Oxygen Not Included - space colony sim from Klei

[Space Satan]

I usually place sinks on both sides of latrine.
SSTTTTSS.
This way more dupes tend to wash their hands. Or you can make washing mandatory by locking latrine room but I have rooms with one exit
SSSTTT]
This way dupes have no choice but to wash their hands.

Especially if you still need to boil the water to disinfect it.

You can place liquid reservoir into chlorine room and pump water there. Water magically desinfects. Chlorine can kill millions of germs that way but the fewer germs the slower desinfection rate.

 

[Alienman]

Do all rooms have to be rectangles? I tried to make a huge open area for my critters to climb around in, but the game just refuse to acknowledge the room. Having the same issue with my hospital. If that is the case it sure put a heavy limit on creativity.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Do all rooms have to be rectangles? I tried to make a huge open area for my critters to climb around in, but the game just refuse to acknowledge the room. Having the same issue with my hospital. If that is the case it sure put a heavy limit on creativity.

They don't have to be complete rectangles, but some have specific requirements. Like both a bedroom and a barracks have a 12 square minimum size, but bedroom requires at least 4 square height. But I do have a non-rectangle barracks with a few oddball squares poking out and it still counts.

Gradually getting my sea legs under me again, some extra stumbling coming from learning about everything that's been added (According to my save my previous colony was last played in January of 2018) even though by and large it still seems to function about the same. Disease might be less of an issue now, since I've had a few major piss explosions including dupes completely submerging themselves in my wastewater and the few cases of food poisoning have been a breeze. Having fun getting used to everything though, ONI is pretty goddamn great for satisfying base building. It's not hard enough that you're constantly on edge, but there's still enough going on that it doesn't feel like you're completely coasting either. Hits the sweet spot, at least for me.

 

[Raghar]

I usually place sinks on both sides of latrine.
SSTTTTSS.
This way more dupes tend to wash their hands. Or you can make washing mandatory by locking latrine room but I have rooms with one exit
SSSTTT]
This way dupes have no choice but to wash their hands.

Especially if you still need to boil the water to disinfect it.

You can place liquid reservoir into chlorine room and pump water there. Water magically desinfects. Chlorine can kill millions of germs that way but the fewer germs the slower desinfection rate.

I typically create happy life in total dystopia. That's one of best ways how to play it.

 

[Space Satan]

Do all rooms have to be rectangles? I tried to make a huge open area for my critters to climb around in, but the game just refuse to acknowledge the room. Having the same issue with my hospital. If that is the case it sure put a heavy limit on creativity.

No, they have to be locked by doors and have all requirements like buildings and min max space. Some make one looooooong central shaft as a park\nature preserve room for additional morale

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, max titles was my problem. Didn't notice that.

 

[Zombra]

Anyone want to sell me on this game? I'm a long time Rimworld player and I love colony building type stuff, particularly if characters have meaningful stats and traits.

I absolutely hate the art style, not just for its childishness but because it's incredibly busy and visually overwhelming. Take all the unnecessary black lines from any screenshot, string them together and they'll reach the moon and back. But I thought Rimworld was ugly too at first.

Please link to previous posts in the thread that summarize good/bad, or to reviews you agree with. Or just post your opinion like in olden times.

 

[Hellraiser]

Anyone want to sell me on this game? I'm a long time Rimworld player and I love colony building type stuff, particularly if characters have meaningful stats and traits.

I absolutely hate the art style, not just for its childishness but because it's incredibly busy and visually overwhelming. Take all the unnecessary black lines from any screenshot, string them together and they'll reach the moon and back. But I thought Rimworld was ugly too at first.

Please link to previous posts in the thread that summarize good/bad, or to reviews you agree with. Or just post your opinion like in olden times.

