Surviving longer than 50 cycles

[CreativeBox.exe]

I have been playing Oxygen not included for a while, but I never created a colony that was stable. Every colony dies slowly after cycle 50, so I need your help. My main problems are not enough oxygen (big suprise), not enough food and not enough power. My idea was searching for a geyser, that creates natural gas. With that, I want to build natural gas generators for power and polluted water. After I cleared the polluted water, I want to make oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is for my dupes and the hydrogen is for my hydrogen generators for more power. To get rid of the carbin dioxide I want to use carbon skimmers. Is that doable or a horrible, supid idea which will certainly get me killed.

No matter what, do you still have good ideas or experience?

[WanderingKid]

Not all of your answers are wrong, but your timing is mispositioned.  I worry you missed a few 'easy' answers along the way.  A colony should be relatively easy to stabilize once you have the tools and knowledge in position.  Assuming you've learned the tools through the school of hard knows, now you just need the knowledge.

Dying on 50 has about 4 ways you can get there, two if you've moved past dying on 20.  One is food variety.  If you're on mealwood for everyone still, you end up with a problem because half your dupes are in massage beds all day.  The other way is not enough exploration.  If you've run out of coal or algae, you're in a bad place that way, too.

So, to answer your last question first, a Natural Gas Generator requires a ton of infrastructure and knowledge to get it to work right, and Oil is even worse about 4 fold.  However, I'm more curious how you got to that particular question.

You need 3 things at all times for dupes, everything else is extra or building for a different time to change tactics.  Oxygen is your first one, and you feed that with Algae for a *long* time.  The huge green patches in the Christmas biome (Jungle, whatever) have iron, Algae, and Igneous Rock.  There's literally plenty to go for at least 100-150 cycles of Algae in there if you dig for a bit.  You must explore though, otherwise you have to dig well and quickly to get what you have to work.

Your next problem is food.  There are two staple foods you can build with reasonably minimal effort, Mealwood and Fungal Spores.  Mealwood is quite literally the easiest food to make, but you need 5 plants/dupe to keep the averages up.  Mushrooms take 3/shrooms per dupe to keep up without fertilization, 2 with farm stations.

Power uses Coal.  Start there.  Hydrogen doesn't have enough unless you know exactly WHY you're avoiding easy power, and that takes a bit.  Use coal.  Hydrogen is a booster until you know why you're not using coal, the easy power. 

Finally, CO2 via Skimmer isn't a bad choice.  It's not good, but it's pretty neutral, especially for the early game.  *AHEM* … in my personal opinion.  There is only one reason to keep CO2 around, and that's for slicksters.  Considering the conversation you're having, I'm assuming you haven't met any, nevermind ranched a bunch to your preferences.  So, really, get rid of CO2 any dang way you can.  I typically freeze it, but Sieve+Skimmer is certainly an option.  The option of just keep digging down will also help for a while until you find a few choices to deal with what you've got.

CO2 has three basic options.  Ignore it (dig deeper, ship to freezer till later), convert it (skimmer/slickser), or store it (high pressure vents).  I typically end up ignoring it by digging until I can convert it.  All are options, it depends on what you want to do later.  Your easiest method is to use a skimmer with a sieve attached so you can clean the water and get rid of the problem.

[Yoma_Nosme]

1 minute ago, CreativeBox.exe said:

My main problems are not enough oxygen (big suprise), not enough food and not enough power.

1. Oxygen. Use algae deoxidizer with a pressure sensor to save power and algae. 

You will need to research granulator to build with refined metal and research the pressure sensor.

Place the sensor inside your sleeping area or working area. Or 1 floor above the dupe printer and set it to 1200-1400

Keep digging for algae. There is plenty for more than 100cycles and use mechanical doors to keep the oxygen inside the core base. Especially doors on the top because oxygen will flow upwards.

Dig downward and build no doors so the co2 can settle down you can deal later with it.

I usually go for electrolyzer quite late when I see algae is running low and I found enough wheezworts to cool the oxygen or have enough power to cool it with aquatuner or thermo regulator. 

2. Power. Use the hamster wheels and 1 coal generator that's 1000w. For start the wires can't take much more. 

Very important are smart batteries you automate with your hamsterwheel and generator so they only run when power is low. To spare resources and dupe time.

One note on the hamsterwheel. I have rather 1 dupe dedicated running half the time than 2 or 3 hamsterwheel with them running 30% of the time.

3. Food. Start with mealwood in planterboxes. Berries will need water. You can get extra water with a sieve loop after the lavatory and wash basins.

Take some ph2o run it through a sieve let dupes use the toilet. The germy ph2o from the toilet flows to the sieve. Now deconstruct the first pump that started the ph2o and make a loop...cleanwater-toilet-sieve-cleanwater-toilet....

