Need some guidance...what next?

[JesusOnEez]

I've reached about as far as I've ever reached in this game. I'm close to 300 cycles in on a Terra map (I like building more than challenges). I play slowly, not in any big rush, but I'm kind of at an impasse as to what to do next...I'm spending too long sitting there watching my base... 

So, for my 300 cycles, I have 10 dupes. A double-walled insulated 'living area' base. Access to the other biomes with exosuits. I have tamed a Nat Gas Geyser with it filling a room plus 8 Reservoirs supply Gas to 4 Nat Gas Generators. I have Coal Generator and Hydrogen Generator backup systems.

I have recycled water loop in place for sinks, toilers and showers.

I have plenty of water in general, with clean polluted water being cleaned and drip fed to the primary tank.

I have Electrolisers supplying O2 to my exosuits. Base O2 is produce by Algae Deoxydisers (I still have 30+ tonnes of Algae remaining, and they are automated to stop at 850g pressure to minimize usage.

My base temperature is 26C in the coolest areas and 32C in the hottest. I've not really done any cooling other than recently placing Wheezeworts in those warmer areas and, as mentioned, insulating my base.

What I've got and not implemented yet is (because I'm not sure what to do with them);

• 2 x AETN
• 1 x Copper Volcano
• 1 x CO2 Geyser
• 1 x Chlorine Geyser
• 1 x Hot PO2 Geyser

I've not yet found a Water Geyser which is unusual to say the least...still, water is not a big problem for the foreseeable future. What I am lacking is Gold Amalgam. My Slime Biomes have been particularly lacking. I have an abundance of Copper Ore and Iron Ore, and good seams of Wolframite.

Food not an issue...making Frost Buns at the high end of my food chain, with Fried Mushroom at the low end.

I have about 6T of Plastic from Smooth Drecko ranching.

So suggestions on what to do next would be appreciated!

[nakomaru]

Start producing pacus en masse. Check out @Lifegrow's recent post on the subject. You will need pacus for their massive supply of egg shells for lime.

You already have plastic, so you can build turbines. Tame yourself the copper volcano and look for a cool steam geyser in the mean time. You'll want it to start making a permanent oxygen supply for you. I would tie your cooling around your copper volcano as well, since you will probably want an aquatuner in the steam room.

After those two, head to oil and begin making petroleum. Starting off with an oil refinery is fine, but then switch to heating it by using another volcano or a metal refinery with a heat exchanger. There are many examples.

With those pacus and you should have ample supply of steel production, so head to space. Bunker up the top row then work on a scanner network and a way to deal with debris. After that, rockets!

[metallichydra]

and make your base look nice.

you can make metal tiles, good artwork and plant sporechids.

[JesusOnEez]

Thanks for the reply.

This one I take it - 

How does the lime help me create steel? I thought you just refined Iron Ore to Iron to Steel.

Doing cooling with a super-hot volcano? Sound counter-intuitive to me. :/

I've always struggled in the past with taming Cool Steam Geysers. Initially I tried Wheezeworts to condense the steam but that fails after a few cycles as they can't take the heat. I've tried a polluted water loop with a Sieve which worked OK, but isn't feasible any more. So, could I simply run a Pump, an Aquatuner or two, Insulated Pipe to the top of the Geyser room, a little run of Radiant to condense the steam and back to Insulated to be dropped back into the main pool of water?

Thanks for the pointers anyway.

 

[MorsDux]

The ultimate goal is to send a rocket to the temporal tear, try to do that in the long run, you will find many obstacles to overcome on the way there, and each will present itself at a point in development. Also if you want to have things done quicker, take on 10-20 more duplicants most of them specialized in building and digging. You will save time building stuff

[JesusOnEez]

Just now, metallichydra said:

...and plant sporechids.

Evil!

My base is already very pretty.

[metallichydra]

Just now, JesusOnEez said:

How does the lime help me create steel? I thought you just refined Iron Ore to Iron to Steel.

to create steel you need:

refined coal - use a kiln

iron - refine iron, or find it in space. if you're playing the badlands it will also generate as part of the world

lime - use rock granulator to refine egg shells, pokeshell molts and fossils into lime

Just now, JesusOnEez said:

Evil!

you can plant them behind glass if you want.

[nakomaru]

8 minutes ago, JesusOnEez said:

Doing cooling with a super-hot volcano? Sound counter-intuitive to me. :/

Here's one way.

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/109211-how-do-you-guys-cool-your-metal-down/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-1230442

 

[chasinji]

39 minutes ago, JesusOnEez said:

My base temperature is 26C in the coolest areas and 32C in the hottest.

Come on, show your base off here! don't be shy!
try sporechild as décor plant in your base. may be. it has effect on duplicants.

[JesusOnEez]

4 minutes ago, chasinji said:

Come on, show your base off here! don't be shy!

Ha! I'll post a couple of pics when I get home from work this evening.

[Junksteel]

58 minutes ago, metallichydra said:

and plant sporechids.

No. SporechiLd is evil.

[Lurve]

We don't need to derail another thread arguing how to spell sporekid.

@JesusOnEez , you've got space above you, and oil below. Both have new stuff to play with. Your dupes are eating mushrooms and dinner rolls when they could be eating stuffed berries and pepper bread. They probably have to walk everywhere instead of taking a convenient tube. Absolutely nothing in your base is getting melted, frozen, evaporated, or converted, and I'm sure you'll agree that is a shame.

[metallichydra]

2 minutes ago, Lurve said:

We don't need to derail another thread arguing how to spell sporekid.

the real plague caused by the sporechid

[bmilohill]

1 hour ago, JesusOnEez said:

I still have 30+ tonnes of Algae remaining, and they are automated to stop at 850g pressure to minimize usage.

