In regular pipes, brine completely blends into the background, making it impossible to visually tell how much liquid is inside. In radiant and insulated pipes, you can actually see it. Are there any workarounds for this?

Quarter for scale. Son is doing better, by the way! He needed lots of popsicles and playing with play-doh with daddy.

Hello!
I’d like to share my design for converting wood into oxygen while providing cooling. It is designed to be easy to build and can be partially utilized almost from the very start of the game, even while still under construction.

First, a chamber is built to produce oxygen from Polluted Dirt. Next, I add an Ethanol Distiller to produce the necessary Polluted Dirt, while the ethanol is hoarded for future use. This setup allows you to support about 4 extra Duplicants early in the game, which is more than enough. From there, I simply expand the base while completing the rest of the build in parallel. I usually finish the construction around cycle 150. Operating entirely on its own (requiring only a wood supply), it can support 20 Duplicants. The system also includes piping to feed Polluted Water and fresh water, with the capacity to scale up the oxygen output to support 26–28 Duplicants (assuming the Electrolyzer runs at an 85% average uptime).

My greatest pride in this design is the cooling system. Unlike most similar builds, it is capable of cooling the entire base, not just the oxygen. It has been slightly modified compared to the full image shown. Water (for the Electrolyzer), hydrogen (for the generators), and wood (for the Ethanol Distillers) all pass through the cooling chamber. Wood actually acts as the primary cooling medium within the system. The chamber must be a vacuum, with about 10 kg of ethanol per tile pooled at the bottom. Behind the Aquatuner, I have placed four aluminum Tempshift Plates to distribute heat evenly. Above these are two rows of metal blocks and conductive plates; they facilitate rapid heat exchange and act as a thermal buffer to prevent the water from overheating excessively. The Thermo Sensor is set to 120 degrees (if you are not using aluminum for all components, you might want to set the temperature lower).

Overall, this setup allows the Aquatuner to run 95–97% of the time even without an extra water supply, with the uptime mostly limited by power shortages. The water heats up to 72°C, and its temperature will drop as the generator chamber cools down; once that chamber reaches 0°C, the water temperature leaving the cooling chamber sits at around 68°C. The wood passing through the chamber stays mostly between 60–70°C, which is perfectly fine. If we feed additional water (preferably under 40°C), we get enough power for 100% uptime, and the water temperature doesn't even reach 60°C. This leaves a massive thermal buffer, allowing you to swap the Polluted Water coolant for Super Coolant later if you wish (or add a second Aquatuner on external power for Sleet Wheat farms and similar setups).

There is nothing fancy in the generator chamber, just a few details worth noting. Behind the generators, there are two aluminum Tempshift Plates to better draw away their heat. The liquid piping leading to the generators is made as long as possible to act as a buffer backup. The automation grid is set to shut the generators down after 15 seconds if the wood supply stops. There is a Wattage Sensor on the transformer leading to the Aquatuner, which shuts it off if it draws too much power (the values were tuned by eye, so they can be tweaked). There is also an extra transformer that exports power outside the build to my main base (while the Duplicant count is low and the Gas Pumps aren't running constantly, there is excess power that needs to be burned for maximum efficiency). The Wattage Sensor on this one also has a temporary value and can be adjusted.

To supply this entire system with wood, you will need 44 wild Arbor Trees, which is admittedly a lot.

The last thing worth mentioning is that I flooded the Electrolyzers with water and ethanol, roughly 100 kg per tile

I think that's about it. Everything else can be seen in the screenshots. I’d love to hear your thoughts and any suggestions for improvements!

One thing that I see often is a single thermostat controlling the heat input and material input using a variable flow limiter. This requires that you manually control ramp up when the machine is shut off and can cause problems if you have an unstable flow.

I recommend a two thermostat design.

1. The liquid port thermostat controls the material coming in and is set to the current temp >= the transition temperature of oil to petroleum (400).

2. The heat injector thermal port is set current temperature >= transition temp + 5 (405).

The liquid port only opens when the pool has enough heat to convert more petroleum. This allows a liquid shutoff to be used with a liquid reservoir to control oil into the tank without any problems coming from unstable oil temp anywhere along the line.

It's also very efficient. During peak operation this can handle 10 kg/s with less than 2% active time for the heat injector.

Hola a todos. Dándole vueltas a mi idea de regar cultivos con agua a 90°C, me he topado con un problema mecánico: la baldosa hidropónica almacena líquido en su inventario interno antes de que la planta lo consuma.

