What to do to go through middle game?

[DarckCrystale]

Hi! I play ONI since some time now (~ 500h of game) but I never go more than early game. I always start a base, exploit some of it, then when I start to struggle, I stop and make a new colony. I recently started a new colony for which I want to go further than my regular way. My map is okay, I am now at cycle 200 and I don't know what to do. What do you usually do when you are around 200 cycles?

[Neotuck]

Pictures can be worth a thousand words

Can you provide a screenshot of your base?  It would be easier to provide help once we see what we are working with

[Mastermindx]

Not everybody will be at the same point at cycle 200. Sometime, just because of the geyser you find, your priority might change.

In my last play-through, I had a Cool Slush Geyser right next to my base, which allowed me to postpone heat management much later than I usually do.

Even the definition of mid-game isn't the same for everybody. But I'd say it's the "maintain the status quo phase". Your dupes are alive, you want to keep it that way. That means 

- Renewable source of water
- Sufficient heat management
- Sustainable food production
- Sustainable Oxygen production
- Efficient "byproducts" management. (CO2, among others)
- Sustainable power source.
- Probably a few I'm not thinking of right now

How you achieve each items is a topic in itself.  For example, heat management can be done in at least 4 ways.
- Steam Turbine / Thermo aquatuner
- Wheezewort
- Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier
- Superheating gases and venting them in space (Not the most resource efficient I'd say...)
To be honest, I only ever used steam turbine for heat management, so I can't comment on the efficiency of the other 3 methods.

The exact way you handle those issue is what will give a "flavor" or "personality" to your base. But if you need help with specific aspect, I'm sure you'll find a lot of help here in the forum.

[6Havok9]

4 hours ago, DarckCrystale said:

Snip

As it was written above, there is no clear definition of a "midgame" based on cycle count alone. Sustainability might be a thing you want to aim for, or have already achieved as it requires little to no automation. Maybe you're rushing for space, maybe you turtle it and get to rockets after 700 cycles. Your choice.

When you feel that you've reached that early point when you really don't know what to do, I'd say go for steel and plastic production. Renovate your power grid and use those new materials to make better infrastructure and build machinery that can handle harsher conditions. Start automating menial tasks first, power production, basic supplies, then progressively more complex operations, freeing up dupe time to do whatever you like with. Your power to build things and experiment only goes up from there.

[DarckCrystale]

8 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Pictures can be worth a thousand words

Can you provide a screenshot of your base?  It would be easier to provide help once we see what we are working with

Indeed I did not post screenshots shame on me
My base is pretty big in my opinion (I only have 8 dupes and don't really plan to print more of them):

Quote

On the top right corner was a caustic biome, I just finished to dig it to expand my base and create bedrooms for my dupes (I would like to fill only their bedrooms with oxygen and have them wear an atmo suit when they are out of it). It's still pretty hot. I'm currently pumping out some chlorine that was in the atmosphere.

I failed to do my usual build where all the columns of my base have a width of 20 tiles: the middle one has only 18 of them, that's why my barracks can only contain 7 bedcots

I mainly produce my oxygen using algae terrariums (I firstly built the little electrolyzer setup to generate some hydrogen to add it in the drecko farm on top left corner, as I always struggle to manage a sustainable source of water).

I discovered a big chunk of the map, looking for a hydrogen vent and a thermo nullifier. I'm pretty happy to have a lot of small ice biomes:

Quote

Sadly, I didn't find any hydrogen vent. For now, I have:

• a natural gas geyser just next to my base
• a natural gas geyser on the other side of my base but a little further that the other
• a cool steam vent just next to my base (in activity)
• a chlorine gas vent next to my base
• 3 copper volcanoes
• an infectious polluted oxygen vent
• a salt water geyser (in activity)
• 2 entropy thermo nullifiers

I currently only use existing water pockets in my setup (I entirely dig a swamp biome, collecting a lot of clean polluted water):

Quote

I would like to use the steam cool vent next to my base to have water:

Quote

But I don't know how to manage heat (I mostly use tempshift plates made of ice to quickly cool down a zone, and 2 or 3 wheezeworts I move around my base depending on local hot spots), that's why I produce refined copper and plastic using critters.

What advices / ideas could you share about this setup?

8 hours ago, Mastermindx said:

Not everybody will be at the same point at cycle 200. Sometime, just because of the geyser you find, your priority might change.

