Algae shortage and heat issues - RIP

[Jigsawn]

Things have gotten pretty bad in the base now. After finding the thermo nullifier (see other thread) I thought my heat issues might be solved. But I wasn't able to get it up and running before my food poisoning got out of control (see the other, other thread!). With most dupes suffering from food poisoning thanks to poisoned food, some have died from various ailments. I managed to set up my new bristleberry farm at the top of my base, but by the time I populated it the whole top portion of the base is full of hydrogen from my 3 electrolyzers and the sole pump I installed up there can't pump it out fast enough. So the berries won't grow. In a flash of inspiration I switched over to making pickled lice rather than bars but it may be too late - the slide into stress and mass sickness is in effect!

I've got a host of countermeasures in hand though, and have almost finished constructing an electroylzer setup next to the thermo nullifier with a piping system back to my base. If I can get that up and running, and pump out the hydrogen quick enough from my farming area, I might be able to bounce back. Heat levels are rising with my original berry farm out of commission and the heat encroaching on my new farm and my vital mealwood farm. In the short term I might need to do the ice storage container in water tank idea as an emergency measure. That is, if my dupes can even survive that long. I think this might be the end for The Fouth Hurrah, but I'll see it through to the bitter end!

Thanks for all the help in this and my other threads. Maybe I will do better next time. I am doing a bunch of feedback for the devs right now based on this playthrough.

I must say that I find this game one of the most stressful I have played in recent times, there's always 10 things to worry about or actively going wrong! In a good way... I think? *downs whiskey*

[Zarquan]

2 hours ago, Jigsawn said:

...but by the time I populated it the whole top portion of the base is full of hydrogen from my 3 electrolyzers and the sole pump I installed up there can't pump it out fast enough. So the berries won't grow.

I generally avoid releasing hydrogen in to my base.  My ideal base has only oxygen and co2 (with small quantities of polluted oxygen because you can't avoid it).  I tend to build my electrolyzers outside my base, which lets me better control the temperature of the oxygen, then I pump it in to the base through either cold hydrogen or thermoregulators.

[Jigsawn]

Sadly, I only realised my electrolyzers in base was a big problem until I made this thread and people pointed it out. Now their output of hydrogen has gone over the top. In the short term I might have to emergency dig out a much bigger cave above my base for it to float up to and free up the farming air. In future, I won't be building them in my base any more

[PickPay]

Sorry things are going sour, you'll definitely do better next time !

In case you haven't seen my post there this might help you in the future :

 

[Jigsawn]

I am amazed to report that my base, The Fourth Hurrah, is still up and running! Thanks of course to the tips in this very thread.

Let me talk you through the latest events - when total disaster seemed imminent. This will be a long one as I have some time to burn! Enjoy!

Last time I posted, The Fourth Hurrah had 15 dupes, and was on the cusp of overheating. My bristle berry farms couldn't grow, the top of my base was flooded with hydrogen. My mealwood farm was starting to overheat at the edges. My water supply was completely contaminated with food poisoning. My dupes were all getting food poisoning and half were in med-bay and throwing up all over the base. I had just started mining out an ice biome southwest of my base, and was about to unearth a Thermo Nullifier there.

The first two problems I had to tackle were the food poisoning, and the rising heat before my farms shut down. I built a liquid tepidiser in a seperate, contaminated water pool in an effort to kill the germs - but I couldn't get enough reliable power to keep it going. I couldn't just dump the tepidiser in my main water tank or polluted water tank as they are in the middle of my base - I couldn't handle any more heat. I also started laying down the groundwork to surround the Thermo Nullifier in insulation and set up electroylzers next to it. Finally, I dismantled almost all my Algae Deoxidisers in my main base, now I knew from the forum that I didn't need so many. Now with only a few Deoxidisers and terrariums scattered around the base and caves, the algae sitation was under control.

