What is your maximum dupes you successfully maintain

[Exa]

While survivng isn't a real challenge for now, I found that successfully maintain a high population base is the real funny goal right now, what is your best?

I saw a 42 duplicants base in the "Show Us Your Colony" topic but rarely more than 20 other than that

 

[BlueLance]

The highest I got before I made a new colony was 33, but because of how I design my bases I could probably go much higher, My water reservoirs are directly below the starting portal, to the left of it is my gas chambers for power, below the water reservoirs is a farm which just gets deeper as I need it, to the right is all living quarters, and on top is all my power generation and batteries, Once I get home I will show you a screenshot. The limiting factor though would be water for oxygen in my builds, since I don't super cool Polluted Oxygen or Steam Polluted water

[Cilya]

I stopped at 42 because there wasn't enough polluted water to keep the peppernut farm running. The size you want to target for your colony depends on what you want to give your duplicants. Showers ? Top quality food ? Those are not needed but If you want to give it to your dupes, it will require water which come in a limited amount.

There are periodically people who try to house 100 duplicants. It have been done several times by different players. It is not a hard limit and I think there are already players that have gone further. The mealwood farms can be extended quite easily for that, but the oxygen production may require a more careful planning.

[Saturnus]

All plants that require irrigation only needs 10g/s if you make sure to individually valve them, and since each dupe creates 11g/s polluted water surplus from lavatory visits that means each dupe in essence sustains one plant. Use a mixed food source with mushrooms, wild grown plants (you leave the plants alone and only harvest them. Don't dig them up) etc you can sustain a fairly large amount of dupes even with good quality food.

If you can get a large amount of dupes with small bladders that's perfect as they have twice the net water output (IIRC).

Showers are water neutral. Polluted water only lose 1% mass if you distil it. Using a water purifier the conversion is 1:1.

[Cilya]

I should have said "it depends on your goals AND on the exploit you want to use or not".

Showers are indeed water neutral, but the water conversion is not costless. You will have to spare more resources in a colony where you have showers than in a colony which doesn't. Unless you are consuming all the polluted water produced by the shower to irrigate the peppernuts, like I did.

[BlueLance]

I only use mealwood, even in the last patch where it was more calories.... so water isnt an issue for me, once they make it that food requirements are an issue I will reassess my situation, but like Cilya said, it all depends on what you want to give your dupes, For instance I never give them showers and I feed them only mealwood. If i had to give them better food it would be mushrooms.

[Reaniel]

I find showers in OU behave a lot differently than it was in AU.  I'm having a lot of interrupted showers in OU with the exact same setup (and the pipes are fine with absolutely no blockage).  Also, dupes seem to be super OCD now, and if they somehow got wet on the way to a task, they'll run all the way back to take a shower instead of keep digging or whatever.  So now I just have them all turned off.

REALLY wish we can set the showers at certain priority along with auto disinfect.

[Xadhoom]

before the last upgrade my biggest colony was 90 dupes, i wanted to see how big a colony i could make and have it survive. mostly survived on frost buns, had a lot of steam geysers to get water for O2. if they congregated in some area, the O2 would become depleted FAST

[Kasuha]

14 hours ago, Saturnus said:

All plants that require irrigation only needs 10g/s if you make sure to individually valve them

It's an exploit, plants are supposed to require certain amounts of water per cycle to grow. And since high quality food for your duplicants is optional, I don't think that achieving it using an exploit really counts as an achievement.

7 hours ago, Reaniel said:

dupes seem to be super OCD now, and if they somehow got wet on the way to a task, they'll run all the way back to take a shower instead of keep digging or whatever

It was the same in AU. Stepped in water, dug one tile, went shower. Having showers during rapid base expansion phase is waste of water.

[Reaniel]

13 hours ago, Kasuha said:

It was the same in AU. Stepped in water, dug one tile, went shower. Having showers during rapid base expansion phase is waste of water.

Huh, so it was already like this in AU?  I could've sworn that when I used priority 9 for an area back in AU, they would dig it out before heading back for shower...