Am I playing the game wrong? [Few dupes vs LOTSA dupes gameplay]

[ORELIS]

Hi.

How one plays the game is obviously to each and their own. However, time and again, I've never reached mid-to-late game mostly due to getting stuck in an... well... "endless midgame loop of feeding the colony" since the nerfs. Now, obviously, one needs to stop accepting dupes from the printer.

 

However, I'm confused if the game is designed around the Few Dupes, expand over time till you get space rockets n stuff - than Accept every single dupe and try to take on feeding them challenge.

 

To explain; I've been always playing with the challenge of accepting every dupe as soon as the printer is ready. (Kinda also want to do a stream/gameplay with that challenge, so to speak).

However, time and again, I simply stumbled upon this problem where I just can't expand further. Not only due to starvation problems, but simply due to the game design not really supporting the idea of having too many dupes.

 

Is it just me, or do you really have to stick with some 10 dupes?

At this point, I don't know if the early-mid game could have more food types to produce. There should be more "wasteful and horrible food options" imo.

[Lifegrow]

Theres no right or wrong way to play the game - just go with what you can comfortably support.

I normally run with 10-16 for the first 300 cycles or so, then later accept upto 24-28 dupes, but I like to build big ol' bases and put my idle dupes to work on wheels  

It's whatever suits your pace of expansion more than anything - and also your geyser luck to some extent. 

Just remember, the less delivery/operate/handling/tuning/tinkering your dupes are doing, the more disposable workforce you have - sweepers/loaders are your friend  

 

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, Lifegrow said:

Theres no right or wrong way to play the game - just go with what you can comfortably support.

I second that. One issue is that if you stay with just 3 dupes or lower, you are going to run into trouble with fixing surface destruction in time. Of course, you will also need much fewer resources, so even that should work.  And somewhere around 30 dupes and above, you will have to get creative providing enough Oxygen. My guess would be there is a hard limit somewhere around 50..100 dupes were making enough Oxygen becomes infeasible. Although fetching ice with rockets may extend that.  And, of course, more dupes slow the game down. 

[ORELIS]

1 hour ago, Lifegrow said:

Theres no right or wrong way to play the game - just go with what you can comfortably support.

I normally run with 10-16 for the first 300 cycles or so, then later accept upto 24-28 dupes, but I like to build big ol' bases and put my idle dupes to work on wheels  

It's whatever suits your pace of expansion more than anything - and also your geyser luck to some extent. 

Just remember, the less delivery/operate/handling/tuning/tinkering your dupes are doing, the more disposable workforce you have - sweepers/loaders are your friend  

 

 

So in other words, you actually stop accepting dupes and stockpile food for a long whlie?

Oh yes, I understand that we are free to play as we find it appropriate. I just find that the game doesn't allow one to transition well if you have an army of dupes.

I am just wondering if one is really forced to stop accepting dupes as said in your quote. I really like taking in each dupe that comes out of the printer, but it just seems that the midgame doesn't support it that well, unless you're really lucky with vents. It is still super hard for me to transition away from mealworms/dirt. I did get mushrooms and bristleberries, but never really at the quantity to support the 30-some dupes. Hence why I think I may be playing wrong.

I am aware too that one needs get away from mealworms all together. But I had so much trouble that I had to even revert to mushbar/fry. Maybe we do need a few more "terrible" foodstuff?

[JDL]

One possible consideration from your first cycle is that the space biome will immediately start destroying the upper sections of your map via meteors. While it's fine to play how you want, delaying too long might mean you lose some of the initial resources in these areas.

[Iriswaters]

It really is necessary to stop taking in more strays at some point. You run up against limits of what you can feed/oxygenate.  First with running out of free dirt to grow lice, where you have to switch over to either mushrooms or stuffed berries, then another wall as you start to run out of slime and/or run up against your first major water limits for growing berries/peppers.  

