WIP Ice-Sea layout

[rvr1982]

Greetings,

My first post on this forum, but i read you since several weeks, gathering useful information... 
I've spent some time planning my next Sea-Ice colony. I'm still experimenting with the game, and I feel like I need some advises on my layout.

I'll go with the rich explorer, probably cannibal for an easier start (yes, sorry ), but still randy rough. And a deadly freezing map, of course... I'll start with the little layout on the right of the pic. The main goal will be to find the perfect mate and expand till I reach the whole thing on the left side. No interest in building a big colony this time, it will be only for 2, + occasional prisoner/patient/food (empty room bottom left side)
I tried some Sea-Ice maps before, but I always ended up disappointed on some placements I did early on, reason why I'm planning the next one ahead... 

If you have any advises or critics about it... maybe about the battery setup and electricity in general... maybe the hydro farm is a little bit big for 2 ? there are probably plenty of things that are not optimal yet...



Thanks in advance for your help.

PS.: I was about to write "happy rimming", but as English is not my mother language, I decided to google it first...
I'll just say happy gaming.

[khun_poo]

I suggest that separate your battery into 2 groups will safe you from Zzzzt event. Just in case when Zzzzt happen, your first group of battery will drained, you can switch on your reserved battery just in time.

How about using Nutrient paste? It's safe your food by a lot margin.

Fire are no joke in sea ice since your steel wall can burn too. Place some fire foam popper can help.

Orbital trade and comm. console are your only communication and trading you have. You can make profit by sell those organ ahem... I mean scythe blade and get rich in no time.

By the way, nice layout! 

[Albion]

Some notes:

• scrap the solar panels. They are tempting but will give you close to no power on the poles especially in winter. During the summer they are decently effective but once winter hits you will be glad if they give you like 250W of power. Better invest in more wind turbines combined with more batteries or build a chemfuel generator. You'll need to supply it with chemfuel which will be difficult but it also adds heat which is an upside.
• I also recommend having 1 or 2 backup batteries behind a switch. If a Zzzzzzt event hits and all your power is gone the plants in the hydroponics will die and you will starve.
• the double door from the cooking area to the outside is a nice touch but usually doesn't conserve heat too much. I personally stick to a single door. Check out this awesome video that explores how temperature work and how you can keep your room warm: https://youtu.be/RtPwe5hDGBM
• instead of having a free space between the hydroponics just put in more hydroponics. It's essentially wasted space because your colonists can walk over hydroponics. They will be slowed down but being able to grow more food will make it worth it. Also: consider growing some cotton to get cloth. It's quite useful.
• lastly just a general tip: check out the thread for the community sea ice challenge found in this forum. Maybe you'll find some more interesting lessons learned there.

[BugPowderDust]

Very helpful thread- never tried SeaIce before, I'll give it a go!

[Canute]

Since Chemfuel generators are now at vanilia, this should be your main powersource.
Special bonus they generate heat too, very usefuel at your cold biome, lower the power need to heat the base.

But you need to research refinery first to create chemfuel out of veggies you can grow with hydroponics.

[dkmoo]

I played sea ice ALOT and usually add perma coldsnap to it. Being efficient in every aspect of the game can go a long way with survival. Tips:

1) Heating: the game's heating mechanism is a function of the size of the room and heat loss is a function of wall thickness and # of edges facing the outside. So, you'll want to have room shapes that gives the maximum area with the fewest "edges" facing outside. In game terms, this mean you should use squares for all your rooms to achieve heating efficiency.
2) Building material: You can start with whatever material u have to make walls for those temp shelters but eventually I prefer to have all walls be made of stone b/c fire is extremely dangerous if it burns down a wall and outside temperature is -100C. Your access to stone is likely going to be limited, so room shapes that achieve "material efficiency" is circular. This isn't always compatible with point 1) b/c in game to make a circle you have to make diagonals which counts as 2 "edges" facing the outside per tile. So this will be a balancing act between "heating efficiency" vs "material efficiency". You can play around with the "ovalness" of your square to find a happy medium. I'm currently using a "square-ish" circle for my base that I found to be fairly good heating-wise but costs less stone to build for the same area.
3) The corner wall tiles (ie, the 2x2 next to your wind turbine in the lower right corner) serves no purpose as far as heating is concerned so consider removing them. If you applied this to your whole base (including the inside corners, you can save roughly 200 building blocks. The only purpose corner tiles serve that i can think of is a) ascetics, 2) defence - raiders have to dig thru 3 tiles to get into your room if they dig the corners, vs 1 if you remove them.
4) Power efficiency - solar lamp will be one of your biggest power draws, so consider fitting as many hydroponics as you can for 1 lamp. In game terms this means building a circular room the exact same area as the reach of the lamp. this can fit up to 24 hydroponics with 4 empty squares for heaters. If you need more heaters you can always add additional tiles by changing the room shape. I know you only have 2 colonists so the number you have now is enough for food - but you still want the option to build more for future for things like growing herbs, or cotton/psychoid to make $$ with.
5) your current growing area has single walls in the north and south - this will give u pretty significant heat loss
6) consider making a separate dining/rec room that's large enough to fit at least the table, a few different sources of joy, and maybe room a for a couple of statues. the mood buff from impressive dining/rec room in late games can be very useful.
7) need a lot more batteries connected behind switches - esp later for defense -i'm assuming you'll need a lot of turrets sicne you are keeping only 2 pawns.
i never use crematorium - I usually either get a psycho/cannible and butcher all the corpse for $$ (selling meat and humanskin bowler hats). If you don't have one of those, just have corps zone outside and throw a molotov in there.
9) how will you trade? caravans will be few in between due to temperature and i don't see orbital. Trading will be your main source of getting resources.
10) your starting set up - not sure regular lamp can give enough light for the hydro. Also don't see a renewable resource generation method (either orbital, or smelter for slag).

