Game almost unplayable - running out of water.

[Oozinator]

Just now, BlueLance said:

It isn't, If you die to something you learn how to fix it. It took me till about my 40th to actually be able to breath and test new things XD

Yes, similar for me, but ONI changed a lot since i started playing.
I was never frustrated, to start a new base, when i failed, but it changed between last three updates.
The exploring/inventing factor is more limited and when new stuff comes ot, it's somewhat high research target and most times useless for my playstyle.
For me personal ONI was a great game, now it's a good game.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Oozinator said:

Yes, similar for me, but ONI changed a lot since i started playing.
I was never frustrated, to start a new base, when i failed, but it changed between last three updates.
The exploring/inventing factor is more limited and when new stuff comes ot, it's somewhat high research target and most times useless for my playstyle.
For me personal ONI was a great game, now it's a good game.

I feel the same. The high end stuff just doesn't feel useful when you are worrying about resources.

[Lutzkhie]

you need to build fast and explore fast, transition from melwood to bristtle then to gristtle should be based on the number of dupe to maximize water usage
dont rely too much on electrolyzer, switch to algae deoxydizer when your water source is dormant or in critical level (unless if you got a lot of water)

[Oozinator]

5 minutes ago, Lutzkhie said:

you need to build fast and explore fast, transition from melwood to bristtle then to gristtle should be based on the number of dupe to maximize water usage
dont rely too much on electrolyzer, switch to algae deoxydizer when your water source is dormant or in critical level (unless if you got a lot of water)

There are many different ways to feed dupes and to give them something to breath..

[WanderingKid]

@Xira What's your Dupe count?  I only recently started playing in the Rancher 1 update after taking a few months off, and I've had nearly no issues keeping up on food and Hydrolyzer usage, but I admit I'm only getting over to the mid-game at around Cycle 75 with 17 dupes.  I've barely even dented my PH20 volume (actually being aggravated by a bug), nor have I started a ranch. 

That said I'm certainly in a good place food wise with room for expansion and my Electrolyzers are purring along nicely, and that's on the opening water supply.

I'm aware of the mid-game change that usually happens for geysers, but what is your actual expectation and what kind of volumes are you getting from the geysers?

[Xira]

9 hours ago, BlueLance said:

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, 

That is spot on.

I was playing with 10 dupes.

 

Perhaps I should clarify, I was hitting 400 cycles (700 now and not much has changed - still having mass dieoffs while the water geysers are dormant) and noticing the sustainability problem. I can go tap the ice biomes for another few hundred cycles and maybe by then I'll have a petro cracking station set up that can produce enough NG to last forever, but what I found in my starting area was in no way sufficient to run a single electrolyzer and berry farm - I can only run 1 electrolyzer most of the time. And yes, I did convert to a mushroom farm and am setting up a Morb/Puft slime farm.

It's unfun to run through a 65.2 cycle period of time with 1 duplicant running the manual generator and farms before the geysers come back and I can start hiring again for a ~80 cycle period.

[TheExceed]

@XiraI have been sitting at 12 dupes since cycle 100 (now 980).
I had a tough time at first too because my geysers were crap. Had to melt ice for bristle.
Then found a ph2o vent which quite literally solved all of my problems.

It really is all about RNG with geysers but if you don't get what you want/need, there are other ways:
Cleaning ph20. algae distiller. morb farm etc.
Just gotta find what will work for you.

[Arash70]

Go to: 

There's plenty of water around the map, you can also make your own water.

Here's somethings you can do:

Natural Gas Geyser -> Natural Gas Generator -> Water Sieve -> Water

Slime -> Algae Distiller -> Water Sieve -> Water

Water -> Lavatories -> Water Sieve -> 2.34 * Water

Polluted Water -> Water Sieve -> Water

Polluted Water -> Drip on magma -> Water

Polluted Ice -> Polluted Water Tank -> Water Sieve -> Water

Ice/Snow -> Storage Compactor -> Water Tank -> Water

 

[WanderingKid]

14 minutes ago, Xira said:

I was playing with 10 dupes.

How very interesting... that is nothing like what I'm seeing.  With only 10 dupes you shouldn't even have a huge power component, a few coal generators and a NGG or two off a geyser should keep you completely stable to not need to go manual.

The 20kg/cycle for a Blossom ends up at 66.67g/s per blossom.  Using Farmers and hydroponics you get them to produce in 3 day cycles, so 2/dupe.  At 10 dupes, you're at 1.33kg/s for 10 dupes (without playing games with the valve amounts... is that still a thing?).  Yeah, that's probably not going to happen unless you get a really strong RNG.

