Early Midgame Water what do I do?

[Averagedog]

I have played this game for mroe than a few hours now But I can never seem to get past the early game. Without fail, I research the first two sets of tech but I run out of water. How do I replenish my clean water supply?

[Tarshaid]

Another way to see the problem would be: "how can I consume less water before I have access to other sources?". If you're starting to lack water after "two sets of tech", either your researching is hella slow, or you're burning water on relatively basic stuff, like the microbe musher and bristle blossom farming. All this consumption could be absolutely bypassed by feeding your dupes raw mealwood. It only consumes dirt, of which you should have plenty in early game, and you should need about 5 crops per duplicant, so it also takes space, but there's plenty enough in the starter biome. You can think about improving food when you get more abundant sources of whatever it is you need to grow your crops (I'm a mushroom fan btw). In the meantime, if you need morale improvements, focus on making rooms first, and then decor.

On other sinks of water, the advanced research station also uses water, but I wouldn't think about cutting on that. There's also the electrolyzer, that also tends to produce air at a fairly high temperature (unless that was changed, but I doubt it), so I would refrain from using that in the middle of my base until I can manage heat better.

Now, on sources of water, the only one that doesn't require expansion is using latrines to get 6.7kg of polluted water per dupe each cycle, then sieving said water. Just be careful not to mix this water with anything, it's going to be full of germs. Then you have the slime and polluted water from the slime biomes, and the ice from the ice biomes. After that you can use pufts to create slime out of polluted oxygen, and turn said slime into polluted water+algae with a distiller. But that's getting a tad advanced for early game.

[Seleck]

Originally posted by Averagedog:

I have played this game for mroe than a few hours now But I can never seem to get past the early game. Without fail, I research the first two sets of tech but I run out of water. How do I replenish my clean water supply?

How many cycles are we talking about and in what are you spending water

[Averagedog]

Originally posted by Seleck:

Originally posted by Averagedog:

I have played this game for mroe than a few hours now But I can never seem to get past the early game. Without fail, I research the first two sets of tech but I run out of water. How do I replenish my clean water supply?

How many cycles are we talking about and in what are you spending water

I generally get to the 30th-34th cycle before exhausting my water sources unless if 3 large water areas spawn on me. I tend to rush hygiene and farming and du mp the waste water in a hell hole.I have tried sieving a few times, but it seems to produce less water than what I started with wasting my copper. At this point I usually intentionally drill into a chlorine pocket or hydrogen pocket and let the waves of deadly gas take my colony. A preferable way to die than thirst.

[Seleck]

Originally posted by Averagedog:

Originally posted by Seleck:

How many cycles are we talking about and in what are you spending water

I generally get to the 30th-34th cycle before exhausting my water sources unless if 3 large water areas spawn on me. I tend to rush hygiene and farming and du mp the waste water in a hell hole.I have tried sieving a few times, but it seems to produce less water than what I started with wasting my copper. At this point I usually intentionally drill into a chlorine pocket or hydrogen pocket and let the waves of deadly gas take my colony. A preferable way to die than thirst.

look up a self sustain washroom setup, I think that may be your problem, wasting water on hygiene when in reality you only need a small amount. The starting water should be enough to carry your colony for about 100 cycles, depending on the number of dups
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1519182192

[L37]

IMO the easiest way to get water early-mid game is sieving p-water you find in slime biome. It is generally germ-free, there is a lot of it and there is a lot of sand in starting area.
Just be carefull with slime/slimelung.

[Lantantan]

Definately set up a proper bathroom with a sieve. This will turn every dupe you have into a water source since they all pee around 10kg of water every day! This does cause your clean water supply to go germy but thats okay. Water shouldnt be wasted on food anyway until you find a geyser and thats the only downside to germy clear water.

Early game, dirt becomes food via meallice farms, algea becomes oxygen (dont use terraria). Later switch to water becomming oxygen in an electrolizer.

[Sid]

Are you using electrolizers? They eat a lot of water, you are not really suposed to use them until you find a cool steam vent (or cool slush geyser) and find a way to cool the oxygen. Stick with algae instead and try not to go over 8 dupes until you have oxygen and water sorted out.

[The Queen Salis]

make sure you scroll through your starter pokemon er...dupes and find a savant that specialises in learning and also likes to do it so you get the learning bonus early.

