Can't get pass cycle 100

[Greybear]

After more than 500 hours I've still to push through the midgame and start working with plastics or even looking at rockets. Around cycle 100, my progress slows down to a crawl, and it takes forever for my duplicants to accomplish even basic tasks like cleaning an area or building something. Anyone else had this experience? What did you do to push past this point in the game? I might be having problems with very long commutes - or maybe I just fail to prioritize accordingly, but when my game reaches this point, it becomes so slow to progress I usually lose interest in my colony.

[natanstarke]

Hi man so, it maybe your pc base layout, prioritys and excess of critters, plants and gases performance wise.

So lets start with what i do nowadays. I chose 2 criters to raise or even less. Kill all flying critters, dreckos and majority of pacus. Confine the other critters in really small rooms like 2 or 1 tile for them to walk. I make plastic tiles in my base and if i have a metal volcano eventually put metal tiles everywhere for super mv speed and decor " plastic gives less decor but same mov speed". If things arent getting done reprioritize everyone to build and supply exception off cookers and put some storage bins next to the construction site and make it full of materials before starting constructing these materials are metal ore, refined metal and raw mineral, every big project use these ones in large ammounts. For space also make a storage containing like 3 tons of steel or more always to save time and glass.

Do 1 project at a time this is hard i myself keep losing focus and doing lots of things at once. Yesterday i spent hours doing almost nothing because i spammed tempshift plates in my entire base and a cooling system for my coolsteam geyser none of the projects was getting made so i start letting the cooling system at a nine and every other build project in the map including the tempshift plates at 5.

[SharraShimada]

I run into this issue nearly every time too. I dont know exactly whats causing it, but i think its the priority system. I see dupes carrying stuff around with low priority in near proximity, ignoring tasks further away. It seems to be related to the fact, that dupes look for the nearest task suitable to the permissions and skills. 

Usually i enforce them to do things further away with priority 7 or 8.

Its usually just for half a hour to a hour, until things run smooth again.

[natanstarke]

Operation priority uses almost all of dupes time but it also slows you down to not have someone constantly going to metal refinery so let 1 dupe full operate priority and put only the metal refinery as priority 9 and maybe a petrol refinery at 8.

If all these dont work you're probably lacking dupes i use 16 max because of performance. Also do not make jetpacks. Sooner or later they will destroy your save.

[Saturnus]

One thing that can really slow you down is having too many manual tasks for the dupes to do. Try to automate as much as possible. Especially power production.

Another example is storage containers. These are a huge time and task sink for your dupes if not set to sweep only.

Also evaluate what is essential to have, and what is not. For example early game your dupes will not have high enough morale requirement that you need to cook bristle berries into bristle berries for example. Just eat them raw until the morale requirements grows.

[Lali-Lop]

I used to have a similar issue of just not getting anything I wanted to done.  The biggest thing that made a difference for me was learning to set the priorities effectively (so there is a more clear order of what/when things will get done.)  This is something to best keep up with from day one of your colony, or can be a hassle to fix things later.  Specializing your dupes helps with this as well.  For example, making sure your builders' first priority is always build, having a dupe whose main job is to tidy up, etc.  Make sure every dupe fills an important role, so nothing gets left behind.  If something is the lowest priority for everyone, it most likely will never get done.  If you find your dupes running all over the place too much, enabling proximity for priorities can sometimes help with that, if you haven't already.  Also, it could be very possible that your workforce is simply too small to keep up with the increasing number of tasks being thrown at them.  If you find yourself frequently having to max out the priority or set an alert to get something done, either one or both of these are probably your issue.

[natanstarke]

A way to help prioritize is to let the dupe do only 2 tasks one +2 priority and another +1. I normally let combat and toggle at +2 too because they will only do it if you tell them too. After some cycles you ll probably notice some of them becoming idle, then you allow 1 more task for this dupe at a lower priority than the main 2, do this until the dupe doenst have time to iddle anymore.

