A guide to building an efficient and compact "core" for your base. It includes an automatic kitchen, infinite frozen foods storage, great room, and recreation room.
 

1. Introduction

This guide will be different from my previous guides to critter-ranching. This guide does not offer anything unique or new. It is a guide that will help you to think about how to design your kitchens.
 
 
After getting through the first few cycles using emergency outhouses/cots, my usual play style is to begin building a "core foundation" of cooking, eating, and relaxation areas. It might be as simple as a CO2 hole to put food in, but it is important to get up a great place for +6 morale. This core encapsulates my portal. It is usually located in the great hall, or sometimes in a recreational space. Around the core I move my earlier bedrooms, bathrooms as well as research labs and early game infrastructure. The core is further away from industry, power generators, etc. as the base grows.
 
 
I see many questions about how efficient kitchens can be built. After the introduction of diagonal construction, it is quite different to create infinite freezer food storage. Also, automating multiple sweepers/loaders within close proximity to one another without creating endless food loops can be difficult for beginners. I will attempt to provide at least one concrete solution.
 
 
This guide is not intended as a definitive guide to building a kitchen or surrounding core. It's meant that you can make a "good" kitchen setup. You can experiment to find the best one for you.
 
 
 

2. Objectives

As with all my guides, the main objective of this build should be to be functional from very early in the game and be able, as you progress, into the late games. There are many great designs available, but many are designed for mid-game deployment. Below are my specific objectives.
 
 

Requirements

• It is necessary to automate the removal of ingredients in storage to load appliances.
   
   
• Automated return of cooked food from storage until required
   
   
• To automate the retrieval from the freezer of food to a duplicate accessible area

Goals / Nice to Haves

• It is necessary to automate the removal of ingredients in storage in order for appliances to be loaded for cooking
• Automated return of cooked food from storage until required
• To automate retrieving food frozen from the freezer to an accessible area,

3. Bottom Line First – The Design

My design consists of a simple stack consisting of three or more 16×4 rooms. The recreation room (top/left), along with the kitchen (middle/right), occupy the top of the 1- or 2 story great room.
 
 
These images show examples from completed three- and fourth-level designs.
 
 

 
 

 
 

Specifications

 
The only difference is the number of duplicates the great-room can hold. These specifications are shared by both variants:
 
 

• These can be replaced with a second, if necessary, Gas Range if you don’t use berry Sludge.

It is important to note that the base game doesn't have a kitchen. However, if you use the Rooms Expanded mod you can create a kitchen with 64-tiles maximum.
 
 
The 3-story design has the ability to house the printing pod in its recreation room.
 
 
The 4-story design allows for the printing pod to be placed in either the recreation or great hall. The great hall, which is 118-tiles long, can accommodate 24 or 28 duplicants (with/without printing pod)
 
 
 

4. Construction

The following sections explain how to build your design in a progressive fashion. The idea is to build a skeleton first, then gradually build up the final design.
 
 
 

– Zero Automation

After settling your immediate needs for cots and outhouses, you will decide where and how big to place this "core". The three-story version is possible with the printing station on the left hand side of the middle story. This will later be converted into a recreational space. The four-story version can also be built with the printing device in the same place, or on top of the lower floor. This will create a great hall. You can also choose not to include the printing device at all by putting the skeleton along the opposite side of the main ladder corridor. This is especially helpful if you have already constructed bedrooms, bathrooms and research station above and below the printing pod and don’t wish to relocate them. Below are build orders for the first construction.
 
 

 
 
The three-story version might work well if you don’t intend on expanding beyond the 14 dupes currently living on this planet. You can simply follow these plans, and you can tile the area where the connecting ladder would be.
 
 
You can use the upper two floors for outhouses, cots, and even a research station for light. You will eventually want to move bedrooms, bathrooms, and other items out of this core. But a little bit more mingling may help you get moving faster, without having to move everything around the pod.
 
 
Once you've completed the initial skeleton, and have researched basic technologies you can start adding equipment and decor items.
 
 

 
 
We are starting with a simple CO2 pit, with ration containers to collect food that we find around the map. This is not the best way to preserve our food, but it's a good option until we can freeze it. I'm also a*suming that the construction was started early in the game so I'm showing four tables. As you add new dupes, you can add additional tables.
 
