever I like, as the basics and the not-so-basics are all sorted.

 

So I thought I'd document the base, and share it here, so others can enjoy the pics. We also seem to be getting a lot of newbs with the QOL upgrade, so maybe this "mature, but not perfect" base can offer some inspiration.

 

 

The Sarkyn Base "14-3-8-3-14" Basics

 

• The basics of a modular home - The base is built around the concept of modularity. The block sizes are all identical, so I know what I'm defining for. It's either a 14-wide side block or an 8-wide central space. Height can vary, I just adjust the 'stack' to make things fit. The doors don't need to line up, and I can swap in/out various functions and they all play nicely together. Later this really reduces travel time as I add the fireman's pole to the central columns and can make the stairs plastic. This modularity (besides really appealing to my designer's OCD) gives the base a really nice aesthetic and makes things easy to find.
   
• Ventilation is key - Early on I discovered that gravity will always be the best sorter of gases, so all my bases have huge vertical shafts (3 wide) purely to ensure that the gases sort themselves reasonably quickly into layers to be dealt with. I originally had three of them, but that led to the base being too wide, which I didn't like and it delayed the thermal seal as I had to break into other biomes. So I'm happy with this and I added ventilation in the edges.
   
• Single exit w/exosuit - the base is sealed by 1000 cycles. I operate exosuit only from midgame, once then second SPOM is set up and I have sufficient excess oxygen to reliably and quickly fill the number of exosuits I need. This stops the SlimeLung problem, the Scalding problem, and a lot of pain and grief.
   
• Thermal barrier - the base is thermally sealed and anything heat-generating is moved to the racks of rows outside. So dupes operate them with exosuits on, including research. Moving heat-generation out is basically the first thing I do once the initial crash period is over. It means moving batteries and treadmills and everything out, but it means the base itself never has heat-death issues (except sometimes near the dreckos). I make exceptions to this rule for things I just don't use very often (like exosuit building, outfit building).
   
• Storage is outside - because of material-heat seapage, I started keeping bulk storage outside. Usually on the same side as the exosuits.
   
• Duplicant Barracks - in the mid-upper level, this starts as 2-per-room barracks and becomes 1-per-room luxury after dreckos start making the plastic in quantity. Nothing terribly special here, but I rack up about 12 dupes this way in close proximity to their food, shower and the base exit.
   
• Central Kitchen and Diner - like every good luxury apartment, it has a central kitchen that is the heart of the home. In this case, I use the simple mechanics of gravity to create a CO2 space for storage immediately below the cookers. The dupes sometimes hold their breath while cooking. This ensures food doesn't move very far. I add automation in mid-game which brings in the ingredients, stores them and pops them on the grill, and cleans the floor. Endgame problem- I end up with imbalanced ingredients (too many Pincha pepper!) and the food storage overflows. I deal with that by adding basement storage and pushing coffee purely to use the peppers.
   
• Dining Halls / Great Halls - immediately above the kitchen and pantry is fairly standard tile-able dining hall. Each can accommodate 8, but in a 12 dupe base like this one, I have 6 per room.
   
• Medical & Morale rooms - above that I have a flexible area which I kit out half-heartedly with standardized medical rooms (that stop being used once Exosuit only rule applies). I haven't made very many designs for mood rooms as Morale really, really hasn't been a thing.
   
• Hygiene - the central column below the replicator is standard tile-able toilet and shower rooms. I've found 4 toilets sufficient for 12 dupes, but I could just double this or use a 14-tile side room if it became an issue. The showers end up being a cold-spot with a couple of wheezeworts as Showers somehow act as efficient thermal radiators (accidentally, I suspect).
   
• Power - I have a distribution network set up. One horizontal power line per row of the base links to a transformer sitting outside the base (usually on the opposite side to the exosuit entrance). That keeps batteries, transformers and heavy wire outside. The transformers are all part of a heavy watt wire grid that links the power plants and power storage.
   
• Liquid Processing - consistency is key to avoiding overlaps and stuff-ups. Cool, clean water comes in the left. Polluted water leaves via the right. The interlinking combs then don't need to cross each other. I also make sure to use an extensive array of storage, as storage-fed water keeps pumping through power brown-outs. Makes losing power less of an issue.
   
• Liquid by hand - I have a small, automation maintained cold water tank in the bottom left. It's for water to fill the mess-hall drinking fountains, feed the mealwood in the drecko farm, and while I still have mealwood, it is used for the lice-loaf.
   
• Air processing - I use bridge based air vents fed by the SPOMS to keep the whole base reasonably cool and well oxygenated. The air coming in is SPOM-temperature, so usually a little chilly. Storage at the top of base 
   

That's the fixed part. Then I have a lot of space 'downstairs' next to the hygiene sections, to do things with, like:
 

• Mealwood Farms - the early game food of choice. 4 plants per dupe as a rule. I could automate it, but by the time we have automation set up, I'm phasing out mealwood. I've not deleted these plants yet, as I haven't really needed the space for anything.
   
