Is it me, or is the game very finicky about how you attach wires to equipment, power sources, etc.?
Each item has a specific point to connect wires, pipes, or air ducts to. It shows on the corresponding overlay, which should show automatically when you start constructing wires (or pipes or ducts).
OMG, this game is amazing. I haven’t made it past cycle 25 yet before restarting. But my current game has lot of potential and I have got oxygen neutral and thanks to my farming station running a big food surplus.
I think it is Kerbal Space Program for system or earth engineers. My very bright 16 year-old nephew, casually mentioned it, on family get together a couple of weeks. It was on my to buy list, once it left early access.
After playing this game obsessively, I have to say my opinion of the kid went up a notch, . First this game is hard AF, it brings back memories of college physics courses, where I left the lecture hall, thinking damn my brain hurts. (I’m not being modest I got Cs and Bs in engineering physics). But also this game is so addictive, I’m really impressed with his discipline how could he waste his time, playing tennis, debate club, flirting with girls, and of course school, when he could be playing Oxygen Not Included!
I’m also so glad that I waited until this game was out of early access before trying it. Not so much to because I avoid bugs (the game is shockingly stable for such complex game put out by a small studio) or the features. It is because the Wiki is pretty much an indefensible, lots o good guides and nice brush up on the physics for the millions of us who struggled. But I what I really like is gives you useful hints as to the gotcha with buildings…
Does anyone else hate virtual plumbing as much as real plumbing.
Is there any kinda of repair operation like there is for transformers (Yes I managed to plug them in the wrong way also.). Or do you just have deconstruct the dump pipes and replumb them correctly and mop up the mess?
First impression: My controller does nothing. Huh. Ok, I guess I’ll use the mouse. That should be relaxing in a way. Let me just click on basic controls here. What? I have to use the keyboard too?
I’m out. I’ll wait for gamepad support, or a mouse-only version.
At second level of “Tidy” training, a dupe will get a skill to empty a pipe without undoing it. Theoretically that should help with the mop up. In reality, unless you can stop the input flow it doesn’t work as the dupe empty acts like a spigot the dupe bottles. And new liquid flows in and he keep emptying forever. Lots of times if you can stop the flow, the pipe will drain on its own. So it is very situational.
Of course, maybe if you misplumbed, you may not want what is in pipe to make destination. Then you may be better off deconstructing fast to stop flow to exit and mopping that segment’s contents. You can deconstruct one segment, mop that, then use the “empty pipe” tool on any remaining segments with liquid, as long as no input flow.Yes, you need to rebuild. Pipes have no valves in this game, but the bridge acts just like a one way valve. That can be useful in ummm … spaghetti plumbing. Not that I know anything about that …
There’s no console version planned so I doubt we’ll get controller support unfortunately.
Both liquid and gas pipes do have valves, but they need to be researched. And cutoffs that can be opened and closed with automation. Valves are essential in cooling loops as they always output all of their input, enabling you to control flow. Not that I am any kind of ONI plumbing expert. I regularly end up with a mess on the floor or a gas leak.
I should have been more specific, a flap valve is what I mean. The “liquid valve” (base non-automated one) is a screw valve. Thanks.
My tip was that since the bridge enforces flow direction, it can act as a flap valve, without needing another pipe to bridge. Cheap, early, no refined materials or power needed. So this is a useful tip for early game messy plumbing. When you need to control volume as well as direction, then you need the ones further in. And even the first volume/direction combo one is tucked behind gas piping research. I was answering a post where they aren’t past cycle 25 yet. :)
And even once you have the nicer tools, sometimes using a bridge as a flap valve to control direction on specific segments is still useful. This tip is also true for gas bridges. You can also use bridges as content packet buffers. But if you are already doing cooling loops you probably knew that?
What do you need to use the keyboard for? AFAIK there are mouse controls for everything. You can scroll with the mouse using right click. The overlays that are in the fn keys have icons in the upper right. All the building controls are on screen. I use the keyboard mainly for scrolling with wsad and the convenience of space for pause. The only thing I don’t know of a mouse control for is screenshot mode (alt-s, hides the UI and allows further zoom out) but that’s not necessary to play the game.
Quick tip for new players. A work station that in light gets a +15 bonus so build your research stations right next to the dup printer to take advantage of the light it gives off.
Oh nice. The tutorial told me to use the WASD keys to scroll the map around, I tried moving the mouse to the edges of the screen and that didn’t do it. Then I tried clicking and dragging and that didn’t do it. I might not have tried right click.
If I can do everything with the mouse, then I’m back in. I wish they’d tell you that in the tutorial messages though.
Even before edge scrolling, you could click and hold left mouse button to move the map around, which I do a lot when I’m too lazy to move my left hand to the keyboard.
I definitely tried left clicking and dragging, and it didn’t work for me. Every time I tried it, it opened something and didn’t drag the screen. Do you know what I mean? There seemed to be nothing I could left click on that didn’t open something or other.
Er, sorry, no, I do it all the time and that’s never happened to me…?
