Single Dupe Colony

[Gurgel]

This is Stinky. He is the most lonely dupe in the universe:

He has a little garden he works all by himself:

He sleeps alone and eats alone and cooks only for himself, with just the graves of Lindsay and Camille for company:

Surprisingly, Stinky does well. While he must not get Food Poisoning or Slimelung under any circumstances, even getting Slime for the Mushrooms is not a problem. Research works. Oxygen is fine. And morals are not a problem at all, Stinky is cheerful all by himself.

 

I found this is some ways the most easy colony start I had so far. At cycle 40, Stinky could manage all by himself up to cycle 200 (test-run overnight). At the same time, the effects of priorities, planning, job-effects are far more visible than in a multi-dupe colony. This turns out to be actually a nice change, albeit things are slower and the dupe must neither get seriously sick or entomb itself.  

Colony created on survival, extra dupes disposed off by not allowing them any food. Only condition was that the one Dupe must be able to do all jobs, except caring for the sick.

[fishoutofwater]

I had been there, I drowned the other two, will never do it again, too cruel.

[SakuraKoi]

Can't wait for Stinky to fly with a rocket!

Spoiler

Colony Lost~

and indeed, the very reason why so few try this seriously is because of those literal death sentences. Personally I am quite in favor of no lethal diseases since it is quite implausible to have a Dupe die of disease anyway. Additionally there should be a "desperate" auto-dig and auto-deconstruct if not even auto-construct feature for when a Dupe is suffocating or entombed, making them save themselves. The price in return can be a lot of stress as well as stuff being dug and (de)constructed semi-arbitrary..

I'd actually love to try such a playthrough as well and I tried such in Rimworld (of which a scenario allows for one colonist) but there a wound and a following infection can/could not be treated and was as such lethal. In ONI I am also afraid of such accidents, while I did learn to avoid them but accidents still rarely happen

[Gurgel]

I am willing to reload on these problems with the single-dupe colony. This is entertainment after all, not a rigorous test of skill. That fixes all the small problems. I would like an option that dupes can do emergency digging/building/deconstructing when they have no way out and are running low on oxygen or food, but only as an option that can be changed during the game. An auto-pause when a dupe is in distress (configurable what that means) may also be a solution.

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, fishoutofwater said:

I had been there, I drowned the other two, will never do it again, too cruel.

I am more with g5457s regarding cruelty to dupes

[Gurgel]

I am now on cycle 750, and I can say that this is really "easy mode". In particular, you have a lot of time to plan things and there never is any rush. 

[cblack]

4 hours ago, Gurgel said:

...this is really "easy mode".

Considering that the only real challenge of this game is maintaining massive amounts of dupes, this doesn't surprise me.  I'd do one of those "accept X dupes" challenges, but the game is laggy enough on only 8.

[The Plum Gate]

I kind of like the idea of starting with a lone dupe..actually ( And not having to kill off two of them to do it ). I always start slow anyway. Except in setting up a bathroom.

The maze-runner start of a colony.

[Gurgel]

On 1/25/2019 at 6:32 PM, The Plum Gate said:

I kind of like the idea of starting with a lone dupe..actually ( And not having to kill off two of them to do it ). I always start slow anyway. Except in setting up a bathroom.

The maze-runner start of a colony.

Same here. This pretty much validates my approach to only go beyond 3 dupes after I have food solved and beyond 6...8 dupes after I have solved oxygen. I was surprised how striking the contrast is though.

[impyre]

My current style of play typically uses 4 or 5 dupes max. I find that with 4 or 5 dupes, you don't suffer needlessly long construction times, and you still get most of the benefit of having a small colony. My initial realization of this fact occurred when I waited so long to get dupe number 4 that he died trying to construct a tunnel that the other dupes were working in just fine. His athletics were so low compared to the other dupes that he couldn't get to the end and back before suffocating. It's easy to not realize how much they improve over just a couple hundred cycles, especially when they all share all the labor. That having been said, I personally think they should change morale requirements to be on a per-job-mastered basis and change the requirements accordingly so that a single dupe can reasonably be expected to master a single branch. This would make astronaut training prohibitively difficult if it remains set up as it is, but then I never liked the idea of having to basically master two separate careers to become an astronaut anyway; it makes more sense to rearrange the jobs, or create a special job tree for astronauts.

