Not Quite Beginner's Guide

A guide to getting started in ONI, with an eye towards tackling higher difficulties and completing achievements and late-game content.

1. Introduction

This guide is very unlike any of my other guides. I won't be providing step by step instructions on how to build anything, instead it's really two different guides in one, that I'm publishing for two specific purposes.

A "Not Quite" Beginner's Guide

This won't be a traditional beginners guide in terms of "first build outhouses, then cots, then get down meal lice and oxygen diffusers before you starve or suffocate". Actually, I guess there it was, there's my beginner's guide to the first 10 or so cycles of ONI :)

Instead, I'll be sharing what might be considered unconventional opinions on how I approach a colony in ONI. My recommendations lean towards optimizing for higher difficulties, achievement runs, and more challenging starting planetoids. A hyper min-max approach isn't even remotely required to succeed, but learning good habits early will better prepare you for what the rest of the game can throw at you. I specifically focus on the starting dupe team and then what kind of dupes to add along the way. You've almost certainly heard that your starting team should consist of one or two builder/diggers, and then probably a researcher or rancher. One version of a "dream team" in that regard might look something like this:



The advice above is generally good, and honestly on the normal difficulty and the Terra asteroid you could easily survive with a narcoleptic starting team of doctors, decorators and chefs. That's not meant to cut anybody down or say that the game itself is easy. We've all failed on numerous starting colonies, but the basic survival mechanics of managing oxygen and food aren't really changed by having a dupe with +15 digging instead of +1.

In my colonies I would never take dupes like the three above

To be fair I certainly used to! All my early colonies were loaded with these dupes, following the common online advice. This guide will explain why my approach has changed and provide alternative recommendations. I'll describe the more subtle mechanics of stress and morale, which can be unexpected killers after food and oxygen are taken care of. This will help prepare you to tackle rocketry and colonization of other planetoids in the Spaced Out! DLC. Those mid-game objectives can be challenging for many players, but a simple change to your dupe selection approach can position you for the best chance of success.

Lets Play!

This might be an interesting and unique part of the guide, or might be a total flop. I recently ran a colony to playtest a new SPOM design before publishing my Easy Submerged Electrolyzer / SPOM Guide. I thought I'd go for the Super Sustainable achievement at the same time, to make sure I could reliably run the entire base off the hydrogen from the new SPOM. I had a wild idea to take screenshots every 5-10 cycles for the first 100 cycles and share what I was thinking at the time, what my next objectives would be, etc. Kinda like a Lets Play! video on YouTube or Twitch, but infinitely more boring since you have to read it :)

I also thought this might serve as a showcase for my other ranching guides, and maybe for a couple useful builds I've borrowed from other designers. Something about seeing someone else build designs in a real game can be different from the sterile nature of a "how to build this" guide. It might also shed light on "when" I start thinking about building those systems, so you don't get caught surprised on cycle 50 with overheated plants and no food.

I'm not claiming that the way I play the game is best, or even "good". I'm not particularly a "fast" player either. People launching rockets on cycle 40 are impressive, but you won't find that here. I tend to get distracted by multiple large projects and waste dozens of cycles before I come back to finish them. It took me about 50 cycles to even get flush toilets up this game! That said, I think there could be value in seeing someone else's thought processes, seeing them make mistakes (and hopefully not die from them), even seeing how long I managed to drag this artificially power-limited colony on (for the achievement) without rushing into the midgame for steel, rockets or new planets. Nobody forces you to play ONI quickly, unless of course you're going for the Carnivore and Locavore achievements :)

*** BEGIN GUIDE ***

2. Survival "Not Quite" Basics

As I said above, this section won't be about early game food and oxygen production. The thing is, on default difficulties, once you've failed a few times and learned the basic mechanics it's really not that difficult to get a colony going.

As you're learning the game you're absolutely going to lose colonies for one or all of these four reasons:

• You didn't notice you were running out of algae to make oxygen and everybody suffocated
  
• You didn't notice you were running out of dirt to grow plants and everybody starved
  
• You didn't notice your base was slowly warming from all the machines, so your plants overheated and everybody starved
  
• You took too many dupes too quickly - they ate all your food and everybody starved

Anyway, we've gotten those early learning games out of our system, and we now know how to transition to electrolyzers and hatches for oxygen and food that can't overheat. That should last several hundred cycles until we run out of either water or rocks and need to figure out the next level of sustainability. That's far beyond the scope of a "beginner's" guide, so in the meantime, what's the next big threat to our colony?

Depending on the difficulty settings, and how disciplined you are about managing morale, the most likely thing to destroy your colony next is probably stress.

- Stress

Stress is a mechanic that you'll either never notice or it will cause you to enter a death spiral from which the colony can never escape.

On the default difficulty, dupes with no debuffs will accumulate 0% stress per cycle. This can be raised to 10% (Glum) or 20% (Frankly Depressing) using the difficulty slider in the game settings. Any time a dupe obtains a debuff they will receive a temporary increase in stress. For example walking through a puddle will give them Soggy Feet and cause +10% stress for 0.2 cycles, which effectively adds a total of 2% to the stress meter. Every night as the dupe sleeps they'll relieve stress at a rate of 20% per cycle for about 3 schedule blocks, removing about 2.5% total stress from the meter. If a dupe's stress meter reaches 100% they'll stop what they're doing and have a stress reaction for several schedule blocks, such as vomiting or binge eating. After the reaction the meter is reduced to around 50-60%.

I want to pause there and reinforce the concept. Let's assume you're the most benevolent colony manager in the world, pampering your dupes to make sure they never receive a single debuff. On the hardest difficulty level the meter would still climb by 17.5% per cycle just for being alive, after factoring in sleep removing some of the default stress. For the first 3 cycles you get the free New Hope stress reduction buff which nicely cancels this out. After 6 more cycles (cycle 9) each dupe would have a stress reaction, reducing their meter to ~60%. At that point you begin a spiral of repeating stress reactions every 2.5 cycles or so.

In a normal colony you'll have small buffs and debuffs affecting stress on individual dupes, so they won't all be synced up like the above hypothetical. Below is an example of the stress tooltip showing these adjustments.



Once a dupe or two starts screaming or puking everywhere, that can cause additional stress on other dupes, potentially sending them over the edge as well. Even worse, dupes having stress reactions won't perform tasks (like running on hamster wheels, or harvesting food) potentially leading to failures in other parts of the colony that were previously working fine. Side effects of the stress could include puke breaking an important liquid lock or getting into a clean water reservoir, or a destructive dupe totaling a critical machine.

It's possible to build massage parlors to help relieve stress, and on harder difficulties I find I almost always have to. But these are at best a crutch and at worst a total trap. First of all the massage tables require power, quite a bit of it at 240W. Potentially more importantly, dupes getting massaged aren't performing tasks which as above can lead to failures. I've had massive colony failures where one dupe is running like crazy on a hamster wheel (400W) just to try to keep massage tables running for the other two stressed out dupes. Three dupes fully consumed by trying to alleviate stress, and zero work being done in the colony. Once the stress cycle starts it can be difficult to break out of, so your goal should be to never start down this road.

Controlling stress is the primary challenge of the harder difficulties, far more than the additional hunger, disease spread or even radiation. However, even on normal there are several situations where stress can pose a problem. This is particularly true in the Spaced Out DLC, when putting dupes in rockets or colonizing new planetoids. In those situations you won't have your +6 morale from great halls and nature preserves, you won't have your +12 morale from surf'n'turf, all of a sudden your morale plummets and your dupes may find themselves stressed out. Managing morale is the most effective way to control stress, as will be discussed in the following section.

- Morale and Skills

As stated above, managing morale is the best way to keep stress in check. This means not learning too many skills, unless you have more than enough morale to support them.

Every time you take a skill, it adds a morale requirement to the dupe. 1 for a first tier skill (left most column), 2 for the second tier, and so on up to 4 for the fourth tier (right most column). A duplicant skilled into Mechatronics Enginering, for example, requires 3 morale for the skill itself, 4 more for the two second tier prereqs, and 2 more for the two first tier prereqs. That's a total of 9 morale required. The morale tooltip describes how much morale a dupe has, and how much they require for their current skill load:



If you have exactly the same amount of morale points as required for your skills, the dupe receives a "Sufficient Morale" buff, removing 5% stress per cycle. Having more morale than required gives a "High Morale" buff of either -10% or -20% stress per cycle, for 1 or 2 more points than required, respectively. Conversely, having less morale points than required gives 10% extra stress per cycle, per missing point, to a maximum of +50% when 5 or more points below the requirement.

Put as plainly as possible, the amount of morale a dupe has directly limits how many skills they can obtain without generating stress

This is where sending a dupe onto a rocket or to a new planetoid can result in disaster as their morale plummets, unless you skill scrub them first. Even having a dupe decide not to visit your nature preserve one cycle will temporarily drop their morale by 6 points, potentially swinging them from High Morale (-20% stress) to Low Morale (+40% stress) in one swoop!

For all of these reasons, I focus on choosing dupes that can consistently maintain high morale.

Higher morale allows them to learn a greater number of skills and maximize their benefit to the colony without inducing stress. My specific recommendations are covered in detail in the next section on dupe selection.

As a side note, the other reason to ensure your dupes have constantly high morale is to encourage overjoyed reactions. These are the opposite of stress reactions, and duplicants will run around faster, accomplish tasks faster, and even hand out balloons or drop stickers to raise the morale of other dupes. These reactions are very helpful and can only occur when a dupe has the High Morale buff, so always try to maintain a few morale points more than you need.

3. Dupe Selection

This section covers my approach to choosing dupes, which as said above focuses on high morale (and thus capacity for high skill load) with low stress. I talk about interests and traits, as well as "jobs" which is what I call combinations of skill selection and task priority to optimize dupe performance.

- Interests

Every dupe generated will have between 1 and 3 interests. Each interest will provide +1 morale point whenever the dupe learns an associated skill, for example when a dupe interested in cooking learns the Grilling skill, or a dupe interested in operating learns Electrical Engineering.

For this reason, if you intend for a dupe to learn a particular skill it is highly desirable for them to have an interest in that skill family.

Having more interests is strictly better from a morale standpoint than having less

At least as long as the associated skills are useful to the dupe. It's also important to note that there is no other way to obtain these bonus points of morale.

For example, consider a dupe with a single interest in digging. They might start the game with +7 to +9 in digging, and as you skill them up to Super-Duperhard digging with 3 skill points they'll gain 3 morale points from those skills. Eventually though, you're going to want to continue to skill them into atmo suits or carry capacity or building, and no matter what skills you choose they won't receive any more bonus morale as they have no other interests.

