A great game that scratches the Dwarf Fortress itch.
My issue with ONI is that I have a great time building a base for a while, and then invariably I fuck up containment somehow, leaking germs/pollution/CO2 everywhere, at which point it's too much of an ordeal to clean, so I abandon the base.
I'm sure this can be overcome with careful, wiki-led gameplay, but I haven't gotten over that hump yet.
I'm in the same position as your so I haven't gotten far. I think the key is to accept there will be some amount of deaths and also not to grow population too fast.
You don’t have to accept deaths! I’ve never lost a dupe yet and have beaten the game multiple times. There are skills to learn though so you can safely conquer each of the hazards presented by different biomes (heat, lack of oxygen, germs etc). I do like to look at other people’s builds etc to learn from them though. There’s a huge community around this game and people have built all kinds of crazy megaprojects (pumping magma, melting steel and regolith, boiling glass to use the vapour for things etc) you can take inspiration from. Francis John is someone mentioned in another post or if you want really insane builds greezyhammer is great although he posts very infrequently.
One key thing that another poster has mentioned is taking it slow. Also learn to use vacuum and similar mechanisms to your advantage. If you look at other people’s advanced builds, they almost always start with a vacuum to control the environment and build from there.
I have 1,000+ hours in ONI. IMO the game is more fun if you use the wiki sparingly, if ever; part of the fun is overcoming whatever sunk you last time.
Here's a few tips:
1) Don't feel pressured to grow fast. I have beat the base game and come pretty close to beating the expansion (stopped only by laziness) with no more than 12 dups. You can get really far on just 3-5. Taking too many dups early is like taking VC money, now you've got an aggressive ramp and a time limit.
2) Don't pick up dup skills too fast. All you really need at the start is a digger and a researcher.
3) Don't do advanced research too fast. Pick & choose what you need. Advanced research uses a lot of water, which you might need for electrolysis (oxygen).
4) Gas stratification is your friend.
5) Most germs die off (slowly) in pure water & pure oxygen.
6) Atmospheric chlorine can interact with stuff in pipes.
7) Rock has a lot of thermal mass if you don't dig it out.
8) Go exploring around the map! Go to the edges and see what you find :)
I have played so much of this game! Very fun. If you’re curious I recommend Francis John on YouTube for tutorials and fun playthroughs.
An interesting aspect of this game is that the most useful player created mechanisms seem to come from exploiting the edges of the physics simulation, the parts where the simulation simplifies real physics. I’m sure there’s some interesting philosophy of science to explore in that idea.
Same small personal nitpick I have with games like these, like cult of the lamb and timberborn: I could not care less for decorations and the mechanic of needing decor is sterile and put there only as an additional layer of expense and complication.
The decor system is something you can safely ignore for all the game. The worst you can get is a -1 Morale malus, which is laughably low and doesn't have any consequence (as long as you keep Dupes Morale high enough, which is easy: don't overskill them).
Well this is the one I point to when someone claims that Dwarf Fortress is hard - that is simply not true - ONI is actually hard.
DF has many systems that generate cool history and artifact/art descriptions but have tiny impact on actual game. As long as you place few farm plots, you can produce enough food to buy out whole caravans. The game balance simply was never the focus. Same for performance of large forts.
DF now may not be hard but five/ten years ago it was very hard to prevent or stop tantrum sprials, your first twenty or so fortresses had a very short shelf-life.
I'm going to respectfully disagree. ONI is not hard. At least the first asteroid with normal settings (called "Survival") is not hard.
What's hard is the steep difficulty curve when you are first picking up the game, especially if you play without outside resources. The game itself does a poor job at explaining what you are supposed to do and in which order, which means frequent restarts because you didn't anticipate something you didn't know about yet.
When you overcome that initial curve, the game is actually quite easy, though it can become a bit boring after a while because there is no random event to spice things up.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 11.6 ms ] threadMy issue with ONI is that I have a great time building a base for a while, and then invariably I fuck up containment somehow, leaking germs/pollution/CO2 everywhere, at which point it's too much of an ordeal to clean, so I abandon the base.
I'm sure this can be overcome with careful, wiki-led gameplay, but I haven't gotten over that hump yet.
One key thing that another poster has mentioned is taking it slow. Also learn to use vacuum and similar mechanisms to your advantage. If you look at other people’s advanced builds, they almost always start with a vacuum to control the environment and build from there.
Here's a few tips:
1) Don't feel pressured to grow fast. I have beat the base game and come pretty close to beating the expansion (stopped only by laziness) with no more than 12 dups. You can get really far on just 3-5. Taking too many dups early is like taking VC money, now you've got an aggressive ramp and a time limit.
2) Don't pick up dup skills too fast. All you really need at the start is a digger and a researcher.
3) Don't do advanced research too fast. Pick & choose what you need. Advanced research uses a lot of water, which you might need for electrolysis (oxygen).
4) Gas stratification is your friend.
5) Most germs die off (slowly) in pure water & pure oxygen.
6) Atmospheric chlorine can interact with stuff in pipes.
7) Rock has a lot of thermal mass if you don't dig it out.
8) Go exploring around the map! Go to the edges and see what you find :)
If you see 4 blocks of Neutronium, there's a geyser on it. Set an emergency-priority task on it, and it will reveal what it is.
Found a Natural Gas geyser? Awesome! Your energy problems are mostly solved!
An interesting aspect of this game is that the most useful player created mechanisms seem to come from exploiting the edges of the physics simulation, the parts where the simulation simplifies real physics. I’m sure there’s some interesting philosophy of science to explore in that idea.
DF has many systems that generate cool history and artifact/art descriptions but have tiny impact on actual game. As long as you place few farm plots, you can produce enough food to buy out whole caravans. The game balance simply was never the focus. Same for performance of large forts.
What's hard is the steep difficulty curve when you are first picking up the game, especially if you play without outside resources. The game itself does a poor job at explaining what you are supposed to do and in which order, which means frequent restarts because you didn't anticipate something you didn't know about yet.
When you overcome that initial curve, the game is actually quite easy, though it can become a bit boring after a while because there is no random event to spice things up.