Asking for general advice

[Cobalt1]

Hello, i'm new-ish and just ended a 250 cycle game. Great game, and the whole time it felt like I was seconds away from death. I researched everything but barely used any of it, because it felt like I always needed to be focusing on having enough water, food, power, oxygen respectively. I would love to spend more time exploring biomes and trying out automation. I'm looking for any tips given what I had trouble with:

• Water
  • I wasn't able to find a steam geyser in neighboring biomes but want to try cooling steam next. 
  • My attempted natural gas + fertilizer plant setup did give me polluted water but really only enough to feed the plant.
  • Distilling slime gave me some germy water, but not much.
  • At the end I started running power/pipes to every medium-sized pool of water, and felt like it used all my time and resources.
• Food
  • I used 2-3 microbe musher + mealwood farm. What would you recommend upgrading to from there?
• Power
  • Manual generators + Coal first, which ran out.
  • Hydrogen + electrolyzers didn't provide efficient power, but maybe I don't have enough of them.
  • I tried a natural gas + fertilizer plant which worked pretty nicely. I was running into a problem where dupes wouldn't supply dirt despite checking and re-trying priorities and having dirt. 
• Oxygen
  • Had to supplement my 2 electrolyzers with algae, I wanted to add more but didn't have the water to support it. Then I had to keep using time to distill slime for algea. Is there anything else I can do?
• Dupes
  • I tried to keep around 10. I killed some off and replaced them when they became too sick. My med-beds did nothing, so keeping them around just spread germs, used another dupe to try and cure, and wasted food.
  • I went for 2 cook/farm, 2 mine/build, 1 research, 1 engineer, 1 art, and a few suppliers, which was sustainable in terms of food. 
  • I don't think i'm understanding storage compactors. Am I supposed to have one dupe always/only running around putting everything away? 

I've been trying to watch tutorial videos too which are great, but seem to focus on one advanced aspect. Can anyone point me toward a resource that's a more general survival guide? Thanks for reading, sorry for being a noob, appreciate any tips.

[QuQuasar]

Water: 

- You can often gravity-drain polluted water pools above you into your vats with a good base design. This is a lot faster than piping.

- Ice can be dug up and carted back home (with a 50% loss), or melted and piped/drained to the appropriate location. This is generally more valuable for cooling than water, but it can be a bonus.

- Fertilizer makers no longer generate significant amounts of natural gas: they're really only good for making fertilizer now.

Food:

- Gristle Berries use significantly less water than liceloaf/Mush Fry, and are a logical step up from mealwood. Dusk caps use no water at all and are another step up. Most of your water was probably eaten by liceloaf. I never make the stuff except in emergencies: better to overproduce and eat the mealwood raw.

Oxygen:

- As mentioned, most of your water was probably eaten by inefficient food sources. Electrolyzers are the correct approach.

Dupes:

- 10 is a reasonable number. Med beds will only work if your dupes have "Care" set to high priority in the "Priorities" tab, otherwise they often won't recieve treatment and die. But prevention is better than cure: make sure your waste is quarantined, spam deoderizers, and use airlocks and submerged storage compactors to keep slimelung away.

- Yes, you should have several couriers and groundskeepers. Debris on the floor has a massive impact on decor, so sweep it all up.

[Promethien]

So first thing is 10 dupes is a lot. The standard suggestion is 6. I recommend the same at least until you get a reliable water source.

Previous post said it but I'll emphasize. Just eat meal lice raw. You are wasting water and dupe time making them into bars.

On running out of water. Definitely seek out a water geyser ASAP. A natural gas geyser is super helpful too (produces polluted water from the generator). There are always at least two of each on every map. If you have trouble finding them go into thermal mode. Hidden geysers are always a heat anomaly, usually colder than the local environment.

On electrolyzers. You can set them up so you get much more power out of them than you put in. The absolute best set up I have seen I first saw in this thread

 Go to a post by user NanoD. I tested it and his setup works perfectly. It keeps a hydrogen generator running 100% and uses far less than the power the generator puts out.

