How to deal with bottled germy water?

[Volne]

so basically I have in my base a LOT of bottled germy water all around it, now when I am creating food like mush bars to feed my dups, they use this bottled water to make the food ., which is causing food poisoning. I don't know how to empty out specific bottles, I can only empty out with the bottle emptier but that would throw most of my clean water away, now I know my English is stupid but hopefully, u understand

solutions i am looking forward:

being able to empty out specific bottles

being able to use the bottle emptier for only germy water and not normal water

being able to move these germy water into somewhere where i can lock so dups can't get access  to it,

[Saturnus]

How about a radically different alternative. Start growing food instead of wasting water and dirt on mush bars.

[Sasza22]

There is a micromanagement heavy solution. You can build 2 bottle eptiers and only set one to accept water on low priority (4 or lower) then mark all germy water bottles for sweep with high priority. they will be delivered to that emptier. Then disable it or remove it and neable another one for the water without germs.

Remember germs can transfer from water bottle to dupes and from dupes to bottles so make sure they wash their hands.

[Oozinator]

I never use mush bars, they are evil.
 

[Gus Smedstad]

First, the quick answer to your immediate problem:

Disassemble all but one bottle emptier. Put that over a tank that does not have a manual pump, so Dupes can’t draw water from it. If you use that water, use an electric pump to move it out, and use it for something not food related.

If you need water for food in the meantime, build a manual pump over a clean source. You may have to find a new pool of water for this.

Longer term answer:

While Saturnus was unnecessarily rude about it, it’s true that you don’t want to eat mush bars. Mush bars are an emergency food, and you should avoid them at all costs. You want to harvest wild grains first before resorting to mush bars if at all possible.

It’s not the quality. It’s that mush bars are actually really expensive. It’s a rookie mistake to depend on them for any length of time. I did it because I didn’t understand how expensive they were.

Mush bars are water and dirt. Dirt is a valuable resource, though it’s not obvious when you first start playing it. You will eventually run out of your starting supply of dirt, and you’re dependent on recycling for dirt after that, which is only a trickle. You can’t possibly feed your colony with mush bars made from recycled dirt.

They’re also pretty pricey in terms of water, but it’s the dirt that’s a big deal.

You want to shift to mealwood as soon as possible, because that requires a lot less dirt. Further, you want to shift away from mealwood to something that doesn’t use dirt at all, like mushrooms or berries. Mealwood’s a stopgap because you don’t have access to mushrooms or berries at the start.

Mushrooms are low cost, but do require that you mine slime, and build a specialized room with carbon dioxide in it. Berries require water and moderate temperatures. Berries are harder overall but can be made into Stuffed Berries, which is a high quality food. When you’re just worried about calories, though, mushrooms are a better early choice.

[Gurgel]

For PH2O I just plant the fiber-plant. That works nicely for early game disposal of waste-water from the wash-basins.

14 hours ago, Oozinator said:

I never use mush bars, they are evil.
 

I use them to threaten my dupes with, but they are too dumb to care. I do imagine some somewhat smarter dupes to recoil in horror and cower in fear when I do it though! 

[fredhp]

When possible, build your kitchen and food storage in a hermetically sealed room filled with chlorine, allowing dupes to enter only when wearing exosuits.

Use conveyor  to delivery food inside a small carbon pit near or inside the mess/great hall.

Then... don't worry about food contamination or spoilage anymore. 

[Gus Smedstad]

Making a chlorine kitchen (which I've never done, personally) is a mid-game solution, mainly because it requires atmo suits at the very least, and preferably conveyors as you mention. By the time you're up to doing that, you should have moved away from food that uses water directly. Your dupes should never have food poisoning germs on their hands, since they only start from toilets, and it's trivial to set up sinks that should catch all germs as they exit.

That said, I held on to both meal lice loaves and mush bars far, far longer in my first game than I should have, because I didn't realize how important it was to get away from those. So it's not impossible that it might make sense as as stopgap if you make that mistake.

[Volne]

5 hours ago, fredhp said:

When possible, build your kitchen and food storage in a hermetically sealed room filled with chlorine, allowing dupes to enter only when wearing exosuits.

Use conveyor  to delivery food inside a small carbon pit near or inside the mess/great hall.

Then... don't worry about food contamination or spoilage anymore. 

this might be a good idea

[Volne]

so basically all of you are saying that I shouldn't produce mush bars, but at the moment my farm isn't doing great. i need tips on it. its not producing enough food which is causing food shortage and that's why i am obligated to make mush bars. i normally send germy water to my planets that's coming out of lavatories and being cleaned. but the germy water they produced isn't enough . should i connect it to a clean water source instead?

