What tasks do you actually need Dupes to do in the late game?

[lee1026]

I am trying to compile a list of things that you actually need dupes to do. My general suspicion is that you can run a deluxe base with very little, if any action from dupes, and this is a reason why you should never print new dupes except maybe to man rockets.

 

So the full list of stuff that you actually want for dupes to do in the late game is the following:

Cooking BBQ/Pepper bread

Crushing eggshell into lime

steel making (metal refinery)

digging/building

ranching.... stuff (dreckos for reed fiber seems like the only thing useful into the end game)

Possibly flipping compost for the pepper bread route

 

And as far as I can tell, that is the entire list; 3 dupes should be plenty

[Sasza22]

Harvesting crops if you don`t want to use extra resources and wait for them to drop on the ground.

Operating the molecular forge for advanced materials.

When all research is done and there`s no need to tun up power generators that should be it.

[lee1026]

I don't think there is ever an need to tune up power generators if you keep the number of dupes small because your power needs scale with dupe count to some extent but your nat gas geysers are alway a fixed number.

 

Same goes for harvesting crops - with a small enough team, you simply don't consume that much crops to have to worry about their resource consumption.

 

Yes, I forgot about the molecular forge.

[FiannaTiger]

With enough automation and low dupe count you could sweep the wild sleet wheat and peppers and have all the food you'd ever need.  My 12 dupe base at cycle 1400 was about 1.7million kcals of pepper bread.  Even at it's very slow growth when wild.

[goboking]

1 hour ago, lee1026 said:

And as far as I can tell, that is the entire list; 3 dupes should be plenty

Three dupes means the late game is going to take a lot longer to reach than a colony with a larger labor pool to get mid-game builds done in a timely manner.

[lee1026]

One last thing that I missed - oil wells need dupe to relieve the pressure at some point.

[MorsDux]

5 minutes ago, goboking said:

Three dupes means the late game is going to take a lot longer to reach than a colony with a larger labor pool to get mid-game builds done in a timely manner.

Yes, anything gets done quickly when you throw 20 construction dupes on it.  Having 3 dupes is extremely slow, getting to the point of automatization we are speaking of here would mean maybe 1000 cycles or more. Thats a lot of time even on superspeed  

 

[pacovf]

I have a 6 dupe colony that barely breached space at cycle 1000. I don’t know how much of that is my own inefficiency, but it’s definitely taking a while.

[JohnFrancis]

By the time you have everything that can be automated... well automated, the game is pretty much over.

You can automate the collection of steel by sending rockets to the satellite ring by the way so no need for lime or steel smelting. To be even more extreme if you have everything automated already then you don't need any resources at all as you don't need to build anything else. I think the minimum you could get away with is zero labor.

A SPOM and clean water (No polluted water or a compost is required) the excess hydrogen could provide all your power as you don't really need to power anything anyway. A pacu tank could provide all your meat, just eat it raw. 0 labor and infinitely sustainable. That would be a very bland way to play but could be achieved very early with the right vents and a few wheeze.

[lee1026]

That is why I asked about you will want for the dupes to do as opposed needing them to do it - steelmaking is such a good idea because steel is so much superior to iron means that you will pretty much always want more steel.

 

On the same note, you probably want to grill the meat.

 

I am actually dubious of the idea that you want 20 guys building something - there is usually a clear order that something must be built simply because most of the build isn't reachable until the tiles and ladders are built one by one. I don't think I can productively use more then 3 dupes on a build site anyway.

[Zarquan]

2 hours ago, JohnFrancis said:

A pacu tank could provide all your meat, just eat it raw.

If you are going to have enough fish to eat the meat raw, then perhaps omelettes would be a better solution for morale because you can actually cook the eggs without grilling them.

[lee1026]

Eating eggs means that you need a stable supply of algae to keep the pacu population stable. 

 

Probably a bad idea. 

[Zarquan]

1 minute ago, lee1026 said:

Eating eggs means that you need a stable supply of algae to keep the pacu population stable. 

 

Probably a bad idea. 

But you would need fewer pacus.  With space travel, it might be possible to get enough algae and slime with fewer total animals.  And fewer animals means less pathfinding.

But you are probably right.

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, FiannaTiger said:

With enough automation and low dupe count you could sweep the wild sleet wheat and peppers and have all the food you'd ever need.  My 12 dupe base at cycle 1400 was about 1.7million kcals of pepper bread.  Even at it's very slow growth when wild.

