Pointless Challenges Inc. presents: One Dupe, Zero Printing Pods, Too Many Cycles

[SomeRandomFinn]

Every now and then someone will post a question about how few dupes one can reach space or do something-or-other else with. As a fan of small bases with few dupes, I figured: Why not waste a rather silly amount of time on this question?

The thing about fewer dupes, which might seem counter-intuitive until you try it, is that it actually makes the game easier, not more difficult. To somewhat counter the benefits of fewer dupes, I played on Oassisse, with the printing pod permanently disabled (no care packages), and without ever using a skill scrubber.

I immediately disallowed all tasks and all food for two of the dupes (forgive me Leira and Harold - I would like to say it had to be done, but I'm not sure it did). And then Ruby set off on her task to single-handedly escape the asteroid.

I'll spare you a cycle-by-cycle rundown of everything that came next. ("Aaaaaand were back. In this episode we'll continue building that insulated pipe we've been working on for the past few episodes.") Maaaany cycles later I had completed all the research, analyzed all the plantes, and fuelled up a rocket that could take Ruby to the temporal tear.

It was slow going. But there is nothing about getting to the end game with one dupe is that is more difficult than doing it with many dupes. (More tedious? Absolutely! More difficult? No.)

If there's anyone out there planning a one-dupe run, some things I noticed that might be of use are:

- You can get by for ages on wild plants. (Oh, and Pincha Peppernut plants will start dropping and rotting all over the place. Dig up one's you don't need to save your dupe running around picking up bio waste.)

- Automation is your friend. Even tiny stuff - automate the heck out of your base. (If you have been avoiding learning automation, this will force you to try to automate at least something!)

- Be mindful of your priorities. Having any errand groups (digging etc.) on a raised priority can lead to other types of errands not getting done for a veeeeeery long time, if ever. You can counter this by not prioritizing any groups of errands and just raising individual command priorities.

- Problems with morale? Carpets! Everywhere!

- Once you start gathering space materials, you will be staring at an empty base for dozens upon dozens of cycles. Remember that point about automation? Maybe put in a light on an automation switch. So you can turn it on and off and on and off while you wonder why the heck you ever thought rolling a one-dupe world was a good idea.

Thanks for reading this. Now I'm off to send Ruby to the temporal tear. (And then I might just go wild and roll a world with TWO dupes!)

TL;DR

If you want lots of dupes, print lots of dupes. But if you are trying to rid yourself of the pressure to keep adding more and more dupes, know that there isn't anything you can't do in this game even playing with just one dupe. (But if you do kill off any of your dupes, don't blame me - I'm losing enough sleep over Leira and Harold.)

[SackMaggie]

Uhhh I'll try.

[Tuplex]

I just finished a single-dupe challenge to a monument.  It was pretty fun until the last part where I had to make 17.5t of steel.  That took a VERY long time.  Playing with a single dupe is great when you have other things you can do while the game is running.

With care packages turned on, you can almost ignore farming and ranching - in fact, towards the end I did just that, as I had well over 300 cycles worth of food just from the printer pod.  I'll probably do what the OP did and turn off the pod next time, it was a little too easy this way.  I used automation and work lights everywhere I could think of, and it made a big difference.

Playing with a single dupe is a great way to learn how priorities work, because the effects of your priority settings are immediately obvious.  And I would consistently change the priority settings throughout the game.  For example, I'd prioritize Operating to make steel, but then when I'd see that my coal bin was running low, or that there was food that needed picking up, I'd lower the priority and spend a couple of cycles supplying and tidying. 

I'd recommend especially to newer players to give a single dupe map a try, it's a good learning experience.

[Gurgel]

I tried that a while ago. I agree that 1 dupe is very easy:

The only question back then was what happens if Stinky gets into a Rocket and no dupe is left. I did not try because it would have obviously worked. Do you select continue after the "Colony Lost" message and things work when that lonely bugger is back?

[SomeRandomFinn]

11 hours ago, Gurgel said:

The only question back then was what happens if Stinky gets into a Rocket and no dupe is left. I did not try because it would have obviously worked. Do you select continue after the "Colony Lost" message and things work when that lonely bugger is back?

