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

[Slvrsrfr]

me 3. i love more inspiration....

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 8/18/2019 at 4:27 PM, Xenologist said:

I've been doing it on the badlands map, 

Well, that's a toughie.  If you're having difficulties by 50, pick an easier map to start with more beginning resources.

 

[ruhrohraggy]

Same way learning any other thing goes.

Learn -> Practice -> Fail -> Learn -> Practice -> Fail (Hopefully not as much this time) -> Learn -> Practice -> Success! (eventually)

The first step to playing any game is learning the rules...The better you know the rules, the better you can play the game.

The rules in ONI's case, are game mechanics. You don't have to see the game code like Neo or anything, but just a basic understanding of how the game works goes a long way.

Use the help / database provided in game...It's actually quite useful.

Your first priority is to keep your dupes alive. This means eating and breathing. Once you keep your dupes alive, your base can go on forever...

Here's the methodology for solving the first 2 problems...it can be applied to the rest of any problems you'll experience.

_________________________________________

1) How many farmed mealwood can support 1 dupe?

Mousing over a dupe and clicking on it's status, and looking in condition...We can see a dupe requires 1,000 kcal / cycle.

Going to help and looking at farmed mealwood, we can see that a mealwood grows every 3 cycles, and produces 600 kcal of food. (Without turning it into a liceloaf)

Basic math time : 3 cycles x 1,000 kcal = 3,000 kcal needed for 1 dupe, every 3 cycles.

1 mealwood = 600 kcal every 3 cycles. 3,000 kcal / 600 kcal = 5 mealwood needed to feed a single dupe. (If you just feed it the product and don't convert to liceloaf via microbe musher)

__________________________________________

2) How many dupes can each oxygen producer support?

A quick look at the wiki - Standard dupe consumes 100 g/s oxygen.

Algae Terrarium : 40 g/s - need 2.5 algae terrarium per dupe, or 8 algae terrarium for starting 3 dupe. (Not a good pick)

Oxydizer : 500 g/s - Can support 5 dupes

Rust Deoxydizer : 570 g/s - Can support ~ 5 dupes

Electrolyzer : 888 g/s - Can support ~ 8 dupes

__________________________________________

Heat death would take far longer than 50 cycles. Your dupes would probably suffer from suffocating from co2 if you couldn't figure out how to manage it before that happened.

So long as you give them air and food, they survive. From there you make it as complicated as you want.

Some finishing usefulness : If you get bored, or do not like the slow pace of the game, use developer mode and press alt-z, this will speed the game up significantly.

If you're not enjoying the game, then maybe it is not the game for you...*shrug*.

 

[Majestix]

12 hours ago, PickPay said:

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...

The whole point of the game is to fail, analyse your mistake, think about a solution, and then do better next time.

It took me, I think, 5 restarts until I had a game going in which on cycle 500 every one of my 24 dupes was sleeping on a comfy plastic bed and was being sent through the map in plastic tubes, and 2 rockets were constantly going back and forth between planets. But I could see that some late game problems were on the horizon, and for the next play through have decided to do a few things slightly differently. If you keep failing over and over for the same reasons, then you are not analysing your failures enough.

Watching good youtubers can also help. I really like the various series of GrindThisGame. Have a look at  his QoL3 series.

The game gets much more interesting after the standard beginning is over, when you start uncovering more of the map, start thinking about neat solutions to how to incorporate the resource/geyser layouts into your build, get into oil, get into rocketry... It's totally worth persevering a bit!

[ONIfreak]

On which map?

[Gus Smedstad]

8 hours ago, ruhrohraggy said:

2) How many dupes can each oxygen producer support?

I find the math on oxygen production isn't all that useful, mainly because in practice there's a lot more variables. For example, you need a significant overproduction of oxygen, because  you're constantly digging out new spaces, and those spaces need to be filled with oxygen. Production doesn't address distribution, either.

You're not touching on deoderizers, either, which can be an important part of your oxygen ecology as bottles of polluted water offgas polluted oxygen.

In the early game, what I end up doing is eyeballing the map for areas of low oxygen density (< 1200 g/tile) and add local oxygen producers (algae terrariums typically) and adjacent deoderizers (for the inevitable bottles of PW) on floors where it's low. If I don't have a significant O2 production surplus in the daily report after doing that, I'm doing it wrong.