Good:

Machinery, logic gates, gas/liquid simulation and matter changing states based on temperature make for a very good engineering sandbox game. They allow you to design and build various contraptions to overcome mundane survival issues with over-engineered machinery. For example, your duplicants breathe out mostly useless CO2, most power generators also create it. The average player will just use a CO2 scrubber to "destroy" it. A more advanced player might pump it to feed 20 slicksters that eat CO2 and piss crude oil, also providing meat and egg shells (lime - needed for steel and not so easy to get) in the process in addition to the oil. A creative player might use CO2 to make a room temperature sterile food storage without any need for refrigeration as CO2 is sterile killing germs that spoil food. A very creative player will use it to build an air conditioning system that dumps all heat from his colony into a CO2 chamber that gets vented to space automatically when it becomes to hot. Someone else, playing on a planetoid with lots of cold biomes, will pump the CO2 to one of those where it will liquefy freeing tiles for oxygen which has a much lower boiling point.

Bad:

The challenge is mainly figuring out how your colony can be sustained indefinitely and how to deal with some problems that can kill dupes directly or indirectly. After you figure that out the game becomes trivial and mostly turns to watching dupes build or gather the resources for your contraptions. Then again depending on the player some might argue that the survival part is a road block to building contraptions.

 

[Zombra]

Nice writeup Hellraiser; thank you.

I've skimmed the thread a bit and I don't see anyone talking about the "duplicants". I thought the colonists were supposed to have stats and traits that affected gameplay; is this more true or less true? I like getting attached to individuals' quirks. If characters are interchangeable insects I find that less interesting.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Nice writeup Hellraiser; thank you.

I've skimmed the thread a bit and I don't see anyone talking about the "duplicants". I thought the colonists were supposed to have stats and traits that affected gameplay; is this more true or less true? I like getting attached to individuals' quirks. If characters are interchangeable insects I find that less interesting.

The dupes do have stats/skills/traits, but they're mostly just game pieces. In something like Dorf Fort (And to a lesser degree Rimworld, though with mods it's improved) you can see flashes of individuality in your people, but in ONI it largely just boils down to if they have a negative trait that draws your attention, like narcolepsy, or a trait that means they flat out can't do certain jobs.

As for the stats and skills themselves, it works like this. The stats are the meat and potatoes of what determines how good a dupe is at a job. Having a 7 research stat might mean that dupe will research 200% faster than a dupe with 0 stat. Stats will naturally and gradually build from use, and occasionally a dupe will level up and gain a skillpoint. The skill tree for dupes is extremely basic, mostly being straight lines for basic job types, and each point gained in it will add to the associated stat for that job, can potentially give the dupe a job-related hat (Entirely cosmetic but it helps you know that worker ant's job at a glance), and some skills are necessary for certain jobs/aspects of jobs. Like all dupes can dig softer/basic materials, but only dupes with training can dig harder materials, etc. Each time you spend a skill point and make the dupe more skilled, it increases their morale requirements as well. Untrained dupes are content to sleep on the ground and eat mud pies, but highly skilled dupes are more likely to throw tantrums if they aren't well catered to. A dupe's interests also factor into skills a little, because if a dupe learns a skill they're interested in they get a base bonus to morale (It's pretty small, but they won't lose that bonus due to the base losing power or anything) and jobs they flat out won't/can't do they can't learn the associated skills. A brand new dupe comes in 3 different flavors, 1 interest but 7 stat points in that interest, 2 interests with 3 stat points in each, or 3 interests with 1 stat point in each.

 

[Zombra]

Huh! That sounds involved and fun. You've cranked up my interest significantly. Thanks Multi-headed Cow.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I assume you can't use polluted/waste water for your toilets/showers/sinks, but you can use grey water, right? Piss-pool's getting full enough I should start planning on dealing with it. Getting a coal generator rigged up for some more power (Smart batteries/automation are pretty great. I remember it being a nightmare when I just had to build massive banks of batteries to try to reduce generator waste, and you'd still waste power just from the batteries themselves) too, but starting to wobble on what to build toward next. Running out of "Safe" room to expand.

No idea how I missed Space Satan's comment about chlorine until now, too. That's a cool idea for disinfecting the water and as much of a hassle as pumping chlorine gas around would be, probably STILL less of a pain than building a liquid tepidizer since that takes obscene amounts of power to run and then leaves you with potential heat issues.

