Number of recreation area needed per dupe to manage stress

[Yannick Vachon]

For those of you who are playing on the Expression Upgrade, I have some questions for you, based on what you have seen. First of all, how many recreation room does you need to keep your duplicants mentally sane?

I am asking because I am at cycle 170 with 24 duplicants, a lot of them having completed multiples job branches and I am crumbling under stress being far too high for my two massage tables to handle.

I have barracks with painting for all of them, a few lavatories / outhouses to convert, painting in the main areas (even in my ranches!!!) and mess halls for everyone. Still, I know that the food is bad as my geysers are far away and found dormant so it s difficult to move above fried mushrooms, especially with my dirt running low (I've spawned some in debug because I did not wanted to start over yet).

My guess is that the dupe must do more than just standing by inside the recreation room to benefit from it. Or they really buffed up the penalty for walking in water (since I have a lot of people breaking things, vomiting around and such, difficult to mop everything).

Any ideas? I have not played a lot with the Mk Upgrade so I am trying to learn the Ranching part, which means I have 3 hatch stables for coal but nothing more.

I will have to restart a new map to try your ideas but if it can prevent me from failing that much next time, it would be better

[Promethien]

Assuming they don't have to travel too far they have enough time for 2-3 activities in the break room. Each water cooler can service two dupes at a time. Same for the video game. They don't seem to use break time equipment if they already have the bonus so for instance each water cooler can effectively handle 4-6 dupes per break. Better to assume 4.

Food quality now matters a lot more. It translates 1 to 1 for quality of life. However there is one thing to note. You MUST use barbeque to meet the QoL standard of tier 6 jobs. Barbeque gives 16 QoL.

So get your Ranching on and do it early with as many critters as you can. You'll be needing the meat.

[Yannick Vachon]

I underestimated the value of barbeque then it seem. But, how can you manage that many ranch? I understand that the drop off can help in moving from one stable to the other critters so they are not overcrowing but it does not help with the killing part at all.

I understand that I can automate moving the eggs with the shipping components but none of this is available at the start. Does I need to do this manually or is there a way to automate the killing part of critters as to feed the food production that I missed?

[he77789]

Pincha is also easy as 24 dupes generate tons of p water when supplied with showers if you don't sieve cool it all.

[Yannick Vachon]

10 minutes ago, he77789 said:

Pincha is also easy as 24 dupes generate tons of p water when supplied with showers if you don't sieve cool it all.

Pepper bread require both pincha and sleet wheet if that have not changed, right? In my current game, not possible since I lack the dirt for sleet wheet but pincha would be easy as I have way too much phosphorite. But without a drecko farm, not a long term solution.

Why does I think I will need to double the number of ranchers needed in my next play?

[he77789]

BBQ needs meat and pincha. Now fish drop only accept fish so we need to be more creative for critter killing.

[Yannick Vachon]

2 minutes ago, he77789 said:

BBQ needs meat and pincha. Now fish drop only accept fish so we need to be more creative for critter killing.

Wait what? You are saying that the way to do it, before, was to drown them?

If yes, I find this really funny the hear actually...

[he77789]

Yes as fish drop accepted all kinds of critter before EU so ppl use them to drown excess critter.

[Carnis]

8 minutes ago, he77789 said:

BBQ needs meat and pincha. Now fish drop only accept fish so we need to be more creative for critter killing.

Noooooooo.

[Yannick Vachon]

6 minutes ago, he77789 said:

Yes as fish drop accepted all kinds of critter before EU so ppl use them to drown excess critter.

We could have a stable in which water is dropped on critter instead, don't we? It require an exosuit to avoid the soaking wet debuf but as soon as you drop critters in it, they drown.

And if the drop off cannot work under water, then we only add some doors that will let the water down once in a while. I am sure those who create all those builds have already figured out how to do this.

[Carnis]

41 minutes ago, Yannick Vachon said:

And if the drop off cannot work under water, then we only add some doors that will let the water down once in a while. I am sure those who create all those builds have already figured out how to do this.

