Travelling tips for a beginner

[Falkenpelz]

I've been trying to learn ONI for a while now and what always bothers me is my wish to explore v.s. the slow and difficult process of expanding into any direction. Is it generally better to stay in one biome until day x and keep the base compact, or do yout to expand into promising terrain quite soon? Do you want to keep your main base near the printing pod, or do you wanna slowly move up and settle down near the surface? If you wanna move, should you rather go far down towards the oil biome or up towards the surface first? And do you guys rather avoid slime biomes at all while routing, or just say sike and embrace slimelung? (For me, airlocks are but a frail and temporary protection from the vengeful wave of ew..)

All in all, give a newbie some advice:D

[tuxii]

You might want to find a goal to work towards.  When you have a goal it helps you decide your next course of action.  If you don't have a goal you can really just chill out with your 3 starting dupes and take your sweet time, which is a fine way to play if you don't get bored.  Maybe you want to build a particular contraption, explore space or get all the achievements.  It's those goals that make you break into new biomes to get the resources they provide.  Others play to preserve the natural environment as much as possible.

There is really no better just different.

I haven't played the game outside of debug/sandbox in 6 months so I am decidedly weird. 

[GuyPerfect]

I like to stick near the Printing Pod when I play in Terra clusters, but mainly because the temperatures tend to be higher no matter where else you wander off to. When I do go exploring, it's minimal shafts and corridors that are big enough to let a Duplicant through but not really more than that unless I'm harvesting Coal or Sulfur or something. When traveling horizontally, consider paving the floor with Tiles to increase run speed.

Take the time to build Fire Poles wherever you dig vertically, as they're significantly faster than ladders (even if they only go down). This is especially useful before you get Suit Wearing II or whatever it's called that eliminates the movement penalty when wearing exosuits. Oh yeah, exosuits! I recommend setting up an Atmo Suit Checkpoint and never exploring without one. It gets hard to breathe out there.

Whether you go up first or down first is a matter of preference. Down requires less resource and research investment, so it's more accessible early on. Even before you reach the oil biome, you're likely to pass by some large deposits of Coal and Iron Ore, so it's generally worth it even if you don't go all the way down. Plastic is a handy resource for the niche things you can do with it, but unless you're fabricating Data Banks for high-tier research tasks in Spaced Out, you don't really need it. Petroleum, on the other hand, makes a convenient coolant for the Metal Refinery because it freezes at the relatively low temperature of -55°C.

 

1 hour ago, Falkenpelz said:

And do you guys rather avoid slime biomes at all while routing, or just say sike and embrace slimelung?

I'm a real stickler when it comes to germs: I set the automatic disinfect setting to zero and never let any germs run free ever. This makes Slimelung a barrier until I can gather the means to eliminate it.

In the base game, it's a real hassle because I refuse to let it get into the air. I've never found a good method for dealing with it, but the best and most effective method I've come up with involves a High Pressure Gas Vent, a liquid airlock and enough Chlorine to prevent excavated Slime from sublimating. The clumps of Slime fall to the ground and rapidly disinfect in the Chlorine environment. Once they're clean I gather them up and put them in the Algae Distillers. High Pressure Gas Vent requires Plastic, which in turn requires Crude Oil, so expect this approach to take some time to set up. Alternately, you can probably make due by excavating an extra-big cavity, filling it with Chlorine, then building a bunch of Tiles to raise the ambient pressure above the sublimation limit of ~2000 g/block or so.

In Spaced Out, Slimelung is trivial to deal with: stick a Wheezewort or two near the trouble spots. Wheezeworts emit a fair amount of radiation, and Slimelung is quickly killed off by radiation. A Wheezewort is strong enough to sanitize walls of Slime three or four blocks deep, and it only takes a cycle or so to do the deed. When you're done with your Wheezeworts, use them for Radbolt production.

[Falkenpelz]

2 hours ago, GuyPerfect said:

a liquid airlock

About that liquid lock - I have only just seen this in a couple posts (whoever came up with it first is a hecking genius), how do you actually set it up?

((The smartest "invention" I made for myself so far is what I call "The Pee Crevice".))

