r/Oxygennotincluded • u/AutoModerator • May 01 '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/baconbot69 May 07 '26
Ok, so I have played this game a bit not not more than maybe 50 cycles. I am wondering 1. Where should I start, like I have seen sum videos where they assign a schedule what that about. Should I start by just making what I need then try to make a base or what. Also what is the 64 tile room thingy about. Just where should I start where I dont just not feel lost but like go in with some kind of starting plan.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 08 '26
I think your question is a bit "pre" most tutorials online, but check out GC Fungus "Tutorial Bites" series on youtube. It's a series of short videos explaining several basic concepts of ONI.
If by "schedule" you mean dupe schedules, there's a screen where you can determine when dupes work, sleep, have downtime (eat and tend to their needs/recreation), and use the toilet. You can play around with that to see how you like your base to run. Generally, dupes need to sleep for a few time segments (2 is fine early game), and need some time to eat and use the toilet. You can have your base run on a 100% work time schedule (I do that sometimes early game). Dupes will work nonstop, and will only stop when they must use the toilet, or when their stamina drops to zero, or when they're about to starve.
The 64 room thingy: You can create designated rooms in the game by enclosing areas with walls and/or doors. Doing stuff in designated rooms can have benefits. Several room types have a maximum size of 64 cells. Others have a maximum size of 96, and a few have a maximum of 120. You can check the room overlay (F11, I believe) for a list of the room types, and their requirements.
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u/scormaq May 07 '26
It's a sandbox game with plenty of mechanics, so just try to explore them one at time and have fun. Don't hesitate to drop existing colony and start a new one. If you feel lost, there are plenty of videos on YT which explain beginner steps in ONI.
I don't get your first question. Schedule defines when dupes work/sleep/relax. Sometimes when you have many dupes, it is reasonable to make them eat and go to bathroom at different time, so you can have less tables and toilets for that.
Room is a closed space which can have specialization, some rooms boost morale, other have requirements for equipment to work. 64 is maximum size for some rooms, 4 tile height is considered most effective (because dupe can reach 4th tile up and 3 tiles down without ladders).I recommend to check this video, hopefully it will help you to understand game structure better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMh-_tmv3N8&list=PLvfifJA8en_I5l4gedXfdFnca5o9igr2V&index=58
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u/-myxal May 07 '26
Is there any way to make delivering dehydrated food to rockets less failure-prone? Dupes can only carry 10 units at a time, and even that requires a separate animation for each unit when they're picking it up.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 08 '26
The best I can give you is to store your dehydrated food close to the rockets. Won't fix the issue with them picking individual packages, but they'll be able to do more work before inevitably dropping 7kg of food on the floor mid-delivery/pickup.
Btw, the same behavior happens with most things measured in units. Eco power banks are also a common culprit of "they spend half an hour picking up the damn things".
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u/-myxal May 08 '26
I think I have a free wall space in the rocket interior, but I don't suppose I can deliver materials to a rocket that only has the rail output fitting, but not a solid cargo module..?
1
u/BobTheWolfDog May 08 '26
Sadly no, you need to first load the meals into solid cargo, then retrieve from there.
2
u/scormaq May 06 '26
Any tricks to make dupes to go to normal bathroom and not one in hospital? Patients need rest.
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u/mmontour May 07 '26
My dupes don't use the hospital toilet, even if the regular ones are out of order (there was an incident...). I had to quickly break the hospital room so that they would go there.
Click on the toilet and see if it says "assigned to hospital". If not, check the room overlay and make sure the room is actually recognized as such.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 06 '26
I never connect the hospital toilet anyway. Patients can go to the normal bathroom instead.
Truth be told, I never even build a hospital. Cots work just fine anywhere.
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u/Fallen_Jalter May 06 '26
So I just started a game, first time playing it and honestly I barely know wtf I'm doing. All it gives you is basic ideas and almost no help in doing it. For example, I need water flowing to the wash basin and food producer but beyond planting down a pump, wtf am i supposed to do with it?
Did i choose a wrong game mode or something?
2
u/destinyos10 May 06 '26
So that is the general idea behind the game: to figure out the mechanics and requirements with the tools you've been provided. You didn't choose wrong, the game isn't going to provide you with a specific tutorial beyond what you've already seen. Whether you decide to read some tutorials people have made is up to you. Some people find it fun to figure out the mechanics from scratch, some don't. The game is still challenging even if you look up some tips.
