Seismographic pendulum

[Water Knight]

I was just playing another game when i had harder time than usual to find water geyser. With sandbox (in new game) I tried to find it in wider proximity of starting biome, with no luck.

So I got this idea. What if we had some kind of seismograph building, that let us scan/search for nearby geysers? So just let me write what are my ideas.

First of all, that would be building, probably in Station tab. It would need Refined metal (or Raw mineral) and maybe even some Reed fiber. 400, 2 maybe? It can't be too cheap as it can be very useful and not too expensive as it's not game breaker.

It would need low energy to run and generate small amount of heat. Well if it is used in real life, it has to be similar to it, right? So, no outrageous power consumation or produced heat.

It could be only operated by Tenured Scientist (as it has Geyser analysis). It seems like a good idea to allow high tier job to operate it as that prevents early scaning for geysers.

And most importantly, it would need to be far away from running heavy machines and digging commands, as they would disrupt scanning. Either that would disable building for some time or lower accuracy of results (similarly to Space scanner) or it would show totaly wrong area of where geyser should be. Scanning should last at least as long as analyzing geysers and results should be shown on map as a area in which geyser should be (15 or 20 blocks wide circle, maybe?). It wouldn't reveal area, just hint location of geyser

Main feature of Seismographic pendulum would be scanning and searching for nearest, non-dormant geyser. That would make it potentialy useful in early mid-game when searching for geysers, most likely water geyser. And thats it.

After finding geysers you want it becomes completely useless, so..., maybe not best building to add it to the game, and even with it, it is not impossible to find geysers, it just takes lots of time.

Well, thats it from my side. Thanks for reading and I hope you like my idea. 

[badgamer123]

I actually thinking of suggesting something similar 
a machine that detect certain direction like 3X30 row below ,in normal game play that don't save/load debug sandbox etc I think a lot of player want to take a look further ahead b4 digging in new bimoe.
sometime digging pass abyss tile on wrong location give you a lot extra work.or you want to build a pool early to catch those PH2O from the top

I think the reveal machine should make use of the lesser useful feature in the game:chip.it make more sense to consume chip on map-scanner then a power plant....it would be better if the machine took 2 dupe to operate.(from my memory those kind of landscape  generally need a small 2-3 man team working together).So it cost us a bit of small metal and 2 dupe time.you can just dig pass everywhere if you don't want the wait ,seem fair enough.

[Water Knight]

44 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

a machine that detect certain direction like 3X30 row below ,in normal game play that don't save/load debug sandbox etc I think a lot of player want to take a look further ahead b4 digging in new bimoe.

That's quite a good suggestion. Although I wasn't thinking about revealing actual part of the map, only hinting as to where geyser could be. That makes it only situationally useful, where your idea reveals everything in quite large area. Could be bad or just game breaking if you could place it in the middle of starting biome and scan every corner of map.

44 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

it would be better if the machine took 2 dupe to operate.(from my memory those kind of landscape  generally need a small 2-3 man team working together).So it cost us a bit of small metal and 2 dupe time.you can just dig pass everywhere if you don't want the wait ,seem fair enough.

As much as I like that idea, we have yet to see machine that needs two dupes at the same time to operate. If you have lot of work arranged to do it could take some time to get 2 eligible dupes free at the same time. 

But after all, I quite like that idea.

[badgamer123]

7 minutes ago, Water Knight said:

That's quite a good suggestion. Although I wasn't thinking about revealing actual part of the map, only hinting as to where geyser could be. That makes it only situationally useful, where your idea reveals everything in quite large area. Could be bad or just game breaking if you could place it in the middle of starting biome and scan every corner of map.

 

Since it could scan in 30 row deep(counting from the building)making it at the print pod would not give much reveal...you need to keep rebuild the building if want want to go deeper.it will behave more closer to give ores veins information since it single direction. it should have a direction like station that you determine b4 you build it so it took a lot of time to open large area of map.(In real life those scientist could move those machine slowly to scan a big area,but we cannot ask to have an moving building lol)

I felt the same way ,that there should be some in-game mechanism help player to find some important resource/planning for exploring (whether Seismographic,revealing or something else),instead of purely blind digging and hope for the best.(As long as the player willing to spend extra time and resource to obtain the information)

[Water Knight]

12 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

I felt the same way ,that there should be some in-game mechanism help player to find some important resource/planning for exploring (whether Seismographic,revealing or something else),instead of purely blind digging and hope for the best.(As long as the player willing to spend extra time and resource to obtain the information)

Agreed, It could be useful, but not mandatory to build/use. Depends on how fast you're playing though and burning resources.

[Neotuck]

Not sure I like this idea, the map is pretty small and doesn't take long to explore the whole thing

[Water Knight]

14 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Not sure I like this idea, the map is pretty small and doesn't take long to explore the whole thing

When you put it like that, it makes a lot of sense. World is not that big and if you play for 1000 cycles, for example i guess that by 300th cycle you pretty much explore whole thing. And that is 30% of exploring time. Don't hate me for incorrect numbers.

But for us with much slower exploring, I, for example, have never found or complete renewable water before 250th cycle, we have problems with water shortage. 

Yeah, PW pools in slime bioms can let you breath for some time but only really renewable water i had to was eating food that doesn't need water (for cooking or farming) and using excess water from bathroom loop.

So, either I need how to make more efficient base, or save water even more or explore faster. Or add another building to assist me in searching geysers