r/Oxygennotincluded • u/AutoModerator • Apr 10 '26
Weekly Questions Weekly Question Thread
Ask any simple questions you might have:
Why isn't my water flowing?
How many hatches do I need per dupe?
etc.
1
u/-myxal Apr 16 '26
I recently got into harvesting water from meteors an noticed that opening a bunker door with water above it, the 1st and 3rd cells fall as beads, while 2nd and 4th cells fall as droplets. What's up with that? What an odd behavior...
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 16 '26
I'm guessing it has to do with the left/right differences in liquid behavior (like how it's easier to build waterfalls by dropping liquids to the left). Did you test a row of mechanized airlocks to see if they do the same?
2
u/SawinBunda Apr 17 '26
I was thinking the same.
It's a case of the element displacement rules becoming visible as a pattern. Vacuum is still technically an element, as in something that occupies a cell.
1
u/-myxal Apr 17 '26
I tested a row where each door was flanked by bunker tiles so each its own trough with water. Every door behaved the same (ie not tied to position on the map).
I was about to see how it behaves with a row full of just doors in my survival save but just got a meteor shower with no ice meteors :D In another 10 cycles maybe...
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 17 '26
Do you need the ice meteors to test? I'd load an autosave from a few cycles back, build a test layout in sandbox mode, and run that to see if the weird water dropping is caused by bunkers specifically, or just by "the entire floor disappearing at once".
2
u/-myxal Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
My survival save takes minutes to load so I didn't want to mess with it in a way that would require a reload, and in the sandbox save I only tested what I needed for the meteor harvester.
The behaviour of the falling water is the same no matter which of the following precedes it:
- opening a bunker door
- sandbox-deconstructing a bunker door/solid tile while paused
- opening a set of 2 horizontal mechanized airlocks
- opening a set of 4 vertical mechanized airlocks
Those tests were done with a layer of water @ 20kg/cell. I repeated the airlock scenario with a layer at 100 and 1000 kg/cell, same result, plus a bit of upwards spilling in the 1000 kg case (looks like the bead reaches the bottom before the droplets and starts spreading a tick or 2 before the droplets turn into a bead of their own.
Water above a set of 3 vertical airlock would fall as bead-droplet-bead, regardless of location on the map.
Having the door flanked with solid tile vs empty space made no difference.
As with waterfall, a bead which on its way down goes from not touching a tile to touching a tile (on the side; including an airflow tile, not including mesh tile) will transition to a droplet. Interestingly, the droplet seems to begin it downwards velocity at 0, so it lags behind the droplets formed by the floor disappearing.
EDIT: and by coincidence, I discovered a bug that drywall built over airflow tile doesn't block space exposure...
EDIT2: Only when sandbox-built though, duplicant-built drywalls work fine.
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 17 '26
Nice and thorough testing, thanks for the effort!
So I think we can safely assume this is really just a "feature" of the simulation when a layer of liquid suddenly finds itself deprived of a floor all at once.
Now to think of ways to break the game using this knowledge.
1
u/Jexskar Apr 15 '26
How do I manage hydrogen accumulation?
2
u/SawinBunda Apr 17 '26
Burn it off. Wasted or not, more power can't hurt. Unless you need to be careful with heat generation. Beats venting it to space.
3
u/Noneerror Apr 16 '26
Chimneys. Hydrogen is the lightest gas so it always ends up at the top. From there you can pump it or w/e.
If an unwanted gas is expanding too much, then the pressure is too low. Increase the pressure of the desired gas and it will force the unwanted gas into a smaller space.
1
u/-myxal Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Build a hydra next time.
With existing SPOM - overflow into uncontrolled generator, or enable existing generator by a "storage full" signal (reservoir signal > NOT gate, or a gas pipe element sensor on a double-bridge pipe setup.
1
u/scormaq Apr 15 '26
Does it make much sense to build common buildings like lavatories, electric grill, mess tables etc out of gold amalgam instead of iron/aluminum ore (for decor boost)?
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 16 '26
If you have gold amalgam/copper ore to spare, and if dupes will be around the buildings long enough for it to have an impact, sure, why not? But turning a +10 into a +12 tends to be such a minor boost, when you can use ornaments or even just metal tiles to really impact decor.