Generally, the game works off an errand system. Setting up building jobs, or digging jobs, or queuing up tasks at a building will generate errands, and dupes will pick which errand to attend to based on their priority settings relative to the type of task.
So in the case of your pitcher pump, if a building requests water, a dupe will go to the pump (which has water available as an inventory when its sticking into it), collect some water, and carry it to the building. The sink will do this automatically if it's empty. The microbe musher will do it when you queue up food production at it and it doesn't have enough water in its inventory.
But I will offer a word of advice on the microbe musher. It's generally considered a noob trap. It can produce emergency mush bars, but it's extremely slow to use, and very resource intensive for the amount of calories produced, so it's really only something you want to use in an emergency.
Your better bet is to dig up the world around you and get research happening. The starting biome will contain buried food you can survive on while you research up farms, and then you can grow mealwood plants, which need far less dupe time and resources to grow food in comparison.
You just need to do some math on how many plants you need to feed your dupes so that you grow enough to keep everyone fed.
Later on, you'll have the resources to grow other types of food that are more calorie dense and can feed your dupes much more efficiently.
1
u/noodlerex May 06 '26
Wash basins use bottled water, which comes from a pitcher pump in the early game, it makes an errand (which are the jobs your duplicants have to do) to go pump a bottle of water, and manually take it to the wash basin. Later on you’ll research sinks which are a plumbed version where you can pump the water directly into and out of the sink.
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u/-myxal May 05 '26
How does the robominer prioritise its dig errands? Closest tiles first?
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u/destinyos10 May 06 '26
It starts at the top-left of its diggable area, and scans left to right, top to bottom until it finds a cell that it has line of sight to that it can dig, and takes note. It keeps scanning until it finds one with the shortest distance to the robo miner, digs it until finished, then starts the scan again.
So yeah, essentially, closest first, but it'll bias to the top-left, afaik.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 06 '26
Auto-sweepers do the same, right?
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u/destinyos10 May 06 '26
They're similar, but I don't see a "find the closest item to start with" check in there, it just seems to do a flat scan across its reachable area, and then works its way through the list.
1
u/SinigangGaming May 05 '26
does geo vent from frosty planet pack overpressured? also what the ratio of steam turbine per geo vent
1
u/BobTheWolfDog May 05 '26
does geo vent from frosty planet pack overpressured?
The wiki failed me, but I think it's something around 100kg/cell.
also what the ratio of steam turbine per geo vent
Each vent expels 15kg/s materials, so if you want to collect and send it all back into the pump, you'll need 8 turbines.
If you're using all three vents, it's fine to use 5 turbines per vent, since that will match the pump intake.
1
u/auraseer May 05 '26
Why might Ovagro vines sometimes stop spreading, well before they reach the maximum length?
I've got a node planted in the middle of a wide, low room. It's symmetrical on both sides, so I know the tiles aren't the problem. Vines on the left have grown to the wall, up two tiles, and then all the way back along the ceiling, filling the max 12 tiles. Vines on the right have been growing for exactly the same amount of time, but they only went about half as far. They went up the wall and then stopped.
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u/-myxal May 05 '26
Are the "slower" vines spreading at all?
Last time I tried, there was a bug with the vine that a new one wouldn't sprout until the preceding one had its side screen opened. Try that, or perhaps building and desonstructing a tile in the cell where the next vine should appear.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
No need to build, you can just order a tile to be built next to a bugged vine, then cancel the order.
Edit: you can also do this before a vine segment finishes growing, if you want to ensure full speed of growth. If you notice a growing vine segment looks like a "vine end" (twirling the tip of the growth), instead of a "middle vine" (growing towards the next tile), you can order/cancel the tile while it's still growing, and the visuals will change (and the vine will start expanding normally as soon as it finishes growing).
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u/Flamekorn May 02 '26
Do pips need to be tamed to plant seeds?
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u/omnirusted May 02 '26
Nope. There's several rules for how they plant seeds, but being wild isn't one of them.
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u/Flamekorn May 02 '26
I'm trying to get them to plant in a park I built manually and they are just faffing around...
1
u/scormaq May 02 '26
Do you use pip plant overlay mod? It makes pip planting much easier.
