Some thoughts on the early game

[Gus Smedstad]

I’ve been thinking about the mistakes I make in the early game, and what I should probably be doing instead.

It seems to me that the primary driver for much of the game is the quest for stability. Basically, sustainable oxygen and food production, particularly in the early game. Secondarily there’s water, power, and heat. The early game feels like dealing with crisis after crisis.

Early oxygen is algae. There’s a choice between oxygen diffusers, which require electricity and thus hamster wheels, and terrariums, which are more algae efficient and don’t need power, but which do suck up water at a tremendous rate.

Terrariums also produce a lot of polluted water. Which you need to either recycle with a sieve, or let stand and turn into oxygen with deodorizers. I’m thinking the latter is probably the better choice, since sieving requires power, and produces heat because of the 40 C fixed output temperature.

If you’re using polluted water from terrariums for oxygen, it’s going to be important to deconstruct those terrariums as PO2 -> O2 production rises. Otherwise the terrariums are going to go through all of your available clean water in no time flat.

It’s probably a good idea to create an insulated farm ASAP. One way or another heat’s going to creep into your colony, particularly once you start sieving polluted water. Mostly that doesn’t matter, except that your crops want a temperature of at most 30 C. Mushrooms can stand 35 C, but that’s not much warmer.

I knew full well that heat could kill farming in my latest game, but I still let the temperature creep up until there was no place left to farm. I ended up doing a lot of cooling with ice tempshift plates, which isn’t really a great idea for a variety of reasons.

Your Dupes don’t care about heat otherwise until the air’s above 75 C. It’s not so important to insulate your entire colony, just the area you intend to farm. Though you want to leave some room for expansion in that insulated farm area.

Toilets are your first source of renewable water, but only if you’re sieving the output and probably disinfecting it. Which means heat from that 40 C output temperature, and cooling that 40 C water is just not sustainable early. You don’t have power to spare the way you do in the late game.

You can insulate the area around the sieve / collection area for sieved water, which helps with heat, and it’s safe enough since 40 C doesn’t trouble Dupes. The heat’s still going to tend to creep out as warm water gets moved around.

Power’s pretty limited early on. Hamster wheels eat up Dupe time and don’t produce much, and coal is limited. Hatch ranches can offset that somewhat, but I’ve never gotten to the point where they produce enough coal to keep up with consumption.

Making a smart battery to control your coal generator is well worth it, even if you’re using the rock crusher to make refined metal inefficiently. Uncontrolled coal generators waste a lot of coal.

Speaking of refined metal, it’s very easy to control that heat output from a metal refinery by using polluted water and sending the output to a sieve. The first few kilos of metal can make the automation you need to recycle the water until it’s near boiling, too. This beats out the methods I used to use.

Transitioning away from meal lice for food is harder now. Bristle berries aren’t viable until you’ve got substantial renewable water, and mushrooms want slime. The upkeep cost on mushrooms is very low, but slime will offgas polluted oxygen if you’re not careful, and small pockets of polluted oxygen carry more of a threat of slimelung now.

Algae’s going to run out sooner or later, and making more by distilling slime isn’t very efficient. Actually, you’re better off letting the slime offgas and deoderizing it for clean oxygen, in terms of slime -> oxygen efficiency.

Long term oxygen production comes from water. Either in electrolyzers, or letting polluted water offgas to polluted oxygen and deoderizing it. Which means that once you’ve moved to mushrooms, finding a renewable source like a water geyser and switching oxygen production is important. Oxygen’s a higher priority for that water than bristle berries.

As  you do all this the power demand is steadily rising, and coal isn’t really cutting it. Going for early petroleum can help a lot with power demands, but produces a tremendous amount of waste heat. Both from the oil refinery and petroleum generators. Those will heat up to the point of scalding your Dupes pretty quickly if you don’t have significant cooling. Insulation doesn’t help because it just traps the heat inside the industrial area and the heat becomes a problem that much sooner. 

IMHO cooling a petroleum power center requires a a cooling loop using water cooled by an aquatuner, which you in turn have to cool with a steam turbine if you want something sustainable.

