As I said, this is always a dangerous time for me. The BBQ is coming on, but it's not full-on yet, so I need to watch food. I don't have a lot of coal or a lot of algae. Most seeds have a major vein of coal somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.
And there are so many projects to pursue! I think the answers are: 1) stabilize the coal & algae situation. 2) get some shipping going to reduce labor. 3) get some o2 going to reduce power and labor both.
Here's two caustic biomes I haven't looked closely at. Let's check'em out.
Sure enough, got me a big motherlode of coal in one of them. Setting up to core that guy.
c108, coal is rebuilding. Looking at all of this, ya know what I think is actually killing me? *Labor*. I don't have enough automation, my priorities aren't awesome, and, and dupes are running around everywhere half-cocked.
The three big labor tasks are 1) ranching, 2) oxidizer filling, and 3) coal loading. All three are far more automatable than I'm doing.
So. Step 1: let's get coal power a little more centralized. This will be the core. I threw in two transformer-pairs. One will just cover the incubators and the rest of the ranching automation. The other will feed the mains, and we'll gradually step over to battery-flipping.
c110, fleshing out the rest of the shipping for the ranches. Then I spoze we gotta tackle o2 production. That means setting up a source, and setting atmo suits in the base.
c113. First target for the mains power was the metal refinery. Rationale: it was two coal generators and in heavy use. Now instead of splitting the coal and carrying it manually, it can all be brought to the mains supply.
Somewhat to my surprise, this worked first time. I guess maybe I'm starting to understand how these battery-flippers work. I'm using a double-battery flipper here cuz the draw is so high.
Below, started work in the oil biome. The desiderata here would be a nice 25-wide dry rectangle down at the level of the abyssalite separating the magma. Most of the oil you're seeing here is overpressurized, so I'm thinking of blocking it out.
No idea whether this'll work.
Whoops. Spoke too soon. See all that damaged conductive wire? I may understand the flipper at the destination end, but I obviously haven't mastered at the source end. :)
I think it's cuz of the batteries in there. But I'm gonna fix it by just going with heavi-watt on that part.
c120. I am kinda just barely hanging in. I think my labor efficiency has improved, but I switched off the regular hatches too soon, and the BBQ is still a good 10 cycles from being adequate. I switched from pickled meal to liceloaf to gain calories. This uses cool h2o, ugh.
It is absolutely time for o2 and atmo suits at the base exit. In the pic above, I'm gonna clear away that spot power and hook to the mains, then put a full rodriguez. It's close to the hot h2o there.
c130. The rodriguez is primed, and the first o2 line is in use, replacing the old feed to the suits below. It took a while, cuz I have been having lots of minor food annoyance, and i kept having to break off and go fix that.
Here's the sitch at the hab. I've built a bunch more mealwood, cuz my bbq isn't quite up to it, and I need to clear that lowest level for the atmo docks and entrance, which I'll plan/do next.
c140. The suits are in, not enabled yet, still charging. While we wait, time to get some of those dreckos sheared, including 2 glossies. I mentioned before, there's no merit here to having 96 tiles: they're ungroomed and starving, they're not gonna breed ever, just get sheared.
c150. It's all atmo all the time outside the habitation unit. Sheared two glossies so have my first little drab of plastic, oh boy oh boy! You want that room full of h2, btw, to speed scale growth. (If I don't have enough glossy drops yet, I'll shear, then return them to breeder.
Here's the whole hab unit. It's open at the top, and there's a bunch of useless piping up there. I want one more layer above where the showers are. Let's do that, and clean up the crap, preparatory to getting a cooling loop in there.
c155, hab unit sealed up, insulated, and cooling loop going. I want to be careful not to repeat my dumb move last time of cooling the hab *too* much. :) Right now, it will let the coolant get to 30c, this drop it of course to 16. Let's see if that works.
Down in the oil, I got something going, too. My concept: snag just enough dry space to make a pour-in infinistore for oil, then we can expand to the sides and avoid pumping most of it.
I'll alternate that work with work on the hab, gotta finish the plumbing, add the medbay, skim the co2.
Okay, well, c159. I think I got this. In the words of my favorite Far Side cartoon, "If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings!" Let's see if I got it.
It works! c160, and I'm free to start seriously mining the oil biome. Of course, while I was all worried about that, I accomplished nothing in the hab unit.
c170. In the hab, we're holding a nice 27c. I might want that just a tad cooler. We're almost ready for the diamond, but I'm taking my own advice, and letting my janitors load a box of it before I start.