[Averagedog]

Alright, this time I made it to day 40, stopped planting a lot of those thistle plants and am wasting a lot less water this time around. What do you guyus think of this base? This is the first time In a long time I've actually started going past the initial biome.

I had 2 large clean water reservoirs, the 2nd being located at the top of the base. It sprung leaks somehow and also luckily ended up flowing straight into the lower reservoir. I have the sieve tech now. Is there a way to clean germy water once I employ the sieve tech?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1521085992

[Tarshaid]

Ways to remove germs from water? There's a few ones. Easy ways? Not really.

What comes out of the top of my head is to heat/cool the water enough that the germs die, and regulating the heat of water, while doable, will likely require a lot of power (with the common question of "where do you put all this heat" coming along the way). Or to research the extremely far in the tech tree water tanks, and put said water tanks in a zone that you fill with chlorine. Then you wait until all germs die.

Considering that both of these solutions seem likely hard to reach for you, since you're just dabbling with water sieve, I'll stick with my first advice and say "don't mix your germy water with your clean one". It's completely fine to reuse germy water in lavatories, showers and sinks though, no matter what you may think of such a practice.

[Seleck]

Originally posted by Averagedog:

Alright, this time I made it to day 40, stopped planting a lot of those thistle plants and am wasting a lot less water this time around. What do you guyus think of this base? This is the first time In a long time I've actually started going past the initial biome.

I had 2 large clean water reservoirs, the 2nd being located at the top of the base. It sprung leaks somehow and also luckily ended up flowing straight into the lower reservoir. I have the sieve tech now. Is there a way to clean germy water once I employ the sieve tech?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1521085992

Too many dups you should try a smaller number 3-6 until you are more experienced and if you can handle a few dups fine then add 1 more and wait to see how it goes and add another 1 and so on

[Sid]

Originally posted by Averagedog:

Alright, this time I made it to day 40, stopped planting a lot of those thistle plants and am wasting a lot less water this time around. What do you guyus think of this base? This is the first time In a long time I've actually started going past the initial biome.

I had 2 large clean water reservoirs, the 2nd being located at the top of the base. It sprung leaks somehow and also luckily ended up flowing straight into the lower reservoir. I have the sieve tech now. Is there a way to clean germy water once I employ the sieve tech?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1521085992

Few friendly tips that should make things a lot easier for you, try making each floor of the base 4 tiles high (bathrooms 5) so you can build several paints across it, it's a major boost of morale early on, even if it is a bit tricky to buid it that way, use stairs 1 tile above the floor to reach the ceiling if you have to. Also, dupes can jump over 1 tile so keep 1 tile clear on the side of your stairs so later you can build the fire pole next to it, it speed things up considerably.

Let's see, take a look at the room overlay's descriptions (one of the buttons at the top right of the UI), they will tell you how to build several rooms that provide major bonuses. For example, if you build a water cooler on your mess hall at the top left, along with a 20+ decor paint, you will get a great hall with +6 morale bonus for dupes eating there. I also think your bedroom is a bit too big, split it into 2 with a door and you should get the barracks bonus (+1 morale). By the way, you can configure doors to always stay open, it speed things up a little bit.

Last but not least, look up something called "water lock" on youtube or ONI's wiki, it will keep diseases and bad gases away from your base, effectively sealing it away from the rest of the map.

[Averagedog]

thanks for all the advice, I'll check out oni. what is a healthy number of dups to have by day 40? In the current game there are so many that half of them are generally idle now wasting my precious precious resources.... in this game I have decided not to take dups twice or th rice when all had narcoleptic or other very negative traits.

[Lantantan]

Your dupe number is fine IMHO, if a bit high. Your colony will just reach its tipping point sooner but that just means you learn faster. And have more FUN ;). Focus dupe picks on Diver's Lung and the learning atribute.

You should focus on digging exploratory shafts to find those geysers. Crosstrain all your dupes in
first rank courier, miner and architect.

Also, try to leave wild plants alive (with a light bug sealed in, if required). Wild plants require no dirt or water. They yield only 1/4th, but that 1/4 is totally free. Especially the super thristy fiber reed plants should never be planted domestically.

[Lantantan]

This tends to roughly be the (my) order of progression:

1) Dirt for press Food -> 3) dirt for farm food 5) -> Slime for mushroom Food -> 6) Water for Food
2) Algea for Oxygen -> 4) Water for electrolizer Oxygen
5b) Hatches for coal power -> 7) Gas power