Oxygen Not Included - Tutorial Bites - Strip-Mining

[@mario6826]

There's one thing I would add in: get higher priorities on ladders than diggin. For example: ladders on 7 and diggin 5. In theory dupes will first do their scafholding, then dig. Otherwise they sometimes just stuck somewhere just because they dig underneath them without bulding a ladder first - dupes... am I right?

[@TheKlink]

i wish there was a way of writing "jobs" where you specify each step in ever higher numbers. should deffo be a researchable.

[@02JAN1970]

@@TheKlink You can manage this pretty easily with job and dupe priorities. If your dupes have specific jobs/roles (Digger/Builder or Rancher/Farmer) then the preparation tasks and execution tasks are done in order at the same time. To dictate which place a specific job should happen in order, you use priorities from seven to four - and also have the proximity box checked.

[@tp1558]

Dupes will always find a way to kill themselves.

[@James-oj6ck]

So right indeed.

[@nomadsoul5645]

Mi-Ma always get herself in trouble

[@02JAN1970]

I agree with nearly all you said. My preference is to space the ladders six tiles apart rather than seven. This keeps the dupes on the ladders and not hopping from one to the next. It is also an even number, so after a few levels a six ladder pattern comes back into line with a four ladder pattern. I also make the ladders a priority 6 and the digging a priority 4. This is strip mining, so not as important as building a needed thing. Then the top row of digging is made priority 5, which I update as the dupes get through it. This keeps the dupes focused on digging down and not helter skelter. I also build full ladder runs, vice every other tile, this seems to have the dupes moving faster than hopping from ladder to ladder. One of the biggest strengths to this style of building is also one of its drawbacks. The things the dupes are carrying will fall to the bottom of the dig. So a dupe transporting an egg (like a vole egg) or slime or bleach stone will drop it when their schedule changes from work to something else - and the chances are you won't notice the item in the debris pile at the bottom of the map.

[@kaishang6406]

4 tiles apart have period of 5, 6 tiles apart have period of 7. these are co primes so they would meet back after 35 tiles which is not in the nice way you described.

[@02JAN1970]

@@kaishang6406 It works fine for me. Thank you for replying to a two year old post.

[@SigmaMan1448]

@@02JAN1970 asweftfg

[@Scott_Burton]

What I learned from this is the dupe's reach downward. I've seen it many times, but never heard anyone mention that it is 3 down. Since I knew they could reach 4 up, I typically just went with the 4 high intervals, occasionally 5 high if I knew with confidence "I'll need a 5 high room here later" but it's easy enough to convert a 4 high scaffolding to a 5 high room when I get to the actual build.

[@mrjblacc85]

A problem I tend to have with strip mining is that dupes get stuck because they start mining out places down the line which will then no longer have access to get back to base. I usually give the ladders +1 priority over mining the blocks, which is somewhat helpful. The problem is off course much less significant when using atmo suits or when you give the strip mining above average priority.

[@lordxabbu]

Try using a ladder height of 3 between levels as this give the dupes the ability to build the ladders for the next floor up and greatly reduces the chance of them getting stuck when strip mining. Another trick I use is to only do one row at a time.

[@naefaren3515]

@@lordxabbu or you could build ladders every-other-block and leave the gaps unmined, this way even if someone digs out a spot to place a ladder but doesn't build it, the dupes can still cross. Once everything is done those blocks caan be easily mined out at the end and boom, you're done!

[@ofo2167]

this is really the best channel ive came across in awhile

[@naefaren3515]

Another tip, I saw someone mentioning giving ladders higher priorities. If you don't mind the tediousness and repetitivenous, then you can just do ladders every other tile and leave the ones in between without dig commands. This means if a dupe who isn't going to build ladder comes by and digs the spot out, they can still get across with the solid tiles on every other block. This also allows you to set the ladder priorities lower if the strip mining isn't something you're really concerned about. You can have your builders focus more on main tasks earlygame while your digging dupes can stay busy!

[@naefaren3515]

if you're wanting to queue up a MASSIVE dig command, then you can just place ladders horizontally in your lines, then come back vertically with the cancel tool every other block, then drop your dig commands in the 4 block gaps in between. It's a little bit of up-front effort, but in the long run, it saves your diggers from getting stuck. If you have gaps in terrain however, definitely set the ladders through there to a higher priority so that when they get uncovered, they instantly get taken care of. Just in case!