If that same dupe had spawned with three interests in digging, suit wearing and supplying, they would instead start the game with only +1 to +3 in digging. Right out the gate this dupe would be ~85% slower at digging, but they'll skill up faster and reduce that gap quickly. More importantly, when it comes time to skill them into atmo suits and carry capacity, this dupe would receive a total of 8 bonus morale points instead of only 3. Both dupes would eventually cap at the same score of 20 in digging, and the same final digging speed, but those extra 5 morale points can never be obtained by the first dupe. The second dupe will be able to spend 5 additional skill points for free!

For this reason I recommend a somewhat non-standard playstyle where I only accept dupes with 3 interests. I try to make sure all three interests are complementary and relevant to the dupe's eventual job, which will be touched on in a later section. It wouldn't be as helpful for a dupe to have an interest in both cooking and researching, for example. Both of those jobs require standing in front of a different appliance all day long and you would be unlikely to take skills from both trees on the same dupe. You might also consider the effective morale provided by each interest, which I've categorized below:

Interests worth 2 Morale Points

• Cooking
  
• Ranching
  
• Rocketry
  
• Suit Wearing
  
• Supplying
  
• Tidying

Interests worth 3 Morale Points

• Building
  
• Decorating
  
• Doctoring
  
• Farming
  
• Operating

Interests worth 4 Morale Points

• Digging (*)

Interests worth 5 Morale Points

• Researching (**)

* - The Tier 4 skill in digging only allows you to dig through the fallout of a nuclear reactor explosion, which is not a particularly useful skill. Most colonies will never see that fallout or have to dig it up. The skill also costs 4 morale points, giving back one due to the interest, so with a net of -3 morale taking this skill is not recommended. Instead I stop my diggers at Tier 3 digging and the interest is therefore only worth 3 morale points.

** - In the late game after researching the entire tech tree, I recommend skill scrubbing the two Tier 3 research skills from your researcher and re-allocating those skill points. After doing that the research interest is only worth 3 morale, however for hundreds of cycles you should be benefiting from the full 5 points.

- Traits

I was tempted to do a tier list of all the traits in this section, but to be honest that's not how I think about traits in ONI at all. Not to mention I don't think there's nearly enough variety among the traits to justify six independent tiers from S to F. For me there are a few traits that are extremely good (S-tier), a few that are extremely bad (F-tier), and then the rest are basically just "meh". Some might be a smidge better than others, they all add a little flavor and variety to the game, and I'm glad they exist, but I don't really worry about them at all when choosing dupes. Interests are infinitely more important and impactful than traits, in my opinion.

One example is that 22 of the 66 traits either add or subtract 3 points from an attribute (e.g strength, science, cuisine, etc.), and 4 more add points to all attributes for a portion of a day (e.g. Night Owl) or only when certain conditions are met (e.g. Loner). Combined, that's about 40% of all possible traits that only (slightly) modify dupe attributes.

With or without these traits, all of your dupes will eventually cap any skill they use regularly at 20 points, and in my opinion the +/- 3 from a trait just isn't big enough to worry about. Most attributes give either a +10% or +25% bonus per point to the associated task completion speed. So if you compare a cap of 17 vs. 20 vs. 23 points, the total task speed would be either 270% vs. 300% vs. 330% or 525% vs. 600% vs. 675%. A dupe with no attribute affecting traits is completing tasks either 3x or 6x faster than they did at the beginning of the game, and a dupe with a +/- 3 point trait is only increasing or decreasing that total speed by about 10%. Anything that saves dupe time is nice, and it's a bonus if you can get the right attribute trait on a dupe with the right job, but it's not important enough to impact my dupe selection criteria or reroll for.

So with that 40% of traits out of the way, if we assume that half of the remaining 60% of traits are negative, that really only leaves 30% of the traits, say 18-20, that would be worth any real discussion or "tier list" treatment.

For those reasons, I'll instead present a list of traits that I consider "excellent" that I'm always looking out for, and a list that I consider "terrible" that I personally will never accept on a dupe. Because those lists are so small, I'll list some honorable mentions that are considerably above or below average, particularly traits that the community at large might expect to find in the former lists. Any trait not mentioned, which will be most of them, is just "fine" and you likely don't need to worry about them. Certainly don't take something like Yokel (cannot do research) on your science dupe, but aside from obviously dumb pairings the rest won't have much impact on your game.

-> Excellent Traits

There are six traits that I consider excellent and am always looking for on my dupes.

Kitchen Menace and Shriveled Taste Buds

These traits both provide the same bonus of +1 food morale, and Kitchen Menace also gives -3 to the Cuisine attribute and +2 to an attribute the dupe has an interest in. In my opinion Kitchen Menace is probably the best trait in the game, especially because it is classified as a negative trait. This means you can get the effect in combination with any other positive trait. In fact, these two traits even stack with each other, which can be a powerful combination. Having one or the other is certainly sufficient, however. It's not at all worth trying to re-roll for both.

So what makes +1 food morale so good? The secret is that these traits actually bump the Food Quality score of anything the dupe eats by 1 grade, for example a Grisly Meal (Meal Lice, -1 quality) would be treated as a Terrible Meal (Bristle Berry, 0 quality). A Good Meal (barbecue, +3 quality) would be treated as a Great Meal (Surf'n'Turf, +4 quality). The higher Food Quality score then translates to multiple actual morale points. If you're feeding your dupes Grisly or Terrible food only 1 extra morale point is given, so in the very early game these traits are pretty mediocre. In the early game you also don't have any skill points, and you have access to lots of easy morale from great halls or nature preserves, so you don't need a boost as much. However, if you're feeding Poor quality food the extra morale granted is 3 points and any other food (except Frost Burgers) will give a whopping 4 points of morale to a dupe with either of these traits! (or 8 if they have both) Since most people transition to eating barbecue relatively early, you could consider this trait as giving a constant 4 morale points from that moment on. That will benefit you all through the mid game when you will have lots of skill points but need more morale to spend them.

"Skilled:" Traits

Super-Duperhard Digging, Exosuit Training, Mechatronics Engineering, Masterworks

There are several other "Skilled: " traits, but these are the best four in my opinion. Each trait gives you the corresponding skill at the beginning of the game, without requiring you to learn any prerequisite skills. This not only saves morale points since you don't have to buy the skill or the prereqs, it also allows you to take advantage of the skill much earlier than you would normally have access to them.

Super-Duperhard Digging is directly worth 3 points of morale. As a digger you're going to have to take the two pre-requisite skills anyway, so there's no further gain, but this is still great to have access to early. It also lets you start multi-tasking your digger earlier, into building, suit-wearing or whatever you want.

Exosuit Training is directly worth 3 points of morale, however it also allows you to skip Rocket Piloting and Suit Sustainability Training for 3 additional points (total of 6) if you like. Rocket Piloting is 100% worthless to any non-pilot dupe, but Suit Sustainability Training provides a +2 bonus to Athletics which can be nice. Depending on your difficulty setting you can decide whether +2 Athletics is worth -3 Morale, but either way this is a great trait.

Mechatronics Engineering is directly worth 3 points of morale, however it also allows your builder to skip Improved Tinkering and Electrical Engineering if you don't plan on doing power plant tune-ups. That would save 3 additional morale for a total of 6. In theory you could also skip Improved Carrying I and II for 3 more points (total of 9) but in my opinion every dupe should get those skills so I count this as a 6. Dupes with this trait (and no prereqs) are among the best dupes to send to new worlds to establish new colonies, as they can construct conveyors to transport goods with zero skill investment or morale costs.

Masterworks is directly worth 3 points of morale, however once you have it there is no value in taking the prerequisite skills so this really saves 3 more points for a total of 6. What's additionally great about this trait is that I almost never make a dupe an artist as their primary job, instead I add it to a dupe later as a secondary job. Spawning with this trait saves spending those 6 morale points on top of a dupe already loaded out with skills for their primary job. In addition, most colonies only need one artist. So if a dupe ever shows up at the portal with this trait and they're not otherwise terrible, they can immediately take on the decor needs of the entire colony while you gradually skill them into any other primary function.

Important Note on "Skilled:" Traits

These traits give the dupe a skill at the beginning of the game, however if you skill scrub the dupe the skill will be removed along with all other skills. You can re-purchase the same skill for "free" again, however it requires you to first purchase the prerequisite skills in order to unlock the skill. So be careful skill scrubbing a dupe with a Skilled: trait if you were planning to take advantage of the extra morale from not purchasing its prerequisites.

Honorable Mentions

These traits are definitely good, they're just not quite as good as the traits above.

Diver's Lungs

This is a good trait, but in my opinion it's probably the most over-valued trait in the game. It's certainly nice for dupes to consume less oxygen, but after your first couple games where you run out of algae and everyone suffocates you typically learn to build a sustainable oxygen source such as an electrolyzer to stop that from happening. From that point on, other than unique situations like long rocket voyages, oxygen is just not a primary survival concern anymore. I see a lot of established colonies venting oxygen to space just so their electrolyzers will run and produce more hydrogen (which, side note, must be infuriating for new players to see!)
My main issue with this trait is that I fear it is a bit of a noob trap. People who re-roll to get most or all of their dupes with this trait because of how great they hear it is aren't really learning how to survive with "normal" dupes. They might be unintentionally training bad habits like waiting too long to get off of algae, or taking too many dupes too early, that could hurt them in higher difficulties or harder starting planetoids.

Quick Learner

This trait is another good trait that I consider somewhat over-valued. The increased science attribute is nice for early game research, and the dupe will also earn skill points faster which can rush skills like mechatronics earlier. However, on higher difficulties you may not have the morale available to spend those extra skill points, so it's a bit of a wash. Definitely a good trait, I take it more often than not, but I wouldn't reroll for it.

Any other "Skilled:" Trait

Any Skilled: trait is a direct savings of morale which is great if you planned to acquire that skill anyway. The remaining traits aren't quite as amazing as the ones called out above, but they'll still save 2-3 morale points.

Starry Eyed

This is not a very good trait all things considered, but I mention it here for one specific purpose. The trait gives an incredible +10 morale to any dupe who is in space, i.e. in a rocket. In the late game you might have multiple rockets flying around to collect space resources, and each one requires a pilot. This trait is a big fat easy button to keep those pilots happy, so you don't have to worry about decor and room morale inside the rocket. It's completely useless otherwise, but if it pops up on a pilot dupe I'd strongly consider taking it.

-> Terrible Traits

There are only four traits that I consider so terrible you should never take a dupe with them.

