Im embarrassed to ask

[PandaGodRob]

So, ive recently tried to advance further in the game and have hit a huge stop again ranging from oil not wanting to be sucked up due to overheating, my dupes refusing to supply algae and coal but will do the farming even with cancelled priority and i mean that bit i dont know what to do ive spent about 2 weeks on this world so far and i dont want to lose another later game world, anyone have any advice?

 

Oh and one last bit, i only have 6 people on cycle 200 plus should i have more?

[SharraShimada]

Screenshots, or even better a save game would help alot to pin down your problems. 

As for the oil beeing to hot to be pumped, try to make a bit of steel and build the pump with it. 

If there is only very hot oil on your map, you may consider to make a slickster ranch to get not so hot oil out of CO².

[DonDegow]

On the dupe count, 6 is fine but your progress will be quite slow, by cycle 200 I'd recommend about 8-12 dupes, depending on your food and water situation.

On the oil pumping, simplest solution is to find and isolate an oil well, it pours out at 90°C which is manageable with almost anything.

If unable to find an oil well, cooling the hot oil with a steam turbine can work, if you don't have any plastic, use an aquatuner and a heat sink until you can pump enough oil to make plastic and build a turbine to extract energy from that heat sink.

On the supply issue, double check priorities (tasks and building themselves priorities) and resource availability (maybe your coal is behind a checkpoint that only one dupe can access at a time, maybe you ran out of algae), as Sharra stated, screenshots or savefile helps a lot to diagnose this.

NB : Don't be embarrassed to ask anything, community knowledge is always vaster than ours.

[Soulwind]

6 dupes may also partly explain why jobs are being left uncompleted.  There's just too much to do and not enough workers to do it.

I usually run with 16 dupes (4 shift setup) and have them before cycle 80-90.

[Yoma_Nosme]

Tip...slicksters can help...

[Whitecold]

Gold amalgam pumps may be a valid substitute for steel pumps to get the oil

[KittenIsAGeek]

You shouldn't be embarrassed about any of those questions.  We've all been there.

As others have pointed out, some screenshots or a save would help quite a bit.  Here's some things that I have found that may help you out:

Buildings damaged by heat:   Different materials will affect the stats of your buildings, particularly when dealing with heat.  Some important items to pay attention to are the overheat temperature, thermal conductivity, and thermal capacity.  For example, Gold Amalgam gives an extra 50c to the overheat capacity.  This may solve your problem in the oil biome, as the temperatures there are around 90c.  Steel adds an extra 200c, with better materials available after you start exploring space.

Dupes not delivering to ..whatever:  There are a number of factors involved in this.  First, there's the duplicant priorities.  Check your settings for the "Supplying" priority and maybe give a couple dupes a much higher setting.  The next is the priority on the building itself.  I often set critical buildings to be 1 or 2 points higher in priority than everything else, just to make sure they get taken care of.  The final factor is the material location compared to the building location.  In order to deliver to a building, there has to be some of its material available such that a dupe (or conveyor system) can reach it.  

Coal generators are the most complicated for delivery, so lets break that one down as an example:

We're going to start by assuming that you have at least one dupe that prefers to deliver supplies over anything else.  We're also going to assume that priority 5 (default) is the priority for all buildings/tasks on the map.  So if you've got an area that you want dug out, that's at priority 5. If you have an area needing to be built, its also at priority 5.  You get the idea.  You do not need to have any idle dupes, and we're going to assume that all dupes are currently busy with tasks.

1. The coal generator has dropped below its threshold in stored coal.  If the generator is not currently running (i.e. power isn't needed), nothing happens.
2. The coal generator kicks on.  Since it's currently below the threshold for coal, it throws a job for a dupe to deliver coal.
3. The task gets added to all of your dupes job's lists, at the end of the stack.
4. For the dupe that prefers delivery, the job will be moved to second in line.  There will also be a check to see if your dupe can reach any of the materials (coal) needed by the generator.  Additionally, there is a check to see if this dupe can reach the generator once they have the coal. 
5. If none of the tests fail, then as soon as the dupe's current task is completed, the job to deliver coal will be moved from the 'To Do" list to the "Current Errand."

Here's how priorities work: In the "Priorities" window where it lists all your dupes and their particular priorities, a - represents default priority.  This is worth 30 points.  A single ^ is 40 points, and two are 50 points.  A v is 20 points, two v's are 10 points, and an x is zero points.  The job itself has a priority from 1 to 9 based on the building's priority.  Lets take a particular case using Bubbles.

She likes to dig, doesn't like to tidy, and she LOVES pushing buttons and flipping switches.

She's currently in the middle of a priority 3 digging project when your coal generator signals that its running out of coal.  Your coal generator is set to priority 9.  Because Bubbles likes to dig, her base priority for digging is 40.  That means that her digging job has a personal priority of 43.  Meanwhile, since Bubbles doesn't really care either way about supplying, her base priority is 30. This means that delivering to the coal generator has a priority of 39.  In this case, Bubbles will continue to dig and ignore the coal generator until all the digging jobs are done.

Now, lets examine Gossmann:

He can't attack, doesn't like to cook or dig, but he likes carrying stuff around.  Also, like Bubbles, he LOVES pushing buttons (I'll get to that later).

There's currently a building task that Bubbles is ignoring, so since Gossmann doesn't really care either way about building, he's working on it (ANYTHING to get out of digging!).  There's a series of flooring that needs to be put in, and its at priority 6 because you felt it was important to get that floor built.  So Gossman's personal priority for building is 36.  However, since he'd rather be carrying stuff around, his personal priority for that coal generator is 49.  The moment that Gossmann finishes his current floor segment, he drops his tools and takes off to find some coal.  Yeah, baby!  That stupid floor can wait!

Now, about toggling.  All my dupes have ^^ for toggling.  This means that when I need to flip a switch, lock a door, or adjust a valve, the nearest dupe will always drop whatever they're doing to go take care of it.

14 hours ago, PandaGodRob said:

Oh and one last bit, i only have 6 people on cycle 200 plus should i have more?

6 dupes is perfectly adequate for cycle 200.  So are 16, though that can be a resource challenge.  My personal opinion is that you should only take dupes as you have the resources to provide for them.  Your initial biome's algae only lasts so long, for example.  The bigger issue is how your dupe's priorities are set.  Lets say with your six dupes that you have two set to prioritize digging, two set to prioritize building, one prioritizes farming, and another prioritizes operating... then as long as you have any of those tasks, nothing will ever be delivered.

[Gurgel]

15 hours ago, PandaGodRob said:

Oh and one last bit, i only have 6 people on cycle 200 plus should i have more?

Going slower is always a good idea. More dupes means you need to have more control of things. Sure, you need to wait longer for things to be built, but that is the only downside. A while ago, I tried a 1-dupe colony, and it was so much easier that it was totally ridiculous.

The one thing that is always really critical in ONI is that you have to have a reasonable grasp of how things work. Do not get more dupes than you can reasonably support with oxygen and food. You will know when there is enough more to get more dupes. If you have a firm grip on things, you can force base growth, but do not do it before that. I have done it several times successfully (i.e. going to 12 or 16 dupes in minimal time), but it is dicey and there is simply no need to do it.