[@Mgis90]

Another great way to dig would be the usage of LEAVING TILES AS A CHESS HORSE would move on a chessboard. Very handy with this comes a mod for blueprints, with which you can blieprint even dig orders alone. Let me know if you need more explanation. (Imagine the horses moving only upwards for example. These are the tiles you omit digging)

[@BouncingTribbles]

One thing you didn't talk about is gathering the resources. Shipping is it's own topic, I know, but I always build couple solid floors at levels that I know I want resources so all the debris above will land on them. That way it's that much closer to my base/refinery or wherever I'm building. Like if I was strip mining the connected asteroid I would definitely have a solid floor across the whole asteroid at the teleporters level. Though I guess if you're planning on having a bucket brigade you'd only need one if all the debris is at the bottom.

[@viralgecko]

Possibly a stupid question but if you dig to high / open up to the vacuum of space does it "Space" your colony as it were letting all gasses escape unless you have it set for airlocks etc. or do the gasses remain in their layers and sort of a here be dragons type thing where above X tile space begins?

[@GCFungus]

Yes and no. If gases or are open to space exposed tiles then they will be deleted, so it will suck the gases out of your base unless it's locked off. But the effect is relatively slow so it's not like the gas will all disappear instantly, but I would advise closing your planetoids at the top if you care about breathability.

[@58209]

great video. my only aversion to strip mining is that i play on a very low-end computer, so all the debris, gasses, and ladders significantly hurts performance for me.

[@GCFungus]

That's interesting as my understanding was that the removing the material and reducing it to gas should be less intensive on computer resources, but maybe that isn't the case.

[@PochoLT]

you dont need any calculations for block of materials, however if you mine any block, gases have additional place to move to and that really hurts performance, if you leave ladders everywhere, dupes have 100s more ways to go to the same spot, which hurts performance too. If you leave debris everywhere, game has to make calculations to determine which debris pile is the closest, sweeping debris to a single place helps with that.

[@lordxabbu]

an interesting thing about using the ladders to dig out is that it does half the sweeping for you. as you dig if there are only ladders beneath you then the debris will fall all the way down to the bottom of the map. thus all your vertical sweeping is done for you. I use that when building my base even just to help with decor. dupes don't like a bunch of stuff on the ground for them to trip over. Another trick to help with performance would be to vacuum out sections so that either no gasses or just a single gas in in that area. The most calculations are done for gas interactions and how they need to trade places. Only one gas no need to trade places. 🙂

[@mario6826]

that's true, what I do is after strip, try to leave only one type of gas in large area, like oxygen or co2. Then gases wont mix all the time and hurt framerate.

[@GhostStyle007]

That would have been great if you also covered how you deal with the tones of resources falling to the bottom of your base

[@GCFungus]

There are 2 options really, the first being to simply leave it and just use it as required (which is what I do). Or you could purposefully sweep it, either with dupes or autosweepers.

[@jlycurgus3244]

Hey! Thanks again for all the tips on my stream today! Greatly appreciated! Also, the tutorials are great. Good work! I bet the editing is a nightmare! Lol!

[@OneOfDisease]

I know this is an old video but what do you prefer to do with various vents and volcanos? I am thinking that most vents and metal volcanos you just let spill out? And only a few of the "good" volcanos you attempt to tame?

[@GCFungus]

I still read all my comments, and to answer your question, I usually leave them capped off until I deal with them. Spilling them out onto the map sounds a bit messy or dangerous.

[@konradhenkel5971]

You never really mentioned picking up all the resources as that would take absolutely ages, for me with one of my bases i made the initial base skinny just so i could strip mine the map and then use auto sweepers to pick up everything, this took.. at least 50 cycles of constant auto sweeping, but only on one shipping lane

[@kenz2261]

i know i am very late to the video but i was thinking if you just dug everything out like that what did you do with water/polluted water/all the other liquid did you let them mix ?

[@GCFungus]

That's really up to you, but there are generally two approaches. Either first pump them into the correct storage (infinite or not) before digging everything out. Or simply dig and then pump ans filter liquids from the bottom of the map.

[@HeBe3y4uu69]

What about Marsh bioms? I'm usually close them with water lock and go there only with suits cause of germs. Is there guide how to deal with them? Maybe I shouldn't care about them at all?