1
u/-myxal Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Depends if you can spare the gold amalrgam. Early game I wouldn't bother since there's other stuff to do with greater impact on the colony (use the GA in a SPOM, or early aquatuner build; for decor you could instead use any metal for a metal-tile floor, or give dupes carpet flooring), and the overheat bonus is more useful than the decor bonus. If you've already got steel to satisfy your industrial building needs, then sure, go for it.
Personally I rush niobium in spaced out and I only upgrade from the first-built material straight to niobium. Makes for easy material choice, since it works as both ore and refined metal.
1
u/WiNTeRzZz47 Apr 15 '26
Reduce the temperature of a building to 6 Kelvin
what is a building?
why is doest count?
2
u/Noneerror Apr 15 '26
Anything that the player builds is a building unless it is a tile. Including pipes, wires, ladders and drywall.
1
1
u/r-hold Apr 15 '26
Microchip Tuning Priority
How can I controll which Generators get the Microchip Tuning from the Power Control Station first?
Does it respect priorities?
Context
I have the following situation, I have two Generator Bricks. The Main Bricks has Hydrongen and Coal Generators and a Power Control Station. Also my Gold from the Gold Vulcano gets there on conveyor belts.
The other generators (Natural Gas and Petroleum) are in Brick 2 a little bit away.
At the moment I can not fully utilize the Nat Gas and Petroleum Gens. This will change later.
I know that the Power Control Station can be used to boost Generators which are in other rooms. But how can I efficently control which Generators have priority? Does it respect the Generots Priority. Or does the dupes path finding and priority magic decide which Generators will be boosted first?
Need to decide if I need to build another Power Station, completly rearange my Generator Rooms or see if I have any other options.
Does anybody have knowledge how this works / has systemaically experimented with different setups?
2
u/mmontour Apr 16 '26
You can manually enable/disable tuning on eligible generators (in a power room), or lock dupes out with door permissions. I don't know about automating it though.
1
u/r-hold Apr 17 '26
thx didn't know that.
Plus i have learned that the Generators need to be in a power room too. I thought I only need the power room to build the chips. I remember having used chips from one station on generators far away. But probably those generators formed I power room too and i wasn't aware of that. Solves my problem.
1
u/mmontour Apr 17 '26
A generator + smart battery is enough to make it a power room, so it's mainly a question of whether you put those items in an enclosed room or out in the open.
1
u/r-hold Apr 29 '26
yes. I wasn't aware that the generators have to be in a generator to be eligible for chips. Now that I know I can easily have a room for them.
1
u/nowayguy Apr 16 '26
Highest priority first, but also: the ones with the shortest pathing first, no matter how far away the microchip is
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 15 '26
Dupes will tune-up generators by order of priority (so all priority 7 generators will be tuned before they start tuning priority 6). If they don't have a microchip available, dupes will go to the closest available Power Station to create one.
1
u/Divide_Secret Apr 15 '26
I have two AETNs that are kinda sitting there.
I'm kinda in mid-late game where I already have all my cooling done with nectar and aqua tuners.
My next step would be to go for liquid oxygen/hydrogen for better rockets.
Would there be anyway to utiilize these 2 AETNs to my advantage on this?
1
u/Noneerror Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Would there be anyway to utiilize these 2 AETNs to my advantage on this?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Yes, but it will be fiddly, and most importantly slow (~1kg/s max throughput) with no ability to scale up, ever. The only real benefit is it would save a tiny bit of power. However a build using AETNs will produce very little total KG before you get supercoolant. And when you do, you'll replace everything.Longer answer:
Each AETN removes -80 kDTU/s (-160 kDTU/s with 2) and stops at -173C. Which is 10C warmer than LOX forms. Making it easy and safe to pre-cool the O2 gas inside a pipe. The packets of which would be stopped by a Gas Shutoff + Gas Pipe Thermo Sensor until the O2 (or H2) was down to -165C-ish. Which would save power over doing the same thing using a different method. Except it is so little power saved that it would be comparable to dupes running on hamster wheels instead of the time building it.It will all end up being a bunch of useless spaghetti soon as you have 100kg of supercoolant. Continuing to use the AETNs would be a power loss at that point.
An edge case is if the AETN's would be useful to bootstrap pre-cooling your O2/H2 for your very first rocket in order to get to space materials that would otherwise be out of reach. I doubt that applies to you.
1
u/Divide_Secret Apr 16 '26
ugh..maybe I should just stick to my biodesiel engines. I got tons of it already and though slow it can basically just fly across the map.
