Episode 6 of Season 1 is a stream that opens on Cycle 18 with eight duplicants and a new one to pick. Oxygen and algae are short, the duplicants run on wheels for power, and a pocket of water sits above the dig sites. Over the video a duplicant gets stuck up high, the water is let down into a cavern, and a Coal Generator goes in. It ends on Cycle 23 with nine duplicants and Liquid Piping picked as the next research.
A digger named Mae
Three duplicants are on offer: Lindsay, a Level 1 Architect, Ruby, a Level 7 Scientist, and Mae, a Level 7 Miner. The scientist is tempting, but "I kind of want somebody that's gonna help me dig because I'm gonna expand quite a bit." Mae it is.
The colony is low on oxygen, and the commentary keeps coming back to one thing: "We need lots of algae." Before digging toward more of it, a path is cut so a pocket of water has somewhere to drain, "because I don't want all this water to pour in on all this stuff."
Pipes and power
A gas pipe loop pumps oxygen from one floor and pushes it around the farm, partly to cool the air. The temperature overlay still doesn't look better, so one branch is removed to send more the other way. A research finished without anyone noticing, and with "a decent chunk of coal" in storage, coal power is picked next.
Stuck up top
On Cycle 19 a duplicant ends up on the tiles above the farm. It had been digging, got itself stuck, and had no supplies to build a way down. It stays long enough to use the bathroom up there, so the mop tool comes out: "Please mop up your mess." The commentary sums it up: "Sometimes they're not real smart about what they're doing."
Stress isn't great either. Flower vases go in by the beds, and the build menu lets the material be picked. Granite gives better decor, so granite it is.
A Hatch and a flood
A Hatch turns up on the wheel floor. The game is paused, the Hatch is marked for attack, "tell this guy to die," and the duplicants crowd it until it is gone. Digging to drain the water gets priority 9. Another duplicant is printed, Joshua, picked because "a better cook sounds good," and the Jobs screen gets cooking and massage set.
Once the algae blocks nearby are cleared, the last tiles are dug and the water pours down into a lower cavern. One duplicant ends up in it: "You can't breathe in the water buddy."
Coal power
The research finishes, and the Coal Generator's info says it makes heat, hurts decor and puts out carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide sinks, so a new floor is built low down for it. Building it gets priority 9, and once it stands it gets priority 8 so coal gets carried in. Two batteries are plugged in next to it, and the duplicants can spend less time on the wheels.
Where it ends
Oxygen is good in the main base by Cycle 23, but carbon dioxide is piling up below and food is rotting where nobody picks it up. On the research screen, Liquid Piping is picked, "because this is going to be a problem." The plan is a filter for the carbon dioxide and a tank for the polluted water it makes. Then the commentary closes the stream.