Avoid Supplying Slimelung Algae

[Zarquan]

I was wanting to excavate a slime biome on miserable immunity.  That means that I can't let any slimelung in my base without consequences (waste balm lilly and coal or get sick).  I can easily stop slime from entering the base, but I still have a few algae deoxidizers and some of the algae has slimelung.  If they deliver that to my base, it will cause a plague.  This is fairly early base without any conveyors.

I would like it if I could block certain items from going through a door or a checkpoint.  If I could do that, then I could stop this bad algae from entering the base and more reasonably excavate the slime biome without anything annoying like banning all delivery for people allowed in the biome or finicky door controls.  

Another option, which would probably be easier to implement, would be to block items from being used item by item.  I see algae with slimelung on it, I just select it and mark "Do Not Use."  If it is marked "Do Not Use," there is a little flag on it marking it, like a warning.  It does not appear in the resource list.  It can be swept in to a storage container, but it can not be put in an algae deoxidizer.

[Sasza22]

Unfortunetly there`s no such option yet. But it can be played around with a little micromangement. You can put a container with sweep only and fill it with germy algae then seal it off with a wall or just a locked door. Later in the game you can use sweeper arms to put it outside of dupe range.

Earlygame there`s a few ways to get rid of the germs. The ore scrubber isn`t perfect but if you put 3 or 4 at the enrtanece to your base they should get rid of most of the germs from algae. Alternatively you can put your entire algae storage in a chlorine room and wait one cycle before opening it so all the germs die.

[Gwido]

And remember that slimelung don't survive in oxygen.

You should also place deodorizers aside your algae terrarium, so it automatically get rid of polluted oxygen and remove some slimelung.. I always do this way and don't have any problem with slimelung disease.  

[SharraShimada]

In case of emergency, build compactors outside and prioritize them. You can always destroy them later.

[Zarquan]

5 hours ago, Gwido said:

And remember that slimelung don't survive in oxygen.

You should also place deodorizers aside your algae terrarium, so it automatically get rid of polluted oxygen and remove some slimelung.. I always do this way and don't have any problem with slimelung disease.  

Is that with miserable immune systems?  Because on miserable, any germs hurt immunity and it doesn't recover unless the dupe is germ resistant or they have vitamin chews (as it essentially removes the duplicants' passive 15% immunity regeneration).  The slimelung lasts long enough to infect duplicants on miserable immune systems.  I've had this experience before.

5 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Alternatively you can put your entire algae storage in a chlorine room and wait one cycle before opening it so all the germs die.

How do I make them wait one cycle?  The duplicants are going to take it out as they are putting it in.  At least, in the early game they will.

My intention is to chlorinate it eventually.  But there isn't a reasonable tool to stop the algae from being delivered immediately.

[Gwido]

7 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

Is that with miserable immune systems?  Because on miserable, any germs hurt immunity and it doesn't recover unless the dupe is germ resistant or they have vitamin chews (as it essentially removes the duplicants' passive 15% immunity regeneration).  The slimelung lasts long enough to infect duplicants on miserable immune systems.  I've had this experience before.

For sure, if all your duplicants have a very low immune level, doing this will not solve the problem immediately. But on the long term, you'll see the med bay will be used only for hypothermia, heat stroke and wounds.

In my current game, I don't even care if algae is contaminated or not. 

 

And if you get rid of polluted oxygen in the your base and surroundings, duplicants can easily go to work outside.

I can't remember the last time a duplicant was stuck in the med-bed for slimelunge disease.

[Zarquan]

1 minute ago, Gwido said:

For sure, if all your duplicants have a very low immune level, doing this will not solve the problem immediately. But on the long term, you'll see the med bay will be used only for hypothermia, heat stroke and wounds.

If you get rid of polluted oxygen in the your base and surroundings, duplicants can easily go to work outside.

I can't remember the last time a duplicant was stuck in the med-bed for slimelunge disease.

Not on miserable immunity.  One of my dupes ate a muckroot without washing his hands on cycle 3.  His immunity is still at 80% at cycle 50.  They don't regenerate immunity and they start losing immunity with any germs they encounter. 

Any germs in their environment damage their immune systems and they don't recover.  They can not have germs in their environment at all.  Meaning if my dupes use the algae, they will get sick.  Or at the very least suffer damage to their immune systems that will not recover on its own.

Of course, there are vitamin chews that regenerate immunity and I do have germ resistant dupes for +8% immunity per cycle, but I don't have a balm lily farm yet and I only have a few germ resistant dupes.

[Gwido]

Honnestly, I gave vitamins to my duplicants in hte very first games. But I don't use it anymore.

 

Have you correctly place and configure your wash bassin/sink so that duplicants wash their hands only after leaving the toilets ?

[Zarquan]

1 minute ago, Gwido said:

Honnestly, I gave vitamins to my duplicants in hte very first games. But I don't use it anymore.

 

Have you correctly place and configure your wash bassin/sink so that duplicants wash their hands only after leaving the toilets ?

Yes, but the muckroot was in the bathroom.

