Early Middle Material Distribution Ideas?

[GeePaw]

I've just cracked the oil biome, which is behind an atmo checkpoint. Beyond a few dribbles of oil, what I really want from this area right now is lead and diamond for construction up above. The most obvious answer is to treat it all like normal: dig the material, have some bins near the construction site(s), and let the dupes load those bins. This seems like a huge drag on labor, because an atmo checkpoint is super slow.

Next simplest thought, use a conveyor, receptacle at the sink, loader at the source, and one long rail. This requires issuing sweep orders (and suppressing sweeps for that material at my current generic-sweep pit). It also won't multiplex that conveyor line w/o a lot of me paying attention.

Is there something more clever, early on, that I can do? How do you folks handle this kind of thing?

Thanks, as always, to this great community -- GeePaw

[YOLO KNIGHT]

I dealt with this recently. I had them dig out manually because setting up autominers is more trouble than it's worth for a temporary setup. This is somewhat dependent on how good your diggers are, of course.

 

Once it was dug out I set up autosweepers and loading bins with one tile of overlap each across the total width of the pit. Then I just set the filters on the loaders to whatever I was after and let them run for a bunch of cycles. On the far end I had a single receptacle and half a dozen regular bins, each set to the individual material. An autosweeper got them all put away.

 

It was a fair amount of setup work but totally worth it IMO. It ran day and night for many cycles and got everything I wanted in easy reach while dupes did other things.

[NewWorldDan]

I generally put a storage bin on the tile after the checkpoint and fill that up with lead. That way dupes can access it without putting on a suit and use it to supply various jobs. You could put the bins 3 tiles off the ground so dupes can access them from above and below, but can't otherwise get into the oil area without a suit. Something that looks like this:

[degr]

>lead and diamond for construction up above

Bring 20 tons of lead above (even with !! priority), leave everything else in oil biome.

PS what are you doing with diamonds?

[GeePaw]

Degr...

I build a superhab that slams decor. A whole row of statues, with diamond tiles above and below. I then slam aero pots, also made of diamond, all over the area. It looks like this shape I drew the other day for a slightly new design -- only imagine planted diamond aero pots above every bed and mess table.

The "max decor 120" in the tool tip is a lie. Dupes are in bed, the bathroom, or the great hall on the order of a quarter of the day. If the decor there is insane, say 600+ in every spot, they get the +12 morale for decor, no matter what the outside world looks like. In midgame, this +12 feels like a huge difference, and it consumes zero power.

Cheers -- @Geepaw