Later - much later than cycle 50 - I'll deactivate or deconstruct terrariums if they're in a zone that has a significant surplus (>3000 g/tile) of oxygen.

Eventually, of course, I switch away from that, and move to a central air production plant and a ventilation system, but that's kind of beyond the scope of Xenologist's experience if he's not making it to cycle 50.

[KittenIsAGeek]

8 hours ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Here's the methodology for solving the first 2 problems...it can be applied to the rest of any problems you'll experience.

_________________________________________

1) How many farmed mealwood can support 1 dupe?

__________________________________________

2) How many dupes can each oxygen producer support?

 

This was a great post.  I think that far too often, players try to rush to end-game setups and that's what trips them up.  For example, mealwood is an awesome starter food.  Its cheap, prevalent in most maps, and doesn't require very much research (first step of farming).    There are certainly better foods as you get further into the game, but you can save yourself a LOT of headaches by starting off with mealwood right at the beginning.

I disagree with your assessment of algae terrariums, however.  If you're on a map that has a decent supply of starting algae, they make an excellent first choice.  They are the most efficient way to produce oxygen in the game, and they really don't take that much dupe work.   If you're short on water, but have lots of algae, you can dump the polluted water out, pump it through a sieve, and pour the clean water back on the algae -- and you'll use a tenth of the water you'd use doing electrolysis.  If you've got water, but are short on algae, then don't touch the PW bottles after the dupes pull them out of the terrariums.  Research your way to deoderizers and soon your base will be fed oxygen simply by off-gassing PW and your algae consumption will drop to practically nothing. 

Generally, if I'm going to use terrariums, I start with a deoxidizer.  Then I build about 8 terrariums and let the bottles pile up.  Once I've got deoderizers reserched and built around my terrariums, I remove the deoxidizer.  By time I've grown to 10 or 16 dupes, the bottled PW is producing most of my oxygen supply and I still only need the 8 terrariums to keep it going.

[Gus Smedstad]

Mealwood really is the go-to early game food. I don't do lice loaf anymore because the water cost is high for the early game. While I've been burned by dirt shortages before, dirt's actually quite plentiful in the early game, much more so than water which is in demand for other things. You can easily go 100-150 cycles just eating meal lice before transitioning to something like mushrooms, even if you're running 15-20 Dupes.

6 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

 By time I've grown to 10 or 16 dupes, the bottled PW is producing most of my oxygen supply and I still only need the 8 terrariums to keep it going.

It took me a while to realize how important a source of oxygen the polluted water -> polluted oxygen -> deoderizer -> oxygen cycle can be. It can easily outproduce the terrariums by 3:1 or more once the bottles start piling up. I used to set up water recycling right away, which I now think is a mistake.

The starting algae lasts a lot longer if you do this. The drawback is that you're converting water to oxygen, and water can run short. As you say, if water's really short, you can collect the polluted water for recycling. Which in turn means you're going to need more terrariums and you're going to burn through the starting algae faster.

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, Gus Smedstad said:

The starting algae lasts a lot longer if you do this. The drawback is that you're converting water to oxygen, and water can run short. As you say, if water's really short, you can collect the polluted water for recycling. Which in turn means you're going to need more terrariums and you're going to burn through the starting algae faster.

Yep, that's the tradeoff.  Either way you get more oxygen per gram of water and algae, but the numbers shift slightly.  If you recycle the water, then you use almost no water, but you need many more terrariums and you'll use more algae.  If you leave the water, then you need fewer terrariums, less algae, but you'll need more water.

Off-gassing PW and putting it through a deoderizer (PW -> PO2 -> O2) results in about 900g O2 for 1kg PW, which makes slightly more oxygen than using an electrolyzer (H2O -> O2).  The down side is that you get no hydrogen from the process.  

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Which in turn means you're going to need more terrariums and you're going to burn through the starting algae faster.

But still slower than oxygen diffusers. They sure have been relegated to emergency only nowadays... 

[hypoeffort]

Im on like Cycle 756 maybe 980? or something in the current one on aboria.   Found all the geyser I think.   

 

Just got a small space station up and did all my observatory stuff so I can move my telescope underground.    Cooling in space is the hardest challenge I find.   Spoms with AETN is how im staying alive.  Current map has 3 and have 2 up and running. 

 

 Just got jet pack system done and now its lag for days.    Need to get a giant steel bunker wall built so they stop pathing for vole meat and ore.

