Any ways to keep a base for more than 50 cycles?

[Xenologist]

I'm not that bad at the game, I just wanna know how people keep a base past 50 cycles and persist into the mid-game. 

[Weyred]

Not to be facetious, but it's by managing resources efficiently. Don't get more dupes than you can handle. Automate where possible.

What specifically is tripping you up in the first 50 cycles?

[bobucles]

The early cycles are all about establishing a stable food and oxygen supply. Start exploring the map. New biomes have more metal, more seeds and more resources to keep the colony going.

Keep the dupe count very low until you get the hang of things. 5-8 dupes is a good early number, and anything above 10 becomes exponentially more difficult. Arboria is especially hard to grow early game.

[Xenologist]

I've been doing it on the badlands map, and part of my problem is dupes being inefficient with storing marked stuff when they have higher-priority stuff to do. Is there any way to make dupes even with disabled storing priorities stop storing the debris? 

[Weyred]

If you de-prioritized storing, then there might be something preventing them from performing the task you'd rather have them on.

You can also mark storage containers as sweep-only to get further control.

I would strongly recommend Terra until you get the hang of things. The later asteroids can be much harder.

 

[bobucles]

Only two materials are worth your effort for storing early on. Algae, for oxygen machines. Dirt, to protect it from hungry hatches. Don't waste any time or effort to store other materials, dupes will grab what they need when they need it.

Edit: The default dupe carrying capacity is very very small. Don't even think about storing things until dupes start picking up the carry capacity skills.

[Lafara]

one of brute force solution to your storing inefficient problem, train your dupe's Athlete to 10 via hamster wheel.

 

[Gurgel]

If you have trouble with that, stay at 3 dupes until you have food figured out and maybe oxygen. It gives you more time. And maybe play on "no sweat" first. There is a lot of strategy involved and some of it is not that obvious initially.

 

[Gus Smedstad]

1 hour ago, Xenologist said:

I'm not that bad at the game, I just wanna know how people keep a base past 50 cycles and persist into the mid-game. 

That's a pretty broad question. It'd help to know exactly how your colonies are collapsing.

While I'm a big believer in keeping my bases clean, I don't make an effort at it until I feel I'm doing with critical tasks. Which means, among other things, that I don't use "mark for sweeping" at all until quite late.

Debris on the floor does give negative Decor, but your base is going to be terrible anyway for a long time. Just assume everyone's going to have -1 morale from "ugly decor," and manage morale through a Latrine, Barracks, and Great Hall early.

Here's a some musings I wrote about the early game a while back. It might serve as a kind of a guide:

 

[Mongera]

Golden rule of the game: Only pick more dupes when they are very good and when you feel that you are absolutely ready to support them (steady food and oxygen production, housing, etc...). Picking too many dupes before the right time is a common mistake new players make, and probably the most serius mistake you can make in this game.

[Xenologist]

2 hours ago, Weyred said:

If you de-prioritized storing, then there might be something preventing them from performing the task you'd rather have them on.

You can also mark storage containers as sweep-only to get further control.

I would strongly recommend Terra until you get the hang of things. The later asteroids can be much harder.

 

I've had the game since the early access release. And I avoid new dupes entirely, and the sweeping issue is with sweep only compacters and a sweep of 5 priority when all other things are either prioritized by the dupe's own priority system or by thing priorities or a mixture of both. Sweeping is the last thing they could do, and yet, a dupe with disabled storage priority still prioritizes sweeping over research

 

[Weyred]

23 minutes ago, Xenologist said:

Sweeping is the last thing they could do, and yet, a dupe with disabled storage priority still prioritizes sweeping over research

If you're marking debris for sweeping, then it's also a tidy errand. The priority system is complicated, and can be surprising, but it does work. If you really think you've hit a bug in that system, please file a bug report.

[Xenologist]

18 minutes ago, Weyred said:

If you're marking debris for sweeping, then it's also a tidy errand. The priority system is complicated, and can be surprising, but it does work. If you really think you've hit a bug in that system, please file a bug report.

I realized that maybe half an hour ago from this post. Why is sweep under tidy?

[avc15]

There are two priority screens. One is called the sub priority overlay, which shows sub-priorities as colored numbers, but this is not actually priority - it's sub-priority and comes second.

 

The actual priorities screen displays priorities as arrows in a grid. If you don't want your dupes to spend time storing debris, you need to make sure that the 'storage' priority is marked with a down arrow through the entire column.

