Game almost unplayable - running out of water.

[Xira]

I've managed to survive to cycle 412 and have a nice little 'borg cube' set up, but the steam geysers just don't produce enough water for me to survive. Eventually you run out of dirt to grow meal lice and water to hydrolyze into oxygen - heaven forbid I try to grow bristle berries with water. I'm a fairly sophisticated player so it's probably not something I'm doing wrong - I've even gone and harvested almost all of the polluted water basins and converted it to water.

 

I was fairly lucky this round with 2 cool steam geysers that are on a quarter of the time (between dormancy and idle time) with 2KG and 13KG/sec production.

 

I don't think this difficulty was intentional or that you intended long-term survival to be 100% dependant on the steam geysers the RNG hands you. Plz fix.

[DyingCrow]

I'd say you didnt manage your resources correctly, There are ways to stay water positive in maps with little water sources. One is not rely too heavily on synthesizers for natural gas, instead find the balance between the natural gas geysers and cooking crude oil, and mixing it with coal and petroleum power. Then you have the option of growing mushrooms and ranching as a food supply, they dont use any water. My previous run i came across the same problem at around cycle 800, where id already used 90% of all the water on the map. But i made mistakes, it was my fault. And a good lesson learned right there  

Experience is a great teacher in ONI. No 2 maps are the same, and chances are you wont be able to play them the exact same way.,

[Luminite2]

I think a cool thing about the geyser system is that the variation in maps necessitates a variety of strategies to adapt to what resources you have available. Your map, for example, seems like it may be incentivizing dusk caps as the primary food source, because they require less water than berries. You also probably want to make sure you're harvesting and maintaining all naturally-occurring crops (which don't need water), especially sleet wheat. Also, ranching hatches requires no water.

I don't know what other geysers you have, but I strongly suspect that there are at least a couple that you can use to either provide water or to reduce water needs.

[TheExceed]

51 minutes ago, Xira said:

I've managed to survive to cycle 412 and have a nice little 'borg cube' set up, but the steam geysers just don't produce enough water for me to survive. Eventually you run out of dirt to grow meal lice and water to hydrolyze into oxygen - heaven forbid I try to grow bristle berries with water. I'm a fairly sophisticated player so it's probably not something I'm doing wrong - I've even gone and harvested almost all of the polluted water basins and converted it to water.

 

I was fairly lucky this round with 2 cool steam geysers that are on a quarter of the time (between dormancy and idle time) with 2KG and 13KG/sec production.

 

I don't think this difficulty was intentional or that you intended long-term survival to be 100% dependant on the steam geysers the RNG hands you. Plz fix.

I agree as some geysers are so completely useless. All hot steam are pretty useless imo.|
Then I have 2 cool steam that only output like 100-300g/s of steam.
Luckily, I found one that outputs 4.6kg/s and a pw vent that outputs over 5kg/s.
I use the smaller vents for water around the base and the bigger one for oxygen and pw vent for oxygen and power.

[avc15]

I brickwalled at water shortage several times when I was new as well, don't give up so easily.

The next couple times I lost because heat got out of control.

It's just a race to make your base efficient, conserve resources as much as possible while building, and not let your dupes idle.

Keep trying !

[Xira]

6 minutes ago, DyingCrow said:

I'd say you didnt manage your resources correctly, There are ways to stay water positive in maps with little water sources. One is not rely too heavily on synthesizers for natural gas, instead find the balance between the natural gas geysers and cooking crude oil, and mixing it with coal and petroleum power. Then you have the option of growing mushrooms and ranching as a food supply, they dont use any water. My previous run i came across the same problem at around cycle 800, where id already used 90% of all the water on the map. But i made mistakes, it was my fault. And a good lesson learned right there  

Experience is a great teacher in ONI. No 2 maps are the same, and chances are you wont be able to play them the exact same way.,

I have no synthesizers. Thus far I've been doing things that require power during the 'on' cycle of my natural gas vents and I have a manual generator station set up to produce just enough power to produce oxygen and run the purifier during the 'off' cycle. I obviously don't run the metal refinery during the 'off' cycle of the steam geysers but I still need to produce oxygen from water...Everything else I do with water is in a recycle loop, so the only net loss of water happening is the electrolyzer.

To survive this off cycle I've resorted to generating Morbs to produce oxygen and pressure for growth of food and just cycling through duplicants as they get sick and die.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to survive without enough water to run a single electrolyzer continuously.

 

And yes I could farm dusk caps but slime is also limited and Pufts only produce a few grams at a time, so even farming them wouldn't allow me to produce enough food to survive.

I've dug up most of the natural food sources, so I guess I could go back and do that. 

