Takin it way too slow

[CaRat]

Idk why but I feel like I am the slowest oni player I hear people talking about plastic on like cycle 50. while for me I forgot it existed and it's on cycle 150 trying to not only use mush bars and have other foods.i feel like I'm doing somen wrong like never accepting new duplicates until I have toilets or placing 100 deodorizers so my duplicates stay healthy. Pls help meh not die by telling meh some useful tips to have so it doesn't take 200 cycles to get oil and another 50 to reach the surface 

[Lutzkhie]

Dont compare your playthrough with others, play it the way you wanted it to be. Enjoy the game, be more scientific, be more experimental. Also your playthrough depends on your map, number of algae, closest geyser, power availability, terrain etc. Its always unique.

[Moah]

I dont think you are the slowest player. My actual Base is in circle 350 and i still have no oil and plastic production - i don't need it yet! Why should i stress me?

Best tip is to don't care what others do!

 

"Milestones" on my ~60th Base:

~Circly 50: Basic Base (Baracks, Mess Hall, Cooking Station, Mealwood Farm, Hatch Farm, Storage Chamber)

~Circle 100: 8 Dupes, Research done and set up bathroom (with pumps and water), Bristlefarm

~Circle 150: 10 Dupes, Some experiments with the new plants/critters, Medic Center

~Circle 200: 12 Dupes, Oxygen production Room (Electrolyzer), Metal Refinery Room, Clean Water support Room...

~Circle 300: Exploration and exploit ~4 Geysirs

~Circle 350: Cooling/Heat Exchange Room

 

next Steps for the next 200 Circles:

* Expand the oxygen production to support 14 Exosuit Stations

* Explore Oil Biome

* Explore some other Geysirs

* Drecko Farm / experiments with other Critters

* Transport Tubes and "Walking-Hallways"

....

I reach space in this base maybe in Circle 500....

 

I have time..

[CaRat]

22 minutes ago, Lutzkhie said:

Dont compare your playthrough with others

I'm not comparing to others I just keep dying of lack of water heat so yeah spending 200 cycles while your only source of power is a coal gen

2 minutes ago, Moah said:

I dont think you are the slowest player. My actual Base is in circle 350

No offense but it cycles also ty for da tips

[xialeth]

As someone who has not yet progressed beyond cycle 200:

Exploring the surrounding biomes and setting up a sieve-filter-system to filter the PH2O into clean H2O has helped me tremendously with water issues (on Terra, that is). As for cooling, I've so far used an ice biome to cool my water, though I rarely got problems with heat (running two-three coal generator at various points in my base) at those cycle numbers. I think insulating your base before digging into the hotter biomes also helps...

[camelot]

You just need to explore soon to get important information about resources like algae, water... Make sure to have the fire pole everywhere to reduce commute time and have oxygen at some remote area. And try to reduce dupe time by investing in some basic automation (power generators, farm, supply task...). That's it

[Soulwind]

I have over 1000 hours in the game (lots and lots of bases) and I have never:

Dug down to the oil biome.

Made plastic other than glossy drekos 

Breached the surface

Made a rocket

Made a steam turbine 

Etc.

Play at your own pace and don't worry about it.

[ONIfreak]

Only thing you jeed is power and water . So easiest is to find natural gayser and hook it up ( inportant info is that geyser will stop produce natural gas if pressure is 5kg per tile so ideally you want to pump it somewhere else ( i setup lots of reservoirs like 30-40 for it as they do not need power to push gas through so kind of like buffer)  water is fairly easy - find ice biome and put on top some hot water ( from geyser for example) after some time ice biome will met leaving pool of clean and polluted water below - hook this up to sieve and send to electrolyzers. You can send some to bristle blossoms as well - or setup drecko farm with mealwood - you get meat this way. And you good to go. After that get suits and explore slowly setting up your base. This is usually my early game setup -fairly sustainable givong you time to build nice advance systems.  

[angrybovine]

Having a great researcher, a really good digger\builder, and another good digeer\?\? as starting Dupes works well.

Also, I like to fast train Supply first (except for researcher) which gives amazing buffs to the Dupes and I can get Suits fast.