If you leave tidy at the default priority, you can still force your dupes to pick up specific things that you want by sweeping with the k hotkey..

Now, get yourself some food, and find some way to keep producing oxygen. That's how you get past cycle 50. Next challenge will be, replenishing your water supply. One problem at a time.

[nivodeus]

2 hours ago, Gurgel said:

If you have trouble with that, stay at 3 dupes until you have food figured out and maybe oxygen. It gives you more time. And maybe play on "no sweat" firsts. There is a lot of strategy involved and some of it is not that obvious initially.

 

I found this to be the most efficient strategy, it might be slow but it helps you get a grasp on your surrounding and the map. However, you also shld look at what exactly the thing that hinder you post cycle 50. Was it food, oxygen, heat or anything. I rarely go for more than 5 dupes at most until late nearing cycle 70 or even more, depends on the maps, the surrounding biomes. 

There are too many factors to look at, but if oxygen and food were the problems, then reduce dupe number, and if you already have only 3-4 dupes and yet still fail to go past cycle 50, maybe it's food problem or your starting biome just lack of anything, in that case, you shld explore (there are times when fast exploring is the key). 

If the reason was oxygen, research airlock when you can and start segmentise your base when you expand, so the oxygen doesnt spread thin. or if you are low on Algae on anything, meaning you need to explore (this is one of the reason why exploring sometimes helps more than crippling your base)

If Co2 was the problem, then easiest solution was just keep digging down, and let it sink down, but remember, the more you dig down, the harder for your dupes later to dig down even deeper in the same area, due to accumulation of Co2. 

If water was the problem, then you can either slow down high research (prioritise what tech you need, and slow down on research why looking for a new source of water or use many water recycling technique that can yield more water than used, such as bathroom and sieve combination. 

If heat was the problem, by cycle 50 i think you shld have insulated tiles already and start figuring out where does the heat come from. 

But the idea is for you to adapt depends on what you are given on diff maps, which after many tries, some of the basics will most likely get repetitive enough and you will slowly start to survive more and more. 

As for storing option, I personally dont bother with it until mid game, when I have specialised dupe that main job is to stay at the base, clean the base, and do most other stuffs but digging and building, meaning I rarely build storage bin, unless necessary. 

Downside is, everything will be scattered (The moral hit from decor is not so bad, until your dupes skill high enough that decor boost starts to become more important) and it might takes longer for dupes to travel for building supply and all, but if you are smart enough to use the same materials that you just dig for building what you need, there is basically no supply run, or at least less traveling time. 

 

[QuQuasar]

On the subject of sweeping: give everyone at least one point in the "supply" skill tree.The extra carry-capacity goes a long way.

Also, build from the top down.If you are careful with your dig orders, you can drop all the debris to the bottom of your base or onto whichever floor you designate for storage, and barely have to sweep anything. Even if you didn't do this, it can still be faster to deconstruct and re-construct a floor than to sweep all the debris on it.

And get in the habit of looking at the "Errands" panel on both duplicants and items with jobs queued.It's extremely handy when it comes to working out why a duplicant isn't doing what you want them to.There's always a reason, and usually you just need to tweak the dupes priority or the objects sub-priority to ensure it gets done.

---

Early/Midgame tips:

1. Always think ahead.Know what your next emergency will be (the usual order is hygiene, oxygen, food, morale, CO2 buildup, algae, heat, coal, water, dirt) and work on something to resolve or postpone it before it becomes urgent.
1a.Once you get past those issues, be prepared for dormant geysers.Make sure you have a backup ready by the time your Nat Gas or Cool Steam income dries up.

2. Insulate your farms before you start electrolyzing.Note: farms synergize well with storage: if you put all your cool sandstone and dirt inside the farm, it will act as a heatsink and keep the place cool.
 
3. If you can find a geyser early enough, harness it immediately and avoid electrolyzing the cool water pools. They're great for farming and as early-game heatsinks.

[Xenologist]

I mainly abandon bases due to the lack of motivation to do so. That and not finding geysers quick enough

[LucidFugue]

3 hours ago, Xenologist said:

I mainly abandon bases due to the lack of motivation to do so. That and not finding geysers quick enough

If motivation is the primary issue, I can say how I've approached adjusting as the pace of the game starts to slow. It boils down to switching your perspective from being focused on tasks to focused on dupes.  

