My Colony Is Falling Apart :(

[vonVile]

I'm on Cycle 75 on TU and currently hanging by a thread keeping my colony alive. I have no access to Algae and mining Slime is a death sentence because the small patches of it that exists are all surrounded by oceans of Contaminated Water. I did try to dig some out in places, but the Slime and Clay erode like tissue paper once disturbed. I was lucky to block off the first attempt, but the second one high up has pretty much doomed the Dupes.

I found out that my Dupe named Ava was suffocating because she go trapped from a flood of Contaminated Water. I went into Red Alert and built a sky ladder bridge in hopes the other Dupes could build it to save her, but they couldn't help and all they could do was dig a deep trench to delay the flood from reaching the colony below. I was able to have Ava save herself by using the ladder bridge I laid out and had her deconstruct the ladder above her, so she couldn't go back up. I then used the ladder materials to makes her build a land bridge by destroying 1 tile in behind her and then use those materials to build the ladder in front of her. When she was far enough away I destroyed the ladders she was on to fall into the Contaminated Water allowing her to live.

The problem was it took 2 Cycles to do it and by the time I gave up on the other Dupes there Stress was through the roof and I only had 2 Stress Tables for 8 Dupes. Then if that wasn't enough I had no Algae to feed to the Algae Oxygenators or Terrariums or power. I quickly made 5 more Stress Tables at 9P and had the Dupes only with Build to get it done. I know I should have done 1 more, but I was working as quick as possible. When they were done I emptied everybody of tasks and put 7 out of 8 on Stress Tables. There was basically never ending Stress Vomit and Dupes destroying equipment for 2-3 Cycles until they calmed down enough. With no power I put everybody on Power duty to run in the hamster wheels to power the Electrolizer to give oxygen to the small sealed in area, The only thing that's saving me is the fact I have tons of water in a tank that I built very early in the game. As long as I can have Dupes make energy I can survive for a long time. The only thing I have to fix is the lake of Contaminated Water just above my colony and slowly growing bigger.

What I plan to do is complete that ladder bridge back to the source of the Contaminated Water to stop the slow draining. If I do that I'll be able to bounce back. I have one last chance to bounce back. There's a small patch of Algae deep below, but I have to navigate between contaminated pockets to get to it. I really don't see anything else I can do if I can't find a big safe patch of Slime.

[AlexRou]

Make a room with a door, put dupes in it, lock the door, wait for them to die and morbs spawn, free contaminated oxygen that they can breathe or you can send into a cooling system to make pure oxygen.

[Ecu]

Curiously, why are you in cycle 75 and still using algae?  You can clean CO2 and produce O2 via water.  That said, I think your experience is a great example of one of the awesome things about this game.  You slowly work up, trying to create a surviving and thriving colony, only to have a poor event throw a wrench in everything.

I see this as an awesome story of the life of a colony, not a detriment to the game.

[Octyabr]

Why not? Last game I made it up to cycle ~600 solely using algae I've found just digging. If it's there, why not use it?

[Ecu]

1 minute ago, Octyabr said:

Why not? Last game I made it up to cycle ~600 solely using algae I've found just digging. If it's there, why not use it?

Well sure.  By all means use it if you have it.  However, if you are worried about your colony is going to collapse...perhaps you should have alternatives prepared as well.

[vonVile]

 

Well, I'm currently at Cycle 131 and finally gave up on getting Slime. I dug of areas put the output wasn't enough to warrant the effort. I did just find out Dupes have been storing tons of it, but won't put it in the Bio Distiller for some reason. I guessing I still have to figure of the priority level of Storage to have them take it out to put it in the Bio Distiller. I have Deliver turned on for all Dupes, so that's not the problem.

Right now I'm pumping the water out of the area on the left into my reservoir. When I opened the area I didn't know the Chlorine would explode out of the top like that and you can see the mess I'm in right now. I put out Scrubbers, but they look to not be doing anything. It looks like I'm going to have to put an Air Pump where the 4 Scrubbers are and send it up in the huge cavern above my colony where I send all the Hydrogen from the Electolyzer. The one under the colony have been running great the colony in a closed off room. I just gave up on collecting Slime to turn into Algae and just built the second one above the reservoir.

The problems I'm currently having is retaining power from using all this machinery causing overloads. I had to split the grid into two and deconstruct useless equipment. As it is right now the two Hamster Wheels power everything under it and the water pump in the reservoir. The two on the two upper levels run the Musher, Fridge, Water Pump to left, and Electrolzyer, Air Pump, and Air Filter over the reservoir. The 4 Hamster Wheels and 4 Batteries as you can see are off. All they run is the Bio Distiller, Water Filter and Air Converter. Right now I'm upgrading all the wiring, since all that Dupes can do is create power. I do have a Hydrogen Generator built, but I can't get it to stay functional. As it is right now I only have enough power to run things with no excess to store, so my poor Dupes are running their little butts off until all the water is transferred.

I'm trying to figure out how to get the Water Purifier to work without overheating 1 second after repairing it. Its currently in a vacuum, but the dupes won't touch it. It wasn't until I reloaded the game and saw the big chunk of dirt appear out of nowhere sitting in front of it that I see the problem. I'm going to remove it and see what happens. Its not like I need it right now with the Contaminated Water so low.

The only good thing is I have tons of water to make oxygen and when that runs out I'll switch to converting contaminated Water, which is like 50-100 cycles from now. I'll have to figure out a way to pump it in without it flood the colony.