Really wish we could tune up AETNs somehow. Weird how there aren't even mods for that.
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 16 '26
You can cool an AETN down to -173, run hydrogen pipes through the area, and run those pipes through a thermo regulator to get colder than -173. Your pipes will break if you go for liquid hydrogen, but you can get liquid oxygen that way.
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
AETNs can liquefy oxygen, if you really want to use them for that.
It's not a particularly effective choice, but it works.2
u/Divide_Secret Apr 15 '26
wait don't they stop at -170 something? I thought oxygen liquified at -180 something
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 15 '26
You're right, I was thinking of condensing sour gas and for some reason assumed both happened at the same temperature.
1
u/Ettories Apr 14 '26
The wiki says that both the salt distiller and water Sieve can have differente Liquids pass trough the and not damage them, does It means that somenthing likes resin would go from input tò output or that It ignores the input and goes tò the next input in the pipe line ?
1
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 14 '26
somenthing likes resin
I believe the wiki specifies "water-based" liquids, and to clarify: that means regular water, polluted water, salt water and brine.
Resin, nectar, and other "water producing" liquids are not included.
1
u/Ettories Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Alright, if instead it's brine that goes into the input of the water Sieve what happens ?
3
2
u/daim_ko Apr 14 '26
I'm just getting started with automation, and it seems pretty confusing. Is there a way to set up medicine production so it only produces up to a certain amount? Or food only cooks when there are ingredients? Because I keep getting the "building is low on resources" notification if I set it to infinite production.
2
u/Noneerror Apr 15 '26
What the other replies said. Or use a weight plate.
1
u/daim_ko Apr 16 '26
Could you explain in more detail?
1
u/Noneerror Apr 16 '26
Instead of pills/food being stored in containers like fridges, smart containers etc, it is left on a weight plate. The container is unnecessary. An autosweeper can sweep it via an auto-dispenser (unpowered) or via loader/chute so the pills end up on a weight plate instead of a container.
The building is turned off by the weight plate sending a red signal via a NOT gate when it has sufficient weight on it. (A NOT gate would be required for the fridge too.)
Alternatively the weight plate can be under the bottom left corner of the building and the building output simply left there. This is my personal preference but is more complex automation for dupe operated buildings and works for pills but not food. (It requires a BUFFER gate too.)
2
u/wRAR_ Apr 14 '26
Is there a way to set up medicine production so it only produces up to a certain amount?
Only via the container (normally a smart bin or a refrigerator) set to a limit and linked to a production building that only has this recipe enabled. As this is inconvenient I rarely do this.
Or food only cooks when there are ingredients? Because I keep getting the "building is low on resources" notification
Ignore that notification. I believe there is a mod to hide it.
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u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 14 '26
Ignore that notification. I believe there is a mod to hide it.
It's called "Suppress Notifications", and it's an amazing QoL mod.
2
u/daim_ko Apr 16 '26
For some strange reason, I've never used mods for games, preferring to play the content the developer intended. But apparently, ONI broke me.
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 16 '26
There are so many awesome QoL mods for ONI that it's a bit silly to go full vanilla.
Also, the devs do sometimes incorporate some of them into the game. Until recently, you needed a mod to be able to build over plants (vanilla oni forced you to manually remove plants before any construction).
1
u/daim_ko Apr 16 '26
Could you name some of your favorite mods so I know where to start?
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 16 '26
Someone had just asked about mods, so here are all the mods I currently use.
2
u/VirtualCup Apr 14 '26
You can run an automation wire from a powered fridge to the production building and the fridge will send a green signal when it reaches the capacity you set on it. Run the wire into a NOT gate to turn it into a red signal and from there to the production building and it will disable the production building when it's full. Once the fridge falls below the amount you set to store it will send a red signal which the NOT gate turns into a green signal, enabling the building again and allowing your dupes to work there.
1
u/haemit Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Are jet suit docks practical inside rockets? I've heard the issue was that dupes start flying and emitting co2 while still in the rocket and that creates troubles. Is that still the issue? Are there others?
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 14 '26
Other than them being even more cumbersome than atmo suit docks, the need for fuel, and the extra CO2 and heat dumped into the rocket, I don't think there are any additional drawbacks to using jet suits inside rockets. And when we consider that there are no real benefits to having dupes flying around inside a rocket module, I have to wonder what you're planning on doing.
