How to procced from here? Some questions and discussion on how to reach proper mid-game

[Rex Lupus]

I'm on cycle 350 with space-out DLC and I want to properly upgrade and organize my base to make it stable, but I have some questions and I would like to know the opinion of people that know the game better on my current situation.

This is my base right now (the image is big, but it's just for a general idea): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006984217

To summarize:

• For food I have 3 stone hatches ranches (that also give me coal), lots of shove vole, overcrowded pacus in my water tank, plus natural plants scattered throughout the map. It's actually too much food and I had to build some compost to get rid of the rotten food
  
• For oxygen I have that small setup with 2 electrolyzers. I'm using the water tank to cool the oxygen output down.
  
• For water I have a cool salt slush geyser right next to a salt water geyser. When the brine gets too cold I add hot salt water to get cold water, but not too cold to the freezing point. That way I also keep my water tank cold enough to absorb the oxygen heat.
  
• For power I'm still using the coal generator
  
• On the top right I have my refinery on a cold biome that it's not so cold anymore.
  
• On the bottom of the map I build an oil refinery and a polymer press to get some initial plastic

This is where I'm now. What I know that I need to do and my plans are:

• Do a proper self-sufficient SPOM (my current setup is enough, but it's power negative). I will probably build it below the current electrolyzer setup.
  
• Do a heat-sustainable refinery (for this I found this guide that I will try to follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tq5_uhEKps&list=FLW-N2J0IBa89vHEk71xuVyw). I believe I will build bellow the water tank.
  
• Upgrade my power generation (I'm running out of coal and I have a natural gas geyser to use)

My questions are:

1. Should I bother to ranch drecko? I have lots of fiber and I can try to make a setup to handle the heat from an oil refinery and a polymer press.
   
2. To upgrade my power setup, I want to use natural gas. Can I just put the generators away and isolated them from my base or will they eventually get hot enough that I need to have an active cooling system to stop them from breaking?
   
3. What should I do with the polluted water and CO2 that the natural gas generator produces? I was thinking in save some CO2 for the initial rocket and dumping the rest along with the polluted water in the space since I can't think of any other use for them. Is that a good strategy or should I do something else with them?
   
4. Does anyone knows a good guide on how to protect the rockets? My initial planetoid has lots of meteor showers. It doesn't even have an outer layer of abyssalite (I'm not sure if that's normal or if it was destroyed by the meteors). So I will need to protect the rocket.
   
5. Should I dig more into the map? Where?
   
6. How can I handle the chlorine pockets? I couldn't find any use for the gas and I just want to get rid of it, but without contaminating my base.
   
7. Any decent way to get rid of sour gas? Should I save it or just throw it in space? I got a lot of it when I penetrate the hot oil biome.

I know that's a big post, but I have never reached this point before and I froze due to the overwhelming amount of things to do and not knowing what exactly to do or where to star.

Thank you very much.

[cswiger]

Of course you should ranch dreckos. And glossy dreckos for plastic.
One natgas vent supports ~one natgas generator. Yes, you will need cooling sooner or later
You could use a Carbon Skimmer and Water Sieve. Pumping to space uses the same amount of power and wastes resources.
Yes, there are rocket guides. Look at the Guides tab for ONI above.
You should dig everywhere to expose all resources, vents, and geysers.
You can ignore chlorine. Or use it for a chlorine room, or to feed dashiva saltvines, balm lilys, etc.
You could ignore sour gas also. Or chill it to methane and heat that up to make natgas.

[gtgiygus]

Q1) Should I bother to ranch drecko? I have lots of fiber and I can try to make a setup to handle the heat from an oil refinery and a polymer press.

A) Yes, you will need fiber for a lot of things, and the plants drink up way too much water to be sustainable in the long run. You also should have a glossy drecko farm as well, they are the best way to get plastic.

Q2) To upgrade my power setup, I want to use natural gas. Can I just put the generators away and isolated them from my base or will they eventually get hot enough that I need to have an active cooling system to stop them from breaking?

A) You should not count on Natural Gas for electricity. We all have one guaranteed per asteroid because you need natural gas for high level cooking. The next step in power generation is the Petroleum Generator and all the related oil infrastructure. You also should be thinking about Solar Panels and Geothermal power with Steam Generators.

