My experience compare with many posts here.

[Mutineer]

I found that when I play I creating pretty much stuff which I need not to die now. Then in the future, I may optimize some, rebuild some. There usually not much point to restructure all base in order to make it just a little bit more efficient.

But when people show their bases in forums many seems to have max efficiency setups. Do you folk just play base so for thousands of cycles to do that?
There seems to be a disconnect between my experience and impression from forums.

[Whispershade]

2 minutes ago, Mutineer said:

I found that when I play I creating pretty much stuff which I need not to die now. Then in the future, I may optimize some, rebuild some. There usually not much point to restructure all base in order to make it just a little bit more efficient.

But when people show their bases in forums many seems to have max efficiency setups. Do you folk just play base so for thousands of cycles to do that?
There seems to be a disconnect between my experience and impression from forums.

It depends on the person. I prefer an organic style where, like you, I satisfy immediate needs to make things work given the circumstances at hand and adapt to the seed.

But then, when I have a good footing I will diverge and work to optimize things. Deconstructing whole areas to improve my setup. So it tends to be a collage of things.

Others have a plan they enact basically from the beginning to how most of the base will build out. I think these people might be prone to start new colonies to try out different styles rather than restructure existing ones.

I tend to only start new colonies when worldgen has changed significantly on updates. I've never been forced to restart from a failed colony.

[Kabrute]

At a certain point, starting a new colony has the experience of thousands of cycles of planning going into its creation, the disconnect you are experiencing might be found in that gap....

[Scorpio King]

Modular build system that I perfecting further each game update starting from cycle one.

Where I started 20.04.2017:

Spoiler

Where I'm now 10.08.2017:

Spoiler

[hpongledd]

some ppl here have over 1k hours put into this game (almost including myself to those) 

@Scorpio King ahh i remember when i used to build those big ass storage rooms myself...

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

The more knowledge I have about this game, the less thinking I spend on this game.

My silly duplicants look like happy every day, so I always suspect that whether their IQ is worth for me to build such a luxurious base.

[BadlyBurned]

I enjoy the first 100 cycles more than anything. I normally restart after that if I haven't done everything PERFECTLY.

I have no idea how some people come up with those crazy designs for the late game, or boil PW2 for Dirt, or make steam for turbines, or any of that stuff. It always is a disaster if I even try and leads to a restart.

[Sasza22]

20 minutes ago, BadlyBurned said:

I enjoy the first 100 cycles more than anything. I normally restart after that if I haven't done everything PERFECTLY.

I have the same. The longer the game goes the more messy my base gets. I get that feeling that i should have thought of the lategame design during cycle 1 when i made my first ladder. I tend to suffer through the later cycles just to get the higher tech stuff out but it eventually gets such a mess i`d rather restart and try to prevent it than spend the rest of the game fixing it and cleaning up the mess i made.

[BadlyBurned]

11 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

I have the same. The longer the game goes the more messy my base gets. I get that feeling that i should have thought of the lategame design during cycle 1 when i made my first ladder. I tend to suffer through the later cycles just to get the higher tech stuff out but it eventually gets such a mess i`d rather restart and try to prevent it than spend the rest of the game fixing it and cleaning up the mess i made.

We are spirit brothers.. I see this now

I do exactly the same thing, for the same reason.. the SMALLEST mistake noticed makes me go crazy and eventually I just restart everything from scratch. My current work is at Cycle 87, and the only difference from the last map is that my greatroom area is 6 tiles wider. I forgot that adding in cool dance machines and stuff would take up so much space, so I just restarted

[greggbert]

I always restart when a new build comes out.

[Yucie]

I actually make simple rooms and setups which allow me to be self-sufficient by the 50 cycle point, with nothing more than mealwood, a water cooler, tons of decor, and manual generators. Upon finding a single water source the game can be left idle without having to do anything anymore, which is rather dull.

So in that sense, I'm struggling to find a reason to create anything beyond the basics because that's honestly all you require if you play your cards right.  I won't blame the devs for this due to early access, but there absolutely must be some incentive to do more than just plop down some planter boxes in the corner and call it a day.

Granted, the builds people do create show just how involved the game could be, but you're going out of you way to make it when there's no gameplay incentive to do so. This is why I dislike the removal of the higher yield farming which promoted smarter play and gave you a reason to be precise with that nice reward for taking it to that next step.

