QoL Mk3 is TOO Easy, please make harder

[s4098429]

I’ve been loving ONI for about a year now, but I think it’s been getting too easy these past few updates. I do agree with the idea of making ONI accessible to new players. I’m just suggesting the harder difficulty settings should be improved to challenge even experienced players.

Currently I’m playing a game with max difficulty settings and am surviving quite well without utilising all the ONI mechanics. This should not be the case. I haven’t built a med room or a medicine production system. I’m on cycle 200, got my 13 dups to the end of the skill tree (except the astronaut stuff) and have sometimes double the moral I need. I haven’t needed to build any recreational buildings like the stereo or video game. I haven’t even needed to build showers. The first 50 cycles required my full attention, but since then it’s been getting easier and easier.

I think there is too much moral.

I think the sources for moral are too strong, and the requirements for moral are too low.

Gathering food from the wild has meant that I often can feed my dupes the very best food. I think the best food should require visiting space and building an intricate farm/ranch system. Maybe the gassy moo could be milked to make ice cream. The quality of food could also depend on the skill of the dupe that cooked it. Much like good art work requires an advanced dupe, higher tier chefs could add a few moral bonuses to the food they cook. Or/and the higher tier recipes can only be cooked by a higher tier chef. Either way I think food, especially the BBQ and pepper bread, provide too much moral when compared to the effort required to make them.

As my game progresses my dupes continue to gain skill points, but I don’t have enough good things to spend those skill points on. With time their attributes like athletics increase but their moral requirements don’t.

I think there should be repeatable skills/attribute things to spend skill points on. Such as athletics, tinkering, digging, strength etc. Each point increase requireing another moral point. This will mean better dupes always require more moral.

I think there needs to be a few more sources of stress. Currently the ‘soggy feat’ and ‘sopping wet’ stress penalty are harsh, maybe too harsh for new players, but I think there should be few more similar penalties for not managing the environment. A stress penalty for being in chlorine and polluted oxygen would be fair in my opinion. A minor disease, similar to hypothermia, would also be appropriate. Example: ‘caustic burns’ for being in chlorine, cured by having a shower. ‘Pink eye’ for being in P.O. too long, cured by being in chlorine. Each disease could increase stress by 10 or 20%.

With regards to germs, I’m ok with the changes to immunity, I just think that there needs to be more sources of germs. In the higher difficulty setting it should be required to have a functioning med bay and medicine production facility.

I suggest having critters produce food poisoning germs when they poop. Coal from hatches could have germs growing on it, requiring dupes to wash their hands after picking up after them.

Hatches/ Dreckos could also be carriers of their own unique set of germs. These germs could be analogous to fleas and cause dupes that handle them to get a minor disease that makes them itchy, interrupting themselves to scratch. Maybe the disease could be called something like ‘hatch rash’ or ‘drecko dandruff’.

These changes would penalise the player for having hatches and dreckos wandering throughout the base pooping everywhere.

I also think there should be a few species of germs that don’t affect dupes but only affect plants and critters. For plants something analogous to aphids or fungus, maybe just referred to as ‘blight’ germs. Critters could have something analogous to mad cow disease, maybe ‘crazy critter’ disease. It could cause critters to attack dupes, not lay eggs, and then die.

These germs could be living in solids in various parts of the map. For example algae in the caustic biome could have ‘blight’ growing in it, preventing you from having the oxygen diffuser near your farm. Some sedimentary rock could have the ‘crazy critter’ germ growing in it, preventing you from feeding it to your hatches. The ore scrubber would become a necessity.

If there are more germs and germ types on the map then chlorine and chlorine geysers would become more useful.

It would also be nice if there was a special species of germ that thrived in chlorine. Maybe this germ should only occur late game and be from another planet, requiring the player to create a quarantine system for materials bought back from space.

This is all I can write at the moment, what are everyone’s thoughts?

Are you due to master ONI before it reaches full release?

 

[Sasza22]

The morale balance is pretty off atm. Imo they should reduce the mess/great hall bonuses and maybe even some of the high tier food bonuses. The skill tree could use higher morale costs too. The tier 3 jobs are too light on morale imo, especially if a dupe has interest in it.

The diseases can be hard to avoid early on but they don`t do much when untreated. Imo they penalties they give should be higher. Double the bladder increas for food poisoning, or triple so they will spend a lot of time in the toilet, slimelung should give -6 athletics.