[The Plum Gate]

I think I keep it artificially low until I start seeing my Kcals go way up and O2 is no longer depending on Algae. I usually keep it at 10 or less, but I have yet to launch a rocket. So I may be bringing more on board to maintain low level functions as I send my  more experienced dupes off ( to their death or space ). I'll cross that bridge...

[Lilalaunekuh]

7 hours ago, impyre said:

My current style of play typically uses 4 or 5 dupes max. I find that with 4 or 5 dupes, you don't suffer needlessly long construction times, and you still get most of the benefit of having a small colony.

I prefer to have at least 6 duplicants:

1. At least one Farmer

2. One plumber (Or storage filling duplicant with "Tidy > Supply > Storage" as highest priorioties)

3. One cook (Most of the time a duplicant restricted to my home area. So this one will do my research aswell.)

4. One electrical engineer (Just to have a duplicant prioritizing the tune up. A room with 5 generators can take close to a full cycle of worktime. This is a new addition to my playstyle since I want to minimize the amount of burned hydrogen, so I have more rocket fuel.)

5. One builder

6.One miner or later astronaut (Yeah, most of the time my builder is my miner, but with one duplicant for each task it makes it much faster. When I launch my rocket, digging isn´t really that important anymore.)

 

[SharraShimada]

My main problem with few dupes ist mostly, it takes ages to do anything bigger as a plant pot to dig/deliver/build. 

Normaly i play with 20 Dupes. And still waiting sometimes for something to be done.

[SakuraKoi]

7 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Normaly i play with 20 Dupes. And still waiting sometimes for something to be done.

Most likely they just get in each others way, like when you are building a "bridge" only two tiles can be worked on, meaning that not only there should not be more than two who do construct but more importantly it is about delivery which should only be by one dupe. There is a significant difference between tasks which have limited access (also includes something like operating which can send dupes all over the place) and tasks which are quite accessible. One will find wires and pipes being built very quickly and why buildings should only be built when the tiles are done.

20 times the Dupes does not mean 20 times the work done, only 20 times the resources they require. The reason why ONI is more easy the less Duplicants one has is indeed because there is no "challenge" which requires numbers unlike e.g. Rimworld where one has a need of a defense but also offensive fighting force for various scenarios (the latter for sieges or infiltration/infestation plus more, where turrets are of limited help).

Personally I sure like ONI the way it is and would not want some "there is safety in numbers" scenario, not every game should have somebody or something out to kill you and ONI is the game for me where I am my own biggest enemy. It of course also adds a more dynamic difficulty than simply "you dealing less damage to enemies and enemies more damage to you" or "moar enemies", even in the event where those dynamically change, there should be no need to.

[SharraShimada]

I object. If you have more dupes. some can do farming, other cook, while another is digging or building. 

If you have less dupes, the work tasks are the same. Sure, they wont have to cook as much, but all the build/dig tasks remain the same. A single dupe cant cook/farm/dig/build at the same time. It has to be done in order, one by a time. So if you have, lets say, 4 Dupes, one cooks, one farms, one digs a new cavern, and one is supplying. Then there is no free dupe who can build at all.

[Saturnus]

On 22/01/2019 at 5:08 PM, SakuraKoi said:

Can't wait for Stinky to fly with a rocket!

  Hide contents

Colony Lost~

 

I'd consider that an ultimate win condition for a single dupe colony actually. If you can manage to do everything needed to achieve space flight with a single dupe then I'd say you have won the game.

[Gurgel]

2 hours ago, Saturnus said:

I'd consider that an ultimate win condition for a single dupe colony actually. If you can manage to do everything needed to achieve space flight with a single dupe then I'd say you have won the game.

Have not thought about that, but I tend to agree!

Now I wonder what Klei will eventually come up with for a win-condition.

6 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

I object. If you have more dupes. some can do farming, other cook, while another is digging or building. 

