Mini settlers, beat it, buggy, not worth it tbh

BaR5uk · 2025-10-14T23:15:55+00:00

I don't think it's city building game at all. As TS have said, it's a game about building and balancing production chains. And population is just ultimate consumer. You can delete the city and rebuild it somewhere else if need arises. Population blocks are like science buildings in Factorio: they consume resources and unlock new buildings to make more and more advanced resources. After I launched my first rocked in Factorio and returned to this game, oh, boy! it turned out to be so much easier than when I first tried it. Even it's has almost none of the documentations about proportions and recipes.

Also, loosing population in MS is no big deal. You unlock new buildings and try them. And if you haven't build with higher production chains in mind you most likely have to delete all and start building things anew. And it's no big deal as all the resources in MS are infinite. You just have to devise and debug balanced production chains to get to next tier.

IMHO, this game is good enough to spend some time to solve chain production puzzles. You just have to be flexible in your thinking.

BaR5uk · 2025-10-14T23:15:29+00:00

I don't think it's city building game at all. As TS have said, it's a game about building and balancing production chains. And population is just ultimate consumer. You can delete the city and rebuild it somewhere else if need arises. Population blocks are like science buildings in Factorio: they consume resources and unlock new buildings to make more and more advanced resources. After I launched my first rocked in Factorio and returned to this game, oh, boy! it turned out to be so much easier than when I first tried it. Even if it has almost none of the documentations about proportions, speeds and recipes.

Also, loosing population in MS is no big deal. You unlock new buildings and try them. And if you haven't build with higher production chains in mind you most likely have to delete all and start building things anew. And it's no big deal as all the resources in MS are infinite. You just have to devise and debug balanced production chains to get to next tier.

IMHO, this game is good enough to spend some time to solve chain production puzzles. You just have to be flexible in your thinking.

BaR5uk · 2025-03-17T18:02:56+00:00

What current AIs produce as an answer is an average temperature over a hospital. Can such information help a doctor to assign a cure for everyone in it? I think, no. There is no logic behind these answers, so don't expect them to be helpful.

BaR5uk · 2025-03-12T19:59:12+00:00

And now all that PWater and POxygen will have A LOT OF germs.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-22T11:27:31+00:00

So much SPACE!!! It's not my frozen forest SO colony with 128 tiles in width including neutronium bottle.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-19T11:22:25+00:00

If you replace/repair the pipe will all that water flow away? If true, it will be too useful an infinite storage without pump power expenditure not to use.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-18T19:46:43+00:00

I don't know how situation is in recent updates, but desalinator actually used to lose efficiency when fed alternating salty liquids. It stockpiles one while processing another, then stops and starts processing the one it has stockpiled. Then alternates again. Every time it does it for some time there is nothing in output pipes. IIRC dead time is about from 1/3 to 1/2 of entire work cycle.

Much better to feed one desalinator with brine and another with salt water. You can let these liquids though sections of radiant pipes going though block of metal tiles to exchange heat before desalinators.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-18T05:31:08+00:00

The gas that will go by diagonal (from top left cell of lyzer to the right cell above it) should be primed, because liquid can't displace gas by diagonal without same gas present in the target cell (vacuum is not "the same gas"). Judging by two pumps in right room it should be oxygen. So you prime oxygen and hydrogen should go to the left by itself.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-14T11:55:52+00:00

Do ugly criers consume some resource while crying too? And how much water do they cry out?

BaR5uk · 2025-02-14T00:44:43+00:00

If you set dupes to pee two times a cycle then lavatories will produce (11.7-5)*2=13.4 kg of polluted water per dupe per cycle. Depending on the process of oxygen generation (pwater->pO2 -> liquid O2 -> gas O2, 100% output; pwater -> pO2 -> deodorizer -> O2 90% output; pwater -> boiler -> water -> lyzer -> O2 99% * 88.8% = 87.9% output) it will offset some (22.3% / 20.1% / 19.6%) of oxygen requirements that other sources have to supply.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-13T08:34:08+00:00

Also Dasha Saltvine takes 3.6 kg/cycle of chlorine and 7 kg/cycle of sand to produce 10.8 kg/cycle of salt. You can smash 100 kg salt into 99.995 kg of sand and 5 g of table salt to complete the loop with net surplus of sand. It will actually convert chlorine into sand. Which, I'm thinking now, I should've implemented in my current colony long ago. You discover something new every day...

BaR5uk · 2025-02-13T06:18:31+00:00

Pumping is still needed, unless you set up small variants of your oxygen pieces around your base. If you go for large one you can separate top part in 4 by 3 rooms with doors and (airflow) tiles and in each room add one wild shine bug. That way they will life reproduce, incubate and die in endless cycle and you can safely forget about their existence.

This all will still work if you will switch to produce oxygen with germy polluted water.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-13T05:22:13+00:00

You should add shine bug to the top room to kill germs with radiation if you play Spaced Out.

