Straight Dope Message Board

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Of course, then there are things like the latest game, where by cycle 45, two of my dupes are in rapidly failing health due to slimelung, even though I thought I was very careful with slime; come to find that even though my storage isn't allowed to hold slime, it's positively teeming with germs, in a way I haven't seen in any previous game. Not sure what's causing that.

Is it set up to hold algae, clay, gold amalgam or any other resource that can be found in the marsh ? That'd probably be it. Algae in particular is super annoying to me, because I've got my oxy makers on priority 9 and when they're closer to the swamp than the storage, dupes will sometimes go fetch ultragermy algae to put in there. Which is S-M-R-T apparently . Truly, lazyness is what'll bring down every civilization. 101

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Heh--it's the automation system that's most intimidating to me. I've done a bit with it, but I have very little programming background, and my attempts at getting things to work have not been super-successful.

Automation is a major step up challenge. I have very little programming background too but it's mainly the kind of thinking you would be in a philososy course about logic. Go about it the same way you've gone about the game: Learn, plan, experiment then start the cycle over by learning from your failures.

Example: I realized that my liquid pumps don't pump all the time but continuously take about 240Watts which is significant. So I put a liquid element sensor on a section of pipe going from the pump to my base. I set the liquid sensor to detect water so that if there is water in the pipe section where the sensor is, the sensor sends out an Active Signal. Then I ran an automation wire from the sensor to the input of a NOT Gate to invert the Active Signal into a Standby signal. Then an automation wire from the NOT Gate's output to an automatic shutoff which controls the liquid pump's power. So, if there's water in the monitored pipe section, the liquid pump shuts off. Result: The liquid pump only consumes power when it needs to.

Next time you quit a base, take the time to try a few things with automation; If you're leaving that base anyway, there's nothing to lose.

Automation is potentially one of the best mechanics of the game. 102

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

Automation is potentially one of the best mechanics of the game.

Also the one that's most likely to fuck everything up. So, yeah, best 103

[Kobal2]

This game is, in retrospect, awful. It lets me virtualize my worst habits. "Oh, I need this quick. OK, let's just setup a temporary solution here until I get around to doing it right, I've got other plans right now." [60 seconds later) "Eh, this is inconvenient, but since I've got that piece of shit over there I might as well connect them while they're there. I'll re-do it proper when I do the first thing correct". (60 cycles later) "Ugh there's just so many shit systems connected to this one horrible decision, I can't even begin to sort it out... I'll just start a new colony, fuck it". 104

[Skywatcher]

Sounds like you'd be happier with sandbox mode enabled.



Note: clicking the box for sandbox mode in custom settings only makes the mode available, you still need to activate it. Every single time you load that game. 105

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

"Ugh there's just so many shit systems connected to this one horrible decision, I can't even begin to sort it out... I'll just start a new colony, fuck it".

In one of the The Expanse books, a character is talking about space colonies, and how there are so many interdependent systems in a typical colony, but without the redundancy and therefore robustness of a natural system. And when one system goes down, colony collapse is inevitable even if you can string it along for a while, because all the effects cascade and bring down all of the connected other systems, and the systems connected to those, etc. That's pretty much this game in a nutshell.

I came really, really close due to a single stupid error. For some reason, my dupes were refusing to take care of a bunch of stuff--refuelling my coal generators, running the oil refinery, completing some super-important construction tasks, etc. Instead they were going out of their way to finish some extremely low-priority stuff, and mostly just running on their hamster wheels. I was out of battery juice and virtually everything was shutting down. I couldn't understand it.

My lower levels (with power generation and some other industry) are hot and poisonous, and so I had an atmo suit checkpoint. And, due to a small defect in oxygen routing, they weren't being refilled with O2 at a sufficient rate. So the dopes basically wouldn't go down there except when a rare blob of O2 made it to one of the suits. It stopped like 99% of the necessary visits to those levels.

Took me quite a few cycles to find the problem and I just barely recovered. A few dupes almost suffocated or heatstroked since the only way to fix the problem was to let them down there without suits (since there was no sufficient power reserve to refill them even once I fixed the pipes). But with enough careful priority management I just made it.