I heavily rely on Mushrooms however.  A pair of Electrolyzers should support 15 dupes (with some leeway) at 2kg/s of water consumption, so that ending up tight makes sense.  I guess I'll have to try out some maps and see what the RNG does to me.  Thanks for the observations.

[Luminite2]

25 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

The 20kg/cycle for a Blossom ends up at 66.67g/s per blossom.  Using Farmers and hydroponics you get them to produce in 3 day cycles, so 2/dupe.  At 10 dupes, you're at 1.33kg/s for 10 dupes (without playing games with the valve amounts... is that still a thing?).  Yeah, that's probably not going to happen unless you get a really strong RNG.

600 seconds per cycle, so 20kg/cycle = 33.33 g/s per blossom. Assuming cooking into gristle berries, constant tune-up farmer's touch, and free fertilizer, each plant gives 2000 kcal every 3 cycles which means 1.5 blossoms/dupe, so thats 15 for 10 dupes which is about 500 g/s of water, which I think is a lot more attainable than 1.33 kg/s.

[WanderingKid]

Just now, Luminite2 said:

600 seconds per cycle, so 20kg/cycle = 33.33 g/s per blossom.

Ah, you're right, my bad.  Don't know why I used 300s instead of 600s as the timer.  Appreciated.  Certainly more reasonable then my original thought. 

Why would you care about tune ups though?  They only adjust for power usage, which shouldn't really be a concern, but metals being a finite resource is (at least to me).

[Luminite2]

1 minute ago, WanderingKid said:

Ah, you're right, my bad.  Don't know why I used 300s instead of 600s as the timer.  Appreciated.  Certainly more reasonable then my original thought. 

Why would you care about tune ups though?  They only adjust for power usage, which shouldn't really be a concern, but metals being a finite resource is (at least to me).

Terminology mistake; I meant the farmer's touch buff.

[Grimgaw]

11 hours ago, Xira said:

It's unfun to run through a 65.2 cycle period of time with 1 duplicant running the manual generator and farms before the geysers come back and I can start hiring again for a ~80 cycle period.

What about coal gen? I have mine connected to smart battery by cycle 15.

[cpy]

If only I could find a way to make ore out of pure metals from volcanoes. Anyone found anything?

Or maybe you could pump crude oil to oil wells instead of water to make more crude oil

[Oozinator]

1 hour ago, cpy said:

If only I could find a way to make ore out of pure metals from volcanoes. Anyone found anything?

I  tried many things, no result ^^
When it's theoretically possible, there must be something in the code about that "re" transform process
@R9MX4 is it possible?

 

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

11 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

I  tried many things, no result ^^
When it's theoretically possible, there must be something in the code about that "re" transform process
@R9MX4 is it possible?

Sorry I didn't follow this topic.

It seems you want to ask if it's possible to modify game code to make a machine that can convert refined metal to metal ore? 

Yes I can. Though I can't create a new machine, I could add some recipes to old machine.

 

1 hour ago, cpy said:

If only I could find a way to make ore out of pure metals from volcanoes. Anyone found anything?

I guess it's impossible in current game without any modify.

[Oozinator]

8 minutes ago, R9MX4 said:

Sorry I didn't follow this topic.

It seems you want to ask if it's possible to modify game code to make a machine that can convert refined metal to metal ore? 

Yes I can. Though I can't create a new machine, I could add some recipes to old machine.

Thank you very much. Is it possible, without modding, to get refined" metal, back into "ore" state?
 

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

10 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

Thank you very much. Is it possible, withoud modding, to get refined" metal, back into "ore" state?

AFAIK, impossible.

 

Two way to convert refined metal to metal ore

1.machine

2.melt and solidify

 

The first way is restricted by machine recipes, but it's easy to be modified, add new machines and new recipes.

The second way, it's a one-way street now, and I don't think there is any evidence shows that devs will add an opposite rule to ONI world.

[Oozinator]

Hmm, but would it not be nice, to have a way to convert it back?
Perhaps a machine, taking in 65g/sec liquid CO² - 333g/sec O² 200Kg refined metal - and it shapes a solid block, worth 100 Kg ore. Dig out by dupe, something like that.

I bet @cpy is not happy to hear that.
 

