High tech startup costs for tidal turbines

[DarkMaster13]

It's very noticeable that this start takes a lot longer to get going in terms of tech costs compared to other starts.  This is mainly due to not having the plant pulverizer and vulconizer as buildings given by the starting research dump.  Since your only early game power options are manual generators and tidal turbines, you have to wait until you've researched the ability to process rubber to get passed the normal early game.

Bonus note, it's very strange how deep into the tech tree the swimwear crafting pattern is.  All the way at caffeination, and requiring materials science on Spaced Out.  It should be much more accessible.

[suicide commando]

First of, there is a gasket next to the beach chair, so you can get one turbine up and running without trouble

Second, There are other paths to provide you with gaskets. Mainly the finding minnow directive. Each time you complete one of her quests, she will reward you with a gasket. The first quest is pretty easy to do as it only requires some pearls. Also you can get them from the get go as a care package, so this also enables you to get more.

As for the research. it's only tier 4 research, so it doesn't require anything special. And you want to research farming etc. anyhow to grow your rubber trees, so it's only one more step there. The vulcanizer is located at the metal refinery, another must have tech for when you want to start on the mid game. Both can be researched easily before cycle 40.
 

Until then, a single tidal turbine is enough to get a good bit of your base powered, and you can add a manual generator for that little extra oomph every once in a while.

[DarkMaster13]

On 5/29/2026 at 12:22 PM, suicide commando said:

First of, there is a gasket next to the beach chair, so you can get one turbine up and running without trouble

Second, There are other paths to provide you with gaskets. Mainly the finding minnow directive. Each time you complete one of her quests, she will reward you with a gasket. The first quest is pretty easy to do as it only requires some pearls. Also you can get them from the get go as a care package, so this also enables you to get more.

As for the research. it's only tier 4 research, so it doesn't require anything special. And you want to research farming etc. anyhow to grow your rubber trees, so it's only one more step there. The vulcanizer is located at the metal refinery, another must have tech for when you want to start on the mid game. Both can be researched easily before cycle 40.
 

Until then, a single tidal turbine is enough to get a good bit of your base powered, and you can add a manual generator for that little extra oomph every once in a while.

I haven't been able to play with the quest giver in my game because she spawned in an extremely inopportune position and there's no way to easily dig to her without dumping large salt water pools.  Hard researching the tech ended up being much easier to do.  The only reason this stood out to me due to it being much harder to expand your basic power capacity compared with other starts.

Though if the expectation is that you're going to make contact and start doing quests within a very short period of time (say 15-20 cycles) and get by that way, then the issue could instead be the map generation putting the quest giver very far away (top right edge of the new salt water biomes) and behind several large salt water pools.

[blakemw]

Another route to getting gaskets is aggressively digging down (using water as ladders helps) to the polluted brine biome, where plastic grows for free. Some players will be scared of digging down, but there's nothing particularly dangerous and because you're digging down there's no risk of flooding your base.

Of course you need to be able to dig through abyssalite but that's not much of a skill gate in the grand scheme of things.

[DarkMaster13]

I misremembered and it's far to the right where the quest giver spawned.  I've circled the printer pod and the quest giver.  I do see a way to get to her now, but I put this off for a long time and ended up forgetting about her.

Edited May 31 by DarkMaster13

[suicide commando]

That's an easy spot to reach. 

1 hour ago, blakemw said:

Another route to getting gaskets is aggressively digging down (using water as ladders helps) to the polluted brine biome, where plastic grows for free. Some players will be scared of digging down, but there's nothing particularly dangerous and because you're digging down there's no risk of flooding your base.

Of course you need to be able to dig through abyssalite but that's not much of a skill gate in the grand scheme of things.

Possible, but an easier route is to leave not dig up the gum trees and wild harvest those for gum wood, then turn that into rubber and make some rubber gaskets. As rubber is actually more useful now because you can make the boots/swimwear out of it, and also use it to make gaskets, which replace plastic in all things that needed it. Then once you've wild harvested some pearls, you can build proper wide farm tiles for them and presto, infinite gaskets.

[AugyBear]

On 5/29/2026 at 10:20 AM, DarkMaster13 said:

Bonus note, it's very strange how deep into the tech tree the swimwear crafting pattern is.  All the way at caffeination, and requiring materials science on Spaced Out.  It should be much more accessible.

Totally agree

On 5/29/2026 at 10:20 AM, DarkMaster13 said:

Since your only early game power options are manual generators and tidal turbines, you have to wait until you've researched the ability to process rubber to get passed the normal early game.

What do you consider to be the end of early game/beginning of midgame, and how many cycles do you normally expect that to be? I feel like the free power from that first Tidal Turbine makes setting up the initial base and starter research insanely easy, but I also tend to play very sequentially instead of trying to do a bunch of things at once.

I consider establishing the living quarters, food, and oxygen supplies to be "early game", i.e. basic rooms, farms/ranches, and SPOM are early game (first 20-40 cycles), and then Metal Refining is the start of midgame. Since Rubber production only needs a quick detour for the Plant Pulverizer, I feel like it doesn't have any impact on the early game at all.

[DarkMaster13]

2 hours ago, AugyBear said:

What do you consider to be the end of early game/beginning of midgame, and how many cycles do you normally expect that to be? I feel like the free power from that first Tidal Turbine makes setting up the initial base and starter research insanely easy, but I also tend to play very sequentially instead of trying to do a bunch of things at once.

I consider establishing the living quarters, food, and oxygen supplies to be "early game", i.e. basic rooms, farms/ranches, and SPOM are early game (first 20-40 cycles), and then Metal Refining is the start of midgame. Since Rubber production only needs a quick detour for the Plant Pulverizer, I feel like it doesn't have any impact on the early game at all.

I consider the very early game done once you've got your essential facilities up and have stable forms of oxygen, food, and automated power running.  When you're at the stage where you could leave your base running on its own for like 50-100 cycles and come back with no problems.  For the base game's sandstone start, this would be a mealwood farm, oxygen diffuser, and a coal generator hooked up to a smart battery.  A couple coal gens can keep you going for a very long time.  Plus enough dirt and algae dug up to keep everything running for a long time.  You aren't really forced to start adding more specific infrastructure until CO2 starts really building up, you run out of algae, or run out of coal.

After the very early game is when I feel like I'm free to start tackling whatever project I feel like doing in the moment.  Whether that's upgrading rooms, getting new production up, tapping new power sources, or getting a new food source.

That very early game feels much more stretched out on this map, since it's so much harder for me to scale up my dupe count or industrial production thanks to the lack of power.  It made me play much more cautiously and avoid sprawling out or exploring the new content as quickly as I otherwise would.

EDIT: I don't think trading is a good solution to this problem, you only get one extra gasket and after that you need to make sushi rolls for the next delivery.  That puts you well passed the point in the tech tree where you'd be making your own rubber gaskets.  A couple 100-150 watt generators isn't really enough power to start really scaling up.

Edited June 1 by DarkMaster13

[SamLogan]

As it's free electricity that not produce heat, I consider it's ok that the rubber ask some process to be product. Especially when you have one for free at the start.

The gap to pass is the "Glassy" production to have enough latex but with the glass forge you can have a lot rapidly.