Transit Tubes - What is your experience ?

[babba]

I had a lot of transit tubes in my colonies.

With 110 dupes using the transit tube system it became a huge energy consumer, especially with dupes using stations to jump just a few tiles far. From my experience I would only use transit tubes to create point to point connections at the 4 corners of a map - For very long distances.

I decided to destroy all transit tubes, with the released 100 tons of plastic I am changing my internal colony to now consist of plastic ladders.

I can now also get rid of most heat generating transformers inside my colony, I am implementing a 50kW power line entry/exit at the lowest and coldest point of my big steam room - Insulated in a room filled with oil. Most stuff which produces heat will be move to the inside of the steam room.

The colony nearly went extinct again, so I am using the opportunity to change the entire colony to the better. This time I am building a new farm from scratch

Filling the exit/entry 50kW line connection module with oil

[Sasza22]

Yes that`s my experience as well. Most of my bases collaped with insufficient power once i started making those. Generally they are best as an elevator going up while you use fire poles for going down. Most of the time you don`t want them to have exits close to the station. I think it should lead to some area that`s not often visited and it`s pretty far.

I imagine that with 100+ dupes each station is draining power constantly and that adds up quickly.

[Pedro_L]

Platic ladders are faster after athletic 24 iirc

Nevermind it's after 34

[nyonyonyo]

My experience: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Transit tubes should be linking highly travelled(mostly), long distance (definitely) locations, usually where horizontal travelling is required. Firepole iirc is the fastest travel mode. I usually put it between two distant points; usually outside my suitdocks and the far place I want to reach, like my launch pad or deep into my oil reservoir. Don't connect them with transformers: I directly tap into the main heavy current line running through my base. Firepoles and ladders are good enough for short distances as firepoles are faster. I cannot remember where I saw transit tube speed but if given choice between transit and firepole, dupes take firepole for the same vertical distance. 

The biggest downside (if you don't use a mod) is that the 'tubes cannot cross firepoles and ladders.

Also, you use them in areas you completely seal off with different atmospheres.

From the wiki:

Quote

• Duplicants need about 35 Athletics to move up or down a plastic ladder as quickly as a transit tube, and about 27 Athletics to run as quickly across metal tiles, if you don't factor in the time spent entering. This means that for almost all scenarios they are the best transportation option for longer distances.

 

[ZombieDupe]

Aside from moving up I don't think there's much point, especially since they are not as fast as I would like. Sealing in rooms can be very risky since the plastic will melt at a low temperature and areas where I would like to keep sealed are usually of high temperature, like steam rooms. The transit tube access points are also very bulky, 3 by 2 and they need time to charge before another duplicant can use them so you either try to make more or make duplicants wait in line or bypass it. They should be 1 by 2 and just draw power from the grid instantly instead of having a very limited battery of their own, we can make our own batteries, why limit this? Last grievance I have with using them is that you can't place a transit tube crossing underneath them to let duplicants go downwards as well.

[JRup]

I try to place them at points I'd consider useful, but sometimes the dupes would just run instead if the transit tube loader is momentarily unavailable. (These dupes have high speed pretty much trained to max levels, I think...)

I'm doing this in an old vanilla base with 24 dupes that consumes up to 14-16 kW at busy times and every time I'm done optimizing stuff pretty much brings the power consumption down by a chunk (usually a 1,2 kW AT )...

Transit tubes do provide a good alternative to sealing off very chilly environments if you're into that stuff.

I'm currently looking into how this "technology" ties into the abominable "long commutes" warning. (Nothing too scientific though...)

9 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

they need time to charge before another duplicant can use them so you either try to make more or make duplicants wait in line or bypass it. They should be 1 by 2 and just draw power from the grid instantly instead of having a very limited battery of their own, we can make our own batteries, why limit this?

They do operate "continuously" until the charge drops to a certain level then stall to recharge up to another certain level... Pretty annoying for long queues...

The charge-mode power draw is another pressure point these things got going on... Maybe a more dynamic draw that depends on the cable type that's connected? That would be nice.

23 hours ago, babba said:

I decided to destroy all transit tubes, with the released 100 tons of plastic I am changing my internal colony to now consist of plastic ladders.

Now you can make a lot of naphtha to substitute petroleum as coolant, yay!

[BT_20]

I’m my current play through I installed my transit tubes and map wide sweeping system at the same time and my power draw spiked from like 6.5 Kw to 28.4 Kw. My steam turbines and petroleum boiler weren’t enough to power everything. Fortunately I’ve saved up 1756 tons of coal so I just threw down 15 coal gens.

(I have 18 dupes btw)

[Gurgel]

Built them once for all destinations, then less so and these days, with the small(er) maps, I mostly do not build them at all. I think the only use I may have for them is as an airlock replacement. Don't get me wrong, I think they are a perfectly valid element of the game. But one of the strengths of Oni is that there usually is more than one way to do things.

[SharraShimada]

On 4/3/2022 at 5:36 PM, babba said:

 

Excuse me sir, but i have to ask. Whats wrong with you? :P

[Sasza22]

16 hours ago, nyonyonyo said:

Transit tubes should be linking highly travelled(mostly), long distance (definitely) locations, usually where horizontal travelling is required. Firepole iirc is the fastest travel mode. I usually put it between two distant points; usually outside my suitdocks and the far place I want to reach, like my launch pad or deep into my oil reservoir. Don't connect them with transformers: I directly tap into the main heavy current line running through my base.

