Oh, and are there any must have mods? I got one that colors gasses and one that lets me zoom out further. I also got a modded airlock door (takes 3 tiles and requires electricity but it pumps gasses back to the side they came from). I don’t like the idea of waterlocks…
Oxygen Not Included: The Kerbal Space Program of base building & what Fallout Shelter should've been
Breeding solid (?) hatches takes awhile, but it’s really rewarding: plenty of efficient refined metal with no heat production.
Not necessarily; a single standard wire is enough for 3x panels. In fact you can handle probably 6-8 panels per wire if you install batteries locally (i.e. to smooth out the day/night cycle) and then a transformer to limit peak wattage.
They will flop towards the nearest edge that drops to some lower point. My main water tank is at the bottom of my main shaft, and the printing pod is nearby, so for me they just naturally flop towards the edge and drop in. I keep them wild, so they naturally drop a fillet and egg at the end of their lifecycle, while sustaining the population. I have hundreds of them in the tank; it’s a great way of getting totally free food.
Smooth hatches. And yeah, they’re almost too good; they ate through pretty much all my metal ore. I had to cut production because there are a few things that you need ore for.
Not that I need more refined metal, anyway. I have a gold volcano that was filling up with hundreds of tons of gold, unusable because it was molten. I built a steam turbine though and that brought it down to a more reasonable ~125 C. I’m upgrading all my wire to be “conductive” since I actually need the ore.
Played about 30 more cycles. I got my power situation under control, not by using natural gas (both the vent I had and a second vent I dug up and insulated will remain dormant for another 30 cycles or so) but by taming my hatches, getting eggs together, and setting up a real ranch. I’ve now got enough coal to run a single coal plant pretty much full time, which is now my main power source. This is sufficient, so long as not everything is running at once, because my oxygen electrolysis operation is self sufficient.
I do have a couple of auxiliary systems (deodorizers, CO2 scrubbers) that are now powered by little hamster wheel and battery arrays.
So the next step is to up my power game. In about 30 cycles, that will involve setting up natural gas generators; but as I’m learning, natural gas is only available some of the time.
I just had a dreadful thought. Natural gas is gonna come out at 150 degrees. Is that too hot? Do I need to cool it somehow rather than simply pumping it out?
I don’t think the generators care about the temperature. You’ll need a gas pump that can handle it, and you’ll probably want to keep it out of your base, but I’ve never had a problem in that regard. Even hydrogen never seemed to be a problem even though it comes out at 500 C. Seems to cool enough via the pipes to get to a reasonable temperature.
I’ve set both rooms up with gold pumps, but one of them IS quite small, hopefully this doesn’t mean I won’t have room for the gas to cool.
I’m trying to get the hang of simple automation. I think I will set up my hatch ranch(es, I still have a cramped 4 tile high ranch I was originally using) for automation, as well as a coal generator room. I will build the beginning of my main wire service vent/transformer grid off of that start as well. Then when I add stuff like solar later, I can just plug it into the existing grid.
Oh, there’s also a Cold Steam Geyser over in the cold biome. Now that I am cleaning dirty water at a good clip a renewable source of water isn’t a dire need, but I’m sure that once I have it I will find a use for it.
Cool steam vents aren’t really that cool. Something like 110 C. Useful, but you’ll still need some serious cooling.
Cool slush geysers are my favorite. Easy to convert to plain water, or use as-is for various tasks. You’ll probably have to explore to the next planetoid, though.
Have you looked into drowning chambers for your ranches at all? I use a very compact design for mine that works well.
Not yet, but once I get three or four ranches filled in I will need to look into it.
I feel bad for the hatches when they’re drowning. But not so bad that I won’t do it.
OK… Now I’m getting somewhere.
On the left we see my electrolysis machine, which runs 4 electrolyzers off of 2 hydrogen generators. I have the AC turned on (sending this air throughout the base) because I had a surplus of hydrogen blocking the pipes and wanted to burn more power, but I might turn that off again. As you can see, I now use a lot of passive air flow to let the O2 drift into my base.
On the right is the new electric zone. I need to set up the automation, but the idea is that the hydrogen generators will burn off any surplus hydrogen when the tanks (middle) are getting full. The main power source will be the three coal plants, which are run by coal gathered from the hatches in the ranch in the lower middle. Conveyors automatically feed my generators, which means minimal dupe time invested in this zone.
I’m using that transformer you see on the right to power the top third or so of my base now, and the original power plant mostly running the rock crusher.
I will need a lot more hatches for the amount of coal I’ll be burning, though. Hence why I’m about to empty that lower mid area.
And tomorrow’s problem: I dug up some bleachstone and failed to seal it properly, leading to chlorine gas escaping into my base. I was also a bit sloppy when sealing the natural gas vents, leading to some spillage. I now have layers of chlorine and natural gas at the bottom of my base, above the CO2 and below the O2.
I will probably need to bite the bullet and filter the air, sending it into reservoirs. I think I have the power budget to afford this now…
Natural Gas setup is up and running.
I will need to set up a dedicated method to capture that dirty water - for now, I am directing its flow to the bottom of my main shaft, where it has nicely covered up my bleachstone.
Things are looking pretty good. I think next step is major expansion as well as scouting out both the depths and surface. And maybe, if I can automate farming, I can bring in some more dupes!
Stick a pressure sensor in your nat gas chamber, hook it up to the pump, and set it to 500 g or so. Otherwise, you’ll waste a lot of power pumping low-density gas (though I see you have a switch, so maybe you thought of that already and are just waiting for the research to come in). Aside from that, looking good! Save some gas for the grill, though.
Yeah, I’m doing it manually this time around, when the vents go dormant (in 100 cycles or so) I will turn them off.
Currently I can’t keep up with the vents, I’m going to have about a dozen filled reservoirs of natural gas in just a moment and the vents will go for 70 and 100 more cycles. I’m adding more geneators and some metal refineries just to use up electricity.
Meanwhile, I do feel like I’m finally getting the hang of automation. I automated another level of hatch ranch, as well as a mushroom farm. On the right you can see the completed mushroom farm and on the left you can see the prior version.
Woot! Good to hear you’re getting the hang of automation. It’s very satisfying to set up systems that run smoothly.
Oh, for sure. I cheered out loud when the first raw mushroom dropped right beside my grill.
Now I’m dreaming of a base designed like this from the ground up. But… I’m resisting the urge to restart! I can make this base into an automated dream.
Is there a good way to pollute more water? Somehow I’m running out of that…