[babba]

I find the oil/petroleum airlocks really good, they give a ~500 Celsius buffer and I find them mega long term safe and easy to make.

In the beginning you can use water or basically anything, if oil/petro is not yet available.

You only need to setup bottle emptiers for manual dupe bottle emptying or you can lay pipes and have fluid drop in via liquid vents

BTW 20 aquatuners in oil/petro...Took me 6000 cycles and the colony nearly died 10 times.

Cooling basin - Currently under reconstruction

The cooling basin shall someday filled with nuclear waste. I tend to build large fluid storage basins, which I also then use as door locks at some point.

[DolphinWing]

No matter you want to slowly explore the map or rush to some biomes, my first suggestion would be make sure you have your base stable. Explore when you have enough oxygen and food production, proper dining room and wash room. Because at that time you don't have to worry them when you are exploring. 

If you don't mind using liquid lock, it can be setup with bottle emptier or destruct the pipe directly. Most of the time I will setup a liquid lock before digging to some places for certain resources or geysers. My dupes may need to hold their breath and dig into natural gas vent or some underground areas. For a beginner, it is recommended to explore lower part of the map first than upper because CO2 is heavier.

You can decide what your base looks like. For example, @babba likes to dig out the map and replace them with man-made ladders/tiles. I prefer to keep everything in nature and make a small base as home. For myself, I like to manage limited resources such as space and materials and make the best of them. As far as I know, ONI is still a single player game and I enjoy the process of the journey.

[GuyPerfect]

11 hours ago, Falkenpelz said:

About that liquid lock - I have only just seen this in a couple posts (whoever came up with it first is a hecking genius), how do you actually set it up?

The intended way is to use liquid to form a makeshift P-trap style setup in order to produce an air-tight seal that gases can't get through, but Duplicants can:

  

This can be done with just one liquid using a Bottle Emptier. However, since the game only allows one liquid per square of world space, you can get the same result with far less mass if you use two different liquids. In the left example I have Brine on the bottom and Salt Water on the top, and in the right example I have Crude Oil on the bottom and Petroleum on the top.

There is an alternative design that exploits the game mechanics wherein you can stack two different liquids directly on top of each other:

  

Here is the Brine+Salt Water combination stacked vertically. I have mixed feelings about this one because it's kind of gamey and always feels dirty to use. You construct it by removing the adjacent floor materials and deconstructing carefully-positioned Liquid Pipes in order to precisely deposit the liquid materials in place. The resulting doorway will remain in place and block gases, but because it's made out of spills, the mass is very low and it is subject to deformation from environmental temperatures or even Duplicants carrying hot stuff through them.

[6Havok9]

18 hours ago, Falkenpelz said:

All in all, give a newbie some advice:D

Having a solid foundation before trying to experiment is the safest option. If you mess up, reload and reevaluate the situation. So I'd say stay compact and "sustainable" until you feel comfortable. After that anything goes.

Going on an adventure always on the brink of ruin, with the constant threat of starvation, suffocation and voluntary early termination of existence (I'm looking at you, vomiters...) is much more fun imho, but very taxing until you settle. Like, hair-pulling taxing.

But my best advice is: don't be tempted by the printing pod offering godly dupes when you don't have the means to sustain them. It's the mistake I keep on doing over and over, and it turns your nice cozy base into an absolute dumpster fire while your dupes become savages, frantically trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel some more just to not end up in a tasteful memorial.

 

[Unfawkable]

1 hour ago, 6Havok9 said:

But my best advice is: don't be tempted by the printing pod offering godly dupes when you don't have the means to sustain them. It's the mistake I keep on doing over and over, and it turns your nice cozy base into an absolute dumpster fire while your dupes become savages, frantically trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel some more just to not end up in a tasteful memorial.

 

This is the best advice you can have. My girlfriend just can't help printing all the dupes possible, and she now has 20 dupes on 300 cycles, while I have 16 on 660. And it shows, she's always scrambling to tackle one emergency or another, while my bases are self sustainable. You want the 4th and 5th dupe relatively early because they increase the work output by almost double, but after that take it really slowly.

