Pre-Space Sustainable Base

[Drethon]

Hi, I've been around the forums for the past couple of months learning most of the ins and outs of the the game and building a base roughly formed after the steam early-mid game guides.  Terrific community here, you guys really put a lot of thought into base designs!  I think I'm getting close to mid game sustainability and wanted to check my thinking about what is needed to sustain a base, ignoring space for the moment at least.

I'm keeping my population to 8 dups at the moment, though this might increase when I start working with petroleum.

Food:

I've mostly switched from mealwood farming to bristle blossom lit by shine bugs.  This with eggs and some meat from hatch and drecko farming provides plenty of food, though not the best quality.

Water/Oxygen:

I have tapped a cool steam and cool slush geyser to power a SPOM and top off my clean water reserves.  A second electrolyte runs occasionally as my base isn't perfectly sealed but I have more than enough water to support this at the moment.

Heat:

The SPOM seems to provide almost too much cooling with the wheezeworts so I think I'm good here.

Power:

SPOM + coal provides my power at the moment.  I've dug down to the oil and plan on setting up petroleum/natural gas power next which I think should get my power sustainable.

Resources:

At this point I think the last resources I have that are not sustained are.  1. Algae, renewable only by pufts I think but also there seem to be plenty of alternatives to algae (ex electrolyzer).  2. Dirt, I think the use for farming is fairly slow so may not be a real issue but it looks like the best very long term option is boiling polluted water.  This also provides another clean water source but could be a bit of a power hog depending on implementation.  3. Sand, this I think is the biggest initial issue for dealing with polluted oxygen and water.  Could be produced by heating the dirt from boiling polluted water.  Though once boiling polluted water is implemented, one main consumer of sand is gone.  The last consumer here could be removed by liquefying polluted oxygen and then returning it to gas, or using pufts to consume the polluted oxygen.

 

Am I missing anything important here or do I understand enough if my intent were to produce a fully sustainable base (once everything is built), without plans of going to space (so long as meteors don't wipe me out anyway)?  Next step of course will be getting to space, but I just want to understand and get working a full sustainable approach if I can, then make the switch to space... and probably find out how badly I killed of everything I need to get to space by using it up to make my base sustainable, and restart with a new base.  But that is half the fun right?

[Drethon]

Just realized I probably should have made this more obviously a question in the title, rather than looking like a possible example... sorry.

[Nitroturtle]

I don't think algae is needed outside of oxygen diffusers and feeding fish.  So once you switch to full electrolyzers for O2 it shouldn't be an issue.  Also, once you breach the surface, you'll get access to more regolith than you'll ever need, which can be used in place of sand for water sieves.  Personally, I use mushrooms as my mid-game food source, since there's a lot of slime to use up on the map.  Once I start running low on slime, I switch to berries.

[Neotuck]

What version are you playing?

Most of what you say applies to early versions of the game

(Shine bugs to light BB, boiling PW for dirt, cooking dirt into sand, making LOX from PO2 as an O2 source)

Those are all outdated solutions that don't apply to the current update

[Drethon]

Whichever version steam updated to as of Tuesday I'm using shine bugs for my bristle blossom.  The rest comes from gamepedia, is there a better general guide?

[Neotuck]

Just now, Drethon said:

Whichever version steam updated to as of Tuesday I'm using shine bugs for my bristle blossom.  The rest comes from gamepedia, is there a better general guide?

The forums are the best guide available as players are the quickest in adapting to changes in updates and sharing their solutions

Shine bugs eat bristles now so you lose some of your crops as you harvest.

[Drethon]

9 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

The forums are the best guide available as players are the quickest in adapting to changes in updates and sharing their solutions

Shine bugs eat bristles now so you lose some of your crops as you harvest.

Part of why I came here to ask, though I could probably sharpen my search skills (but they say good engineers are lazy... I strive to be excellent...).  Noted will look to forums more for info.

Yeah, bristle berry farming with shine bug lighting may not be the most efficient but I've got way too much food from eggs and plenty of surplus gristle berry in storage.  And I just kind of like watching the SPBM (Self Powered Berry Machine... ok, it doesn't provide its own water).

[Neotuck]

Well I have been active in the forums for over a year, feel free to message me if you have any questions

[Drethon]

Thanks!

[Neotuck]

24 minutes ago, Drethon said:

Thanks!

I'll go over some up-to-date solutions

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

Boiling PW for dirt, cooking dirt into sand, making LOX from PO2 as an O2 source

Boiling PW for dirt or clean water is not as effective as a water sieve.  Sand is unlimited now so take advantage of it.  No need to cook dirt for sand and deodorizers are perfect for making clean O2 from polluted O2 

 

[Drethon]

21 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I'll go over some up-to-date solutions

Boiling PW for dirt or clean water is not as effective as a water sieve.  Sand is unlimited now so take advantage of it.  No need to cook dirt for sand and deodorizers are perfect for making clean O2 from polluted O2 

 

Then I pretty much just need to get my petroleum power in place (no good natural gas sources, could coal farm hatches but prefer to learn petroleum), get my base a bit better organized, and it will be sustainable.  Guess working toward space may be closer than I realized.