 

[Greybear]

I usually specialize my duplicants to do one or two tasks, but there simply seem to be too many tasks to do. I haven't gotten into automation yet - I tend to reach this point before I get enough refined metals. I tend to have around 12 duplicants after cycle 100. How many duplicants do you usually use at this point in the game? And how many of them are specialized?

[Saturnus]

12-16 dupes normally. You need one to rush mechaengineer, and one/two to be decent researchers, and one that can mine the toughest rocks/abyssalite. All the rest I rush to exosuit wearing foregoing every other skill.

That's another thing I forgot to mention. Atmosuits speed things up tremendously as dupes don't have to catch their breath all the time while digging and dropping things they carry constantly. So atmosuits for everyone as early as possible is a very good idea.

Note the cycle count.

[beowulf2010]

5 minutes ago, Greybear said:

I usually specialize my duplicants to do one or two tasks, but there simply seem to be too many tasks to do. I haven't gotten into automation yet - I tend to reach this point before I get enough refined metals. I tend to have around 12 duplicants after cycle 100. How many duplicants do you usually use at this point in the game? And how many of them are specialized?

I usually stop at 8 or 9 until basic infrastructure is done and every single dupe is specialized. 

My current base is around 170 and my dupes are the following. 

2 builders, 1 miner, 1 supplier, 1 janitor, 1 resesrch/art/chef (done with non space research), 1 operator and 2 ranchers.

I start ranching hatches early and keep all pacus alive and just harvest meat as they die. I currently go from raw mealwood to meat to barbecue. 

[Greybear]

Seems like you have a very compact base compared to what I usually make. I might be having problems with my distances.

I've never used a mecha-engineer so I wouldn't know why I need to rush it. You use exo-suits only? We seem to be playing this game very differently.

 

 

 

 

 

4

2 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

12-16 dupes normally. You need one to rush mechaengineer, and one/two to be decent researchers, and one that can mine the toughest rocks/abyssalite. All the rest I rush to exosuit wearing foregoing every other skill.

 

[Saturnus]

You'll note that I have no research stations since I've done it all. Typically I have researched everything (except space stuff) by cycle 50-60, so I just take them down to save space until I'm ready for going into space.

Mechaengineers are needed to make sweeper arms and conveyors so you can automate a lot of processes. Like filling a sieve with sand, or filling coal generators with coal. They're really instrumental in speeding up the game progress.

[beowulf2010]

11 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Mechaengineers are needed to make sweeper arms and conveyors so you can automate a lot of processes. Like filling a sieve with sand, or filling coal generators with coal. They're really instrumental in speeding up the game progress.

Agreed. It really is amazing how much quicker things get done once autosweepers and conveyors are set up to feed my hatches, send the coal to my power plant, meat to storage, extra eggs to the drowning room and egg shells to the steel plant.

And that's just the hatch ranch. 

[camelot]

Switch to coal generator very soon, good farm (mushroom, berry..), sweepers, firepoles, exosuits for explore early, enough oxygen at key areas, ladder not very long outside base is key to reduce chores and idle time

This is my base in QoL 2 at cycle 100. 

[Gurgel]

Just to add a very different base layout, here is what I use around cycle 100. A lot of things are not done yet and I just have 6 dupes, still on algae for oxygen. Food is long-term solved for up to 12 dupes though, with a second layer of mushrooms already planned for. I stay in 3 dupes until the mushroom farm is running.

 

At cycle 300, the base looks like this, with 12 dupes. Oxygen is now from filtered polluted water and I have Exo-suits. The second exit at the bottom left is going to be closed soon.

 

So far, I always have used some variation of this standard layout and never had any serious issues with it. As long as you are careful to not have more dupes than you can provide food and oxygen for, there is no need to rush anything. Well, except fixing ice-biome thermal insulation if you want to go the wild sleet-wheat route eventually. The Jukebot in the Great Hall is not powered BTW, not needed to make it a Great Hall.

 

[Saturnus]

Btw, same base as before at cycle 231. I've spent a lot of cycles clearing out debris to improve frame rates which was really tanking. And making steel. I'll show my storage as well.