It’s weird to be talking turbines in the “early game,” but they’re a lot easier than they used to be, and even more effective at removing heat now. It’s workable to have a turbine-cooled petroleum power center by cycle 150 or so. The big cost isn’t the turbine, it’s the 1200 steel you’ll want for a steel aquatuner. A gold one only has an overheat temperature of 175 C, and it’s easy to exceed that.

If this ramble sometimes seems like I’m stating the obvious - well, most of it wasn’t obvious when I started playing. Everything I’ve touched on here is something I’ve screwed up in the past.

 

[pacovf]

Deodorizers / Oxygen dispersers stopping because of excessive pressure due to accumulated CO2 can also hurt, and it's not immediately obvious as a problem if it's your first time around.

For heat, hydrolizers slowly but surely raise the temperature of your base too. It's 70 C oxygen / hydrogen, after all.

Cooling is tough / very expensive in the early game if you don't find wheezeworts and don't want to abuse the water sieve.

(personally, I feel like even in the midgame, I am running from crisis to crisis, though the frequency does decrease  )

[Lacost]

1 hour ago, Gus Smedstad said:

As  you do all this the power demand is steadily rising, and coal isn’t really cutting it. Going for early petroleum can help a lot with power demands, but produces a tremendous amount of waste heat. Both from the oil refinery and petroleum generators. Those will heat up to the point of scalding your Dupes pretty quickly if you don’t have significant cooling. Insulation doesn’t help because it just traps the heat inside the industrial area and the heat becomes a problem that much sooner. 

IMHO cooling a petroleum power center requires a a cooling loop using water cooled by an aquatuner, which you in turn have to cool with a steam turbine if you want something sustainable.

 

Why don't you just use your natural gas geyser? (I think one is guaranteed) Combine natural gas with your hydrogen generators from the oxygen production and coal generators and you will easily fulfill your power demand towards the late game. You can also try to build your heat producers in the ice biome and let them melt away all the ice there. It will take them forever to do that while staying relatively cold.

 

As for heat management: Try to pump your oxygen into atmosuit stations and force your Dupes to only run around in atmo suits outside their beds. 70°C oxygen will fry your base but in atmosuits it will do nothing. 1 Wheezewort in oxygen is enough to cool down 5 fully filled stations.

[Sasza22]

I like the crisis management nature of the game. This is why i like to start over a lot (it`s also beacause my bases tend to get so messy late game ii`m tired of managing them).

For early farms i try to put them near water pools that has a high thermal "inertion" and will keep them cool for longer than other parts of the base.

I don`t go for plumbed systems before i get a geyser. Usually i pump the geyser water to an ic biome to cool it before i got a robust power system. Sometimes it take awfully long. Recently i`m trying to place my toilets outside the base so they can use hot water instead without heating the interior of the base.

I stay on just a few coal generators until i can afford to switch to nat gas. Usually i try to make a long heavi watt powerline just outside the base and put a single transformer for each floor. Eventually extending the powerline up to space.

I like to build my electrolizers near an AETN and pump some of the extra hydrogen to the machine to keep my oxygen nice and cool. Requires me to provide enough power for the system to work and can be problematic based on where the AETN is located.

I like to keep the oxygen diffusers after the electrolizers are done just disabled so i can enable them in case of trouble.

I used to store slime in my water pools but recently i just put a buddy bud and a deodorizer next to the supply bin and it`s safe. I`m still not sure if using bristle early is the way to go but i`m having trouble getting enough CO2 pits for full mushroom sustain early so i mix it up.

I don`t really care about losing some ore early through the rock crusher. I won`t run out in a long time. Some basic automation is really nice. The smart battery is a must have.

I need to try getting a early/mid game steam turbine. Still didn`t test this thing after the rework.

[Gus Smedstad]

40 minutes ago, Lacost said:

Why don't you just use your natural gas geyser?

In my present colony, I've yet to find a natural gas geyser. So far all I've seen is one relatively low value cool steam geyser (about 1 kg/s average including dormant time), a minor volcano, and an oil well. There's one more geyser site that I haven't dug out yet to see what it is.

I think there's supposed to be a guaranteed gas geyser, but if so, it's pretty darned far away on my current map. I've explored all the way to the bottom edges of the surface to the oil biome. Vertically, that is. There's a lot of I haven't explored horizontally as yet.