I have a pretty good mid-game sea ice colony now with 6 pawns. I can share my screen after i get back home from work.

[Renegrade]

I played sea ice ALOT and usually add perma coldsnap to it.

Oooh, that's a good idea for making it colder.  Wish I'd thought of that before starting my current save.  I'm going to see if I can't back-edit a perma coldsnap to it. Thanks

[BugPowderDust]

Since Chemfuel generators are now at vanilia, this should be your main powersource.
Special bonus they generate heat too, very usefuel at your cold biome, lower the power need to heat the base.

But you need to research refinery first to create chemfuel out of veggies you can grow with hydroponics.

Would milking a Boomalope be able to keep up with demand a chemfuel generator has for fuel? Obviously, you'd have to start with one as a 'pet' (if this is even possible)

[rvr1982]

Thanks so much for all your constructive replies, i received much more feedback than I was expecting !
As soon as I have a few hours, i'll focus on replacing solar with wind, improving my battery setup, and adding an orbital trade beakon + communication console. I'll stay away from the nutritient paste for now. The overall Layout will probably change a lot, I'll pay attention to all your comments about wall insulation, etc...
Maybe I'll send a new screenshot when that's all done...

Thanks again !

[SpaceDorf]

Good general question - how many Boomalopes can sustain a generator.

As counter calculation - what is the difference in required nutrition between a boomalope and a refinery.

[Sola]

Solars are bad.  Wind generators are good.  Winter means no power for you.

Too many doors at your hydroponics basins.

Do not have your door to the greenhouse occupying a space that either the pawn or a drop could hold the door open from (diagonally touching the basin), else you might lose your things to cold.

[tyriaelsoban]

Assuming youre using cell-cell exact scales, your pawn can lump it with a 5x5 bedroom, even a 4x4 is being far, far too generous imo ... ive slept in smaller rooms myself with just about enough room for a single bed, desk & chair. i really dont see why rimworld pawns have to be so special in that regard; "just be happy you have a roof over your head, ya little shit!" (this is also the core reason i play with realistic rooms)

Solar is worthless anywhere other than temperate zones and if you insist on using solar panels though - put them behind a wall or you will find that theyre repeatedly victimized by raiders and are also rather fragile, but the space they take up could be turned into storage rooms or hell, even bedrooms for any lucky takers who want to join you.

The sandbag walls are a bad idea, i find its actually better to indent a door in the wall with an empty square infront of it and then sandbag over the doorway there, it has the effect of forcing the AI to stop for a moment and reconsider its plans when you draw your guys back inside, hypothermia progession, yay!
Dont forget to roof over those fire ports - it adds a defense modifier to your guys as theyre standing in darkness, not only that; but both walls on left and right, plus the sandbags AND the door (door did in A17 at least, havnt checked in B18, but it still seems to work so far on a casual observation) add to the chance for a shot to miss your guy and plunk into either of those objects.

- S S S -
W W - W W
W W D W W

Where S = sandbag, W = wall, - = empty space and D = door.

If you want to use your greenhouse as a main entrance and exit area, you will need to move the doors one square back and airlock your external doors. nothing fancy, just a door forced open behind your main door, (not shitting you here it works, ask w4stedspace) for some reason or other, a door slows heat/cold flow even if its open... i should be noted that even if the door is forced open though, your pawn will still slow as they pass through it, but only slightly.

Even with the changes to growth times, if youre using rice (which youre crazy not to in hydroponics bays, 230%? growth speed and all) in A16 i had a colony in a seasonal -120-180*C mountain range running 3 people on 6 hydroponics basins growing rice, had two more growing meds, i think the total space i had to play with here was 12x12 until i moved them into a compound it took them a whole year to build, axe cooking your meals and replace that with a paste dispenser and not only do you save materials, but power and "man hours" so to speak - which is essentially time your guy(s) can spend elsewhere, -4 mood is a small price to pay just keep the joy bar topped up.

Crematorium is a waste of materials and power - strip the bodies, sell the gear (or dont and just leave it all to rot)... and do what i did here; Roof is optional, alternately, just 'tov them and watch it all burn.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838869513 - one of my early attempts at the sea ice challenge in A16, got bored with all the non-stop-thumb-up-my-ass gameplay and lack of action.