Lavatories & Outhouses : Question about Polluted Water / Dirt

[Captain Australia]

Hey Hey

I'm taking a pretty strict 'no research' approach - not meaning I don't want my little dupe scientists to research, but meaning *I* am trying to avoid reading guides and just kind of learn and work things out as I go.

The game sometimes makes me feel pretty stupid, but I'm starting to feel the core concepts gel together.

I did have one question about lavatories and outhouses, in relation to sustainability.

For the most part, as I unlock research, I'm going "what the F am I going to do with THIS ?!" and experimenting, and that's fun.

I just don't want to wreck my budding little civilisation by doing something that I can't recover from later, and as I try to figure out sustainability, I can't wrap my head around POO.

OKAY, so here's my question:

I build an outhouse.
My dupe drops a parcel for delivery, it gets carried away for composting, which turns the "polluted dirt" into DIRT.
I use that dirt for farming, at the moment focussing on meal lice, but looking to start playing with different chemical environments for little hydroponic mushroom farms and whatnot.
Dirt is required to continue farming, so I figure without this recycled poo, I eventually wont be able to farm (yeah I know there's probably more dirt surrounding the colony than I'd ever use, it's just the concept I'm asking about.

OKAY.

I build a lavatory.
My dupe drops a parcel - but everything is flushed away.
I currently drain all that stuff into a septic pool, and I'm experimenting with cleansing and reintroducing to the colonies water, and also diverting some polluted water as it looks like certain plants require it. Ew.

SO

Outhouse: ultimately produces dirt.
Lavatory: ultimately productes water.

I want dirt and water, I like the idea of recycling and sustainability -- am I meant to have a mix of outhouses and lavatories so that my little dupe army is producing both dirt & water ?

I just don't like the outhouses, and I have no idea if the duplicates favour one or the other, or choose the service based on distance ..

Anyway, yeah - it's a question about poo & wee, thanks !

[ForwarD]

There are ways to feed your colony without using any Dirt later, with only Water, or without water at all. So you don't need Outhouses to be sustainable.

[Bokonon]

Outhouse produces dirt, lavatory produces POLLUTED water. Polluted water can be sieved ... Just a hint, don't want to spoil it for you.

Edit: FWIW, 500+ hours here, I'm never in a rush to build anything just because I can. One job I once had I had the motto "just because you can doesn't mean you should". It really applies to my style of playing ONI.

[snuggleform]

I would say that lavatories replace outhouses.

Your question boils down to - are there other ways to produce dirt, and the answer is yes. Pips excrete dirt, and sieving polluted water also produces dirt. Since pips and polluted water are renewable, therefore dirt is renewable without having to use poo.

(I would also say there's so much dirt lying around that you don't have to worry about sustainability for quite some time, i'm near cycle 200, 46 dupes, and still have 55 tons of dirt on hand and I'm not producing dirt and haven't mined the map out yet).

[Captain Australia]

Thanks all for the responses, appreciate it

[fluxtorrent]

I think the thing you are really missing is that outhouses also CONSUME dirt. They have to refill it with the exact same amount of dirt that it produces in polluted dirt, and then that polluted dirt outgases a bunch before you finish composting it, each tick it loses mass.

Where as with lavatories, they produce more water than they consume, even if you dump it into the world and let it outgas before you clean it.

In the end outhouses cost dirt, while lavatories produce water.