38 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

I don`t go for plumbed systems before i get a geyser.

I think early sinks are a good idea. They use precisely the same amount of water as un-plumbed wash basins, they're more reliable, and require less Dupe labor.

[Grimgaw]

10 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

In my present colony, I've yet to find a natural gas geyser.

There should always be one in slime biome and you have 50/50 for one in caustic biome.

[Abt9]

How many duplicants do you keep in the early game? I keep the count under 10, and I rarely need to take a look at the water level, even with bristle blossoms. Just a little bit of cooling required to feed the blossoms and things are good - which is easy because mining ice biome gives tons of free ice.

So I get enough time to create hatch farm to power those coal generators. Also searching for coal is a main drive for exploration for me, otherwise I don't find many reasons of doing that.

Thereby, my main bottleneck is not really about survival after establishing blossom farms. It is more about my distaste against rock crusher >.>

Maybe I'm keeping my dupe count too low?

[Gus Smedstad]

10 minutes ago, Abt9 said:

How many duplicants do you keep in the early game?

I don't really have a fixed answer for that. As many as I think I can currently support. Modified by who I'm offered. Even if I think I can afford more, I'll skip a group if none of them look good.

Interests are now more important with the new skill system, since they discount skill costs and increase XP. So I'm less likely to take Dupes that duplicate the interests of the ones I already have.

In my present colony I'm up to 12 at cycle 250-ish.

[Gurgel]

3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

For early farms i try to put them near water pools that has a high thermal "inertion" and will keep them cool for longer than other parts of the base.

I currently put one tile of cool water below the farm tiles and an insulation layer below that. That keeps things cool for a long, long time.

[Abt9]

2 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I don't really have a fixed answer for that. As many as I think I can currently support. Modified by who I'm offered. Even if I think I can afford more, I'll skip a group if none of them look good.

Interests are now more important with the new skill system, since they discount skill costs and increase XP. So I'm less likely to take Dupes that duplicate the interests of the ones I already have.

In my present colony I'm up to 12 at cycle 250-ish.

Ah, I see. Then could I ask, why do you seek for reducing cool water usage and go for the reclamation system? The water you've initially got can last centries of cycles with 12 dupes, I've experienced. And by then you got an access to the ice biome, which gives even more access to the cool fresh water.

[Gus Smedstad]

Just now, Abt9 said:

Ah, I see. Then could I ask, why do you seek for reducing water usage?

I don't understand the question, but I'll take a stab at answering it anyway.

I'm not really "seeking reduced water usage." It's more like, I avoid setting up things that regularly consume water until I'm sure I can produce enough to meet demand. The main consumers of water being oxygen production (once I move beyond algae) and bristle berries.

I'm not counting research in water consumption since it's a one-time expense.

[Abt9]

Ah, so you dislike continuously draining water without a qay to replenish it. Now I see why you got to the way. Gameplay differs a lot per individual, interesting.

 

Btw I love using water from water geyser for electrolyzers. It can even provide potential cooling effect.

[Gus Smedstad]

8 minutes ago, Abt9 said:

The water you've initially got can last centries of cycles with 12 dupes, I've experienced. 

That's not remotely my experience.

12 Dupes is 720 kg of oxygen a cycle. That's 864 kg of water a cycle if you electrolyze it. A bit less in practice, since Dupes don't consume oxygen while holding their breath, but it's sill going to be 600+ kg a cycle.

Feeding 12 Dupes on bristle berries consumes 900 kg per cycle. 720kg if you're foraging wild pincha pepper and making stuffed berries.

So easily 1500 kg a cycle once you start really using it. If you start with, oh, 50 tons of water, that'll only last 33 cycles. Hardly centuries.

That initial water only lasts a long time when you're not using it for food or oxygen.

10 minutes ago, Abt9 said:

Btw I love using water from water geyser for electrolyzers. It can even provide potential cooling effect.

Once I'm set up to exploit a geyser, I'm definitely comfortable setting up electrolyzers. For example that low-quality cool steam geyser I mentioned will provide about 600kg a cycle on average, which is most of what I need for oxygen. I'm comfortable with that kind of margin.