 

[Zombra]

I picked up the game, by the way. Tried it for a couple hours. Mostly seems like a huge drag and I almost refunded this morning ... but I started thinking about how I wanted to refine things, establish a better workflow, get more comfort for my dupes etc. So I guess that's how it hooks ya. Looking forward to playing more tonight.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yep, that's the appeal. It's not exactly a fun game in itself, but it depends on if you end up thinking about how you want to deal with X throughout the day, or learning from how your base developed and considering ways you could improve future bases, etc. And the amount of interconnected parts and systems in ONI is really impressive/maddening for a sandbox base building thing.

 

[Hellraiser]

I assume you can't use polluted/waste water for your toilets/showers/sinks, but you can use grey water, right? Piss-pool's getting full enough I should start planning on dealing with it. Getting a coal generator rigged up for some more power (Smart batteries/automation are pretty great. I remember it being a nightmare when I just had to build massive banks of batteries to try to reduce generator waste, and you'd still waste power just from the batteries themselves) too, but starting to wobble on what to build toward next. Running out of "Safe" room to expand.

What do you mean by grey water, salt water that they just added? I think it will only accept regular clean water input and everything else will damage the sinks/showers/crappers, you should build one and check the properties/tool tip and it should show acceptable inputs.

Also I never bothered with tepidizers for sewage processing. In my experience you can just ignore the germs and hook the sewage to a water sieve for recycling. As long as the septic tank is seperated with a manual/automatic airlock and there's a deodorizer on the outside of the airlock to deal with whatever polluted oxygen that gets out that is enough. If you have germphobia you can also forbid your cook from entering the sewage tank on the door (restrict the direction so that the cook can only leave but not enter the tank). I guess another reason why this is never a problem for me is that a proper bathroom with enough sinks and showers is the first thing I build.

Disease is a slap on the wrist now anyway. Only time I have my dupes hospitalized now is because they get scalded by heat or a pokeshell pinches them too much (those things only pinch and wound dupes if they are guarding their eggs). Slimelung used to be a huge problem.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

What do you mean by grey water, salt water that they just added?

Grey water's non-potable processed wastewater. Basically the germy water after you run it through the filter. I remember it still having a horrific amount of germs a year and a half ago, but since I haven't processed any water yet maybe the amount of germs is negligible now and it might be a moot point jumping through hoops to reuse dirty water exclusively for the bathrooms.

And did they nerf slimelung? I've been avoiding digging in to it since I didn't feel like fucking with suits yet, but if slimelung doesn't really matter (Or I could just build some basic medical shit) I might just burrow through.

 

[Space Satan]

I think you can't wash hands with salt water or brine. Anyway, you can setup easy sterilization hub for water with primitive automation, for example that holds water for some time and then releases clean water via clock automation to sinks, showers and other sources.

Main problemis establishing a cooling loop, that won't break pipes due to overfreezing the water.

 

[Hellraiser]

What do you mean by grey water, salt water that they just added?

Grey water's non-potable processed wastewater. Basically the germy water after you run it through the filter. I remember it still having a horrific amount of germs a year and a half ago, but since I haven't processed any water yet maybe the amount of germs is negligible now and it might be a moot point jumping through hoops to reuse dirty water exclusively for the bathrooms.

And did they nerf slimelung? I've been avoiding digging in to it since I didn't feel like fucking with suits yet, but if slimelung doesn't really matter (Or I could just build some basic medical shit) I might just burrow through.

I had a successfully colony in the launch test build a few days before 1.0 release that actually managed to "beat" the game (the ending cutscene was a WIP placeholder screen though), and I used a cold slush geyser as both the primary source of water with a water sieve between it and the sinks/toilets/showers/farm. It was separated with an automatic airlock and in the end maintained 10-20C temperatures. 3 sinks forced dupes to wash their hands after using the crappers, showers were available for everyone.

Dupes got slimelung a few times but I just ignored it and had them work, the asteroid did not have that many slime biomes compared to the default asteroid from prior versions. They might have also gotten food poisoning a few times.

Maybe they ate some spare medicine from the printer care packages but in general I just ignored disease and nobody died or caused an epidemic. Disease cases were singular despite no hospitalization or quarantine on my side.

 

[Raghar]

So how your dystopia looks like?

 

[Raghar]

So I tried Oxygen not included release version, and it's fucking shit in comparison to early access versions.