Oh, wow, you know what? I thought I was in the Planetfall thread. Jeez. Mondays. Anyway, I used WASD in ONI as well, sorry, though I don’t remember having this issue with left-click-dragging in ONI (or any game for that matter) you are describing, either, I can’t speak with any authority here as I’ve only played a few hours of ONI. Maybe as the game gets going there are more things to click on and it does become a problem, but early on I never had any trouble.
Right-click and hold.
Well, I certainly don’t agree with Hechicera. I don’t think ONI has lost anything in the updates. It’s the best it ever was and for me by far the best colony builder game existing.
Despite playing a lot a couple of months back the launch update pulled me back in.
Here is a tour of a cycle 880 base with mostly 6 dupes (only increased to 12 for the colony imperative at the end).
The goal was to reach tier 3 rockets and send someone to the Temporal Tear.
The base is very messy and not optimized at all. I also fall back to certain building patterns even though I know better.
Viridian Point:
tour of Viridian Point (click to expand)
Big overview image of most of the map.
The Asteroid was Rime. Mostly freezing (between -5°and -30°C), almost no wildlife except some pokeshells in the subsurface ocean right below the surface (30°C there).
Also ironically no frozen biome and thus no natural wheezeworts and no wolframite.
main living area
Nothing fancy, mainly “naturally” developed as the base grew.
The recreation room with the pod has both an arcade and a jukebox even though for some silly reason the game has them designed in a way that they use up 2050w peak and so they can’t be on the same conductive wire circuit and each requires one of their own. tsk.
The showers are in the park room which works nicely. Dupes use a shower each morning and thus pick up the park morale bonus and showers don’t have a specific room they utilize.
Random Pips running around. I didn’t use them for anything they are wild. If nothing else was offered in care packages I just took them for cuteness.
foodstuffs
The farm at the end. Nine Pincha Pepper plants (which need decently high temperatures) and 25 Bristle Blossoms to make stuffed Berries. This setup feeds 8 dupes.
Even though it is pretty efficient I for some reason don’t like using the Greenhouse room and the fertilizer double growth thing. I could half the number of required plants but… meh.
On the right between the Pip and the rightmost Bristles there is an area of natural tiles where 3 wild Hatches ended up as I was building my base. I just left it as their terrarium.
In the left the slime storage under water from I was still using mushrooms to feed my dupes.
The carbon skimmer cleans all CO2 above wile the lower area remains CO2 flooded for sterile food storage.
reservoirs, some of them...
These are the primary water reservoirs inside the base. The middle is clean, germ free water. Since toilets and showers are self sustaining in water it only really is used for plants and the water cooler in the great hall. I occasionally topped it off with a dozen ice (abundant on Rime) tempshift plates.
On the right polluted water. I used this a lot as a coolant on the beginning. Despite Rime having a bunch of frozen polluted water as well this was actually in high demand. Several plants, especially Reed Fiber for atmo suits and furniture, use sooo much polluted water. The reservoir has some clean water on top to prevent the polluted water from emitting polluted oxygen.
On the left is the bathroom overflow after being cleaned. This is about half of the water that toilets “produce” for 6 dupes in 800 cycles. I only transferred it once my entire run when it was about as high as this.
also reservoirs
My secondary reservoirs. Left is mixed water and a single Pacu. In the beginning he was a cold variant and turned lots of polluted water into normal water. As the game went on random water and machinery heat slowly made this the warmest spot in my base and in the end the Pacu’s descendants became the tropical variant.
The mixed bag reservoir can be cleaned. Then it’s diverted below into the chlorine chamber to be disinfected.
The right one is the cleaned water. It can pump into the main clean water reservoir after filtering out the salt water.
the forge
Making refined metal and steel is one of the stepping stones of learning the game. Dealing with the produced heat and managing the coolant are important skills to learn.
This is a maximally simple setup to use the produced heat to create steam which then drives a steam turbine. The turbine turns the heat into energy very efficiently. Gold doesn’t produce enough heat to make a big dent but steel releases so much heat that the turbine generates more energy than the steel production requires. If only we could convert heat into energy at this rate in the real world… :P
power core
The main generator room. Four natural gas generators (with tune up) were able to satisfy my energy needs for most of the game. Only some experiments with high energy demand cooling required more.
On the left the glass forge. Glass isn’t really used or useful for much.
This whole area is a terrible mess but I never saw the need the rework it.
Also visible are two algae oxygen thingies as supplements needed by the 12 dupes total for the colony imperative.
fuel storage
My two storage areas for natural gas. Since geysers are not active all the time and have long dormant periods you need a good buffer.
Gas reservoir buildings aren’t super effective so I just like the easy solution to wall in a large-ish area.
The most important thing is to make sure to remove all other gases. 5kg/tile natural gas will just push those out the the top and bottom if you create some kind of door setup.
more reservoirs and oxygen
Dunno why I have so many reservoirs. :P
Not pictured is my tertiary reservoir just below for random overflow from the map. Salt water is cleaned by the desalinator in the top left and then clean and polluted water is directed to the Pacu reservoir.