Gourmet

This should come as no surprise, as its -1 Food Quality is the exact opposite effect of the Kitchen Menace and Shriveled Taste Buds traits that I value so highly. This equates to a constant loss of 4 morale points once you get out of the early game and its terrible food, limiting how many skills you can put on this dupe. For a dupe that never leaves your main base and won't ever need to skill into atmosuits, such as a chef, this isn't as big of a deal. However, in my opinion there's no positive trait that's so amazing for such a character that it would justify taking this downside. Maaaybe if they came with "Skilled: Masterworks" you could have a Chef/Artist and the +6 would cancel out the -4, but I can't really see any other worthwhile combination. I mostly refuse to accept these dupes on principle, because just about any other negative trait would be better.

Flatulant

Well... except for this one. This is unquestionably the worst trait in the game. The dupe randomly releases natural gas which will float around and cause all kinds of mayhem in your base. It might get into your farms causing plants to stop growing in the unfavorable atmosphere. It might settle over your CO2 scrubber causing it not to run and flood your base in CO2. It might destroy liquid locks or vacuum rooms leading to catastrophic chain reactions. If the dupes produced enough gas to be useful you might lock them in a room and burn farts to power the colony, but the amount of gas is so small it's just an absolute nuisance with no upside. I hate these dupes so much I'll even save scum frozen friends and hermits to avoid it.

Anemic

This trait gives -5 Athletics, which doesn't sound that bad after my whole section on how the +/- 3 point traits don't make enough of an impact to worry about. If it were only -3 like every other attribute-adjusting trait it might have been a dishonorable mention instead. The problem with athletics is that it affects dupe movement speed, and for a large majority of the cycle most of your dupes are moving around between jobs. Each point in athletics gives a 10% speed boost, so a maxed dupe with 20 points vs. 15 points would run at 300% speed vs. 250% speed. The dupe without this trait moves 20% faster, everywhere, all the time. Taking a 10% penalty on performing specific tasks like digging or building are forgivable, but taking a 20% speed penalty on moving is just too much. My overall feeling about this trait is much like Gourmet. On certain dupes that don't move around a lot, chefs come to mind again, it can absolutely be worked around. I just avoid it on principle because it's more than twice as bad as the other attribute reducing traits.

Narcoleptic

This trait probably only deserves to be a dishonorable mention, it's really not that terrible. But one thing I don't need any more of in my ONI colonies is random chaos. These dupes randomly fall asleep during the day, dropping whatever they were carrying, disrupting whatever task they were performing, and taking a new task when they wake up. It's not much different from what regular dupes already do at the end of their work shift, except that it happens at random throughout the day. On your way to rescue that incapacitated dupe before they die, nah, time for a nap. Carrying my only pip to start a farm on the other side of a lake, oops I dropped him and he drowned. Like Gourmet and Anemic, you can somewhat mitigate the effects on a chef, researcher, pilot, etc. since they don't travel far, don't carry anything dangerous, and can resume their jobs immediately after waking up. I still recommend avoiding this trait unless you roll an otherwise perfect dupe.

Dishonorable Mentions

There are three other negative traits that I particularly dislike, and will almost never take a dupe with these traits.

Loud Sleeper and Nyctophobic

These two traits change a dupe's sleeping habits, the former causing them to snore and disrupt dupes around them, and the latter making them require light to sleep (which will disrupt dupes around them). They're actually both very easy to play around by leaving some space around a special bedroom for these dupes. The main reason I don't like them is its much harder to accommodate such dupes in the small space of a rocket. So as is becoming a theme, on something like a chef that will never leave your main colony, this isn't a big deal, but I prefer all my dupes to be consistent rather than have to remember who requires special treatment.

Allergies

This is far more of a personal preference than an actual game breaker, but my play style doesn't mesh well with the Allergies trait. When exposed to floral scent these dupes will become sneezy and incur 15% stress per cycle. That's almost enough to cancel out the 20% bonus from High Morale, so it's similar to a straight -2 morale point penalty. Both buddy buds and bristle blossoms spread floral scent, so at the very least you'll have to keep these dupes away from your berry farms. I like to use buddy buds throughout my base for the 5% stress reduction on non-allergic dupes, with a bonus effect of killing any other airborne germs the scent encounters. Adding allergic dupes to that situation is a recipe for stress reactions unless I remove the buddy buds, which would penalize every other dupe in the colony and allow germs to spread. Unlike Loud Sleeper and Nyctophobic you can't work around this one with special accommodations, unless the dupe is in an atmosuit 24/7 and their bedroom is liquid locked to keep the scent out. There's simply no positive trait a dupe could have to make it worth that kind of hassle.

- Skills and Jobs

There are 12 different interests in ONI, and as shown above each interest supports multiple skills. Generally, you would use the priorities system to assign each dupe a job, based on the skills and interests the dupe has. For example a dupe interested in Cooking would take the Grilling skill and become a Chef. You would then raise the priority of cooking tasks and potentially lower priority or completely forbid the dupe from doing certain other tasks, such as digging or decorating.

There are no standardized names for these jobs, nor standardized ways to configure their skills and priorities. I will share my own names, and will make recommendations on how to configure skills and priorities for each job. My first recommendation is to name every dupe in game with their job title, such as "Digger: Meep" or "Researcher: Mi-Ma". This makes it easy to remember who everyone is at a glance when configuring skills and priorities, and easier to assign dupes to schedules to balance the type of work being done throughout the day.

Looking at the interests and skills available, some are much better than others. Some are more suited to being a primary job vs. a secondary role, and some are generally good for all around support. I'll discuss each branch of the skill tree below and my opinion on whether it should be a primary or secondary role.

-> Primary Jobs

Digging / Digger

This is likely the most important job in the early game as you're expanding your base and searching for food and other resources. Digging skills are important as they allow you to dig through harder materials which gatekeep new biomes. In the later game as you colonize new planetoids you'll rely heavily on digging again, so this is a great primary job for duplicants. Once you have enough morale, you should take on a secondary job to fill the dead time between big digs.

Ranching / Rancher

Ranching is a great primary job that will keep the assigned dupes very busy in most cases. Between wrangling and grooming critters and hugging eggs ranchers are generally running around all the time. Once you have multiple ranchers and they have some down time it's good to skill them into secondary jobs, as the primary job doesn't require many skill points.

Cooking / Chef

Like ranching, your chef might spend almost all day cooking. They'll be hopping between grills, gas ranges and possibly mushers for berry sludge. The only way to alleviate this is to add more chefs, but I don't believe the job is important enough to warrant multiple dedicated dupes. As long as you have a good freezer the uncooked ingredients will last forever without spoiling, and a single chef can outproduce the food needs of most colonies. I always take one dupe whose primary job is a chef, usually as my 5th dupe, 2nd dupe from the printing pod. I later add cooking skills to other dupes as secondary jobs to help the chef out in their down time. This is particularly easy since Grilling I is only a 1-point investment, so any dupe should have the morale capacity for it.

Researching / Researcher

Along with Digging this is the other most important job in the early game. The difference is that this job has explicit phases where you're either researching 24/7, or you've completed a phase and are not performing research at all. For example once you've completed all tier 1 and 2 research, your researcher will have nothing to do until you get set up for radiation (tier 3) research. And once you complete that phase you'll again have nothing to do until you build a rocket to collect data banks from space for tier 4. Eventually you'll research everything on the tree and researchers will have nothing to do for the rest of the game. It's still one of the most necessary skills early, but you should be ready to assign them a secondary job or two later on.

Supplying / Utility or Runner

This is a great set of skills and I'm going to start out by saying every dupe in the colony should eventually take Improved Carrying I and ll as secondary skills. This makes Supplying one of the best extra interests to look out for on any dupe. In addition to that secondary role, you can actually use supplying as a primary job which I call a "runner" or a "utility". Like a "utility player" in sports, these dupes will do a bit of everything, running around the base to ensure machines stay full, sweeping and mopping, and handling other little tasks so the rest of the dupes can stay focused on their main jobs. I don't recommend starting the game with a runner, but as your colony grows having a couple utility dupes, up to one per shift, can be a good investment.

Operating / Engineer

It's very counter intuitive, but this is the tree you should actually be looking at when thinking about a "builder" dupe. The final skill, Mechatronics Engineering, is required to build many of the shipping/conveyor buildings *plus* it gives the same +2 construction you'd get from a building skill. Because this skill has four prerequisites, you don't have time to waste skill points on building skills, you need to rush a dupe this direction from the start. Later you can consider going back to the building tree for +2 construction skills to build a little faster, if you like. I used to just call these dupes "Builders", but on the off chance Klei ever patches the building tree to make it useful I now call these dupes Engineers to differentiate them. So when you see advice online to start your colony with "builders, diggers and a researcher or rancher", I recommend that you translate "builder" in your head to actually mean the operating tree.

-> Secondary Jobs

Building / Builder

I have an unconventional opinion on building that will likely surprise most people. I mostly gave it away in the operating section, but I don't consider this a necessary job at any stage of the game. Unfortunately, the associated skills are mostly worthless. The first two skills only give a minor +2 to construction, while the third does the same and also enables demolition of Gravitas buildings. 6 morale points is a lot to pay just to destroy a few buildings and to build slightly faster, so I almost never skill my dupes into this tree. I recommend skilling a dupe into demolition, demolishing any Gravitas buildings you don't like, then running them through the skill scrubber. After that, I avoid these skills, though they can be a reasonable addition to a digger or engineer later in the game when you have tons of morale to spare.

If anyone from Klei happens to come across this, I might recommend requiring Improved Construction I and II skills to build certain types of buildings. I'm thinking higher end power plants like maybe hydrogen and natural gas require Construction I, Steam and Nuclear require Construction II, etc. Similarly various rocket pieces could be locked behind the two Construction skills, but most normal buildings could still be built without either of these skills. That seems to be a balanced way to give these skills a purpose and keep them distinct from the operating tree.

Farming / Farmer

The value of this job will depend on your playstyle, but I almost never use farming as a primary job, at least not until much later in the game. I allow all dupes in the colony to harvest at medium priority in their downtime, and other than the very early game most of my time is spent without growing any plants at all. The farming skills are required to identify mutant seeds and to apply fertilizer to plants, so for some mid to late game farming styles (once you get into sleet wheat and blossoms for berry sludge) and achievements it can definitely help to have dedicated farmers. I would just recommend putting that off in the early and mid game, and potentially making this a secondary job for some dupes once you're ready.