Here's the storage. I have one on each side. It's an automatic dispenser that just gets emptied 4 times per cycle. Set to accept sweeper only obviously. That's it except for slime and polluted dirt which is stored in the water. Currently I just empty them whenever they're full.

[Greybear]

Thanks for all the hints. It seems like the progress slowdown is just in the nature of how I enjoy playing the game. I don't really like the compact and crowded automation designs I usually see, so I'm not interested in going in that direction. I'll probably just end up never really entering the mid/late game.

[camelot]

Share your base here, I'm pretty sure that things can be improved somehow

[Greybear]

Camelot - I don't have a base at the moment, I kinda quit playing after my last base stopped doing stuff - ran it for a hundred cycles on 10x speed, and nothing really happened - they manage to clean a couple of rooms and the base was still self-sustaining - although I was running low on algae. And I'm not really looking for other people's "improvements" - I was just looking to see if this is a general problem that other people encountered, and whenever there was a common problem I overlooked. Seems like the problem is the game is meant to be played in a different way than I enjoy.

[Lacost]

16 minutes ago, Greybear said:

Camelot - I don't have a base at the moment, I kinda quit playing after my last base stopped doing stuff - ran it for a hundred cycles on 10x speed, and nothing really happened - they manage to clean a couple of rooms and the base was still self-sustaining - although I was running low on algae. And I'm not really looking for other people's "improvements" - I was just looking to see if this is a general problem that other people encountered, and whenever there was a common problem I overlooked. Seems like the problem is the game is meant to be played in a different way than I enjoy.

Bases slowing down is a general problem you face towards the midgame. You can compare this to heat management or power management. You have to streamline the layout of your base and make absolutely sure that your priorities settings are on point. If you set the wrong priorities or don't disable certain jobs for your Dupes, a lot of unskilled labour will soak up much of the work schedule. Try watching a lvl 0 construction Dupe building a temp shift plate.

You can also ruin any way of progress by assigning wrong priorities to your storage compactors. In the worst case your Dupes will transfer all of your stored stuff to newly built compactors which were assigned with a higher priority.

 

And lastly, the biggest time sink for expanding bases: Breathing. If you don't manage to supply oxygen to every point of interest, you won't be able to get anything done in a reasonable time frame. Atmo suits are superior in that regard but tactically placed deoxydizers can do the trick too.

 

Edit:

I currently have a +300 cycles base that runs smoothly without any overly complex automation going on. My bristle farm is still completely manual as well as my backup coal generators or food storage. Automation is not mandatory for an organized base, it only helps.

[KittenIsAGeek]

As most have posted here, and I've written about before, this is a general problem and it is caused by a number of different factors that all contribute to the problem.  When I encounter this issue, I generally have the following contributing factors:

1. Small number of dupes
2. Lots of dupe-time-intense systems
3. Actively researching
4. Travel times are slow
5. Sickness

The first issue isn't necessarily a problem.  Because you're in the early- to mid-game stage, you're going to have fewer dupes because you aren't producing enough oxygen/food/etc to sustain more.  Later, as your base becomes more robust, its easier to support many more dupes.  Thus this isn't a problem to fix, its simply a contributing factor.

The second factor, lots of dupe-time-intense systems, is also normal at this stage of the game.  You're probably still feeding your dupes mealwood -- which per calorie requires the most dupe activity.  Bristlebloom in planter boxes are next.  One way to free up more available dupe time is to re-design your food production systems.  Depending on your available resources, you may want to increase your bristlebloom farm, start a mushroom farm, or dig out a cold biome and plant sleetwheet.  Another system to change is to upgrade all washbasins and outhouses to sinks and lavatories.  A third example of a labor-intensive system is your power grid.  Early game you're almost exclusively using hamster wheels for power, which is going to occupy some of your dupes.  During the early- to mid-game slowdown, I transition over to any other available power source -- generally coal on a smart battery.  Later, once my base is more developed and I have more dupes, I'll go back to using the hamster wheels.