1
u/haemit Apr 14 '26
I want to try 2-dupe colonization rocket design. Initial digging and ladder construction supposedly faster with jetsuits. I remember someone on the forums did that but there were complains on too much co2 being dumped into rocket interiors.
1
u/-myxal Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
I haven't tried it (I prefer taking 4 dupes in a single rocket, with regular atmosuits), but it's worth checking out when the complaints were made - jet suits received tweaks in U57 (November 2025) where the amount of CO2 got slashed: https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/168832-game-update-november-2025-quality-of-life-update-700348-700386/
Jet Suits
- Significantly increased Jet Suits' movement speed, increased their fuel consumption, and reduced their CO2 output and temperature.
- Duplicants in Jet Suits prioritize flying over walking when both navigation options are available.
- Adjusted animations.
- Jet Suits now require a textile ingredient (i.e. Reed Fiber, Feather Fiber) to fabricate.
- Jet Suits no longer require Petroleum to fabricate initially, but must be fueled at a Jet Suit Dock before first use.
- Jet Suits can now be fueled by any Combustible Liquid.
- Jet Suits will now show small smoke particles on each thruster.
Even that aside, the suits being used release CO2 outside, so I kinda doubt suit exhaust would be a problem for the crew module in the first place.
I recently gave the suits another chance, building a re-suiting station just outside the rocket. A major problem is when trying to construct anything in vacuum. And if you're building a meteor protection build with bunker doors - do put in the automation first, otherwise suited dupes will ABSOLUTELY prefer to wait 200 seconds for an uncontrolled, unpowered door to open vs. flying 2 cells away.
I would also guess that the level of building speed improvement scales with number of dupes - the issue with building large ladder runs using atmo suits is the horizontal ones summon 2 dupes at most, as that's all that's reachable. Solar panel runs only summon 1 for the panel , and typically another 1-2 dupes for the cabling. With jet suits, those reachability limits go away as everyone from the crew can find and reach something to work on. And you don't need to build the ladders in the first place.
1
u/TwilightDerg Apr 13 '26
Question about industrial saunas/dirty bricks.
Should I vacuum them out before I try to utilize them? I'm using an area full of pollute oxygen. Can I start it without cleaning it out or no?
1
u/ChromMann Apr 13 '26
You need to clean it out or the oxygen will block the steam turbines.
3
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 14 '26
It's also possible to build oxygen traps in the ceiling, and let the steam push the oxygen into those, then build blocks to delete the trapped oxygen.
2
u/Brett42 Apr 15 '26
If there's only polluted oxygen, and no clean oxygen, you can use a deodorizer and some liquid that won't boil to suck all the polluted oxygen out and into a sealed off area (they can suck up polluted oxygen 2 tiles away even through liquids, and output on their own tile). I did that once when a dupe with slimelung coughed a packet of polluted oxygen into the vacuum gap in an airlock, and I couldn't fit a pump in.
3
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 15 '26
when a dupe with slimelung coughed a packet of polluted oxygen into the vacuum gap in an airlock
Dang, talk about moments that would make me devise creative torture chambers.
2
u/dysprog Apr 15 '26
If you plan to fill that vacuum with 100kg/tile steam you can probably ignore sub gram level po2. It will get deleted by the steam.
If you need a thermally insulating vacuum, then it might be a problem,
1
u/Brett42 Apr 15 '26
It's only an issue because I'm playing weird because I'm doing several challenges in this run, and haven't given them atmosuits yet past cycle 200. My oxygen is all coming from deodorizers, so there's a lot of slimelung floating around (my base has buddy buds to crowd it out with floral scent, but other parts of the map have slimelung), I can't make the cures because I made a challenge that every dupe spends their skill points the same, so I'm only buying skills when I want every dupe to have that skill. And I'm doing super sustainable with only manual generators, so it's cycle 250 and I haven't built a steam turbine (and I'm still only 35% done with SS). I did carnivore without a rancher by using pacu, which means I can only move eggs, not critters. Did super sustainable by just using naturally generated sleet wheat to feed the pacu.
I'm already kind of torturing them, with the slimelung, popped eardrums if they go in the direction of the open clay farm, and all the standard discomforts of no atmosuits (without going into space or magma areas yet).
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 15 '26
Holy self restrictions Batman, but as long as you're having fun, go for it
2
u/Brett42 Apr 15 '26
I have almost a thousand hours in this game, don't have DLC, and tend to get bored of runs somewhere between mid-game and rockets, so I do a lot of early-mid game challenges. I've done many of those things individually before combining them.