The sieve water will have Food poison but it's not so bad. Germy water will still clean dupes in showers and wash basins. And it can irrigate berries. You will need to cook them so dupes don't get sick!!(GRISTLE BERRIES) top right of the hud, the consumable tab, disable berries so dupes won't eat them raw

[WanderingKid]

2 minutes ago, turbonl64 said:

Current maps should yield enough algae to atleast survive up until cycle 50. So oxygen is not really the big issue here immediately if you limit your dupe count to below 10 (that's very important).

I disagree with this horribly, turbon.  I typically hit 10 dupes long before cycle 35, and that's only when I get a few sets of horrible ones.  Dupe count in my experience doesn't need to be throttled before 15 dupes and that's if you're long gaming the cool steam geysers.

[CreativeBox.exe]

Okay, so I need algae deoxidyzers, coal generators and a big hole for the carbon dioxide, to deal with it later. Also mealwood and algae.

Good, but I have 2 more questions: the different types of athmosphere is causing troubles, so how do I build airlocks and what happenes after I have run out of coal and algae?

[BlueLance]

A good piece of advice as well for when you explore, keep tabs on oxygen leaving your base, if you struggle with oxygen you ideally don't want too much of it leaking out and away from your base. 

Another bit of helpful information, if you find a pocket of polluted oxygen, check to see if it is infected with slimelung, if it is not place two or three of the air purifiers down and open it, this will convert it some if not all of it to clean oxygen. Just make sure you do not leave any slime lying around, store it underwater for safety or you might find yourself with an infection.

[PhailRaptor]

46 minutes ago, turbonl64 said:

However, polluted oxygen and hydrogen will raise above it.

This is true for Hydrogen, but it is not true for Polluted Oxygen.  Both clean and Polluted Oxygen have the same gas weight.  The only reason they might separate is if you have an air current (digging into a vacuum sucking it from the front, or a production source pushing it from the back).

[PhailRaptor]

4 minutes ago, turbonl64 said:

I always had polluted oxygen raise above normal oxygen.

Water will do this.  Oxygen will not.  More than likely, the location this was occurring in was above a production source for Oxygen.

[Kabrute]

it always moves left/right on me and refuses to change in elevation unless it hits a different gas like hydrogen or co2, which honestly shouldn't happen like it used to since they leveled off the gas some more. Going on what Bluelance said, even if the pocket is infected I will slap deos in there because eventually the infection will die in clean o2 but never in po2 so better to get it started cleaning early imo.

[Yunru]

Can confirm, in order:

Hydrogen

Polluted Oxygen

Oxygen

Nat Gas

Chlorine

CO2

Propane

[BlueLance]

For me polluted oxygen has always eventually risen above oxygen.

A pain in the rear when my pumps at the top of my base bring polluted oxygen to my exo suits. 

[Grimgaw]

1 hour ago, CreativeBox.exe said:

what happenes after I have run out of coal

1 hour ago, turbonl64 said:

Step one is to never, ever wait for it to run out

Single best piece of advice about this is to hook the generator to smart battery. Coal gens left unattended burn coal like nobody's business.

[PhailRaptor]

3 minutes ago, turbonl64 said:

I don't even do that (I should be doing it). Just hooking it up to a normal battery and use the sliders on the coal generator to only refill if battery charge falls under like 25% has always been enough for me. Though I should be doing what you mention 

It would depend on how much power you are drawing versus how much you are producing at the time.  There is a fixed quantity of power in a given mass of Coal.  While it's possible to calibrate the refill % of the Generator to only start at a time when you won't waste very much, the Smart Battery is dramatically more effective.  The reason being that the Coal Generator will happily run it's way through the Coal stored within it even if the Batteries it's connected to are full.  With the Smart Battery, this doesn't happen.  When the Smart Battery sends a Standby Signal (red) the Coal Generator will stop consuming Coal to produce Power completely.  Then when the Smart Battery sends out an Active Signal (green) the Coal Generator will start up again right where it left off.

(This post was more for the OP's benefit)

[BlueLance]

I do agree, smart batteries are amazing at limiting the wastage of all fuel sources. 

[old_fantom]

Most of my bases make it into the 1000 range before I get bored or a new update comes out.  I don't build the crazy complex structures, like full automation or massive tube networks, and I have not built a 1000+ cycle base since they nerfed Natural Gas.  I did have one in 500s that I dropped during beta that was nerfed, so I think my strategy still works.  My thought is use algae until you can find a water source outside of your start water.  Then switch to electrolyzer.  When you start, keep your dupe count low.  To me, that is no more than 8 in the first 50.  I let my food tell me when I should expand.  Get a crusher early and make refined metals with hamster wheel   When you have enough metal, make a smart battery and a coal gen.  Never make a power source without a smart battery is my thought.  My coal generator runs computer, supercomputer, a musher, to algae o2 sources and a massage table.  I don't have big power draws early.  When I do find water for electrolyzer, I use brothgar's design for self running O2.  His design had two electrolyzer a filter, battery and hydrogen generator.  But if you use a smart battery, and vent gad until you are always pumping H, you can build a two electrolyzer O2 rig that will run a water pump, the gas pump and two electrolyzer and have excess hydrogen.   Explore early in all directions with tunnels no more that 2 high or ladders and blunder algae veins.  Prioritize O2 and food early.  Where I am different than a lot of players, I will not have environmental suits, oil or plastic until relatively late game.  Cycle 400 is very early for me.  I had one go to 1100 before I got plastic fairly recently.  By the time I get to 50-75, I can let the game run unattended for 30 minutes or so.  Until ranching came out, I could leave my cycle 750+ bases alone for hours. 