First they made diseases non lethal. I remember how I had 3-5 people in hospital beds, and hospital and people with natural aptitude for kindness and who were wanting to care about any patient were a priority.
I remember how at that time I was running out of algae, and was forced to make algae manufacture, in slime areas in a way to reduce chance to get slime lung leaking into safe area. I also remember how I had to forbid certain people to enter slime areas, to prevent them to drop infected in hospital when they got idea of running to grab one thing into slime infected area with weakened condition.

Second the skill system feels far less organics. While the early access system felt like weird stuff put into it. The old system did allowed high stress from highly needed jobs, and all these nice consequences. The new system, stuff generates skill point, you can save skill points until you know what you'd need them for, and all would be fine doesn't work well. It made absylite mining trivial for example. And the morale boosts like sculptures are FAR less important.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah, I gotta say I'm also not a fan of the new skill system and the completely neutered diseases.

 

[Zombra]

Seems like a higher difficulty level would address a lot of your concerns.

 

[Zombra]

So how your dystopia looks like?

Well on the road to disaster. I'm learning a lot. Very first game.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

And the morale boosts like sculptures are FAR less important.

The new morale system does seem pretty weird. I guess it's to benefit "Skilled" players since skill points are plentiful so you can level up dupes like mad, but just getting basic amenities like bedrooms and bathrooms and dining rooms keeps them well covered, then you can specialize your starting dupes to only take skills in their interests anyway. I dunno.

And dear fucking lord, Zombra all that oxygen production is massive overkill. In a base that size you could have like... One. Maybe two. Fortunately they cut off when the pressure builds up so you won't destroy your dupes with the pressure but still.

My base thus far. Fucked up a few bits fairly hard, but I've just kept rolling with my first launch base. Nicer housing is up that latter, attached is the hydroponic farm, got my cluster of water fuckery on the lower right (Leftmost is 100% clean, center is piss, right is "Cleaned" wastewater that's still infected with gems. You absolutely don't have to remove germs to use it in hydroponics or bathroom use, so only my 100% clean water is used for research and food and the largest water reservoir is everything automatic), got my super dense clusterfuck of stations under the portal because fuck the dupes, lone refrigerator relatively near the dining room and attached to my coal generator, coal generator not pictured but down below (Fucked with automation to get a carbon scrubber in there that runs automatically too), got a hospital not pictured on the lower left, and under the clean water is my hydroponic piss-farm where I'm growing plants that require polluted water since the way I've got my plumbing messily set up it gets pumped to the water cleaner on the left, pumped to the piss-plants in the bottom middle, and also pumping up from the carbon scrubber in the power plant. Open area in the above left was just a rich source of copper and coal, and the insulated square I originally had grand designs for and then stopped giving a shit so it's massively overbuilt for nothing. I might use it for something at some point, maybe move some of the warmer stuff over there.

Edit: Actually might try hatch ranching next. Could always use more coal, and I haven't ever fucked with ranching since that wasn't added when I played last, IIRC.

 

[Hellraiser]

My experience with the morale now is that it is easier earlier on but become as difficult once you get astronauts. In the end I play exactly the same, I ignore decor because luxury food is less of a headache and let the astronaut accumulate some stress.

Also the jumping joya made artists redundant for me as I excavate those or get them from a care package for the decor item requirement of the mess hall or bedroom.

Too lazy to pump out the chlorine, berry farm is running too hot despite pumping 5C o

I am playing on oceania with subsurface oceans, volcanoes and whatever trait that generates obsidian blobs. Essentially all three make exploration difficult. The ocean biomes aren't even as big or numerous as in the test build game I played but it still took me a long time to reach the surface because I had to bypass or drain some of them first. There are also random areas of 100C+ temperatures caused by the volcanoes. My base ended up almost right on top of an oil and lava biome.

It is cycle 233 and I did not even build a proper space airlock with exosuits or an observatory. Mostly because power generation was a problem as I did not discover any natural gas geyser until cycle 180-ish. Then the lack of ice biomes made metal refining and plastic production hard until I got a hold of some lead and made passive heat exchanger using it.

Currently building a tube to the in progress space airlock, it will be a while before I get a rocket up.

On the upside at least lime is not an issue as oceans have fossil deposits and pokeshell molts.