Heh. I love optimization. And for probably no deeper reason than that the first rule of optimization is to be as lazy as possible.
Oxygen Not Included: The Kerbal Space Program of base building & what Fallout Shelter should've been
I recall my favorite Dave Attell standup routine where he went on about the invention of the drinking straw. He said something along the lines of, “Who took a sip from a glass then declared, ‘There has to be an easier way’?”
It does take a special kind of mind to be, at the same time, eternally dissatisfied with the functioning of the universe, and yet optimistic enough to feel that one can fix it one tiny element at a time.
Regarding LHoD’s situation again: one way of solving the issue for the steam vent is to seal it completely in an insulated chamber, and then completely evacuate it of all gases except steam. Also, ensure that the radiant pipes are in open space and not immersed in water. What will happen is that the pipes will cool the steam to just below 100 C, which will then condense into water and fall into the tank. Once all of the steam is condensed, though, you’re left only with a vacuum–which, as said, is a good insulator. So the radiant pipes will no longer absorb any heat, and thus you won’t be wasting the cold.
This won’t work if there are other gases, because the radiant pipes will cool that gas, and from there cool the pool of water. But with a vacuum that can’t happen.
So…solar panels. I don’t get them. They’re huge, and the most I’ve ever gotten out of one is about 290 Watts, which isn’t enough to power the bunker doors needed to protect them. Is there something I’m missing, or are they always a net negative?
I haven’t figured out how to make effective use of solar panels. But the bunker doors aren’t a reason: they only consume power when opening or closing, which only happens for a meteor storm. The average power use is very low, probably <10 W.
The latest update has an auto-miner, which turns regolith tiles into chunks (and thus don’t block the sky). So that part of the maintenance is solved, at least. But they still seem more trouble than they’re worth. They need a ton of steel, too.
Having a weird issue with transit tubes. I have a tube from my main base to my oil base. When coming back from the base, they use the transit tube just fine. But they never go the other way - only from the oil base back to the main base. Going down, they always use the poles.
Now I know sometimes there’s traffic queued and you can’t go both ways at once (I assume), but I’ve seen plenty of guys go down via the poles when there was no one on the other end.
It’s not so bad this way - the way back up is the slower way anyway - but why aren’t my guys using the transit tubes to get down?
Edit: I don’t think the pole way is faster - it’s not a straight shot down, there are a few points where they have to get off the poles and walk across to another pole, so I don’t think that’s it.
The tube can be used in both directions–you can have dupes flying every which way.
Assuming you have power on both ends, the tubes are lined up right, etc. (worth double-checking–I’ve screwed up here a couple of times), it may just be that the poles are faster. The dupes have a reasonably sophisticated pathfinding system that seems to do a good job balancing route speed vs. directness. That is, sometimes you want to go out of your way to take a fast transport and sometimes you don’t. There’s a small overhead to getting in the tube, so maybe the pole is faster taking this into account.
The other end definitely has power. When you say lined up right, what do you mean? If it works one way, the tubes should be correctly lined up to work either way, right?
Nope–you can have a one-way system such that dupes just pop out the end with no “receiver”. You only need an access point to enter the system. So if there’s something wonky at one end, with the pipes not lined up right or something, the dupes may just pop out close to the end point, but not be able to go in the other direction.
Another quick possibility: make sure the far side doesn’t accidentally cross an automation wire. Dupes will still be able to exit, but not enter, if the station is disabled.
Finally got my system up and running–and it occurred to me that the heated polluted water would be perfect for watering pepperpinch plants, so I set up a side chamber for that. Feeling pretty efficient :). (Obviously I have room to grow, but it’s a good start).
Two notes that I’m not sure if anyone’s made:
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I just learned recently that cross-training is amazing. Instead of rocketing up the job chart as quickly as possible, have your dupes master as many low-level jobs as you can. First, once they master a job, they carry that job’s benefits with them even after they quit; this gives you both extra abilities (mining hard substances, cooking, etc.), and extra stat-boosts based on the job. Second, and what prompted looking into this, you can’t lower their stress by putting them in a lower job later on. I thought you could: let your tenured scientist work as a gofer for a few cycles to lower her stress. Nope. Once she experiences the cushy life of a tenured scientist, her morale expectations stay at that level, or whatever her highest level is. So, early game, crosstrain as much as possible before bumping them up to the next tier of job difficulty!