Q3) What should I do with the polluted water and CO2 that the natural gas generator produces? I was thinking in save some CO2 for the initial rocket and dumping the rest along with the polluted water in the space since I can't think of any other use for them. Is that a good strategy or should I do something else with them?

A) You should try to avoid dumping water into space. Your better off feeding the p.water to plants, or sieving it for more fresh water. CO2 is a bit more common, if you dump it that's OK, but the rocket idea is solid as well.

Q4) Does anyone knows a good guide on how to protect the rockets? My initial planetoid has lots of meteor showers. It doesn't even have an outer layer of abyssalite (I'm not sure if that's normal or if it was destroyed by the meteors). So I will need to protect the rocket.

A) Insulated tiles are strong enough to survive most impacts. They can get damaged with repeated hits, but the rock to repair should be super common. You can build a silo with bunker door roof and insulated tile sides. But for your first, small rocket, I would build it underground, then just have one bunker door over the top.

Q5) Should I dig more into the map? Where?

A) You need to know where all your renewable resources (geysers, volcanoes, vents) are, and metal ore pockets are located. Look for the 3 netronieum blocks that form the base of the geysers for where to dig.

Q6) How can I handle the chlorine pockets? I couldn't find any use for the gas and I just want to get rid of it, but without contaminating my base.

A) Chlorine is good for feeding a few plants and animals, as mentioned above by cswiger. Other then that I would space it.

Q7) Any decent way to get rid of sour gas? Should I save it or just throw it in space? I got a lot of it when I penetrate the hot oil biome.

A) Sour gas should be actively cooled down to get natural gas and sulfur. However, it has to be REALLY cold, you won't be able to get it that cold yet, so ignore or space it.

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

1. Should I bother to ranch drecko? I have lots of fiber and I can try to make a setup to handle the heat from an oil refinery and a polymer press.
   
2. To upgrade my power setup, I want to use natural gas. Can I just put the generators away and isolated them from my base or will they eventually get hot enough that I need to have an active cooling system to stop them from breaking?
   
3. What should I do with the polluted water and CO2 that the natural gas generator produces? I was thinking in save some CO2 for the initial rocket and dumping the rest along with the polluted water in the space since I can't think of any other use for them. Is that a good strategy or should I do something else with them?
   
4. Does anyone knows a good guide on how to protect the rockets? My initial planetoid has lots of meteor showers. It doesn't even have an outer layer of abyssalite (I'm not sure if that's normal or if it was destroyed by the meteors). So I will need to protect the rocket.
   
5. Should I dig more into the map? Where?
   
6. How can I handle the chlorine pockets? I couldn't find any use for the gas and I just want to get rid of it, but without contaminating my base.
   
7. Any decent way to get rid of sour gas? Should I save it or just throw it in space? I got a lot of it when I penetrate the hot oil biome.

I know the screens are not spaced out but same applies. I usually ranch drecko from the start. It's pretty easy to put a little hydrogen in their room when you have canisters and a constant source from electrolyzers.

You will need cooling unless you're using end game materials, and even then I don't know how hot they'll get, but they'll get hot. See below for the setup I used, it works ok and has plenty of room for expansion. I vent the co2 to space and sieve the pwater along with the other non germy pwater sources. Recycling no germ pwater provides around 80% of my colony water supply eating primarily farmed bristle.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007219864
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007219676

I did not think you got meteors on Spaced Out. But I usually build steel bunker tiles and bunker doors to keep shove voles out anyway. You need a space scanner and logic circuitry to auto detect meteor showers, otherwise you have to watch for them and close manually. And the scanner needs to have quite a large area open to space. There are setups that exploit airlocks to make it easier though.

Dig ALL the map, that's what I try to do anyway. You can create stockpiles that have massive amount of crap in it once you have access to dispensers.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007222326
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007222690

For gases I seal the main base up and do not use airlocks, but water locks. Petroleum is the best, oil second. Using waters usually results in freezing or vaporizing. Then circulator pumps at top and bottom filter for anything not oxygen and either store it or vent it to space. Once I have my decontamination rooms pressurized with chlorine I barely use it.