Yep, I saw this when I discovered the map and did not found any hydrogen vent

8 hours ago, Mastermindx said:

- Renewable source of water

- Sufficient heat management
- Sustainable food production
- Sustainable Oxygen production
- Efficient "byproducts" management. (CO2, among others)
- Sustainable power source.
- Probably a few I'm not thinking of right now

I think my problem is that I do not have a single of those points checked

• I use water pockets
• I manage temperature using non renewable ice
• my food production rely on water pockets (I use polluted water from sinks and lavatories to farm bristle blossoms, sinks and lavatories filled using water found in pockets)
• I use algae to generate oxygen but I do not generate any algae, and if I move to electrolyzer, I will rely on... water pockets
• I put CO2 where it bothers me the less
• I use coal to generate power

I find it overwhelming to try to go out of my comfort zone and find builds which could allow me to find reliable solutions, so if you have some tips/tutorials/posts/videos/... to help me, I'd be glad you share them with me!

[Nebbie]

First off, I define "basic resources" as water, dirt, and filtration medium. As long as you've got these coming in in the right quantities, your dupes shouldn't starve or suffocate because you can grow mealwood, electrolyze water, and deal with carbon dioxide.
My goals by cycle:

1. 2: Latrine and barracks.
2. 5: Great hall.
3. 10: Any oxygen source.
4. 20: Any power source besides hamster wheels.
5. 25: Sustainable food given basic resources.
6. 30: Washroom with cycled water.
7. 50: Sustainable oxygen given basic resources.
8. 75: Access to lead, diamond, and oil or dreckos (explore to oil biome, and rust or caustic).
9. 100: Sustainable power given basic resources (generally involves exploring for geysers).
10. 125: Basic steel production (any big pool of liquid can be a place to dump the heat).
11. 150: Aquatuner and steam turbine paired to destroy heat, metal refinery moved to help heat steam (MID GAME STARTS HERE).
12. 175: Carbon dioxide management in place, sustainable dirt (pips eating arbor trees generally, composting ethanol distiller waste if desperate).
13. 200: Sustainable water (generally some kind of geyser, there's tons of ones to use; salt water's the best).
14. 225: Basic space infrastructure (atmo suits, bunker doors, meteors won't destroy stuff near space entrance).
15. 250: Sustainable filtration medium (this can mean just dumping regolith into the base, but I'm finding it easier to just use pokeshells and desalination).
16. 300: Explore to magma biome and both map sides (look for helpful resources).
17. 350: Sustainable steel production.
18. 400: Sustainable solar panel operation (meteor shield is reliable).
19. 450: Base seal (dupes in atmo suits any time they're leaving the oxygenated area cooled by the original AT+ST).
20. 500: Explore 75% of the map.
21. 550: Tame any metal volcano discovered.
22. 600: Initial rocketry (LATE GAME STARTS HERE).

Most things on this list should be goals of yours. I should note the cycle count is actually a little high for this, because I tend to struggle around cycle 30 with efficiency (I scale things up too slowly), which has huge knock-on effects (AT+ST cooling could be cycle 100, and rocketry could be cycle 400).

[Mastermindx]

Taming water geyser is definitely one of the more crucial element as it really affect the sustainability of oxygen production.

Sustainable oxygen production with only algae terrarium (diffuser are even less efficient) would require about 6 puft per dupe to generate enough algae. (If I remember the math correctly)

In some ways, it also affect the sustainability of food production. But it's easier to rely other source not requiring water.  IIRC, you need roughly 2 hatches to produce enough eggs/meat to feed 1 dupe. (Assuming you cook the egg. It comes short a bit though...). And those hatches also help with power production. (Hatches are OP!!!)

So it would appear to me your next step would be to learn to "tame" water geyser... And most of them requires to learn how to cool down your base. Cool slush geyser being the notable exception.

As for power, with 2 nat gas geyser, you shouldn't have too much problems.

[Nebbie]

6 hours ago, Mastermindx said:

...

Sustainable oxygen production with only algae terrarium (diffuser are even less efficient) would require about 6 puft per dupe to generate enough algae. (If I remember the math correctly)

...

Oh yuck, algae for oxygen, perhaps the stupidest thing from ONI's early design. I wouldn't waste time even considering pufts, the ranching wasted on them is utterly nuts. Turning polluted oxygen into oxygen directly has some potential, but it's still micromanagement-heavy.
Rather sadly, the only name in the game for later midgame oxygen for an entire base is electrolyzers (SPOM or not; either let hydrogen collect atop your base, or seal in and make a SPOM). Algae is only useful if you've got non-suited dupes that need a breather somewhere outside the base.