Yes its easy, but your mechdoor Will Be underwater & flooded debuffed. Its an extra micro. The fishdrop was excellent & simple.

In The real world, lab rats are terminated with co2. Would Be relatively easy, If critters breathed in ONI.

[Yannick Vachon]

16 minutes ago, Carnis said:

Yes its easy, but your mechdoor Will Be underwater & flooded debuffed. Its an extra micro. The fishdrop was excellent & simple.

In The real world, lab rats are terminated with co2. Would Be relatively easy, If critters breathed in ONI.

Maybe one day they will breath, the same way that duplicants require oxygen to survive.

As for the debuf, it only require that stable to be accessed with an exosuit to avoif the debuf. I made a little prototype of a butchering stable. Of course, it require either mecha engineer to pick the meat or people to go in. But it works.

It of course means that I must scale that up for a base but with all the things people said here, at least there is some hope

[suicide commando]

Actually, killing critters in an automated fashion isn't all that hard.
If you have an 'excess ranch' where your spare critters get sent off. Do the following with it:

1) Make the floor out of mesh tiles

2) Under the mesh tiles build automated doors, make them horizontal, and 2 or 3 layers deep, they do not need to be powered, hook them up to automation with a NOT gate and a clock sensor somewhere in the middle of the night. This means that the doors will always be open, except for a short period at night when dupes are sleeping ( and thus not in said room ).

3) fill up the open basin with water.
 

4) Make sure that your dupes enter said ranch from above so when water rises, the sides can be locked off so water does not spill out..

Now, during the night, the doors close ( use a few buffer gates with different timings on them if you want to be fancy ) and the water will rise up through the mesh tiles and fill up the ranch, drown all critters inside, then the water will recede in the morning, leaving behind all the meat.
 

[Yannick Vachon]

3 minutes ago, suicide commando said:

Now, during the night, the doors close ( use a few buffer gates with different timings on them if you want to be fancy ) and the water will rise up through the mesh tiles and fill up the ranch, drown all critters inside, then the water will recede in the morning, leaving behind all the meat.
 

How would the water recede actually? The way I have built my prototype is to have two water bassin: One above the ranch and one below the ranch. When the top one is full, doors open and drown the critters. When the stable gets too much water, doors opens to let the water go down where a pump can bring it up for a new cycle.

Your idea of tying this to a clock so it works only at night is something I missed and clearly, it would remove the need for an exosuit there, which is great.

More things to think about but at least, designs are possible.

[suicide commando]

Simple.. while the doors are open, the area below the ranch can hold water, when the doors close, this water is then pushed up through the mesh tiles, drowning the critters. Then when the doors reopen, the water falls back down again.
By using a buffer gate on the top row of doors, the bottom ones close first, then the top ones, thus ensuring no water is lost when the doors do their boogaloo

Here's a quick build of what I mean:

View post on imgur.com

[Yannick Vachon]

1 hour ago, suicide commando said:

Simple.. while the doors are open, the area below the ranch can hold water, when the doors close, this water is then pushed up through the mesh tiles, drowning the critters. Then when the doors reopen, the water falls back down again.
By using a buffer gate on the top row of doors, the bottom ones close first, then the top ones, thus ensuring no water is lost when the doors do their boogaloo

Here's a quick build of what I mean:

View post on imgur.com

I just tried and it does not work. The water no longer rise it seems. It just got deleted by the doors. Unless it is because all doors close at the same time of course, because I know it have been working before, mostly as part of liquid compressor.

Have you tried this in the Expression Upgrade or is it something from the previous version?

[leoroy]

Wait, stuffed berries isn't enough to make high tier jobs dupes happy in EU?

[Carnis]

6 minutes ago, Yannick Vachon said:

I just tried and it does not work. The water no longer rise it seems. It just got deleted by the doors. Unless it is because all doors close at the same time of course, because I know it have been working before, mostly as part of liquid compressor.

Have you tried this in the Expression Upgrade or is it something from the previous version?