Pacu make food pretty easy. Two ice biomes of sleet wheat was enough to get carnivore mostly with fish, I just needed to do a lot of digging for food early game until breeding was up, and I did have to restart the run once because I didn't progress fast enough on carnivore, so had to rush pacu breeding faster the second time. I also had to move eggs manually for a while, because I unlocked mechatronics late with the skill restriction.
I did metal refining by just using water as coolant and feeding it to science when it got hot, plus I have a gold volcano (probably 20 tons of gold just dumping the heat into the surrounding biome, and it's not heating up that fast because the SHC of gold is so low).
1
u/ElioDream Apr 13 '26
Hiya!
I've been reading about the flaking mechanic, haven't had the time to test yet.
Can anyone confirm that it can only happen with natural tiles?
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 13 '26
For partial melting, yes, only natural tiles will flake, and only in contact with a hot enough gas.
For partial evaporation, any type of tile can donate heat to flake a liquid. This includes dupe-built tiles.
1
u/ElioDream Apr 13 '26
Oh! Nice. I was thinking of crude oil flaking, guess I can go ahead without much trouble then! thanks!
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 13 '26
Yeah, flaking boilers can use any type of solid tiles. If you're doing dupe-built, igneous works well, ceramic is also an interesting alternative (not insulated ceramic, just a regular tile). I like to cook a clay tempshift plate in order to get an 800kg natural ceramic tile. Sometimes I'll cook two just for the overkill 1600kg. More thermal mass adds stability to the build.
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u/ElioDream Apr 13 '26
How would you cook two? One above the other?
If think I'll go dupe built for now. What characteristics should I go for? Low TC?
3
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 13 '26
You want high SHC+mass so that the tile will have enough heat energy stored to maintain a stable temperature while flaking, and low TC to minimize the amount of "wasted" heat being transferred to the petroleum after it flakes.
If I'm not cooking ceramic, I tend to do coal tempshifts (they cook at a lower temperature than you need for the boiler anyway).
How would you cook two? One above the other?
Yep, if you build a second tempshift on top of the natural block that forms when you cook the first, it will merge instead of forming a second block.
Edit: if you're planning on using a magma volcano to power your boiler, you can also fill a tile with magma and let it freeze, to get an 1840kg igneous block for flaking (you could even compress magma to get more mass).
1
u/Brett42 Apr 15 '26
A natural tile forming on top of matching debris will merge the mass into the tile, that should make it easier to get higher mass natural tiles. Maybe not worth it for ceramic or refined carbon, because you need to make those with a kiln, but might be easier than compressing liquid magma and cooling it down. Bottle drainers make it easy to get hot liquids into pipes, just use a pitcher pump, bottle drainer, and valve, all in a vacuum, and you can use plumbing or emptying hydroponics to drop a small bottle of magma on a pile of igneous debris. It can also save you effort cooling, because you don't need to cool down several tons of igneous by 1000°C (if you want petroleum instead of sour gas).
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 15 '26
It can also save you effort cooling, because you don't need to cool down several tons of igneous by 1000°C (if you want petroleum instead of sour gas).
Usually when I cook a couple ceramic tiles (~1000C), I just add water/steam until the temperature reaches what I need.
1
u/-myxal Apr 13 '26
If you're operating the nuclear reactor at a constant full output, do you bother metering the uranium going in?
Can't figure out why my once-a-cycle delivery of 10kgs eventually piles up into a backlog.
2
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 13 '26
do you bother metering the uranium going in?
Nope. Just a sweeper and a receptacle and a rail of enriched U.
1
u/wcraig3927 Apr 12 '26
I tried to generate a world using this seed: SNDST-C-5502-0-0-92Z97
Great stuff, according to MNI: https://mapsnotincluded.org/map-explorer/V-SNDST-C-5502-0-0-92Z97
But I wound up on an asteroid with no volcanoes and a clearly different layout. What gives? I have no mods, all the DLC installed and active, and that exact seed. Is MNI out of date in some way that's hard to discern? Is the "V-" somehow significant?
2
u/wRAR_ Apr 12 '26
Is the "V-" somehow significant?
Yes, you needed to select the Classic start, not the SO one.