[AzeTheGreat]

2 hours ago, Yucie said:

self-sufficient by the 50 cycle point, with nothing more than mealwood, a water cooler, tons of decor, and manual generators. Upon finding a single water source the game can be left idle without having to do anything anymore

Mealwood isn't sustainable since you need dirt.  At least, not easily sustainable with the infrastructure you're describing.  You also haven't mentioned how you'd handle heat death.

I do agree with the general point that there aren't quite enough pressures forcing people to expand faster, but they are there, you just haven't noticed them

[heckubis]

sustainable by 50 with sleet wheat in the ice biomes yah thats easy with meal wood less easy but still doable if you have a water sieve.heat death occurs because of player interference. 1 either digging all the sandstone(dispurses heat really fast, the 200k materiel  tiles have nothing on the natural tiles leave some of the water to absorb the rest really easy) 2building all their stuff in the main living area of there asteroid spoms the super efficient types generate the max heat possible from the smallest space for the most energy available. Most players use super efficient small builds that are super great at heating there bases in no time. simple bases with little to no heat production using tier 1 only yah thats doable but not with many dupes.

your better off with p water o2 production making meats and coal from clay made by o2 filters. using gas perm tiles to give more surface area to a sting of p water tiles that generate po2 on mass with a pump keeping the pressure low(high pressure is high cost in both heating and cooling no reason at all for it other than steam) less is more is something that goes way over the head of many

[WanderingKid]

On ‎8‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 4:57 PM, Mutineer said:

But when people show their bases in forums many seems to have max efficiency setups. Do you folk just play base so for thousands of cycles to do that?
There seems to be a disconnect between my experience and impression from forums.

I play a particular style of ONI, which doesn't always agree with general expectations.  I expect a base to be done, buried, and gone after a few hundred cycles.  Most of my builds only go for 100 cycles.  The majority of my bases are testing build techniques to speed up the process to 'reasonably' sustainable so I can go build the big toys where and if I decide to without a serious investment in time... though there's a lot that could be said about the 30+ 100 cycle bases about 'investing time', along with realizing I could have used a better technique at week 4 and reverting 50 cycles back.

So, what's max efficiency?  Are we talking 'completely sustainable'?  that's something you invest a lot of time and infrastructure to a base to achieve, and currently really doesn't offer much of anything other than 'I did it!'.  Which, really, is a goal in itself for this game.  It's just not mine.

So, I think your impression about how a lot of the forum users play is because when a lot of the deep dive posters here start digging into interesting mechanics, the only ones left to try out with each other are a hell of a lot deeper dives then the ones they all played with since v 0.0.0.2. 

On that note, though, this is (usually) one of the friendliest forums and a lot of them will help you out with anything from 'Why did I run out of dirt in my mealwood farm' to 'Why is steam not working?'.  So, just because the ideas a lot of them (us?) are throwing around seem like huge deep mechanisms, use them to understand the little things that started all of that.  Most of us are more than happy to explain our toys... that's part of the fun.

[Yucie]

5 hours ago, AzeTheGreat said:

Mealwood isn't sustainable since you need dirt.  At least, not easily sustainable with the infrastructure you're describing.  You also haven't mentioned how you'd handle heat death.

Dirt is the easiest thing to renew. Also, what's heat death? Once you find a nearby ice biome, you take a couple wheezeworts to keep your very limited industry cool with no issue. I actually come closer to freezing over time, which you probably didn't expect to hear.

5 hours ago, AzeTheGreat said:

I do agree with the general point that there aren't quite enough pressures forcing people to expand faster, but they are there, you just haven't noticed them

Enlighten me.

Any pressures you can find are almost entirely the players fault.

I've played on miserable/fatalistic since buying the game and aside from a dupe charging into a slimelung biome to construct a safe tunnel, sickness isn't a problem. The aforementioned mealwood requires no water, so peeing in the water has no effect, nor does it affect the electrolyzers or bathroom in any way.

Early game stress does require you to push hard for high decor, but once accomplished there's nothing to worry about. Morale isn't a concern if you keep your jobs low tier, with frost buns for the higher morale dupe if you desire one. This is the only in-game pressure that hurts but is also moot too quickly to be a concern beyond cycle 20.

Power is easy with manual generators as it doesn't require resources and only gets easier as dupes level up.  Coal does make a good backup source, but manual generators have no consumption of finite resources.  As I play with 6-8 dupes, losing one or two on wheels isn't slowing down much.