Great fun! 106

[MichaelEmouse]

I'm starting to see the utility of cooling. I kept getting oil spills near my polymer press and I wondered what it was. It was the plastic I made melting. I really needed that plastic to facilitate surface exploration by building a tube system.

Cooling air seems to be much easier than cooling liquid. Do I understand that the aquatuner needs to be either in a very cold gas environment or in liquid? I don't seem to have any loose liquid to pour in its enclosure. 107

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

I kept getting oil spills near my polymer press and I wondered what it was.

Naptha, probably. Not sure if it can be used for anything. Maybe it turns back to crude if it gets really hot.

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

Do I understand that the aquatuner needs to be either in a very cold gas environment or in liquid? I don't seem to have any loose liquid to pour in its enclosure.

Liquid, ideally. But you have to cool that, and the only ways to permanently eliminate heat (aside from exploitish stuff) is via Wheezeworts or thermo-nullifiers. The latter can easily drive an aquatuner, but really you might as well cool the plastic plant directly at that point. I haven't yet found a use for aquatuners. 108

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

I'm starting to see the utility of cooling. I kept getting oil spills near my polymer press and I wondered what it was. It was the plastic I made melting. I really needed that plastic to facilitate surface exploration by building a tube system.

Yeah, I haven't started with plastics but according to the Wiki it gets created at 75° and its melting point is 76. And the machines producing it emit a ton of heat. Good luck sorting it out .

Cooling air seems to be much easier than cooling liquid. Do I understand that the aquatuner needs to be either in a very cold gas environment or in liquid? I don't seem to have any loose liquid to pour in its enclosure.

Cooling is easier with liquids, but cooling the liquid afterwards is much harder to do than cooling gas.
And yeah, temp tuners remove heat from whatever is travelling through them but transfer it to the air (or liquid) around them. Ideally you sit them either in a hydrogen room stuffed with wheezeworts or a pool of liquid you'll deal with later - but with water than can be dicey, you can end up flashboiling it and have your machine suddenly conk out right after that. Polluted water has a higher boiling point and more heat capacity.

Naptha, probably. Not sure if it can be used for anything.

Doesn't look like it. It seems like it once had interesting properties, but now it's just another liquid ; and it's not used by or in anything. 109

[MichaelEmouse]

Does the glass forge say: "MISSING.STRINGS.BUILDING.STATUSITEMS.PIPEMAYMELT.NAME" while being unusable for other people too? 110

[msmith537]

My colony turned into a yellow hell of slimelung 111

[Atamasama]

I hear Johnny Cash singing, “It turned into a yellow hell of slimelung...” 112

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

One thing I'd love to set up is some customizable alerts. For example:
-Any time a dupe has >150K germs (or maybe 250K)--so you can catch illnesses early.
-Whenever food has gone down 3 cycles in a row (or whatever number).
-Whenever oxygen has gone down 3 cycles in a row (the more frequent notices are useless)
-Whenever a consumable resource (algae, coal, etc.) drops beneath a given threshold.
-Whenever the water in a given pool exceeds a given temperature.

Also, I figure at some point there'll be sign-making. This would be really useful: I'd love to label rooms with my plans for them, and I'd also love to have mouseover labels for storage.

Is there anywhere that upcoming features are teased? 113

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Is there anywhere that upcoming features are teased?

Not sure, but I agree that some expansion in automation would be great. Factorio is an excellent model here; its "circuit networks" are much more advanced than ONI's automation, since the signal wires can carry far more information than a binary signal. Not sure how far down that road they want to go, though.

Among other things, Factorio has a siren building that can be set to go off based on boolean operations. So you can easily test if some resource is below a limit and get an audible notice in that case. 114

[Chisquirrel]

Has anyone worked with a steam turbine yet? Is it possible to actively concentrate heat into a specific water supply then run the steam through a turbine in order to cool it AND create power? 115

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

One thing I'd love to set up is some customizable alerts. For example:
-Any time a dupe has >150K germs (or maybe 250K)--so you can catch illnesses early.
-Whenever food has gone down 3 cycles in a row (or whatever number).
-Whenever oxygen has gone down 3 cycles in a row (the more frequent notices are useless)
-Whenever a consumable resource (algae, coal, etc.) drops beneath a given threshold.
-Whenever the water in a given pool exceeds a given temperature.