 
The bottle emptier should only be used to empty five 200kg bottles (totalling 1000kg) of water from an automatic pitcher pump. This will be spread into the three tiles leaving 333.33kg each tile, just below the 350kg threshold which would trigger flooding. You can also use polluted water, seawater, or brine to conserve regular drinking water. They all have the same SHC/TC properties. Super coolant and nuclear fuel are the two best liquids. If you're using brine, not salt water! You can empty a 6th 200kg bottles for 1200kg total, and 400kg per tiles. This is just under the 420kg required to trigger flooding.
 
 
You will notice that only one flower pot is required for the 4th and 3rd floors. I recommend the right-hand pot if you're building the four story design. If not, you can only use the left.
 
 
When the construction is finished and a seed planted in the bottom poter, the great hall can be enabled in the room overlay for +6 morale.
 
 

 
 
You can get a Kitchen by playing the Rooms Expanded mode. It requires a refrigerator. You can place one or a few in the CO2 Pit to get the room bonus. I wait until the food is ready to freeze. You will not have the Rec Room enabled on the room overlay because it is not enclosed at the moment. If this bothers your, you could temporarily enclose it. However, I wait until later construction steps have been completed to reduce the risk of dupes getting stuck. Rec Rooms do not provide a direct morale boost, so the Great Hall was chosen.
 
 
 

– Deep Freeze Upgrade

This is where the kitchen really kicks it into gear. But before you start, there are some prerequisites.
 
 

Prerequisites

• You need 735 grams of refined metal
• You must have a dupe with the Mechatronics Engineering skill
• You should have constructed an electrolyzer (or SPOM).

 
The refined metal will go towards two autosweepers (220ea), one conveyer loader (200), one metal tile (100,00), one gas sensor (25), and two pieces (five ea) of automation wire. A Mechatronics Engineering can only build the conveyor loader (and autosweepers) and conveyor rails.
 
 
An electrolyzer (or SPOM) will provide us with easy access to Hydrogen for the construction. Natural hydrogen from the environment might be possible, but it would take 25kg (20-25 full tile) and it would be difficult to filter out mixed gases. If you have enough hydrogen in your system and don't mind filtering them, skip the electrolyzer.
 
 
My kitchens use a ThermoRegulator to cool the cooling loop. While the Aquatuner may be "better", especially when used with a steam turbine as a pairing, it consumes 5x power and is much more of an a*set in the mid-game (postplastic) category. It also provides far greater cooling than is needed. The Thermo Regulator's downside is that it can heat up without any outside cooling. The heat absorbed by the water will delay, but it's not possible to delete heat until there is a way to do so. I usually build the regulator out of a basic metal, such as copper. It is only good to 75C. You could use gold-amalgam, which is good for 125C, but this will not delay the problem. At 102C, water will boil, quickly boiling the regulator, overheating it and causing other problems. A swamp biome starter with a regulator made of gold amalgam in a polluted well would be an exception. Your entire base will have to deal with polluted air. The polluted water will not boil at 121C until the regulator overheats. It doesn't matter what metal you choose; the goal is to cool the regulator before it breaks. This could be as simple an as a wheezewort that can be used to localize heat deletion or a liquid cool loop once you have installed a aquatuner or steam turbine elsewhere. In an emergency, even a tempshiftplate of ice in the corner of the musher could reverse some of the heating.
 
 
Below are the build orders. Next, you will find the gas and shipping overrides. To build one pipe segment, you must remove the corner tile immediately above the Microbe Muster.
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
There are some final steps to be done after construction is completed.
 
 

1. Hydrogen will completely fill the cooling circuit.
    
    
    
   • Do not remove the pipe/bridge which is used to fill your loop
2. Demont the tops of the two radiant tubes. Hydrogen will flow into the tile and fill it.
3. Reconstruct the radiant tube to complete the cooling circuit
    
    
    
   • The pipe/bridge which is used to fill this loop will push on one tile gas to replace it.
4. Remove the pipe/bridge which was being used to complete the loop
5. Construct a conveyor chute using the tile full hydrogen.
6. Construct a tile of metal just below the conveyor chute
7. Insulate the tile just below your metal tile

 
It will look something like this after all the work is done. The conveyor chute should be able to transport food into the enclosed atmosphere of hydrogen.
 
 

 
 

Automation and Operation Settings

 
The two autosweepers were placed so that only one can reach into the freezer to remove food. The top one cannot reach the conveyor loader in order to return food to storage. Both sweepers can reach all cooking appliances and pick-up any cooked food produced.
 
