Letting the Printing Pod create animals, seeds, clothing, etc.

[Rossum]

If the Printing Pods were created as a way to start a colony and they can print out living things, then it makes sense that they would be able to print out more than just dupes. For example, they could print out animals, plants, food, medicine, or any number of supplies that might be difficult for the dupes to make themselves.

So, what if in addition to the three dupes we can choose from each time the Printing Pod starts up, there are ways to unlock additional things to print. For example, by researching a Tier 1 Tech, you get the option to print out seeds for planting, or various supplies like clothing from the textile mill, medicine (for when disease becomes implemented), and maybe some raw metals or oxylite. A Tier 2 Tech could unlock the ability to print out creatures like Hatches, Pufts, etc.

 

This could be used in a special 'Barren' game mode where the map is created without any plant seeds or animals. It's just a new dupe colony starting out in a completely lifeless rock and the only animals or seeds they have access to are ones the Printer can make for them.

As for printing out clothing, I think it could make sense for the Printing Pod to be able to craft items that boost dupes abilities (like the clothing we have already, and possibly things like weapons, armor, etc later on) or things like medicine to help improve the survivability of existing dupes. Maybe things like Oxylite ore or food rations for emergencies.

Regardless, each use of the Printing Pod would use up it's charge and require it to recharge as normal, so every time you use it to make seeds, animals, supplies, etc then it's forgoing the creation of a dupe.

It might also allow for adding more domesticated animals. Like, there could be a special type of 'space hamster' that really likes running on the manual generator. Instead of catching one in the wild or breeding existing animals to create one, you simply access the Printing Pod and select it from the pod's database and create it much like you would create a dupe.

Thoughts?

[Masterpintsman]

Question: where would be the fun in that, if you could pull everything out of the printer?

[Mason607]

@Masterpintsman

Question: where would be the fun in that, if you could pull everything out of the printer?

I think you may be not fully looking at what this person is saying because I agree with Rossum. Let me elaborate on what I believe he is saying.

I think being able to print this would be useful but before you can just "Pull everything out of the printer?" as you put it you would first be required to bring that item and sacrifice it to the printer first. Once you do this the printer would break down the molecules or ingredients required to print said item so for example: If I am short on Bristle Berry seeds but I did insert the blue print into the printer. It may require me to gather Algea, Oxygen, Dirt and maybe another ingredient to produce maybe 2 or 4 seeds. So there for the game would become sustainable in a closed loop. So for ever other item in the game to print would require the basic molecule or ingredients to print that said item. Another example would be printing Coal: You would require Dirt and C02 to produce a certain amount of Coal which I would personally find useful as a hydrogen generator is basically useless (not efficient) and Coal is hard to find once your initial patch is used up so creating. Every game I always have more dirt 100,000kg plus and I know this can be used for food but other than that is basically under used. So in closing his printing idea is good and could be actually a lot of fun if the proper mechanic is built into using it so its balanced and not abused or exploited.

[Rossum]

21 hours ago, Masterpintsman said:

Question: where would be the fun in that, if you could pull everything out of the printer?

 

My original thought was that the Printer doesn't use resources in the traditional sense, but instead uses time.

Right now it takes about 3 cycles for the Printer to charge up enough to make a Duplicant. Meanwhile, you have to keep your colony alive for those 3 cycles and they are constantly producing CO2, getting stress, eating food, etc.

Now, what if after those 3 cycles, you have the option of either choosing to print one of three Duplicants, or maybe printing out a Puft which will suck up polluted air to turn into slime. Or it can produce three sets of Cool Vests to dress up your Dupes with (thus giving them each a bonus to decor and hopefully reducing their stress over time). Or if they implement diseases at some point, one of your dupes is dying of disease, and you don't have a medical bay set up, then you use that once-every-three-cycles use of the Printing Pod to make up a stack of 10 medicine that can be used to cure your Dupes.

 

Basically, I'm imagining the Printer Pod as like... in Age of Empires 3 they had the Home City where your colony came from and every once in a while you could get a shipment of supplies from them. When you start a game of AoE3 then I think every two or three minutes of game play you get a sort of Shipment Point which you can save up and then spend to get a special shipment from your home city. Shipments can include things like a pile of resources, a couple of units, a building, etc. Basically, it's a little something that your Home City can send to you on regular intervals as a reward for keeping your colony alive, and it usually consists of either things you can't easily get by playing or just regular resources that you pick to use up the Shipment Point.

 

My thought for adding new items to the Printing Pod consist of:

1). The ability to choose something other than a Dupe from the Printing Pod without 'wasting' the use of it.

Some people might want to play a game using fewer Dupes in their colony and right now the only choice to do that is to simply ignore the Printing Pod or cancel the use and effectively waste the opportunity. If there are other things to choose from, even if it's something like just printing out a Puft that will float around doing very little (unless there is polluted air to clean) or printing out a pile of raw metal to get turned into wires... that at least provides something other than choosing a Dupe.

2). Provides possible cool rewards for each 3 days the colony is active.