I find that picking up materials on the floor is a huge time sink.  I tend to have a cluttered base until my Dupes are stronger\faster\better at cleaning.

I also think its best to have a project or few projects (dig this area or build this room\system) and finish them instead of a ton of unfinished projects that Dupes waste a lot of time on traveling back and forth to the unfinished job sites stretched over multiple cycles.

Smart pathing and avoiding debuffs help.

[thewreckedangle]

1 hour ago, Soulwind said:

I have over 1000 hours in the game (lots and lots of bases) and I have never:

Play at your own pace and don't worry about it.

 

exactly! i have over 2.7k hours, never* built a rocket, tepidiser, oil refinery, plastic beds, hydroponic tiles!! it goes on. i am currently on cycle 280 and still only have wheels for power! XD

low tech is a viable option!!

^{*or very very rarely}

[N00bieMeap]

4 minutes ago, thewreckedangle said:

i am currently on cycle 280 and still only have wheels for power!

oooooookay, interesting

[nakomaru]

I uncovered the space biome at cycle 7500 this go. Pretty sure pacing is completely up to the individual.

[ONIfreak]

9 minutes ago, thewreckedangle said:

1 hour ago, Soulwind said:

I have over 1000 hours in the game (lots and lots of bases) and I have never:

 

Play at your own pace and don't worry about it.

exactly! i have over 2.7k hours, never built a rocket, tepidiser, oil refinery, plastic beds, hydroponic tiles!! it goes on. i am currently on cycle 280 and still only have wheels for power! XD

low tech is a viable option!!

I like this way as well. However i do send rocket since it needs just some steel and water (easiest way to make steam? - drop water on debris from space ;)) but around cycle 400 i start to slow down and slowly tidy up planet building new farms and make planet livable. Lots of heat management and clearing but i like it. With almost unlimited power ( lucky to have 2 natural gas geysers and gas from petrolum refinery) it is so much fun to setup all those not necessery systems ( algea distillery, balm lilly farm etc.) Speed is not important in this game. 

[Lurve]

5 hours ago, Webber is bes said:

trying to not only use mush bars and have other foods

You do need to get off mush bars.  They're resource and labor intensive, and burn through your stocks of two critical resources (water, dirt).  5 mealwood farms per dupe is enough to sustain them, and you can put 4 or 5 bristles in planters around your printer, which'll feed a dupe and a half if you grill them.

If you like long-term sustainability, try some forest starts using pips to wild-plant mealwood everywhere.  You'll need 20 per dupe, which sounds like a lot, but then it's free food.  Just let them have access to your farm and they'll move any extra seeds all over.  When you can spare the time to fiddle with environments, wild mushrooms and waterweed are both better, and can be combined late-game to make a decent high-end meal.

[nivodeus]

my speed varies with each playthrough, sometimes I get to some area faster due to easy early access of geyser or something. I dont think there is anything wrong with playing it too slow or too fast. If the colony keep failing, sure when you start another new colony, you will definitely get better, since you use the experiences from before and not repeat the same mistake. 

Just remember, sometimes, exploration could be the key. Discovering new geyser, or new resources, that ways you can easily sustain more dupes and then slowly expand the base. 

[ONIfreak]

1 hour ago, nivodeus said:

my speed varies with each playthrough, sometimes I get to some area faster due to easy early access of geyser or something. I dont think there is anything wrong with playing it too slow or too fast. If the colony keep failing, sure when you start another new colony, you will definitely get better, since you use the experiences from before and not repeat the same mistake. 

Just remember, sometimes, exploration could be the key. Discovering new geyser, or new resources, that ways you can easily sustain more dupes and then slowly expand the base. 

Very true. I usually spend 40 cycles as soon as i get my hands on atmo suits to just unhide whole map to know where and how mich of certain material is available. After that prioritizemy build based on that. 

[Gurgel]

Who cares how others play? I am currently on a cycle 300 Terra, no plastic and I have just started making steel. There is no rush. 

[DemainaNyx]

I'm probably about to ramble my way into a 10 paragraph essay, so I apologize for that.  As others have said though, don't compare yourself to others.  Play however you want and enjoy your time in the game.  Just because someone else is quicker at it doesn't mean you should feel bad about how you play.