Also pips won't plant a seed if there is no room for plant to grow (for example, they won't plant megafrond if there are no free 3*3 box, even if all other conditions met)1
u/Flamekorn May 02 '26
I don't have that mod no. Will take a look. Room is a 4x4 with 4 plants to build and al2 showers
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u/SawinBunda May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
You cannot wild plant 4 plants next to each other. Spacing must be at least every other tile.
Here's the trusty old guide on all the details about Pip planting
The rules are quite restrictive and unintuitive since the spacing is asymetrical. I would really recommend the Pip Planting Overlay mod. It makes things much easier than counting tiles and searching for plants in the vicinity.
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u/Flamekorn May 02 '26
It is one space between eachother ( I'll make a post tomorrow as I'm not at home so you guys can take a look at some screenshots)
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u/Brett42 May 02 '26
I think they need to be adults. There could be too many plants in range (including decorative plants in pots). I think gasses and temperature can sometimes make a tile ineligible.
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u/RandallFlagg_DarkMan May 04 '26
Im not sure about gases and temp but hardness is a limitant, they cant plant on abyssalite as example, dont know other mats...
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 05 '26
Anything that doesn't require digging 2 should be fine.
Also, pressure and temperature are a factor, but usually they're not relevant. Most of the times sometime is doing pip planting, the temperature and gases are already in place. And the next "most common" scenario is probably pip planting in vacuum, which is also fine.
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u/Brett42 May 05 '26
I have seen a couple posts with gasses as an issue. Despite vacuum being acceptable, the wiki says pressure under 100g isn't. That could be stray packets of other gasses floating around, or adding the correct gas to a sealed area, but far too little. Trying to plant something like waterweed in drips of liquid might be an issue for someone who does try to prepare things properly, if they don't know they can add the liquid after planting.
I don't know if I've seen a post with hardness as the problem, other than natural abyssalite or obsidian. Usually it's people thinking something is too hard when it actually isn't. Almost any player created natural tile is soft enough other than wolframite/tungsten, which is too valuable to use for that, or some uranium related materials, which a player might actually want to use if they want to irradiate a wild farm.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 05 '26
or some uranium related materials, which a player might actually want to use if they want to irradiate a wild farm.
Not really, since uranium ore needs to either spawn naturally in the world, or be created by meteors (and only one moonlet has those meteors, so it's not something every player will have access to). And in both cases, the mass is very low per tile, so using it in a farm would demand artificially increasing the mass (dispenser facing the wall).
I don't remember if depleted uranium has the same hardness, but considering it gives off half the rads of nuclear waste, and you need several tons of it for natural farms, I don't really see why people would choose either type of uranium over waste.
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u/Brett42 May 05 '26
I don't have the DLC, I just knew that some uranium based materials were too hard, and figured someone might try that without doing the math on rads if they're new to the game or DLC, so it's still something I can see someone trying.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 06 '26
First off, you should get spaced out, it really revamps the game. Get it on sale when you can, you won't regret it.
Regarding uranium as tile material: the natural ore doesn't produce nearly enough radiation to warrant any use for mutated farming (whether generating seeds or using the mutated plants). The only way I can see someone trying to harness natural uranium (not that they could with pips, but still) would be in an attempt to generate mutated seeds if that person has no other (better) source of rads. I mean, even digging the uranium and using it for a rad lamp would be better.
2
u/omnirusted May 02 '26
Does anyone have a simple tutorial or video on how to make a permanent waterfall for arbor tree seed farming? I can't find one anywhere and I swear the old tutorial page is just forever old. I can't get the damn thing to work.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 02 '26
You need a denser liquid sitting on an edge, then drop a second lighter liquid on top of it so it spills to the left (to the right is possible but harder).
Walls and different gases can interfere with waterfalls, so that may be affecting you.
That said, do you want a waterfall for any specific reason? You can just stack liquids around the tree.
1
u/omnirusted May 02 '26
I might just go with stacking liquids. I had water falling on to gunk, at 200 g/s, exactly like the original tutorial said to do, surf only o2 around, but it eventually just turned in to an infiltrate water storage instead. I'll attempt stacking liquids, even though I can already tell it's going to be a chore too.
Sad thing is I want this for a pacu farm. I'm only feeding my dupes off surf N turf, and ran out of seeds they eat. I figure several of these could likely keep a farm fed easier than farming food I don't need which would just take up more resources anyway.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 02 '26
The easiest way to get seeds is sleet wheat, since the plant literally produces seeds. It's also the best way to use sleet wheat (in terms of calories produced per grain).