I'm not following what you mean by a "cooling effect." Maybe you're referring to the fact that if you're feeding an electrolyzer 90 C water, it's only coming out at 70 C? 70 C is still hot enough to be a serious problem if you don't offset it in some way.

[Abt9]

47 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Feeding 12 Dupes on bristle berries consumes 900 kg per cycle. 720kg if you're foraging wild pincha pepper and making stuffed berries.

Oh, wow. I've never had that kind of water usage. Maybe I've been using up the ice of ice biome pretty early, so I couldn't notice the speed.

Though, according to the database, single Bristle Berry consumes 20kg/cycle. I've found that 15 Bristle Berries were enough to feed all, which is 300kg/cycle. It's 200 cycle to deplete 60t of water. It gets better if you made the stuffed berries.

47 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I'm not following what you mean by a "cooling effect." Maybe you're referring to the fact that if you're feeding an electrolyzer 90 C water, it's only coming out at 70 C? 70 C is still hot enough to be a serious problem if you don't offset it in some way.

Yes. So when I set it up, I compensate it with cool water. I can cool it down and quite easily with a single aquatuner, and with 2 coal generators and 2 hydrogen generators, it's more than enough to run it. You can delete the heat by dumping to the polluted water and sieving it anyway.

Still, 90 to 70 is quite a bit of cooling - especially because now you got an oxygen, which have quite less heat capacity. Easy to cool it down, really.

[avc15]

9 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

If you’re using polluted water from terrariums for oxygen, it’s going to be important to deconstruct those terrariums as PO2 -> O2 production rises. Otherwise the terrariums are going to go through all of your available clean water in no time flat.

Use a simple automation to stop circulating water & turn off the lights (save power & reduce heat) then shut off your terrariums when pressure gets high, then the reverse when pressure gets low. This way you keep exactly the right amount of PW gassing to maintain your base pressurized, without any micro.

This is based on Neotuck's design, but the automation is mine.

 

 

[Daxterr]

I always ransack ice biomes for wheezelworts ASAP. Heat will never be an issue if you do that.

[Abt9]

2 hours ago, Daxterr said:

Heat will never be an issue if you do that.

Are you sure? *take a glance on a coal/petroleum generator*

[Junksteel]

Well, I don't know if this is the right place to do it but since it's early game thoughts I'll throw it to you guys:

I found my first Leaky Oil Fissure in my current run right next to my base and had the "brilliant" idea to build waterfall liquid compressor by Saturnus to hold that free drop in the bucket in the early game and use it later. It's so close to the base I couldn't resist...

But I found out all the materials I have available to build the pump can't stand the 330C oil the fissure outputs. And I guess even a steel liquid pump wouldn't be enough...

Is it possible to combine the waterfall liquid compressor with such heat attached to the liquid before bringing stuff from space?

My idea is to run cool pwater in radiant pipes from a cool slush geyser through the steel liquid pump but I don't know how to calculate if this would be enough. I don't want the hassle of disassembling the mess if it doesn't work.

I also thought about a more permanent setup with hydrogen around the compreesor, refined metal wall instead of insulation tiles and wheezeworts cooling the cell (as I have many of them from printing pod and nearby ice biome). But I'm affraid of overcooling the whole thing and freezing the oil inside.

Thoughts?

PS.: Sorry if I deviated from OP @Gus Smedstad, but I don't think it would worth a single thread as it is a specific doubt.

[Lacost]

9 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

Well, I don't know if this is the right place to do it but since it's early game thoughts I'll throw it to you guys:

I found my first Leaky Oil Fissure in my current run right next to my base and had the "brilliant" idea to build waterfall liquid compressor by Saturnus to hold that free drop in the bucket in the early game and use it later. It's so close to the base I couldn't resist...

But I found out all the materials I have available to build the pump can't stand the 330C oil the fissure outputs. And I guess even a steel liquid pump wouldn't be enough...

Is it possible to combine the waterfall liquid compressor with such heat attached to the liquid before bringing stuff from space?

My idea is to run cool pwater in radiant pipes from a cool slush geyser through the steel liquid pump but I don't know how to calculate if this would be enough. I don't want the hassle of disassembling the mess if it doesn't work.

