early Alpha ONI General Observations

[tehMugwump]

First off, great game potential and I understand that it's early in alpha, so I assume there's a lot of balancing to come, BUT:

I've gone through probably a dozen restarts and every single one ends with a putrid mess of fouled water and air and everyone puking all over and in the water supply by cycle 25-30.  I can't be that bad at games to fail so miserably, so early on! 

• Decent water/air management comes too late in the game to be very useful.  By the time I've researched all the things that can really help me, my environment is already contaminated beyond repair and I've little water left to even run pumps.
• Not enough coal in map to make coal generators useful.  I mined everything I can find and it's not even enough to start the motor.  How am I supposed to keep this thing running long term?
• Not enough obsidian to make all the plumbing I need, so a lot of my pumps I've finally researched and am placing in desperation, never get plumbed until it's too late to matter.
• Not one map I've rolled has enough water to keep my dupes going long-term.
• At some point, my researchers should learn to press that dang 'fabricate' buttons themselves.
• Same for whoever get's assigned to the Microbe Musher.  I'd like a little less micromanagement here.
• As I've mentioned in another thread, I get no feedback as to why none of my pumps ever work when installed.
• My Electrolyzer says 'max gas pressure' and never even started.  I don't know what this means or how to fix it.

That's most of my issues and I'm sure most of these things will get hammered out.  I know you're stress testing the game, so adjustments will come later.  But it feels like it's on 'hard core' mode ATM.

Just posting for prosperity.  Great jorb, Devs!  I've already put more hours in ONI than most of my other current games.  Keep up the great work.

[DNsingbanana]

So : 

-how did you contaminate your air ? With the contaminated dirt from contaminated water ? Make sure you place your toilets, compost and contaminated dirt storage in a sealed room (use airlocks) and a good amount of vertical space for the contaminated oxygen to be container. As a general rule in this game early on you have to make dump areas for undesirables until you research how to clean them. 

-i personally never had problems with coal, it's for now the least problematic consumable. Buy maybe you had bad generations or used it too early. If you use it while your base consumes less than 600W you will waste power. 

-pipes can be made of any mineral. The thing is it defaults to the left most in the list which is obsidian. Choose to make them in sandstone and you will no longer have a problem. 

-water is with algae the big challenge yeah. Try getting percolation quickly to recycle contaminated water in other biomes. 

-all crafting stations have a "do forever" button on the right of the fabricate button

-i assume you are talking of gas pumps. If the gases near the pump are not pressurized enough(less than 150g/tile approximately) the pump will not work. You need to compress the gasses by placing an algae desoxydizer for exemple. 

-if the tiles above the electrolyser are too compressed in gas (>1800g) it cannot add more gas in. Make more room, pump out the existing gas to depressurize the area.