To address OP's base directly:

1. Salt water geyser? You're set for water and sand. Get it pumped to a desalinator ASAP, you can worry about cooling a bit later.
2. Get some electrolyzers going. A decent SPOM should do you some good the moment you've got water coming in.
3. Seeing smooth hatches next to Ice-E-fans makes it plainly clear you're a bit new to heat management (both are basically noob traps that waste duplicant labor on things you can do more efficiently other ways). You have 2 AETNs, just send a bit of hydrogen into one, and loop some hydrogen around it and your whole base and you'll probably stay cool for pretty much the rest of time, even if running a metal refinery some of the time using your water tanks.
4. Copper volcanoes aren't too bad to tame. Just do realize they require steam turbines to deal with (and copper isn't all that useful compared to gold or iron, sadly).
5. Bristle blossoms aren't terrible, but I really don't recommend them compared to any ranching-based food solution for the long term. They consume a lot of water and the morale from them isn't great. Ranch regular/stone hatches for coal, or pokeshells for lime+sand (they can replace your composters as a way to get rid of polluted dirt), or pips for dirt.

[Mastermindx]

17 minutes ago, Nebbie said:

Oh yuck, algae for oxygen, perhaps the stupidest thing from ONI's early design

Not quite stupid... It's meant to give you something to produce oxygen in a way that you are eventually forced to grow out of.  I kindda like the design.

And I personally like puft. They allowed to increase my pacu's farm to the an abusively high 250ish. I also use the Squeaky Puft to turn chlorine into bleach stone...  Not that I use bleach stone... I just like to collect stuff :P

Never quite used the Dense Puft though... Oxylite is only usefull between the first rocket and LOX, and that timespan is usually so short (at least for me), it's not worth getting into Dense Puft farming, the Oxylite Refinery is more than enough.

Oh and... SPOM are noobs trap too! :P On a map with no hydrogen geyser, you really don't want to use your hydrogen for power production.

[Nebbie]

7 minutes ago, Mastermindx said:

Not quite stupid... It's meant to give you something to produce oxygen in a way that you are eventually forced to grow out of.  I kindda like the design.

...

Oh and... SPOM are noobs trap too! :P On a map with no hydrogen geyser, you really don't want to use your hydrogen for power production.

The problem is that there's no real processing chain, it's just direct consumption of a resource. Oxygen from rust is a lot better-designed as far as a system you want to eventually replace. Algae terrariums meanwhile come in later and are kind of a trap, as they take way too much dupe labor for what they do (if used as your base's main oxygen source), and tempt you with a way to make them sustainable.

If you need hydrogen, you can always just stop burning it once you've got reliable power. Just don't seal the hydrogen generators and the piping to them in. It's just usually a good idea early on to make something that won't break when you inevitably run low on power.

[Neotuck]

6 hours ago, Mastermindx said:

Sustainable oxygen production with only algae terrarium (diffuser are even less efficient) would require about 6 puft per dupe to generate enough algae. (If I remember the math correctly)

Do you include polluted water bottle off-gassing in your math?

I have made terrarium setups that have been more oxygen efficient than any SPOM design.

I don't need to build electrolyzer until I need hydrogen for rockets

[TheMule]

1 hour ago, Nebbie said:

Algae terrariums meanwhile come in later and are kind of a trap, as they take way too much dupe labor for what they do (if used as your base's main oxygen source), and tempt you with a way to make them sustainable.

They're used to bottle pwater. They have other advantages like resetting the temperature but it's possible that gets patched in the future.

Anyway, each terrarium supports 3 dups, if you want clean oxygen. They need to be emptied every other cycle, I don't think they keep producing while being emptied. Using light boosts them a tiny bit (around 1%). You need about 3 deodorizers per terrarium.

[mathturtle]

14 hours ago, DarckCrystale said:

I think my problem is that I do not have a single of those points checked

• I use water pockets
• my food production rely on water pockets (I use polluted water from sinks and lavatories to farm bristle blossoms, sinks and lavatories filled using water found in pockets)

I would recommend focusing on these two first.