Current small project: Cap & tap the second cool steam vent. I don't much need the water, but I wanted to get the big pool of hot h2o cleared away. I was able to drain it into the infinistore with a little digging. I wanted that space, cuz soon we'll be industrial bricking.
Continuing to clear the oil biome. Just *loving* that infinistore. I've never done that before. Next time, I'll plan for it. Note that I'm getting ready to put a nature reserve at the entrance. That's the next small project.
Today's a workday, so only 1 in 5 pomodoros are ONI, but from last hour last night, plus breakfast, here's c185. Lots of small things done, no big ones.
In the oil biome, we're clearing and clearing, which got me a lot of diamond and lead. The nature reserve at the entrance is nearly ready. Next, here, is to dig all across the top of that biome and get a full look.
I'm sectioning off and pumping po2 out the massive slime biome. I do not like po2, which seems to muck things up even when -- I'm in atmo suits -- it does no harm. This is the area where the industrial brick will go, or at least the bottom of it.
The hab unit is the main thing I worked on in that long stretch. It is all diamonded up. Still some stuff to do, but the decor on the best bed here is over 900. Average morale is 40, outliers at 30 and 49.
Tho I got 3 tons of plastic, somehow I killed my glossies too quick. I'm not happy with the sheering rooms, and will re-work them, and I want to go ahead and get a regular stable going, too. I want incubators, cuz I want to load these stables up fast.
Now, let's do four writing pomodoros, and we'll catch ya after while. :)
*Five* writing pomodoros, thank you very much. Let's play a little more. :)
c190. Base a little further along, got first rank of plants in. Fixed my shearing station, and added incubators. Let's go dreckos!
The real progress, slowly pumping out sections. The left one is nearly done, the one on the right is just getting framed in. Reminder, btw, do everything you can to build w/local materials. The difference between building these ladders & tiles with sedimentary vs igneous is huge.
Okay, got a couple images to make, then we muse. Seeya after that!
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In our efforts to optimize the Many More Much Smaller Steps (MMMSS) path, we've tried and rejected the "shortest-distance" floptimization. Today, let's take up the "pin-making" floptimization, in which we create specialists, stations, and hand-offs.
Your periodic reminder: as much as I enjoy thinking and writing and talking about changing code, changing the world is far more important to me. Please join me in supporting and enacting change for social equity.
Black Lives Matter.
The seeming awkwardness of the MMMSS path pushes us to propose various optimizations. Unfortunately, most of these are based in analogies that flop, they don't actually improve that path. We call them "floptimizations", and today we'll take up the pin-making floptimization.
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.
We've built ourselves a positive case for "Many More Much Smaller Steps" (MMMSS). There's a counter-case, tho, based in a trio of proposed optimizations. Sadly, those optimizations usually flop. Today, let's take up the "Shortest Distance" floptimization.
Folks, I love thinking & writing & talking about geekery, and I hope you do, too. But before we start, I want to say that social justice is a far more important issue to me than anything in geekery. Please keep working for & supporting change.
Black Lives Matter.
The counter-case to MMMSS is supposed to be a set of optimizations -- ways around the odd disorderly-seeming path forced on us by stride-limits. They are *compelling*, these optimizations. But false. I call them "floptimizations".
Oxygen Not Included: Gonan fire up sandbox mode and play around with battry-switching power distribution in an effort to get more than just theoretical knowledge about it.
The problem: there are economies of scale in power production. We want generator centers, so we can fuel, cool, and control them more efficiently in clumps, instead of slapping generators down any old place. This means we have to store & distribute that power.
Wires have load limits, and if we exceed their load limits, they burn up. We can use heavi-watt wire, then, and run it from our generators to a bunch of transformers, each of which limits the load on the consumer side of their circuit.
1) Remember the prime directive. It's a sandbox game, there are no victory conditions you don't set yourself. If your'e not having fun, skim a save, restart, or get a new seed.
2) Everything here is about my play-style. There are other play-styles. There are lots of experts, with different approaches. I've recently *changed* my play-style cuz I wasn't having fun.
3) Before the game proper, you get the mini-game of picking which 3 dupes to start. You can do this for an hour. My formula, and everyone has a different one:
1 pure researcher. 2 builder/diggers. I name dupes by jobs, so that's Brains, Digby & Dagby.