[Shame]

Just wanting to let you know that a drecko ranch can give you food out of nothing, not just reed fibre. If you feed them balm lilies, which take up no resources, then you are effectively getting eggs and meat from them for zero loss of resources. Not as good as shove voles, but when your hatch ranches fail (and they will unless you can tame enough magma volcanoes in time or something) and you don't yet have shove voles sorted for food, this will be your answer. Works in both the vanilla game and spaced out. Drecko ranches can be quite finicky though to make sure they are not overcrowded, that you also get all the eggs out as needed and leave enough dreckos in there to tame indefinitely. Autosweeper reach was the most difficult tetris thing I've done in this game so far. Maybe it's actually worse for certain puft ranches though.

[XceptOne]

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

• Do a proper self-sufficient SPOM (my current setup is enough, but it's power negative). I will probably build it below the current electrolyzer setup.
  ...
  
• Upgrade my power generation (I'm running out of coal and I have a natural gas geyser to use)

Counting only electrolyzers and pumps and having no filters, you'll always have enough hydrogen to power them. You only need enough hydrogen generators to burn what you produce (and not lose hydrogen to deletion).
In that way, any electrolyzer setup is a SPOM (I never really understood the felt benefits of integrating these things with each other, just have your h2 power plant nearby).
One generator per electrolyzer is fine, then add another to deal with slight overflow.

Also, as you should use all your produced hydrogen for power (minus some 10-30g total for AETN, if needed), hydrogen generators should be very high priority within your power grid. As such they are prime targets for tuning (Power Control Station / +50% power production), which makes them quite good power producers (first thing you might want to try.

Other than that, try to diversify your power sources. Having multiple small sources is almost always better than trying to rely on a single power source.

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

Should I bother to ranch drecko? I have lots of fiber and I can try to make a setup to handle the heat from an oil refinery and a polymer press.

Dreckos are always a good thing. Not only do they produce fibers/plastic, you'll also get food and phosphorite andy way less heat (young dreckos are rather hot, though).
It's also a lot simpler to set up than using polymer presses (for plastic) and doesn't have that exorbitant water consumption (fibers and plastic).
Fibers are basically free while producing glossy dreckos consumes some dirt.

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

To upgrade my power setup, I want to use natural gas. Can I just put the generators away and isolated them from my base or will they eventually get hot enough that I need to have an active cooling system to stop them from breaking?

Everything that produces heat and is fully insulated will eventually overheat and require cooling.

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

What should I do with the polluted water and CO2 that the natural gas generator produces? I was thinking in save some CO2 for the initial rocket and dumping the rest along with the polluted water in the space since I can't think of any other use for them. Is that a good strategy or should I do something else with them?

In terms of CO2, that's a good plan. You can also feed it to slicksters or use it to convert water into polluted water.
As for water, the game heavily revolves around recycling stuff, so I'd use that water first before using water from renewable sources.
On the other hand, if you've got enough water, don't plan on expanding much and are already set up, then dumping it doesn't make a difference either (I think it's still better to not produce water you don't need, rather than dumping overflow, but a natgas generator doesn't produce much to begin with).

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

Should I dig more into the map? Where?

You should always look for those renewable resources (geyser/volacano/vent).
Otherwise dig put as much as you need the space, but be aware that having large gas filled areas is pretty much the worst thing in terms of performance (best being vacuum or uniformly filled with same element solid tiles and non pathable)

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

Any decent way to get rid of sour gas? Should I save it or just throw it in space? I got a lot of it when I penetrate the hot oil biome.

Just dump it. While it can be converted to natgas and sulfur, doing so is complicated and if you do you will be feeding it directly fom an oil source. So any free floating sour gas is just a hazzle and not very useful.
On a side note, did you actually do anything yourself that created it (digging out hot abbysalite in direct contact to oil) or has it 'always' been there in the first place? If it's the latter, you'll want to check if there is a breach between the oil and magma biome and seal it (oil biome shouldn't be warmer than 90℃ anywhere).

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

I know that's a big post, but I have never reached this point before and I froze due to the overwhelming amount of things to do and not knowing what exactly to do or where to star.