[TheExceed]

Pufts and morbs are certainly enough for keeping dusk caps.
My farm is 4 groups of 4 tamed pufts with 12 morbs.
I dont care for the math tbh in terms of morb output and puft intake.
But this keeps me going with slime for 30 duskcaps as well as produces eggs to cook up too.

As for water, yeah unfortunately RNG has to be on your side in terms of geyser output amounts.
If you get lucky and find 4kg/s geysers you're golden.

[Coolthulhu]

How many dupes do you have? Sounds like you're playing at some crazy number like 30 or so.

There is no way you'd use up all the available water from pools and ice by cycle 400 without a massive excess of dupes.

[SkunkMaster]

7 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

How many dupes do you have? Sounds like you're playing at some crazy number like 30 or so.

There is no way you'd use up all the available water from pools and ice by cycle 400 without a massive excess of dupes.

and even so, there are ways to make water from oil, slime, natural gas....  so many options that even a 30 dupe colony could be made sustainable...

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've had some issues with water as well.  My solution was to be extremely critical of my water use from the very start.

1) Save the polluted water from sinks.  Usually by cycle 20 or so, I have set up a room for saving contaminated water.  It includes a pump so that I can get the water back out later.

Spoiler

The 'empty pipe' icon is because I haven't connected the bridge yet -- no plumbing set up.  This is just a collecting pool at the moment. It will get developed later.

2) Avoid mush bars like the plague.  Per caloric unit, they use way too much water.  Along the same lines, don't produce Liceloaf either.  Sure, its better, but it still uses far too much water over time.

3) Transition from outhouses to lavatories as soon as possible.  Each time the dupes "make a deposit" there is a slight net gain in available water.  Showers and sinks are water neutral, so having them on your plumbing lines is just fine.

4) Avoid using Algae Terrariums.  They can be useful in the right areas, but their water -> oxygen path is wasteful.  I've only used them on maps where I couldn't find a lot of algae, and only until I could get my electrolyzer up and running.

5) Mushrooms.  I try to get mushrooms started as soon as possible.  Dupes won't eat mealwood for too long before they start to become unhappy over it, and bristle blossoms use water.  However, that said, a small bristle blossom farm is just fine to augment whatever other food you're producing.

6) Hatch farms are great for water-free food.  There are two different methods.. you can cook the eggs, or you can cook the meat.  Doesn't matter -- its water-free food.    Feed the hatches something that you have a ton of but don't often use.  Sedimentary rock, clay, .. dig out an oil biome and feed them igneous rock.  

7) Find some resource use paths that work.  For example, your hatch farm will produce a lot of coal. Use the coal for power and send the carbon dioxide to slicksters.  Turn the crude into petroleum and store it up. IF you use a refinery, make sure to store the resulting natural gas as well.  When your polluted water pool gets low, turn off the coal generators and crank up the petroleum generator.  Send the PW to your collection pool to get turned into water for your electrolyzers.  Your food production chain now PRODUCES water instead of using it.

Unfortunately, I have yet to set up a system that runs continually.  Most things will run for a while and I have to switch to others for a bit.  For example, that natural gas waste from making petrolium? Once I have a lot of it stored up, then instead of running the petrol genny, I run natural gas generators.  This gives time for more petrolium to be stored up but still augments my dwindling water supplies.  I've got a 600+ cycle run that didn't start looking for water outside the starting area until around cycle 300, and its only recently tapped in to geysers.

 

 

[badimo]

@Xira I suggest you post your save file so the people on this forum that are smarter than I can provide some real guidance.  Based on my experience, something seems off with your current situation but it is hard to provide advice without observing what is happening.  Everyone is just speculating at this point.

[TheExceed]

2 hours ago, badimo said:

@Xira I suggest you post your save file so the people on this forum that are smarter than I can provide some real guidance.  Based on my experience, something seems off with your current situation but it is hard to provide advice without observing what is happening.  Everyone is just speculating at this point.

I wouldn't use the term "smarter" for anything like this. Just because people are smarter does not mean they are better. It's about the experience.

[Ayka]

I'm not sure how one takes into account calling themselves a "Fairly Sophisticated" player, but by near anyone's standards I should count.

One thing that I've learned about ONI over the past few patches is very rarely have you exhausted all of your options. I dont see mention of using Dirty P. Water to run Power in your off-geyser cycles even on a smart circuit to recycle more Clean P-Water and reduce your reliance on other sources. I don't see anywhere where you boiled your Dirty P. Water to clean it up to recycle it. I don't see where you mentioned melting ice, polluted ice, or snow; to their liquid forms.

If I've ever learned anything, there is ALWAYS something you could have done better. I'm not sure how many duplicants you're running, or what your base looks like; but I'd be much more likely to assume you've made a mistake if you're running out of potable water at anything under Cycle 750.