Decorating / Artist

I don't use decor in the early game at all, as there are far easier and more reliable ways to generate morale. I transition into spamming decor everywhere in the mid game, and if I haven't found a good artist by then I give these skills to a dupe as a secondary job. On the subject of what makes a good artist, any dupe you can find with the "Skilled: Masterworks" trait is instantly a master artist, saving you from investing 6 morale points into another dupe as a secondary job. It's a great trait to keep an eye out for as it can take care of your entire colony's decor needs, and the dupe is still free to skill into any other primary job.

Rocketry / Pilot

This is a mid to late game skill that I tend to apply as a secondary job. If I'm sending an expedition team of diggers and engineers to a new planetoid, I might slap the Piloting I skill on one of them just to run the rocket, rather than hire a full-time pilot. Like adding Grilling I this is only a single point investment, so there's no need to dedicate a dupe to piloting early on. Additionally, until the very late game with multiple rockets fetching space materials, a dedicated pilot would usually be standing around with nothing to do.

Suit Wearing / Pilot

I lump this skill in with rocketry and pilots as it doesn't seam to work as a primary job. A "suit wearer" isn't a thing, however this is probably the most important secondary job for most dupes. Diggers, builders, ranchers, researchers, etc. all have to leave your base and venture into hostile environments or even new planets to do their jobs. As you enter the mid game almost all of your dupes should be skilled into atmo suits, which makes Suit Wearing one of the best interests to keep an eye out for.

Doctoring / Doctor

Unfortunately, in the current build, doctoring is almost completely worthless. Diseases don't affect the dupes much, so other than making rad pills or treating scald wounds faster doctors just don't have a role in the colony. Even the higher difficulties only increase the chance a dupe will catch a disease, it doesn't amplify the generally negligible negative effects. That could be a change which would make doctors invaluable, in my opinion, while not ruining the existing balance for players on normal difficulty.
Because I allow my dupes to get scalding injuries and pass out from heat stroke frequently, especially when colonizing a second planetoid for oil, I tend to add at least one point of doctoring as a secondary job to some of my expedition dupes. This helps other dupes heal faster in a triage cot and get back to work, but frankly even this isn't necessary. You could just as easily ignore the whole tree. As-is it's on par with building, maybe a hair better in Spaced Out! high difficulties for rad pills alone.

Tidying / Utility or Runner

Like suit wearing this is a skill tree that no dupe should take as a primary job. I tend to lump tidying in with supplying and give it to my runner / utility dupes. A couple dupes in your colony should definitely take plumbing as a secondary skill, especially if you don't use the pliers mod, but even if you do. It could really be anybody, and I often add this to ranchers as well because they have so much morale to spare, but who better than the utility dupes already doing miscellaneous odd jobs?

4. Putting it all Together

Now we get to combining all of the information above. We want our dupes to maximize their future morale total, and thus their potential skill load, by having multiple interests. We also want those interests to be complimentary to support their primary and/or secondary jobs. Finally, we want to keep an eye out for a handful of good traits that might radically enhance the dupe.

The way I run my colonies I only use six types of dupes, aligned with the six primary jobs described above. I'll explain which interests and traits to look out for for each job. Before that however, it bears repeating that Suit Wearing and Supplying are the two best secondary interests in almost all cases. Any dupe starting with these two interests, plus a third in their primary job (Digging, Operating, etc.) will be among the best dupes possible, as long as the traits aren't terrible.

- Ideal Dupe Builds

Below are my thoughts on the ideal builds for the 6 types of dupes I aim for in my colonies. I'm willing to take just about any dupe with 3 interests and no terrible traits, but when I see something along these lines I know exactly what role they'll fill in my colony.

Digger

Best Interests: Digging | Suit Wearing | Supplying or Building

Best Traits: +1 food morale | Skilled: Super-duperhard Digging or Exosuit Training

Diggers and engineers are the two main components of your expeditionary teams for colonizing new planetoids. You'll need to mine them out and construct conveyor rails to return the plunder, and even at home they spend a lot of time far from your base, away from nice decor, in potentially hazardous conditions. These are also skill point heavy dupes, as most diggers will do a lot of building and vice versa. Any trait to maximize their morale or give them a free skill is an ideal fit.

Engineer (aka "Builder")

Best Interests: Operating | Suit Wearing | Supplying or Digging

Best Traits: +1 food morale | Skilled: Mechatronics Engineering or Exosuit Training

Even more so than diggers, engineers synergize with a supplying interest since that tree is a requirement for Mechatronics Engineering. That is unless you get the skill for free. Everything said about diggers applies equally here, so any trait to maximize their morale or give them a free skill is an ideal fit.

Researcher / Pilot

Best Interests: Researching | Suit Wearing | Supplying or Rocketry

Best Traits: +1 food morale | Starry Eyed | Quick Learner

I have found great synergies between researching and rocketry, and now turn all of my researchers into pilots. The primary reason is that researching is an early game activity that eventually runs out of tasks, while rocketry is a mid to late game activity that has nothing to do early. In addition, if you want to take the Rocketry II skill it requires two prereqs in the researching tree, and researchers already require atmo suit training (and thus the prereq of Rocketry I) to safely analyze geysers and volcanoes. These interests marry together so well I'd expect it to be a more commonly seen pairing.
I like to skill scrub the two Tier 3 researching skills once the entire research tree is complete, but keep the Tier 2 skills for geotuners, mission control stations and geyser analysis. This frees up 6 morale and 2 skill points, one of which will be used for Piloting I. The other can be used for Piloting II or to add grilling, doctoring, etc.
Like diggers and engineers, researchers are a common component of your exploratory team on new planetoids. You'll need them to analyze any geysers discovered, or potentially to fly the rocket as above. For this reason increasing food morale is a good bet on traits. It's also worth keeping an eye out for the Starry Eyed trait, which can greatly simplify your rocket designs. No more worrying about cramming in a great hall to prevent stress, on top of a washroom and barracks, etc. This dupe will be thrilled just to be in the capsule! It's a bit of a tradeoff against 3-4 morale points all the time from food quality, but I think it's a good trait to help ease a potentially complicated part of the game.

Rancher

Best Interests: Ranching | two of Suit Wearing or Supplying or Farming or Decorating

Best Traits: +1 food morale | Skilled: Critter Ranching I or Masterworks

Ranching is not a skill point heavy job. They don't even always need atmo suit training, so if you roll a good one without that interest it's likely OK. You can usually wrangle critters and escape with just a bit of scalding or eye stinging, and someone else can go back to relocate the critter once it's trussed. After maxing out the few required skills I usually skill my ranchers into either farming or decorating as a side role. Masterwork decorating costs 6 morale points, unless you get it for free, and the remaining two farming skills would require 5. Many of my other dupes won't have that many points to spare on top of their primary jobs, but the ranchers will. Sometimes I even give them plumbing for another 3 points. If you can build up enough morale, ranchers essentially become a "utility" dupe as their secondary job.
Ranchers are also the first job where increasing food morale isn't quite as necessary. You're less likely to send a rancher to colonize a new planetoid unless you're attempting to wrangle critters to bring back to the home world. Even then, it's often easier to add the ranching skill to one of the diggers or engineers on the squad right before you pack the rocket for home, and hope they don't have a nervous breakdown on the trip back. The extra morale is nice if you want to pack them with secondary skills, but going without it won't hamper their primary role. Getting the ranching skill for free early is a nice bonus worth 2 morale, but it's usually learned early anyway so the rancher has more flexibility in accepting mediocre traits.

Chef

Best Interests: Cooking | Decorating | Supplying or Farming or Doctoring

Best Traits: +1 food morale | Skilled: Masterworks

Even more so than ranchers, chefs have it easy when it comes to morale, skills and traits. You're essentially never going to send a chef to a new planetoid, instead you'll send their food. Chefs also have almost no use for an atmo suit, they tend to walk between their bedroom and the kitchen in the comfort of your core base. They don't even really need the supplying skills for carry capacity, since your kitchen should be automated to move ingredients and cooked food around for them. For these reasons chefs tend to have a lot of leftover skill points, if not necessarily much time to do anything with them. I like to skill my chefs into decorating, and occasionally doctoring or farming, for the same reasons described for ranchers. Decorating and doctoring are jobs that usually have no tasks, so the chef can take short breaks from cooking to knock them out and then get back to the kitchen.
When it comes to traits chefs can be the most forgiving, even partially mitigating the downsides of many of the most terrible traits. Just be careful if you start piling on secondary jobs requiring a lot of movement, especially if it will take them outside the comfortable base. Also note that Kitchen Menace will reduce the chef's cuisine stat by 3, so it's not as good here as on other dupes. Look for Shriveled Tastebuds instead.

Runner / Utility

Best Interests: Suit Wearing | Supplying | Tidying or Decorating or Operating

Best Traits: +1 food morale | Skilled: Exosuit Training or Plumbing or Masterworks

Runners are often following behind your diggers and builders (engineers), at least on your home planet. They carry materials to construction sites, and sweep away dug out debris. They'll need the same atmo suit and carry capacity skills as most other dupes, but can then splash on any utility skills the colony needs. They usually won't be part of an exploration crew on a new planetoid, at least until it's well sustaining, so their morale and trait requirements are more flexible like a rancher. You may choose to not play with these dupes at all, and instead use all specialists of the other 5 types with secondary skills.

- Example Dupes

With all that in mind, here's an example of a whole different kind of "Dream Team" of starting dupes:


Note that I normally wouldn't take a chef (on the left) as a starting dupe. I'd usually go for a digger in that spot to complement the researcher (center) and "builder" (engineer, right). A chef is usually my 5th dupe after I have one of everything else except a utility/runner. However, this is a nearly perfect chef+decorator that would be hard to pass on if it came up. Until I needed their other skills and had found a digger to replace them I would use them to dig, and frankly their +0 wouldn't be noticeably worse than a +1 or +2 digging dupe at the start.

One nice thing about this three interest playstyle is that stat wise the dupes are almost all the same at the start :)

*** END GUIDE ***

5. Let's Play! (Super Sustainable)

This section begins the psuedo Let's Play, where I'll comment on how my playtesting challenge went for the first 100 cycles.

As a reminder, the goal of this colony was to test out a new SPOM design, so that I could publish a guide confident in the build's performance. Secondarily, I wanted to go for the Super Sustainable achievement, so I would only use hamster wheels until the SPOM came online, and then hope the hydrogen was enough to power the whole colony. Along the way I planned to showcase other designs I've written guides for, as I tend to use those in all of my colonies. The difficulty settings were all on default / normal.