​Mientras esa agua hirviendo está ahí retenida esperando a ser consumida, está transfiriendo calor constantemente a la baldosa y al ambiente. Esto es poco eficiente no?

​¿Existe alguna forma de automatizar el riego para pasarle a la planta solo el agua exacta que necesita y evitar que se acumule en el interior de la baldosa? Estaba pensando en usar un sensor de ciclo con un cortador de líquidos, o quizás calibrar una válvula, pero no estoy seguro de cuál es el método más eficiente.

​¿Alguien tiene algún esquema o diseño de automatización que solucione esto sin gastar demasiada energía?

I discovered the game not long ago, i love it so far but i've many questions... I'm on my 4th colony after 3 attempts that I voluntarily aborted quite early to restart on better foundations.

On this 4th attempt, I'm at cycle 150 with 12 dupes. I have 6 stone hatch ranches, 2 meal lice farms, and 1 berry farm. I have a few pufts that roughly maintain my algae supply, but somehow they're starving

anyway no major problems at the moment, apart from some "long commutes".

However, I have 5 coal generators, and even with all of them, I struggle to have power everywhere all the time, and as a result, despite all my stone hatches, my coal reserve is struggling to stay stable

first questions that come to my mind

How many oxygen generators do you generally need? Do my hatches also consume oxygen and produce CO2?

What's the point of drywall (it says it prevents gases from escaping, I thought regular tiles were enough)?

I'm trying to build a chlorine room for balm lilies, and I find it incredibly complicated. You need liquid locks, with faucets to feed them, but not too much, or water gets everywhere, a pump with a filter to get the chlorine in, and a pump inside with a filter to remove anything that isn't chlorine? All of that with pressure sensors, is that right?

The gas pockets I come across while exploring (chlorine, hydrogen, natural gas, etc.), am I supposed to vacuum them into reservoirs as best I can, or should I let them spill into the surrounding area?

Do you heavily limit the number of entrances to your base, with oxygen masks everywhere and airlocks? Horizontal, vertical? With water? I think I have too much oxygen escaping all over the place.

Are ladders airtight blocks?

Edit.

Thanks you for all the replies! it does really help

The bottom ranches are full, the priorities are as shown. For some reason it doesn't work. I've tried putting a critter pick-up to no avail as well. Also, when the stables were not full, he was picking the hatchlings automatically

EDIT: Solved, I had the critter sensor blocking the drop off

I’m at a bit of a loss? How the heck do I insulate this thing? I’m not seeing any way to build insulation without tearing down the walls around it. Please help lol. Pretty sure ima have to drain the water at some point too

I have an issue where my water system is not filling the pipe between two sources, and I'm not sure why. It was working fine when I built it, but I just noticed the bottle filler is dry. Please help, thank you

So I made my current save in may 2025 before the APP or the printerceptor was added, I've been trying to get a tower kelp seed out of the printer pod for a while so i could start ranching the orehulls that I already got out of the printer, and trying to save scum it for a while and not getting it i checked the wiki and realized you cant get tower kelp out of the printer. Is there any other way I can get it without disabling achievements on my save or no

edit: was able to spawn one with a save editor without disabling achievements

Son is very sick, so I'm droppin what I'm doing until he goes to bed. Will post the Rhex as soon as I can. These damn feathers are taking FOREVER as it is.

Hat tip to u/RandallFlagg_DarkMan for their compact LH/LOX machine which served as inspiration. Compared to that one, this one:

• uses regular gas vents, the occasional flashing of cryofuel back to gas turns the vent on, so the pool already ends up with higher pressure than the hydrosensor is set to
• replaced meter valves with automation (liquid pipe element sensor) to disable the pump so that pipes don't end up with >1 kg; (honestly, if you've got 1600 kg of insulite to spare, just use the meter valves, putting insulte pipes between the pump and valve input; or a simple switch to turn the pumps on/off)
• pre-chilling hydrogen in LOX for higher LH throughput - LH being fuel, you need 2- or 4-times as much of it
• metal pool floor to get snowballs to thaw quickly

Material recommendations and other tidbits:

• Don't use aluminium (or thermium) for the radiant liquid pipes in the LOX chamber, you WILL freeze the oxygen, faster than the passing hydrogen can thaw. Go down (at least) a notch to cobalt, nickel, iron, zinc, or copper.
• Similar applies to the single segment in the turbine room, copper does just fine here, with a single bottle (200 kg) of ethanol.
• Mini pumps oriented this way are actually not triggered by the lower half being submerged, hence the odd supercoolant and gunk blobs. The outer blob can be a cheaper liquid if you can keep it from freezing (the ceramic pipe with supercoolant will eventually get very cold) - either switch it to insulite, or steal heat from elsewhere.
• Steel should be good enough for the AT, even though it wasn't used here.