Assuming the Printing Pod can produce items that can't be easily made in the colony (such as creatures) then each time the Printing Pod activates becomes an opportunity to pick something cool that you can't normally get and might make it a little sweeter when your colony survives those three days to claim it.

3). Could allow for 'Gifts from Home'.

Right now, I don't know what the lore behind this game is or who built the Printing Pod. My first guess is that it was made by humans, or something, and this is just their way of starting these new colonies. As such, the Printing Pod is the first thing the player sees when they start the game and acts as a link to whoever or whatever started this colony. If the people who made the Pod are benevolent and care for the Dupes being created, the Pod might include the opportunity to create things like decoration items or cake or something else to cheer up the Dupes and keep up morale (even if there is no direct connection to the Creators and these gifts were all pre-designed long ago, it would still show that thought went into them).

Alternately, if the people who created the Printing Pod don't care about the Dupes, there could be ways of expressing that by say... letting you print out items that are just standard-form business objects clearly designed by some faceless corporation or even things more alien or sinister. I don't know, I just think it's an option.

4). Emergency Items

Sometimes your colony is falling apart due to problems and there's no easy way to fix it with the resources on hand. Maybe the Printing Pod can be used to print out some helpful item or resource to provide a last-ditch effort to fix a crummy situation. Something like a pile of food, a bunch of Oxylite ore to provide oxygen, sand to run a water purifier, etc. Since it takes three days for the Printing Pod to charge up, then relying soley on the Printer to bail you out of bad situations simply isn't a practical idea (since you'd at least have three whole days of Dupes running around and you could hopefully use them to fix the situation in the mean time).

5). Allow for a Barren Game

Like I said before, it could be an interesting challenge mode for the colony to spawn in a place that has absolutly no signs of previous life. No plants, no animals, no diseases, no muckroots spawning in the ground as you dig them up. Nothing. The only food you can get in such a place would either be mush bars made from dirt, the rations in the box, and maybe grow plants from seeds made by the Printer.

Gameplay in such a mode would consist of starting your base, maybe getting a Microbe Musher set up, building a Lab to tap into the Printer for more options, and then have the Printer make up some seeds that can be used to start a farm. Out-of-Universe, it provides for a neat challenge mode for those who like such things. In-Universe it demonstrates the whoever made the Printer Pod had every intention of giving the Dupes the tools they need to get their colony running. Where they could end up on a totally barren and lifeless world and so long as they managed their resources correctly they could get plants, animals, tools, whatever they need to get the colony running.

The only limit is that they need their colony to survive for the three or so days for the Printer to recharge itself and provide them with those tools and supplies.

 

So, yeah. I'm imagining it less like "The Printing Pod can make anything you want" and more like "The Printing Pod can make all kinds of cool stuff... you just have to keep your colony alive for the three or so days it takes for the Pod to build up the energy to do so and even then you can only choose one thing before it has to recharge again."

[Masterpintsman]

16 hours ago, Rossum said:

The Printing Pod can make all kinds of cool stuff... you just have to keep your colony alive for the three or so days it takes for the Pod to build up the energy to do so and even then you can only choose one thing before it has to recharge again.

Most colonies I did were >400 cycles, so I could have pulled 100+ 'stuff' from it additionally to the duplicants I got.

Dosn't sound like fun to me if I could get the stuff for 'free' - the need to have the printer powered with a not-trivial wattage so it would charge up (or having to feed it resources) could solve the 'easy, boring' issue I have with it.

YMMV.

[Nidhoggur]

I'm not so sure about this idea, tbh. For me it's more fun to actually build production chains, than to get stuff printed - even at the cost of resources or energy. If you print items for resources, than how it is different from the corresponding  builings, that make same items.

[vovik]

Printing seed or animal from a pod would be a not so bad idea because they are all made of genetic ooze and can be printed, assuming you can print genetic ooze, but with some additional reconfiguration from a dupe with high enough tinkering cause its configured to print dupes.

Would really appreciate an idea of getting some otherwise non-renewable items on printing instead of new mouth to take care of - like some field ration or briar/whezewort seeds etc.

 

[Executive_Lurker]

I just hope they make a machine that uses materials like algae, slime, dirt, or clay and makes genetic ooze which in turn must be used in the printer to print a duplicant. 

[Masterpintsman]

1 hour ago, Executive_Lurker said:

I just hope they make a machine that uses materials like algae, slime, dirt, or clay and makes genetic ooze which in turn must be used in the printer to print a duplicant. 

Sensible idea, I like it.

[Michi01]

I had this idea as well although a bit differently. My idea is that after a bunch of prints, the printer will run out of fuel. From that point on you will need to supply it with power and produce your own genetic ooze for it.
Genetic ooze could be created out of materials that organism are made of such as carbon, hydrogen and water or also be extracted out of existing organisms or their remains (both of these options at a machine with a relatively high power cost). This would not only balance the production of creatures and plant seeds, but also make it so players can't just waste dupes or kill them for free morbs.
To obtain the genetic blueprint of organisms, you would need to sacrifice one or multiple ones of it in a scanner.
Other rebalances might also be necessary to make this not overpowered, for example making it a harder to maintain wheezeworts (which I believe the devs are planning to do anyway).