Also, I figure at some point there'll be sign-making. This would be really useful: I'd love to label rooms with my plans for them, and I'd also love to have mouseover labels for storage.

Is there anywhere that upcoming features are teased?

I looked for it but found nothing. Updates seem to come out every 1-2 months though.

I've been wanting to create a control room around the research stations where you could control nearly every part of the base using signal switches. Labeling would be useful for that.

You may want to start a thread on Steam and tell the devs about it. If they've been thinking about it or other people agree, it may influence them.

Sign-making seems like a pretty easy and useful to implement. You can already change the names of your Dupes, I've been giving mine creative names like "Research Farm Cook" and "Supply Build Dig" based on their stats and interests.

Originally Posted by Chisquirrel

Has anyone worked with a steam turbine yet? Is it possible to actively concentrate heat into a specific water supply then run the steam through a turbine in order to cool it AND create power?

I built a turbine on top of a geysers but my timing was bad and I'll have to wait 68 cycles more. If I remember correctly, you need a 3000g pressure differential between what's on top and beneath and turbine and the region beneath the turbine has to be about 220°Celsius. If you manage it, please show us how you did it as that would be pretty impressive.

Steam turbine might work well down near magma though.


Which reminds me, has anyone else been surprised by inundating oil when prospecting for it? I'd dug a deep, narrow shaft to get to the oil quickly and once I started digging in the ground near crude oil deposits, it suddenly came out and flooded the narrow shaft about the height of a biome. 116

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

I looked for it but found nothing. Updates seem to come out every 1-2 months though.

I think I saw somewhere they have a regular 6-week update schedule, but I can't find that now.

I've been wanting to create a control room around the research stations where you could control nearly every part of the base using signal switches. Labeling would be useful for that.

I've been dismantling the research stations by around cycle 60 or 70 or whenever I complete the research tree; that's much earlier than I get much need for switching. But I do like the idea of a central station for controlling the base.

You may want to start a thread on Steam and tell the devs about it. If they've been thinking about it or other people agree, it may influence them.

Good idea!

I built a turbine on top of a geysers but my timing was bad and I'll have to wait 68 cycles more. If I remember correctly, you need a 3000g pressure differential between what's on top and beneath and turbine and the region beneath the turbine has to be about 220°Celsius. If you manage it, please show us how you did it as that would be pretty impressive.

Steam turbine might work well down near magma though.


Which reminds me, has anyone else been surprised by inundating oil when prospecting for it? I'd dug a deep, narrow shaft to get to the oil quickly and once I started digging in the ground near crude oil deposits, it suddenly came out and flooded the narrow shaft about the height of a biome.

I need to go prospecting--just found the biome that has oil, but haven't dug in it at all yet. I do have a question: is there an easy way to find geysers? So far all I've found in my current world is a cool slush geyser, and I'd love to find some others. 117

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

I do have a question: is there an easy way to find geysers? So far all I've found in my current world is a cool slush geyser, and I'd love to find some others.

Other than the ones that are readily apparent : look for neutronium. Every "hidden" geyser sit on an indestructible plate of neutronium that has no heat and is indestructible, for coding purposes (because technically geysers and volcanoes are buildings and you could disable them by destroying the surface they sit on ; so the devs made sure you couldn't). Neutronium is black & sorta veiny ? I mean you can just look at any geyser you've already uncovered and see what it looks like. All you gotta do next is look for it in the strata you've uncovered. If you don't see any, dig further - the number of geysers on any map is fixed (although the types aren't). 118

[SenorBeef]

Anyone use the transit tubes or conveyor belts yet? Any tricks to it? I'm at the stage where I'm considering building them but having trouble finding tutorials on youtube so I'm wondering if there are tricks or things to avoid with them. 119

[MichaelEmouse]

Tube transit: I think it costs 10kW each time you use it so it's best done for long range upward/sideways travel.