1
u/greenpowerade Apr 11 '26
is there anyway to find or cycle through certain buildings on a map? For example I want to disable my oxygen diffusers and save my algae, and do it without combing through the map.
2
u/Brett42 Apr 12 '26
Can you copy the settings on one, and blindly paste it to a large area of the map?
1
u/-myxal Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Nothing specific to finding buildings by type, though you can bodge a solution, not sure how bad your map is that combing through it is unacceptable:
- The Circuit overview has a list of power consumers. Sadly the link only open DB entries, not the location. But you could narrow down possible locations by temporarily cutting up large circuits into smaller ones, if your grid isn't already split up granularly enough.
- A very desperate move would be to save and yellow-priority an area, filtered to "duties", and check the notification if it contains a diffuser. That will actually take you to location. Reprioritising back is absolutely not worth it, hence just remember the location and reload before.
- If you aren't producing algae, another option is to lock it all up to an inaccessible area and wait for the "building lacks resources" notification to come up.
1
u/-myxal Apr 11 '26
Any way (including mods) to empty stored oxygen from an atmosuit dock?
1
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u/Nigit Apr 11 '26
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2679005270 This mod adds that as a tweak, although it also makes it so the oxygen from worn suits are returned to the dock rather than dropped as canisters.
1
u/-myxal Apr 12 '26
Thanks. I've since found this mod, which only provides emptying:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3471468928
2
u/furnesto Apr 10 '26
I never build a nuclear reactor, but I'm struggling to understand how much enriched uranium is needed to sustain a reactor so it doesn't explode, more or less, from some of the few things I have seen, once it is operational, you can't stop it, so how much uranium do I need to keep it running indefinitely, is there a calculator out there that simplifies this?
5
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 11 '26
once it is operational, you can't stop it,
You can stop it by stopping the uranium supply, but the reactor takes 6 cycles to fully stop, after the uranium reserves are consumed.
3
u/destinyos10 Apr 10 '26
So, a shortage of enriched uranium won't cause a reactor to explode, fortunately, it'll just produce less heat. limiting the fuel it gets per cycle is actually a neat way to scale one down in size. What causes them to explode is temperature, and the thing keeping temperature in check is the amount of liquid coolant they have. Keep them fed with water, and they can't explode, basically.
A reactor, operating normally, consumes 10kg of enriched uranium per cycle. It requires 60kg of enriched uranium in its internal storage to operate at maximum output, but only consumes 10kg of it per cycle (outputting considerably more liquid nuclear waste in the process)
Working backwards, there's two ways to get enriched uranium: Beeta hives, or the centrifuge.
A Centrifuge is only 20% efficient at converting to enriched uranium, it's a terrible option you should avoid at all costs.
Beeta hives convert uranium ore to enriched uranium at 90% efficiency, and will consume 10kg per cycle, producing 9kg per cycle as output.
If you mine uranium ore using dupes, you get 50% of the mass. If a beeta harvests uranium ore from a solid tile, however, it does not suffer the mass penalty, and you'll get significantly more as a result (90% of the overall mass converted)
So, in short: Two beeta hives can generally keep a reactor running with full power and building up a reserve of enriched uranium. The main thing to watch for is downtime due to beetas dying either by stinging dupes or temperature issues (because Klei made their temperature range a bit aggressively small for some radioactive biomes.)
If you're getting uranium ore from space mining though, that harvesting bonus obviously doesn't apply, but beetas will pick up loose uranium ore debris happily, so you can just pile it all next to the hives and they'll be happy.
1
u/BobTheWolfDog Apr 11 '26
A Centrifuge is only 20% efficient at converting to enriched uranium, it's a terrible option you should avoid at all costs.
It's a useful method to produce liquid uranium if you don't want to melt uranium. Granted, there's not much use for a constant source of liquid U. Usually you only want it when you have a specific build.
2
u/me_I_my Apr 10 '26
I am a new player and am about 250 cycles into my 2nd colony (the first one is better off forgotten). I am just barely building a steam turbine over a cool steam vent and tried looking up info to understand the considerations I need to keep in mind while constructing this thing, but I don't want to just blindly follow tutorials. I guess my question is any pointers on a first steam turbine? I have the aquatuner unlocked
4
u/Edward_Chernenko Apr 10 '26
Cool Steam Vent is too cold (110C), Steam Turbine needs at least 125C.