[fredhp]

1 hour ago, Volne said:

so basically all of you are saying that I shouldn't produce mush bars, but at the moment my farm isn't doing great. i need tips on it. its not producing enough food which is causing food shortage and that's why i am obligated to make mush bars. i normally send germy water to my planets that's coming out of lavatories and being cleaned. but the germy water they produced isn't enough . should i connect it to a clean water source instead?

You shouldn't produce any more than the absolutely necessary. Much Bars are expensive and inefficient food - use it only to prevent starvation. For start try liceloaf production. It's awful, but still better than mush bars and more efficient. 

If you have dificulty, play a little with debug/sandbox on, understand how things work in ONI. Some experiments and you will master farming. Its not dificult, just take a little time and patience.

[Saturnus]

Start growing meal lice first. You need 5 plants per dupe. Don't waste time cooking it just eat it raw. It's terrible but it's easy.

You can then switch to mushrooms or bristle blossoms. Both are a little harder to grow but if you keep your dupe count low and the meal lice farm stable while you experiment it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

The main stopping block for many players is they try to take on too many dupes too fast. You can do that when you've learned how to handle the different emergencies, and the best build up strategy. But as a beginner... start slowly.

[Neotuck]

might ask how many dupes you have

a common new player mistake is adding a new dupe every time the printer pod is active

best to limit the number of dupes you have early game to save on food and oxygen

[Zarquan]

In what way is your farm not doing well?  Heat?  Seeds?  Pressure?  Just not providine enough food?  It would be useful to know why there is a problem.

[Zarquan]

I would also like to point out that this is a good question.  Having germy water in bottles is annoying because it is difficult to deal with.  You want to sort it out because germs are bad, but there isn't a good mechanism for it that is easy.  If you have a clean water source, I would do the following:

1. Stop making mushbars, at least temporarily.  (you should avoid making them at all, but assuming you are in an emergency, I would assume you can't)
2. Remove any pitcher pumps in germy water
3. Put a bottle emptier at a higher priority in the germy water.  Assume any existing bottled water is germy.
4. Dump all existing bottles of water in the germy water reservoir.
5. Once all the bottles are taken care of, resume using the water (if you really have to make mush bars).

Though you can't use the germy water in your microbe musher or algae terrariums (without being careful), you can safely use it in an electrolyzer or hydroponic tiles without any risk of contamination of your duplicants.  Electrolyzers kill the germs quickly with heat and being oxygen, and the plants kill/ignore the germs of the water they consume.  I generally let the germy water be germy.

When it comes to cleaning the water, there are some useful methods, but some of them are considered unfair/inconsistent exploits, so some people don't like them (not that there is anything wrong with using them):

1. One of Neotuck's septic systems, storing water in liquid reservoirs in a chlorine atmosphere until it is clean.
2. Heating the water (I do not recommend because water is your main heat buffer)
3. Using an algae distiller to put slimelung water in the clean water.  The germs kind of fight each other and, given enough time, the slimelung will win then die out.  Keep in mind that slimelung water should not be used in an electrolyzer if you want a completely germ free colony.

[Gus Smedstad]

2 hours ago, Zarquan said:

1. Stop making mushbars, at least temporarily.  (you should avoid making them at all, but assuming you are in an emergency, I would assume you can't)

In my own personal food emergency, what worked was digging out access to wild grains. In particular, wild sleet wheat, since the plant will start producing grain as soon as it's visible, and it keeps for a long, long time because it's in a cold biome.

In short, even when you think you have no choice but to make mush bars or starve, it's quite likely there's another way out. For the short term, at least, until you can get a crop of berries or mushrooms going.

[angrybovine]

When I was struggling in Dec to learn how to deal with germy water bottles, one adhoc solution was to disable the pitcher pump to not draw from it and let the Super Computer use up the bottles that were sitting around.  Once they were used up I'd enable the pitcher pump.

One of the advantages to this is that supplying the bottles did not give my dupes germs (whereas using the bottle emptier does and you need to maintain a wash station next to it).

Overall, keep the dupe count low and use the wild plants as much as you can until you get stabilized.  Then berries and omelettes are a good food source.  I try to avoid lice meal because it uses dirt, but if you need food, its better than mush bars.  I find that I have enough muckroot in the starting biome to support a small colony until its ready for better food.

[Marsfc]

Why do you use mushbars dude? You can do like @Zarquan said, it's so much better. 

[Volne]

dude ok , liceloaf uses water too , i have been seeing bottled germy water right next to my plants , and they have been appearing way too often , idk where are they coming from , i wont produce mushbars but still , its a big problem , help!

