Thanks for the recommendation. So many of the ONI videos are just much too long, and either explore esoteric topics, or just don’t explain too much. The couple of John videos I watched were good.
I totally got sucked backed in the game this last week. But, I’m also continually frustrated by the game, I screw up plumbing and gas all the time. I sometimes reload, which helps but it seems sometime after cycle 100, I always get hopelessly confused and start over.
But I’m still having fun!
Seeing this thread reminded me I have owned this game since early access and barely touched it, let alone after the 1.0 launch or any post-launch updates. Is there a good video that walks someone through how to play this? Part of why I haven’t gotten into it is just not really knowing how, but I’m assuming there is a video or two that folks agree is a good starting point, hopefully?
Francis talks super fast but this tutorial is really good.
Don’t run your game at the medium speed, too much will happen that you’ll miss.
Oh, perfect, thanks!!
My only comment is I like to get farms up more quickly. I research farms first and once I have I farm tiles planting some mealworms and bristle flower. You need roughly five mealworm plants per person or 3 Bristol flower, and bit later, just under 3 mushrooms. You have 5 days starting food,and you will find food,muckroots, so no need to go crazy… I like to keep a 7-8 day supply of food, so for 3 people that 21,000-24,000 Kcalories of food on hand, since if something wiped out most of my plants. It takes 6-7 days to harvest most of the early food.
I just started this up after picking it up on Epic during one of their sales. What do I do??
More seriously,I have a huge pool of CO2 clogging up the bottom of my base and I can’t figure out what to do about it. (I’m about five cycles in, on super easy mode.)
Quick fix: Dig deeper.
To get rid of the CO2, you need either algae terrariums or co2 scrubbers. The former will leave you with plenty of bottles of polluted water, which will emit polluted oxygen. Which isn’t really that bad, since it’ll help keep your oxygen levels up, and breathing polluted oxygen isn’t a problem as long as it doesn’t have any germs in it. You can build air filters later to clean it up.
Thanks!
Also, should I just restart on not-easy mode? Reading some of the posts above it seems like the game really gets going when it pushes back on you.
I think easy mode is a good way to learn the mechanics. Plenty of time to fail later :)
I’m really digging this game (har har). The one thing that’s bugging me right now is the power limit on wires. As a not-electrician who’s had a couple electronics classes (i.e. the worst) it bugs me that apparently the dupes wire everything in series (somehow) such that the total power draw flows along every bit of wire in the circuit. (Really they mean current, not power, but whatever.) Honestly I’m not really bothered by a non-physical modeling of electrical circuits; it’s that setting up separate circuits once you have too much power draw is uninteresting busywork. A better system (by “better” I mean “potentially more interesting”) IMHO would be to have consumers, well, consume the power they draw so that you’d have mains made of higher-load wire and the end branches of the system would be OK with smaller wire.
By contrast, the way that gasses don’t really mix and each square contains only one gas is also non-physical, but it doesn’t bother me because I find dealing with the different gasses interesting.
[The big disclaimer here is that I’m still on easy mode.]
For wiring, work through the tech tree, there are some improvements that help big bases.
Yeah, I got the ones where you use refined copper instead of copper ore and it goes to 2000 W, and another one for the big bundle o’ wires (or whatever it’s called) for really high power. I’m in the process of upgrading the wiring but it’s still fundamentally the same problem, AFAICT.
It is a fair point, as somebody who got a degree in electrical engineering, decades ago, the way they handled power bothered me for a long time. I eventually found the approach interesting and lead to some interesting choices about how you design your power system. But it probably took me 100+ hour before I really understood how transformers and such worked. Basically, do you centralize power,or do you decentralize production. I was never organized enough to make one central system.
That said I agree with you a more traditional way of modeling power distribution, would have been just as interesting from a game perspective and more intuitive.
Another thing that took me a while to really grok, is that you are going to be tearing down and redoing lots of stuff, wiring is just one element. Since there is no penalty, other labor, for doing that it eventually becomes second nature.
I’ve been playing this again with my kids and I’m at the point where it is not obvious what to do next. Essentially, I’m farming some, have a pump with running water, shower, etc, a septic area, basic electrical grid. Seems like we need to explore to find more metal soon. What should we focus on next with gas/liquid/power?
Generally I’ve found getting a critter ranch going with hatches to be essential. You want to breed 'em into the different variants (so aim for 4 ranches, one for each variant). Stone hatches are great for long-term coal production. Smooth hatches are great in the medium term for refining metals. Once they’re up and running they become a great source of food, combine with a drowning chamber to easily cull 'em for meat.
It’s been awhile since I played, but I remember the typical priorities are:
Each of these presents their own short and long term sustainability issues - e.g. coal eventually runs out, oxygen at scale generates too much heat, etc.
All roads lead to temperature management. At least they did in base game. Once you have that it is sustainable systems.
You really are at the point where it doesn’t matter which direction you expand next, you end up here. Swamp start in the DLC or the cold asteroid in the base are starts where you think you aren’t, but really the starting ambient temperature just delays that reckoning.
So, you are at the stage where you experiment!
On posts about the systems, as someone who has worked in factory automation, did a thesis in it, and had majors or minors in ECE, EE, CS and ChEngr, and I taught intro to circuits for all majors at a 4 yr college … I so feel you on the modelling.
It doesn’t bother me at all. My English classes had the best phrase for how to approach ONI’s not quite real systems “Willing Suspension of Disbelief”. Its not real, and I’m ok with it. However, ONI does beg the question" Is there a systems modelling “uncanny valley” just like there is in animation?
Why I play ONI less (but I am fiddling in the DLC beta) is due to changes in the game right at release. Somewhere upthread I suspect I mentioned it. But back to @Clay 's question. The game used to me more “sandbox” in the stages before they added cheevos and space. They were added at the end, in a rush, and that decision leads to your question. ONI went from a pure sandbox in early/mid beta to a game with engaging systems that doesn’t really know what it’s endgame is. The player can still chose though. There is no right answer.
I’d say the couple of thing to add to this list first is a metal refinery. It takes a significant amount of power and also is a good one of learning to deal with heat. After that you’ll want to get a plastic manufacturing set up. Now in both cases you can use ranching to provide refined metal or plastic, but I think long term you want to use buildings instead of critters.
I’m definitely still exploring the mid game, then, because I have no idea how to make plastic or refine metal! 👀 I’m just trying to figure out what I should be doing with ventilation to take care of oxygen circulation problems… like what do you do when pressure is too high so that your diffusers won’t operate.
Air pumps and digging… You pretty much always should have 1 or more guys digging (aka exploring) for a couple of reason. First it is pretty helpful to see what goodies (like geysers) are in other biomes. Plus digging out areas decreases the air pressure making it possible for your diffusers to create oxygen. A single air pump right above an oxygen diffuser will put out about 3x oxygen then diffuser without a pup…
You’ll soon discover that the tech to regulate the air pumps (like a pressure sensors, detection of oxygen or CO2 in lines) requires refine metals, which will lead you back to my comment about refining metal. You’ll also discover that you need plastic to make high pressure vents which let you pump more oxygen or other gas into an area
BTW, it was one of my biggest source of frustration is that game is so sandbox, that I never was really sure what to do for at least my first 1/2 dozen serious attempt to play the game. I often was so far down a bad path, (like running out of algae) before switching to alternative oxygen sources, that ended up starting over.
That said, I started building but never finished a rocket in the game, so I’m far from an expert… To me is a building a rockets is worthwhile goal, but there are other potential goals.
This guide is outdate but not a bad outline of what to do.