Getting Lost in mid game

[boldestfortune]

Hey guys was hoping to get some tips for the mid game. The game lacks any real objectives to help develop your base. I've attached a screen-cap of my base. my germ Polluted water is starting to overflow, and I've setup one fertilizer maker. I have a lot of slime biome to go through, but the dupes aren't using my ore scrubber. I had some pincha pepper nuts setup in the bottom right, but the temperature wasn't high enough for them so I'm moving it into the chlorine biome next to it.
 

So yeah in short, Im not sure what my goals should be at this point. Open to  all tips and suggestions

[DyingCrow]

I'd say you're only in early game. In mid game you would dig down to the oil biome and harvest it for other options, late game you'd explore space.

There is a lot more tech you can research and use, many more things to build, a lot left to explore, and many challenges to overcome.

I'd say the next step could be setting up a proper electrolyzer oxygen supply for the colony, and build some exosuits. Then go down to the oil biome for the oil, and up to space. Ultimately you would crack into the vacuum and build all the space things, then some rockets to explore asteroids and planets. That is the end game for now.

Each of these steps will significantly increase the complexity of the colony, and up the challenge by a ton, if that is what you're looking for. Your colony, as it is, you barely scratched the surface.

Ultimately, the objective would be to play for many hundreds of cycles, build technology to solve problems and deal with all the issues that spawn from that. Atmosphere, gas build up, heat, lack of power generation, dupe stress related to working in a hostile environment, etc etc.

[Nightinggale]

Your base isn't sustainable. When you look at certain resources (like coal), you spend more than you gain and eventually you will run out. Also your colony lacks temperature control, meaning unless you do something, you will end up with no power and a colony too hot for food production meaning all your dupes will starve to death.

Another issue is that you produce CO2 and it just piles up. Eventually your base will be full. This too isn't urgent, but it will happen if you do nothing.

Luckily you have a fair number of cycles before that happens, meaning your task now is to work towards replacements before you run out of resources for your current base setup.

The ultimate goal is to have a base where you can in theory leave it for 1000 cycles and it will still be alive when you get back. You are very far from that point right now.

 

Actually scratch that. The ultimate goal is to have fun while playing

[greggbert]

You've got a good start but will need to make some adjustments.

Next thing you want to do is explore as much as you can in all 4 directions from your base.   Get a feel for where the other biomes are.  Look for a natural gas or hydrogen geyser for more reliable power.  Then you want to start moving the hot things out of your base.  The electrolyzers are going to make things very hot, along with your 3 coal generators, and that seive.   Get those on the outside of your base and put some insulation to block their heat from going into your base.  Put your electrolyzers in a cold biome to to cool the oxygen they produce (40C is hot).   Turn of your fertilizer maker for a wile and wall up your cool slush geyser until you have real need for polluted water.

Next I would concentrate on creating a proper energy grid.  That means putting your generators on Heavi-watt wire (and moving them to a place where their heat won't bother you) and using a 2 or 3 transformers to create regular wire circuits inside your base.    Most players put all their generators, batteries, and some of their big machines like refinery on the heavi-watt backbone and divide the consumers like pumps and auto-doors and cooking machines, into circuits.

After you do that, you'll want to create a nice big reserve cistern of clean water.  

[Lacost]

If you want some more motivation/goals I can dearly recommend you playing on the hardest difficulty settings. Miserable/Fatalistic with very high morale expectations force you to build a properly designed base. For instance, you can't just dig into the slime biome without preparation since slimelung will wreck havoc in your colony. Stress levels rise extremely fast so you won't get by with sloppy base layouts. Mopping up the floor becomes vital to prevent stress. You are also pushed towards optimizing the morale of your Dupes.

 

All in all: It gives you less breathing space. Your current issue is that your base is doing just fine but it will crumble in a few decades. A harder difficulty will shorten the time your base runs itself in a dead end so you will always have something to do until you reach self sufficiency.

 

Short on algae? Well too bad because you can't enter the slime biome without atmo suits or a working medbay.

Gases screwing up your plants? Well, water airlocks will stress out your Dupes so you have to spend power on a massage clinic or tech into atmo suits.

Low oxygen areas? You have to avoid them otherwise stress will overcome you. Have fun building infrastructure everywhere you want to build something.

[Sasza22]

First of all explore. Finding all geysers on the map could be a goal. It`s also extremely useful when deteriming your next step. Focus on finding water, since the starting biome has limited amounts and natural gas for extra power.