I should probably also mention that I always play with a bit of a self-imposed handicap in that I try not to remove any abyssalite unless absolutely necessary. If I need to shave 2-3 tiles to make a design fit or pass a pipe through to another biome I'll definitely do it, but I try to avoid it. I like the way the worlds look with the abyssalite borders between regions, as opposed to an entire map of 4-high concrete slabs. I also like being forced to think about which biomes my designs can fit in, and the opportunity cost of taking up a large biome for a large project. Finally, the only game-relevant reason, it's nice to have the near-perfect insulation between regions. I can run an industrial sauna right next to a sleet wheat farm, using the natural abyssalite between the biomes to provide the insulation. Anyway, I wouldn't expect anyone else to play this way, but since it will figure into my planning and commentary I thought I'd mention it up front.

I unfortunately forgot to get a screenshot of my 3 starting dupes, but they were configured as follows:

Builder: Rowan

Interests: Building, Supplying and Operating

Thoughts: Building is a waste of an interest but he had the kitchen menace trait so I took him anyway.

Digger: Abe

Interests: Digging, Suit Wearing and Supplying

Thoughts: Perfect digging interests. The traits weren't anything noteworthy, but I focus mostly on interests unless the traits are terrible.

Rancher: Pei

Interests: Ranching, Research and Farming

Thoughts: A bit of a jack of all trades early dupe. Far from perfect, but she's both researcher and rancher, so when I get another dupe that is more specialized one way or the other I can specialize her the other direction. She did have the Skilled: Critter Ranching I trait which I've never actually played with, so I figured I'd see whether it made any noticeable difference. Spoiler alert: I don't think it did.

World / Map Seed

SNDST-C-1068319744-0OC-0

ONI Build / Version

U44-537329-S

- Cycles 1 and 2: Core Base

Before I get started I should probably comment on how Steam displays these large 4K screenshots. Inline with the guide you'll see a small image which you can click on to pop out a window with a larger (but still scaled down) image. Many of these may still be hard to read at that size.

In order to view the full scale image you need to click on the link in the upper corner of that new window.

Note that sometimes something happens in Steam's back end and these links will break and give an error, even though the smaller images display fine. That usually goes away on its own if you try again another time.

Cycle 1

The first thing I do when starting a new colony is pause the game and look around. I might dig a little bit to either side to clear a little fog of war and then pause again. My immediate concerns are where are my water pockets and will I be able to easily combine them? Do I see any abyssalite or granite that might limit how far I can expand? I then start measuring to decide where to drop my "core base" blueprint. This core base is something I've published a guide on, which you can find here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2849011639
I always build the 4-story version of that core base, and depending on what's around I either build the bottom floor around the portal, or I leave room for a vertical ladder corridor in between the portal and core base.

In this game this is the view I started with:


There are chunks of abyssalite around me in all four corners, so not enough room to leave a ladder corridor beside the portal and fit the core base to one side. The two water pockets will be easy to combine later, so I plopped down my blueprint and got to work.

Cycle 2

Ugh, it's Cycle 2 and I've already made a few mistakes :)



I put down my core base blueprint and gave additional orders to build some outhouses and cots. Once that showed good progress I gave orders for a hamster wheel, battery and research station. It's pretty standard to place your first research station to the left of the portal and your advanced research computer to the right, so that both will get a lit workspace bonus from the portal and perform research faster. I do that in every one of my colonies until I get a true research laboratory built and relocate them.

Notice too that the areas of my core base that will later become kitchens and great halls are currently being used for outhouses and cots. I guess the takeaway here is to not be afraid of temporary solutions (within reason) that have to be moved around or improved later. I actually like starting with my cots in this area on purpose, as the CO2 from the sleeping dupes will gradually fill up the pit. By the time I start harvesting food the pit is a sterile place to store it and prevent rot!

Now what about the mistakes I mentioned? Primarily it was forgetting to cancel building tiles in the blueprint, as I could have saved time letting natural tiles form my floors and ceilings for a while. I usually remember to cancel tiles unless they're replacing sand, mud, oxylite, or something similar that will fall down or sublimate. Otherwise I leave the natural floors until I'm ready to run wires through them or sweep up their debris. Even worse, you can see that each of my floors has a single tile that juts out into the vertical ladder corridor. Those are supposed to be left as natural tiles so that if I ever get a pip I can put him in the corridor and let him plant seeds to form a nature preserve. By the time I caught it almost all my natural tiles were gone, but thankfully there are some wild plants to the right. It will be an awkward way to make a preserve, but I'll have to deal with it.

- Cycle 5: Food and Water

By cycle 5 the core base shell is mostly complete and I've added the advanced research computer and an oxygen diffuser. I've also begun combining my water into a single pool and extending my ladder corridors south. Build orders have been issued for 20 planter boxes which I will gradually fill with mealwood as I dig up seeds.



Each dupe requires 5 mealwood plants to keep fed, and I've taken on another dupe for a total of 4, hence the 20 plants. Speaking of that dupe, let's welcome Pilot:Pei.

Pilot: Pei

Interests: Researching, Suit Wearing, Supplying

Thoughts: Pilot is a bit of a misnomer for now, but this Pei will be a great researcher who will later be able to transition to Pilot. She also rolled the Quick Learner trait which is a nice little bonus to her research speed.

At the bottom of my biome I found another pool of water, so I'll probably work to combine all three on top of the abyssalite. Also, at the very bottom of the screen, just on the other side of the abyssalite, is a cool steam geyser. I won't be able to tame that for a while, but I'd like to make sure it's not overpressurized so that it's producing water. The environment can soak up the heat for a while before it becomes a problem, and that water will eventually be the source for my SPOM.

The last notable thought is that all the red icons at the top of my base indicate granite, which is currently too hard for me to dig. I'll have to expand sideways or further downwards until I get a skill point on my digger.

- Cycle 10: Exploring and Planning

First of all I've taken on another dupe, this time a chef.

Chef: Gossman

Interests: Cooking, Decorating, Doctoring

Thoughts: Another jack of all trades dupe that will focus on cooking, but can later skill into some secondary jobs to save other dupes the points. Funny enough Gossman came with the Kitchen Menace trait which would usually be great but is far less useful on a chef. Not only does he suffer -3 to his cuisine attribute, but he doesn't even really need the food morale bonus. Chefs don't need as many skills as most other jobs and I'll never send him to another planet where his morale would plummet. Oh well, not every dupe will be perfect...

Here's what we're looking at so far:


The theme the last few cycles has been exploring. I dug a tunnel off to the west until I hit abyssalite and even went east through the slime biome, which I'll come back to. This exploring gave me a much better idea of how big my starting biome is and now I can really start planning where to put things.

I also closed in the ladder shaft to the right of my base with some of the wild plants and a park sign, creating a nature preserve. This gives a +6 morale boost and allows me to not worry about morale at all for a while. I recommend early in every game to get either a great hall, nature preserve or both online quickly. Bedrooms and bathrooms are only worth +1 morale, so they can wait until later.

I decided that the slime biome to the northwest would be a perfect spot for my new SPOM design.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2909246022 It's tall enough to fit 4 electrolyzer modules, which is enough for ~32 dupes. I also liked that it's completely surrounded by abyssalite with a natural "mouth" pointing southeast into the base. This should be perfect to test the pumpless "natural diffusion" design. It will be a long pipe run to bring up water from the cool steam geyser, but I'll just have to insulate it to keep from cooking the base. Speaking of the geyser, I can see it a bit better now and it's pretty open with a nice pool of water forming, so that's great. I issued orders to seal it in with insulated tiles "just in case". I don't intend to dig down there and build those tiles, but if I accidentally open it up somehow I don't want to forget and let steam all over the place.

Just below the SPOM location, above the comfy bed ruin, is a strip just big enough to hold my automated drecko ranch.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2685094605 Before I can build either of these I'll have to drain the polluted water from the slime biome down into the comfy bed ruin, but that should be manageable.

Finally, in the southwest corner between the comfy bed ruin and the abyssalite I can barely fit an automated hatch ranch with a (future) control room, 3 stables and an "eggspam" drowning pit.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2640391564 I don't need to transition to hatches just yet, as I haven't even really gotten mealwood running, so I'll prioritize getting the SPOM and dreckos going, and come back to this later. I'll also have to move the pool of water out of this area, another reason to combine it with the water in the far south.

So what I plan to be going for should look something like this:


Now lets revisit the slime biome I cracked open to the east, as I'm about to crack open a second one to the west. Many players are terribly afraid of these biomes due to the slimelung germs. If you look closely you'll see that my exploring dupe took a roundabout path through the biome. He started out moving southeast, leveled off, turned northeast, up over the natural gas geyser, then down southeast again. The secret behind this crazy pathing was that I avoided digging a single tile of slime. As long as you're digging algae, clay, gold amalgam, or the other materials found in this biome, you have nothing to fear from the slimelung. The only way the germs can get into the air is if you dig a tile of slime and it offgasses into a tile of polluted oxygen. Below I show the germs overlay of this area and you can see that there are no germs in the air or water, even though the tiles of slime are covered in them.



Unless you get very unlucky, there are usually multiple paths you can dig through a slime biome without disturbing the slime itself. Then you can come back later with deodorizers, buddy buds, atmo suits, or whatever other tech makes you feel comfortable with the germs. Frankly, with diseases as nerfed as they are you don't have much to fear even if you go guns-blazing into the slime itself with no protection. I might be a little more careful than that while clearing the next slime biome for the SPOM, since I don't want slimelung germs breeding all over my oxygen supply.

- Cycle 15: Food and Water (again)

It doesn't appear like much has happened these last 5 cycles, the big project was combining my 3 water pools into a large pool at the bottom.



Airflow tiles are used to make a wall on the right side, since they won't break under any amount of liquid pressure.

The other thing to point out was another big mistake. I forgot to check the temperature when I was planting my mealwood, and it turns out the whole top of my base is already too hot for them. I started clearing another floor below the portal to relocate mealwood that was stifling on the top floor. Fortunately the biome is cool from the portal all the way down, so I'll just have to gradually move plants south as the heat flows in, until I transition over to hatches. In the famous last words of an ONI player: "It's not perfect, but it's good enough for now."

- Cycles 20 to 25: Hatch Ranch

Cycle 20

Well, I guess I lied about putting off the hatch ranches to focus on the SPOM and dreckos. We're about halfway done building the 3-stable ranch.



Having to move my stifling mealwood must have worried me in the moment, triggered some PTSD from my first games of ONI where everything overheated and the colony starved. Now with a clearer head I feel like I overreacted. There's plenty of cool biome to the south and I easily could have moved more plants down there. I think I also had a nagging voice saying that my rancher, who started with the ranching skill for free, hasn't been able to do anything with it. If I didn't start ranching soon, a chunk of that trait's value would be lost.