[@GCFungus]

My go to is always atmo suits if you can get them, as that will protect dupes from any slimelung. If you don't have that, then you can carefully go through with deodorizers to remove the polluted oxygen that slimelung germs live on. Alternatively you can just barrel right through it! Slimelung isn't really that big a problem, more a minor annoyance. I would always try and minimize the risks, but not let it stop me if I didn't have a choice.

[@MacManChomp]

Quick note: you can build your ladders 6 vertical tiles apart to save on both time and pathfinding complexity

[@Lorens4444]

There is only one problem with strip-mining - your own PC. The more map you reveal and the more tiles you occupy with gases, the more the game has to calculate. It can start lagging, you might even get to the point when the game would freeze for large quantities of time, and you'll have to abandon hours of work. According to Steam reviews, some players abandoned the game because of it. The alternative is to strip-mine the starting biome, get atmosuits, then build a long ladder on the outside of your base from top to bottom of the asteroid, giving you access to oil and space. Afterward start looking for some sort of water geiser. From my experience, the sea biome has a high chance of having one. If you are confident in your own PC, then go for strip-mining. If lag is an issue for you, you might try to conserve space, you'd be surprised how little resources do you actually need to make a stable self-sustaining base. XD

[@GCFungus]

Definitely true, it certainly taxes older systems. Of course it's not an option for everyone, but the newer hardware does run the game well. I find that the number of dupes is far more important than the area stripmined though, but they work together to make long pathing.

[@Jayle_YT]

I recommend everyone making the ladders has higher prioritization than digging. This will make them less likely get stuck at a random area

[@WormiT]

How do you deal with the lack of oxygen as they get further down the map around unbreathable gases?

[@GCFungus]

My general advice would be to use atmo suits when exploring as it makes everything to much easier. If you aren't using suits then you will need to supply oxygen to where you want to explore to. Oxygen diffusers can be a temporary stop-gap, or you can use a SPOM output to fill areas.

[@nobreznncray6588]

I have a few questions that I would be grateful if someone could answer :) 1 - judging by the distance that the dupes need to walk, along with the fact that they are wearing atmosuits, wouldn't this harm the excavation efficiency? What could I do to make getting around faster?? 2 - how do I deal with the chaos caused by slime lung?? I generally do this type of digging on a smaller scale, little by little, which makes dealing with these germs easier. 3 - what do I do to deal with the heat in the lower area, where is the crude oil along with the fossils? 4 - As for liquids, is it more advantageous to let them all mix and then create a liquid separator? I still haven't gained enough experience to get past the beginning of the mid-game (I can usually ruin my colony between 200-300 cycles :p) and most of the quality Oxygen Not Included media content isn't available in my language (Brazilian Portuguese), so it's a little difficult to find out about the game.

[@GCFungus]

1. The suits will slow down dupes a little, but they will quickly increase their athletics skill to the point where it's not a big deal, and it's still the easiest way to protect dupes too. If you want to make sure they can get around quickly then make sure you have direct routes, with at least a ladder and pole and transit tubes if you really want to go fast. 2. Atmo suits will completely avoid slimelung, otherwise you need to put the slime in a liquid so it doesn't offgas, and use deodorizers to clean polluted oxygen into normal oxygen so the germs die off. 3. Again if you have atmo suits you don't need to worry about the heat, and it's hard to get dupes in there without scalding otherwise. In terms of overall heat, it shouldn't be a problem in itself, so you don't really need to cool things down there, just keep the dupes' living areas away from the very hot things. When using machines down there, use gold amalgam or steel if you have it. 4. You can take either approach, but at some point you will probably want dedicated liquid storages for each type. You can do that as you go along, or mix them for convenience and sort them later. In general, you want to put your living areas in a nice closed base with insulated tiles, where you can control the oxygen levels and temperatures closely. Then the rest of the map is only accessed with suit docks that makes things easier. Most of my Tutoial Bites have Portuguese subtitles, but I haven't managed to add them to the earlier ones yet so I will try and get that done in the near future!

[@MyNameIsHan]

Polluted oxygen really messes me up. Is there any way to stop them from spreading when strip mining or should I just avoid polluted oxygen area?

[@GCFungus]

Polluted oxygen by itself isn't a huge issue, but if it has slimelung then I can see how that would be annoying. My number 1 advice would always be to have atmo suits if you can get them, since they solve so many problems. If you don' have suits then I would personally just put a load of deodorizers to convert the PO2 into normal oxygen. You'll need quite a lot to deal with a stripmined area, but just space them about and it should all disappear after a number of cycles.