 

First thing is really stop and look at what is ruining your colony.  Are you constantly out of algae for oxygen?  Are you overheating your crops?  Are you not planting enough crops?  This may seem like a silly thing to ask but you'd be surprised at some of the issues people face.  I once had a base where everyone starved.  Ok, just produce more food you say, except the problem wasn't that there wasn't enough food.  The problem was that there was so much carbon dioxide in my base that the dupes would run to get food, get half way, drop the food, and then run back to catch their breath.  They never got to eat the food despite it existing so they starved but the real reason I lost was because of my oxygen being too low and the carbon dioxide that was pooling at the bottom of my base just expanded.  Little things like that can kill a colony because you are busy trying to solve problem A while problem B is what's actually killing you.  A similar example is crops being too hot.  Your dupes will starve, but your real problem is the heat, not the amount of crops.

 

Personal preference, but if you notice you run out of algae, try using terrariums instead of diffusers.  It costs more dupe time and water to do, but you use about a third less algae doing it.  It takes 2.5 terrariums per dupe so calculate accordingly and make sure to have a polluted water pit to dump the polluted water.  You can just let the polluted water bottles off gas into polluted oxygen and use a deodorizer to convert it to clean oxygen in exchange for sand, but I would recommend sweeping up as much of the p.water as you can and only using a few deodorizers to get the gas that escapes before cleanup.  That way you can recycle that water later instead of it just disappearing.

 

You mentioned heat as well, which might be from the water sieve unless you are on the launch patch.  Heat is a running issue that we constantly battle.  Early game the easiest way to deal with it is to place it somewhere you don't care about.  For example, I build my initial battery two floors away from my farms so that it can't overheat them.  Once I get insulated tiles, I move the batteries outside my base so the only heat produces inside are machines like the research stations, rock granulator, electric grills, and gas ranges.  Everything else is outside where the heat the machine produces can either be ignored, captured, or controlled.  Electrolyzers might be your other heat producer, so cooling the oxygen before piping it to your colony is advisable.  

 

For food, I honestly never touch the Microbe Musher.  A dupe needs 1000kcal a cycle and raw meal ice provide 600kcal a harvest.  It takes 3 cycles for them to fully develop, so I need 3000kcal of meal lice to satisfy them for that growth period which is 5 plants.  So I plant 5 mealwood plants per dupe and just let them eat that instead of refining it into anything else.  You could upgrade it to Pickled Meal if you have someone capable of using an Electric Grill, but I don't even bother.  I'm 400 some cycles into my current playthrough and they are just now starting to destroy the original Mealwood farm for better food.

 

Try to plan out what you want to accomplish and see how difficult it is to do it in the research menu.  You have to plan ahead for things, like using electrolyzers creates hydrogen so you should probably have the hydrogen generator researched before setting up electrolyzers.

My research pattern is Meal Preparation, Advanced Research, Decontamination, Improved Plumbing, Distillation, and Sanitation before Cycle 30 and hopefully set up an Oxygen System which requires Air Systems, Advanced Ventilation, HVAC, and Advanced Automation before Cycle 50.  That way I have water being generated from bathrooms to supplement my starter water while I use terrariums and that extra water can be used for oxygen with Electrolyzers after.  I only take 6 dupes until I have Electrolyzers up and running so that limits my productivity but also means I don't need to produce a lot of oxygen or food.

Here's a detailed breakdown of all this.  No images because I'm on my phone but I can provide those later if you are interested.

Spoiler

 

We get Basic Farming which gives me Terrariums and the Ration Box.  That allows me to move the existing box from beside the printer to a lower platform that will be my carbon dioxide pit (carbon dioxide, chlorine, and hydrogen are sterile gasses and food won't rot in them).  I then build my terrarium platform above that so that there is always carbon dioxide for my food.

Meal Prep gives me Farm Tiles, so I can make a 2 tile tall, 18 tile wide farm for my mealwood seeds.  I normally make that one floor above my printing pod (the floor directly above the printer pod is my temporary barracks).  I need 5 mealwood plants per dupe so they can subsist on raw meal lice.  One floor covers my initial dupes so I need another if I take more.

