New player - Is this a fundamental issue?

[Angpaur]

3 minutes ago, ruhrohraggy said:

I'm quite mystified...

Check if there are no gases interfering with the scanners. I had similar problem - one scanner couldn't reach more than 70%. All space around seemed to be fine. It turned out that scanner zone was overlapping some drywalls, where a CO2 from falling meteors was gathering. When I removed the drywalls scanner started to work at 100% efficiency.

[ruhrohraggy]

Just now, Angpaur said:

Check if there are no gases interfering with the scanners. I had similar problem - one scanner couldn't reach more than 70%. All space around seemed to be fine. It turned out that scanner zone was overlapping some drywalls, where a CO2 from falling meteors was gathering. When I removed the drywalls scanner started to work at 100% efficiency.

 

I built them 1 tile below the top of the map, it is a perfect vacuum, far as I can tell. The bunker doors above them are open.

[Angpaur]

1 minute ago, ruhrohraggy said:

I built them 1 tile below the top of the map

Well there you go - probably this is a problem. As far I know scanners needs 13 tiles space above to get to 100%. End of map limits the space.

[ruhrohraggy]

6 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

Well there you go - probably this is a problem. As far I know scanners needs 13 tiles space above to get to 100%. End of map limits the space.

Sigh...maybe a picture might help...

-Edit-

Seems to have to do with putting the dish close to the very top of the map...

There's some kinda retardeness that occurs there apparently.

[Angpaur]

4 minutes ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Sigh...maybe a picture might help...

Sigh.. maybe a more straightforward answer might help...

Move the scanner 13 tiles down and check if you will get 100% efficiency.

[ruhrohraggy]

6 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

Sigh.. maybe a more straightforward answer might help...

Move the scanner 13 tiles down and check if you will get 100% efficiency.

 

Yeah, I got it, frustrated and it's 7:52 AM. Thanks, Didn't mean to be rude. I misread what you said.

The automation system I wired in is tedious, because I wanted to test out something I've been working on. I probably learned this fact when I first tried building it 3'ish months ago, and then forgot. So, stripping all that out made me angry.

[Angpaur]

Don't worry  It is still me who owns you - for the idea of pulsing scanners and powering only one when meteors are detected. I created my own version of this system and it works flawlessly. 6 scanners are powered for 2 seconds every 8 seconds. When incoming signal is on, 5 scanners power is cut off and only one scanner is powered. Bunker doors start to close after 146 seconds. When signal is gone I keep the 5 scanners power off for another 99 seconds(it is a minimal time for next meteor shower to detect again). This way I can save lots of power and have fully functional meteor detection. Thanks!

[ruhrohraggy]

1 hour ago, Angpaur said:

Don't worry  It is still me who owns you - for the idea of pulsing scanners and powering only one when meteors are detected. I created my own version of this system and it works flawlessly. 6 scanners are powered for 2 seconds every 8 seconds. When incoming signal is on, 5 scanners power is cut off and only one scanner is powered. Doors start to close after 146 seconds. When signal is gone I keep the 5 scanners power off for another 99 seconds(it is a minimal time for next meteor shower to detect again). This way I can save lots of power and have fully functional meteor detection. Thanks!

 

Well, we all owe Tunderlock. Was his crazy idea. I just spent 600 cycles seeing if it could work. And I feel worse now for being rude. I recognize you from the original post, now that I think about it. So again, I apologize...I just misread what you had said.

Glad to hear it's working well for you! Sounds similar to mine.

After doing a lot of math, I set it to pulse every 28 seconds for 1 second and my doors are buffered for 132 seconds. The buffer gate for the final reset is set for 72 seconds since my pulser circuit is 23 seconds long, with 5 second duration. (Takes ~4 seconds for unpowered bunker door to open, so 27 seconds till open, 1 second of scanning time)

Now that I'm a lot more comfortable with automation, I also did some cleaning up of the circuit. I got to make it a little more "simple" by removing an unnecessary gate and doing some extra routing from the Master Scanner.

I plan on working in a water clock to hold the signal instead of a filter gate, so it's save/load proof.

And I was going to use it to test rocket detection on beta.

[GrindThisGame]

On 12/2/2018 at 7:20 AM, Express said:

dditional duplicants only serve to make the game more difficult to new players. I feel this is counter intuitive as most base building games encouraging one to increase the population so more can get done.

I kinda like how it's tempting to take on dupes as fast as they are served up. After a few playthroughs you realize that this is yet another thing to balance and get right. There is a sweet spot (different for everyone) on how many dupes is fun and sustainable. My goal in the game is always to be 100% sustainable and get to the point where I can afk the game for 100s or 1000s of cycles without intervention. And some maps can only support only so many dupes (the ultimate limiting factor being lag).