• Drecko Farm - I added this a couple of bases ago, and it's a real asset. Feed it some hydrogen with the manual gas-tank emptier and it maintains a static hydrogen environment. Add mealwood to increase glossy drecko chance and it becomes a reasonably self-contained plastic farm. I have set one of these up early-game and then never built the polymer press ever again. I literally sit on tons and tons of plastic by mid-game. I can't use it fast enough.
   
• Coal/BBQ Ranch - I don't really concentrate on this. It's a stop-gap, I've seen hundreds more efficient ranches online but just never really felt a burning need to increase meat consumption that much. So I pop it in there and then manually kill off half the herd every now and then.
   
• Mushroom Farm - oddly inconsistent CO2 handling has led to slightly less reliable mushroom farming than I would prefer, but it's here and it keeps them fed through mid-game to 250-750 cycles.
   
• Filth-base Oxygen - In the latest build I had a crack at the Algae Terrarium approach to oxygenating the base, where you leave the polluted water around and let it evaporate into Polluted O2. So the cycle becomes water + algae => O2 + polluted H20 => polluted 02 => clean 02. It definitely works, but it feels a little soiled and has an acidic smell.

 

https://imgur.com/FSUFiIF

https://imgur.com/px2DKza

https://imgur.com/B77ngxg

https://imgur.com/UWvcoxn

https://imgur.com/UYq8Va9

https://imgur.com/nZfCVbO

https://imgur.com/y8qxSkw

 

I have a lot of "out of base" building designs that I'm happy to detail if people are interested. Just ask. These include a couple I already posted as well. The list in the current 1000-cycle base is:

 

The Sump

 

My water processing facility immediately below the base. It takes in geyser water and the bases polluted output and makes cool, clean water with the aid of filtration, chlorine gas control and a lot of tricky plumbing. Also grows balm lilies.
 

The Pincha-Power Plant

 

My natural gas power plant to feed the grid, using it's waste output of Polluted Water and heat to keep a pincha pepper farm going.
 

The Hydrogen Plant

A hydrogen geyser fed power plant similar to the natural gas one.
 

Dirty Gas tower
 

A vertical building that houses my fertilizer makers & oil refineries to create those two products but also cleanly capture the natural gas via gravity gas-separation, and then feed that gas out to the gas storage/power network. I used to have polymer presses in here as well, but I don't make them anymore, to be honest.
 

Space Station (Section-by-Section)
 

A tile-able 4-door, 2-solar power section at to the top of the base with self-cleaning and cooled autominers. Used to keep an input-free power sources in the form of solar power coming in, and recently modified with Thermium auto-sweepers to feed regolith to my new pet project. Also had the observatory in a section, but I find myself just never opening the doors on that again once the rocks are all explored.
 

Rocket Design
 

I min-maxed the rockets needed for research/exploration, and then min-maxed the rockets I needed for material retrieval. Happy to share the designs with pics.
 

AETN-based Gas-Cooler (for Glass cooling)
 

I made liquid chlorine to create a pool to drop liquid glass into. It works just fine, but I just don't need the glass. I stop it after I'm sitting on 20 tonnes and so it didn't need to be efficient, and I don't know what to do with liquid chlorine anymore. I converted it to pre-cool oxygen for liquid oxygen instead.

 

CO2 eating Slickster Farm
 

Not very special or very efficient, I never really focused on it. But it seemed to work once I figured out they were dying from temperature reasons not from being underfed. Didn't seem to produce very much at all, so I'm not convinced that it was worth it. 

 

 

Current Project: Regolith-Power
 

My current endgame project (while my rockets explore the universe rock by rock).
 

• Trying to work out how to consistently create power by leveraging the waste heat of Regolith. Something like Regolith (heat) + Polluted Water => Steam (+ more regolith) => High Temp Steam => Power (with byproduct of heat deletion and condensing clean water that I can cool). I've built and tried 3 designs so far with efficient steam product, but not particularly reliable or efficient power production.
   
• This started as project to reliably create steam for rocket engines. But I phased out of steam power shortly after, so it was a waste, and also I made it far too efficient, so ended up with 300kg/tile of steam, so I could fly a gazillion missions and not run out. But that steam wasn't hot enough for a steam turbine... so... next thought. How do I make 300kg/tile of steam "hot enough"... 
   
• Still working on that... 

 

Oh, forgot to add the zoomed-out whole-asteroid view.

[Arcus2611]

That's way more organized than my 1000+ cycle base (which is a ridiculous, ridiculous mess that miraculously hasn't imploded yet)

[chemie]

First 5 points are spot on.  I never understand why so many people put a ton of compactors inside their base.  negative decor and no benefit vs outside.