I'd love to see your save file to help you find where you went wrong. I'm sure others here are just as likely to help.

Also fairly certain this is a Troll post anyway.

[Guest]

Regardless, it has become much more difficult to play the game because of the lack of water. If you have a somewhat bad map, you are simply going to run out of water! It is too much on the edge. I use to run bases of 50 dupes. I can't find myself being able to run even 20 anymore. This forced playstyle of just hamstering water out of everything is plainly ruining the fun for me to the point I myself get frustrating and just debug more sources water into the map. Something of which I am not exactly proud of, but I myself have enough of running small 10 dupe bases.

You can all say what you want and point the finger to the person adressing the issue, but if you have to cramp so hard on your playstyle than something is clearly wrong. At this moment in time I laugh at things like plastic, because it's a waste of water on petroleum, it is a waste of water on research and it is a waste on valuable dupe time. That's how much the game has to be played on edge.

When the guy above says he is experienced, we have to assume he is not arrogant. He uses a borg cube ffs, that's pretty advanced. Can you imagine how a new player feels like? Do you even think he or she will promote a game where they can't seem to get pass a certain point because they can't imagine water being that critical?

No this went too far. The developers have to do something about this.

[Ray_Garraty]

I can't really see why would someone want to take in so many dupes, like 20 or more? You'll need to build massive exosuit docking stations for them, make tons of oxygen and food and what for? Imho 12-15 dupes is enough for most tasks

[Grimgaw]

The game is fine. It's better than it ever was, and I'm enjoying the uncertainty of geysers.

If you struggle with water there's more than enough oil and magma on the map to combine both and use in NGG to last you into thousands of cycles.

Quote

Can you imagine how a new player feels like?

Stop projecting your unwillingness to adapt on new players.

Game is fine.

[PhailRaptor]

18 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Stop projecting your unwillingness to adapt on new players.

Perhaps you should consider doing the same with your elitism.

Good for you, you're very good at this game.  That's great.  But not everyone is as good as you are.  Myself as an example, I still struggle with first the transition to Electrolyzers, then producing a reliable water recycling system for bathrooms.  By that time I'm out of starting water, and I haven't even figured out a cooling solution for Geyser water to put together a Berry farm.  Are you telling me that at cycle ~200 I should already be working with Magma and Oil?

And I've been playing since Agriculture.  I can't imagine how much harder ONI would be if I were just starting it now.  And the game isn't even done yet!

The game is not fine for players of a more average skill level.

[Grimgaw]

@PhailRaptor You are struggling with ONI basics which have not changed since geyser got introduced. 

OP is struggling at cycle 412 and thread is already full of people telling him how to fix it.

Honestly, game is fine.

[0xFADE]

The new geysers are an issue for sure.  I've got 3 cool steam geysers and they don't produce as much as two of them used to.  It doesn't help that one of them is on maybe a third as long as the other and the hidden one puts out barely 1/10th of the normal ones.  Looking at how much they output before starting a map is definitely important now.

I'd never really used the water filter before.  Anyway necessity is the mother of invention.  I'm going to be stressing all the uses of polluted water and natural gas I can think of.

[BlueLance]

12 hours ago, Xira said:

I've managed to survive to cycle 412 and have a nice little 'borg cube' set up, but the steam geysers just don't produce enough water for me to survive. Eventually you run out of dirt to grow meal lice and water to hydrolyze into oxygen - heaven forbid I try to grow bristle berries with water. I'm a fairly sophisticated player so it's probably not something I'm doing wrong - I've even gone and harvested almost all of the polluted water basins and converted it to water.

I am also curious about how many dupes you are playing with, it takes me near 200 cycles just to run out of start water from running 4 electrolyzers and my bristle berry farm. I play with 16 usually. Lasts longer if i take longer to get to 16 dupes.

Bristle berries only require 10kg per cycle, so even your worst geyser, for every 5 seconds it is on can provide enough water for one plant. Those same 5 seconds would also give you 10 seconds of oxygen generation Assuming you have a 100% electrolyzer set up eventually when your base has enough oxygen they will consume less water since there is too much oxygen.

You should have enough polluted water in the map and sand to run for a very very long time, you can also boil the polluted water when you run out of sand.

Also like @0xFADE said, 

11 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

necessity is the mother of invention.  I'm going to be stressing all the uses of polluted water and natural gas I can think of.

That is spot on.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

@PhailRaptor You are struggling with ONI basics which have not changed since geyser got introduced. 

OP is struggling at cycle 412 and thread is already full of people telling him how to fix it.

Honestly, game is fine.