Next step should be a robust power system. You current base draws very little power. Eventually you`d want a centralized power plant with heavi watt and transformers (i like to make one small transformer per floor but that`s up to you).

After you got power and water supply you will probably spend some of that power to keep the water cool and suitable for the plants, some for oxygen generation and some for heavy machinery like the smelter or glass forge. Start large scale metal refinement.

When you are ready go for the oil biome. It`s better to start there rather than space due to fossils. Fossils are a source of lime and lime will allow you to make steel. Steel is needed to protect your space stuff from meteors. Also don`t forget oil. You can use petroleum as a power source or to make plastic.

Finally solar power and rockets once you reach space. Might be a struggle to keep it all working but it`s the actual lategame tech. From there it`s optimisation, transit tubes, automation, auto sweepers and space materials.

[Mr.Trueba]

You are still in the early game and don't have any really important built. 

Do you want goals? You need a lot of basic things before mid game. 
1. A sustainable food supply
2. More oxygen
3. More energy
4. Regulate the temp
5. Atmo suits or an open base (you are very far from there)
6. Better organization, your pathfinding are very bad
7. Better decor and morale for everyone

Once you reach that, you can star build stuff like polymer presses, refineries, steel, convoys and very late after that, you can build your comet protection and start with the rockets.

So, you have only enjoyed like 20% of the game. Keep playing and you will see all the great things that the game has for us.  

[WanderingKid]

General overview of my goals when I play:

Early Game:

My early game is all about high - speed expansion.  As many dupes as I can grab as quickly as possible.  I try to be out of the early game in 20-25 cycles, with at least 8+ dupes.  Preferably more.

• Outhouses + basins / manual research / beds
• Coal Generator and Diffusers
• Farm space - planted mealwood - dug out for eventual mushroom swap and farm tiles
• Insulate the farm walls - I tend to dig big early
• Dig out space for later projects from the top down in the starter biome shell
  • Use S-Digs, not ladders, to move quickly vertically.  Try to stay within 50 +/- the starter biome vertically at first, as well, until you know where you want to expand further.  Left/Right Straight to the walls (barring obvious problems).
• Begin exploration digs for other metals (gold primarily)
• Build the lavatory - sink - shower area and the sieve loop
• Put excess Polluted water into a basin for early gold refinery.  Drain excess to a hydroponics tile or two of thimbles.
• Build my local 3 coal generator power system nearby the refinery to power it and move let the old system only handle the research and diffuser power.
• Main Hall
• Run the first main vertical dig shaft down near the oil biome and start building ladders and fire poles.

Mid game

My mid game is about exploiting the local resources and expanding quickly into the next tiers of the builds.  This is to get me to 'mostly' sustainable.  All geysers are capped and ignored at this time still.  Still expanding population as quickly as possible.  The minimum # of dupes I like is 16, I prefer 24 to 32.

• Swap out Mealwood for Mushrooms as available.
• Lay the ground work for my power trunk (heavi-watt) from the 3 coal generator system. 
• Begin producing refined gold for projects
• O2 and PWater + Aqutuner cooling system.  This should be built (for me, due to large consumption rates) by cycle 50 or I've got to expand at high speed to get more algae.  This stage can be whenever you find yourself getting under 10-15 tons of algae in reserve.
  • This is a very large system for me and typically takes 10-15 cycles to build out.  It also involves using hydrogen power generators in different ways, and hydrogen volume flow to control priority.
  • After that it takes me 3-5 cycles to build out all the ventilation systems.
• Dive for oil.
  • Fire poles are your friend.
  • Use a Terrarium or a diffuser every 20-30 cells down if you're having O2 issues.
• Explore possible oil build places.
  • Too hot / normal method: 3-4 exosuits to get a couple of gold pumps down there and pump it up somewhere the rest of your dupes won't need them.
  • Fast / know what you're doing: Use 2 storages with 1 ton of ice each allowed in them, and use them to cool the tunnel to where you want to build your pumps, then get the heck out of dodge before it gets to scalding.
• Build up refinery / petrogen systems
• Continue expansion.  The meteors aren't dangerous anymore, you can listen to the nice kabooms.  Get to know your map.
• Begin automating:
  • Slime for shrooms
  • Coal for generators.
  • Shrooms to main hall / grill
• Build a large Exosuit system (12+ docks) for the oil biome for the eventual strip mining.
  • Depending on my excess algae either I'll use a handful of diffusers to provide O2 to the docks, or I'll build more Electrolizer systems without any cooling, as the exosuits don't care about the O2 temps.
• Start steel production.
  • Using petro from the refinery and superheating it to just below boiling you can then dump the super hot petro (and the heat) into your petrogens.
• Start plastic production:  Put a press or two into an ice biome somewhere and use a weight pressure plate to control how much you need.  You don't need a lot *unless* you get into tube building, which prolific fire pole construction can offset significantly.

