The Rock - An impossible long term map?

[Yannick Vachon]

After watching streamers playing on the custom map "The Rock", I decided to give it a try. It is hard, I give you that, because you have to rush between being cooked and being freeze to death. Which is why I called my current game "The Microwave"

Still, after 25 cycles or so, I checked the full map with DEBUG MODE just to have kind of an idea of what to expect. As said in the stream I was watching, it is a mix of ice, lava and space biomes all around the starting area. No iron ore (but you can get some iron from the meteors) and no gold. Every thing must be done in copper and wolframite.

But the real issue is oxygen in the long term. There are no geysers in this map so even if you were to gather all the ice / polluted ice, which are finite resources, we are doomed at one point to have no more water and alguae for the oxygen production.

And since there is no oil and no natural gas either (unless you have flatulent dupes), you can create water only by using the lavatory and using the excess water to create oxygen. And with no dreckos and slicksters, we cannot have plastics either. At that point, every drop of liquid becomes seconds on your doom clock.

For those of you who have played this map, is there something that I missed? Is there really no way at all to survive in the long term, even if it is really hard to do? Even to powerup exosuits so you can venture into the ice and magma biomes, you are taking oxygen from your already low supply to do so.

If there was a geyser on the far end or even in the void of space (something that get drained by the space biome unless you are able to patch it up with drywall for example) or if the meteors would be a mix of metal, sand and ice, then there would be something to do, with a lot of work.

[Sevio]

You could go the route of spawning morbs until their PO2 production is enough to cover your dupes. I believe you need 6.667 per dupe if my measurement of 15 g/s per morb was correct. That should make water sustainable.

[chemie]

Oxygen for suits was going to be used by dups in your base.  I am surprised when people make this comment that they can't afford the o2 for suits....it is just a mobile base, dups dont consume more when in them.  To your other question, I dont think you are wrong.  No water is a problem.  There was another one of these maps that had a huge starting biome and I thought water would be a challenge but it turned out that a huge number of pools was still 5000 cycles worth.  How big are the ice biomes?  You might be surprised how much water is there, so then power is the real issue.

[Yannick Vachon]

1 minute ago, chemie said:

You might be surprised how much water is there, so then power is the real issue.

I have attached two pictures of my current map in full screen mode. The first one is the map and the second one with the temperature overlay. There are much more space than ice on this map. As for power, I started to get some coal out of a few hatch in a stable that I got. Not enough to live of that but it helps. Also, with the electrolyzers, I can get some hydrogen as well. For the rest, the wheels should be enough. I could try to go for the solar panel as well and use the heat glass to melt the ice biomes, which is not a stupid idea at all. Getting steel will be tricky for the doors though

A funny map indeed...

[Sevio]

If there is no oil and there are no slicksters on the map, you won't be able to make plastic. So that locks you out of some buildings like high pressure vents.

[chemie]

I think the map was ice hellicon or something.   Anyway, apart for the power needed, you have a huge amount of water available from those ice biomes.

[Denisetwin]

1 hour ago, chemie said:

I am surprised when people make this comment that they can't afford the o2 for suits....it is just a mobile base, dups dont consume more when in them

Yes but docks store a TON of oxygen that is not usable by everyone else.

[PhailRaptor]

The lack of any Swamp Biome means no Pufts, no Mushrooms, no Gold Amalgam, no Thimble Reeds.  It also means that any Geysers that would spawn there, like the guaranteed Steam and NatGas, as well as the randoms, do not spawn.

The lack of any Caustic Biome means no Dreckos (Woolly or Glossy), no Peppers, no Phosphorite, no Iron Ore, no SedRock (Hatch food), no Balm Lilies.  It also means that any Geysers that would spawn there, including the guaranteed Steam and NatGas/Chlorine, as well as the randoms, do not spawn.