[0xFADE]

Last couple times I've went for water piping sooner than later(usually after finding a geyser source) and it has been better.

The value of getting 11kg of polluted water out of 5kg of clean water from a toilet isn't something to pass up.  Especially early game when your water usage is so small.

[Albryant]

I wouldn't recommend a new player try this, it was more of an experiment on my part to see if I could do it, but what I'm doing in my current colony is surviving off terrariums.  I started off with 8 plus a light source and let that run for about 30 cycles.  I left all the bottles of polluted water on the floor and just cleaned the air.  

After the 30 cycles I slowly started disabling the terrariums one by one while keeping an eye on the oxygen.  It was probably a little too much micro managing but so far I've survived  over a hundred cycles with 2 - 3 terrariums running and occasionally opening pockets of non-infected PO2.  I havent even dug into any caustic biomes yet for more algae so there is still tons and tons on my map.  I should mention though I was only running 6 dupes all with divers lungs.  I can't stress enough how good diver's lungs is for conserving oxygen use.

I think for my next project I'll work on switching over to toilets and see if the extra water from them will handle the terrarium's water needs and allow me to expand further.

[DyingCrow]

2 deoxydizers will go a looong way if you build modular and enclosed, which required a little good common sense planning. Cots, kitchen, toilets, food production, build those inside 4 walls with 1 or 2 accesses, power production, distribution and everything else outside. The deoxydizers will build ideal pressure inside, and deactivate when they reach max pressure. This also helps with unwanted gases triying to seep in when dupes go out the airlocks, as the pressure inside might be higher then outside.

This thread explains an excellent way to build a properly planned colony.

Then start digging and expand, go for raw metals, coal, algae pockets, and rush the granulator and smart batteries after you got your food situation sorted out, so your coal generators dont burn crazy amounts of coal for nothing. And keep the hamster wheels till you are absolutely sure you dont need them. As for research, i tend to rush basic food and then decor for pictures. Then go for the granulator and smart batteries, at that point hamster wheels are not as necessary, so you can disable them and save dupe manpower.

Dont start getting dupes left and right, also. Prepare the infrastructure first, expand food production to accommodate another dupe, then get himso you dont come to a situation where you have to resort to disgusting mush bars. Get dupes as you need and can provide for them, not just because you can.

[avc15]

My advice is not to overthink it, just have a plan to beat the thing that got you last time and try again. You may very well lose your colony this time to something different. No big deal.

Try different things each time. Try with more dupes, try with fewer dupes. Using hamster wheels for a long time until you get NG, rushing straight to coal. Different foods. Lots of ranches, no ranches. Just don't fall into a routine of always having the same base.

This game has one similarity with DST, is that it tries to kill you. Just don't get too invested in any one colony.

[PhailRaptor]

13 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

This is true for Hydrogen, but it is not true for Polluted Oxygen.  Both clean and Polluted Oxygen have the same gas weight.  The only reason they might separate is if you have an air current (digging into a vacuum sucking it from the front, or a production source pushing it from the back).

So quoting myself here, because now that Cosmic is out I'm seeing different behavior than I used to.  I am seeing P-O2 rise above O2 in my early game Latrine (there were some slime blocks from the nearby Swamp, plus the P-H2O bottles from the Wash Basins).

I can only assume this was a change made in Cosmic, that either did not get into the patch notes, or was overlooked as part of the gas direction rebalance thing.

[Oni Noob]

17 hours ago, CreativeBox.exe said:

I have been playing Oxygen not included for a while, but I never created a colony that was stable. Every colony dies slowly after cycle 50, so I need your help. My main problems are not enough oxygen (big suprise), not enough food and not enough power. My idea was searching for a geyser, that creates natural gas. With that, I want to build natural gas generators for power and polluted water. After I cleared the polluted water, I want to make oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is for my dupes and the hydrogen is for my hydrogen generators for more power. To get rid of the carbin dioxide I want to use carbon skimmers. Is that doable or a horrible, supid idea which will certainly get me killed.

No matter what, do you still have good ideas or experience?

Dont expand too fast. And I always conserve my water