On power I recommend rushing Smart Battery. You ran out of coal fast likely because you were using super inefficient batteries (smart batteries have less than half the power loss) and didn't automate them. Smart batteries are the easiest automation to use. You connect them to what you want them to toggle with automation wire. Then on the battery itself you can set the upper and lower limits of battery charge you want them to toggle on/off. Like this you can have all your generators just turn off automatically at high battery charge and turn back on at low charge. Never need the hamster wheel again unless you want to train up tinkering.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Good questions.  Here's my tips for a new user:

• Water:  Set up a water loop with your latrines, sinks, showers, etc using a water sieve.  Use bridge priorities to set up an overflow and you'll slowly gain polluted water over time.  Do NOT make mush bars except as a very early supplemental food while you're establishing a farm.  Also, don't make liceloaf if you can help it -- both foods are water hogs.  This leads into....
• Food:  Mealwood are a great starter food.  As soon as you can build light sources, start supplementing them with bristlebloom.  Then when you hit the slime biome, set up a mushroom farm low in your base where the CO2 is building up.  Mushrooms will work just fine for your dupes for a couple hundred cycles --  or more.  You can later add ranches, pepper farms, sleetwheat farms, etc.
• Power: Hamster wheels and coal are a very good start. I've run a base for 400 cycles just off those.  A decent hatch farm will provide enough coal for one or two generators, depending on your usage.  Research smart batteries as soon as you can and once they're researched, always build one with your generator.  This will save a HUGE amount of resources over time by basically limiting the generator to running only when you need power.  Hydrogen generators will provide enough power to run your electrolyzers (and a bit more, depending on how efficiently you set them up), but hydrogen geysers generally don't provide enough to run a hydrogen generator full time.  The best mid- to late-game power source is natural gas created by a boiling oil into petroleum then natural gas.  You CAN capture natural gas off fertilizer farms, but they aren't a good source anymore for simply generating power.
• Oxygen: Up in the water section I mentioned setting up a water loop with your latrines and such.  The excess PO2 will help off-set the water needs of electrolyzers.  Capture the waste water from your natural gas generators (or petroleum) and you can build a sustainable base without a geyser.  Until you balance things out, melt some ice and/or process slime into polluted water and algae.
• Dupes: 10 to 15 is a good number of dupes.  Too few and its frustrating to get things done.  Too many and you have dupes standing around wasting resources.  Try to find a number that works for you that covers all the jobs you need handled. 

[Cobalt1]

Incredibly helpful information, thank you all. I'll give it another go for a few days with this info. 

@Promethien I'll try that setup, is one electrolizer enough to give the base oxygen? Or should I have multiple of those setups?

[b4st]

I got the game like 2 weeks ago.And  i was in the same boat as you. What I did was play a little until something went wrong, then restart a new game and try to stop that going wrong again. But over the course of about 10 1 hour games, i got most of it figured out, at least to keep me stable, It relieved the feeling of pressure for a little bit until i could learn the finer points of survival.

 

My current game is up to  cycle 500 or so and I still have some of my original water, although I've run out of dirt. So now im trying to solve that through composting and pwater boiling. So my next game, I will be aware of the dirt issue and setup a dirt solution much earlier.

[KittenIsAGeek]

14 minutes ago, Cobalt1 said:

 is one electrolizer enough to give the base oxygen? Or should I have multiple of those setups?

One electrolyzer can theoretically provide enough oxygen for 9 dupes.  I generally use a pair for every 10 dupes.

Spoiler

2 oxygen pumps, one hydrogen, using manual gas separation.  Hydrogen pressure automation set to 600g.

 

[Carnis]

About food:

https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Guide/Food

Liceloaf 29kg water per duplicant.

Gristle Berry 60kg water per duplicant.

Mush fry 71kg water per duplicant.

Dusk cap 0kg water per duplicant.

-> after dusks upgrading to slickster bbq is cool, but wild pincha peppers are not an infinite resource for a larger colony and cost 17kg per duplicant to cultivate.

..

So dont try to save water by upgrading to gristles. Dusk caps are terrific, and also freely process your slime without generating heat or wasting slime like your slime distiller would.

[avc15]

The only thing I'll add is that this is a tinkering / problem solving game. Don't be afraid to lose! That's part of it.

[Promethien]

1 hour ago, Cobalt1 said:

Incredibly helpful information, thank you all. I'll give it another go for a few days with this info. 

@Promethien I'll try that setup, is one electrolizer enough to give the base oxygen? Or should I have multiple of those setups?