At some point the not-pictured map overflow was overflowing however, that’s how the Pacu lake got some salt water in it and required a later filter loop back up for the salt water.
On the right the steam geyser provides water for my main oxygen production electrolyzer. This setup falls a few percent short of providing oxygen for 8 dupes. (It’s active like 98% of the time).
Excess hydrogen is burned for energy, with a battery setup that makes sure the output is not wasted. This side product hydrogen covered about 1/3 of my base load in energy for a long time and even at the very end still provided easily 20%.
volcano
An iron volcano and how I like to deal with them.
I enclose a section of natural tiles so the heat from the 1400°C iron has a small area to dissipate. This solidifies the iron. It’s still 800-1000 degrees hot but much easier to handle.
industrial zone
Small area outside my base for miscellaneous industry. Some petroleum production and a polymer press for plastic. A pool of petroleum because various things need pitcher pump access to it.
An electrolyzer setup for oxylite production, tier 1.5 rocket fuel.
Also an underground telescope. Telescopes are used at the top of the map to research the various planets you can fly to. Meteors are annoying to deal with. I generally brute force it. I build 5 telescopes and just mass research all planets over 20 or so cycles, micro managing the bunker doors in case of meteor showers.
The game has a scanner system that’s supposed to automate it but I find it super annoying, fiddly and tiresome.
Anyway, after researching all the planets I scrap the telescopes for the rocket launch pads and just place one somewhere randomly (to gain access to the space map).
The purple gas is LOTS of sour gas that got produced by natural interactions down below.
down below
Here at the bottom of the map the magma biome touched the oil biome and was not separated by abyssalite for a few tiles.
This cooked the oil, turned it into petroleum and then sour gas. It flooded the entire accessible bottom third of the map with it.
It also is a nice example of how effective insulated tiles are. After 700+ cylces a single row of insulated tiles divides 1400° magma from 9° oil. The rest of the biome is about 6°. This included the couple of dozen turns of normal heat exchange before I noticed that oil got cooked and built the tiles.
actual reservoir buildings
Two electrolyzer setups for hydrogen (the oxygen gets vented into space). This is the rough amount of gas reservoirs you need to get a rocket to the end game goal (you still have to liquefy the hydrogen).
Not pictured, another water reservoir to feed the electrolyzers.
This whole area is in the subsurface ocean, so there is salt water all around and some weird ladder and tile constructions to not have to deal with all of it.
launch pad
A hobo hand crank double launch pad.
Left rocket is a display bug, it’s actually en route to the Temporal Tear right now.
Bunker doors and regolith crushers at the top. Manual controls all around because I really don’t like the automatic game systems to deal with meteors.
In the middle left there are two transformers providing energy from a small oxygenated room. Since the game has no heat radiation you need something to touch stuff to prevent overheating. There previously was a bigger area like it housing, supplying and cooling the telescopes when I was using them.
rocket fuel
Production for liquid oxygen (top) and liquid hydrogen.
Liquid oxygen is relatively easy, even when you use hydrogen to cool (replace the aquatuner with thermo regulators). It’s not a high performance design but it does the job.
Super coolant makes it easier and faster but doesn’t change the design except for the aquatuner.
Six wheezeworts are enough for hydrogen gas cooling of oxygen with three thermo regulators, but not enough for the aquatuner with super coolant. I also pumped some 30°C water for additional cooling and then dumped it in space. Since Rime has no (or only very rarely) frozen biome areas I only had 7 wheezeworts total, I moved them to the hydrogen facility.
Liquid hydrogen requires super coolant but works on the same principle.
I had stopped played in beta around the Quality of Life updates, so there’s a lot that’s new to me in release. I’m on cycle 72 with six dupes and so far I like the changes I’ve seen.
The wheezwort nerf invalidates the cooling designs my all my earlier posts in this thread, so when heat starts to be a problem I’ll have to experiment with steam turbines. The simpler skill system is far better than the job board thing they had when I played played. I’m glad that Slimelung is only an inconvenience now if someone catches it early on.
Ah thank you that explains why the Transformer had a repair option (I had a guy with the electrical skill) and plumbing didn’t (no plumber) Also didn’t know there was an empty pipe option.
Now a philosophy question. How do you go about exploring other biomes. Do you send a guy to do digs just to see what’s out there. Do you set up a base camp with a barracks, bathroom, and ration box?
I’ve found swamp and caustic biomes but other than the Peppers to improve my food quality, and the Thimble reed I’m not sure what I need there.
On the other hand the frozen biome seems really useful to have to cool stuff down as does the oil biome.
Very impressive base, Therlun. With more than 150 ONI hours clocked (most in early access), I am still a long way from launching my first rocket. I am hoping that my current base will reach that point, but unfortunately I only have a single natural gas geyser, and I am struggling for power. I have also made a couple of serious design mistakes, which will be crippling some future expansion plans. But this is all part of why ONI is such a great game. I’ve learned a lot from these mistakes, and I am already looking forward to starting over, so that I can avoid them the next time around.