Now the allergy effect is too strong on the other hand (+20% stress in an instant and can happen 5 times a cycle easily). Should be like the sopping wet imo half a cycle debuff for 10% stress total(20%/cycle).

I haven`t yet tried dealing with the zombie spores. They seem like a hard germ to deal with but you only encounter it in the oil biome where you use exosuits anyway. It also hits hard when infected. Maybe it will be moved to a different biome on release.

Release will have 3 new biomes. I suspect some of the stuff might be moved to those. Like the morb for example. I can imagine it spread some kind of "blight" germs instead of slimelung that would have the old food poisoning sypthoms (vomitting) and be more deadly.

There is some balancing needed definetly but i kinda like the direction it`s headed.

[Zarquan]

14 hours ago, s4098429 said:

I think there is too much moral.

I think the sources for moral are too strong, and the requirements for moral are too low.

Gathering food from the wild has meant that I often can feed my dupes the very best food. I think the best food should require visiting space and building an intricate farm/ranch system. Maybe the gassy moo could be milked to make ice cream. The quality of food could also depend on the skill of the dupe that cooked it. Much like good art work requires an advanced dupe, higher tier chefs could add a few moral bonuses to the food they cook. Or/and the higher tier recipes can only be cooked by a higher tier chef. Either way I think food, especially the BBQ and pepper bread, provide too much moral when compared to the effort required to make them.

I agree with the too much morale, or too low morale requirements.  It feels like morale is almost a non-issue until we need astronauts, then I need to feed them decent food.

14 hours ago, s4098429 said:

With regards to germs, I’m ok with the changes to immunity, I just think that there needs to be more sources of germs. In the higher difficulty setting it should be required to have a functioning med bay and medicine production facility.

I don't see how this could be enforced.  My dupes don't come in contact with germs.  They do inhale some food poisoning early, but that's it.  If they implement your animal germs, I would put the dupes in exosuits for ranching to avoid it.

14 hours ago, s4098429 said:

Hatches/ Dreckos could also be carriers of their own unique set of germs. These germs could be analogous to fleas and cause dupes that handle them to get a minor disease that makes them itchy, interrupting themselves to scratch. Maybe the disease could be called something like ‘hatch rash’ or ‘drecko dandruff’.

These changes would penalise the player for having hatches and dreckos wandering throughout the base pooping everywhere.

These changes would penalise the player for having hatches and dreckos wandering throughout the base pooping everywhere.

I also think there should be a few species of germs that don’t affect dupes but only affect plants and critters. For plants something analogous to aphids or fungus, maybe just referred to as ‘blight’ germs. Critters could have something analogous to mad cow disease, maybe ‘crazy critter’ disease. It could cause critters to attack dupes, not lay eggs, and then die.

These germs could be living in solids in various parts of the map. For example algae in the caustic biome could have ‘blight’ growing in it, preventing you from having the oxygen diffuser near your farm. Some sedimentary rock could have the ‘crazy critter’ germ growing in it, preventing you from feeding it to your hatches. The ore scrubber would become a necessity.

I think this is a cool idea.  However, it would need to be coupled with a change to the germ system so that germ types can overlap.  Even without your changes, they should change the germs.  It would be interesting if certain surface germs could lead to a minor disease.

14 hours ago, s4098429 said:

I think there needs to be a few more sources of stress. Currently the ‘soggy feat’ and ‘sopping wet’ stress penalty are harsh, maybe too harsh for new players, but I think there should be few more similar penalties for not managing the environment. A stress penalty for being in chlorine and polluted oxygen would be fair in my opinion. A minor disease, similar to hypothermia, would also be appropriate. Example: ‘caustic burns’ for being in chlorine, cured by having a shower. ‘Pink eye’ for being in P.O. too long, cured by being in chlorine. Each disease could increase stress by 10 or 20%.

I think it would be nice to have this.  The question I have is, in your mind, how long would they have to be in the chlorine or polluted oxygen to get this effect?  Can they pop in and out of a chlorine room to get food?  One of my tricks is to put my compost piles in 2000g chlorine atmosphere to prevent offgassing and kill germs.  Perhaps this change would make it harder for me to avoid germs in the early game.