You will want to look at what your dupes are breathing in. Unless they have a trait its 100 units per day. An electrolyzer running constantly non stop (doesn't happen, lol) will generate 888 per day. Knowing all of that Kitten has the ratio right at about 2 per 10 dupes but its not a hard number. You can generally run a single on 7 dupes no problem. Especially if you use some algae terrariums to support it which I recommend as they are slow to generate oxygen but efficient at it.

[Parusoid]

4 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

Gristle Berries use significantly less water than liceloaf/Mush Fry,

@Cobalt1 Its not true. Gristle Berries use two times more water than Liceloafs to produce the same amount of kcal. And even if you use farming station, the water usage is the same. Mush Bars are much more expensive in terms of water usage in comparison to berries and liceloafs

Take a look at plant needs here 

 

[ShadowOfALegend]

I'm in a similar boat as the OP but i currently have access to efficient nat gas geyser with a single generator pulling my water production which fuels my electrolyzer which could be more efficient but i'm content at the moment as i now have a slight balance of consumption with my surplus hydrogen going to a AETN (i may include a second set- up for safe measure).

 

I'm currently in a transition of switching from 150k in Kcals off pickled meal lice and attempting to take advantage of a generous supply of sleat wheat to make sleat bread and pepper bread (i'm absolutely staying away from bristle blossoms until i can tap all of the major water sources.

only aspects unique to my colony at this moment is the liquid CO2 and the infected PH2O vent and those are sealed with no chance of cause any issues to my colony until i can get a use out of them

[WanderingKid]

7 hours ago, Cobalt1 said:

•  

You have great questions, but the answers are specific to what your intent is.

What game do you want?  You can create a race game.  How fast can you get PH2O to keep up with your electrolizer build.  You can create a long game, do you expect the dupes to run out in cycle 600?  Do you consider cycle 600 a long game? (I do.)

So, personally, I consider a game of 100 cycles (over 18 hours) reasonably done.  With that in mind:

@Cobalt1

• Water
  • I wasn't able to find a steam geyser in neighboring biomes but want to try cooling steam next. 
  • My attempted natural gas + fertilizer plant setup did give me polluted water but really only enough to feed the plant.
  • Distilling slime gave me some germy water, but not much.
  • At the end I started running power/pipes to every medium-sized pool of water, and felt like it used all my time and resources.

A cool steam vent is something you should need in the very late game (cycle 400+, on a bad seed)

Fertilizer isn't worth building anymore unless you want fertilizer.  That's a new concern in the last two updates.

Distilling slime is something you only do with a lot of practice for the game, and you understand morb + puft interactions, which are broken.

Gravity fills to the swamp biome (Polluted H2O) are the easiest way to get you mid-game water supplies.

Food

• I used 2-3 microbe musher + mealwood farm. What would you recommend upgrading to from there?

I would recommend you transition to Mushrooms as quickly as possible.  They are the bets food (in my opinion) available except to feed exceptions.  Exceptions (high level jobs) can actually be kicked out of the job cycle to keep the food expectation low long term.

Power

• Manual generators + Coal first, which ran out.
• Hydrogen + electrolyzers didn't provide efficient power, but maybe I don't have enough of them.
• I tried a natural gas + fertilizer plant which worked pretty nicely. I was running into a problem where dupes wouldn't supply dirt despite checking and re-trying priorities and having dirt. 

Always start with manual, but drop it off quickly.  The game (again, my opinion) is about time, survival vs. improvement.  The more time something does work for you, the more time your dupes can do something else. While dropping off the Fert maker, current NGG (Nat Gas Generators) can help create a reasonable amount of fresh water (sieves) and some extra dirt (sieves again) for you, at a particularly small price for Electricity.

Oxygen

• Had to supplement my 2 electrolyzers with algae, I wanted to add more but didn't have the water to support it. Then I had to keep using time to distill slime for algea. Is there anything else I can do?

You should start with Algae.  That's the easy setup, and it can hold on for a good long while.  Eventually, you should shatter your base to figure out the long/end game amount you can handle.  That end game amount should include your oil consumption, slickster return, oil well values, …. and you get the idea.  If you don't know what that value is, the Cool Steam Geyser is simply your first contact with a truly long term game and it gives you an idea for the next one.  There's a ton of other things that you need to consider that you've only had first (or fifth) contact with.   Enjoy blowing up the maybes a few times, you'll find the RNG actually will decide it for you once you're used to the expectations, and it'll be a harrowing experience in the meanwhile.