From my experience, almost all maps provide enough sleet wheat for 12 dupes. That is why I usually go for 12 dupes. (Did one map with just 1 dupe a while back though.) Peppernuts are not a problem, you need only 2 per dupe for Pepper Bread. You may need to fix broken ice biomes as a priority though.

[MorsDux]

4 hours ago, lee1026 said:

That is why I asked about you will want for the dupes to do as opposed needing them to do it - steelmaking is such a good idea because steel is so much superior to iron means that you will pretty much always want more steel.

 

On the same note, you probably want to grill the meat.

 

I am actually dubious of the idea that you want 20 guys building something - there is usually a clear order that something must be built simply because most of the build isn't reachable until the tiles and ladders are built one by one. I don't think I can productively use more then 3 dupes on a build site anyway.

You should give it a try.

[camelot]

Why go for less dupe if you can support more by knowing how many water geysers you have? Still stuffed berry is good enough for most of the job (QoL2)

[Angpaur]

3 minutes ago, camelot said:

Why go for less dupe if you can support more

Interesting question is why go for more dupes if at some point you will need just a few of them? To get to that point faster? And then what? New colony?

[SakuraKoi]

Sleeping, eating, dancing and... sleeping!

40 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

Interesting question is why go for more dupes if at some point you will need just a few of them? To get to that point faster? And then what? New colony?

Welcome to the wonderful world of sandbox games where the endgame is inevitable (unless it develops faster than can be played, usually achieved through RNG&Grinding, core systems of RPGs) and oneself has to find a reason for continuing or play another way~

[Angpaur]

So maybe the conclusion should be to get less dupes in order to extend time before you reach endgame?  

I guess everybody need to answer such question individually considering what gives more fun and keeps interested in a game.

[suicide commando]

11 hours ago, JohnFrancis said:

By the time you have everything that can be automated... well automated, the game is pretty much over.

You can automate the collection of steel by sending rockets to the satellite ring by the way so no need for lime or steel smelting. To be even more extreme if you have everything automated already then you don't need any resources at all as you don't need to build anything else. I think the minimum you could get away with is zero labor.

A SPOM and clean water (No polluted water or a compost is required) the excess hydrogen could provide all your power as you don't really need to power anything anyway. A pacu tank could provide all your meat, just eat it raw. 0 labor and infinitely sustainable. That would be a very bland way to play but could be achieved very early with the right vents and a few wheeze.

Sounds like an interesting challenge, setting up a base that has 'everything' but where dupes have 0 labor tasks. I think I'm going to try and build a base like this  

[tzionut]

I set another challenge. Dig the entire asteroid, vacuum it and consume all the resources, including the magma. The limits are: max 10 creatures/ type, max 10 tones / type of resources. This challenge isn't easy at all, but is possible. Everything you have over 10 tones you melt it and the excess magma dispose it into the void. Challenges is disposal of abyssalite, for me any way. 

[bmilohill]

16 hours ago, lee1026 said:

And as far as I can tell, that is the entire list; 3 dupes should be plenty

 

4 hours ago, Angpaur said:

So maybe the conclusion should be to get less dupes in order to extend time before you reach endgame?

 

1 hour ago, suicide commando said:

Sounds like an interesting challenge, setting up a base that has 'everything' but where dupes have 0 labor tasks

My current goal is a luxury base. Right now I'm running 13 dupes with my current geyser, but the plan is to scale up to whatever the absolute max I can have on this map sustainably. 24+ I am hoping. 

Eventually have enough automation that all dupes are scheduled to work 1 hour a day. The complete Wall-E experience. 

[fifty_ducks]

I think the thread has the task list complete, but I would also add building and digging. If you aren't doing either of those two things at all times, what are you even doing?

Running sub-12 dupes just seems like a huge time sink getting to this theoretic endgame point, I am not interested in a 30 hour save.

[chemie]

my end game is when the autosave delay and lockup becomes so annoying I stop playing that map.

[JohnFrancis]

7 hours ago, tzionut said:

Challenges is disposal of abyssalite, for me any way. 

If you stock pile thousands of reed fiber and don't dig up the wild stuff you can turn huge amounts into insulation and then grind it into sand, well in theory I'v never tried your brand of insanity . You could go the shine bug route but dear lord the time taken would be horrifying.

7 hours ago, suicide commando said:

Sounds like an interesting challenge, setting up a base that has 'everything' but where dupes have 0 labor tasks. I think I'm going to try and build a base like this  

Why would you do this to yourself? I think this forum attracts people with varying brands of insanity. Which makes me curious which one do I have.