[babba]

1 hour ago, Unfawkable said:

This is the best advice you can have. My girlfriend just can't help printing all the dupes possible, and she now has 20 dupes on 300 cycles, while I have 16 on 660. And it shows, she's always scrambling to tackle one emergency or another, while my bases are self sustainable. You want the 4th and 5th dupe relatively early because they increase the work output by almost double, but after that take it really slowly.

In my last dupe extinction wave ~140 dupes died within 10 seconds from hunger, the remaining 8 dupes where like "Wow, its super easy now. We have giga trillions of oxygen, food and high FPS game speed now and its all for our self".

Just before a high amount of dupes is about to die, I make them dig and construct their own graves...Otherwise its too much graveyard work for the remainders. Still, a lot of corpses to carry afterwards...

[Unfawkable]

Just now, babba said:

In my last dupe extinction wave ~140 dupes died within 10 seconds from hunger, the remaining 8 dupes where like "Wow, its super easy now. We have giga trillions of oxygen, food and high FPS game speed now and its all for our self".

Just before a high amount of dupes is about to die, I make them dig and construct their own graves...Otherwise its too much graveyard work for the remainders.

You can go to prison for genocide :P 

[DolphinWing]

3 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

My girlfriend just can't help printing all the dupes possible, and she now has 20 dupes on 300 cycles, while I have 16 on 660.

She forgot to print them asap or there should be 100 dupes by then.

[Falkenpelz]

12 hours ago, 6Havok9 said:

But my best advice is: don't be tempted by the printing pod offering godly dupes when you don't have the means to sustain them.

Got me on that one:D Even if they are not that godly, I keep printing them cause yay, more workers, they don't need to breath or eat. My new dysfunctional strat for handling oxygen is to just send a few dupes to do digging in the outback so they spend 50% of their day holding their breath...

[Unfawkable]

8 hours ago, DolphinWing said:

She forgot to print them asap or there should be 100 dupes by then.

I make sure to give her a stern look every 3 cycles, but I can't do it all the time sadly

[babba]

Always print !

6 feet under is expanding, the various colony graveyards are compressed in to 1 new place...get buried in the new steam room

Golden hot coffins !!! Bring balloons to the funeral...

[Sasza22]

In the base game the strategy should be to stabilize then explore. You need to secure water, power, get some basic research and food production.

The first immediate danger will most likely be temperature. Food doesn`t like it to be hot (except pincha peppernuts but you can`t eat those directly). It`s advisable to insulate your base or at least the parts with your farms. Later in the game you`ll need some cooling solutions to keep it cool (or heating if the map is Rime).

Exploring outside is ok early but i would wait with strip mining until atmo suits. Both beacause there might be a ton of slimelung slowing you down and beacause dupes tend to get themselves stuck in unbreathable atmospheres way too often during large mining tasks. Suits will be needed for the oil biome as well due to it being scalding hot.

You should go for the oil biome first for the fossils you can refine into lime. Lime enables you to get steel which will grant you protection from meteors on the surface. Oil can also be changed into plastic but you can also use dreckos for that.

When going to the surface remember to seal it off so your atmosphere won`t escape.

[GuyPerfect]

2 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

You should go for the oil biome first for the fossils you can refine into lime. Lime enables you to get steel which will grant you protection from meteors on the surface.

I've had a lot of good results ranching a bunch of critters and smashing up the Egg Shells for Lime. Fossil has too low a yield for my tastes, and I don't need a bunch of hot sand.

[Sasza22]

13 hours ago, GuyPerfect said:

I've had a lot of good results ranching a bunch of critters and smashing up the Egg Shells for Lime. Fossil has too low a yield for my tastes, and I don't need a bunch of hot sand.

That works too and will provide a sustainable source of lime over time. But if you want a lot of lime fast for a headstart in steel production fossils are a good option.

[GuyPerfect]

In the base game, there's also a facility on the surface with a giant Steel door that gives you, as memory serves, 2000 Kg when you deconstruct it.