I ran into the problem of being told there was "No landing available" at several junctures. Turns out, I needed to run the mouse over sections I'd built to smooth them over. It didn't cost anything, it just connected several adjacent sections into a whole.

I think the main issue you'll have is making enough plastic and making sure neither the newly-made plastic nor the machine that produces it overheats. 120

[SenorBeef]

Ah, woops. I thought transit tubes cost 25 plastic per piece, but I was thinking of plastic ladders. 100 per piece means a whole lot of plastic for a decent run.

How do thermal nullifiers work? Do they just suck in heat created in that area? So you pipe in some hydrogen, then run a pipe up there with some o2 you want to use in your base and put a thermal exchanger thing up there near the nullifier? 121

[Chisquirrel]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

Ah, woops. I thought transit tubes cost 25 plastic per piece, but I was thinking of plastic ladders. 100 per piece means a whole lot of plastic for a decent run.

How do thermal nullifiers work? Do they just suck in heat created in that area? So you pipe in some hydrogen, then run a pipe up there with some o2 you want to use in your base and put a thermal exchanger thing up there near the nullifier?

Yep, the nullifier just cools whatever is around it. I think my next liquid cooling solution will be to put the fluid right on the nullifier. It obviously liquefies chlorine, so experiment will proceed apace.

You could also use radiant ducts to increase the cooling effect on your pipe. That's my current solution right now - just piping air from the base to a frozen biome, running it through in radiant ducts, then sending to back to vent near the base, where my heat has tended to collect. 122

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by Chisquirrel

Yep, the nullifier just cools whatever is around it. I think my next liquid cooling solution will be to put the fluid right on the nullifier.

Watch out; it can be flooded. If you pump chlorine gas in the top and let it condense to at the bottom, pumping out the liquid as it forms, you should be all right. You can also use radiant pipes running through tempshift plate to transfer the heat, but that requires keeping it in liquid form--risky. 123

[SenorBeef]

So I have a remote oil refining/plastic/power generation plant, with the manual oil refinery. For the first few cycles I operated it, someone would come down at least 3-4 times a cycle and turn the crank, so it was at least running half the time. But for some reason no one has been coming down the last 2 days, and that stuff has all gone unused. The oil refinery has a priority of 9. I have 2 people in the operate profession, and additionally I gave operate a high priority to 2 more people. But it seems to just make them use the manual generators in the base more often, which only have a priority of 3. So why are my guys ignoring the 9 priority oil refinery for the 3 priority manual generators? Or why I can't get anyone to go down there at all anymore? I haven't changed anything about that area. 124

[Chisquirrel]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

Watch out; it can be flooded. If you pump chlorine gas in the top and let it condense to at the bottom, pumping out the liquid as it forms, you should be all right. You can also use radiant pipes running through tempshift plate to transfer the heat, but that requires keeping it in liquid form--risky.

Well damn. Guess I'm gonna have to try something else. I still plan on using liquid cooling - it's just so much more efficient. Chlorine is still the plan, as it has a decently large window of stable temperature, with roughly 60 degrees between gas and solid. Properly managed, it shouldn't be TOO difficult to keep it in that range, which also happens to be right about where a frozen biome sits anyway.

Properly managed is the key phrase. My dwarfs can tell you that "properly managed" is more like a fantasy than a realistic goal. 125

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

So I have a remote oil refining/plastic/power generation plant, with the manual oil refinery.

I've had problems with the refineries too. I don't fully understand why the dupes sometimes avoid it, but I'd make these recommendations:
- One input and output pipeline per refinery. Outputs go to a reservoir; use automation to turn the refineries off when the reservoir is full. Inputs ideally also come from a reservoir with one pump per refinery.
- Keep it on a separate power grid. Even a tiny interruption in power keeps the dupes away. I actually just have hamster wheels and a few batteries powering the refineries.
- Double-check that the dupes can actually get there. Sounds silly but I have mine behind an atmo suit checkpoint and they weren't going past that due to lack of O2.

The dupes are pretty diligent now with these changes. Almost too much--they work themselves into being stressed (I wish they would rotate).

