How do you handle long commutes and what do you prioroitize in the early game?

[Brad]

I've got a ton of time in this game but boy do I suck at it. I constantly end up getting pretty far but then running out of resources and my colony dies.

My main problems are that I have such long commute times that some projects take forever to finish. I use the prioritize feature for each dupe and will mark specific tasks as low or high priority but it doesn't seem to help too much.

I typically prioritize getting food and a hatch farm going to get coal but It seems to barely provide enough to keep my generating running even with 30 hatches. I typically don't get too lucky breeding sage and stone hatches. I always seem to end up stretching myself too thin and inevitably failing.

[cswiger]

Running out of resources implies you are getting too many dupes before you have obtained stable income from infinitely renewable vents/geysers.

You should be trying to replace dupe labor with auto-sweepers and conveyor rails whenever possible, so your dupes have more time to work on stuff only they can do. You might be expecting them to work on too many things and/or have them chasing around between distant tasks. Generally, lowering priority will work better than raising it.

30 hatches is a lot. I generally run around 16 - 20, depending on whether I want to have a few smooth hatches making metal or not. Sage hatches are OK, but pokeshells are often a better choice for lime and for recycling sand -> pdirt -> sand from a Water Sieve.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

My main problems are that I have such long commute times that some projects take forever to finish

Have a room where your duplicants run on manual generators until they reach ~15 athletics, then give them athletics related skills so that they aren't slowed down while wearing equipment (masks or suits).

[Konebred]

Sounds like maybe you either have too many mouths to feed, there is too much going on, or your priorities are wonky. I usuaully dont go past 8 dupes until I get ready to hit the teleporter asteroid. Make sure your generator batteries are smart batteries too, otherwise you will just run out of coal every time. Focus on one project at a time. One of my early mistakes was just queing too many jobs and dupes were just running around doing everything half ass and nothing was getting done. As for your priorities, just let your dudes do their jobs you picked them to do. Things go way easier when one guy digs, one dupe supplies the resources and another guy right behind to build. This prevents your dupes from running all the way across the screen just to drop off components for one wire, then another guy running all the way across the screen to build that one wire over and over.

[Magic]

You can't avoid being long commute after mid-game. But there are solutions that mitigate this. For example at priority menu enable priority and never put any priority on supply. Use sweep only automatic dispensers that puts all debris at one tile. Use shipping system and put stoage space near producers etc.

[SailaNamai]

Get the suit wearing skills (+athletics) and strength (+carry capacity) on every dupe no matter their job. Most helpful, I think, is to build stuff like ladders from the resources you are currently digging out (don't build sandstone ladders when there is granite next to your dupes).

[Quyzbuk]

Go into the priorities tab. Anyone who is a builder needs to have that as their highest priority, everyone else should be neutral or lower. Same for your dig crew. Set proximity mode to on in the upper right so that your dupes don't just mine/build one tile then leave.

Do NOT change the priority of the actual project more than one point in either direction. Priority too high = underskilled labor comes to help and puts their potentially critical jobs on hold.