[TheMule]

On 2/10/2022 at 3:46 AM, Falkenpelz said:

I've been trying to learn ONI for a while now and what always bothers me is my wish to explore v.s. the slow and difficult process of expanding into any direction. Is it generally better to stay in one biome until day x and keep the base compact, or do yout to expand into promising terrain quite soon? Do you want to keep your main base near the printing pod, or do you wanna slowly move up and settle down near the surface? If you wanna move, should you rather go far down towards the oil biome or up towards the surface first? And do you guys rather avoid slime biomes at all while routing, or just say sike and embrace slimelung? (For me, airlocks are but a frail and temporary protection from the vengeful wave of ew..)

All in all, give a newbie some advice:D

My personal take on ONI evolved during the years. Today, I see the first part of the game (what is commonly referred to as early/mid game) as "resource acquisition" phase. You can divide it in steps, it makes sense, I think in terms of tiers, with (roughly), everything easily available as tier1, steel/plastic tier2, rare materials (super coolant, insulation) tier3.  Tiers are identified by availability but also by what those resources allow you to do, build wise (ignoring crazy no-steel, no-supercoolant builds, that do exist). E.g. steel/plastic are prerequisite for steam turbines/aquatuner setups, supercoolant allows you to upgrade those and access LOX/LH2 production.
Tier classification may vary depending on the map. Reed fiber (one key material) can be tier1, if you can see plants in the biome next to the starting one, or tier2 if you don't have any source of fiber in the starting planet at all.

To answer your question, assuming dups are surviving, what drives my first part of the game is accessing resources. I expand only for that reason, if I need to, and only in the direction of the resource I need (or looking for it). You can say, to a point, that every click of mine has that purpose. I stop when I have supercoolant. Then, I build the "final" version of my base, everything before that is temporary (i.e. functional, but ugly). That's the "colony building" phase, for me.

[Falkenpelz]

Thanks for all the answers guys! I guess my main issue is, that I'm to much of a survival guy at heart, I wish you could just move around more easily and explore the world. Besides that, my biggest love are pips. I just wanna ranch pips all day and be happy.

[babba]

On 2/15/2022 at 3:19 AM, Falkenpelz said:

Thanks for all the answers guys! I guess my main issue is, that I'm to much of a survival guy at heart, I wish you could just move around more easily and explore the world. Besides that, my biggest love are pips. I just wanna ranch pips all day and be happy.

Pips are super cute, I wonder if someone would have...like a thousand in a colony. That would be mega cute !

[Neotuck]

On 2/10/2022 at 1:05 PM, GuyPerfect said:

The intended way is to use liquid to form a makeshift P-trap style setup in order to produce an air-tight seal that gases can't get through, but Duplicants can:

  

This can be done with just one liquid using a Bottle Emptier. However, since the game only allows one liquid per square of world space, you can get the same result with far less mass if you use two different liquids. In the left example I have Brine on the bottom and Salt Water on the top, and in the right example I have Crude Oil on the bottom and Petroleum on the top.

There is an alternative design that exploits the game mechanics wherein you can stack two different liquids directly on top of each other   

Here is the Brine+Salt Water combination stacked vertically. I have mixed feelings about this one because it's kind of gamey and always feels dirty to use. You construct it by removing the adjacent floor materials and deconstructing carefully-positioned Liquid Pipes in order to precisely deposit the liquid materials in place. The resulting doorway will remain in place and block gases, but because it's made out of spills, the mass is very low and it is subject to deformation from environmental temperatures or even Duplicants carrying hot stuff through them.

Wanted to add my two cents to liquid locks 

Two main problems is the soggy feet debuf, and the two stacked liquid locks can be broken if a dup exhales at the wrong moment

Both issues can be fixed with a 4 layered liquid lock forcing dupes to "jump" though the lock, this prevents soggy feet and dupes don't breath while jumping

Also having two of these locks can provide perfect insulation between rooms if you have a vacuum in between the locks

[tuxii]

59 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Both issues can be fixed with a 4 layered liquid lock forcing dupes to "jump" though the lock, this prevents soggy feet and dupes don't breath while jumping

Why do you use 4 liquids?  I ask because this can be done with 3.

[Neotuck]

3 minutes ago, tuxii said:

Why do you use 4 liquids?  I ask because this can be done with 3.

prevent the dups from stepping down encouraging them to jump

If a dupe is out of breath it will rush to the lock and stand in it in order to catch it's breath breaking it as it exhales