I'd love if I could have the refineries powered by the main network when there's enough juice, but switch to manual power when not (and use the manual power only for the refineries), but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. 126

[SenorBeef]

Durr, figured it out. I replaced tile with mesh tile to let the pollution drain, but forgot to reconnect the oil pipe after that. 127

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

Durr, figured it out. I replaced tile with mesh tile to let the pollution drain, but forgot to reconnect the oil pipe after that.

How often does stuff like this happen? All the time, that's how often. Recommendation for update: if you've set a nonworkable machine to a priority of 9, a dupe turns to you and says, "You forgot to connect a pipe, idiot."

Having the dupe call me names would be a definite perk.

I think I've run into a bug. Occasionally, the cook drops a piece of food in front of the grill, and dupes trying to put it into the adjacent fridge are unable to do so: they'll move it mg at a time, apparently forever. The worst part is that it seems to make the grill off-limits, and the cook stops cooking.

I nearly had someone starve before I figured out what was going on. The only fix I could come up with was to deconstruct the floor in front of the grill, making the food fall to the level below, and then rebuilding the floor--at which point the cook went back to work.

Has anyone else seen this happen? It's happened to me a few times. 128

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

I'd love if I could have the refineries powered by the main network when there's enough juice, but switch to manual power when not (and use the manual power only for the refineries), but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

Thanks for the tip of using a reservoir. I've had problems managing the output. I realize that I tend to be miserly with my use of powered machines like pumps because I'm wary of running out of energy but I guess the game can be pretty generous with that.

As for what you could do, remember that switches don't care what they're switching on or off or in what direction. You could put a switch on the juncture between the main power network and the local one. If you automate it, you might be able to shutoff the connection when the electrical reserves of the main power network go down too low.

E.g.: Main Generator - Main Batteries - Heavy Wire Link - Transformer - SWITCH - Hamster Wheel - Local Battery - Oil Refinery.

To preserve the power of the local network's battery when the main network is active, you could have: Main Network - SWITCH_1 - Oil Refinery - SWITCH_2 - Local Network.
With SWITCH_1 being on when SWITCH_2 is off and vice versa. That also can be automated.

Or just, you know, use the hallowed design principle of brute forcing it and move a coal generator to power your oil refinery. I think I'll do that. 129

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I don't think I (or anyone) linked to this earlier: Useful Construction Patterns. These are some lovely ways to set up, for example, a room to utilize a steam geyser, or to cool water, or to generate power from a natural gas geyser, or whatever. They're pretty complicated, but I've been trying some of the ideas, and in doing so have been learning about some of the more abstruse things you can build and their effects. 130

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

Or just, you know, use the hallowed design principle of brute forcing it and move a coal generator to power your oil refinery. I think I'll do that.

I haven't run out of coal yet, but I'm starting to have to go out of my way for it, and I want to save some for steelmaking. I think you have the right idea about the switch network; I can also use it to disable the hamster wheels when there's enough power available. The only other thing I'd like is for the backup batteries to have a "diode" so that they can be charged by the grid put can't put energy back onto it (only the refineries).

I finally found a natural gas geyser but it has the same dormancy periods as steam geysers, so it's only useful for reducing oil use, not as a real replacement. Maybe there's another, but I'm actually starting to run out of map.

My lower reaches have become super-pressurized with CO2 and I'm having to pump it out into space now... 131

[Chisquirrel]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

I haven't run out of coal yet, but I'm starting to have to go out of my way for it, and I want to save some for steelmaking. I think you have the right idea about the switch network; I can also use it to disable the hamster wheels when there's enough power available. The only other thing I'd like is for the backup batteries to have a "diode" so that they can be charged by the grid put can't put energy back onto it (only the refineries).

I finally found a natural gas geyser but it has the same dormancy periods as steam geysers, so it's only useful for reducing oil use, not as a real replacement. Maybe there's another, but I'm actually starting to run out of map.

My lower reaches have become super-pressurized with CO2 and I'm having to pump it out into space now...