[@omarabdelaty634]

is it a good idea to build and deconstruct robo miners

[@GCFungus]

For stripmining, I don't believe using robo miners is quicker than simply digging with dupes. Having to build the wires (and get the mateiral) and the miner itself generally takes more time - especially once you start opening the map a lot.

[@omarabdelaty634]

@@GCFungus actually I was thinking of using a manual generator and a battery. I don't like to extend the wires everywhere, but i have the feeling it won't be too efficient like you say

[@DLicht0]

Often good, but really depends a bit how many dups you have, how skilled they are at digging, and especially how far the location is from your main base and how hostile it is. I like using robo-miners, but primarily when extending further from the base, and especially into not very breathable areas when you don't have suits well established (or skills for your dups to move quickly enough in them). For something in a breathable environment near your base, regular dup labor will likely be better (though I think it's still fine to set up a robo-miner for the fun of it!)

[@davidvarga2916]

Strip all then all sweep with bots at the bottom.

[@plusabove6671]

What is the problem with leaving one tile between ladders?

[@GCFungus]

So I've run an experiment, and for horizontal placement, dupes move at about 90% of the speed as they jump over the gaps. For vertical ladders, they move at around 50% speed so you could probably do this horizontally but not vertically. The other reason why I might prefer to not skip is to make it easier to build with a click-drag, but the blueprints mod would make this much easier.

[@plusabove6671]

@@GCFungus would this only be useful if your lacking of materials or like early game?

[@GCFungus]

To be honest I haven't come across a scenario where you would be lacking materials in the early game for this. Commonly though I would half build for temporary access, or if heavily restricted in materials, for example when landing on a new planetoid. Strip-mining gives so many resources that means making full ladders is no issue.

[@ragnaroket1285]

the only problem i have with strip mining is lag.

[@GCFungus]

Yeah the game incrementally struggles with the number of dupes, and the possible pathing. From my experience though it does run fairly well with not too many dupes on somewhat recent hardware. I think laptops are struggling a lot more though.

[@tsukerk1]

i need a guide about digging out large SLIME bioms

[@GCFungus]

If you have atmo suits (tutorial bite coming soon) then it's no different to anywhere else. If not, then my advice would be to dig through anyway, and it may help to have a doctor and medical packs to hand - I covered this is the tutorial bite for germs and diseases.

[@lordxabbu]

Slimelung has been SUPER nurfed since the game first came out. It has gone from a game ender to a minor inconveniences for a couple of cycles. It is also dies off in regular O2. if after cleaning the area out you put in a bunch of deodorizers and get rid of all the polluted O2 then the germs will just go away. If you wan to limit the amount of germs you have to deal with here is a trick I use. Start at the bottom of the biome and create a pool of water as wide as what you want to dig out. Make sure the water is 1 tile deep. this will prevent anything in the water from off gassing. then slowly dig up. Make sure that when you give a dig command for a slime chunk that there is nothing below it. that way when the slime is dug out it will fall into the water and not off gas. No off gas = no germs :-)

[@naefaren3515]

What I like to do, is start from the top and stick a door to block gas flow, of course it's not going to be perfect as the dupes come in and out, but from there you can place deodorizers on top of airflow tiles as you dig down. You can do this without atmo-suits as well, as long as it's not too hot/cold. I've found slimelucky and yuckylungs to really not be that bad. especially once you get deodorizers down. I like you make a place t ostore slimes as well in the biome so I'll place a couple storage bins in a little pool of water, set them to sweep only and for anything that off-gasses. That way I can sweep up any slime that doesnt fall into the polluted water. As you dig down and add deodorizers, you'll turn all the polluted O2 into regular O2 which will kill off all slimelung within a few cycles. To clean up after the fact, you can either drain or pump the polluted water somewhere and sweep everything else up. Good luck on your future endeavors!

[@coconutcute712]

SLIMELUNG GERMS IN THE CHLORINE??? HOWWWWW

[@GCFungus]

Slimelung germs can exist in any gas. It's true they die quite quickly in chlorine so they must have just been made or just mixed into that gas. That is what happens when you stripmine!

[@Bamfviola666]

just make sure the stupid dubes dont get stuck xD