Dupes

• I tried to keep around 10. I killed some off and replaced them when they became too sick. My med-beds did nothing, so keeping them around just spread germs, used another dupe to try and cure, and wasted food.
• I went for 2 cook/farm, 2 mine/build, 1 research, 1 engineer, 1 art, and a few suppliers, which was sustainable in terms of food. 
• I don't think i'm understanding storage compactors. Am I supposed to have one dupe always/only running around putting everything away? 

Don't worry about killing a dupe.  It's almost always worth more to get them into a med-bay than replace them.  However, once you're used to the game a dupe or two in med-bay shouldn't be a concern, 15 of them in med bay would be a wipe, two should be normal. 

Chefs, in my experience, should be 1 chef/15 dupes (or so). 

Compactors are the supply vs. storage choices in your priorities.  Supply does things like drop off 400kg of gold to a new airfilter tile.  Storage drops off unwanted seeds into a compactor of your choice.  They both do useful things, but not necessarily in the most useful order.  In general, a dupe on stprage priority will do 2 or 3 less trips to get the goods closer to a workspace than a supply dupe who is delivering to particular ladder requests via supply.  It's actually one of the most interesting components of the game in terms of efficiency/minute, but it's definitely a discussion as to base building techniques.

[QuQuasar]

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

@Cobalt1 Its not true. Gristle Berries use two times more water than Liceloafs to produce the same amount of kcal. And even if you use farming station, the water usage is the same. Mush Bars are much more expensive in terms of water usage in comparison to berries and liceloafs

Fair cop, those numbers are different from what I had in my head.

With that said, I still stand by my assertion that liceloaf are absolutely not worth making. It takes 1200 kCal of edible meal lice to produce 1700 kCal of liceloaf, which (assuming you're already growing lice, which... well, duh) means you're actually using 50 kG of water to make 500 kCal of food. From that perspective liceloaf costs 100 g/kCal, or nearly twice as much as gristle berry.

Also, are you sure the water usage is the same even if you use the farming station? Unless something has changed, I thought farmers touch caused blossoms to grow twice as fast with no change in water consumption, further increasing the attractiveness of berries.

[WanderingKid]

7 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

Also, are you sure the water usage is the same even if you use the farming station? Unless something has changed, I thought farmers touch caused blossoms to grow twice as fast with no change in water consumption, further increasing the attractiveness of berries.

Farmer's touch, assuming you have enough farmers to make your entire crop accurate, use 1/2 of all materials (fertilizer + water supplement) to produce the same crop.  This is why berries are very attractive to small settlements that can catch up on water production later with little expense in the early ponds.

[Carnis]

I cant actually keep up with early game growth of 333kcal/cycle without gristles. But I have a minimal farm at The portal that I replace with shrooms & hopefully ranches ASAP.

I Also only use liceloaf If we are starving.

[BlueLance]

Just now, Carnis said:

I cant actually keep up with early game growth of 333kcal/cycle without gristles. But I have a minimal farm at The portal that I replace with shrooms & hopefully ranches ASAP.

Cycle 21 and I have a Hatch Stable on the go!!! Another 3 (1 Hatch and 2 Shinebug) are on the way as well. 

Currently I am thinking of a way to try and reduce the amount of critters that end up "Expecting" because it wastes time. I was thinking of having a room dedicated to hatching eggs only, but it would still have the same problem unfortunately.

[QuQuasar]

35 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Cycle 21 and I have a Hatch Stable on the go!!! Another 3 (1 Hatch and 2 Shinebug) are on the way as well. 

Currently I am thinking of a way to try and reduce the amount of critters that end up "Expecting" because it wastes time. I was thinking of having a room dedicated to hatching eggs only, but it would still have the same problem unfortunately.

You've got the right idea: a breeding stable can supply critters to all your other stables, and doesn't need to be full size: just big enough to support a breeder or two. The idea is to ensure the eggs are laid somewhere the dupes can't get to them, so they incubate and hatch without your intervention.