That`s almost completely opposite to how i use them. That`s kinda funny. I mostly use them to low travelled places so it won`t drain too much power and mostly for vertical travel (usually up). While fire poles are perfectly valid and don`t use power they are still a bit slower than tubes. Someone made a comparison and the tube beats the pole just slightly.

Also i prefer to connect the tubes via transformers and make sure that when power goes out my critical systems still work.

[NurdRage]

i make very liberal use of transport tubes and it's one of the driving reasons that push me to make lots of power and justify building sour gas boilers. 

[tuxii]

In my experience, Transit Tubes have been  and always will be considered a vanity project and not an essential part of surviving.  If you have the plastic and power to spare to create useful Transit Tubes you pretty much have the game won already.

In the base game they were decently useful since you had a single massive map.  They are less useful in Spaced Out since you get many smaller maps.

What would be really interesting is if there was a mysterious Point of Interest walled in by Neutronium with a Transit Tube Crossing (also made of undeconstructable Neutronium) sticking out of it and you had to send a dupe in their to find the treasure or the trap.

[nyonyonyo]

7 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Also i prefer to connect the tubes via transformers and make sure that when power goes out my critical systems still work.

That is why there is backup (aka the Long Walk) that runs parallel to it. There comes a point where building transformers just to power them becomes inefficient in terms of space and material. I know because that is how I powered it in the beginning. If you are going to be power short, then you wouldn't be building transit tubes. 

Short routes are inefficient because firepole down is way faster. I noticed this because dupes take the fastest method and they always took the firepole for the same distance down over transit tubes. Going up, they are faster but below a certain distance, the time to go up and down via conventional means is faster than transit tube. 

That is why my internal core base hub doesn't have tubes; short traversed distances vs required power and space requirements. 

Also, one other thing: If your dupes don't have T3 that negates the suits' atheletic debuffs, transit tubes are DEFINITELY faster. So, I usually (ie, almost always) build them outside the suitdocks. 

PS. My suit docks exits take up much more power since I have sets of 5 exits x 8-10 docks.

PSS. No, wait, my supercoolant aquatuners chilling the base to a nice 0C eat more power.

PSSS. No, wait, my steam turbine regenerative power system negates that aquatuner power loss.

PSSSS. Yes, I agree with the people that say they don't use transit tubes on the smaller asteroids; my transit tube network is primarily on the huge starting classic asteroid. And on the water asteroid where it links the top "floating" section of the base to the main base at the seabed.

[DolphinWing]

I like to build them between long commute places. But in Spaced Out all asteroids are not that big so I rarely build them. In my latest run I built one to fast travel between my underwater base and the surface. It took me some time to find that dupes runs slower in the water.

 

 

[nyonyonyo]

1 hour ago, DolphinWing said:

I like to build them between long commute places. But in Spaced Out all asteroids are not that big so I rarely build them. In my latest run I built one to fast travel between my underwater base and the surface. It took me some time to find that dupes runs slower in the water.

 

 

Secret underwater lair.

[Gurgel]

8 hours ago, DolphinWing said:

I like to build them between long commute places. But in Spaced Out all asteroids are not that big so I rarely build them. In my latest run I built one to fast travel between my underwater base and the surface. It took me some time to find that dupes runs slower in the water.

 

 

That is a nice application. Never thought of it. I just compressed all that water. 

[nyonyonyo]

18 hours ago, Gurgel said:

That is a nice application. Never thought of it. I just compressed all that water. 

Yes. "Building a base into the environment and being eco-friendly". :3

Though the alternative of draining the ocean is a fantastic challenge itself. 

BTW, I've notice that there are "tides" at the water surface. Does the water regenerate or it's just "simulated wave action"? because I have notice that the water does rise and fall creating these "wave/tides".

My WIP - drainage in progress:

[Gurgel]

I think the "waves" are a result of the pretty bizarre flow/pressure physics of ONI. 

[Primalflower]

Transit Tubes are absolutely adorable. I love them so much, its a shame that It doesn't feel like they've much use on the smaller asteroids of Spaced Out. If only they were a bit cheaper in terms of power.

[KaeseSchnitte]

I wanted to build Transit Tubes for my dupes to travel between two habitable zones, and another Tube network for suited-up dupes to get to their destination quicker. That#s when I realized that you can't build one Tube Network over the other without connecting them. That's when I stopped playing.

related

[melquiades]

On 4/3/2022 at 11:36 AM, babba said:

 

I think more stairs = more pathing = more CPU usage? though i haven't tested that.

I always strive to do tube friendly colonies, it takes some planing/designing from the start. cause I like using them to send dupes quickly to strategic places, like the storage room or the reactor, the hatchery etc... And to avoid transformers everywhere I do a heavy watt line on the edge of the map all the way from top to bottom that branches to the center. Power is not a concern for me at the midgame XD

I also remove fire poles when i set up a transit tube line, to prevent dupes from pathing though those.

The only gripe i have with tubes is that I wish there were crystalline or metallic tubes that you could use in harsher environments.

[babba]

On 4/6/2022 at 2:53 AM, nyonyonyo said:

Yes. "Building a base into the environment and being eco-friendly". :3

Though the alternative of draining the ocean is a fantastic challenge itself. 

BTW, I've notice that there are "tides" at the water surface. Does the water regenerate or it's just "simulated wave action"? because I have notice that the water does rise and fall creating these "wave/tides".

My WIP - drainage in progress:

DLC2 - Please give us SUBMARINES dear Papa Klei Smurf

[cpy]

If only you could lube up dupes so they'd slide faster in those tubes.