After first producing some oxygen, CO2 goes very low, then when you start breathing oxygen to produce more CO2, it balances on very low levels
Did you turn on experimental features when starting the game?
Yes, is that really everything I was doing bad?
Well, the experimental compounds production mode is vastly, vastly less balanced by the default mode. In fact so far everyone who has had problems with the gas concentrations never going up has been playing experimental mode. So I recommend turning off experimental mode and trying again.
For the next release I’ve already implemented a big red warning text about turning on experimental mode as it is bad for game balance and any bug reports that don’t disclose the fact that it uses experimental mode are confusing.
You found the strategy that gets the oxygen amount out of control. Quite often the oxygen levels stabilize around 15-20%, though you may need to switch patches a bit to chase them, and the carbon dioxide stabilises somewhere between 5-10%. Those are all playable numbers. Further tweaking to the system will be done for the next release.
Thanks, now it works very well