I too go full exosuit outside of base.

[Arcus2611]

6 hours ago, chemie said:

First 5 points are spot on.  I never understand why so many people put a ton of compactors inside their base.  negative decor and no benefit vs outside.

I too go full exosuit outside of base.

 

Rockets seem to eat exosuits now though (if you send an exosuited dupe into the command capsule, when they come out they won't have an exosuit on), which is particularly annoying because dupes really shouldn't be going inside the rocket silo without an exosuit, but what can you do.

[Sasza22]

55 minutes ago, Arcus2611 said:

Rockets seem to eat exosuits now though (if you send an exosuited dupe into the command capsule, when they come out they won't have an exosuit on), which is particularly annoying because dupes really shouldn't be going inside the rocket silo without an exosuit, but what can you do.

It`s a visual bug. They still have the suit on but it is invisible. Once they pass the checkpoint they leave it there as normal.

[Gurgel]

Pretty good points. Sadly, I find that I do this more slap-dash the more I know. By now I am, for example, going without plastic far after I have sealed space. I have not even mined out my base completely at cycle 800. I have complete sustainability, except thermal management (which I do late, since before liquids got parallel CPU it slowed everything down) from cycle 500 or so though. 

[fishoutofwater]

I wonder if most of the ONI player base is not sealed, meaning oxygen all over the map or worst (mix of gasses).

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, fishoutofwater said:

I wonder if most of the ONI player base is not sealed, meaning oxygen all over the map or worst (mix of gasses).

These days I delay sealing the base for a time, mostly to be able to mine slime directly for mushroom-farming. But eventually, you use exo-suits and then it becomes an obvious step. With the old, much larger maps, I used to have exo-suit checkpoints in remote locations just for entering a specific area, because dupes are initially slow in them, but that is not really a factor anymore. (I do miss the the large maps though, although they would probably not work well with all the new features added since...) So you have one exit point from the base wit exo-suits and then it becomes obvious that you place a liquid-lock there and seal the rest.

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, fishoutofwater said:

I wonder if most of the ONI player base is not sealed, meaning oxygen all over the map or worst (mix of gasses).

I never fully seal off my base. I feel that gives me more freedom of building stuff and expanding the base. Otherwise i would have to build more and more exosuit docks and move the existing ones. I still build airlocks at the edges of livable space and just fill the inside with oxygen letting extra spill away form the base.

I put exosuits for the space biome and oil biome. Outside of those i let my dupes walk freely putting a terrarium here and there to keep oxygen in the pathways. Maybe it`s not optimal and doesn`t look as clean as some designs posetd on the forums but it`s my preferred playstyle.

[Exa]

20 hours ago, Arcus2611 said:

That's way more organized than my 1000+ cycle base (which is a ridiculous, ridiculous mess that miraculously hasn't imploded yet)

show us!!!

[Craigjw]

Only 1 exit for the exo-suit dock?  you can have more, so long as you restrict access between the exo-suit access zones.  I find it easier to have 2 zones, one at the top and one at the bottom.  DEFINITELY have a liquid lock also.

You don't need to partition your bunks up like you have, a single 64 tile room with 4 beds and decor is easily sufficient to reach the max decor bonus and is just more space efficient.  My bunk rooms need a clean, my dupes have been slacking lately!

Using Jumbo batteries is not going to help you, switch to smart batteries asap and use the automation with the smart batteries to switch the transformers, this will save a LOT of power.  Transformers will be producing heat 100% of the time without the automation and also, the jumbo batteries have considerably more power leakage than smart batteries, not to mention the heat produced;  1.5KDTU's vs 500 DTU's and  2KJ/s vs 400J/s respectively.  I don't know if transformers consume power when fully charged or not though.

Your water fountain, you don't need the flow valve, a vent at the top will act as a valve, so long as you have an airflow tile above it to stop an air cavity forming.

This is my standard water fountain setup, it keeps the water full and has it's own storage buffer.  The vent is where the red X is.  The airflow on the right prevents the air cavity from forming.  As you can see, it is full at the moment, so the vent has prevented water flow.  You don't need all the junk I have placed in it, however, this acts as my clean water supply, all of my clean water is supplied from here.

 

Consider having your ladder access to have a decor zone either side, this way, your dupes gain morale going up and down ladders.  This also has the benefit of allowing you to have over-sized rooms that don't fit with the 16x4 room style by sacrificing the decor zone, or whatever your preference is.

Why do you have airflow tiles at the bottom of your borg cube?  Perhaps instead seal of the cube completely and have a couple of air pumps and filter the air. If your air supply fails for any reason, your base may fill up with gases from outside the cube and believe me when I say, having to deal with 8/10 dupes with slimelung is  no fun at all.

[cpy]

I partially insulate my base, and I love to keep my dupes in sterile freezing environments -5C to +5C. I'm evil! Mwhahahaha.