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Abyssalite is no longer usable for insulation, until you learn to make perfect insulation. Apparently that was too good. Igneous rock appears to be the current best insulator in the early-to-mid game.
Excellent! Yeah, that’s a great use for warm polluted water. At one point I found all my pepper plants dead due to low temperature–ended up making a heat exchanger to pre-cool sour gas and warm the polluted water. Though I did eventually have to set up a dedicated heater.
You’re absolutely right about cross-training; that’s something I did early on (as much as possible–I have a few dupes that refuse to do certain tasks). The supply path especially is nice; having everybody on your base able to carry ~1800 kg can be very convenient.
I do kinda feel like the inability to put trained dupes on a lower job setting to increase morale is a defect of sorts. Though it’s not that hard to keep morale up, so it’s not too big a deal. I only have one trained astronaut.
Over a thousand cycles with my current base. I’m tapping into 2 steam geysers, 2 natural gas geysers, a hydrogen geyser and one of those entropy nullification things. I’ve also drilled from space down to the magma core and have tapped into a massive crude oil lake. The base is pretty much self-sustaining for the 8 dupes living in it. I could probably support a lot more, but growing enough food always seems to be the bottleneck.
I basically have all the water I could ever need. More really, as I’m having trouble finding places to put it.
Same thing with air pressure. Circulating air with regular vents is becoming a problem throughout the entire asteroid. I may actually have to start venting excess air into space.
Temperature is also a bit of a problem. I’ve managed to use Weezworts to keep my farms cool, but most of the base is a balmy 90F-100F. I’ve insulated the natural gas and hydrogen geysers sitting in the middle of the base and moved most hot machinery elsewhere, but I think the main problem is I’m pumping all this hot fluid in from a boiling lake of geyser water. And the zero entropy thingy doesn’t appear to do shit.
Also, the polymer press is super annoying how it keeps overheating itself.
Try my suggestions in post 354 :). Another one: you can just drip water on top. Either automate it or set up a valve with a slow drip. Put the whole thing on top of one of your holding tanks with mesh tile so that the water just falls in. Dripping water is very effective in cooling down machines.
1000 cycles is doing very well. Have you launched any rockets yet? There are some very useful materials from them, but from my perspective the best is more wheezeworts. Look for ice planets.
How is your thermo nullifier set up? It should be worth about 7 wheezeworts, but it can be tricky to make the best use of it.
How many wheezewhorts does the typical map have? I think I have somewhere around 25, which seems like enough to cool my base indefinitely. In fact I moved a bunch out of my base because a lot of areas were 55f and cooling. Does the heat leaking in from other parts of the map become overwhelming once you get to hundreds of cycles?
25 sounds about right. Somewhere in that ballpark at least.
How many you actually need depends on what you’re doing with them. I needed a large number for my oil-natural gas conversion system (though I’ve reduced this somewhat now), and then for actually keeping my generators cool. I use a bunch for cooling water for crops, etc. And then a bunch more for my rocket fuel liquifiers.
Some of my heat problems related to the regolith issue I mentioned earlier–kilotons of 300 C regolith sitting around in numerous piles around my base. I’ve fixed that, so I don’t have heat problems from that any more. But it did cause a huge heat soak issue at first.
I’ll try that. Fortunately the press sits near an ice biome
No rockets yet. Soon though.
I need to research how to create a completely self-sustaining source of food. At some point I’m going to run out of slime and I really want to grind up the entire asteroid at some point.
What are you farming now? Bristle Berries require only clean water and light. I also farm Peppernuts (my dupes need their espresso fix), which need polluted water and phosphorite. The phosphorite technically isn’t sustainable, so I should probably set up a Drecko farm at some point (they poop phosphorite).
Also, for folks having trouble with the polymer press, I learned recently about glossy dreckos and their plastic wool; I’m hoping to get a glossy drecko farm up and running by ~cycle 200, to complement my smooth hatch farm (for the refined metal poo).
Just set up a Drecko farm. They’re annoying! They always manage to either escape or get caught in the doors.
The solution (which I didn’t invent) is a water trap:
Dreckos won’t pass the water, but the dupes will. I also put in an exosuit station so I could fill the stable with hydrogen (the ranchers tend to be in there long enough that they can’t hold their breath). I actually need reed fiber more than plastic so I’ll stick with the normal Dreckos.