Whilst doing this, disaster struck! With half my dupes already sick, the rest were struggling to keep the mealwood farm going. Two dupes also caught slimelung thanks to their low immunity, before I'd had time to micromanage my doors and prevent sick dupes from going into germy areas. Power started to run out as the coal generators weren't being restocked, and my poor chef spent half his time on a hamster wheel to try and get power to his musher and grill.

Then starvation began to hit. Over a number of cycles, my dupes started dropping dead, one by one. Their bodies littered the base. Sick was all over the floors, constantly being mopped. The slimelung claimed the lives of two as well. I thought it was game over. 7 dupes were dead - 8 remained.

RIP

But then the starvation stopped. I had all my dupes making their own food, or more commonly just eating mealwood lice straight off the trees. There was just enough for the food situation to stabilise. Then I realised I could stop them eating food poisoned meals, by making pickled mealwood lice. I set my last surviving chef to work. The dupes very slowly started getting well again.

Although the deaths of my 7 dupes was a catasrophe, there were some unexpected benefits. Extra oxygen was now sweeping through the base. Strangely, this also seemed to make the hydrogen at the top of my base diminish - putting my bristle brush farms back in growable air. I am guessing that the extra rising oxygen forced the hydrogen to compress. Or maybe the electroylisers were maxing out pressure with less dupes to support, giving the hydrogen pump at the top time to clean up the worst of the hydrogen.

They're Aliiiiiive!

At the same time, I implemented the idea from Greggbert in this thread. I placed storage containers at the top and bottom of my mealwood farm, and one in each of my water tanks. I set them to liquefiables only, and set their priority to high. Then my dupes started ferrying ice and snow from the ice biome (already lying around there) into them. I had to fiddle with the storage priorities a bit - I set one to 5 and left the others at 6, and the dupes just stole the ice from the 5 priority one to put in the 6's! Setting them all to sweep only fixed that.

The cooling aura of the ice-filled containers after a few cycles started to lower the temperatures in my mealwood farm, getting my food source sustainable again. The small amount of ice in the water tanks helped to bring the rest of the base down a few degrees too.

The south west of my base is a real mess. Top right you can see the ice storage compactors in the farm. No drainage apart from one mesh tile - not very efficient or tidy... but its an emergency short term measure. 

After a while I noticed the temperature had dropped below 30C at the top of my base, where previously my bristlewood growth had stopped due to heat. I don't know if that was thanks to the ice containers, or maybe less dupes emitting body heat, or maybe just less machines being used with less dupes to man them. Either way, things were getting back under control, at least in the short term.

With the crisis now behind me, I concentrated my efforts on getting the Thermo Nullifier setup working, which took ages to build. Thanks to the forum I knew that the electroylzers were a big part of my heat problem. The plan was to get those terrible heat spewing electrolysers out of my base, and into a cold place, cooled by the Nullifier, where I could pump cool air back into the colony. I had to run pipes all the way back to my base, and once I had the gas pumps, hydrogen pumps and piping set in place, I realised I also needed water pipes to run to my electrolyzers in there - doh! I'm using a similar setup to the one demonstrated to me in my Thermo Nullifier thread - I'll seal off the Nullifier, pump hydrogen into the room, and next door have the electrolyzers - pumping cold oxygen back to the base in insulated pipes, and filtering off the hydrogen emissions back to the Nullifier.

Nullifier setup almost complete (this is just after the pipes froze). I've since added a second pump inside the electrolyzer room as max pressure was being reached (gap at the top of the electroylzer room is an airlock).

Right now I have just got the Nullifier setup working, but ran into a few snags. Whilst finishing construction, I let water run to the Electrolyzers in the ice biome. This caused the pipes to break after a while, presumably the water inside froze. Polluted water kept dropping into the construction zone through my roof airlocks as the ice in the biome slowly melted - forcing me to wall all the ice off. I eventually got hydrogen pumping into my sealed Nullifier room, but there was a bunch of oxygen sitting at the bottom I couldn't get rid of - so the Nullifier wasn't immersed properly.