I could go on and on, but as someone with an engineering background who tries to find the most efficient yet minimalist approach to problems, there's little to find here (Pun not intended). While I do love looking at the great builds people make from an engineering standpoint, it's entirely a case of 'Because I can' and not due to necessity. Not that it's a bad thing mind you, but it would be nice if going above and beyond like that was beneficial and practical instead of overkill. Modding alongside an actual end-game objective might ultimately fix this though, time will tell.

[Whispershade]

7 hours ago, Yucie said:

could go on and on, but as someone with an engineering background who tries to find the most efficient yet minimalist approach to problems, there's little to find here (Pun not intended).

I mean, yeah. There is a limit to that sustainability. But you will last a long time. At the same time, I like to cast myself into the mindset of a duplicant trying to survive in the colony I've built. I don't want to just provide the barest minimal necessities to survive. And, in the end, I like to provide that good life 100% sustainably. Not just sustainable for 'long enough'. But in literal in-perpetuity were the game to operate that long. Including inputs and outputs.

[Grimgaw]

8 hours ago, Yucie said:

Dirt is the easiest thing to renew.

Could you tell us how? Maybe the forum collective missed something obvious.

[FutureJohny]

4 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

Could you tell us how? Maybe the forum collective missed something obvious.

I have Glass forge powered cooker, it turns fertilizer, algae or slime to dirt.

Compost is also an option.

[Scorpio King]

4 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

Could you tell us how? Maybe the forum collective missed something obvious.

Feed algae to fish or let food rot.

[Grimgaw]

32 minutes ago, FutureJohny said:

I have Glass forge powered cooker, it turns fertilizer, algae or slime to dirt.

Compost is also an option.

 

31 minutes ago, Scorpio King said:

Feed algae to fish or let food rot.

I know how to get dirt, but that's not what I asked for. @Yucie said: 

13 hours ago, Yucie said:

Dirt is the easiest thing to renew.

@FutureJohny @Scorpio King So do tell how you get renewable fertilizer/algae/slime or rotten food the easy way. Preferably with numbers and not in some hand-wavy way.

[Mr.Trueba]

7 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

 

I know how to get dirt, but that's not what I asked for. @Yucie said: 

@FutureJohny @Scorpio King So do tell how you get renewable fertilizer/algae/slime or rotten food the easy way. Preferably with numbers and not in some hand-wavy way.

And what else?
Do you want a cold beer too?

At your service, sir. 

[Sasza22]

I wonder how good is composting seeds. Does it produce useful amounts of dirt? Lategame you sit on quite a lot of mealwood seeds. Would composting mealwood seeds and rotten meal lice give more dirt that it consumes?

[Grimgaw]

15 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

I wonder how good is composting seeds.

You get what you put in weight-wise (both for seeds and meal lice), so 30kg in 2kg out (at best - if you have 100% on seed).

16 minutes ago, Mr.Trueba said:

And what else?
Do you want a cold beer too?

At your service, sir. 

Thanks for you valuable contribution. 

[Scorpio King]

@Grimgaw

For dirt i seal off fish farm without access to dupes, when fish die meat is produced, which is left to rot. All that is is processed with auto sweeper, which ,in turn, inserts algae into fish feeder, which feeds 1 fish that makes 4 eggs. 3 of those eggs are transferred to pool where fish are not fed and one is left for next "lonely pregnancy journey". Polluted dirt goes to compost room that is over pressurized with chlorine so it wont toot any PO2. This method makes one pool with only 1 fish at all times and that is fed and happy to reproduce fast. And another pool which is idle but ever lasting growing.

 

For slime breed Pufts like crazy, with room always above 1800g of PO2, so slime does not emit any PO2 and loose mass. In the middle of the room there is a Puft lure that is out of reach of dupes, so Pufts hangs around it at all times, only flying towards grooming station when called and then back to lure, pooping slime there. Even if slime land on single tile it be looted with auto sweeper. Below is water (with that fish farm).

[Grimgaw]

@Scorpio King We're talking renewable Dirt for Mealwood. So 37.5kg per dupe per cycle. How many fishes do you need to 'rot', how many pufts do you need to feed to get 2x37.5=75kg slime per cycle (remember you need to dig out the dirt if you're cooking slime), and what in your opinion makes the process you outlined easy?