Everything but the geysers are finite resources.  And it really is possible to burn through everything.  Trying to take every dupe add keep up that rate of explosive expansion is certainly an interesting challenge, but it is definitely a -challenge-.  It's playing on ultra hard mode.  And it's guaranteed to collapse eventually.  It's not a question of if, but when.  

[Oozinator]

1 hour ago, JDL said:

One possible consideration from your first cycle is that the space biome will immediately start destroying the upper sections of your map via meteors. While it's fine to play how you want, delaying too long might mean you lose some of the initial resources in these areas.

That meteor thing seems a bit buggy for me. Results are not the /stable/same.
So far i can not hear meteors, they don't exist(harm surface).
I dig only down from startbiome, till i am ready, to build a "skybridge from steel" and then i rush it, everything intact(small damage).
Next time 1 1/2 top layers are destroyed, doing everything like before.
Dunno if there is any random factor in meteor activation, but "feels" so..

[SakuraKoi]

Double the dupes does not mean double the production but still means double the consumption.

Duplicants can and will get into each others' way, not to mention that paths will be longer anyway since you can not plant or built in the same optiomal space twice.

In theory, the two Cool Steam Vents that always spawn are able to keep at least 12 dupes alive and each additional water geysers means another 12. Any more and you will have to scrap water from other sources to stay alive infinitely or shift to other sources for food and oxygen (Food is 60kg/cycle, Gristle Berry as taking only water, and Oxygen 67.57kg/cycle, Electrolyzer, if you can live with Omeletts, you can nearly double the dupe count)

[Rotintin]

To me the game is more limited by FPS than resources. With even the most ideal map in terms of water, you will hit the wall of FPS much sooner than the wall of water. The most I've gotten at once is 100 dupes and that was 4fps on normal speed. Unplayable.

[cpy]

If you have green thumb and AVOID killing every wild free plant that gives free food you can feed about 15-20 dupes from that map alone.

But it's low quality! Shhh, you can cook it, feed it to hatches, kill hatch -> BBQ TIME!

Free crap food -> hatch fodder -> BBQ

High quality -> dupe platters

Maybe there's a better animal to feed for food, but my map is only hatches and dreckos.

You can have completely free food from dreckos too, they eat balm lilies and they grow for free! (if you have enough chlorine).

Pacu needs algae and i'm not really good with making algae or slime. My pufts seems to be always eating my supply instead of creating it, maybe i need some creative way of dumping polluted water in grates so it can create more PO2.

[Lifegrow]

6 hours ago, GEORGEMONK said:

 

So in other words, you actually stop accepting dupes and stockpile food for a long whlie?

Oh yes, I understand that we are free to play as we find it appropriate. I just find that the game doesn't allow one to transition well if you have an army of dupes.

I am just wondering if one is really forced to stop accepting dupes as said in your quote. I really like taking in each dupe that comes out of the printer, but it just seems that the midgame doesn't support it that well, unless you're really lucky with vents. It is still super hard for me to transition away from mealworms/dirt. I did get mushrooms and bristleberries, but never really at the quantity to support the 30-some dupes. Hence why I think I may be playing wrong.

I am aware too that one needs get away from mealworms all together. But I had so much trouble that I had to even revert to mushbar/fry. Maybe we do need a few more "terrible" foodstuff?

It's not so much a question of stockpiling food - more of going off and building more infrastructure for the base.

i.e. getting a fairly decent electrolyzer build up and running to give surplus O2/H, then working on a decent natural gas/petroleum build to start getting more power/water/co2, etc etc.

I also like to spend a fair bit of time cross training my dupes, so I rarely fit things like exosuits until my dupes are actually going to be speedy running around in them  Nothing worse than seeing a fat old stinky struggling to handle a ladder...

 

[Icywolf]

I was actually thinking about using a set seed, with multiple slush/water geysers to try the "get as many dupes as you can" challenge. 

The best I've managed was 35 of the 2 Cool Steam geysers, and it was a serious water challenge - there were times where I was melting ice to stay afloat... Food wise I had 3 automated mushroom farms, 3 hatch ranches and a puft ranch supplying omelette and BBQ.