He is actually one of the most experienced players around.

The game is not fine. It has gone from pure survival in the beta to too easy sustainability to actually a good balance to being back survival. There's absolutely no line to draw from it. If the developers want to make this a pure survival game again, than that's great, but get rid of the high end stuff like tubes, plastic, conveyor belts. Nobody is bothering with that in a survival game.

Maybe you should indeed stop projecting your own experience and arrogance on other players. I am experienced and have a good grasp on the basics, Phail Raptor certainly has a good grasp on the basics. We are playing this game over a year now. Instead of trying to bicker and accuse me "projecting unwillingness", why don't you actually argue the point: new players will be heavily discouraged. Most players don't take the time to go to the wiki or the forums. They want to be able to figure out the game while playing it, not banging their head on their wall out of frustration.

1 hour ago, Ray_Garraty said:

I can't really see why would someone want to take in so many dupes, like 20 or more? You'll need to build massive exosuit docking stations for them, make tons of oxygen and food and what for? Imho 12-15 dupes is enough for most tasks

Because it has been done. There were 100 dupe challenges half a year ago. It doesn't have to be that extreme, but if you are going to stress every possible source of water, I do feel you should be rewarded by being able to sustain a high dupe count. The game developers even paid special attention with the priority systems so that players with high dupe count can micro manage better. They said that themselves. So clearly the intent is there, but without a decent supply of water you can't do better than 15 dupes on average.

[PhailRaptor]

12 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

@PhailRaptor You are struggling with ONI basics which have not changed since geyser got introduced.

You sure about that?

Farming has been reworked twice since I started playing.  Agriculture update itself, which was quickly reworked again, almost a reversion but not quite.  And now the current system with Mealwood costing dirt and Bristle Blossom water cost being greatly reduced.  And just this Update we now have Eggs.

There used to be upwards of 15 each of Water and NatGas Geysers with fixed outputs.  That got reworked to 2 of each and a Chlorine.  Now it's 2 Water, and either 2 NatGas or 1 NatGas and a Chlorine.  And now, this update, all their outputs are variable based on world seed.  Even if you find a particular Geyser, more often than not it's producing a mere fraction of what it used to, let alone what the other 13+ of it's kind used to.  This is a direct impact on how much water is available for use.

Are you really suggesting that these things haven't changed?

23 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

OP is struggling at cycle 412 and thread is already full of people telling him how to fix it

I never said my colonies died at cycle 200.  But I'm certainly stalled out there.  Reading OP's posts, it sounds an awful lot like they are experiencing the same problems I am, simply at a later point.  So they're a little better than I am.  And if you actually read the other posts in this thread, only 6 of them have anything concrete to them.  The rest are either in full agreement that there's not enough water on the map, or extremely nebulous statements of "just keep trying".

31 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Honestly, game is fine.

For you, sure.  But we've already established that you are clearly a heavily experienced player.  You aren't looking at the game with fresh eyes.  Really, this statement just amounts to a prettier "git good, scrublord".

I hope that's not your intention, but process of elimination I'm not seeing another option.

[Grimgaw]

1 minute ago, turbonl64 said:

why don't you actually argue the point: new players will be heavily discouraged

I'll take you up on this. Here goes.

Game hasn't changed for new players since the introduction of geysers. In fact since plants use less then outrageous 80kg/cycle of water it's easiest it's been since.

[Guest]

Just now, Grimgaw said:

I'll take you up on this. Here goes.

Game hasn't changed for new players since the introduction of geysers. In fact since plants use less then outrageous 80kg/cycle of water it's easiest it's been since.

You must be joking. Geyser output was, at introduction, that much of an issue people were struggling to create room to electrolyze all the water. And you had anywhere between 4 and 10 of those water geysers. plants being 4 times as consuming is laughable, especially because back then the heat in the farm tiles did not affect the plants.

[Grimgaw]

3 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

You sure about that?

Yes.

Transition to elcectrolyzers has not changed since... ever.

Water recycling has not changed. In fact Sieve is in it's most efficient state... ever.

Cooling geyser water for berry farm. Again hasn't changed or is more easy these days.

2 minutes ago, turbonl64 said:

You must be joking. Geyser output was, at introduction, that much of an issue people were struggling to create room to electrolyze all the water. And you had anywhere between 4 and 10 of those water geysers. plants being 4 times as consuming is laughable, especially because back then the heat in the farm tiles did not affect the plants.

You lost me here. Not sure what point are you making here.

Quote

Geyser output was, at introduction, that much of an issue people were struggling(...)

Quote

(...)especially because back then the heat in the farm tiles did not affect the plants.

Are you saying people were struggling with geysers before and they are struggling now? So what changed?