I'm in the process of putting in a pump to create a vacuum in the Nullifier room, before I pump hydrogen back in. After repairing the broken water pipes, I got the electrolyzers up and running, and they are working well, albeit slowly due to power issues. The water pipes haven't broken again, so I think if it was freezing that caused it, the water is now moving too fast for it to freeze before it gets to the machines. I'm almost there. Already, I can see the areas around the cold air pipe vents in the base starting to cool a little. This cooling solution should help me get a bit of stability for at least a while.

Now I can concentrate on other projects. I am setting up a new wiring system for all the new setup in the ice biome as I'm already breaking the current wiring down there. My bristle farms are starting to get going, so if my cooling keeps the heat in check, I'll be able to close down the mealwood farm and use berries instead. I have a ton of minor construction and digging projects which have been untouched for decades of cycles. My base is completely covered in debris and I need to clean it all up, and make more art.

The water system could definitely do with some tidying up, it's a maze!

I've added 4 new dupes to fill in some of the job gaps, so my roster is up to 11 now - and I think I'll keep it there until I'm sure I can sustain at this level.

In the longer term, I can start to move towards better food and finally raise my dupe job levels up from 2nd/3rd tier as a result. I have access to plenty of seeds in different biomes and can start to set up farms for them. I want to research conductive wiring so I can optimise my wiring setups. I want to get the tepidiser working with my water system so I can kill the food poisoning once and for all. Eventually I want to see if I can get a new aquatuner setup working to solve my cooling issues - as the ice in storage won't last forever. I've built a refined metal maker machine now, so I'll get that up and running and then I can finally start thinking about making HEV suits which I have researched but never built or even seen in the game!

But there are challenges too. Coal is being used quite rapidly and I'm having to go further out to get it. It might run out completely especially as I'll be adding more machines. I'll need to start switching to other power sources like hydrogen, or find some hatches and manipulate them into making coal for me. I have a natural gas generator hooked up to a fertilizer machine gases, but maybe I'll have to make more of those. Or find some geysers, which I understand are quite OP in sustainability (at least in this patch!). Heat may still be an issue too. We'll see.

Regardless, life hangs on in The Fouth Hurrah - and much of that is thanks to the tips and advice from this forum, in this thread, my AETN thread and others. So thanks everyone. Right now, I don't need any help - I'll try and muddle through it myself, but I'm sure I will soon be back asking questions, especially if it all goes horribly wrong! Maybe I can get this base to a decent state with all of the research done before the next official update (can't wait for the new geysers!).

Finally, since getting over this big heat hurdle, at least for now, I've found the game much more fun - I can at last start actually doing projects and planning ahead instead of just worrying about bloody heat. It's definitely something they need to look at in future (see my Heat feedback thread in Suggestions forum).

Here's to The Fourth Hurrah and its ongoing mission to explore strange new biomes, to seek out new critters and ancient civilisations, to boldly go where no dupe has gone before! (and hopefully not overheat in the process!)

[Jigsawn]

After all my positivity last post, the end has come much sooner than I thought. I made it to cycle 200 and now am giving up.

My main killer: I ran out of power. My farms were also starting to overheat, again!

My thermo nullifier setup was working, but it wasn't cooling down the base enough. There also wasn't enough oxygen going through the pipes from it to the base (2 electrolysers), maybe I needed more than one pipe?

As for power, I ran out of coal. I had 3 generators on the go, one running almost 24/7. I had already mined out coal in most surrounding areas. I had a few hydrogen generators but no reliable source of hydrogen as my electrolysers were feeding the thermo nullifier. There are hydrogen gas pockets all over the map but its expensive and time consuming to set up pumping systems to them, and they run out fast. Aside from my one natural gas generator (Fed by a fertilizer machine) I couldn't see any other way to make enough power (aside from constantly having dupes on hamster wheels). I never found petroleum which is the other generator I had researched.