Anyway, the other thing going on was moving the bedrooms to the northeast, on the other side of the nature preserve. I like to make sure that either the bedrooms or bathrooms (or both!) are placed such that the only way in or out is through a ladder corridor, which gets turned into a nature preserve. This helps keep the morale buff up on the dupes as much as possible.

Cycle 25

At this point the initial hatch ranch is finished, the new bedrooms are finished, and you can see a lot of random dig orders to the northeast and southeast of the base. The reason for this was to hunt out every easily reachable buried item in the starting biome, hoping to find as many hatches as possible.



Also, over the last 6 or so cycles I hired two new dupes to help with ranching and building:

Rancher: Nisbet

Interests: Ranching, Tidying, Farming

Thoughts: The interests could have been better, but plumbing and farming are two things I often give to ranchers so it could have been worse. Traits-wise she rolled with shrivelled tastebuds, so I figured the extra morale would offset any imperfection in the interests.

Builder: Ellie

Interests: Building, Suit Wearing, Operating

Thoughts: Almost exactly the same as my starting builder. The building interest is a complete waste, but she spawned with Kitchen Menace again. Like Nisbet, the bonus morale will offset the imperfect interest. I don't know why the game keeps giving me this great trait but I'll keep accepting it!

Note on population growth

In my colonies I tend to grow to 5 dupes ASAP, then pause for a bit, then grow to 8, and then essentially stop growing for a significant time. Eight dupes is the maximum that a single electrolyzer can provide oxygen for, the maximum number of cots that can fit in a single barracks, and it also makes a nice number to split into two shifts of 4, with 4 toilets and 4 sinks. It's a great number to shoot for and stabilize on, until you're sure the colony can support additional infrastructure.

Not much else to say at this point, now I can finally turn my attention back towards the SPOM and dreckos.

- Cycle 30: Start SPOM

Now we're back on task clearing out the slime biome for our SPOM and draining the polluted water below where the drecko ranch will go.



The hatch ranches are humming along nicely, however I forgot to pump water into the drowning pit below the bottom stable. Embarrassingly, I don't figure that out for the entire playthrough, somewhere around cycle 95. In the meantime about a million hatches will live in that pit, and I'll wonder why my barbecue numbers aren't going up as fast as I'd expect. I believe I noticed there was no water a couple times along the way, but shrugged it off and said "if they're not drowning they'll at least be starving, so no big deal". Little did I know many of them were eating scraps that fall from the stables above, just enough to stay alive. I later found some 60 and 70 cycle old hatches in that pit!

Sometimes it's the stupidest little mistakes that get us, but other than some wasted rocks it didn't really harm the colony in the end.

- Cycles 35 to 40: Finish SPOM

Cycle 35

By cycle 35 the SPOM was finished, along with a transformer to send power to the colony and a hamster wheel to kickstart the hydrogen pump. At this stage my power needs are very minimal, so I have a single non-conductive wire running through the whole base. I'll later split that out into 2 or 3 circuits, each on a separate transformer. If I ever find lead I'll double up the transformers and replace the wiring on each circuit with conductive lead.



The only other thing of note was the digging and construction orders in the far south. I'm installing the pump and insulated pipes to bring water from condensed steam up to the SPOM. I still won't bother to tame the vent yet, the environment can keep soaking the heat until I get plastic for a turbine. I was also finishing out the hatch hunting by digging up the last buried objects in the starting biome.

Cycle 40

There's not much notable to report in the last few cycles. The pump and pipes are finished and the digging for hatches is finished. While doing that digging I combined a large water pocket with the water from the steam vent, to average out the temperature and also give the vent more room for later. Right now it's almost flooded so I need to start using that water. Finally, I created a second row of plants in the south of the base, since a few more at the top have stifled and I'm about to start blowing hot oxygen up there.



There's no cooling on the SPOM output because once the hatches are my primary food source temperature in the base won't matter. The hatches take 20-30 cycles to get into a good rhythm of BBQ production, so I just have to keep enough plants around to bridge the gap. There's plenty more room to keep moving them south to escape the heat, but I doubt I'll have to move them again before I demolish them instead. One other neat find was the input and output teleporters (bottom right) for shipping resources to my linked planetoid. I likely won't be visiting there for a while, but at least I know where all the devices are now.

The next thing on my agenda is to build the drecko ranch and get plastic production running.

- Cycle 45: Drecko Ranch

You can see in the screenshot that initial construction of the drecko ranch is almost finished, and below it I added some deodorizers to clean up the air and more importantly produce clay. I should be able to produce a lot of clay as the polluted water evaporates, which will translate into a lot of ceramic down the road.



Also, if you look to the left of the portal and two floors up, you'll see I've added automated dispensers around the small pit of water. This is my "sweeper pit", where I'll eventually sweep all the resources and debris from the entire map into a single tile. This allegedly helps reduce lag, but more importantly it centralizes all my resources for later shipping via conveyors, and it also prevents anything from off-gassing under the water.

- Cycle 50: Bathrooms

By cycle 50 the drecko ranch construction is essentially finished, it's just waiting on critters. The three major construction projects I set out to build around cycle 20 are all finally complete.



At this point I noticed three important things about the colony.

1. It's 50 cycles into this game and I don't even have flush toilets yet. I'm not worried about my dirt supply, but it's probably time to give the dupes some loving in the core base area.
   
2. Also in the core base area, I haven't constructed the kitchen or freezer. My calorie count has been steadily rising as barbecue is starting to come in, but it doesn't last long before spoiling so I need to start freezing it.
   
3. Another semi-mistake I didn't really plan for: The planters in the drecko ranch are too hot to grow mealwood, so I'm going to need to cool them down before I can get dreckos running.

I gave building instructions for new washrooms and a water sieve, which you can see in the image above. I added overflow to two planters which will grow reed fiber, even though I should only need one. As soon as all that's done I'll start on the kitchen and freezer transformation.

I thought I'd comment on what might be considered an odd bathroom arrangement. I actually do something like this a lot in my colonies. I like to make bathrooms that meet two specific goals:

1. They're only open on one side, so dupes can never leave without passing a sink to wash up.
   
2. The open side enters into a nature preserve, refreshing the +6 morale buff.

What I've found is that in most of my colonies there are some weird nooks and crannies around the core, particularly off a ladder shaft, that aren't nearly big enough for a standard 16x4 room. I often take advantage of those odd spaces to put in stacked bathrooms as shown here, or else stacked barracks. These kinds of room's don't really matter how big they are, only that you have enough of them for each dupe in the colony. One colony I remember I had 4 floors like this, each with only one sink and one toilet. Here I had to remove 3 tiles of abyssalite for the bottom floor to fit, but hey, nobody's perfect. Next up will be the kitchen.

- Cycle 60: Kitchen and Freezer

Whoops! I made a conscious decision here after cycle 50 to switch to updating every 10 cycles instead of every 5. Then I promptly lost track of time and overshot by a couple cycles, so the screenshot is from cycle 62.



The bathrooms are long done. I even added a 3rd floor with one more of each fixture and some space between them for later decor. The kitchen and freezer are also done, following the instructions in my "core base" guide from earlier.

You can see at the top of the base several more plants are stifling, as the heat slowly works its way south. You'll also notice there's a lot less debris around the core base, as I finally have some time to do a lot of sweeping. I like to issue a lot of broad sweeping orders on priority 4, so that any other order will take precedence, but if a dupe runs out of tasks to do they can always go do some sweeping.

In the hatch ranch I've started a stable of stone hatches. I'm long out of sedimentary rock for the regular hatches, so they've been switched to granite. The stone hatches will be on igneous rock, allowing me to split my consumption and hopefully not run out of either rock type.

The only other thing of note is that the shearing room in the drecko ranch has been filled with hydrogen, using extra from the SPOM. My next move will be cooling down that area so that I can get the dreckos (specifically the mealwood) started.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I added a Utility/Runner dupe to the team!

Utility: Bubbles

Interests: Operating, Supplying, Suit Wearing

Thoughts: With these interests she's actually perfectly set up to be an engineer. I'll likely skill her into Mechatronics later on, but for now she can run odd jobs. On the traits front she somehow landed both Quick Learner and Kitchen Menace. So morale will be high *and* she'll earn skill points faster! Really an incredible dupe, in my opinion.

- Cycle 70: Dreckos (for real this time)

Back on track with the cycle 70 update. As you can see in the screenshot the mealwood in the drecko ranch is growing and we have happy dreckos. What's not normal is that instead of shearing stations in the ranch I have two hydrogen generators. This was me trying to be clever, but in actuality a total brain fart.



So here was my thought process. I need to cool down the mealwood, and eventually my whole base, but I don't have plastic for a steam turbine to run an aquatuner cooling loop. Then the massive lake of polluted water right below the mealwood caught my eye. If you look close you'll find an aquatuner just below the pitcher pump. I ran a loop of insulated pipes up to the drecko ranch, with a single granite pipe in the center of each group of 3 mealwood. The idea was the aquatuner should almost never run since it would only be pulling heat out of those 2 tiles, which would pull some heat out of the neighboring mealwood tiles and the air around them. It was extremely focused cooling and I didn't even use radiant tiles because I didn't want to cool any more than necessary. I set the aquatuner to cool to ~20C to ensure the mealwood would stay below 30C, and now the only problem was how to power it.

There ends the cleverness, now comes the brain fart. The aquatuner needs 1.2kW and my entire base is currently running off two non-conductive wires, each with a max load of 1kW. Not only do I need a new circuit but it has to use a conductive wire. I don't have lead yet and didn't want to waste a ton of copper (and build two new transformers) running a circuit down from the SPOM. So I decided an isolated local circuit with it's own generator and battery would be ideal. That probably wasn't the worst Idea, but then I made two dumb decisions:

1. I was thinking that since a hydrogen generator can only make 800W, and I needed 1.2kW, that I needed two of them. I completely forgot that the battery would act as a buffer, and since the aquatuner would almost never run a single generator would be more than sufficient to recharge between uses.
   
2. Because I already had a hydrogen pipe in the shearing room, I decided to stick the generators in there instead of literally anywhere else, such as right above there, or slightly to the left. Now I've forced myself to tear this down and relocate it before I can start shearing dreckos.

In retrospect I now realize that I might have been able to use the existing thermo regulator from the kitchen freezer and skipped the aquatuner with its dedicated power circuit all together. It would have taken some tweaking to adapt since I couldn't cool mealwood with the -40C hydrogen directly, but it would have probably been smarter in the long run.

