What to look for in starting dupes?

[The 2C3D]

I normally look for a 5-8 learning on one dupe, since the reasearch speed boost is so dramatic. Then I just look for athletics and some generally useful things like digging. What do I want on my dupes?

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

It depends on what I need really. I base my choice on the interest of the duplicant; what I certainly exclude is a general negative trait, like flatulent or bio hazard. A negative trait that excludes a certain job is fine for me.

[Coolthulhu]

Most positive traits are rather unimportant and starting stats will quickly stop mattering. I like twinkletoes because it never stops being useful.

Just make sure you don't get any terrible traits like allergy or anemic. They are never worth it.

[natanstarke]

Athletics and learning here. If looking for easier time managing oxygen and hydrogen divers lungs. If looking to use low level foods i search for simple tastes or uncultured.

 

[7 and 4]

I'm running my second colony with diver's lung only.  Really like the quirks of that one.

Planning to do so on my next one as well.

[Neotuck]

personally I don't bother with athletics and strength.  I always do supply as the first job for 2 starting dupes while one does research.  They get plenty of exorcise picking up all the items on the ground dug out from building the starter base 

once all the items are picked up and they have mastered their jobs, I switch them to operating and farming

[Nightinggale]

Short term importance: learning. With a high learning, the dupe will adapt the rest of the stats to whatever is needed.

No traits, which makes the dupe or other dupes interrupt work. With this I'm thinking like flatulent and narcoleptic where the timed event will cancel the current work task. This is an efficiency killer if the dupe switch active task before finishing the previous one.

Good interests and the more the better. Since interests now means lower morale requirements, interests matters more than stats for long term planning of the dupe's tasks.

If possible, I would like to start with one farmer, one cook and one for everything else. If they can all double as researchers, then it's even better.

It should be noted that a surprisingly little amount of dupes meets all those requirements and often it's a matter of "close enough" rather than what you really want.

[Melodist]

--On Interest--

Soul Food effect from Barbecue food item pretty much allows Duplicants to pretty much do it all.

Even though that's the case, I'd like to share some information I've experienced in my play time.

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Interest wise, you can think of each "heart" icons over each of the job panel on the job screen to be 1 free moral point. I'm going to list them in order with consideration of efficiency, value, and practicality.

Keep in mind, this is not to state whether of for example, Research itself is more important than Cooking. All interest are beneficial, they are just not as comparatively valuable to some others if given the choice.

Do you really need more than 1 skill point in Cooking? You typically only need 1 skill point in Cooking to unlock Electric Grill usage, so choosing an Interest in Cooking only saves you 1 moral point for example. Even if you allot another skill point in Cooking, you're only getting +2 Cooking more stats for 1 more moral point saved. (2 moral saved, +4 Cooking given and Electric Grill usage). Compared to alternative, Cooking seems like a poor choice.

--The Preferred----

"Research" is very high potential for all Duplicants no matter what they do. Since it net you a +60% skill learning rate across the board with every stat. This interest saves your Duplicant 3 points of moral if you were to have "Advanced Research + Field Research + Astronomy". At which point, the Duplicant will have +6 learning bonus, yielding +60% skill learning rate. Nearly all Duplicant will benefit more from this than alternative.

"Supply" will save you 2 moral points when max, and benefit the Duplicant with 1200Kg extra carry weight, plus 4 Strength (160Kg more carry weight, along with faster digging/tidy/etc etc, read into Strength stat if you're curious). Think of how much time your Duplicant spends that would be faster with more carry weight / strength.

"Dig" will save you 2 moral points when tier 2, and unlock Abyssalite mining, +4 Strength is also given.

"Operate" by itself will save you 3 moral points, and allow  "Mechatronic Engineering" (Automated Shipping). (Not all of your Duplicant needs to have access to building Automated Shipping, but at least one is required to be able to build.

 

--Combo--

"Research and Supply" combo is the typical combo to be aim for. Saves 5 moral points, read below for beneficial gain.

"Supply and Operate" combo  will save you 5 moral points and allow a Duplicant to have access to "Mechatronic Engineering" (Automated Shipping). At least one Duplicant needs Mechatronic trait to build any shipping.

"Farm and Rancher" is not a very useful combo, will only save you 2 moral points in terms of access to Ranching. Although a player allot more skill points, if the goal is just to have a Rancher Duplicant, it only cost 3 moral points with no interest.

 

--The Rest--- 

Cook, saves 1 moral point, unlocks Grill Cooking. unless you choose Cooking tier 2 for the extra stats +2 Cooking stat.

Art, saves 1 to 3 moral points, unlocks Art and higher quality Art if tier 2 and tier 3. (Higher Quality can be produced Art stat is high enough, tier 2 and tier 3 avoidable)

Tidy, saves 1 to 2 moral points, tier 2 unlocks ability to deconstruct liquid pipe without flooding, although the +4 Strength given is more appealing in my own opinion.

Farmer, saves you 1 moral point, or 2 if you choose to apply for Farmer tier 2 for "crop tending/micronutrient" . (Myself opt out tier 2, tier 1 is required for Rancher however)

Rancher, which would only save you 1 moral point, unless you choose Rancher tier 2 for the extra +2 Ranching stat.