[sai05]

Some how when i read this i rember for the first time playing like no ide how to help trap dupe  aslong you not dig 2-3 block from water they will not leak

On 3/17/2017 at 1:28 PM, Octyabr said:

Why not? Last game I made it up to cycle ~600 solely using algae I've found just digging. If it's there, why not use it?

Whats your pc spec ? Over 100cycle the game keep crash for me , 

[Octyabr]

2 hours ago, sai05 said:

Whats your pc spec ? Over 100cycle the game keep crash for me

Nothing fancy, a lot of fans though, summer can be quite unforgiving...

[vonVile]

I worked on it more.

- I removed all the Chlorine gas with a Gas Pump up over my colony. I had to deconstruct it and rebuild it in various places because the Chlorine gas doesn't move much, so I had to bring the pump to it.

- Rebuilt my Muckroot farm in an enclosed room like the rest look like. I originally had it across from the medical bed, but the Chlorine killed them all and I deconstructed them.

- I figured out why the tower wasn't getting as much oxygen transfer with the Electrolyzer as the one over the reservoir. The Gas Pump was placed on the wrong side and should be one the left.

- I couldn't get the Dupes to access the Water Filter even after I removed the dirt block. I tried removing the middle tile it was placed on, but that didn't work either, so I took it out of the vacuum and redesigned the layout like suggested and put a spout over the Water Filter. That one Water Pump is also handling the 2 Electrolyzers.

What I plan to do next:

- Redesign the tower room lay out. Move the beds to the middle. Batteries on the top. The room with the Dupe machine will have Stress Beds. Put in a Gas Pump where the beds are to pump out the CO2 to where an Air Scrubber is.

- Figure out a better ventilation system in the tower. The Electrolyzer over the reservoir had tons of pure oxygen. It could be that the Dupes rarely went over there except to get water.

- Build a ladder up to where the Hydrogen Generator is and replace all the wiring with heavy duty. The ladder is where the Water Filter is. It'll have airlocks and will come up out of the ground, so all the Hydrogen I pumped up there won't come down. I also plan to put a Water Pump in the Contaminated Water up there and go to my Contaminated Water reservoir. There's a ton up there. Way over 10 times the amount of fresh water in the picture. I hope the air isn't 100% unbreathable.

- I need to figure out a way to make more Dirt. I'm running very low to use on Outhouses and making Mush Bars. I plan to build another Muckroot garden below the first after I find more seeds, so I'll have the food problem solved. If I can't find a new batch of Dirt I'm going to have to make Commodes using water.

- Outside of that I need to explore the new Ice biome that's in the south east corner of the map.

[Kulze]

Setting up alternatives for oxygen is mandatory. You WILL run out of algae sooner or later + you WILL run out of slime as well.

Cleaning polluted oxygen and breaking up water with the electrolyzer is the way to go later on, so set it up as soon as possible.

My new world is on cycle ~75 right now, fairly late to actually start given I have 8 dupes, but since I build a 'closed chamber' base setup It is working.

For my setup do the following:

Instead of having a single big room being flooded with oxygen, instead set up a pump right above the deoxidizer and let it suck up all the goodness. The single pump (more dupes more pumps later on) sucks out the oxygen and guides it into every... single... room. This way you get maximum pressure + a buffer so it doesn't run out as fast. Before thought, you'll burn trough your algae like nithing because of it thought, after all there are several hundred kilos of oxygen in pipes after all as soon as the base gets bigger.
Simply add new oxygen pumps for every new setup, the main framework is working after all from nearly the beginning, so it needs rather few materials when you're going to expand.

Also, since all the doors open frequently, the walkways which are used often are kept slightly pressurized, just enough for the dupes to live, but not enough to waste any oxygen.

[vonVile]

Here's what my colony currently looks like. Look at that beautiful pink cloud.

I did a ton of work in the last session.

- Built a second garden. I ran out of Mealroot and switched to that other one. I currently have no more seeds to plant.

- Rebuilt the power grid so its localized to 2 separate grids. One for the tower and the other for the reservoir. I had to do it this way because I was taxing the limit of the batteries holding power. I was just making enough to last the day and had to start from scratch to fully recharge them again. I was forced to bring in 2 more Dupes because everybody was working on Power leaving no one to built or fix anything.

- I updated the layout a bit and got the Wheels on the second to bottom level. I also added an Air Pump to collect the CO2 from them working down there. I was easily able to slap down an air filter to send the oxygen that happens to get caught back into the tower. The output goes to an Air Scrubber.

- As you can see by the top picture I'm in the process of working on the Hydrogen Generator and making a Water Pump to move Contaminated Water into the reservoir to be processed. I have a kill switch ready to shut down the pump when it gets too full. I currently have it tied to the Hydrogen Generator's power, but now that I think about I should have it separate. I might even have to add a second kill switch in case of possible overload.

- One problem I did run into was a bug involving the Air Pump and Air Filter in the tower. I moved the Air Pump all the way to left because there was a bunch of pure oxygen over there and I was getting better transfer of gases, but I found out that's not how it works to get the most air. What should be done is to put the Electrolyzer and Air Pump in a small confined space, so all the Air Pump can do is suck in the oxygen and hydrogen produced. When I tried to put it back the way I had it I put the Air Pump back where it was before removing the first pump, which caused a bug breaking the Air Filter and no way to fix it. I even took the whole design apart and put it back together, but it just refused to work anymore. I had use a previous save before I moved anything, which was 2 Cycles back. Is that cheating? I don't thing so, because I didn't change anything outside of that.

Before I go how do I set the spout drip? What's the pressure number to make it happen? Thanx!