Welfare Pod still needs more balancing.

[Grimgaw]

The addition of printable 'gifts' is a nice way to add things which otherwise might went extinct or run out. I don't mind a small boost of something inconsequential like some coal, but 3 tonnes of fertilizer is a bit much. My entire seed starts with 2.1 tonnes... I'd need well over a half of all my starting dirt to get this much fertilizer.

I think ideally the Pod should only print basics, not end products of loooong chain of manufacture. Looking at you Plastic, Glass, Lime and Steel (and Fertilizer of course).

[MorsDux]

33 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

The addition of printable 'gifts' is a nice way to add things which otherwise might went extinct or run out. I don't mind a small boost of something inconsequential like some coal, but 3 tonnes of fertilizer is a bit much. My entire seed starts with 2.1 tonnes... I'd need well over a half of all my starting dirt to get this much fertilizer.

I think ideally the Pod should only print basics, not end products of loooong chain of manufacture. Looking at you Plastic, Glass, Lime and Steel (and Fertilizer of course).

You could try disabling the pod or simply not choosing the stuff that you dont like...

[Grimgaw]

5 minutes ago, MorsDux said:

You could try disabling the pod or simply not choosing the stuff that you dont like...

Disabling or not using a feature because it's not well balanced doesn't really make for a compelling game play.

[Cypher-7]

Perhaps this feature needs to have some options at the start of the game like hunger, immune system, and moral. 

This could turn off the material printing or limit its quality’s to a maximum. 

I personally like it the way it is but I understand people’s difference of opinions.

[Hellshound38]

the randomness is what gets me...

I waited 1,000 cycles for a Care-giving dupe that didn't have horrible negative traits.

They should at least decrease the randomness by Cycling through positive traits / care packages until you get them all once, then repeat.

[chemie]

31 minutes ago, Hellshound38 said:

the randomness is what gets me...

I waited 1,000 cycles for a Care-giving dupe that didn't have horrible negative traits.

They should at least decrease the randomness by Cycling through positive traits / care packages until you get them all once, then repeat.

a point system to spec dups would be nice too

[RonEmpire]

nothing wrong with a little fertilizer boost to help you get some food going.

[withers]

Here’s idea.  Make it a  “wildcard” drop with a chance of being something bad.  You don’t know what you’ll get until you select it.    You might get 3 tonnes of useful fertilizer.  On the other hand, you might get 30 tonnes of liquid poo.

[6Havok9]

12 minutes ago, withers said:

Here’s idea.  Make it a  “wildcard” drop with a chance of being something bad.  You don’t know what you’ll get until you select it.    You might get 3 tonnes of useful fertilizer.  On the other hand, you might get 30 tonnes of liquid poo.

You, Sir, are an evil person.

[cblack]

3 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

I'd need well over a half of all my starting dirt to get this much fertilizer.

Fertilizer is... not that great, honestly.  I plan all my farms around not requiring it, due to the dirt requirement.  If anything it's more of a nuisance as it takes up duplicant time, so who cares if you get 3t of it?

3 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

I think ideally the Pod should only print basics, not end products of loooong chain of manufacture. Looking at you Plastic, Glass, Lime and Steel (and Fertilizer of course).

Lime is hardly an "end product", and if they want it to print something else instead, they have only two options: egg shells and fossils.  Both of which are easily converted into lime, but I guess I'd be fine with that instead.  Plastic is a bit trickier, but I haven't messed around long enough in QoL2 to know if it can print liquids like crude oil or petroleum yet.  Still, getting even a little bit of plastic early on is a very welcome change considering it's needed for the HP vent.

[KittenIsAGeek]

3 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

Disabling or not using a feature because it's not well balanced doesn't really make for a compelling game play.

But who's to say it isn't balanced?  This is a solo adventure.  There are aspects that will challenge beginning players as well as advanced players and the new care package system doesn't detract from that.  Remember that the amounts of "end game" materials are rather low in addition to being relatively rare.  Just because you get 500kg of plastic at cycle 4 doesn't mean you can use it.  There's a LOT of research that you'll have to do first.  Generally, by the time you get that far, you could have shaved a couple of Drekkos for the same amount of plastic.

What I'm really asking, is why do you believe the feature is unbalanced?  Convince me of your claim.  There is no score, and "winning" is somewhat open ended.  What constitutes a "win" for you? Escaping the asteroid?  Building a perfectly renewable colony?  Is it because the rare drop of end-game material is an unexpected and beneficial windfall? 

In my view, this game is bounded only by the goals you set for yourself while playing it.  You can chose a totally random seed, or you can pick one with features you desire.  You can chose to make your dupes eat twice as much as normal -- or nothing but air.  You can chose to turn on sandbox and give yourself whatever your heart desires.  ... but 500kg of plastic once in 200 cycles breaks the game?  I don't understand where you're coming from, but I'd like to see your viewpoint.

Instead of just saying its "unbalanced," please, elaborate! Explain to the rest of us why you think its a problem.  Maybe some of us will agree, maybe some of us won't.