Are you farming hatches? Stone hatches can produce about 1/4 of a coal generators requirements per cycle. 132

[Dr. Strangelove]

I am, but I tend to forget about my farm and it's always on the verge of dwindling away to nothing. Really, I should exclude the eggs from being picked up. If I just let them sit around in the farm they'd do all right.

I spend more attention on my slickster farm since they produce oil from CO2. 133

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

I am, but I tend to forget about my farm and it's always on the verge of dwindling away to nothing. Really, I should exclude the eggs from being picked up. If I just let them sit around in the farm they'd do all right.

That happened to me--I had a good eight or nine hatches, but then I got obsessed with building around a geyser, and by the time I checked on the farm again, it was empty, and I had a bunch of dupes sick of eating eggs.

I took eggs off the grill menu. 134

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

I took eggs off the grill menu.

I'm actually not exactly sure what's going on in my case--I don't have an egg cracker, so I didn't think it was possible for the dupes to eat the eggs. I just find broken shells outside the storage cabinets. I think they're just dying after a while. Or hatching and dying immediately? I can't tell but they aren't being born normally the way they would if I left them out. 135

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

I'm actually not exactly sure what's going on in my case--I don't have an egg cracker, so I didn't think it was possible for the dupes to eat the eggs. I just find broken shells outside the storage cabinets. I think they're just dying after a while. Or hatching and dying immediately? I can't tell but they aren't being born normally the way they would if I left them out.

I store my eggs in food boxes sunken in CO2 (so they never spoil, nor incubate) and yeah, after a long while they just break on their own - I guess they die. I've taken to just not collecting eggs before I have ranching tech, to try and save the glowbugs. 136

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

I store my eggs in food boxes sunken in CO2 (so they never spoil, nor incubate)

Nice idea. I don't recall offhand--can dupes grab items through non-pneumatic doors? It would be nice to have a CO2 "fridge" that doesn't use any power, but ideally it wouldn't leak too much gas into the central part of my base. If I could fill an area with CO2 and leave dupes the ability to get at it without actually opening it, that would be ideal. 137

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

Nice idea. I don't recall offhand--can dupes grab items through non-pneumatic doors? It would be nice to have a CO2 "fridge" that doesn't use any power, but ideally it wouldn't leak too much gas into the central part of my base. If I could fill an area with CO2 and leave dupes the ability to get at it without actually opening it, that would be ideal.

I think you'd have to use the conveyor system which can retrieve things from one room to another without opening a door. 138

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

I think you'd have to use the conveyor system which can retrieve things from one room to another without opening a door.

That would work for retrieving items, but what about placing cooked items? A dupe on the storage side would have to grab them from the receiver and put them in the ration box. 139

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

Nice idea. I don't recall offhand--can dupes grab items through non-pneumatic doors? It would be nice to have a CO2 "fridge" that doesn't use any power, but ideally it wouldn't leak too much gas into the central part of my base. If I could fill an area with CO2 and leave dupes the ability to get at it without actually opening it, that would be ideal.

You don't need doors or conveyors - it's very low-tech . You simply dig a little CO2 "trap" under your kitchen. Something like this :

#H######
#HSFFFF#
#HSFFFF#
#H######
#HSFFFF#
#HSFFFF#
########


(where H is a ladder, S is egg storage and F are the foodboxes).

Either build it where there's already CO2 as your base is getting off the ground, or let it fill up naturally from your cooks breathing (in that case you need to leave the top a little more open so gas exchange can happen faster, at least until the deeper layer is good and sterile, it'll be a while before you need all 4 boxes anyway), or pump concentrated CO2 in with a temporary pump in the CO2 pit which you can then dismantle when the room is saturated.