The third factor, active research, is unavoidable.  You need to research to increase your technology in order to further develop your base.  However, it IS a contributing factor in this period of slowdown because it both occupies dupes continually at the stations AND it requires the transfer of RSS to the stations.  If my base is somewhat stable, I'll focus exclusively on research for a little while.  Sometimes I'll stop researching for a little while to redesign portions of my base.  For example, once I have "Sanitation" researched, I may stop researching and rebuild my restrooms to replace outhouses and wash basins.  Or, I could continue on until I have "Distillation" and "Improved Plumbing" researched as well, and design a totally closed-loop water treatment facility.  There are a great number of different ways you can handle this particular factor.

Slow travel times are pretty much a given for this period of your base development.  You haven't had time for your dupes to "skill up" their athletics, and you haven't had time to research and build faster transportation systems.  If you're using water (or other liquid) locks to seal your base, the dupes are going to slow down through those.  You don't have plastic ladders, or tube systems yet, and if you're using atmo suits, few (if any!) of your dupes are trained to use them.  The solution here, for this part of the game, is to optimize your dupe activity so that they're spending less time traveling.  Your priority board is especially useful.  If every dupe can do anything, then you're going to have dupes switching places on a continual basis.  It is highly beneficial to select one dupe and give them a much higher priority on a particular task type (such as digging or building, etc) so that when there's a job of this type, they will take care of it before switching back to anything else.  This reduces the overall time spent traveling.

Finally, a factor that can contribute a lot in this slow-down is illness.  During your early base progression, you're much more likely to end up with sick dupes.  You may not have was basins, which leads to your dupes getting food poisoning.  You may be digging out a slime biome without suits, which tends to get dupes sick with slimelung.  Both of these illnesses reduce the time your dupe spends actually doing work, so can contribute to the early- mid-game crawl.  Some solutions are easy -- build wash basins anywhere your dupes can get food poisoning on their hands (bathrooms, compost pile, etc).  Some are more complicated -- such as reducing the consecutive cycles any particular dupe spends in the slime biome and ensuring that no more than two non-biohazzard dupes visit the slime biome during any single cycle.  By the time you're fully in the mid-game, you probably have a med bay set up and can easily counter these two illnesses reducing their impact considerably.

 

tl;dr:  This period of slow base growth is normal.  It has multiple causes, and its impact can be minimized by changing the way you do certain activities.  Your base will eventually grow out of it.

[mathmanican]

4 hours ago, Lacost said:

Try watching a lvl 0 construction Dupe building a temp shift plate.

I've tried. They generally make it to level 2 construction about 5 cycles later by the time they finish. 

[Greybear]

2 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

 

1. Small number of dupes
2. Lots of dupe-time-intense systems
3. Actively researching
4. Travel times are slow
5. Sickness

At my last base I had 12 duplicant, I used coal and mushrooms, I had both medicine and sinks, as well as chlorine food storage. And not researching. The phase you're talking about - the early game - usually goes pretty smooth for me. I never figured out what was wrong with my last base - but all my bases dies around this point as I start to struggle to get anything new build. Probably just build to big, and clearing the debris took away all my time.

[Eli Astronomic]

I usually stick to no more than 12 duplicants, and use automation sparingly. I also take my time. I'm only at what most would consider "mid-game" at cycle 500 or so.

One of the ways I speed up the clearing of debris is to keep dropping down as I'm building my base -- I mine 3 blocks below where I want to build a new floor section and continue to do that until all of the debris is at the very bottom of where I want my base to end. I then build my storage area right beside the debris and it takes a lot less time to clean up.

I also try to keep my most important tasks inside my base. Here's a pretty typical layout for me. Note I have my stables, food production, and storage either inside or just outside my main base.

 

 

[JohnFrancis]

@Greybeari had a similar problem and learning to optimize the priorities system solved it. I have linked a let's play around cycle 120 below, if the dupes are building fast enough for your liking check out the priorities tutorial it's in the mechanics playlist, I think it would help you.

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