 

[ChickenMadness]

It's up to you.

It helps if you go in sandbox and design a base that can support X number of dupes before starting the game. Then stick with that number as your maximum until you expand to build a second base, or more farms if you have room to expand the initial base.

I usually take new dupes as fast as possible just to get the game rolling up to 8 or 12. I usually save scum for the first few dupes just so I don't waste loads of time rejecting crappy dupes. Then once the initial food troubles and setting up of my starting base is done I'll start bringing it up to whatever my maximum is.

Example of one of my colonies. The maximum number of dupes that could fit inside was 21. And I ended up sticking with that number up to cycle 1000+ without any resource troubles (all the farms are offscreen). Eventually got bored and restarted with bigger base designs though.




After a while there isn't much for the dupes to do though so having a large number of them isn't really useful apart from the roleplay aspect. Wanting to make a big pretty city etc.

Usually need a big hamster wheel room so the dupes don't idle.

Only had a very small mushroom and sleet wheat farm + a dense puft ranch feeding the colony. You can have much larger colonies if you get some big farms and ranches going. I'm trying to come up with some mini farming base ideas where the farmers permanently live

[Lurve]

I don't think the game is being developed with any particular number of dupes in mind.  FPS is more of a bottleneck than resources these days, but there's nothing wrong with accepting a dupe every charge.  It makes for a very different challenge.  You'll have a horde of dupes to zergrush every build project, but even that won't be expanding fast enough to keep up with their food needs.

On the flip side, if you have been taking on too many dupes, try a game where you limit yourself to four elite, high-learning dupes.  You'll have much more wiggle room in some respects, but have to relearn how to play in others.

Browsing the seed website, it looks like there's a seed (https://toolsnotincluded.net/seeds/1386914827/291640) with three slush geysers, two polluted water geysers, and a gold volcano.  That is a LOT of cold water and dirt to run an overcrowded slum on.

[ETA] Actually, look at this one: https://toolsnotincluded.net/seeds/157666509/291278  Hotter water, no metal volcano, but 50% more (roughly 18 kg/s).

[ChickenMadness]

9 hours ago, GEORGEMONK said:

 

So in other words, you actually stop accepting dupes and stockpile food for a long whlie?

Oh yes, I understand that we are free to play as we find it appropriate. I just find that the game doesn't allow one to transition well if you have an army of dupes.

I am just wondering if one is really forced to stop accepting dupes as said in your quote. I really like taking in each dupe that comes out of the printer, but it just seems that the midgame doesn't support it that well, unless you're really lucky with vents. It is still super hard for me to transition away from mealworms/dirt. I did get mushrooms and bristleberries, but never really at the quantity to support the 30-some dupes. Hence why I think I may be playing wrong.

I am aware too that one needs get away from mealworms all together. But I had so much trouble that I had to even revert to mushbar/fry. Maybe we do need a few more "terrible" foodstuff?

This is a very easy way to move into the high tier foods. You only need to find a slush geyser and you can have large amounts of sleetwheat, eggs and meat.

Build a reservoir underneath a slush geyser and fill it with pacus (they'l turn into gulp fish). This gives you unlimited fresh water that will either sit at the top of the reservoir at 1-2C or start turning into ice and fall to the bottom. 
Take the ice out and melt it for the sleetwheat. Or just have fun building ice sculptures everywhere.

You can also start building hatch ranches from cycle 1 if you dig a hole for them to all fall into. that will help you transition away from mealwood as you can kill them for meat in emergencies. You'll get BBQ that way during 'stress emergencies' since picha nuts are easy to collect from the wild plants. I think 1 BBQ feeds 2 dupes for 1 cycle.

Dense Pufts are also very easy to ranch and give very large numbers of eggs. If you see any wild dense puft eggs in lying around you should take them into your base and let them hatch. (so you can use them later once you build a room for them).

They will always be making Puft prince and normal puft eggs that you can send to your kitchen for omellettes.