[GrindThisGame]

I'm currently playing this map. At cycle 200 or so now. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0e6KLG9pI0

It is possible to go forever. Use morbs + deodorizers for oxygen and the wild growing sleet wheat is enough for probably 8-10 dupes. I'm sticking with 6 for safety. After 1000s of cycles you would run out of filtration medium (sand/regolith) but you can make your own sand by cooking dirt from polluted water from the excess polluted water from lavatories. It is pretty limiting what you can do vs. a normal map though.

[Yannick Vachon]

2 hours ago, GrindThisGame said:

I'm currently playing this map. At cycle 200 or so now.

Yeah, I know, it is because I watched your playthrough that I started playing on the map

Personnally, I love big base with a lot of dupes so this kind of map is not for me I guess. Still, I wonder if this map with an appartment for each few dupes where you need to go in an exosuit to go out would work. That way, you save on oxygen production since all farms / stables and factories are in carbon dioxide while the living areas are in oxygen. Will have to look into this.

I might also try to create a variant from this map with hard to reach geysers and propose this as a challenge to people here.

[Sevio]

How do you even make exosuits on this map? Are there some sneaky thimbleweed plants on the map that don't live in the swamp biome?

Also, I have to wonder why they bothered to add space biomes to it but not make all of the void around it space as well which looks a heck of a lot better. I wonder if it's possible to add or remove "space" in debug...

[Yannick Vachon]

1 hour ago, Sevio said:

How do you even make exosuits on this map? Are there some sneaky thimbleweed plants on the map that don't live in the swamp biome?

I did not build them yet so you may be right and I may be even stuck even sooner then. Because to venture in a lava magma biome without suits is just suicide. And without clothing as well, don't even think about it.

Personnally, I would have preferred a map where everything around the starting point is ice and magma only and then around it, you have space and meteors. But, if you find the space station, then you will find a few seeds that are not found on the map like pincha, balm lilies. And why not a few dreckos and puffs moving around?

It would give a long term goal as you have to reach them before they starve to death while also giving a way to survive if you are bold enough to venture into space without any protection

[Sevio]

I cleared out the start area of The Rock pretty good, couldn't spot any thimbleweed seeds falling among the debris.

Looks like you're going to have to live without exosuits....

I did get lucky with this seed and found two cool slush geysers in the ice biomes though.

[Sevio]

I've made a space version of The Rock which replaces all of the void with empty space that has the proper backdrop. For some reason the protective abyssalite walls in the original version disappeared with that as well, although that might actually look better.

If anyone's interested I'll post the worldgen files that you can drop into StreamingAssets\worldgen, they won't replace anything vanilla.

[Yannick Vachon]

2 hours ago, Sevio said:

I did get lucky with this seed and found two cool slush geysers in the ice biomes though.

Wait, what? There are geysers on this map? Normally, there are none, at least, from the time it was named "Helicona" and there was two.

Are you sure there are geysers on your map? With a lot of neutronium around the magma, it makes them hard to see without mass debug dig to find them...

After checking my own map, you are right: There are geysers on "The Rock" but their type change. On mine, I have a leaky oil fissure and one carbon dioxide vent. So I could potentially have oil, petroleum and plastic if I can reach them and exploit them. I also have 3 AETN but with all the cold and the space, I'm not sure I will have problems with heat for a while

Still, both geysers are beyond a space biome, with an average of -55 degrees celsius. There seems to be a few lockers as well but all really far from the starter biome. So, maybe we can have some cloth to use and get somewhat some water out of those geysers.

After all, from my oil fissure, I could get oil and from there, petroleum, some natural gas and the polluted water that comes from it. And the output is almost perfect with an eruption period of 600s / 600s and a dormancy cycle of 0.3 cycle out of 0.5 cycle (so it almost always run it seems!)

No slickster to use with the carbon vent though so I would have preferred something else. Will not complain for the oil fissure

[Sevio]

The geysers appear in the ice biomes and seem to be limited to two at a maximum per map.