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Other Games / Re: Oxygen Not Included: Alpha Release
« on: June 22, 2018, 06:18:13 pm »I always try to dig a couple big dumb water tanks for fresh and polluted water. I guess now that I think about it, what kills my colonies is that I end up putting too much work into that before I have sustainable everything-else.
That and I like to take every Duplicant I can get. Apparently that's a bad idea.
I always have trouble with food, too. Even with a good cook cooking just takes so damn long, and apparently I need to baby the hell out of my farms or else they won't be a viable sustainable thing?
Big dumb water tanks are cool, but they do take a lot of work. I usually put that off until all the basic needs of the colony are met (semi-stable oxygen supply, enough food stockpiled or reliably growing that I don't have to micromanage that all the time, enough decor that my dupes don't spend all day on the massage tables etc). Just leave space for them.
Taking every duplicant is a challenge in and of itself. If you look at the algae deoxydizer for instance, it produces 550 g/s of oxygen. Unless they have the Mouth Breather or Diver's Lungs traits, dupes consume 100 g/s of oxygen. So if you want a lot of time to set up everything properly, 5 dupes is the limit, otherwise you'll have to build a second deoxydizer, which takes up an additional 120(?) W of power, so you may need a second coal generator too depending on what else you want to run. Then you'd also need bigger farms and more cooks, which require more resources and power and so on. It's definitely possible to take on a lot more dupes early (Brothgar on Youtube made a challenge out of it, adding 3 duplicants every 3 days with the sandbox menu), but at some point it just becomes very very hard.
I know it's hard to resist taking on more dupes, but you can always lay out new constructions with the game running instead of paused, so you don't have to wait as long IRL for them to get things done.
By babying your farms do you mean micromanaging? That's not really necessary if they're set up right, you could for instance have them in a sealed room with only CO2. Most plants grow fine in CO2, the dupes won't breathe it away so pressure will be relatively stable and it'll also prevent other gases from flowing in and messing up your food production. At that point you only really need to keep an eye on their temperature and grab some wheezeworts from a cold biome if it becomes a problem. You could also calculate in advance how many duplicants your farms can supply or vice versa how much farm space you need for X amount of duplicants, but that's a whole other topic...
If you have surplus food to stockpile, always use ration boxes or unpowered fridges in a CO2 or chlorine environment. CO2 and chlorine are considered sterile, so the food will never go bad, and you don't even have to use power for that.
TL;DR: life becomes a whole lot easier the less dupes you have to manage.
And yea, cheating is a valid option if you get bored of that.
seriously though, don't use it except if you know you are gonna get someone and will end up in a safe place (e.g. not the middle of the enemy team), or after using earthshatter or something like that. it's also really useful for getting out of spawn quickly.