[KittenIsAGeek]

23 hours ago, LeifErikson said:

I'm a veteran of this game, but only recently restarted to try out the new rocketry / space industry update. I rush to 16 dupes, stabilized my colony, then got 4 more, stabilized, and currently sit at 24. Some key things that are essential for newer players to understand include:

-Bathrooms are water positive. You can make an infinite cycle of water from your bathroom to a sieve and back, and you get extra water. Each time a lavatory is used, you get a net of +6.7kg of water , which can be sieved, recycled, and there's 6.7kg of water for electrolyzers, giving 5949g of Oxygen per dupe that uses the restroom. One electrolyzer provides 888g of oxygen, which is enough for 8.88 dupes (100g per dupe).

-Mushrooms are hands down the most reliable food source for the entire game. Sure they only give +1 morale, but that is fine for almost all of your dupes, save astronauts. Swamp biomes are dangerous, but they are very managable if you set up a single deodorizer at the entrance to them, and they become trivial if you dig through to an adjacent cold biome. The cold will radiate out, and kill the slimelung in the tiles over time. Mushrooms only require 4kg of slime per cycle. Slime in your base is bad, but if you just submerge a storage container in water, the slime will not off gas polluted oxygen with slimelung.

-Hamster wheels are your friend. Seriously. I used almost exclusively hamster wheels for power for 500+ cycles, with just a little extra runoff from my SPOMs to supplicate vital systems. Building a coal generator in your base is going to quickly lead to heat death if you don't use insulated tiles to protect the colony. And on the subject of insulation, use insulated tiles to surround your base and prevent as much heat transfer as possible. Insulated Igneous tiles work perfect for most applications, and ceramic is pretty much all you need unless you're going for something very specific to prevent all transfer.

In general, when I start out, I rush farming so I can build farm tiles, fill them with mealwood, survive off of lice loaf until I have a CO2 pit to build my mushroom farm in, and then get rid of the microbe musher forever. Grill uses no water, and mushrooms are an excellent food source. Don't dig up every plant you see in the wild, only the ones you need to move. You can use the naturally growing peppernuts and sleet wheat to make the fancier foods for your dupes that require higher morale.

You have some great points here.  I agree with everything that you said, but I'd also like to point out that coal generators, when coupled with a smart battery, can be extremely useful in freeing up dupes in the early stages of your base.  I do agree that they're a source of heat and CO2, both of which can be problems for your living area -- which is why I always build mine off to the side of the main living base.  For example, build them in the swamp or toxic biomes.

I do disagree with your lice loaf. While it does produce more food for less dupe labor, water in the early part of the game is generally a limited resource.  Instead, I farm some extra mealwood plants, as well as 3 to 5 bristle blooms beside the printing pod.  Every time I've made lice loaf, I've either had to rush to find geysers, or rush to get other food sources started.  If you fry up the berries into gristle berries, it becomes quite a bit more efficient than lice loaf.  Here's a SS of the starting area early in my base:

Spoiler

You can deconstruct the Ration Box and put two more bristle blooms up if you like.  This also helps to generate seeds, which will be useful later if you decide to set up a farm for berry sludge.

Finally, I'd also like to point out that you can use sandstone for insulated tiles around the living area of your base.  Igneous works better, but sandstone does just fine and is much more prevalent.  Later you can replace it with igneous or ceramic in areas that appear to be leaking heat.

[ruhrohraggy]

33 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

You have some great points here.  I agree with everything that you said, but I'd also like to point out that coal generators, when coupled with a smart battery, can be extremely useful in freeing up dupes in the early stages of your base.  I do agree that they're a source of heat and CO2, both of which can be problems for your living area -- which is why I always build mine off to the side of the main living base.  For example, build them in the swamp or toxic biomes.

 

You can actually use the coal generator to your kitchen's advantage. Depending on your base layout, you can just stick your coal gen right smack in the center of your kitchen, above where you'd store your food.

Since mushrooms also benefit this, and mushrooms are probably my favorite mid-game food in the game, they too benefit from this, and benefit from being near your kitchen. So that's awesome on three accounts.

Heat is typically a non-issue early game if you don't go too willy nilly mining everything out. The surrounding sandstone is a pretty good heat soak until you can get a couple wheezes and air conditioning setup.

So I think building like this takes max advantage of the first coal gen, and even if you don't plan on going shrooms, your food storage will still benefit.