The only other noteworthy thing added since the last update is the first half of my great hall, right above the printing pod. This was long overdue, thought I don't particularly need the +6 morale. It will continue to expand into a 2-story hall as I add additional dupes, and as shown in the "core base" guide.

- Cycle 80: Waste Gas Storage

Not much has changed over the last 10 cycles. I corrected my mistake with the hydrogen generators powering the aquatuner, reducing to one generator and moving it out of the shearing room so I can rebuild the shearing stations. In addition I built a set of infinite gas storages in the southeast.



The bottom of my base has been piling up with CO2 and chlorine all run, so I've decided to start pumping it all into these storages. The idea is to have a "waste gas" pipe that goes through a number of mechanical filters, each one stripping off a particular gas to put in storage. I'll start with just two for CO2 and chlorine, and eventually add one each for natural gas and sour gas. Later I can add more pumps wherever I need them and tie them into the same pipe, and know that the waste gasses will be filtered and stored correctly. Later I'll add a filtered vent at the end to allow any oxygen back into the base.

This is a very exploity way to handle gas storage, but I see no reason to cover the map in gas reservoirs. We're already using infinite storage mechanics in our SPOM, so this seems on brand. If you're against this particular mechanic you could just as easily pump waste gasses to space after filtering out oxygen, but I like to hang on to them like this "just in case". Maybe my first research rocket will be CO2 based?

In case anyone is curious, the automation for the pump is a gas element sensor set to Oxygen, wired to a not gate, then wired to a filter gate. The screenshot shows a buffer gate but that was a mistake I later corrected. Basically if the sensor detects any gas other than oxygen for whatever number of seconds you set on the filter gate, it will allow the pump to run. As soon as the sensor detects oxygen again, it immediately shuts off the pump. This minimizes power use while keeping the base relatively free of other gasses.

Oh, and I almost forgot but over the last 10 cycles I printed two new dupes.

Digger: Leira

Interests: Building, Digging, Suit Wearing

Thoughts: Similar story to a couple of my previous dupes. The Building interest is a waste, but Leira printed with Shriveled Tastebuds, so the extra morale points will cancel that out.

Utility: Jean

Interests: Operating, Suit Wearing, Supplying

Thoughts: Just like the previous utility dupe (Bubbles), Jean is set up well to branch into Mechatronics in the future. The main difference is that Jean printed with the Skilled:Plumbing trait. That's not quite as good as Bubbles traits, but it's still free morale mixed with good interests.

It didn't take me long to realize my mistake after this as my oxygen pressure started dropping. My single SPOM module can provide enough oxygen for "not quite" 9 dupes, and with these two I now have 11. Luckily I caught it quickly, and next we'll be expanding the SPOM.

- Cycle 90: SPOM Expansion

I'm a bit late again, it's actually cycle 93. As I mentioned in the previous section I've expanded the SPOM with a second module following the process in the guide.



I should be good now up until 17 dupes, however I'm not producing enough water to run both electrolyzers full out. The cool steam vent only produces 1.2 kg/s on average, and each electrolyzer would consume 1kg/s if they weren't being limited by an atmo sensor. I'm going to eventually have to tap into either the polluted water geyser in the northeast or the salt slush in the northwest to up my water production. In the meantime 11 / 17 (dupes) is ~65% and 1.2 / 2 (kg/s of O2) is 60%, so my water to dupe ratio is close enough to where it should be.

The drecko ranch has also been fleshed out quite a bit in the last few cycles. There are atmo suit docks, incubators, conveyors, and other infrastructure finally in place. Up until now ranchers would just hold their breath and get their eyes stung every time they had to shear a drecko.

Finally, I managed to receive some pips (or eggs?) through the portal several cycles ago, and they finally made it to adulthood. I put the pips in my ladder corridors and made them plant seeds so that I have a nature preserve on either side, and was finally able to bulldoze the old awkward preserve from around cycle 15.

- Cycle 100: Summary

Well that's basically it. 100 cycles of ONI and we have a pretty reasonably base going. Plenty of mistakes were made along the way, but nothing severe enough to threaten the colony. At this point I thought I'd show the overlays for the whole base and give an overall summary.

First of all, the new SPOM design clearly works as intended. Using natural diffusion of oxygen rather than spending electricity on pumps worked out great. The base is a fairly good size and we're having no trouble maintaining high pressure.

On the subject of electricity, we're not as far along as I'd have liked towards the Super Sustainable achievement, but that's no fault of the SPOM. The colony just hasn't been burning much energy since I've been overly cautious with my usage. We've only burned 19,000 kJ of power this whole game, out of the 240,000 kJ required, less than 10%! No big deal, we have plenty of extra hydrogen banked and we'll get there eventually, but I drastically underestimated how long this achievement would take. Looking into the future, by cycle 200 I was up to 88,000 kJ, cycle 300 I was at 187,000 kJ, and I finished the achievement around cycle 355.

For reference, the electrical overlay at cycle 100 is below. We're still on two 1kW circuits for the base, with a dedicated 2kW circuit for the drecko aquatuner.



The gas overlay is simplistic as well. Hydrogen is pumped to all our generators, there's a regulator cooling loop for the kitchen, and our waste gas storage in the bottom right.



On the liquid front there's the water supply to our SPOM running vertically up the middle, our bathroom loop to the left of that, and the drecko-cooling loop to the left of that. At the bottom is a remnant of the pipes I used to flood and drown hatches, once I finally realized they weren't dying.



The final overlay is the room overlay. We have barracks, bathrooms, a great hall, ranches, and of course the two nature reserves in our ladder corridors. In addition I relocated our research stations to the bottom, closer to the water pump, and turned that room into a laboratory.



The last thing I can think to mention is that I finally demolished all the mealwood plants. That's something I should have done some time ago, as we've been eating nothing but barbecue for a while. I like to stockpile extra pickled meal to send to my first planetoid, due to the long expiration period, but I have more than enough in the freezer and should have killed the plants at least 20 cycles ago.

6. BONUS - Let's Play More!

Since I was nowhere near finishing the Super Sustainable achievement after 100 cycles, I thought I'd post a few more updates showing some notable accomplishments for the colony. As I said before this isn't meant to suggest that this is how someone should play, it's not even really how I normally play. Going for this particular achievement and continuing to play test the new SPOM drastically affected the course of this colony.

- Cycle 200: Just Expanding

100 cycles later. In some ways a lot has changed, and in some ways nothing has really changed at all. I'll drop the screenshot and then list some of the larger changes starting in the upper left with the SPOM.



The SPOM has been extended with two additional modules, although the bottom two modules aren't in use yet. I don't have nearly enough water to run 4 electrolyzers.

To the right of the SPOM is a giant block of uranium. It's crazy but 200 cycles in I still haven't started radbolt research. This is a much slower game than I would normally play, I blame the achievement. In any case, I'll be cracking into that soon and setting up a manual radbolt generator to get some research done. The biome to the right of the uranium has been completely strip mined as well.

Nothing really new in the drecko ranch, except the much higher population in the shearing room. I've been running 3 incubators to keep them coming. Great hall, kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms haven't changed, but there are a few changes just under the portal.

The first of these changes is an infinite Pacu ranch. I don't have a guide out for this yet, but this is a bit of a sneak peak of a design I was testing. The idea was that if you receive Pacu from the printing pod they will hop over right into your ranch. This is definitely not a final design, and I'm still on the fence whether I'll publish a guide with my own build or not. Up until this colony I've always used a minor modification of BierTier's Pacu ranch, which you can see in his video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssl0ybLu0CM This colony I thought I'd test out some of my own designs, but so far I'm not convinced that anything I've come up with is any better than his, so it may not be worth putting out a guide.

In any case, to the right of the Pacu are a massage clinic and a hospital. Neither one ever really gets any use, but I always recommend having a hospital so that dupes will auto-rescue incapacitated dupes (e.g. from heat stroke). I had a minor stress problem at one point and threw up some emergency massage tables, and just never got around to deleting them afterwards.

Near the hatch ranches I set up several gymnasiums to train athletics during dupe idle time. Set the hamster wheels on priority 1 and your dupes should reach 20 athletics in no time.

In the bottom left around the teleporters I've hollowed out 2 or 3 more biomes, including another slime biome, and to the right of that I'm almost finished taming the steam vent. I'm a huge fan of Tuxii Industries' sVent tamer, which you can see in his video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe7AMiD1GTU He has a couple other great tamer designs, including one using a teleporting exploit for steam vents, but I've always used this sVent and found no reason to experiment with changing it.

Last but not least, in the bottom right I'm setting up a double liquid lock to start digging into what used to be the oil biome. I wanted to be able to get more granite and igneous for my hatches from down there, since I haven't gone to the other planetoid yet to find a sulfur geyser for sweetles.

- Cycle 250: New Planetoid!

50 cycles later and almost nothing has changed on my main planetoid. That's because I finally sent a couple dupes through the teleporterr to a new planetoid! It's not even worth a screenshot of my homeworld, so here's the base on the new planet:



I built some rudimentary barracks and outhouses, then captured some plug slugs to provide electricity. I also dove into the oil biome, extracting as much lead and diamond as possible, and swept most of the oil into bottles. There's a conveyor rail feeding both input and output teleporters between the two planetoids, so I can supply food and other critical resources to the new planet while sending back lead and other new resources.

The two dupes I sent through are Digger: Abe and Builder: Rowan. I also defrosted the frozen friend and ended up with the following dupe:

Rancher: Harold

Interests: Farming, Decorating, Cooking

Thoughts: It seems odd to call Harold a rancher, but since I tend to spec my ranchers into some of these secondary skills anyway and I didn't have a rancher on the new world that's what I called him. Since he starts with Ancient Knowledge (3 skills points) I could put one in the farming pre-req for free and the second into ranching. Once I'm done on this planet he should be a decent addition to the main colony. His other trait was shabby dresser which is useless, but I don't tend to save scum my frozen friends unless they roll flatulent or something equally terrible.

The only other thing of note is what I marked up in the screenshot. This planet has two sulfur geysers, which I've actually never seen before. A single sulfur geyser can feed around 40 dupes, so having two of them is absolutely insane. In the next couple updates I'll work to tame these geysers and export the sulfur back home. The long term goal for this planet would be renewable electricity from solar and plug slugs, and a constant stream of sulfur coming back. Other than strip mining the oil biome and any cobalt, there's not a whole lot else of value.

- Cycle 300: Sulfur Taming

Another 50 cycles down and I'm now almost exactly 75% finished with Super Sustainable.