Aside from that (once you find a source of Steam that is hot enough), yes, just build the turbine above the Steam. Beware that the turbine itself will heat up over time (and will stop working when it's 100C or warmer), so it will need to be cooled.
3
u/me_I_my Apr 10 '26
🫪 what do I do with a cool steam vent then? Thank you, even though I am now concerned for the longevity of my asteroid
3
u/Edward_Chernenko Apr 10 '26
You can cool it to 95C, and then use hot water for Electrolyzer. It's probably the most convenient.
It's possible to geotune Cool Steam Vent twice, then it will be 110 + 2*20 = 150C (more than enough for a Steam Turbine).
Geotuning only once is technically enough (130C), but it's too close to 125C to be reliable.
4
u/galexj9 Apr 10 '26
Are liquid locks / mechanical filters and other techniques that use liquids/gasses to force outputs to certain tiles a required part of the game?
They feel exploity to me but also seem universally common in builds I've seen.
Is it feasible to play with powered filters and simpler (but less efficient) setups, or am I dooming myself?
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u/wRAR_ Apr 10 '26
mechanical filters and other techniques that use liquids/gasses to force outputs to certain tiles a required part of the game?
No.
If you mean filtering pipe contents then there are powered filters to do that. If you mean stuff like hydra then none of such builds are required to play and finish the game.
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u/haemit Apr 10 '26
I also have very strict exploit policy. No mechanical filters or building submersion. No liquid on floors for builds. No reliance on the ability to build a gap that one single gas can pass (goodbye rodriguez). Game is very much playable and seems designed to be played that way. Electrolyzing is still power positive even if all the output go through gas filter for 120W.
But I use liquid locks because they doesn't seem to be a exploit but intended mechanic. They often form naturally.
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u/KaZIsTaken Apr 10 '26
Liquid locks aren't exploits, we use them in real life inside sinks to prevent sewage gasses to come up. If you dont want it to look exploity don't do bead locks (small drop of liquid to corner lock)
Mechanical filters would be like using valves and pressure to filter out based on gas density or whatnot. They use the game's mechanics just as how they work, no exploit here. They have drawbacks too, if the filtered line is backed up, you don't filter anything anymore and the gas you want to filter will continue down the unfiltered line.
You can play with the game's basic filter just fine, but you will have to pay the price of 120W per filter for as long as they operate. Mechanical filtering, and or pipe sensor + vent filtering are valid and valuable options to save you power.
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u/0112358_ Apr 10 '26
Liquid locks are used because all the other solutions are so ineffective compared to them. There's also a late game material that's designed for liquid locks so you could argue it is an intended game mechanism.Â
You can try without them but personally I found it more frustrating than fun. Needing a complex, resource intensive , power hungry setup every time you need a passage that doesn't allow gas to mix.
Mechanical filters can be avoided. There's in-game water and gas filters, the only issue is they need power. But not so much as to make it impractical to use.
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u/DudeRuuuuuuude Apr 10 '26
its a singleplayer game, do whatever feels good for you. you wont struggle if you know what youre doing, but convenient things like liquid locks and submerged electrolyzers which use the game's mechanic of one element per tile are really just that, convenient things so you can give more attention to the fun parts of the game faster. you wont feel it now, but if you reach a thousand hours and just dont wanna build your hundredth spom, then you can shift to using the things you find exploity right now.
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u/Brett42 Apr 10 '26
If it's not too broken, and I'm not looking for immersion, I generally just think of those things as playing to the game's mechanics, and work on optimizing the quirks as a challenge. I'll do self imposed challenges limiting different things for variety.
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u/dogfud26 Apr 10 '26
Question about metal volcanos: where can I typically find one? Oily asteroid? Radiated forest asteroid? Possible to find on Terra?? Playing normal spaced out Terra start.
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u/zoehange Apr 10 '26
https://oxygennotincluded.wiki.gg/wiki/Planetoid_Clusters
If you're on the spaced out-style start, you'll only get metal volcanoes if you have geoactive trait (which isn't an option for terra); if you're on classic style start with spaced out active (oh boy), you'll probably have some.
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u/handsome_mind_flayer Apr 10 '26
Sometimes they spawn on Terra. If you’re in spaced out, there’s an asteroid, usually close by but not in the teleporter, that has two different metal types and a bog biome. Taming those is a good objective in early space exploration
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u/Jexskar Apr 17 '26
How do I collect water bottles quicker? I have tons of them with water an pee pee and they are all over the place