[BlueLance]

Tonight I will send a picture of my power set up (once I rebuild it as I started anew last night, currently on cycle 48 using a single coal gen/smart battery hooked up to research table and 1 algae deoxidizer

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 4/9/2018 at 1:55 AM, PhailRaptor said:

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.

OK, first, if you're running out of starting water while doing the transition to electrolyzers and bathroom plumbing, then you have been using a lot of unnecessary water in your starting game.  Second: I've played into cycle 400 without ever really leaving the starting biome, so it definitely is not necessary to be working with magma and oil by cycle 200.  THIRD... you can set up a berry farm by cycle 10.

Berries are not nearly as picky as they were at the start of Agriculture.  They'll grow until the temp is 30c, so if you keep your heat sources away from them, they'll be fine in your starting biome.

I tend to build slowly, keeping resources manageable.  For example, I almost never exceed 5 dupes until I get electrolyzers up and running.  I also spend time thinking about what my limited resources are and how to conserve them.  Algae, water, and dirt are the big ones.  I found out through experience that mushbars are a big problem.  Sure, you may need to make them for a couple cycles near the beginning, but they will run you out of water like nobody's business if you keep doing it.

I find that, much like  "Don't Starve," it takes several attempts at play before you begin to thrive.  If an idea doesn't work, load an older save and try something else.  Or if you find yourself running out of water by cycle 200, then start thinking about how you've been using the water and start a new game using different methods.  

ONI is challenging, but it isn't impossible.  It also isn't getting more difficult.  It _is_ changing, because we're playing it in an Alpha state.  We only see part of what the designers have planned.  They have also been changing some things based on feedback.  For example, Bristleberries now have a more flexible temperature range and mealwood are no longer a completely free food source.

Personally, I don't let others tell me where I "need" to be by a certain cycle of the game.  My play style is always going to be unique to me.  I do, however, think about ideas others have posted about.  I also think about how various buildings interact, what I can do with waste resources (heat included), and how I can keep my dupes alive and breathing.   Change your thought process: Don't think "This game is too hard" think "What can I do differently to have  a better outcome?"

Perhaps that large fertilizer farm is using up too much of my precious water.  What if I shut it down and used coal for a while?  What if I re-designed my power grid for efficiency and try powering everything off the hydrogen from my electrolyzers?  What if I carefully clean out an ice biome, leaving all the sleetwheat growing naturally -- can I get enough food that way without building a hydroponics farm?  That toxic area gave me a HUGE amount of phosphorite.. what if I used it to ranch the glow bugs for eggs, allowing me to temporarily shut down my berry farm to conserve water? 

[sybrwookie]

I consider myself pretty new (I'm excited because I just built my first base to make it to 200, which is also my first to hit 300!), and my naming scheme for bases was based on how I failed the last time.  "Oh, Algae's limited."  "Oh, food takes water."  "Oh, germs are a thing."  Etc.  I probably went through 30ish before I even hit 100 cycles on a base.

I started a few weeks before ranching and honestly, if it was any easier than the time I've had, I think I would have gotten bored and stopped playing.  As is, now that I'm at a fairly stable base at 300 cycles, there's a bit more I want to play around with, with ranching (I am just finishing up expanding my Slickster farm and want to set up a Puft/Morb farm as well), but at that point, I think it'll be time for me to put the game down for a while until it's updated enough times to change the experience drastically.

Has it been difficult?  Sure.  Have I spent more time reading posts/guides/watching videos than actually playing the game?  Possibly.  Do I wish a bit more info was available inside the game?  Heeellllllll yes.  But other than that, I feel like all the tools I need to survive are there, I just need to keep learning to use them better and better.

[BlueLance]

9 minutes ago, sybrwookie said:

my naming scheme for bases was based on how I failed the last time.  "Oh, Algae's limited."  "Oh, food takes water."  "Oh, germs are a thing."  Etc.

I name mine after Vaults   Each is an experiment. Although currently I name them Mega Vaults because I edited the world Gen to get rid of ruins, increase map size and random geyser spawns. I like your naming sense, I kept a sheet with how each vault perished.

[cpy]

Guess maybe some de-scrubber machine or something will be added later. Who knows?

[GrindThisGame]

Almost everything in the game is water. It's just a matter of transforming it. Arash70 covered many of those transformations above. A few more:

Almost any material > hatch > coal > CO2 > slickster > oil

oil > heat (eg magma) > petroleum > nat gas > polluted water > sieve > water

oil > petroleum > petroleum generator > sieve > water

There is so much water trapped in ice it can last a very long time.