Advanced research is simple to unlock higher tier research.

Decontamination is rushed in order to deal with the polluted water that the terrariums output through the use of deodorizers.  I normally flank my terrarium floor with 2 deodorizers each to prevent the polluted oxygen from escaping.  This isn't necessary, but I prefer to have a clean looking base vs having polluted oxygen packets floating around.

 

Once done, my goal is to build a Washroom with plumbed sinks, toilets, and showers.  For this I design what I've dubbed a Mud Room, which is a room that is near my base that holds stuff like Compost Piles, Water Tanks, extra Batteries.  I don't care about the temperature of this room or the decor here and instead try to automate as much as I can so dupes don't spend long in here late game.  I normally access this room through my bathroom so that any germs collected in this room are washed off before heading out into the base.

 

Improved Plumbing might seem silly, but I want to get insulated pipes and liquid reservoirs.  Insulated isn't as vital any more since the sieve outputs water at it's input temp, but previously it was a quick way to heat up your base without them.  Regardless, I still want the liquid reservoirs so I head here anyway.  I set up a small decontamination room where I chain 3+ liquid reservoirs together with a pipe that recirculates the water from the last to the first.  @Yunru made a nice post explaining why this works and showing the setup so I'll link it here.

I normally feed water in from the right but you can do whatever way you want.  I set the dupes to work building all the pipes and reservoirs for this setup while one of my dupes looks for some chlorine or bleach stone to put in here.  The pipes normally take a while to build so it's important to get started soon.

 

Distillation is next since I now have a pool of polluted water that I plan to use to prime my bathrooms with.  Hopefully by now some of the liquid reservoirs are full of p.water.  I set up two Water Sieves above this chlorine room on top of each other and build 2 rows of three Compost Piles beside them.  6 is overkill, but I'd rather have a place for dupes to put waste rather than leaving it where it can offgas, so I always just have extra.  I build it in such a way that later the sieves will be filled via a sweeper arm and the arm will deposit the polluted dirt in the compost piles immediately while dirt will be shipped off to farms.  Right now though, everything is accessible by ladders.  The output from the sieve is sent off towards my bathrooms.

 

Sanitation is finally researched.  Hopefully by now they've completed most of the pipe work and I can just place these down and be done.  The output from these heads back into my mud room and loops into the rest of the system.  Any extra is dropped into my p.water storage tank.  It often has millions of food poisoning germs in it but the water and p.dirt from the sieve is always germ free due to the chlorine room decontaminating it so well.

To accommodate my water needs for research and oxygen, I add a small basin with a Pitcher Pump that comes from the Sieve.  I build it into the insulation wall of my base so that it doesn't upset my standard layout.  Research is often moved to this area and my original designs are taken down and upgraded with better materials as I get them.

Here is an older example of how my setup looks.  Once I get home I can post images from my current build if you are interested.  https://imgur.com/a/iXoSjau

 

With plumbed bathrooms established, I take this time to search for a cooling source and a water geyser of some sort.  These will eventually be turned into an oxygen setup via electrolyzers and whatever means of cooling I find.  Additionally, I unlock Internal Combustion and Smelting in the mean time.  That gets me started with bigger batteries so less time recharging things.  I can also use the Rock Granulator to get just enough refined metals to make a 6 tile long 2Kw wire to connect my Metal Refinery to a Manual Generator and a Battery.  My coolant is water currently and I dispose of it into liquid reservoirs that I deconstruct whenever they become full.  The hot water is used in research and to water my terrariums which can raise the temperature a bit but it isn't drastic.  This setup allows me to generate 1:1 refined metal at cycle 30-50

This can take many cycles depending on your RNG, so reaching it early is important.  I normally only have one or two diggers and I send them out to dig tunnels into the surrounding areas hoping to spot something useful.  I set up my researcher to just complete a row of research and check back in whenever it tells me there is no research focus.  A Cool Slush Geyser is a god send since it tackles both jobs for you, so that is the ideal find.  A Cool Steam Vent is fine though and more likely to happen.  I like to connect the output from my Metal Refinery to my electrolyzers as well as the water source I found since I have this hot water and can easily convert it to oxygen and use the cooler water for other tasks like farming.  It also helps regulate for down times when geysers are dormant without needing to redesign the whole setup.