I've made a few improvements to both planetoids this time. On the main planet I dug out the uranium and added a planetarium to do some additional research with both radbolts and data banks. No rockets yet, but I usually only need 1 or 2 techs that require data banks until much later in the game.



I also dug out the frozen biome in the top right to tame the polluted slush vent. I'm using an infinite liquid storage design that I really like from Luma Plays. You can see his YouTube short describing the design here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcsQj-wG2Ek What I like about this design is that dupes can use bottle emptiers and automatic dispensers to add liquid (or frozen liquid) to the storage, while liquid from a geyser or pipe vents can just fall in and be added as well. The storage contains two pumps, giving flexibility in extracting the stored liquid. I'm using this particular geyser as a temporary base cooling loop that empties right back into the storage, until I get a real AT/ST combo running.

On the secondary planetoid I've collected some of the crude oil into a pit at the top of the base, and turned a small amount into petroleum with a refinery. A small amount of both liquids has been sent to the home planet for use in liquid locks, and I'm also using them in the frozen biomes on this planet where water based liquids would freeze.



Speaking of the frozen biome, I'm almost finished constructing the first of two sulfur tamers. For this design I always use a minor variation of 2LegitCity's design, which you can see in his video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4ufXTWPdLc Mine is an almost identical copy, however I like to add a liquid lock so that my dupes can enter the tamer later rather than sealing it up completely. I've used 2LegitCity's tamer in many colonies and it works superbly. Both of the above designs are highly recommended!

- Cycle 350: Achievement Done!

50 more cycles, and only a few changes to the home planetoid.



I finally tamed the natural gas geyser in the slime biome east of the portal, so that I can start cooking surf n turf. I have the gas being pumped onto my old "waste gas" line, where it gets sorted into one of the infinite storages. This would have been fine, except I made a major mistake when building the storage. I used brine as the liquid over the vent, so after a few dozen cycles of hot natural gas pumping in the brine evaporated and the infinite storage broke. I had to come back later and build a liquid lock to get in without releasing thousands of kilos of gas, then drop some oil or petroleum on the vent.

The other small addition is a second of Luma Plays' infinite liquid storages. This one is just below the steam vent in the south, storing water for my colony. I'll probably eventually pour in the lake of water just northeast of there, then pump a small amount of water into a pit with a pitcher pump and hydro sensor up near the laboratories. That way my dupes can still get water for the computers.

The last thing notable is at the very top of the base, I'm about to breach space and build some solar panels. A few cycles ago I realized that my hydrogen reserve in the SPOM was starting to run low. I've been doing some metal refining and otherwise using a lot more power than I used to. You can see many more transformers near the SPOM, as I've converted the base to all conductive lead wire and have 4 separate circuits now. In order to get more power I had to choose between running more electrolyzers (e.g. overproducing oxygen to get more hydrogen) or adding other power generation. I'm doing a bit of both, in addition to the solar panels I added a water sieve above the kitchen which can pull polluted water off the base cooling loop and send it to the electrolyzers if the main pipe isn't full. I still don't have enough water to run all 4 full time, but that will be a problem for later. I let all 4 electrolyzers run by disabling the atmosensor which was keeping the oxygen pressure down. My dupes will get popped eardrums for a while, but that's better than running out of power completely.

In retrospect, I didn't realize that I actually completed the super sustainable achievement around cycle 355, so I could have easily added coal, natural gas or petroleum generators and solved this problem. I also could have added a power station to my SPOM, but I didn't want to waste the lead.

On the second planetoid I'm also dealing with power issues. I added an AT/ST combo just northeast of the center, which will eventually cool both sulfur geysers. That's what the metal refining on the main world was for, which caused most of the power issues there. On this world the AT is too power hungry for my plug slugs alone, so I had to add a few solar panels. I also rearranged the whole power grid and plug slugs so that everything up top is on a shared heavy watt wire. There are two transformers connected to conductive lead wiring to run the rest of the base. All the glass for both planets' solar panels is being manufactured on this planet, using the massive pool of polluted water for cooling.

- Cycle 400: Sweetle Ranching

Since I didn't realize that I'd actually completed the Super Sustainable achievement almost 50 cycles ago, I'll post one more update from cycle 400.

Starting with the secondary planet, you can see both sulfur tamers are operational.



I now have a massive stream of sulfur coming to the main planet, so you can probably guess what I'm going to do next. I'm still working through some power issues on this planet as well. I doubled the number of solar panels and added some wheels for the dupes to use. Now that I know I'm done with the achievement I might just throw coal or petroleum generators up top somewhere, however I'd prefer to leave something sustainable like solar and slugs so I can send these dupes back home. This planet is mostly "done" otherwise. It's whole purpose was to provide me sulfur, oil and petroleum. There are more resources I could strip mine, but I don't need them all right now.

Moving back to the main planet, there have been some massive changes.



I also doubled up the solar panels on this world, so I could reenable the SPOM atmo sensor and bring pressure back down, and also cut back on water usage.

The hatch ranches in the lower left are completely gone. There's been a massive purge of all the hatches, and the whole area to the right of the portal has been set up for sweetles. This is what all the sulfur was for. Normally I just convert my hatch ranches in place to sweetle ranches, but since I found two geysers I wanted to run more of them (6 stables so far). Sweetle ranches can also be smaller 16x4 rather than 25x4, so they fit nicely into the small space to the right. I'm of course following my own guide to divergent ranching, which you can find here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2646949963 The gymnasiums that used to be in front of the hatch ranches have been relocated as well. 4 wheels were installed at the top of the base, northeast of the SPOM, and plugged directly in to the main power spine. If the dupes are going to run, it might as well save me some hydrogen!

Finally, my barracks have been completely redone, since they used to be where the sweetles ranches are. I have essentially infinite plastic so I went for comfy beds and the extra point of morale.

I was asked to add overlays at cycle 400 so I'll discuss those below. First power:

Starting at the top there's a 2kW line for solar panels, which comes down and then left through my gym, then over to the hydrogen plant / SPOM where a pair of backwards inverters supply all that power to the grid. Coming out of the SPOM through 8 normal transformers are four 2kw power lines which feed various sections of the base.

The liquid overlay is relatively simple:

Starting in the bottom center is my infinite water storage, with a pipe to carry it all the way up to the SPOM in the upper left. In the upper right is my infinite polluted water storage, and a cooling loop that runs through the kitchen and great hall areas. There's a water sieve which can convert water from the cooling loop to feed the SPOM, but it only runs if the regular water runs out. There's a small second cooling loop on the far left for the dreckos, using a large pool of liquid as a heatsink for an aquatuner. FInally just to the right of that is my bathroom loop.

The gas overlay is next:

In the upper left is H2 in the SPOM, as well as once pipe of O2 coming out to feed atmosuits. In the top center is a small hydrogen cooling loop for the kitchen, as well as a natural gas supply. If you trace that nat gas down to the middle right you'll find my infinite storage tanks for various gasses. All the other pipes on the map are just "waste gas" pumps feeding these infinite storages. They pump anything that's not oxygen here for potential later use.

Finally, the room overlay:

Nothing really special, same two nature preserves in the main corridors, with bedrooms, bathrooms and ranches flanking the sides. There is a great hall, massage clinic and (broken) hospital in the middle, and two laboratories at the bottom. At the very top is the gym, which instead of just burning power on a light, actually feeds back into the power plant. That's why I placed it so far from the main base.

7. Thank You!

Looks like it's all over. Thank you for reading this guide and I hope you found something worthwhile to take away from it!

I probably won't do anything like this Let's Play! again, but it was a fun experiment showing both a "live" playtest of a new SPOM design and a successful (if slow!) achievement run all at once. The more useful part of the guide is hopefully the tips on stress and morale management, which leads into dupe selection and job allocation. With the right dupes you shouldn't struggle as much in the midgame, especially with rocketry and colonization.

Finally, in this guide I was able to showcase some of my own designs from other guides, as well as builds from many of my favorite ONI designers. There was even a sneak peak at a Pacu ranch I'm working on that hasn't been published yet, so keep your eyes out for that in the future. In any case, I'd like to acknowledge those other designers once more here, with links to their Youtube channels. I use their designs as shown above in almost all of my colonies. If I could build it better I would, but most of these are near perfect. I highly recommend subscribing to see what they'll come up with next!


Link: https://www.youtube.com/@2LegitCity


Link: https://www.youtube.com/@BierTier


Link: https://www.youtube.com/@Luma_


Link: https://www.youtube.com/@tuxiiindustries

[hbarudi]

No carnivore... No locavore (farms before cycle 100...)

[prince.mandor]

Now Tiding skill have three levels, so it saves 3 morale points

[Asda2220]

you forgot to breathe and everybody starved

[Magialisk]

@Karsk no problem! Also I thought I'd mention that this isn't a true beginner guide. It doesn't get you off the ground with food and oxygen, etc, it assumes you've learned those lessons the hard way (or with any of the other guides around). This is more for "why does my colony always self destruct when I have plenty of resources". It's also tailored more for high difficulties and Spaced Out planetoids, which some folks never play. Hopefully it gets you what you need!

[Karsk]

Great thanks a lot for the reply!

[Magialisk]

@Karsk as far as I know nothing has changed related to choosing dupes or the morale mechanics. There might be a new trait or two that didn't exist when this guide was written, but the basics of choosing dupes with multiple skills, assigning them to jobs with the priority system and keeping morale high is all the same. The guide should still be sufficient to get you off to a good start :)

[Karsk]

Hi is this still relevant or is it outdated? I only just started this game and its....very overwhelming.

[GottaZone]

@Magialisk I really appreciate that you added those images, I'm going to continue the colony this weekend. Thank-you for your time once again!

[Magialisk]

@GottaZone I'm glad you like it! It took me a while to respond but I grabbed some screenshots of my overlays for you in the Cycle 400 section. I don't have much automation other than the ranches, and that's detailed better in the individual guides. Same with conveyors, other than the ranches it's really just a single conveyor from the solid teleporter to the pit of water in my core base which provides infinite solid storage. I've actually played this colony out to 1100 cycles or so, so maybe someday I'll add on more bonus sections and show how it evolved.

[Magialisk]

@mutations I'm glad you enjoyed it. Note that this is not supposed to be a "build" that anyone would follow. The first part of the guide is on how to select optimal dupes, but the second part was just more of a "hey watch me play a bit and see what happens". It's not at all an optimal approach, and yeah I usually have bathrooms much much earlier than this as well, I just got sidetracked trying to demonstrate some of my other builds from other guides :)