This might be less than you think. 30 tonnes algae = 27.272 tonnes of O2 (assuming deodorizers). 
A normal dupe breathes 60kg of O2 per cycle. 

You're looking at 45 days of breathing (algae is always deceptive in the early game since you keep digging more of it. But once it's gone...)


Edit: though i just reread and saw you do have electrolizers for your suits. So it isn't a drastic concern, but in the next hundred cycles you will need to transition to these for your base as well, which then means needing to regulate heat

[JesusOnEez]

16 minutes ago, Lurve said:

We don't need to derail another thread arguing how to spell sporekid.

@JesusOnEez , you've got space above you, and oil below. Both have new stuff to play with. Your dupes are eating mushrooms and dinner rolls when they could be eating stuffed berries and pepper bread. They probably have to walk everywhere instead of taking a convenient tube. Absolutely nothing in your base is getting melted, frozen, evaporated, or converted, and I'm sure you'll agree that is a shame.

True...that's exactly where I start coming out of my comfort zone...the only things I'm converting are ores to refined metals in the refinery, or PH2O to H2O...keeping 1000Kg of ice in storage compactors to melt into my water...simple stuff. 

[JesusOnEez]

As requested by @chasinji;

Main living area - my Glossy Drecko Ranch is just to the bottom left. I plan on moving the heat producing compost and recycled water area outside of the main base as it produces a fair whack of heat.

Spoiler

Oxy generation for Exosuits and Shroom farm. I'm playing on No Sweat so food seems to be a non-issue, plus I'm harvesting a lot of natural Pincha Pepper and Sleet Wheat. I know the Oxy generation isn't the best, but it does the job for now, and it feeds Exosuits only.

Spoiler

Newly built power generation...plenty of power for my needs at the moment, although I do need to stagger automation for supply and demand.

Spoiler

Simple Refinery area which I need to refine (fnar!) as I need to figure out a way to cool the PH2O as the Aquatuner isn't doing enough for larger refinement requests.

Spoiler

Finally, Natural Gas Geyser area. In retrospect I'm going to seal the Geyser off so I can pump in 20Kg P/T rather than letting it settle at 5Kg as it is. Still, I lucked out with a very active Geyser that only goes dormant for 23 cycles (I have 21 cycles remaining here). All tanks full and averaging 4.5Kg P/T in the room currently, so I should be good until I can make the changes for the next active cycles (active for about 70 cycles).

Spoiler

So, there are a few tweaks I want to do to what I currently have, plus I want to utilise the stuff I've already mentioned in the first post (AETN and so on).

Any constructive, downright insulting or cuttingly hilarious criticism welcome.

[TheEvilMango]

What I advice is to set up some automated ranches. Hatchs for food+ egg shells + coal (try to get stone hatches becuase they r the best). U already have dreckos. Fish for alot of food and egg shells. Voles for alot of meat. Slicksters for oil. Shine bugs for unlimited free electricity! And pufts for....I don't ranch pufts. Also if u need ideas alot of people here post awesome stuff all the time plus u can always watch someone like Brothgar on YouTube for ideas like a giant sour gas boiler that will run all your Nat gas gens for ever.

[JesusOnEez]

9 hours ago, TheEvilMango said:

What I advice is to set up some automated ranches. Hatchs for food+ egg shells + coal (try to get stone hatches becuase they r the best). U already have dreckos. Fish for alot of food and egg shells. Voles for alot of meat. Slicksters for oil. Shine bugs for unlimited free electricity! And pufts for....I don't ranch pufts. Also if u need ideas alot of people here post awesome stuff all the time plus u can always watch someone like Brothgar on YouTube for ideas like a giant sour gas boiler that will run all your Nat gas gens for ever.

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

Ranching isn't something I've done a great deal of. When I was running primarily Coal Generators, I did drop Hatches into the room for Coal but it wasn't set up as a proper Ranch (now all my Hatches are dead, so I didn't handle that very well at all). It's something I could improve on. Dreckos I only started ranching because I wanted High Pressure Vents...I haven't done anything with Plastic or industrial Plastic production.

Other than that, I've never ranched anything else as I've never got to the point that I needed the materials, and it's definitely a weaker area of my game (as well as more complex automation and understanding what materials are better to use in a given situation).

Still it's all learning and I do subscribe to Brothgar although he's a bit techy for me...I believe he is/was an engineer by trade. I'm on his Discord as well which has a lot of great help.

[DemainaNyx]

You have most if the basics down so it sounds like it's time to experiment.  Taming that copper volcano would get you a nice supply of refined metals for basic stuff like conductive wires.

Personally, I store my water tank outside my base and pump water into a small 2x3 area inside.  Bottled water is not used for much besides research and microbe mushr cooking, so a tank is generally not needed.  It wont hurt you to leave it there though so do as you please.

Moving the compost might be a good idea.  I've adopted what I've deemed a mud room which is a room connected to my base but separated.  All the grimy tasks are handled there like compost, water sieves, ethanol distillers, polluted water tank and bottle empties for polluted water.  I run about 6 compost piles though generally they arent all used.  I like having extra since you never know when you'll suddenly uncover a room full of polluted dirt and suddenly your base is full of polluted dirt since there's no place to put it.

 

Space would be my best suggestion of what to try since that will give you a long term goal to strive for.  Getting enough steel with take you a while so that will give you plenty of things to deal with.

Or, you could build the colony monument as a late game objective.  Requires a ton of resources as well so another long term thing.