If you have less dupes, the work tasks are the same. Sure, they wont have to cook as much, but all the build/dig tasks remain the same. A single dupe cant cook/farm/dig/build at the same time. It has to be done in order, one by a time. So if you have, lets say, 4 Dupes, one cooks, one farms, one digs a new cavern, and one is supplying. Then there is no free dupe who can build at all.

Actually, with less dupes, some things get a lot easier. For example, food entirely grown in the wild, no water shortage, no need to deal with worse food, minimal cooling and sanitation, WWs in abundance for purpose, etc. A lot of things in ONI get progressively harder with scale as natural resources are limited. Now, if this was like Factorio with its unlimited map you would be right. But it is not.

[SharraShimada]

Sorry, but i never have problems to grow enough food. Water is never an issue, but on really bad maps. I dont even need to cool my base, because i plan and build it with a plan, keeping every heat out from the beginning. Its really easy to maintain 20 dupes, if you plan your base carefully.

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Sorry, but i never have problems to grow enough food. Water is never an issue, but on really bad maps. I dont even need to cool my base, because i plan and build it with a plan, keeping every heat out from the beginning. Its really easy to maintain 20 dupes, if you plan your base carefully.

Ok, do you play to > 2000 cycles or do you stop early?

[impyre]

15 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

I object. If you have more dupes. some can do farming, other cook, while another is digging or building. 

If you have less dupes, the work tasks are the same. Sure, they wont have to cook as much, but all the build/dig tasks remain the same. A single dupe cant cook/farm/dig/build at the same time. It has to be done in order, one by a time. So if you have, lets say, 4 Dupes, one cooks, one farms, one digs a new cavern, and one is supplying. Then there is no free dupe who can build at all.

Digging and building are the only two tasks which benefit from having more dupes, as every other task scales in the amount of work required as the number of dupes goes up.

EG:

More dupes means more farmers, but more dupes means more farms... so the thing goes. As with water requirements, power requirements, oxygen requirements, etc. You can expect your colony to spend a certain percentage of available "dupe hours" performing a given task. This doesn't change with population (with a few very narrow exceptions which I'll demonstrate below (a) ). This means that if you spend 12.5% of available "dupe hours" farming (that's one eighth) and you have 8 dupes, then you'd need one dupe farming for a full 8 hour day to support 8 dupes (including himself). If you have 3 dupes though, you'd need far less food (3/8ths as much to be exact... less than half). With only 3 dupes, 12.5% of available "dupe hours" means you'd only need one dupe to spend 3 hours out of his available 8 on farming (3/8ths the number of dupes, 3/8ths the work needed)... with the rest being freed up for other tasks.

Considering this though, even digging and building suffer indirectly from adding more dupes. Since more dupes requires more resources, let's revisit the farm. For eight dupes you need eight dupe's worth of plants which takes up 8 units of space and requires 8 batches of farms to be built. This means 8 units of space must be dug up. For three dupes you only need to dig up three units of space and build three batches of farms; again, this has cut the amount of work by more than 50%.

(a) Many things can support multiple dupes. For example, a single SPOM can conceivably be expected to support up to 8 dupes who aren't mouth-breathers... or potentially more who have divers lungs. Something like this means if you have 12 or 13 dupes, you may need two SPOMs instead of just 1. And it also means that 8 dupes get more out of this design than just 3 since all the other work is the same whether you use 8 dupes or 3. The use of power and water can be throttled for 3 dupes though so it isn't a horrible loss. This also goes for water piping, power generation, etc... EG: One single water pipe can supply enough water in a day to farm enough bristle blossom and sleetwheat for 109 dupes; however, whether or not you really need 109 dupes just to outweigh the cost of installing those pipes is an exercise I leave to you.

The *real* advantage of having more dupes is to allow specialization. The greater percentage a dupe spends of his/her time performing a single task, the quicker they will become proficient at it. In our farming example, our farmer should only learn farming 37.5% as fast as a farmer who *only* does farming and nothing else.