What was using power? The ones being used the most were: A few hydrogen pumps/filters, two sieves, 2 water pumps and filters for my water system. Fertilizer machine. Mechanical airlocks. A food grill and a few refrigerators.

I guess I may have expended excess power by using coal generators (I did use hamster wheels too). Although I didn't notice any big power wastage in my end of day reports. I've never touched automation as I have no clue where to start, and didn't see anything useful in that category of the research screen that could be instantly used. I was thinking though that presumably you can use automation to stop coal generators running continually. The smart battery sounds useful but has requirements that sound complicated and not for new players. Perhaps some of my gas pumps were running full time when they were just pumping the same air a lot too, draining power for no reason. Maybe my power useage just wasn't efficient enough?

Everything fell apart at once when I accidentally pumped polluted water into my clean water tank, thanks to my horribly messy piping system. By the time I'd restructured the piping system and sorted out the water, my power and heat issues were too late to emergency fix. 3 dupes died and with the farms slowly dying and power almost out, I might as well give up.

I'd like to hear your opinions on where I probably went wrong, without me using advanced techniques. I made it into the mid game this time. Dealing with, and preparing for heat overshadowed a lot of the game. Then it was a lack of power. Did I make any glaring mistakes aside from the electroylser in base, and water/germ mishaps? Was there some tech I didn't research which would have solved my power woes? Do you need automation to actually survive (if so, that sucks). I explored the map to the west and east edges, but not much up and down. I remember reading that you can find petrol towards the bottom.

For the most part I feel like I did alright, but this game is damn hard. Looking ahead, I can definitely optimise a new base better. But dealing with the longer term issues of power and overheat I suspect I might end up with the same problems. I managed to overcome most of the problems that came my way but was never quite able to get on top of the heat, and relied a lot on coal as my dupes didn't have time to be in hamster wheels.

RIP The Fourth Hurrah

[PickPay]

What an adventure ! I went through similar trouble but not as severe  

When food became an issue I had to re-enable the Microbe Musher.

For power I got Natural Gas Gen. quite early that makes a big difference and use Coal only to supplement. Oxygen production is almost self powered by the Hydrogen Gen. Also the use of Smart batteries helps save power (therefor resources).

I kept a careful eye on my water consumption based on water available and knew I had to get a water/steam Geyser soon so I didn't have to rely on filtering. But Im still filtering some of the dirty water to avoid excess.

As for heat well besides the cool air from the AETN I have to admit that without cold water my base would probably heat up too much. Im using a very simple setup with an Aquatuner + the dripping exploit to have water around 5-10°C (can show screenshot if you want).

My past experience with the game last summer helped me set different stages and plan projects a little ahead of time before the situation becomes critical. Roughly in this order : Food - Power (Nat gas Geyser) - Electrolyzers (AETN) - Water Geyser - Plastic (Crude oil)

[Jigsawn]

I guess not finding any geysers except for a chlorine one didn't help. So what other natural gas sources are there apart from geysers? There's the fertiliser machine and farting (lol), anything else? I've seen a few pockets of it around too.

I've decided to hold off on the new update till the official patch, but the new geysers will probably change the balance a lot. 

I've started a new base and kept hatches alive this time, I have 3 on one plane so hoping to use them as a coal source later by putting general minerals in storage compactor there and emptying their contents now and then so the hatches can guzzle on them. 

I'm wondering if I went a bit overkill with insulating my entire base with abysallite last time. It took so much time to dig out and build.

[PickPay]

Yeah Im surprised you didn't have any Geysers. I have 2 nat. gas, 2 steam/water and 1 chlorine ("Tubular map"). The Oil Refinery also produces nat. gas at 60g/s.

I only used abyssalite tiles on the L shaped wall on the right that separates my hot machinery from the rest of the base.

Heat overlay of my base at cycle 429. Notice the cold areas are where the water idles before feeding plants :