 

Here's a couple designs that work well for me:

Turn on Autowrangle, set Critter Maximum to 2, and never worry about micromanaging your stables again. Your dupes will truss up a spare critter and deliver it to your other stables whenever one is needed, and you can set your egg crackers to continuous and not worry about killing off the population.

[BlueLance]

5 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

You've got the right idea: a breeding stable can supply critters to all your other stables, and doesn't need to be full size: just big enough to support a breeder or two. The idea is to ensure the eggs are laid somewhere the dupes can't get to them, so they incubate and hatch without your intervention.

 

Here's a couple designs that work well for me:

Turn on Autowrangle, set Critter Maximum to 2, and never worry about micromanaging your stables again. Your dupes will truss up a spare critter and deliver it to your other stables whenever one is needed, and you can set your egg crackers to continuous and not worry about killing off the population.

I don't use egg crackers i let em crack on their own, but the problem is with the design you posted and witht he design I had in mind, apart from the extra stations the ranchers need to go to, some critters would still be stuck expecting in their egg laying stable and only be removed after they have hatched (This is the biggest probelm for me atm

[Carnis]

I have a perfect system for slicksters could use it for hatches.

9x11 rooms with 3 tiles blocked.

Only 9 tiles available floor.

Sweeper Set to catch all eggs. Hatch with eggdropper (2s buffer,buffer,not), not in range of ground.. Set autowrangle to only allow larva, or Set autowrangle to 0.

Ranchers redistribute newborn. To either replace If stables have room, or Butcher If not..

 

.. The issue that remains is you get quality -1 meat 3200kcal If you dont have pinchas.

[BlueLance]

Yeah my build would work if i decided to use an egg dropper, but I decided against it (Just personal reasons) i think there should be a thing that is meant to do it anyway XD

[PhailRaptor]

13 hours ago, Promethien said:

On running out of water. Definitely seek out a water geyser ASAP. A natural gas geyser is super helpful too (produces polluted water from the generator). There are always at least two of each on every map. If you have trouble finding them go into thermal mode. Hidden geysers are always a heat anomaly, usually colder than the local environment.

Sadly this isn't completely true.  You are guaranteed 2 exposed Cool Steam Geysers (one in the Caustic Biome, one in the Swamp Biome.  You are also guaranteed an exposed NatGas Geyser in the Swamp Biome.  But in the Caustic Biome, you have a 50/50 at either a second NatGas, OR a Chlorine.

8 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

Fair cop, those numbers are different from what I had in my head.

With that said, I still stand by my assertion that liceloaf are absolutely not worth making. It takes 1200 kCal of edible meal lice to produce 1700 kCal of liceloaf, which (assuming you're already growing lice, which... well, duh) means you're actually using 50 kG of water to make 500 kCal of food. From that perspective liceloaf costs 100 g/kCal, or nearly twice as much as gristle berry.

Also, are you sure the water usage is the same even if you use the farming station? Unless something has changed, I thought farmers touch caused blossoms to grow twice as fast with no change in water consumption, further increasing the attractiveness of berries.

About Meal Lice/Liceloaf -- yes, you are spending 50 kg of water for only 500 kCal in food.  However, what it equates to is a trade for ~75 kg of Dirt that would be required to grow the third Meal Lice to cover it, per meal eaten.  Depending on how hard the map seed is making your transition, that can be very significant.  It ultimately depends on which resource is more important to you in your specific situation.

About Farmer's Touch/Berries -- It's difficult to truly quantify this because of the variance in application, due to the requirement of Dupe interaction (twice -- at the Station, and at each plant).  You aren't going to get 100% uptime on the effect.  The other issue is that while you are getting an increase in kCal per kg of water, you aren't growing the Berries any faster.  You will still need X number of plants based on Y number of Dupes.