 
The conveyor loader needs to be set so that it can take all edible items and all ingredients. Manual Override mods can be used to modify the loader. This will allow duplicants and others to clean up after them and return food to storage. I recommend that this case be given medium-high priority to incentivize dupes to put food away.
 
 
The refrigerator is their only access point to food. You should set it to allow any food that you want for them to eat. It should not store more than 2 to 4 kg of food at one time. Food in the fridge will spoil quickly and it will not be safe to freeze or keep in a clean environment. As dupes grab food, the autosweeper pulls more from the fridge to restock the fridge.
 
 
Finally, the thermo regulator cooling circle is controlled using the thermo sensor on the left with a small piece of automation cable. Food must remain below -18C in order to be deep frozen. I like to provide some cushion, so I set this thermostat to activate the regulator if the cooling circuit is above 40C.
 
 

Why Hydrogen

 
I used to build my freezers the same way but using CO2 instead of sterile gas. The conversion from a carbon dioxide pit to a co2 freezer felt natural. It was built as a conveyor chute and then covered with an insulated tiles. Finally, it was sealed with an insulated tarp. While this is still a valid method to build infinite freezer storage (as it is for chlorine, the only sanitary gas), I've come to really appreciate hydrogen.
 
 
The condensation point is the primary reason. Hydrogen, with a condensing point below -250C is the hardest gas to turn to liquid. You wouldn't be able to keep a freezer that cold in the absence of super coolant. Both chlorine and CO2 have condensation temperatures around -48C. They are also close to the recommended -40C setting for cooling the loop. Both gases work well in a freezer with slightly higher settings of the thermo sensor. However, I've accidentally liquefied some CO2 and/or accidentally warmed up my freezer enough times that switching to "worryless" hydrogen was worth it. Food that has been in contact with liquids is not considered safe. Therefore, if your freezer becomes too cold or too hot, you will notice a sudden increase in your stored calories.
 
 
Even though hydrogen doesn't seem to have a lot of advantages, it has the highest level of SHC (and) the highest thermal conductivity. It's the most energy efficient gas you can find. This is why everyone uses hydrogen in their cooling loops. It just makes sense. Instead of collecting 20-30 tiles' worth of hydrogen for cooling, why not take one extra tile for the freezer? Hydrogen as a coolant in a sterile freezer environment will (negligibly;) optimize your energy efficiency. It will also help you squeeze every last cycle of your thermoregulating system before it overheats.
 
 
 

Scaling Up

Once the kitchen and freezer have been operational, scaling up is easy as you add duplicants. This phase is self-paced and can be adjusted to suit your needs. As you acquire more duplicates, you will be able to use the following capabilities:
 
 

• This can be done after the cooling loop and regulator have been constructed.

This section will also discuss how to scale up the recreation room, and how to decorate the core. The image below illustrates all of the above additions, though you might build them out in stages.
 
 

 
 
As shown in the above image, I recommend that you replace the original water cooling units with party-line phones at some point. The water coolers are usually disabled to conserve water. However they provide +0 Morale and enable room overlays for the early games. Phones occupy half the space, and even if they're not powered, they provide the same decor as the desktop and +0 morale. The only problem with phones is the fact that they cost metal ore, not raw minerals. That's similar to an opportunity cost for "refined" metal. If you power them however, they can provide +2 to two dupes when they talk to each others or a whopping plus4 if they are talking to a dupe within space.
 
 

Gas Range

 
It is simple to add plumbing for natural gas to a gas range. There is plenty to run pipes above, below, and right. We also made bridges on the cooling circuit for those who prefer to run them to their right. The best way to reduce decor impact is to hide the pipe as much as possible.
 
 

 
 
If you wish to add another gas range to the one above the microbe mushers it can be plumbed onto that gas line.
 
 

Automation

 
The only thing that can be done to disable the great hall lighting is to make sure nobody is eating. I don’t bother to turn off the one light in our kitchen because of the large area and the fact that there is almost always at minimum one cook in our kitchen.
 
 
Below is the automation overlay of the great hall.
 
 

 
 
These buffer gates are optional, and they only prevent a green signal from flowing across the middle of the room from either the left or the right detector. The logic we want to see is that the left lamp should turn on if either of the center or left detectors are activated and the right one to turn on when either the center or right detectors are activated. OR gates could be used, but ONI logic always replaces red signals (essentially giving you an OR gateway). Instead, we could wire the sensors and lights to one single wire. This would create 3-way OR logic that turns on *both* of the detectors. This would be great and you might even opt to do it and save yourself 50 refined metallic. But I wanted to show you how you can create the desired logic, by breaking the wires up into smaller segments for those who want it.
 