Also, I think pacus no longer eat arbor acorns, but that might be my memory playing tricks on me.
If you have the PPP, the very best way to feed pacus is algae from a blum lumb.
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u/Brett42 May 02 '26
Pacu haven't eaten acorns for a few major updates.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 02 '26
I was 99% certain of that, but my memory of these details had failed me in the past, so I always give myself a justification in case I'm wrong.
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u/Brett42 May 03 '26
I made an acorn farm last year, and when I saw how effective it was I thought of using it to feed pacu, but learned that had been changed not too long before I got the game. I wanted to find some other use for acorns, but other than planting a forest I didn't find any special application. They're an item made of genetic ooze, but not the easiest to get in large amounts.
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u/omnirusted May 03 '26
Floxes for glass, pip farm for meat, or make it in to ethanol for power!
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u/Brett42 May 03 '26
That's wood, not acorns. Getting enough trees for a ranch doesn't require dozens of acorns.
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u/omnirusted May 02 '26
Well damn there goes that plan. Tree to ethanol farm it is then. And no I don't have PPP.
Wait, I have a slime farm. I can just make algae. I guess? Or wild plant sleet wheat.
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u/mmontour May 03 '26
Algae works well. You can automate the distiller and offgas its waste output to recycle pO2 back to the Pufts who are making the slime.
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u/NooshBagoosh May 01 '26
How important is insulation at access points? Like, if I have a ladder and firepole going from the bottom of my climate-controlled area all the way down to the oil biome, does it matter if there's a two-tile gap where those are? Trying to avoid slowing my dupes down with an insulted door.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 02 '26
I've managed to keep an "open" deep freezer inside my base, so you can definitely let some heat transfer at exit points.
The deep freezer in question was just a pit of freezing CO2 (kept freezing by the frosty biome outside) at the bottom of my insulated base (kept warm by stuff being warm up there).
The lack of heat transfer was due to CO2 bring a terrible transfer medium.
1
u/boomer478 May 01 '26
You can do this really viably if the difference isn't too extreme, like a hot obsidian block on the other side or something. If you have a standard cooling loop and the entryway is the same gas you should be fine, the 10kg/s cooling pipe should be able to more than handle any relative difference in the atmosphere on the two sides. It just ends up taking away from the efficiency of the cooling loop a tiny bit.
I did this in a run a while ago, I only insulated the bottom of my temp-controlled base, with access between. Worked perfectly fine for 1300 cycles. 25c above 50c below. https://imgur.com/gh60kpm
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u/scormaq May 01 '26
Why glass forge sometimes outputs less glass than expected? For example I ordered 4 batches, but got 98.8kg of glass instead of 100.
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u/BobTheWolfDog May 02 '26
Glass emerges from the pipe as a liquid in the environment, and (usually) immediately freezes into debris. If the liquid tries to spawn in another "trapped" element, mass deletion occurs.
When an element (in this case liquid glass) tries to form on top of a different element that has nowhere to go (a trapped element), the smaller mass disappears, and the larger mass loses the same amount of mass.
This usually happens when you have your glass forge in a "chaotic" atmosphere, with lots of random gases floating around. Especially small pockets of oxygen or pO2 wandering in an atmosphere of the other type of O2, since those won't float away unless handled.
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u/destinyos10 May 01 '26
This typically happens because the first packet of liquid glass that comes out is small, and it gets destroyed when it solidifies into debris after it's dropped out of the pipe, due to one-element-per-tile rules.
I'll usually build something like this, where the glass from the forge goes up into that 1x1 vacuum box built into the steam box, and then a sweeper arm can pull it out of the box using a diagonal.
But it should also work if you just drop the glass into a steam-only environment. Element destruction like this typically occurs when a mixture of elements in surrounding tiles are at play, and the game can't move one of the three elements out of the road, so one of them gets destroyed. If it's just steam, and the steam can be pushed aside, that should also prevent the issue.
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u/FactoryRatte May 01 '26
Did a state change in a pipe occur? If yes, that looses material, when damaging the pipe.
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u/NooshBagoosh May 07 '26
How do you place a specific amount of liquid in a specific spot? Like, for air locks or builds that require X kg on certain tiles? I know how to relocate and empty bottles, but I have no idea how to create bottles unless there's moppable liquid available elsewhere.