Episode 18 is another live stream, and it opens on a problem. Blue science is running, but crude oil is the bottleneck: "really the only issue is that I'm not producing enough oil, so I would like to find more oil." Basket goes looking, clears an alien nest on the way, and finds none. The rest of the hour goes into getting more out of the oil there is: Advanced oil processing, then modules. An attack on the steam engines by the lake costs time in the middle. When the video ends Speed module 2 is researching and oil is still short.
A slow push on the nest
Since the last video, a lot of the solar panels have moved to free up space, and one machine that was turning oil into plastic for a chest nobody uses gets cleared. Then Basket heads north, where "there's bad guys right up here," and tries the nest alone. That lasts a few seconds: "Okay, I need to run away. Run away!"
The second try is slower. Basket crafts 50 gun turrets, belts, a splitter, inserters and power poles, then extends a line of turrets toward the nest, with a belt running along it and inserters feeding the turrets. "This might be kind of a silly approach, but it might work." It does, though the character takes hits the whole way ("I don't know how to heal myself"). The hive goes down, along with the eggs around it. "So this was a quest for oil, but now it's just kind of exploring."
No oil in sight
Past the nest, the map runs out into dark, unexplored ground. Basket pushes the turret line farther out through a forest, crafts a new pickaxe when the old one breaks, and drops two radars to see farther. The map grows as they scan, but nothing new turns up. "At least for now it looks like I don't have any other oil in my area."
So Basket turns to research. Blue science packs are stocked up, and the research screen shows Advanced oil processing, which takes water and crude oil. "This produces perhaps more of the good stuff. Maybe." Basket starts it, then lays new pipes and underground pipes to carry water to the refineries.
The research finishes about half an hour in, and the next problem shows up right away: "Oh, I'm out of crude oil. So I'm not even producing enough crude oil for these two things." Basket looks for a way to make the pumpjacks work faster and starts Modules. Night falls, and the base slows with it: "We have a bunch of solar panels, but that doesn't really help us during the night." Speed module goes in next.
Biters at the steam engines
Then an attack comes in at the steam engines beside the lake. A medium biter is in among the machines. "I guess I was sort of assuming that they wouldn't go around the trees." Once the fight is over, a pump, a boiler and two steam engines need replacing, and Basket repairs the rest.
There is no ammo down here, so Basket splits ammo off the line to the north and runs a belt down to it. The ammo stops partway, and it takes a couple of tries to find where the belt fails to connect. Trees come down, and a row of turrets with fast inserters goes in along the tree line below the engines. Speed module is done by now, and Speed module 2 starts.
Speed modules, and a missing pump
Basket hand-crafts speed modules, using plastic from a stockpile in chests and copper cable, and puts them into the pumpjacks. The research screen shows that Speed module 2 needs four regular speed modules each, and the commentary decides "I should make speed modules in an assembly."
Water runs short next. The rubble by the lake gives it away: "Yeah, I bet this was a pump here." A new offshore pump goes in, a wrong pipe gets swapped, and the water comes back. One refinery still sits idle until Basket finds its inputs connected the wrong way around. "Okay, great, look at this. I'm producing stuff here now."
Where it ends
The commentary sums up: "the issue is really these pumps need to pump more." To close, Basket opens the recipe for processing units, the next step, which need sulfuric acid, and talks through running a pipe of acid over from the battery plant to make them. "We're still low on oil stuff, but we made a little bit better." The stream ends over the red circuit and blue science area with Speed module 2 still researching.