[Lawnmower Man]

There should be a NatGas geyser near your starting biome.  I'd say getting that online and storing up gas for dormancy is a good target before going full oil biome.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, Lawnmower Man said:

There should be a NatGas geyser near your starting biome.  I'd say getting that online and storing up gas for dormancy is a good target before going full oil biome.

unless you know what seed he's using, how would you know that?

[Lawnmower Man]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

unless you know what seed he's using, how would you know that?

I thought that 1 NatGas is one of the guaranteed geysers and that they spawn relatively close to the starting biome.  Is that not the case?

[Neotuck]

Just now, Lawnmower Man said:

I thought that 1 NatGas is one of the guaranteed geysers and that they spawn relatively close to the starting biome.  Is that not the case?

you have 1 guarantied yes

but the location is random, not always close to the starting biome 

[KittenIsAGeek]

14 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

you have 1 guarantied yes

but the location is random, not always close to the starting biome 

This, exactly.   Many of my maps don't have a nat gas geyser anywhere near by base.  Often I've tapped into oil long before I've found the nat gas geyser.  If you have one near your base, definitely make use of it -- but that isn't always the case. 

Its one reason why I push coal so much for new players.  Coal is plentiful near the starting biome, and if you're doing any hatch ranching at all, you'll get more coal as a byproduct. 

With the changes to the power tree, you can also set up very low priority hamster wheels as a priority power source.  For example, I've built a room with hamster wheels at priority 1 that charge up a battery bank.  These batteries connect to the power grid through a small transformer, adding a constant 1kw at a higher priority than my coal generators.  Basically when dupes go idle, they hop on hamster wheels instead.  Since power is only added to the grid as needed, my dupes don't get stuck on the hamster wheels for their entire shift -- they're only on the wheels long enough to charge the battery bank.

[Soulwind]

Make sure you start gathering wild pepper nuts and you can switch from gristle berry to stuffed berry for a nice food boost + an espresso machine.  Eventually I use the heated polluted water from my cooling loop to grow my own peppers faster than wild,  but there's no hurry on that. 

[Drethon]

Yeah, the seed I'm using (picked one with convienent cold steam and slush vents to lean from) has the nearest nat gas vent down in the oil.  So I'm going petroleum first and using it to start my nat gas power too.

Thanks for the thoughts on food.  As soon as power is in good shape I intend to make the dupes more comfortable.

[Yunru]

On 24/01/2019 at 9:14 PM, Neotuck said:

you have 1 guarantied yes

but the location is random, not always close to the starting biome 

Plus sometimes they can be overwritten by other PoIs.

[greggbert]

I find eggs to be a terrible source of food.  Leave them in a room to hatch and then kill the babies.  There should be enough pinchas lying around to create a steady supply of barbecue.

[Lilalaunekuh]

29 minutes ago, greggbert said:

I find eggs to be a terrible source of food. 

But the only food your able to cook without a duplicant

You need just a hot room (>73°C) with a receptangle for uncooked eggs(, maybe a ration box to increase the capacity) and a loader to send fresh omelettes to your colony.

PS: Shine bugs can be ranched for eggs but not for meat

[Neotuck]

12 minutes ago, greggbert said:

I find eggs to be a terrible source of food.  Leave them in a room to hatch and then kill the babies.  There should be enough pinchas lying around to create a steady supply of barbecue.

While I agree BBQ is better than omletts, it depends on what stage of the game your at.

Early game play you might not have access to enough wild pinchas to keep up with the dead critters.  Personally I do a mix of omletts and fried mushrooms.  Then I switch to pepper bread late game.

[Lilalaunekuh]

5 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

While I agree BBQ is better than omletts

Keep in mind BBQ is the only food with a negative effect on your duplicants:

It decreases the athletics skill

=> If you don´t need the stress relief / higher morale, BBQ is THE worst food in the game

[Neotuck]

Just now, Lilalaunekuh said:

Keep in mind BBQ is the only food with a negative effect on your duplicants:

It decreases the athletics skill

=> If you don´t need the stress relief / higher morale, BBQ is THE worst food in the game

That also depends on athletic of your dupes, if they are maxed out on athletes the debuff is hardly noticable so BBQ can be a late game food for veteran dupes. 

But early game with new dupes? The debuff isn't worth it.  Especially if you are using exo suits.

[Craigjw]

Dupes should get chubby if they eat too much bbq. 

I send all my meat to a pile, which decomposes and eventually get decomposed into dirt.

There is little point using shine bugs for your farming, lights are only 10w.  A farm can literally run from a battery and a hamster wheel for quite some time. But, remember to cool the lights ( I use the bristle berry water supply to cool the lights) the lights can heat up the farm quite fast to above the bristle's heat tolerance.