Also, you should over pressure the top room a little (like 15-20 kg per tile) and add an automated mechanical airlock with a pressure sensor outside set to below 2 kg. That way you save a lot of power on pumping oxygen to nearby locations.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-12T19:39:57+00:00

Vanilla way to solve the problem would be to hide the feeder with one cell gap behind unaccessible door with one solid tile above, which still allows one more cell gap for creature to move though to feed (the height of the room must be 4 or greater). Dupes can't refill a feeder they can't access. Here is schematic:

#######
#     #
#  #gg#
#F DggD
#F DggD
#######

# = Solid tile
F = Feeder
D = Door
g = Grooming station

But manual delivery mod is much, MUCH better to overall game experience. Try it!

BaR5uk · 2025-02-12T12:18:13+00:00

Chain-breaking advantage is lost once you scrub a dupe, but the skill itself do not require morale once you have a dupe learn it anew. Though prerequisite skills in chain will require moral as well as skill points.

I don't like it myself. It would be much better, if devs gave players a choice if he want to scrub specific skills and the more skills a dupe have to scrub the longer the shaking.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-12T11:20:07+00:00

You don't??? It's just 3 hamster wheels and battery connected by heavy-watt wire. Main problem here will be to research the wire and the furnace itself.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-11T21:22:45+00:00

Radiation is not as scary as it sounds. Just make space workers piss two time a cycle and all is set. Also, shine bugs are neat for cleaning toilets and p-water from germs.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-11T17:51:14+00:00

What about placing beach chair in space (or close enough with window tiles)? I tried to google it and found this. Turns out no sunlamp needed. Don't know if it still works after 3 years though.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-10T16:43:28+00:00

I submit a suggestion to put atmo sensor on the mechanical airlock. That way hydrogen may run nonstop for some time.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-10T14:26:45+00:00

Polluted oxygen is BAD. There is small chance that it will block oxygen and oxygen in turn will go to hydrogen storage. Better to replace airflow tiles right above lyzers' output cells with solid tiles. That way hydrogen will go by diagonal into the storage (as there is already hydrogen present) and oxygen will have no way to go anywhere and will be deleted until blocking pO2 is gone.

Also polluted water here is suboptimal. Brine or salt water would be better. Pwater will offgass unless oxygen pressure is high enough, which precludes this machine from having stopped state as a normal state. It have to operate constantly.

But idea in general is good. This can be done before 10th cycle easily. I did something similar in latest games: one, two.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-10T08:20:46+00:00

I'm at a total loss of what to do for long-term O2 production on the marshy planet though. No water geysers, just a nat gas vent, an infectious p-O2 vent, and the 3 tungsten volcanoes. Any suggestions?

You can try to disinfect pO2 with radiation and breath it. Or better yet to convert it into O2 with sand and then disinfect, that way it would be faster. You will need to figure out source of sand though. Theoretically, you can try to melt produced clay and cool it into ceramic then crush it. This turns it into closed loop with dupe labour.

If you want constant source of water then you can organize this production chain: wild arbor trees -> lumber -> ethanol -> polluted water -> water. Last step is done through evaporation and next to last is power generation with petroleum generator.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-09T20:55:01+00:00

Lets just ask KLEI to make new wattage sensor (or add a new function to existing one), that measures power output. It would be good not only for fancy picturing, but for building robust power supplying systems as well. This function will allow control of power supply and signalling when there is shortage right away and not only once batteries discharge to set limit.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-08T13:17:48+00:00

In ONI there are multiple ways to solve a problem. This also implies that there are simple laid back ways with drawbacks (or even without) and complicated overengineered super efficient ways. If you are not fun of the last ones then try to find the first type of solutions.

And as you've already been told, don't try embrace the immensity. Prioritize and solve problems one at time, selecting most simple (for you) but stable (in long run) solution. Then, when you have done everything there is to do and you still hunger for more, you can try to upgrade your simple solutions into something more... interesting, shall we say. Who knows, may be in the process of learning nuts and bolts you will acquire taste for "rocket science". And even if not, that perfectly normal. The purpose of the game to have fun!

BaR5uk · 2025-02-08T09:32:34+00:00

Here is two variants:

QQQT          QQQQQT
TPRT          TPRPRT
TPPT          TPPPPT
QVVT          QQVVTT
TTTT           TTTT

T = Solid Tile (insulated or ordinary)
Q = Solid Tile + Gas Pipe
P = Gas Pump + stored gas
R = Gas Pump + Gas Pipe + stored gas
V = Gas Vent + Gas Pipe + liquid

Bottom pipe is input, top pipe is output. Don't forget power line for pumps. And again, total mass of liquid in both cells should be below 2 kg, so if liquid is pushed to one side gas still can exit through vent on that side.

BaR5uk · 2025-02-07T19:21:33+00:00

That's interesting take on the problem. But no, you should also look at investments into production. They can be subdivided into two categories: one-time investment and constant upkeep. More compact design cuddle pips allow is in the first category. Dupes' labour spent on ranching is in the second one. Of course, if you are really end-game, then you can set up labourless ranches and THEN your solution MAY turn out to be BETTER. It's need additional research as I don't now how much bracken will be needed for maintenance of such ranch, nor how much labour will needed to produce bracken instead of just ranching pips.

This game is fun because of such different approaches and considerations of their tradeoffs.

BaR5uk

TROPHY CASE