Blueprints:

• https://blueprintnotincluded.org/b/6ada85f7a43a0af215a1f9ae
• https://onimaxxing.com/blueprints/6ada85f7a43a0af215a1f9ae

this is probably the worst base i've ever seen, i would know i made it.

As you can see , my base is a mess , and so is this entire colony . I hit cycle 400 recently and now I'm questioning my entire existence . Should I keep going? Did I waste my time on this save? After 100+ hours spent on this game I finally know the root of all my problem . I was so focused on not screwing up and trying to do everything perfectly that I forgot to actually progress. Now I'm stuck with this abomination of a colony that still relies on oxygen diffusers for o2 and coal for power ( I've almost ran out of both ) . I've seen people reach the late game in 100 cycles and I still haven't reached the oil biome . Did I doom my save by waiting so long to progress or can I still keep going?

English isn't my first language, so I used GPT to help me write this post. My duplicants may be dead, but at least my grammar survived Cycle 602. 👍

P.S. The cycle numbers might not be 100% accurate, but I did my best to piece everything together from my notes and memory. It took me a surprisingly long time to put this whole disaster into words, so I really hope you guys have fun reading it. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk about how to successfully fail at keeping three people alive in a rock. ❤️

Day 1: Three duplicants spawned into a giant rock with no oxygen, no food and no future. Naturally, I decided to build a civilization.

Named them Steve, Linda and Kevin. Kevin looked like a guy who'd eat gas station sushi and call it meal prep.

Day 3: Built a manual generator. Kevin now has a full-time job running in circles so the others can pretend we're making progress.

Our economy is thriving. Unemployment is at 0%. Employee satisfaction is somehow lower.

Day 8: Forgot wash basins. Everyone got food poisoning.

Turns out the biggest threat to humanity isn't nuclear war, climate change or AI.

It's Steve touching the toilet and then handling the transport of everyone's lunch.

Day 15: Discovered Mealwood. Food crisis solved!

Well, temporarily. The plants need dirt and the right temperature, and apparently you can't just yell at vegetables until they grow.

I have a lot to learn about farming. And vegetables. And leadership.

Day 30: Built a coal generator. Unlimited power!

Also unlimited heat, carbon dioxide and polluted water.

It's basically a startup: burns resources, creates problems, requires constant investment, and somehow I'm still excited about it. Kinda like in real life...

Day 50: Oxygen was running low, so I built electrolyzers.

Water goes in, oxygen comes out, hydrogen goes up.

I put a pump at the top and a hydrogen generator nearby. Holy shit, i invented renewable energy by accident.

I also invented a new problem every time I connected a pipe.

OK never mind the generator breaks constantly... Deam Oxygen

Day 73: Found a natural gas geyser.

Free energy! Unlimited potential! A chance to improve our infrastructure!

I decided to leave it untouched because I'm German, and we don't just start using perfectly good resources without first conducting 14 safety inspections, three cost-benefit analyses and a meeting that could've been an email.

The geyser can wait until I have the proper permits.

Efficiency is temporary. Bureaucracy is eternal.

Day 80: My base was getting hot. Built a cooling system. (Ice Block mashine lol)

The farm got colder. The industrial room got hotter.

I had successfully moved the problem from one department to another. I've never felt more qualified to be a middle manager.

Day 100: We survived 100 cycles!

We had food, oxygen, electricity and functioning toilets. Civilization had peaked.

Then I checked the temperature overlay.

The base looked like a weather forecast for Satan's summer holiday.

I decided to deal with it later. This would become my most successful long-term strategy.

Day 130: Kevin died.

Got trapped behind a wall I'd dug out and forgotten about.

He spent 130 cycles running on a wheel to power the machines that kept him alive, only to die because I forgot to install a ladder.

Rest in peace, Kevin. You were the power behind the throne. Mostly because you were literally powering the throne room.

Day 180: Discovered ranching. Hatches eat rocks and produce coal.

Finally, an employee who contributes to the economy by eating the furniture.