Construction, saves 3 moral points total, output +6 construction.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I personally chose dupes based on the following criteria:

1. Do they have 2 or three interests?
2. Are their interests useful for what I need to do?
3. Are their other traits going to be a big problem?

So, lets say I need a dupe for mechatronics to set up some shipping systems.  I'll keep my eyes open for a dupe that has "Construction" and "Operate."  If they also have "Supply," even better!  As far as other traits.. in my current base I use buddy blooms and bristle berries to reduce the odds of slimelung infection, so an allergic dupe would be a no-go.  However, in another base I was running, an allergic dupe would be just fine because there were no floral scents within my base.  So, in the previous base, I would have accepted the dupe, even with allergies.

[Gurgel]

One really strong researcher makes a _lot_ of difference for research speed, especially when your base is small. I now go up to 12 dupes as fast as possible (i.e. 27 cycles) and it makes less of a difference with that. It is still nice. 

For the rest, I do not take disabled ones (except Squeamish and Gastrophobia) and I do not take negative attribute values. I used to want some learning on all of them, but lately found that the difference in gameplay is not something I actually notice. The thing that counts is athletics and that gets trained by them running around pretty fast anyways and carrying capacity which you mostly get via jobs. The rest is pretty immaterial I think.  

[zerat]

Diver's lungs is the only trait that actually reduces the upkeep cost of dupes, and is therefore automatically a tier above everything else.

There are lots of good perks out there, but after one or two thousand cycles, none of it really means much when everything is maxed out. Diver's lungs however permanently reduces your daily water usage all the way into the endgame, letting you do other things with it, and there's a lot of important uses for water at those time scales.

[metallichydra]

i stry to have my researcher have the interrests:

research + supply (will save you 5 morale if trying to make your researcher able to pilot rockets)

research + suit wearing (will save you 6 morale if trying to make your researcher have the rocket navigation trait, 5 if you just want them to be able to pilot rockets)

or if im lucky (have only happened 2 times for me)

research + supply + suit wearing (will save you 8 morale if trying to make your researcher have the rocket navigation trait, and 7 if you just want them to be able to pilot a rocket)

[Nightinggale]

30 minutes ago, metallichydra said:

or if im lucky (have only happened 2 times for me)

research + supply + suit wearing (will save you 8 morale if trying to make your researcher have the rocket navigation trait, and 7 if you just want them to be able to pilot a rocket)

Just wait for supply + suit wearing, be happy and then scream as you notice yokel

[Hellshound38]

I don't know anymore, at this point I don't make it into the game. I spend all my time clicking refresh on the dupes hoping for a perfect dupe that will never come.

They really should let you do a point system custom dupe builder at least as an option.... at start and in game.

[Nightinggale]

21 minutes ago, Hellshound38 said:

They really should let you do a point system custom dupe builder at least as an option.... at start and in game.

That would break the game because the end result would be starting with the same dupes each time. Having different dupes on different maps is one of the keys to keeping the game fresh: two games using the same version of ONI will be vastly different due to the fact that you start with very different conditions.

[Hellshound38]

57 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

That would break the game because the end result would be starting with the same dupes each time. Having different dupes on different maps is one of the keys to keeping the game fresh: two games using the same version of ONI will be vastly different due to the fact that you start with very different conditions.

How is that any different then spending hours clicking refresh, or reloading a save until I get what I want.

Plus it could just be an option at the start, if you want to play on random mode good for you. Quite frankly I want the same option to pick geysers.

I mean your saying it would break the game, meanwhile you can just turn on debug mode, or sandbox mode, or put the game on super easy and break it 10,000 times worse then reducing the RNG would

[beowulf2010]

7 minutes ago, Hellshound38 said:

Plus it could just be an option at the start, if you want to play on random mode good for you. Quite frankly I want the same option to pick geysers.

I agree with you on the initial starting 3 dupes. Subsequent dupes from the printer? No, they need to be random.

The geysers? No. They need to stay set on the map seed. It's already too easy to pick your map seed using ToolsNotIncluded. 

This being said, if Klei wants to give us a pseudo-NG+ functionality of starting a new base after successfully launching a rocket to a distant planet (80,000+?) and allowing us to pick 1-3 geyser/vent/volcanoes to be guaranteed and to be in the top 90% of their possible range in addition to tweaking the map seed to match the planet type (Terrestrial for the basic map gen, Ice gives 50% ice biome, Organic gives 75% swamp biome, etc) as well as bringing 1-3 dupes (rocket pilot and up to 2 others in the tourism pods) to start with, I'd be fine with it. (Obviously there would be morale issues to solve, possibly with a +15 morale for 50 cycles Planetary Traveler buff.) 

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, Hellshound38 said:

They really should let you do a point system custom dupe builder at least as an option

Reading what has been written since you posted this and some thinking, I would say maybe a point system would be fine. However don't use the points for random dupes because that way the game will use both systems. If random dupes can be better than the user created, then players are still encouraged to use random traits, hence more diverse playing experiences.

Such a system could actually be decent if it is on a per dupe approach. I imagine getting two random dupes and then creating a third, which is designed to cover the weak spots of the other two would be a common approach.