More drecko morphs

[Sasza22]

For a while i was thinking what types of drecko would actually be useful. Finally i got a few ideas:

Swamp (Carbon) Drecko - this drecko morph eats dusk caps and thinble reed. It has a lower comfort temperature and doesn`t fear water so it can reach thimble reed easily (might be a semi aquatic critter). It`s scales are made of refined carbon and they can produce large amount of it. Would be an alternative to the kiln.

Chitinous Drecko - this drecko feeds off of sleet wheat. Can survive down to -60^oC and feels better in cold. It has more hp than regular dreckos due to very resilient scales. Sheering those dreckos provides 100kg of chitine that is hard enough to be used instead of steel for bunker tiles and doors but can`t be used as a metal. This enables building in space without setting up steel production and relying only on critters but might be even harder to set up.

[Neotuck]

I made a suggestion a month ago similar to this

Scaly Drecko feeds on dustcaps.  This reptilian green drecko's scales can be crushed into lime like egg shells.  At 150kg per harvest it adds up quick for steel production.

[Novo]

i like the sleet wheat drecko idea.

[Coolthulhu]

Carbon drecko sounds positively useless and also like it steps on hatches' toes conceptually. Kilns are very easy to use and very productive. Hatches already produce carbon.

Chitin one would certainly wreck steel balance with those numbers. The idea itself may not be bad, but compare it to existing critters: the plastic drecko produces like 50kg of plastic per shaving. Plastic is an order of magnitude cheaper material than steel - you can easily have 100t of plastic by the time you're still struggling to complete the 10th ton of steel.

[Neotuck]

8 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

the plastic drecko produces like 50kg of plastic per shaving

I thought it was like 150kg?

8 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

Chitin one would certainly wreck steel balance with those numbers.

this is why I like the idea of harvesting for lime better to help with steel production, would be more balanced than getting steel directly from dreckos

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

Carbon drecko sounds positively useless and also like it steps on hatches' toes conceptually. Kilns are very easy to use and very productive. Hatches already produce carbon.

Hatches produce coal by consuming rocks. The carbon drecko is supposed to exchange slime or polluted water for refined carbon. Well maybe the efficiency shouldn`t be too high when we don`t have much uses for carbon (still hoping for some more). Ultimately it was supposed to be a stepping stone to getting the chitin drecko so you can`t find a wild one straight away.

 

9 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

Chitin one would certainly wreck steel balance with those numbers. The idea itself may not be bad, but compare it to existing critters: the plastic drecko produces like 50kg of plastic per shaving. Plastic is an order of magnitude cheaper material than steel - you can easily have 100t of plastic by the time you're still struggling to complete the 10th ton of steel.

The glossy drecko produces 150 kg per sheering and can be sheered every 3 cycles iirc if sits in hydrogen 100% of the time. My bad not talking about the scale growth time. Didn`t want to go into balance yet. I think it should be around 10 cycles maybe more (maybe 25 to keep it close to pacu efficiency). I wanted 100 kg as that`s the minimum usable amount for bunker tiles. Ultimately you are exchanging dirt and water for an equivalent of steel.

 

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

this is why I like the idea of harvesting for lime better to help with steel production, would be more balanced than getting steel directly from dreckos

I remember your previous suggestion. Back then lime was only obtainable from eggshells. Now it`s a bit easier so i figured maybe a direct way to get some bunker material wouldn`t be too bad. It`s also useless outside bunker tiles and maybe rocket parts as it`s not a metal (maybe can be used for regular tiles). Setting it up might be harder than setting steel production in a smelter so my idea was to have a similar payoff.

[Coolthulhu]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

this is why I like the idea of harvesting for lime better to help with steel production, would be more balanced than getting steel directly from dreckos

 

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

It`s also useless outside bunker tiles and maybe rocket parts as it`s not a metal

Honestly it doesn't matter if it's lime or steel.

What matters is that the end result displaces the biggest steel sink. And so it must be balanced as a steel replacement regardless of whether it replaces it fully or only mostly and whether it requires an extra processing step or not.

You need 10kg of lime for 100kg of steel.

• If we assume low effort ranching, 5 pacu eggs cost 1000kg of algae (without exploits) and give 10kg of lime and 8000kcal of meat
• If we assume high effort ranching, it's 60 groomings for 10 hatch/slickster eggs that give 10kg of lime and 32000kcal of meat
• 8000kcal can be considered to be worth about 100kg of slime (33kg of algae) or 600kg of water

A single shaving of 10kg of lime per 50 cycles would make them produce over double of what hatches produce (per same grooming effort). With 2 shavings (+eggs) in a single life, it would be a really good critter, bordering on broken considering that critters enter adulthood shaveable.

[Sasza22]

4 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

A single shaving of 10kg of lime per 50 cycles would make them produce over double of what hatches produce (per same grooming effort). With 2 shavings (+eggs) in a single life, it would be a really good critter, bordering on broken considering that critters enter adulthood shaveable.

The idea for it is to be way more effective than ranching other critters for eggs. Depending purely on hatcha and pacu eggs takes a really long time to get enough steel for anything. I imagined the critter to be an alternative to fossils. Lets say it produces 1 tile worth of steel (or 10kg lime) per 10 cycles. With a ranch cosisting of 7 dreckos (so with no overcrowding) you get 7 tiles every 10 cycles. That`s still pretty slow when compared to digging through fossils and requires a longer setup (breeding the carbon morph then the chitinous morph, setting up sleet wheat with all the temperature requirements and eventually reaching the proper population). By the time you manage to do that you could already be reaching space.

I imagined it as an alternative to going for fossils or a late game replacement when you need more steel but used up all the fossils. I`m trying to strike a balance where the critter isn`t a broken and exploitable way of getting a hard to obtain resource but on the other hand it`s not useless considering the effort needed to set up a ranch.

[Neotuck]

It doesn't have to be 150kg of lime

remember the normal drecko only gives 2 thimble reeds

10kg of lime per harvest seems more balanced