I set up my oxygen room to sorta future proof things.  I place 4 electrolyzers with 4 gas pumps for oxygen and 1 for hydrogen.  Eventually I will need more oxygen pumps so I leave room for them but hold off on building them until later.  CrypticFox has a video explaining a 2 electrolyzer design that automatically sorts the different gasses so that you don't need to use a filter and can thus save on power if you need an idea of how to build this.  I either chill the oxygen in this room via snaking cold liquid through here in radiant pipes or run the oxygen pipes through a cold area with radiant pipes to reduce the temp before sending the oxygen to my base.

With Oxygen taken care of, cooling done through said oxygen, and my original mealwood farm still running, we are more or less self-sustaining.  You may still run out of dirt for mealwood, so this is when I start branching into other foods as well or exploring the map and just living off the wild plants that grow.  You can now get rid of the algae terrariums and instead opt for a carbon skimmer to remove the Co2 from your base.  Atmosuits would be the last thing I'd recommend to help deal with those accidental volcano discoveries but it is not required.

The world is yours to explore now since your big concerns are dealt with.  You can still lose dupes to them burying themselves and such, but you are less likely to lose the whole colony from this point forward.

 

 

Lastly, just play more.  I've played this game for 1700+ hours now and have lost plenty of colonies to my own mistakes before coming up with the above playstyle.  The more you play, the more you'll refine your own play style.  Eventually the beginning cycles will be simply repeating the patterns you've established and optimizing your initial layout so you don't need to redesign stuff throughout the game and you'll be able to speed run your way to plastics and space.

 

If you want more specific advice, posting an image of your recent base would help us.  Most of us can only speculate what might be causing your issue from our own experiences, but an image would help up pinpoint advice for your specific situation.

[LucidFugue]

The amount of cycles is sort of a bad measure because it comes down to how many dupes you have. By cycle 100 there is a big difference between staying on 3 dupes the whole time and having gone up to 8 dupes within the first 20-30 cycles. Food, oxygen, water, power... You need more of everything even though you have more hands to do the work.  

Irrespective of dupe count though, if you're dying from lack of water then look into where your water is going and try to work out alternatives. I avoid bristle blossoms because I don't want my starting water being all used up for food, especially when I can overcome the grisly meal morale penalty from feeding mealwood. It's also a good idea to only research what you need or are planning to use on your next project - the super computer is pretty thirsty! Lastly, look out for water, steam, or slush geysers, and ice biomes. You can do things like build tempshift plates or sculptures out of ice, dump a bunch of warm fresh water over them, and lower the temperature of the water, while giving you more total water when they melt.

 

[Moah]

Hi again!

I played a bit today and here you get my first 26 Circles to rush the Oil Biome:

Quote

starting Dupes: 1x Digger, 1x Builder, 1x Researcher/Builder/Supply

Circle 01: Bathroom + Barracks + Adapt Shedule (-1h Bedtime +1h Worktime)
Circle 02: Research Station + Oxygen Diffuser + "Harvest Plants" all Plants around Printing Pod (Prio 8)
Circle 03: 1 new Dupe Nr. 4 (3x Reload to get one who fits), the new Dupe has already one Skillpoint (use "Hard digging")
Circle 04: 2nd. Research Station + Research "Basic Farming" done
Circle 05: Prepare 5x Bristles around Printing Pod, Research "Employment" Done
Circle 06: Research "Advanced Research" + "Meal Preparation" Done + Dupe Skills (Advanced Research + 2x Hard Digging) + New Dupe Nr. 5 (Skill Farming) + Super Computer
Circle 07: 2nd. Oxygen Diffuser and wires at Excavation Site + 2nd. Shedule for better Bathroom sharing + Research "Brute Force Refining" Done
Circle 08: Digging, Building, Researching...
Circle 09: Research "Refined Renovations" Done, Fire Poles to get faster to Excavation Site, Mess Hall + Mealwood Farm + New Dupe (Nr. 6, Artist), Compost ready
Circle 10: Research "Power Regulation" + "Internal Combustion" Done
Circle 11: Fire Poles + Polluted Water Pit + Coal Generator + Jumbo Batteries Upgrade
Circle 12: Research "Ventilation" + "Pressure Management" Done, Dupe Nr. 7 is ready (Operating, Supply) + 3rd. Shedule for Bathroom-Sharing
Circle 13: Expanding Farm (20x Mealwood + wild Plants)
Circle 14: Research "Decontamination" Done
Circle 15: Dupe Nr. 8 (Rancher, Doctor) + Research "Ranching" Done + Deodorizer Spam
Circle 16: Research "Agriculture" Done + Mealwood Farm upgrade (22x + Station)
Circle 17: Research "Plumbing" + "Air Systems" + "Sound Amplifier" Done
Circle 18: 3rd. Oxygen Diffusion + Wires down below
Circle 19: Time to tidy up a bit, i don't want debris in my PW-Pit and ranch + Research "Interior Decor" + "Artistic Expression" + "Smart Home" Done
Circle 20: Expanding Base
Circle 21: Research "Fine Art" Done + Large Sculpting Block Spam
Circle 22: working Refrigerator, Rock Crusher, Kiln
Circle 23: Research "Sanitation"
Circle 24: Research "Pharmacology" Done
Circle 25: Research "Medical Equipment", "Filtration", "Improved Plumbing" Done
Circle 26: Basic functional Base ready (+Sandstone-Fed-Hatch-Ranch, Generator Room with Smart Batterie Automation, Med Bay, Kitchen) + Oil Biome only a few tiles away...

Spoiler

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In Circle 26 i am with 8 Dupes only a few tiles away from the Oil Biome. But i have to go now.. i can continue next Friday if you want.

Next Steps:

Circle 25-40: Getting the Oxygen Diffuser running in the Ice Biome close to the Oil Biome + Oil+Pumps-Research + Oil Refinery Room + Oil Infrastructure

Circle 40-50: Oxygen Production Infrastructure, Bristle/Mushroom-Farm, Thimble-Reed Farm, Water-Infrastructure, maybe Dupe 9 &10 + Plastic!

Circle 50+: Having fun solving energy and water problems.

And one last tip for today: Every time you dig a tile, you create a open tile with vakuum which has to be filled with oxygen! If you want to rush, do not dig all up.

Hope i could help you.

br

 

[Oozinator]

There is no "too slow" but a "rushed doom" ^^

 

[chasinji]

Oxygen Not Included temporal tear Badland map speedrun any hardest difficulty.

[EnderCN]

Play at your own pace for sure.  Keep in mind though that 3 dupes do the work of 3 and use up the resources of 3.  6 dupes do the work of about 8 and use up the resources of 6.  As long as you can keep dupes doing jobs they are specialized in the more you have, the more efficient your base is.   Playing with 3 or 4 dupes is slower and harder than going with like 6-8.  Once you get over 8 it is all about how well you can use the priorities etc to make sure they aren't running around wasting time constantly, it gets a lot trickier at that point.

Also there is almost never a good reason to make mush bars.  So the first step I would take is figuring out how to run your food better.  You can be planting mealwood on cycle 2 and there really is no reason to do anything with the mealwood but eat it raw imo.  Pickling it just makes it take longer to rot and cooking it wastes water.

[flapee]

15 minutes ago, EnderCN said:

there really is no reason to do anything with the mealwood but eat it raw imo.  Pickling it just makes it take longer to rot and cooking it wastes water.

actually Lice loaf recipe takes 1200 kcals and generates 1700 kcals and +1 quality, so IMHO the 41% calories increase is well worth the water

[EnderCN]

1 hour ago, flapee said:

actually Lice loaf recipe takes 1200 kcals and generates 1700 kcals and +1 quality, so IMHO the 41% calories increase is well worth the water

It also takes a ton of dupe time at a time when you don't have a lot of dupes.  You do not need the food quality at all early game so that doesn't do anything for you, you are trading a significant amount of water and a bunch of dupe time for 500 cals, it just isn't worth it.  On maps that you can it is much better to just move to bristle blossoms as soon as you can and get off mealwood completely. Liceloaf is a trap imo, it is just so inefficient.