Thread by @GeePawHill

Oxygen Not Included: It's a Saturday, and I'm doing some light writing, but I'm also playing some ONI. This is c45 of seed V-SNDST-C-182555902-0, Spaced Out DLC, classic, survivor.

This time, I built my "bad base" on the frame of what will be the ultimate hab unit. Everything's still crummy and WIP, but it's also overlaid over what will be fine. I got lucky with a well-placed natural nature reserve. Where the mealwoods are is where the atmo docks will be.

The big next step with the hab unit is actually two levels above the cots: I want to start the first drecko ranch there. That's the one that needs cool temperatures, so when I cool my base, I'll be cooling that one, too.

Just below the hab unit is the everything-else-for-now area. :) Got a gas slop pit, 2 of 4 hatch ranches open for business. At the bottom of this image you see the cool h2o infinistore. As usual, it's pumping up to a cistern next to the research area.

Next step here: I'm thinking about the power. Do I do temp power in the bottom of the hatch area? Do I look for a more permanent location? And will I use an old-school spine or a battery-flipper spine?

To the East, I have a pair of cool steam vents separated by several levels, and a gigundous slime biome. A concept: spoze I drained both of those CSV pools to an infinistore below them. And all the cool ph2o to an infinistore below *that*? Hmmmm.

At the far south, my central spine has run directly into an AETN. Can't think when I've been this annoyed at finding an AETN. It's right in my path! Oh well, next step here is prolly jag west and keep going down to the oil. I reckon I'm maybe 30-40 tiles away.

Can't build first drecko ranch as top layer of hab unit: it'd start with a temperature very close to the limit, and we won't have active cooling for a while. But what about putting all three drecko ranches -- the thinner & taller ones from Stormfather -- east of the hatches?

The top one could be the first glossy, and it's right at the bottom of the hab, so when I *do* get active cooling, I can just cool that one, too. Me like. Gotta go look up that stormfather build, which I don't know by heart.

Here's an adapted Stormfather design. This is a breeder stable for glossy drecko eggs. The water is going to fill it up to just the level of the farm tiles. There are a couple of fine points here.

I'm using cool h2o for the fill. Any liquid would do, so why cool h2o, isn't that wasteful? It's cuz I'll be growing mealwood in here, and I need it to stay <30c until I have active cooling capability. The big block of h2o will help with that a lot. Other stables won't care.

The size of this stable isn't magic # 96, tho Stormfather's designs are. I think he's making an error there. The breeder stables have 8 farm tiles. That's enough to feed just 4 regular or 3 glossy dreckos. For uncrowdedness, they need 12 tiles each.

I realized this halfway through, so it's actually pretty big anyway, at 85 tiles. Next time I'll be more clever. I'll plan for something like (n+2)*12, to allow room for an egg or two to sit there for a minute. The water tiles count as room tiles, and limit movement as usual.

The otherwise odd shape was intended to serve as a template for all of them. I now see that this isn't necessary. Next run we'll just build them all tightly tuned to purpose, and hell with similar shape.

Let's get some dreckos to start this thing. I am thinking slap some o2 stations off the spine north of the hab unit and crack that caustic biome. I see one drecko & an egg, hopefully there'll be more. Not gonna make o2 yet, will do a sloppy oxidizer/filter rig.

There's the rig. An oxidizer and a mechanical filter. I'll dash in here, get some dreckos, and forget about it. There's no particular other merit to cracking this biome right now.

My next two tricks are basically going to repeat this pattern. I want to square off the east side of the ranches down to the bottom of the left pic, and I want to head west a little then down on the right pic. I want o2 masks for both of those endeavors.

(On left pic, I'll use that ph2o pool to feed some reed fiber back up in the hab.)

I've decided to stay with spot power and spot o2 for the moment. I just don't feel like I have a solid idea where I want things.

c55, the rigs are just getting ready. I'll do the left pic first, pump that area to vacuum, pump the ph2o to reed fiber. Then the right pic, heading down again towards oil.

c62, the two projects went well. The left one is down to a couple hundred mg's of po2. The right one I can see oil. Now that I can see oil, we will do . . . *nothing* with it. We're a ways from being able to crack that biome.

That's okay, I have a lot of other work to do, and now my dupes will do it with the energy of a thousand suns!

(Okay. Not really. But *I* feel slightly better.)

What's next?

To crack oil, we need atmo suits. To get atmo suits we need a refinery and o2 source. To get a refinery we need some cool ph2o. To get o2 we need some hot h2o.