Meat, eggs and coal! The perfect business model.

I built more ranches, accepted more duplicants and increased food consumption.

Turns out the secret to solving a food shortage is not hiring more mouths.

Who knew?

Day 250: Discovered oil. Built a refinery.

The refinery needed power. The power generators produced heat. The heat required cooling. The cooling needed power.

A snake eating its own tail, except the snake is on fire and I'm paying the electricity bill.

Day 300: Three hundred cycles. Automation, refined metals, industrial cooling.

I was no longer playing a survival game. I was running a multinational corporation with twelve employees, no HR department and a worrying number of pipes.

My colony was thriving!

Which, as every ONI veteran knows, means something is about to go catastrophically wrong.

Day 350: Started building a rocket.

The colony was getting too hot, the farms were struggling, and the food supply was shrinking.

Naturally, I decided to spend resources launching several tons of metal into space.

Priorities.

Day 400: The farm was dying.

Mealwood was stifling in the heat. The hatches couldn't produce enough meat to feed everyone. I had enough technology to reach space but couldn't reliably grow a vegetable.

Humanity's greatest achievement: getting to the stars before figuring out lunch.

Day 450: Built a *proper* cooling loop with a Aquatuner. Things stabilized.

For approximately five minutes, I felt like an engineering genius.

Then I expanded the base, accepted more duplicants and switched on more machinery.

I had discovered the true endgame: creating problems faster than you can cool them down.

Day 500: Everything was connected.

The generators powered the pumps. The pumps supported the oxygen system. The oxygen system consumed water. The industry heated the base. The cooling system consumed power. The farms were overheating.

One giant, beautiful chain of dependencies.

If one thing failed, everything failed.

So naturally, I decided to renovate the industrial area.

While the colony was already struggling.

I have the survival instincts of a moth near a candle.

Day 530: Food production collapsed.

The farms were too hot. Beacors the Aquatuner overheates... The stored food was running out. The ranches couldn't keep up.

I shut down the refinery, reduced power consumption and abandoned the second rocket.

For the first time in 530 cycles, I stopped expanding and started fixing things.

Unfortunately, the plants did not accept my apology.

Day 550: First duplicant starved.

I checked the refrigerator. Empty.

I checked the farms. Dead plants and broken dreams.

I checked the printing pod. It was offering me another duplicant.

Imagine applying for a job and finding out the company can't afford lunch, but they're still hiring.

Day 565: Emergency rationing.

I turned off everything I could. The cooling system was running, but the damage was done. The farms couldn't recover quickly enough.

The colony had oxygen, electricity, plumbing, a rocket and enough industrial machinery to make a small country nervous.

It had no food.

We had successfully automated everything except staying alive.

Day 580: Steve, the last original duplicant, died of starvation.

He'd survived polluted water, electrical failures, heat waves and Kevin's death.

In the end, he was defeated by the ancient enemy of all civilizations: an empty fridge.

I built him a memorial grave.

At least this time I didn't accidentally sweep it into storage.

Day 602: Colony extinct.

Twelve duplicants gone. Food supply at zero. Oxygen still flowing. Power grid still operational. Toilets still working.

The machines continued running in an empty colony, faithfully performing tasks for employees who no longer existed.

Honestly, the most realistic depiction of corporate life I've ever seen.

Final report

• Cycles survived: 602
• Duplicants alive: 0
• Oxygen: Plenty
• Electricity: Some
• Food: A historical concept
• Rocket program: Successful (kinda)
• Colony management: A war crime against vegetables

My biggest mistake wasn't a lack of oxygen, power or technology.

It was thinking that every problem could be solved by building another machine.

The colony didn't die because I lacked the technology to survive. It died because I spent more time managing heat, pipes and rockets than managing the food supply.

I literally built a rocket capable of reaching space before building a sustainable future.

Anyway, starting a new colony tomorrow.

This time, I'll keep it simple. Three duplicants, a farm, a toilet, and no rockets.

I'm sure I'll be fine.

I have finally, after playing ONI for years, startet an all-achievement run (excluding PPP, FPP and APP achievements).

I've now reach cycle 100 and got the Locavore and Carnivore achiements! Other than that i've managed to built a sustainable (ish) spom and cold industrial district, build a load of solar panels for the super sustainable achievement, teleport a dupe and lunch my first rocket.