As long as you don't put an O2-emitting device too close to the opening, the base's pressure shouldn't "invade" the hole (the 1-tile opening makes that a little bit harder too), and over time it'll just fill up with concentrated cook's breath anyway. Since CO2 is the heaviest gas and dupes only come in from the top it should never leave the pit barring weird fuckery (like a pufft or morb going down there or somesuch) 140

[Kobal2]

(BTW, lest anybody get confused and start believing I'm half-bright : I'm not the author of this very elegant design . I merely saw a streamer called CrypticFox doing it and thought it was pretty dang clever) 141

[Dr. Strangelove]

Interesting--I'm surprised that's stable. But yeah, CO2 definitely sinks to the bottom. Still, I feel like I need a pump and an atmo sensor or something... 142

[MichaelEmouse]

What are the possibles uses for the miniature pumps? They have worse throughput/energy ratio than the larger pumps so when would you use them?


One great use I've found for the clock sensor is to combine it with a signal switch and an AND gate to turn off machines automatically at night if I forget. 143

[Dr. Strangelove]

Large pumps aren't too efficient when the quantities are small. If you have some fluid dribbling in slowly, the small pump may be better (though probably better yet is to use a hydro sensor). Also, one may want to drain something, but can't quite afford to have it running all the time. Though again, using clock automation might be a tad better here. 144

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

Interesting--I'm surprised that's stable. But yeah, CO2 definitely sinks to the bottom. Still, I feel like I need a pump and an atmo sensor or something...

Nah, not really. That's the beauty of it IMO - it's 0 power, buildable from day 1 (well, you do need agriculture for the food boxes) and it's damn reliable all thanks to how gasses behave.



The only time I had it sort of fail on me was when my entire habitat got very, very low on oxy pressure (because I hadn't noticed I'd run clean out of algae some cycles ago and hadn't switched to electrolyzers yet ) which meant the concentrated CO2 inside the trap started decompressing & leaking out ; then when I hurriedly fixed the problem the CO2 left inside got repressurized and forced back down but there had been enough leakage that some O2 wound up on the upper shelf for a little while before it self-corrected again. I just set the priority on the lower boxes to 7 instead of 6, a dupe came in to switch all the food from one bin to the next and that was that.
I suppose an horizontal airlock door atop the ladder would prevent that from happening at all but even that's a bit overkill IMO. 145

[Unpronounceable]

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove

Interesting--I'm surprised that's stable. But yeah, CO2 definitely sinks to the bottom. Still, I feel like I need a pump and an atmo sensor or something...

The reason it's more-or-less stable is because gases don't mix at all.

Any given square can only have one fluid in it.

There's an unpowered water/polluted water separator design too. 146

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by Unpronounceable

Any given square can only have one fluid in it.

Do you know how pumps work? I had a pool of oil+petroleum. One layer of petroleum and another of oil at the bottom. The pump would output both, however (alternating). Maybe the pump can pull from its entire 2x2 area? 147

[SenorBeef]

I've gotten to the point where everything is kind of a hassle to do because everything I need to do is so far from base. And it's hard to say for sure, but it seems like sometimes the dups won't carry things efficiently. Like I'll need something that requires 25kg of gold, so they go all the way to where there's multiple piles of gold waiting to be swept up worth maybe 500kg, just grab the 25kg, then make the long journey back.... so a lot of my dup time is spent on these tiny errands. I guess I should have a more organized system of smart containers, but I find it to be kind of a pain in the ass compared to rimworld because you can't set container priority, so if you want a particular thing to be stored in a particular spot, you can't just set it to store that thing and give it a high priority, rather, you have to go back through your other dozen storage boxes around your base and uncheck it there - much more of a pain in the ass. 148

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

but I find it to be kind of a pain in the ass compared to rimworld because you can't set container priority, so if you want a particular thing to be stored in a particular spot, you can't just set it to store that thing and give it a high priority

You can, actually. The normal priority setting works. You can leave your already-built generic boxes at the default 5, and then have additional specialized boxes set to a higher priority, and they'll put the specialized items in those boxes preferentially.

I also have the problem that dupes grab small quantities of stuff at a time. Not sure if there's a way to fix that. 149

[SenorBeef]

Oh, that's very helpful. I thought I tested to see that work and it didn't appear to, but maybe my test was flawed in some way.

So if I have all my in-base containers set to 5 priority and accept to receive all, and I stick one outside my base that only collects slime and it's priority 6, they'll always deliver the slime to the one outside the base (if they collect it all) and never to the ones inside the base? 150