Miserable immunity is a difficulty setting that destroys the dupes immunity recovery. You can't do things on miserable that you can do on normal because your dupes can't take persistent germs in the base.  Miserable immunity is a debuff on your dupes for -15% immunity per cycle, which counteracts the +15% per cycle that they have.

[Gwido]

Ha OK. Sorry. I never tested this setting yet.

[Sasza22]

5 hours ago, Zarquan said:

How do I make them wait one cycle?

You have to do it with door permissions. Just deliver all algae that you order to sweep to the high priority sweep only storage in the chlorine room and lock the door until the slimelung dies (you can even disable you deoxydizers for the sweep time, your dupes should survive one cycle with them off).

Next step move all the germ free algae into your base and enable proximity in the priority tab (they will deliver the closest algae). To be super sure disable delivery on dupes that can go to the slime biome and enable it only for the ones that have no permission to go there. Then you can freely dig the biome but you can`t build ladders so be careful.

Then go back to step one, sweep the algae and lock it in the chlorine room.

It`s complicated but it`s the hardest immunity setting after all.

As a sidenote the caustic biomes usually have large chunks of algae in them as well. Overall the same or more than the slime biomes so maybe it would be a better idea to expanmd that way earlygame on this difficulty.

[Zarquan]

22 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

You have to do it with door permissions. Just deliver all algae that you order to sweep to the high priority sweep only storage in the chlorine room and lock the door until the slimelung dies (you can even disable you deoxydizers for the sweep time, your dupes should survive one cycle with them off).

Next step move all the germ free algae into your base and enable proximity in the priority tab (they will deliver the closest algae). To be super sure disable delivery on dupes that can go to the slime biome and enable it only for the ones that have no permission to go there. Then you can freely dig the biome but you can`t build ladders so be careful.

Then go back to step one, sweep the algae and lock it in the chlorine room.

It`s complicated but it`s the hardest immunity setting after all.

As a sidenote the caustic biomes usually have large chunks of algae in them as well. Overall the same or more than the slime biomes so maybe it would be a better idea to expanmd that way earlygame on this difficulty.

That is an awfully large amount of micro for a simple task of "Don't use the algae from this area until I say so."  I feel the difficulty of this mode is supposed to be about keeping the bathrooms good and being careful with slime.  It's not like the dupes want to get sick, but they actively work towards that goal.  I would rather set up a line of 10 ore scrubbers, which I guess would be a solution.  I do have a chlorine geyser. 

But there are a lot of other situations where I want to block items from entering the base.  Like bleach stone and slime.  I never want those in my base because I try to keep my base very clean.  If I could have a checkpoint outside my base that blocks those items from entering, I would be happy to use it for those purposes. 

For example, I would like to build a mushroom without having to worry about slime being carried from one slime biome, through my base, to another slime biome because of my mushrooms.  Yes, this can be done by putting all the slime from a biome in a place where they can't get to it or locking down the slime biome, but there are resources in the biome, like gold amalgam.

If the intended method to deal with these problems is door controls, then they should give us dupe groups so we can quickly have mutually exclusive doors by saying "group 1 is barred from this room and group 2 is barred from that room."  I run large bases and it takes forever to modify door controls.

[Sasza22]

1 hour ago, Zarquan said:

But there are a lot of other situations where I want to block items from entering the base.  Like bleach stone and slime

Well you won`t get any slime or bleckstone in your base if you have no storage assigned for them. If you have a mushroom farm setting storage outside the base with a high priority fixes most of the issues. Make 2 storages with the same priority if you have 2 exits on both sides.

[Zarquan]

25 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Well you won`t get any slime or bleckstone in your base if you have no storage assigned for them. If you have a mushroom farm setting storage outside the base with a high priority fixes most of the issues. Make 2 storages with the same priority if you have 2 exits on both sides.

My current approach is to not have any permanent storage for them and avoid using them as much as possible.  If it needs to be moved, I build a storage compactor set to sweep only and I sweep it.  Then I disable or destroy the compactor.  But that shouldn't have to be the approach.  I would love to use the hand sanitizer for germ removal outside my base now that bleach stone is renewable. But they will sometimes bring it from the wrong place.

These problems have solutions, but the solutions are lousy and tedious.  It's not a puzzle.  It's not a challenge.  It's busy work for me that creates busy work for the dupes where no work had to be done at all.  I should be able to say "No slime past this point."  Or "No algae past this point."  Or "No Bleach stone past this point."

Plus, I've tried having bleach stone storage outside both entrances at the same priority, and they still sometimes carried it through my base.  But I guess that was a long time ago, maybe they are smarter now.

[Sasza22]

Well eventually you can put the storage in the water tank. It won`t offgass from there (as long as it`s under water) and with high enough priority there will be no slime laying around. I usually do it that way. But that`s technically in your base.

[Zarquan]

The problem is that is has to get there.  Things off gas while held by dupes. 

I generally bring in water using a bottle emptier and store bleach stone underwater on site, where it sits for the rest of the game because it is annoying to deal with.  With slime, I do the same thing, making it inaccessible underwater except in one place where I grow mushrooms.  Eventually, I develop a transit system through high density chlorine (if I find a chlorine geyser) to bring it in to the main slime biome.  This degerms it and brings it in for use.