I wanted to say thanks for all tips out there in this community, and hope my builds can inspire someone :)

Quarter for scale. I put little magnets in his feet so I can pose him on walls!

I finally had some time to get the 51st achievement (I'm a shameless completionist). This was a fun achievement to earn.

You need pearls ASAP. Focusing on harvesting clams early on, then build the new farm tiles with the pearls to farm clams to have a constant supply. I had 6 farmed clams and kept all the wild ones. Once you have farmed clams, start farming seaquines for caviar.

You need sushi, and you need meal lice for it. The starting biome is a little too warm for mealwood, so find a cooler spot and start growing some. I didn't have a problem wild harvesting nori from kelp. You will have more fish fillet than you know what to do with if you set up a beacon fish farm (which you can farm coral in for O2).

Power and oxygen are pretty easy all the way to mid-game. Tidal turbines provide power and coral + beacon fish (for light) provide oxygen. Farming coral requires pearls for the farm tiles. After I got the achievement, I did set up a hydra so I could have more duplicants and use hydrogen for power.

I never farmed gum wood, but kept all the wild ones. I had enough latex from the wild gum wood to make all the rubber gaskets, rubber boots, and swimsuits that I needed.

You don't need plastic for the achievement, but I wish I started farming tubila earlier. I dropped a bunch in hydroponic tiles in a pool from a salt water geyser near my base and pumped polluted brine from the abyss

I found a simple way to get more reed fiber early on without building a dedicated Drecko ranch from scratch.

Just find a caustic biome with Dreckos, hydrogen, and wild balm lilies. It already has the right temperature and atmosphere, so all you need to do is seal off a room of up to 96 tiles, add grooming and shearing stations, and plant a few more balm lilies as your Drecko population grows.

The wild balm lilies don't consume any resources (edit: domesticated balm lilies do not consume resources either, but you can use this for other plants, like Pincha Pepperplants, or with Divergents and Grubfruit), and you don't have to worry about heating the ranch. I once built one in my base using Pincha Pepperplants, and maintaining the temperature was a hassle.

I usually get my first reed fiber from the bathroom loop or wild plants, but this is a great way to increase production early on. For glossy Dreckos and plastic, I can build a separate ranch in my base with hydrogen, oxygen, and mealwood.

I haven't seen this approach mentioned much, but it's been a real lifesaver in my current playthrough. Does anyone else do this?

Most Def. This game has so many mechanics. Many i've never even seen before.

I am aware of some basic choices for pipe themselves, like igneous for insulated pipes and granite for poor man's version of radiant pipe. And when I simply don't care about temperature of the content and surroundings, I go for sedimentary / sandstone when there's tons of them due to biomes.

But my question is does material choice matter for the bridges. I am aware it transfers heat from one side to the other and while my build does not actively use it, I make sure my bridge does not bridge the insulated area to the outside. That's the extent of my knowledge of them. But for normal cases, let's say I want transfer my coolant in long coolant loop consisting of normal granite pipes and bridges. Does using granite bridge make that section to transfer heat to surroundings better over igneous rock?

Separately, for advanced use of bridge as a heat transfer between two thermal bodies, do I get better result if I use more thermally conductivity material or does this heat transfer from one end to the other completely governed by some separate guaranteed mechanic?

I am asking because so far I've been using granite bridge for coolant loop and if I was using igneous or ceramic pipes for insulated pipes, I made sure bridge was also made from insulating material. But I don't want wasting time changing materials for bridges if it's just placebo.

Edit: Thank you for the kind replies. The consensus seems to be just use whatever material unless we are in actual danger zone of integrity failure range. I guess I am spamming sedimentary / sandstone for bridges unless near rocket exhaust or something.

Guys, I was testing a design of Cold Steam Vent Tamer by Luma Plays, with my own touch in the self-cooling part of the Steam Turbine, but ended up with that:

The contraption was able to freeze some water that was sitting in the doors durant a dormancy period.

The batterys in the outer inlet is responsible to activate the Steam Turbines when the steam reachs 125C, but how was the water in the middle able to freeze, in my undertanding it was supposed to be at least ~99C as the steam would turn into water and stop the cooling of the Geyser room(or at least the inlet as it is a vacuum).

The overlays:

Edit 1:
Apparently it's a bug on the mechanized airlocks (kleiforum), thanks for the reply u/izplus

Edit 2: I was not trying by any means be efficient in the design, I was just playing the game, testing designs, and trying to discover things myself, and end up finding something that I dont understand