The good news here is, your base already seems to be quite stable and probably will be for a prolonged period of time.
So, there shouldn't be much pressure to accomplish anything, which gives you plenty of time to just concentrate on your next project and ignore everything else for while.
It's a good time to start learning radiation research and rocketry.

[Rex Lupus]

Thank you all for the answerers. Some clarifications:

When I asked about digging, I meant to expand the base. I have already explored the full map. The geysers I have are:

• Minor vulcano
  
• Leaky Oil Fissure
  
• Salt water Geyser
  
• Cool steam vent
  
• Chlorine vent
  
• Natural Gas vent
  
• Cool Salt Slush Geyser
  
• Infectious Pollute Oxygen Vent
  
• Copper Vulcano
  
• Hydrogen Vent
  
• Liquid Sulfur Geyser
  
• Iron Vulcano

I also have completed all research that requires material science research (the yellow bar).

As for the sour gas question, it's weird and I don't know how it happened. When I reached the oil biome, a lot of sour gas started to come out and there was already some petroleum mixed with oil. I have no idea how that came to be, though. There is no source of heat there like a volcano or something and the temperature there is around 100 ºC, not enough to boil the oil. No oil should have boiled and yet some seems to have somehow.

I will see what I can do to upgrade my power grid and prepare to ranch dreckos for plastic an fiber.

Thank you all.

[robotnikkkk]

=FIRST OF ALL, BUILD INFINITE STORAGES

......... THEN,, BUILD DESALINATOR+HYDRA SETUP

.......... THEN...... WHY NOT A SINGLE METAL VOLCANO STEAM TURBINE ROOM???????? .... FIX THAT IMMEDIATELY!!!

........ THEN, MAKE A SETUP FOR GEOTUNER STEAM TURBINE TAMER

......... THEN, DUPLICATE WHEEZE WORTH SEEDS PLANT THEM INTO FLOWER POTS AND MAKE HYDROGEN COOLING ROOMS ........ AND ..... LIKE...... MAKE A COOLING SETUP FOR OXYGEN FROM THESE HYDRAS U'LL MAKE

.............. AFTER U'LL BE PRETTY MUCH OKAY..........................

........... JUST DO YT SEARCH AND U'LL FIND ALL CLUES ABOUT WHAT I'M TELLING ABOUT............ I DONT HAVE ANY CLUE WHY THESE FROM ABOVE WROTE ALL THAT,THAT IS MOVING NOWHERE AND THEY WANT U TO SUFFER

[robotnikkkk]

Originally posted by Rex Lupus:

Thank you all for the answerers. Some clarifications:

When I asked about digging, I meant to expand the base. I have already explored the full map. The geysers I have are:

• Minor vulcano
  
• Leaky Oil Fissure
  
• Salt water Geyser
  
• Cool steam vent
  
• Chlorine vent
  
• Natural Gas vent
  
• Cool Salt Slush Geyser
  
• Infectious Pollute Oxygen Vent
  
• Copper Vulcano
  
• Hydrogen Vent
  
• Liquid Sulfur Geyser
  
• Iron Vulcano

=DUUUUUUUUUUUUDE U'RE THE LUCKIEST GUY OUT THERE,IRON VOLCANO,IT'S AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! .......... AND EVEN HYDROGEN VENT,DAMN U'RE LUCKY

.............. AND EVEN SULFUR........ FANTASTIC ........

....... BUF FIRST THINGS FIRST,TRY TO COOL YOUR COLONY WITH -10 DEGREES BRINE GEYSER........... AND MAKE A ROOM FOR HYDRA SETUP,SO U'LL COOL/HEAT ....... FOR 12 DUPES IS ENOUGH........

=ALSO......... BRING ARBOR TREE SEED TO DUPLICATE THAT FOR ETHANOL DISTILLER SETUP!!!!!! ......... LIKE FREE 1000W OF POWER...... AND,MOST IMPORTANTLY, ETHANOL IS VITAL FOR SAFE BREACHING TO THE SURFACE ,WHERE U'LL DO ENOUGH SOLAR PANELS .............

.......... OK,MADE ENOUGH CLUES