In the early game, just about any dupe can do any task (though obviously some better than others) so you set some basic priorities and off you go. Toilets, research, oxygen, food, bedrooms, dining, etc. etc. One by one you're going through those basic projects, probably doing them a little differently in the context of the map and your resources, but still getting through one project after another. 

When you want to start analysing geysers, building autosweepers and shipping stuff, or digging down to the oil biome, these tasks are going to be bottlenecked (especially if you're trying to rush to them at cycle 50). That is, there is probably only one dupe who can do it. Sometimes you need two different specific dupes to each do a specific task. They will frequently be doing other chores, or they're on break/asleep.

Now, you can try to use priorities to "encourage" them to get on with it. But this gets frustrating because you're fighting the system to override your dupes without taking the time to understand what they were doing. Have you ever had the screen focused on an errand, set at priority 8 or higher, running the game at 3x speed and waiting for a dupe to come along? Was that for an actual emergency, or just because you wanted that job done right now? 

I know you have mentioned dupes sweeping/tidying instead of doing what you want them to do, so experiment with not having any storage containers other than building a sweep only when you really need to tidy an area. At cycle 50 you can still rely on room bonuses and snazzy suits to give you all the morale you need, even if there is debris all over the floor. If you have many dupes constantly running back to harvest from your farm plots, increase the priority for one dupe and decrease for others, or let yourself get distracted by looking into a more automated farming system so that your dupes don't get harvest tasks generated all the time. 

This might sound exactly like what I was just warning against - fighting the priority system to get the job you want done. But it's actually the opposite. I'm not looking to bump a specific job up the list for my dupes. I'm looking at what my dupes are doing and seeing if I can help clear away their chores. You can still have the task you really want them to focus on at a higher priority, but you should only really need to step it up one or two numbers.

I find this mentality helps to alleviate the frustration that comes from feeling like it is taking longer and longer for dupes to get the things you want them to do done. 

[Slvrsrfr]

A good seed is a lovely thing. As a note to this, and as someone who has not experienced endgame material, a good seed goes a long way. Practicing the opening moves and deciding what should be the next task is key to me. Deciding where to commit, and to what extent. I have played the same map now so many times, testing different ways to exploit my surroundings without needing high science. I'm at CY 130, with more than enuff algae, water, and dirt to last for easily hundreds more. Since they increased the density of the tiles, especially in the starter biome, I have had no problems with maintaining the initial 3 dupes. Currently I feel you have almost all the time in the world to step slowly towards the upper ends of the game. You should not feel rushed to get there, not as much as it was when I played LC before. My older version of LC had me running out of materials around CY200 if I did not attempt to develop quicker. I was kinda doomed. The updated seeds are resource heavy, thankfully. Use cariths seed browser, it's great. Or if you want a few very good seeds to choose from hollar at me!

[Xenologist]

No snazzy suits. I'm playing on badlands

[0xFADE]

Each time you play you figure out more of the games mechanics.  Eventually you can get good enough to not ever make any mush bars and beyond.  So the answer is eventually. 

[hypoeffort]

42 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

Each time you play you figure out more of the games mechanics.  Eventually you can get good enough to not ever make any mush bars and beyond.  So the answer is eventually. 

I'm on  my 15th base 400 hours deep.  Still a challenge still getting better each build.   Just focus on water food o2 and temp.   Get a hold on that fast and then ittl be easy to get up in the 100's of cycles.

[DarkMaster13]

3 hours ago, Xenologist said:

No snazzy suits. I'm playing on badlands

Badlands is a very slow grindy sort of asteroid.  Difficulty comes from a lack of resource variety, long term water supplies, and large areas that are slow/difficult to get past.  If you're getting bored a lot, that might not be a good choice to play on.

[Xenologist]

1 hour ago, Shocker said:

I'm on  my 15th base 400 hours deep.  Still a challenge still getting better each build.   Just focus on water food o2 and temp.   Get a hold on that fast and then ittl be easy to get up in the 100's of cycles.

15th base 400 hours deep? I've gotten maybe over a hundred bases over the 2 and a quarter-ish years I've owned ONI. I also have over 500 hours. I still don't know why I am not getting further into the game. I've reached oil once. I guess i do things short and maybe gotten a SPOM done at best with atmo suits. I've also gotten to a point of a metal refinery sometimes working. Nothing special has happened since launch.

[PickPay]

Id be curious to see screenshots of your most advanced base !

I never make it to end game, feels like things become too complicated, usually around mid game I run into serious issues (heat) and leave it there...