It's an open ranch because of the water lock, fed by 4 SPOMs. I used the oxyllite to feed cold oxygen to my base (after running it through a cold water tank).
I'd kill off half of them every dozen cycles to stop my PC exploding.

21 minutes ago, Lurve said:

I don't think the game is being developed with any particular number of dupes in mind.  FPS is more of a bottleneck than resources these days, but there's nothing wrong with accepting a dupe every charge.  It makes for a very different challenge.  You'll have a horde of dupes to zergrush every build project, but even that won't be expanding fast enough to keep up with their food needs.

On the flip side, if you have been taking on too many dupes, try a game where you limit yourself to four elite, high-learning dupes.  You'll have much more wiggle room in some respects, but have to relearn how to play in others.

Browsing the seed website, it looks like there's a seed (https://toolsnotincluded.net/seeds/1386914827/291640) with three slush geysers, two polluted water geysers, and a gold volcano.  That is a LOT of cold water and dirt to run an overcrowded slum on.

Ye I have to restart games a lot because of the FPS lag lol. I found that revealing the fog of war increases lag alot. So it's a good idea to check out what the map looks like in sandbox so you know where everything is before starting the game. And only dig to places you need to.

[Xuhybrid]

I usually stick to 6 dupes until i have my core infrastructure going, some exosuits and a water source. Then i can start adding more dupes. Others prefer to dig out the entire map and use the algae for longer, but i prefer to keep biomes mostly intact, and only digging passage to where i need to go.

[babba]

On one of my visits to Germany...The cashier woman at a store called "Aldi" scanned everything fast and then let it all drop down from the cashier desk and glasses broke as she pushed it all away from her. She told me that "The instructions are to put the shopping cart next to the till", so everything can drop into the cart.

I asked her if I should build a slide at home for the trolley, which I bring along on each visit,so that everything slides safely into it.

Gladly dear @GEORGEMONK you can play ONI however you like, without a German instructor at your commuter - Telling you how to play.

Enjoy your freedom

John Deery talks about Germans and their supermarkets...

 

[MorsDux]

You can get 2 of your starting dupes killed in the beginning and try to leave the planet with your only dupe. That sounds fun.

[Carnis]

I managed to get up to 90 dups, but had very generous water+polluted water geysers. You run out of O2 before you run out of food.

Previously you could support 75 duplicants with O2 with pre-space Mats Via only 3 oil Wells (3kg water ->> 10kg oil ->> 7.5kg water) + natgas cooking.

One now needs supercoolant to get The sourgas -> methane -> natural gas so that no longer Works. So you are stuck with ice biome melting + whatever geyser found.

*

I Fed My dups with bristle/mealwood/drecko meat

Then all mushroom/drecko meat.

Then mushroom + drecko + slickster. + Hatch bbq (natural wild peppers).

Then 70% population with mushroom+fertiliser For +100% grow.

rest mostly with drecko / dense puft meat.

*

Was boiling oil to water, quit that colony when oil physics changed.

A lot of duplicant pathing was laggy even tho FPS was ok. A lot of cycles were messy to manage to keep food above 0.

[Yothiel]

As said above, there is no right or wrong way to play, just do it the way you prefer. While taking all dupes will eventually lead to an unsustainable asteroid, it can still be an interesting challenge to try and last as long as possible. Conversely, taking it easy with a reduced number of dupes can be quite relaxing and also enjoyable.

I think what is really needed for playing ONI is being able to set up the right build for the right opportunity (stuff like proper electrolyzer build, farms properly sized for N dupes, plumbed toilet with water-recycling & overflow protection, proper geyser taming & exploitation, drecko ranches for plastic, etc). How you learn these builds is totally up to you however: you can invent them yourself as you need them, read guides, keep an eye on what is going on in the forums/reddit, or follow youtubers, whichever sits you..