Overall, the argument over what food is most sustainable depends on what you have, where you are, and where you plan to go.  As circumstances shift, so to will the "correct" answer.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Cobalt1 said:

Hello, i'm new-ish and just ended a 250 cycle game. Great game, and the whole time it felt like I was seconds away from death. I researched everything but barely used any of it, because it felt like I always needed to be focusing on having enough water, food, power, oxygen respectively. I would love to spend more time exploring biomes and trying out automation. I'm looking for any tips given what I had trouble with:

• Water
  • I wasn't able to find a steam geyser in neighboring biomes but want to try cooling steam next. 
  • My attempted natural gas + fertilizer plant setup did give me polluted water but really only enough to feed the plant.
  • Distilling slime gave me some germy water, but not much.
  • At the end I started running power/pipes to every medium-sized pool of water, and felt like it used all my time and resources.
• Food
  • I used 2-3 microbe musher + mealwood farm. What would you recommend upgrading to from there?
• Power
  • Manual generators + Coal first, which ran out.
  • Hydrogen + electrolyzers didn't provide efficient power, but maybe I don't have enough of them.
  • I tried a natural gas + fertilizer plant which worked pretty nicely. I was running into a problem where dupes wouldn't supply dirt despite checking and re-trying priorities and having dirt. 
• Oxygen
  • Had to supplement my 2 electrolyzers with algae, I wanted to add more but didn't have the water to support it. Then I had to keep using time to distill slime for algea. Is there anything else I can do?
• Dupes
  • I tried to keep around 10. I killed some off and replaced them when they became too sick. My med-beds did nothing, so keeping them around just spread germs, used another dupe to try and cure, and wasted food.
  • I went for 2 cook/farm, 2 mine/build, 1 research, 1 engineer, 1 art, and a few suppliers, which was sustainable in terms of food. 
  • I don't think i'm understanding storage compactors. Am I supposed to have one dupe always/only running around putting everything away? 

 

• Water: first off, recycle used water from outhouses/lavatories! Polluted water can be converted to germed normal water with a water sieve and with some cooling you can savely give that water to your bristle berries farms. The harvest will not have food poisoning. This alone will get you a very long way. Second, explore more and plan a couple of dozen cycles ahead. If you have a cool steam geyser relative near around, then focus on that. If not, the pools of polluted water actually should by and large be enough to stretch it until you have found a cool steam geyser.
• Power: you ran out of coal. That can easily be fixed by running hatch ranches. 3-5 ranches with each 8 hatches can run quite a few coal generators.
• Oxygen: I personally use a combination steam geyser water and an AETN to cool it down. My cool steam geysers are only there to supply oxygen, so I make maximum use of them. I run the equivalent of 4 electrolyzers (8 electrolyzers each being bottle necked by a single gas pump) from my 2 cool steam geysers.
• Dupes: 10 dupes should not be an issue. I assume they get sick due slimelung. Take precautions against that. Deodorizers, storing away slime, exo suits, keeping an eye out on the immunity levels,... .Regarding compactors: most of the stuff does not have to be picked up and stored (but it is more efficient). There are a few exceptions: if it causes too much stress to your dupes, you should sweep some areas under high priority (the dupes will not store anything away until they have done all higher priority stuff, which basically is never done). Also any material off gassing polluted oxygen, and especially slime, should be high priority cleaned up. Liquifiables should eventually also be cleaned up if exposed to melting temperatures. Finally, having for instance a high priority storage compactor with a high priority and only to accept coal set, next to your coal generator, can save a lot of walking around from your dupes. Finally, when starting a new game assign your dupes jobs but make sure their priorities are properly set. Specialized dupes are great in large colonies, but bottlenecks in smaller colonies. However, I HIGHLY recommedn going for a very early rancher, perhaps even at the start of the game. Hatches can give you coal and omelettes for basically useless materials. Take advantage of that.

[Lilalaunekuh]

1 hour ago, PhailRaptor said:

About Farmer's Touch/Berries -- It's difficult to truly quantify this because of the variance in application, due to the requirement of Dupe interaction (twice -- at the Station, and at each plant).  You aren't going to get 100% uptime on the effect.  The other issue is that while you are getting an increase in kCal per kg of water, you aren't growing the Berries any faster.  You will still need X number of plants based on Y number of Dupes.

Isn´t the effect of "Farmer´s Touch" to speed up plant growth

=> This reduce the amount of plants needed to feed a set number of duplicants.

[BlueLance]

2 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

Isn´t the effect of "Farmer´s Touch" to speed up plant growth

=> This reduce the amount of plants needed to feed a set number of duplicants.

Yes that is what it does, so essentially it halves the amount of water and plant food it needs. But that is only if the plant had 100 up time of farmers touch, if you only had an up time of 50% then you are not going to get the full benefit, but still better than none.