Hahaa - go Stinky! And yeah, as soon as your dupe even enters a rocket you get a "colony lost" notification. Which remains even after your dupe returns. It goes away when you reload the game. And pops right back up again the next time your dupe enters a rocket. I submitted a bug report about it. But they might have bigger issues to work on than one-dupe world bugs;-)

15 hours ago, Tuplex said:

I just finished a single-dupe challenge to a monument.  It was pretty fun until the last part where I had to make 17.5t of steel.  That took a VERY long time.  Playing with a single dupe is great when you have other things you can do while the game is running.

Ugh, the monument... The final 4-5K of materials for it I ended up just getting from space. Alt-tabbing back to the game every now and then to see if it was time to re-launch the rocket.

I have never been away from a colony as much as I was with this one. "There, those build/dig/etc. commands should cover you for a while. I think I'll go make dinner, read a book, and watch my children grow up and move out of the house and then I'll check back in with you."

[Rainbowdesign]

Can you link your other challenges?

[Notecja]

On 9/1/2020 at 10:20 PM, SomeRandomFinn said:

The thing about fewer dupes, which might seem counter-intuitive until you try it, is that it actually makes the game easier, not more difficult

I was trying that thing on my old slow laptop XD One single dupe and one colony build by him. No laggs, no wasting time on "thinking" what to do next (dupes can waste up to 15% work time on "pondering", average 3-9% and it gets even higher is there is a lot dupes) and it was a quite good colony, but it become very boring over time.
But I may tried it again. There is left only one achievement for me... and, well it requires very few dupes.

[SomeRandomFinn]

21 hours ago, Rainbowdesign said:

Can you link your other challenges?

This was the inaugurational Pointless Challenge. But when I do more, I'll post them here.

5 hours ago, Notecja said:

I was trying that thing on my old slow laptop XD One single dupe and one colony build by him. No laggs, no wasting time on "thinking" what to do next (dupes can waste up to 15% work time on "pondering", average 3-9% and it gets even higher is there is a lot dupes) and it was a quite good colony, but it become very boring over time.
But I may tried it again. There is left only one achievement for me... and, well it requires very few dupes.

Interesting to see actual figures on the "pondering" slowdown. Francis John, in his 141 dupe run, showed how pausing the game makes them stop the pondering. But you can't keep pausing and unpausing all the time. And 10% of 100 dupes day spent on wondering what to do is quite a lot. Good luck with the last achievement - may it be a "ponder-free" run

[TheMule]

5 hours ago, SomeRandomFinn said:

This was the inaugurational Pointless Challenge. But when I do more, I'll post them here.

Interesting to see actual figures on the "pondering" slowdown. Francis John, in his 141 dupe run, showed how pausing the game makes them stop the pondering. But you can't keep pausing and unpausing all the time. And 10% of 100 dupes day spent on wondering what to do is quite a lot. Good luck with the last achievement - may it be a "ponder-free" run

I had to abandon the colony at about cycle 200, ~64 dups. Diggers would dig for like 1s, then "think" for 5s, the dig the next tile.

I think you have to reduce speed to give dups more (real) time to "think". Running at 1x instead of 3x, or running 3x and pausing every 5s is kinda the same thing (other than being more annoying). But I'm not sure I can stand the game running at 1x. 

[SomeRandomFinn]

On 9/4/2020 at 1:19 PM, TheMule said:

I had to abandon the colony at about cycle 200, ~64 dups. Diggers would dig for like 1s, then "think" for 5s, the dig the next tile.

I think you have to reduce speed to give dups more (real) time to "think". Running at 1x instead of 3x, or running 3x and pausing every 5s is kinda the same thing (other than being more annoying). But I'm not sure I can stand the game running at 1x. 

Oh my, that sounds bad. I recently started a map specifically to see how many dupes my computer can handle. Based on your experience, I'm thinking it might be better to dig out the map with fewer dupes and then start maxing out dupe amounts once it's dug out, and maybe even already have everything built up around them.

And as far as speeds - 1 x speed would be unbearable. Ever since installing the speed mod everything below 10x (I think it is) seems like a crawl. So this might end up being a very painful run, if I have to slow it down. Anyway, if I learn anything useful, I'll post it. (But I'm assuming what I'll learn is: it gets laggy.)

Edit: typos

[Gurgel]

I think the success goals by Klei give us a good idea of the design idea about the intended number of dupes. And that is around 15 or so. Sure, they let you put in many many more, but that has consequences. I also found that I never really needed more.