Dealing with mid-game

[Tunio]

Hey, I need some advice and help. I stuck in mid-game. I set up the cooling system, and now I am runing out of power, I got coal power plant, hydrogen power plant(work only if there is 3 gas tanks full from SPOM, and 4 natural gas generators but I am runing out of nat-gas (nat-gas geyser 62cycle active of 121 cycles),

I need to make sustainable power source of 4Kw. So what to do? Maybe I am wasting power somewhere?

 

[Sasza22]

The transit tube system seems unnecessary for such a small distance. It eats up a ton of power. I`d disable it until there`s more plastic available so it can extend to space or into the oil biome.

You can install motion sensors to only activate the bathroom and mess hall lights when dupes are inside but it will help more with the heat they generate than the power usage that is pretty small anyway.

Another big power drain are fridges. You can store food in CO2 or chlorine instead to save extra power.

[DepravityCat]

I'd consider building a petroleum boiler and tapping a few oil wells. A few petrol generators should last you until you get to space and can set up a solar array. 

[lee1026]

I think one big hangup that newer players get is that they overestimate their power needs as they enter the midgame. Using up 4KW continuously isn't an easy task, and it almost takes actual effort in terms of finding excuses to use that much power. This isn't factorio; your power needs really don't go up by all that much.

There is obvious waste of energy on that map. For example, incubators work fine when they are unplugged, they are just a bit slower, but spamming extra incubators is way easier than ramping up power until you hit the endgame. That will yield you almost 500 watts continuously on your map. Defusing more oxygen naturally from that SPOM will save another 500 watts. Pumping gas is extremely expensive, so do it as little as possible. Oh right, there is a powered fridge. 240 watts for very little that you couldn't achieve with a CO2 pit.

In any event, you don't have the vents needed to sustain much energy usage; probably around a single KW, from the looks of it, natural gas vents just aren't that powerful. You are nowhere near luxuries like transit tubes yet.

 

So start by cutting about a kw from your expenditures and things should look better. To produce power, start exploring aggressively for more vents. Or just dig down for magma and rig up geo-thermal, which should hopefully buy you time to set up something better,

 

(Here, endgame is defined as having one or more of the following built: full solar coverage, 10kg/s oil boiler, automated rocket launcher with full energy/exhaust recovery, regolith melter, or other such megaprojects.)

 

 

[DarkMaster13]

• Turn off stuff you don't need while you can't power it.  So things like those aquaturnners and incubators could get turned off.
• Consolidate all of your power generation systems into a single power plant.  That means all of your generators should be on the same heavii-watt wire.  This will make it a lot easier to distribute fuel for the generators.  It also means fewer batteries wasting power.
• Seek new power sources.  Petroleum generators are a good option for new players to get in the mid-game as your backup system while you wait for geyser dormancy.

[opleinew]

14 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

• Turn off stuff you don't need while you can't power it.  So things like those aquaturnners and incubators could get turned off.
• Consolidate all of your power generation walmart one systems into a single power plant.  That means all of your generators should be on the same heavii-watt wire.  This will make it a lot easier to distribute fuel for the generators.  It also means fewer batteries wasting power.
• Seek new power sources.  Petroleum generators are a good option for new players to get in the mid-game as your backup system while you wait for geyser dormancy.

Thank you very much for the solution.

[MorsDux]

A few hatch farms supporting tuned up coal generators go a long way and doubles as late game food source (burgers). Its easy and quick to set up, and you can improve the system to be almost fully automated. 
 

But in general if low on power make sure all your generators are tuned up.