However, as it currently stands there are some bugs with job mastery. I've tested cooking and digging. In the Sous Chef position, job mastery is the same for all dupes and only occurs at the background learning rate.

Cooking doesn't increase it faster, and neither does the cooking interest. I tested with interest and with no interest... i also tested no cooking vs. cooking with microbe musher vs. cooking with grill.

I did confirm that for apprentice miners, performing the task *does* increase the rate of job mastery, but it's not an insane amount. For dupes with low digging skills, it's almost doubled when they spend all their time digging... which means a dupe that does no digging learns half as fast. This makes specialization just a tad less important. At high skill levels though, specializing can create a tremendous effect since the action will be performed much faster.

Also noteworthy is the fact that if a dupe is "interested" in a job, the 50% mastery bonus is *not* applied to the passive job mastery rate, only to the mastery received from actually performing the task. I wasn't really interested in testing it to verify whether other professions are bugged or not. Someone wanna get on that?

[The Plum Gate]

Is it not reasonable to assume that cooking something requires a fixed about of time? 

My more experienced dupes with high cooking run the musher faster, but not the grill.

[Christophlette]

8 hours ago, impyre said:

[...]

Very interesting post on the job mastery speed. Thank you for those informations.

[SharraShimada]

11 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Ok, do you play to > 2000 cycles or do you stop early?

Last play, i was ~1800. Then i realized, something gone wrong, and to fix it, would take longer than building from scratch. Currently i am at ~1300. But in my playstile, most of the things are set after ~300-400 cycles. At this point food water and power supply is 100% stable, and dont need any attention or additional work. Later is may insulate something better or boost cooling with super coolant for lower power consumption. 

What i want to say is, at this point gameplay is smooth, and wont change really much for the next hundreds of cycles.

[Gurgel]

7 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Last play, i was ~1800. Then i realized, something gone wrong, and to fix it, would take longer than building from scratch. Currently i am at ~1300. But in my playstile, most of the things are set after ~300-400 cycles. At this point food water and power supply is 100% stable, and dont need any attention or additional work. Later is may insulate something better or boost cooling with super coolant for lower power consumption. 

What i want to say is, at this point gameplay is smooth, and wont change really much for the next hundreds of cycles.

Interesting. I usually need to add base cooling somewhere between cycle 1000 and 2000. I can extend the time without central, regulated cooling with carefully placed WWs.

[impyre]

12 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

Is it not reasonable to assume that cooking something requires a fixed about of time? 

My more experienced dupes with high cooking run the musher faster, but not the grill.

Yes, that is reasonable. It has nothing to do with what I was talking about though. Assuming you're talking about this part:

However, as it currently stands there are some bugs with job mastery. I've tested cooking and digging. In the Sous Chef position, job mastery is the same for all dupes and only occurs at the background learning rate.

Cooking doesn't increase it faster, and neither does the cooking interest. I tested with interest and with no interest... i also tested no cooking vs. cooking with microbe musher vs. cooking with grill.

What I'm talking about is this:

For every job there are supposedly two ways of gaining mastery: 1) passive mastery gains and 2) performance mastery gains.

Passive mastery gains happen all the time at a steady rate. For the lower tier jobs it works out to be somewhere around 1 mastery every few seconds. The passive mastery gain ensures that there is a maximum amount of time it can take a dupe to master a job... even if he/she does nothing else.

Performance mastery gains are applied every time an activity is performed that is related to that job. For digging, you get a small amount of mastery every time you dig up a tile. It seems like most jobs have this in place and working as intended.

This means that a dupe performing his job will get both the performance mastery gains *and* the passive mastery gains, while a dupe doing other things will only get the passive gains. This means that performing the job helps them learn it faster. For cooking, this does not happen. A chef that makes meals all day for 3 cycles gets exactly the same job mastery amount as a chef that spends 3 days cleaning outhouses. They will both master their jobs at the same time.

If this were true for all jobs, there'd be absolutely no reason to specialize your dupes... since at the moment the *only* benefit of specializing is faster mastery. The benefit of *not* specializing is that all of your dupes can perform all tasks, so you don't have to worry about your entire colony going under if your farmer dies.