 

Lighting Buff

 
The screenshots below show the lighting overlay without and with a printing capsule in the rec room.
 
 

 
 

 
 
You can use a printing Pod here instead of a table lamp. However, there is one spot where the light does not reach enough to give the grill the "lit space" buff (+15% task completion rate). In this instance, the tile indicated by an arrow in the top screenshot can easily be replaced with a gla*s tile to let light through. With this change, all cooking and mess appliances will be well lit and will provide the buff.
 
 

Upgrading Tiles

 
The last thing you should consider is replacing the basic tiles in your design with special purpose tiles. Strategically placed airflow tiling can help CO2 move through rooms but also adds to decor. Window tiles can be used to decorate. They not only add a little but also make it possible for decor to spread vertically. Finally, carpet tiles can be placed underneath appliances or mess tables to provide stress relief. This is especially useful for higher difficulty situations. Some of these screenshots show the application of window tiles and airflow.
 
 
 

– Recreation Room Upgrade

The recreation room will need to be upgraded in order to provide more entertainment for the dupes. This is not a significant decision since the room does nothing to improve morale, but it may increase the stress-reduction and morale of the dupes who use the equipment.
 
 
Both the designs with and without the printing pod offer the same options for decorating the top half. You can place the jukebox, hot tub, or both (largest rec building at 5×3-), and add a soda maker to the existing party phone. You can also place any other rec buildings, except the juicer.
 
 

 
 
If the printing pod is in your rec area, it will limit the amount of work you can do in that part. One tile is located to the left of the pod and I think it is best used for another party-line phone. If you don't have the space to print in this area, there are plenty of other options.
 
 

 
 
This area can be used to store two beach chairs (or mechanical surfboards) at 2×3, as well as any other 3×3 recreational items and a party line telephone. No matter which option, there is still space for a large paint job to improve decor near the gas stove.
 
 
 

Decor Bombing

It's possible to hit and surpa*s maximum morale in all three rooms other than directly infront of the microbe-mushers. Designs with the rec area printing pod will have moderately lower decor, but still high. You can choose to install window tiles in certain areas to help decor spread between floors. This is especially helpful for microbe-mushers because they can see objects below them as well as statues and other decor items outside the kitchen.
 
 
The "Bottom Line Up Front Section" section shows examples of how to build with window tiles or decor items. The screenshot below shows a sample overlay after reaching max decoration.
 
 

 
 
 

7. Summary

As I said in the beginning, this guide was created to teach you the basics of building a core base, which is a combination of a great room, kitchen, and recreation area. Although I provided step-by step instructions for "my" type of base, this guide is more about sharing ideas than it is about replicating the exact build.
 
 
This design could be a better foundation for you to build on if you are having difficulty diagonal-building a freezer from the patches or ending up with food loops between three sweepers in your kitchen. I've seen threads where people are surprised to see a great hall with two stories. I kept the design within the allowed tiles for the maximum great hall dimensions and gave the option to build it directly around the start printing pod if you so choose.
 
This guide is another way to show you what is possible. It will also give you a base for experimentation that can work starting at cycle 3 and ending at cycle 3000.
 
 
 

8. We are grateful

I appreciate you taking the time to read this guide.
 
 
I would like to acknowledge another person, but I don't know their name. There was a
Reddit Thread – [reddit.com]
 
Where a user asked for ideas on kitchen design, another user posted a screen shot of their construction. The build was quite odd in dimensions (17 wide and uneven floor heights) and used an aquatuner (and steam turbine) for freezer cooling. However, I found some great ideas after looking at the build. This is the inspiration for the central concept of two sweepers positioned between five cooking equipment. Although I did make some adjustments to suit my own playstyle and preferences, I'd like to thank the designer.
 
 
While the thread remains, along my replies praising its original design, the user deleted the posts and the screenshot. If you happen upon the poster, and you stumble across this guide by accident, please give me shout and I'll credit it to you.

 
 
This is all we can share for Easy Kitchen and “Core Base” Guide – Oxygen Not Included for today. I hope you enjoy the guide! If you have anything to add to this guide or we forget something please let us know via comment! We check each comment! Don’t forget to check SteamClue.com for MORE!