I also thought about a more permanent setup with hydrogen around the compreesor, refined metal wall instead of insulation tiles and wheezeworts cooling the cell (as I have many of them from printing pod and nearby ice biome). But I'm affraid of overcooling the whole thing and freezing the oil inside.

Thoughts?

PS.: Sorry if I deviated from OP @Gus Smedstad, but I don't think it would worth a single thread as it is a specific doubt.

I don't know how this waterfall liquid compressor looks like (link?) but can't you just pump in water from one of your geysers and let it become steam? Once the steam reaches 250°C pump it away and store it somewhere in a vacuum or vent it into space.

[Junksteel]

1 minute ago, Lacost said:

I don't know how this waterfall liquid compressor looks like (link?) but can't you just pump in water from one of your geysers and let it become steam? Once the steam reaches 250°C pump it away and store it somewhere in a vacuum or vent it into space.

Here is the link.
 

 

[mathmanican]

8 hours ago, Junksteel said:

PS.: Sorry if I deviated from OP @Gus Smedstad, but I don't think it would worth a single thread as it is a specific doubt.

This is definitely worth its own thread. We need 5000 more anyway to reach 100,000.  

There are definitely ways you can use this without space materials. The first that came to my mind was to use a steam turbine to capture the heat and drop the temp to 125C of all the contents.  Start a new thread, add some pics, add a save file, and I'd love to help you see ways to tackle this one. There will be lots of great options. You could use this for an omelette cooker. You can use it for power. You can use it to cool the entire base. There are so many cool ways you can use it.  I've also got simplifications to the waterfall mechanics pictures, if you don't want perfect insulation. 

A new thread would be perfect. Message me, or ping me in it, and I'll add comments (though I'm headed to endgame in a bit, so it might be a while, or tomorrow, before I can reply). 

[Gus Smedstad]

Yeah, I wouldn't be shy about creating a new thread even if you think it's a "small" topic.

[JohnFrancis]

@Gus SmedstadHow would you feel about trying a different style of play? There are several ways to get to sustainability I would like to recommend one to you that would alleviate some of the common issues that crop up.

Standard start, oxygen diffusers, straight to coal power (Low down in base preferably), hollow out start biome, cut left or right straight towards edge of map to find cold biome. Setup SPOM beside cold biome and route oxygen in granite pipes through cold biome for chilling. If you find wheeze or AETN you can use them or not it does not really matter.

Spoiler

 

Assuming you don't get lucky and find a beautiful water vent of some kind, rush atmo suits and demolish 2 or 3 slime biomes and put all the polluted water into one tank route though a sieve to your SPOM/s this is now your oxygen supply for the next couple of hundred cycles. You have already hired two ranchers and are ranching stone hatches like crazy, as more and more eggs come online you can start getting rid of your crops.(2 hatches per dupe few extra for safety is recommended) Hatches can survive up to 70C you don't need a cool base any more, water sieve 40C output is technically coolant at this point. Stone hatches eat igneous rocks of which you have several hundred to a 1000+ tons of the stuff. Food just became water free. Also you will need more storage containers for all that coal they drop.

Spoiler

 

Screw nat gas go straight for oil and build yourself a glorious industrial brick with built in cooling solution, all the refined materials you could every need, runs on one oil refinery and as waste products you end up with 5C polluted water and lots of CO2. This gives you all the raw material you need to manage steam vents maintenance free.

Spoiler

 

Steel and plastic give you steam turbines so tap your cool steam vents right about now. This can take over as the water supply for your SPOM's. Oxygen just became sustainable. Now it's time to build a petroleum boiler, if you have a magma volcano great if not use geo thermal. If you have to use geo thermal you can retro fit in a space metal aquatuner later so building one will never be a waste. Then hook up your oil wells, combined with the petroleum boiler they are power from nothing. 3.3KW per oil well plus they produce more water than they consume. The whole thing lasts forever and is maintenance free, just don't ever turn them off. (Pipe cracking can happen)

Spoiler

 

At this point you have sustainable Oxygen and power, all that is left to sort is food and you have all the refined materials bar space stuff to work with, should not be to hard. I know there are several other methods I just find that this one is fast, efficient and very very map resistant.