Havent tried. But that would Be a major physics rework. Set your mechdoor closing with 2-4s wait Times and IT Will all work out.

[Yannick Vachon]

18 minutes ago, Carnis said:

Havent tried. But that would Be a major physics rework. Set your mechdoor closing with 2-4s wait Times and IT Will all work out.

Indeed, it works. I screwed up my clock sensor the first time

24 minutes ago, leoroy said:

Wait, stuffed berries isn't enough to make high tier jobs dupes happy in EU?

Stuffed berries give you a +4 in quality of life, Only the barbeque and the pepper bread gives you a +5 in quality of life. But even with great beds, decor, recreation room, mess hall and lavatories, it is difficult to reach the +24 needed for tier 6 jobs.

Massage rooms will need to be more used than they were before it seems.

[Gurgel]

3 hours ago, Carnis said:

Noooooooo.

I just used a dark room in the basement to have them slowly starve....

[suicide commando]

1 hour ago, Yannick Vachon said:

I just tried and it does not work. The water no longer rise it seems. It just got deleted by the doors. Unless it is because all doors close at the same time of course, because I know it have been working before, mostly as part of liquid compressor.

Have you tried this in the Expression Upgrade or is it something from the previous version?

Most likely it's due to all doors closing at the same time in your setup. I put a buffer gate into the mix on the top level of doors, so they close 1 second slower than the bottom ones, thus pushing the water up.

Although this might also be something of the EU, if that's so.. bye bye door compressors which would be a real shame as they're they only way to hand seriously hot gases and such.

[Yannick Vachon]

2 hours ago, suicide commando said:

Most likely it's due to all doors closing at the same time in your setup. I put a buffer gate into the mix on the top level of doors, so they close 1 second slower than the bottom ones, thus pushing the water up.

Indeed, this is what I did. By putting either more than one clock (one per row, which is hard to manage) or a buffer, it works as expected with your idea of combining doors and mesh tile. No need for a pump or exosuit at all.

Still, it means that we need a huge amount of stables to sustain a big base but at least, we have an option to do so here I guess.

[Promethien]

5 hours ago, Yannick Vachon said:

Indeed, it works. I screwed up my clock sensor the first time

Stuffed berries give you a +4 in quality of life, Only the barbeque and the pepper bread gives you a +5 in quality of life. But even with great beds, decor, recreation room, mess hall and lavatories, it is difficult to reach the +24 needed for tier 6 jobs.

Massage rooms will need to be more used than they were before it seems.

Barbeque gives 16 QoL. Not 5.

[DyingCrow]

EU and QoL from high quality foods forces number of dupes down, for more inexperienced players. Id settle for 12-14, its more then enough to have a very efficient colony running, and much easier to maintain. 20+ dupes makes no sense outside of a challenge scenario.

However, it may be possible to train dupes up to max tier on a job, and then drop them down to a lower tier. Afaik, they will still keep the bonuses and what they learned, but that may change at some point. Which might completely screw dupe cross training :/

[Yannick Vachon]

25 minutes ago, DyingCrow said:

However, it may be possible to train dupes up to max tier on a job, and then drop them down to a lower tier. Afaik, they will still keep the bonuses and what they learned, but that may change at some point. Which might completely screw dupe cross training :/

Are you sure about that? Because from before the Expression Upgrade, the duplicants was needing the food from their highest level, even after going down to something else. So, if they changed that in this branch, indeed, it can help. If not, it means that in time, everyone will require barbeque to be happy in the colony.

As for the number of duplicants, I begin to see why you say that. From before both Rahcning Upgrade, I was building bases with 40-60 duplicants. Now, I struggle with 20-25, mostly because the good geysers (steam and polluted water) are almost always far away and I lack water / oxygen / dirt before I reach them (or they are dormant).

And now, stress and disease become more of an issue as well as slime seems to impact much more the duplicants. Just farming mushrooms give them slimelungs where before, they had to dig for cycles in slime to be sick beyond healing.