[DaveSatx]

1 hour ago, RonEmpire said:

nothing wrong with a little fertilizer boost to help you get some food going.

or hatch food. 

[The Plum Gate]

Fertilizer in the starting biome is scarce because it has a mass override in place at generation. 

If they left this out, then you would get comparable ratio of initial generation to gift mass.

[RonEmpire]

5 hours ago, withers said:

Here’s idea.  Make it a  “wildcard” drop with a chance of being something bad.  You don’t know what you’ll get until you select it.    You might get 3 tonnes of useful fertilizer.  On the other hand, you might get 30 tonnes of liquid poo.

no this is silly.  the point of the print pod is to let you choose out of a set of options.   to choose something and then get crap is just bad.   plus there is save scumming.   why add an extra layer of frustration- one can just always end up reloading over and over to get the goods.   

if anything, they can add in the option for survival customization to include or not include resources as options.   player can choose to disable it.  or you can choose not to take it.      so far   it feels pretty balanced to me what they're offering.


The general idea here is that these care packages are like loot crates or loot boxes.  Sometimes you get lucky and something great appears,  and sometimes you get bad stuff.   But taking away everything that is great  and all that is left is crap.   It doesn't make the game much fun.  While some of you got lucky with good stuff and while you might not need it,  think of all the number players who struggle might find it a lucky drop especially new players.  

Maybe the key here is having options in the survival menu when you start the game that lets you adjust the resource amounts- like how they have adjustment for stress level etc.

[badgamer123]

IMO the more random the more fair it is(i.e steel/lime 500kg ....if there was 300 item to roll I don't think it too imbalance)
I much more welcome some critter and ore that was not renewable(copper ore gold ore ouch )

[Lilalaunekuh]

9 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

I think ideally the Pod should only print basics, not end products of loooong chain of manufacture. Looking at you Plastic, Glass, Lime and Steel (and Fertilizer of course).

I was hoping for the same thing. The amount of fertilizer seemed a bit much compared to how much a complete map contains.

=> I prefer 5t fossil over 150kg lime and the same for the other precursor resources

(Sure it´s not game breaking or really exploitable.)

Is it an exploit to print more glass after just creating maybe a couple gramms using sand and a volcano ?

[TupiniWitch]

I mean, I actually like the way it is right now, everytime I get a Wort Seed on the pod I get all moist, but I do get that not everyone likes this. Maybe an option to limit the "tier" of the gifts on game creation would do the trick, as said above? I just think it shouldn't be nerfed or changed, would be best to remain like it is with customization options so it can please all kinds of players.

[lilibat]

I take umbrage  at calling it 'welfare pod'. 

It's also not that much of an advantage. I rarely get anything I even find useful. Since they changed it I never get anything OP. I think they should just have a setting for custom games to turn it off so everyone who is so upset bu it should just turn it off. 

Not everyone plays the same way and if you must just go balls to the wall hard difficulty, then that's great, just don't try to make everyone do that. The new pod gifts I think offers a good, and somewhat random way, to make it so more casual players can maybe not be tempted by the spawn features of the  sandbox as much. It offers a nice middle ground on difficulty based on RNG. 

 

It's a single player game and ultimately, it's not anyone else's business how you play. 

[PhailRaptor]

Not sure what the issue is.  If you don't like the idea of receiving resources from the Printer, just don't print them.  You still have 2 Dupes to choose from, and can instead ooze the whole lot instead if you don't like any of the options.

Also, not everyone wants to live on the bleeding edge.  If you do, by all means, pursue that.  But don't expect me, or anyone else, to play at your level.  I see this all the time in other games, where a select group of individuals are intent on dictating how hard the game should be because they are capable of playing at it.  They don't realize that they are a minority, compared to quantities of people who are just plain not that good at the game.  Or, for that matter, the people who are playing the game to relieve stress, instead of gain more.  This is ultimately why I can't even stomach ARAMs in League of Legends anymore.  1 person ruins the game for the other 4 people on their team because they would rather throw a tantrum about the Champion they got, or the way someone on the team "gave up" a kill, or whatever other nonsense.

Again, if you want to play that way, go right ahead.  But be aware that not everyone wants to play the game the same way you want to.

[Grimgaw]

I feel like people here don't realize significance of 3 tonnes of fertilizer and there would be way more post like this if there was an option of 3 tonnes of Steel. It's as if people here are still living in the world of pre-nerf Fertilizer Maker (FM).

• It would take 41.6 cycles for one FM to make 3 tonnes.
• It would take 1625kg of Dirt to make 3 tonnes.
• One would need to sieve 40.6 tonnes of pH2O to get this much Dirt.

Those numbers are staggering. As the current game balance stands fetilizer is and end game advanced material useful only for farming Sleet Wheat, though you get people who use it as

12 hours ago, DaveSatx said:

hatch food. 

All I'm pointing out that the packages need another balance pass.

 

[ChickenMadness]

20 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

Disabling or not using a feature because it's not well balanced doesn't really make for a compelling game play.

It's the same as choosing difficulty settings before you start the game. just have some discipline to not make the game easy for yourself lol.