Late Game

Late game is about getting the first research rockets flying and automating them.  I aim for a 9 research pod steam rocket with nearly full automation.  You can save yourself a lot of grief if you build the rocket in a place with O2, seal it, then dig out the regolith/abyssalite layer above it so it can launch.  You should only need a rather small telescope chamber.

For reference, I like to play fast.  I usually get rockets built by Cycle 90-95 and I'm stuck twiddling my thumbs waiting another 15-20 cycles for the astronauts.  I could go faster to build the rocket but... why bother.

• Find your surface, and find the graviton facility.  Avoid the Graviton Facility, it's in your way.
• Dig a nice large area for scaffolding.
• … and a small surface exosuit system.
• Find a nice place to put up a telescope, some doors, a few bunker tiles and a roof.  Leave plenty of room to drop regolith under the telescope.  You'll have to manually mine it out for a little bit.
• Meanwhile, build rocket.
  • Rocket needs Engine, 9 research pods, and a cabin.
• You'll also need a way to power it with steam.  This is an excellent time to start tungsten refining.  Use oil or petro as the coolant and feed it into the water/steam power system.  Tungsten isn't your primary goal, the steam is.  When it gets enough steam shut off the refining with automation.
• Expand the surface area to include a scanner.  Two if you want to automate the rocket.
• Seal up the rocket silo, send your handful of miners out to the surface and dig out the top of the silo.  Slap some doors on top, and a miner (in your nicely cooled area of debris at the bottom) to keep the rocket landing pad clear.
• LAUNCH!

 

After the late game:

• Improve your sustainability by getting cool steam and water geysers arranged and viable.
• Clean up any polluted water overflow problems that have been building.  Use thimble reed if you just need to dump the excess in some useful manner.
• Start ranching.
• Permanent sustainable food source:
  • Balm Lily - Wooly Drecko - Meat
  • Wild peppers - 2 plants / dupe wild growth.
  • Result: BBQ.  Delicious
• Look to use the oil geysers.  Oil *will* dry up eventually if you don't.
• Get Thermite (High Heat metal) and Supercoolant (Best fluid for aquatuner control)
• Build LOX/LH systems for the other rocket types.
• Build an oil boiler.  Build a Sour Gas Converter.  Do both!
• Bother building anything past needing a great hall for morale.  You want a dance floor?  Now's the time!

 

[boldestfortune]

Wow, Thanks a lot everyone. That's a lot of advice lol.

 

So I realized it was early game a little after starting over, but again not having any general overall objectives, or like a cheetsheat of overall tasks. I had no idea where I was in the scheme of things.I feel every time I start over I know a little more. My main issue right now is slime. as I dig it up I can't seem to get it to my chlorine rooms. dupes always take it to the closest sweep box, or regular one, and I need the slime to grow mushrooms.to get off the loafs.

Ive moved on to Fert>NatGas Power to get off the coal until I find a geyser for power. Base Heating and Cooling I still have yet to figure out. I don't know maybe I should play a game on sandbox mode to figure out everything.
Anyways thanks for the suggestions

[WanderingKid]

1 hour ago, boldestfortune said:

My main issue right now is slime. as I dig it up I can't seem to get it to my chlorine rooms. dupes always take it to the closest sweep box, or regular one, and I need the slime to grow mushrooms.to get off the loafs.

Don't use chlorine.  Stick it under water.

 

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, WanderingKid said:

Don't use chlorine.  Stick it under water.

Don't use chlorine *yet*. 

A couple Buddy Bud plants just outside the slime area with a relatively close under water storage (like WanderingKid's picture, 2kg is enough, I usually do 20kg or more but I do collections of 5ish outside my base) is just fine for early game. 

Once you have exosuits and can get the pressure in a chlorine room over 1.8kg, then you can switch over to a chlorine room. Note: Conveyors will make this a lot easier. 

[Sasza22]

3 hours ago, boldestfortune said:

Ive moved on to Fert>NatGas Power to get off the coa

Fertilizer maker doesn`t produce nearly enough for nat gas generators. It`s useful to get rid of the gas but it`s a net power loss. You probably shouldn`t build nat gas gens before you find a nat gas geyser.