[Volne]

all i am saying is , u need more freedom to move stuff arround the base , 

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, Volne said:

dude ok , liceloaf uses water too , i have been seeing bottled germy water right next to my plants , and they have been appearing way too often , idk where are they coming from , i wont produce mushbars but still , its a big problem , help!

Even though it isn't as problematic, liceloaf is also not ideal.  The reason for this is that is that the water is more efficiently spent on bristle blossoms.

1 hour ago, Volne said:

all i am saying is , u need more freedom to move stuff arround the base , 

I think the game would be improved with better control over resources and bottled water, especially as far as germs are concerned.  My annoyance is with algae covered in slimelung.  I know I can store the algae in storage compactors in chlorine or use ore scrubbers, but neither of these are 100%, especially if I am low on algae.

[Neotuck]

2 hours ago, Volne said:

dude ok , liceloaf uses water too , i have been seeing bottled germy water right next to my plants , and they have been appearing way too often , idk where are they coming from , i wont produce mushbars but still , its a big problem , help!

build an electric grill and switch to Pickled Meal

problem solved

36 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

I think the game would be improved with better control over resources and bottled water, especially as far as germs are concerned.  My annoyance is with algae covered in slimelung.  I know I can store the algae in storage compactors in chlorine or use ore scrubbers, but neither of these are 100%, especially if I am low on algae.

I agree, lucky slimelung will eventually die off in the O2 produced by diff users and/or terrariums

this might change with QOL3 with the new germ system.  I haven't had the chance to check out the preview 

[DemainaNyx]

You can always run your water into a liquid reservoir in a room of chlorine and it will kill the germs off.  Might take a bit of time depending on how many germs are there, but it works.  

I set this up for my bathroom loop and all the food poisoning germs are destroyed before the water is sieved and sent back into my colony for use.  Chaining about 3 reservoirs together is generally enough time to kill off all the germs once the water backs up.  The water sieve only converts 5Kg at a time, so with a pump in your polluted water tank putting 10Kg into the pipe it will ensure that the reservoirs are always filled and removing germs.

Here's my build currently on the Qol 3 upgrade. You don't need that many reservoirs, I'm just crazy.  You can see though that the water from my bathroom gets run through that chlorine room before being sieved and then sent to my bathroom, a bottler, and metal refinery.

 

You could set up a similar system for plain water as well, though honestly I never run across germy plain water when using this setup unless a dupe specifically peed in that bottler spot, in which case I dump all that water back into the system and we're good again.

 

On 3/29/2019 at 2:38 PM, Zarquan said:

Even though it isn't as problematic, liceloaf is also not ideal.  The reason for this is that is that the water is more efficiently spent on bristle blossoms.

I think the game would be improved with better control over resources and bottled water, especially as far as germs are concerned.  My annoyance is with algae covered in slimelung.  I know I can store the algae in storage compactors in chlorine or use ore scrubbers, but neither of these are 100%, especially if I am low on algae.

I feel like the reason this isn't implemented is because in real life we can't determine what items have germs on them by just looking at them, so it doesn't make sense that a dupe can just stare at that algae and know that X has germs but Y doesn't.  It sucks but unless they implement like glasses so dupes can literally see germs on things, I don't see a way to implement it without it seeming really strange.  Like, it's already weird enough I can tell my dupes to disinfect my whole base and they immediate know only that one tile has germs on it.

[Neotuck]

Here's the food roadmap I usually use

First few dozen cycles are just nutrient bars and muckroots.  Make them last untill farming meal lice and feed them to my dupes raw.

Never build a microbe musher

Start building a mushroom farm at the bottom of your base around the same time you build an electronic grill

Start feeding your dupes grilled mushroom while stockpiling pickled meal from leftover meal lice

Don't build a Berry farm until you have a reliable water source

Collect wild grains and nuts to treat your dupes when you can to manage stress

Build final farms for long term food production

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 3/29/2019 at 1:13 PM, Neotuck said:

I agree, lucky slimelung will eventually die off in the O2 produced by diff users and/or terrariums

this might change with QOL3 with the new germ system.  I haven't had the chance to check out the preview 

I'm currently playing QoL3.

Slimelung still dies off if it accidentally gets into my base's O2 supply, but I haven't tried infecting my terrariums yet.  I've had two dupes contract slimelung while (carefully) excavating part of a slime biome without a suit.  The big issue appeared to be off-gassing during the process of carrying it to the conveyor loader.  Even in 1800 to 2k oxygen pressure rooms, when the dupe would breathe in it would temporarily drop the pressure enough for the slime to off-gas.  That packet of pO2 would be infected with slimelung and  remain that way until either a) a dupe breathed it or b) it got picked up by a deoderizer.  

Spoiler