Next, then, gather some of both of those.

Looky here. I could do a hot h2o infinistore right below this cool steam vent. And right below that, I could drain that gigundous slime biome into a cool ph2o infinistore.

You feel me?

ph2o first. Gonna need o2 masks for that.

Lots of little stuff to do, also. I need to keep expanding the ranches. I will want radbolt research to start soon. Still haven't done anything about power. This may be a festival of little projects. As you know, I don't multi-task all that well.

c65, first two mini-projects complete: I wanted radbolt research capability, and I needed to finish the barracks level on the hab unit.

and c68. next two projects done: getting the hatch ranches finished, and squaring out the bottom of that area.

c72, and you see my plan for the next pair of projects, obviously still WIP. The ph2o infinistore is the lower one. I'll dig eastward and let eventually the whole biome fill it, tho I just need a little. Hot h2o will fill afterwards. This is all in service to a metal refinery.

And c75, let the wild infinistore rumpus start!

Part of me wants to clean and fix everything, but I gotta keep my eyes on the prize: a metal refinery. That's next.

c79, we just refined our first gold using the metal refinery. The ph2o is pumped in from its infinistore as the coolant, then sent to the reservoir to the sieve to the hot h2o infinistore.

Meanwhile, coal and algae are starting to run a little low. Not bad, but a little. And where do we get coal & algae? Remember that caustic biome we cracked to get our dreckos? Time to go core that and pump it out. (It's modest, but not nothing, that'll give us a start.)

c85. good lord, this has taken longer than all the little projects.did. Beefed up algae and coal already, but now I just want to complete this thing.

c90, and the damned caustic biome is still a few seconds away from being cored. Meanwhile, tho, check this: both of those cool steam vents are dormant, meaning I can box them in w/o atmo suits at fairly low risk. Low, not nil, but still.

I'm now sitting on 6 tons of copper, too, which means it's time to turn my attention to the oil biome and that atmo suits. Let's block in those CSV's first, one still will have to be drained, then we'll tackle that.

It's c95, first CSV is ready. It's dormant now for 40 cycles, and I had plenty of time to box it in, but the reason I did it now was really cuz I started it. Tryna keep the WIP small. I'm gonna stall on the second one for a few cycles, tho, cuz I got important stuff to do.

(This is a super-standard CSV-tamer. Run some cool ph2o in radiant pipes, dump them when they get to hot. Vacuum the space so the steam comes into contact with the radiant's instantly. Everything here is gold or copper.)

BBQ is becoming real. I've switched 2 of the hatch ranches to stone only, and started the switch of the third. I'm gonna turn off bbq in the consumables to draw down the pickled meal supply and build up the bbq, then I'll decide how many/when of the mealwoods to kill.

This is my plan for cracking the oil biome. Next step is just to frame this out and start o2 moving to the atmo docks, whilst I make an exosuit forge and 5 suits.

Additionally, that slime biome we started cracking is ginormous, and there's a lot of ph2o to drain. Frame the oil entrance first, then that. I'm actually kinda stalling for time: it's too soon to shift everything to atmo suits, not enough dupes are trained up.

Tho my current mix of dupes isn't horrible, I'm frustrated: I need 3 more digby's and 2 more opuses and I've gotten fuck-all for quite some time.

c100, and the oil entrance is just waiting for atmo suits. In addition, I drained a couple more slime biome pools, only 3 of those left.

c105. This is a super-dangerous time for me: I multi-task, I get excited, I do stupid things. Here are some of the considerations.

The oil biome is just sitting there waiting for me to *own* it. It can yield diamond, lead, and petroleum -- i.e. plastic & active cooling.

If I had diamond I could make that hab *glow* with decor. It, also, is just sitting there begging me to finish it. Just diamonding the ceiling & floor of the sculpture room would prolly be +6 morale for everyone.

But there's also co2 piling up down low in it. And wait, didn't I want to atmo-suit the gate? And what about the fact that I have a mature pip and can plant nature reserves *everywhere* now?

And power. I'm still using spot power. It'd be cool to get the for reals grid going, and to centralize at least the coal generators.

And I can't atmo the exit if I don't have a potent o2 source. Right now I'm also using spot o2.

Alright, okay, everybody just calm down. The first thing we have is a simple crisis: we're down to 2 tons of coal.

We gotta deal with that first, no matter what.

Let's crack this biome and see what we get. Minimum, we'll get a slight extension, and we might hit a mother-lode.