 

Next is a rocket launchpad.   Rolling about 16 dupes.  4 nat gas gens 1 coal and 2 petrol gens.   Also have 3 hydro gens burning off extra hydrogen as detected.

[ruhrohraggy]

5 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I disagree with your assessment of algae terrariums, however.

It's really personal preference, and was more directed towards a new player. It was not a blanket statement. To really use the algae terrarium, requires knowing how off-gassing works etc... etc...

For me, I typically value early game clean water availability over conversion efficiency, as I am pushing research hard and tend to commit the first water geyser(s) I find to a cooled electrolyzer setup that's going to be hands free and support 16+ dupes indefinitely, instead of more reservoir. Cooling + o2 happens to solve 2 major problems at once.

1x diffuser guarantees 5 dupes worth of o2, for 330 kg/algae per cycle. A couple good sized algae pockets easily lets me transition into more sophisticated o2 production.

Before the new skill system, I also preferred to use liceloaf to push morale a bit while I transitioned into mushrooms...which needed extra water, so maybe it's also a lingering opinion.

Map choice also comes into play. You would really have to put some thought into using algae terrariums on Arboria if you get a single water pool, for example. Even with limited algae, you only need enough to transition into rust deoxidizers, which are insanely good.

Algae terrariums I think are situationally good, but not generally good. And definitely not a great pick for someone starting out who may not know how to fully utilize them.

I understand that you can get p-water to offgas at an average of 60kg/cycle per 1000kg which is enough for a dupe, so technically if you could get a couple tons of bottled p-water offgassing, you can support dupes via deodorizers...I've just never had a need for it.

-Edit- I am however playing with the idea of incorporating wood into o2 production.

I have a p-o2 geyser @ ~4 kg/s total average, which supports roughly 30 some odd domestic trees. Wood -> Ethanol distillers -> P-dirt -> Offgas and scrub. Can also scrub the excess co2 for even more p-watery goodness, to bottle and offgas as well...might be fun...something like 3.6 kg/s p-dirt with 12 distillers, or 1.8t / cycle.

[metallichydra]

it seem like there's (at least) 2 kind of ONI players:

those who have patience (and have a low number of bases), and those who restart all the time.

 

 

 

i restart all the time 

[cpy]

I can pretty much research tons of stuff before cycle 20. Small base works really really fast, travel time kills progress. Once you have whole map to play at, biggest problem is travel.

If you have harder starting area and have to cramp lot of stuff in small place and forget to leave room for tubes, it's not really good in lategame. I make this mistake all the time, I forget to plan ahead. Rebuilding is doable but im pretty lazy to do so

Copy/paste/blueprints like you have in factorio would make rebuilding a breeze to enjoy.

To last longer just plan ahead, check if you are not heating up the area without cooling, make sure you are using renewable sustainable food and source of oxygen.

[ONIfreak]

4 hours ago, metallichydra said:

it seem like there's (at least) 2 kind of ONI players:

those who have patience (and have a low number of bases), and those who restart all the time.

 

 

 

i restart all the time 

I restarted so far 5 times for las two years ( recently i was testing other planets until i found beloved one - oasis). I don't usually restart game because setting up colony, make sustainable food and oxygen and all those beginning tasks are too tedious. I prefer to constantly rebuild and improve what i have. After some time first 100 cycles of the game are more or less the same. Fun starts when you jave problem with too much oxygen, too much water finding ways to rebuild stuff keeping current livable level using "dangerous" stuff like redirectong heat from copper volcano to carbon dioxide geyser to heat up CO2 for slicksters or build dump pools for water to do not overflow and sink your base etc. Gosh i love this game. 

[DemainaNyx]

It really is hard to help without seeing your base, though it more sounds like it might be burnout rather than lack of understanding.  

Are you having trouble setting up a good base and just get discouraged before getting it done?  Or are you just struggling to deal with the additional challenge the new asteroids bring?  Were you able to set up a good base before the launch upgrade or were you struggling back then as well?

 

Once you understand the basics of the game, everything becomes a lot easier.  I've had bases at cycle 400 living off of my original meal lice crop.  I've had bases where all my oxygen came from terrariums or from polluted oxygen vents.  My last base was the first in a while that used coal power simply because I needed the co2 for my oxyfern.  With enough co2 finally, they were able to generate all the oxygen I needed.