Series Index
Previously: Learning Lessons
We’re trying to clear out the rest of the oil biome, and start deconstructing ladders to hopefully improve pathfinding performance.
On the swamp asteroid, we’ve expanded the water tank. This is both providing oxygen locally and exporting water back home for use there.
One of the bigger impacts of poor performance has been dupes not taking the time to realize they should breathe, and suffocating as a result. I have to pause the game for about 15 seconds to get them to figure out that hey, oxygen is good and I should breathe some.
The phosphorite melter has done half of its job, at least, but the output sweeper has nothing to sweep since it hasn’t cooled enough to solidifiy.
I probably needed a longer counterflow, as the incoming phosphorite at ~30C only gets up to about 120C before reaching the top chamber.
As if we needed something else to drag down performance, I also dig out a place for an industrial sauna. There are two metal volcanoes in this area (gold and aluminum). The cool steam vent at the bottom right also has some pipes run into it so we can cool that output with another aquatuner that can sit inside the sauna.
While this goes on we also dig out the entire center shaft to improve airflow and consolidate all the carbon dioxide at the bottom of the map.
We get it vacuumed out just in time for the gold volcano to come out of dormancy, and start throwing water in to get heated. Other heat sources will include smelters and aquatuners.
In the swamp, we’ve finished filling in the right side of the map and get started on the left side. From now until the end this is pretty much all we do over here.
The sauna starts to produce steam, but most of it instantly condenses as it hits the cool ladders and wires.
Crude oil coolant is metered into the smelters – 800kg each, enough to run two batches without backing up the pipes.
We also set up a conveyor loop to extract the maximum amount of heat out of the metal volcanoes. The sensor is set to 125C for now, to bring the water up to temperature, but will eventually be set at 190C.
We also lose our second dupe due to mining-related stupidity.
One year into the colony, we still don’t have an operational sauna. We’re at 50 dupes, and while we have plenty of food and oxygen, we’re lacking on framerate. This is also about when the crashes started. The game just straight up exited to desktop with no error message or anything.
The aluminum volcano erupting finally pushes the sauna over the edge, and it fills with steam. It’s still going to be a while before we can produce power out of it, as the turbines are set to only turn on when the steam is above 190C.
The game also starts to exhibit extremely weird behavior in places, like dupes scalding when in sub-freezing areas.
One of the last projects we complete is setting up automatic radbolts for the materials science terminal.
In a last ditch effort to save the game, I rush into building a dupe apartment where I can sequester a dozen dupes and limit their pathfinding.
We start with planning the airlock/atmo suit level. Dark blue is where insulated tiles will go, light blue is the transit tube entry and tube, dark purple is the atmo suit checkpoint, and light purple will be the atmo suit docks.
Oh, come on. Can we get through one build without someone trapping themselves?
Next we build out the bedroom plan, bathrooms, showers, and carbon skimmer / water sieve loops.
Add in gas pipes, vents, automation for those, a 2/3 Rodriguez, cooling block, and wiring/plumbing for all of that.
Also need a great hall.
It needs a little purging at startup, but the 2/3 Rodriguez works just fine.
Remember how I was shipping pacu eggs back from the swamp planet? This is probably part of why the game is running poorly.
We also almost lose all our dreckos from mealwood overheating. One does die, but we save the others just in time.
About 360 cycles after we printed it, our pip(‘s great-great-grandpip) finally gets some work setting up the nature reserve inside the apartment.
Of all the seeds my dupes could’ve put into the storage bin, they chose this one.
Bathrooms are operational and many dupes take the opportunity to grab a shower between building tasks. The bathroom overflow here will feed into the cooling loop for this minibase, so it’s going to take a while to fill, but eventually it will. The overflow will again go to thimble reeds, once that fills up.
The pip also finishes its work.
The apartment is almost ready to move dupes in. Once the dupes are inside, the doors will be locked and they can only enter/exit via the transit tube. This should limit their pathfinding enough to improve performance noticably.
Unfortunately, I never get to find out if this worked. This is the last screenshot I have, at Cycle 390.
Because, at this point, the game crashed, and refused to resume. I tried loading up previous autosaves, but they all kept reaching the same instant-crash situation around Cycle 390.
I can’t just end the series here, though. I have learned a lot of things from doing this, and have some idea for how I can manage things better. So, soon: attempt #3.
Next: Applied Knowledge
Programming Note: Friday’s post will be non-ONI; we start on the new base next week.