Find a water geyser and figure out how to tame it.  Fair warning: the cool steam vent is actually the most difficult water producing geyser to deal with since the vents producing liquid water can be tamed with a gold amalgam pump and the hot steam vent with turbines.  Taming a cool steam vent either requires heating or cooling the steam by ~15 degrees so the builds are harder.  I normally just wall those off to use if I'm desperate for water later.  Any water geyser should give you plenty of water to run electrolyzers and your lavatories.

For your food production: as others have said already start ranching hatches for eggs/BBQ. You need just over 2 hatches per dupe for sustainability this way, plus with stone hatches you don't run out of food for them until ~ cycle 1000 or so.  And it is 6 stone hatches to sustain 1 coal generator IIRC, so that can be used to make your power more sustainable (not sure how much you care with 2 nat gas geysers).

 

[avc15]

Indeed, terrariums are the MOST sustainable oxygen production and don't generate heat. Just don't let your dupes empty the bottles, and water them by dripping water onto the ground... Eliminates the lion's share of dupe labor required for upkeep, and cuts down on algae consumption by a factor of 8 (because most of your O2 is made from water if you do it this way)

Really their strength is that they use a tiny bit of algae but produce lots of p-water. Left on the ground that bottled p-water converts itself into oxygen on its own. Without being heated. Every other source of oxygen makes hot oxygen.... Terrariums produce oxygen at the same temp as your water source)

Terrariums are only a trap if you're under-engineering. Using pufts to make algae, though, that's a trap. Use neotuck's design above and you'll have enough algae for the first several thousand cycles. When you start to run out, you can be getting algae from your rocket launches.

 

To answer the original question. Pick any improvement to your base and go build it!

- A bigger / more efficient power plant
- More efficient pathing?
- Launch a rocket?
- Make a mechanical petroleum boiler?
- Build a sour gas condenser?
- Plant an arbor tree farm? Start producing ethanol? It's not a trap.
- Figure out how to sustainably prevent heat death? (delete large amounts of heat somehow)
- Get better quality food?
- Figure out how to reach maximum dupe morale?

[Rhogar]

 

On 8/6/2020 at 7:43 PM, avc15 said:

Pick any improvement to your base and go build it!

- A bigger / more efficient power plant
- More efficient pathing?
- Launch a rocket?
- Make a mechanical petroleum boiler?
- Build a sour gas condenser?
- Plant an arbor tree farm? Start producing ethanol? It's not a trap.
- Figure out how to sustainably prevent heat death? (delete large amounts of heat somehow)
- Get better quality food?
- Figure out how to reach maximum dupe morale?

Or set up shipping to reduce dupe labor across the board.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 8/5/2020 at 3:46 PM, DarckCrystale said:

But I don't know how to manage heat

There are a number of ways to deal with heat. 

In the early game, I generally build things that produce heat up at the top of my starting biome, or off to one side.  This prevents the heat from interfering with other things, as ONI tends to follow the 'heat rises, cold falls' rule.  If something is very hot, the heat will disperse further into your base, but generally speaking this works very well for managing heat in the early game.  

For particularly hot areas, in the early game, I use the Ice-E Fan.  The most effective method for it is to leave the bottles of cold water sitting at the fan.  Put a temp-shift plate of granite there and the cold will seep into the floor and disperse slowly down.

The most common active cooling in the mid-game at the moment is to use a combination of an aquatuner and a steam turbine.  There are many threads that showcase this build.  The following are some recommended first steps before building such a device:

1. Steel.  A steel aquatuner will operate over the range that fully powers the generator, so it won't overheat like gold amalgam will.
2. Plastic.  A steam turbine requires plastic in addition to refined metals..
3. Sufficient power.  The aquatuner requires 1200 watts of power, so you will need to be able to run conductive wires to it and make sure you have an adequate power generating system.

Steel is produced by your metal refinery.

Spoiler

Steel requires refined carbon, which comes from a kiln.  It also requires lime, which comes from using your rock crusher on egg shells, fossils, and pokeshells.  It will also require refined iron.

Plastics can be collected in a couple different ways.

Spoiler

1. You can farm glossy drekkos.  There are threads on the forum that show how this works.  It results in plastics the temperature of the drekko.
2. You can manufacture plastics with the polymer press.  It requires petroleum and produces plastic at the temperature of the petroleum. This is usually very hot, close to 100f.  The press also produces a lot of heat, so you will want to do the bare minimum runs until you get heat management into place.