[chemie]

4 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

It's the same as choosing difficulty settings before you start the game. just have some discipline to not make the game easy for yourself lol.

agree.  it would be impossible to balance across all players.  I would file this one under "if you think a drop is OP, don;t take it"

[pacovf]

I think there is definitely room for improvement in the current "welfare package" system so as to increase player involvement. Right now, you get free stuff just because your colony hasn't died yet. I think that's fine for basic stuff like water, nutrient bars and other stuff like starting biome seeds, for the extra early game help for new players. Especially because at that point you are choosing between that and a new dupe.

But past that point, the player should be responsible for the better packages. For example, you can only get copper ore once you research power regulation, or lime once you research smelting. Or you can only get plastic once you've actually produced some for the first time. Or you could find some technology in the ruins that unlocks some rare materials, like tungsten. And make it so that once you fulfill the conditions for a given package, you are guaranteed to have it offered to you the next time the pod is ready to print.

I feel like some of the detractors of the current system (specific numbers aside) are against it because the packages feel unearned. A relatively small change like this could help with that. 

[Tytan]

On 11/02/2019 at 2:44 PM, Grimgaw said:

Disabling or not using a feature because it's not well balanced doesn't really make for a compelling game play.

you have the option to reject all

[WanderingKid]

So, I have some opinion on the pods now that I've had a few hundred cycles to toy with them.

First, to some others:

On ‎2‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 1:06 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

But who's to say it isn't balanced?  This is a solo adventure.  There are aspects that will challenge beginning players as well as advanced players and the new care package system doesn't detract from that. 

[snip]

Instead of just saying its "unbalanced," please, elaborate! Explain to the rest of us why you think its a problem.  Maybe some of us will agree, maybe some of us won't.

 

11 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Also, not everyone wants to live on the bleeding edge.  If you do, by all means, pursue that.  But don't expect me, or anyone else, to play at your level. 

I generally agree with these sentiments, but I don't believe that a balance pass on the selectable options is a black/white concern.  I don't think anyone (besides me) wants it to be removed... get to that in a second.  There are just options that are immediate "Get that!" instead of being an interesting choice between options.  Some options need to be bumped up to make them interesting.  Others need to be squashed a bit to keep them interesting.  Some of them should just be thrown overboard, they're like a Mouth Breathing, Anemic dupe.

I personally dislike the care package system because in the first 40-60 cycles, I don't want a care package interrupting my hunt for the dupes with the interests I want. There's already so much enough aggravation for me trying to get the dupes I want in the first place that I really could use with less chances of getting one that's useful to me.

-- This is easily cured by a simple toggle on the printing pod "Allow Care Packages".  It's not there yet.

-- The similar toggle could turn off dupes for more care package options once you've hit your optimum dupe counts.

Just because I *can* play bleeding edge, doesn't mean I want to either.  There are difficulty sliders for those options if I want them.  Do I think some of these sliders need to be manipulated for 'standard' play?  Sure.  I think disease is ridiculously weak currently, even at Miserable.  I use that as an example simply because I do think there should be some good challenge in the game to improve longevity, for the majority of players.  I don't expect others who have a thousand hours in the game to think it overly difficult, but I think there should be *some* difficult to keep it interesting.

In this regard, gating care packages for some reason (research, found item, time, whatever) can be a viable alternative.  I don't personally think a time gate is valid.  I have rockets going at cycle X, another player at cycle Y.  Neither of us will need a petro drop at cycle 20 if we're still building farms, but I might like one at 80 where the other player may prefer it at 200.  Gating in this case I think should help keep the packages more useful when you need, as newer players will need more of that basic materials to keep going, and 3 tons of fertilizer (as an example) isn't going to help them with their mealwood/musher setup, but could be useful when they research the hydroponics tiles.

At the same time, there are things that are just silly to bother printing, like glass, unless you're going to drop multiple solar panels worth of material.  However, I'd like to think most players would know how to use an early steel drop before you've built up the supply chain.  A single steel atmo pump makes Nat Gas Geyser control simple to use.  Drops like this oversimplify the challenge of the game to keep interest in long term play, in my opinion.  If you desire that easy mode, there's a sandbox that can drop what you want.  I'd personally like to see keeping the 'standard' difficulty keep being interesting.

So, to get off my soapbox... I think we can have valid and valuable discussions about what items should/shouldn't be included, and when they should be included, without it being a black and white issue.  I also think a lot of these options need to be buffed, because right now...

22 minutes ago, Tytan said:

you have the option to reject all

… is pretty much what I usually do.  I don't need either of the two more dupes, a handful of slickster eggs, nor a bottle of water that doesn't have a bottle emptier in the map anymore.

So, to get to the damned point...

I would recommend that care packages were gated for different drop items by research choices. Make sure they make sense.  This *might* mean we need to revisit the entire research system as it stands and hope that Klei agrees with us.  It also would help to give a player a control so they'd only research things they'd want to open the packages for, which is more interesting than drecko eggs when you don't even have a rancher.