 

Personally I like to take all dupes until I reach 35 (that's the number of different dupe templates). It's somewhat outside of my comfort zone, but that's just what I need to get over my procrastination. That's also a nice amount of dupepower for quickly experimenting with builds that may or may not help me reach 100% sustainability. I really like to directly figure & test my new builds in real situations rather than first building them out in debug (and then try to panic-fix everything when I realize I mixed up my gas piping and am venting all my natgas, but at least I'll remember these lessons  '^_^)

[ruhrohraggy]

I liked the idea of killing off 2 of the starting dupes and then having only 1 dupe. Sure would be interesting. I think ima try that next playthrough.

The lone duper...I'd even setup priorities, and make sure it was the lone duper that walled off his friends, so they'd suffocate and die. I'd have him wall off the entrance too, and fill it with magma, sacrificing all of the new duplicants in the name of Lucifer. He'd then fight off hordes of Hatches, build robot sweeper friends to keep him company and keep all of the neuro-vascillators to himself... or something like that.

I find the ideal number of dupes to be 4 early on, then 8, then 16. 8-10 is the number of dupes a single Electrolyzer can support in terms of o2 depending on if they have diver's lungs or not.

As I get to that point, I'm actively checking each dupe available as soon as they're available in the printer, looking for good traits and stats...Otherwise, reject.

Usually only get enough water to feed 2-3 Electrolyzers indefinitely...along with everything else...and by that time most of the map is already clear...So I don't even really need any more dupes.

 

[Icywolf]

I remember seeing a clip of someone running with one dupe and he got his head stuck

[babba]

4 hours ago, Icywolf said:

I remember seeing a clip of someone running with one dupe and he got his head stuck

[ORELIS]

On 29.11.2018 at 11:58 AM, babba said:

On one of my visits to Germany...The cashier woman at a store called "Aldi" scanned everything fast and then let it all drop down from the cashier desk and glasses broke as she pushed it all away from her. She told me that "The instructions are to put the shopping cart next to the till", so everything can drop into the cart.

I asked her if I should build a slide at home for the trolley, which I bring along on each visit,so that everything slides safely into it.

Gladly dear @GEORGEMONK you can play ONI however you like, without a German instructor at your commuter - Telling you how to play.

Enjoy your freedom

John Deery talks about Germans and their supermarkets...

 

Ironically, I've been living in Germany for 30 years.

 

On 29.11.2018 at 10:34 AM, ChickenMadness said:

This is a very easy way to move into the high tier foods. You only need to find a slush geyser and you can have large amounts of sleetwheat, eggs and meat.

Build a reservoir underneath a slush geyser and fill it with pacus (they'l turn into gulp fish). This gives you unlimited fresh water that will either sit at the top of the reservoir at 1-2C or start turning into ice and fall to the bottom. 
Take the ice out and melt it for the sleetwheat. Or just have fun building ice sculptures everywhere.

You can also start building hatch ranches from cycle 1 if you dig a hole for them to all fall into. that will help you transition away from mealwood as you can kill them for meat in emergencies. You'll get BBQ that way during 'stress emergencies' since picha nuts are easy to collect from the wild plants. I think 1 BBQ feeds 2 dupes for 1 cycle.

Dense Pufts are also very easy to ranch and give very large numbers of eggs. If you see any wild dense puft eggs in lying around you should take them into your base and let them hatch. (so you can use them later once you build a room for them).

They will always be making Puft prince and normal puft eggs that you can send to your kitchen for omellettes.




It's an open ranch because of the water lock, fed by 4 SPOMs. I used the oxyllite to feed cold oxygen to my base (after running it through a cold water tank).
I'd kill off half of them every dozen cycles to stop my PC exploding.

Ye I have to restart games a lot because of the FPS lag lol. I found that revealing the fog of war increases lag alot. So it's a good idea to check out what the map looks like in sandbox so you know where everything is before starting the game. And only dig to places you need to.

 

I think my issue is that I never bumped into a slush geyser before. I'm also not proficient (yet) in ranching likaboss. I assume I have to get better at that. I did manage to build ranch zones and whatnots, but I think my dependancy of feeding so many dupes led to the obvious troubles. Ironically, oxygen production was the least of my worries.

 

Thanks for all the replies btw!