Obsidian Boulders

[Dracian]

Hi there,

Am I the only one to think Obsidian boulders may be a wee bit too big ? As other POI, they overwrite Abyssalite barriers between biomes which can lead to that :

Plus, aesthetically, I don't know, it just feels... monolithic, compared to the rest of the asteroid.

I don't know how you feel about that, but I wanted to share my opinion.

Cheers

[Trego]

at the world generation you can have small, medium, large, or no, obsidian boulders.  You appear to have a large one there?  Just don't play with large boulders in your world if you don't like them?  I like that they are putting in many ways of making the game harder if you're looking for a challenge.

[Sasza22]

I wonder how long is it going to take the heat to get to the oil through all those layers of rock.

Thematically they look ok. The asteroid mentions boulders and that`s what you get. I kinda like that it`s somewhat an obstacle but too many of those might clutter the map a bit too much. Maybe they could be less circular. More "rock shaped" with irregular borders could help make them smaller.

[Darkin Coaled]

that picture is a naturally occurring sour gas boiler? somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

[Nightinggale]

I'm not impressed with the boulders. My first game had a major part of the starting biome replaced with a giant boulder. I like the increased amount of obsidian as it's great for certain tasks, but somehow the boulders aren't the way I would like to get obsidian.

Speaking of obsidian, have you noticed that the magma biome has a whole lot more of it now? It's now possible to dig out all the magma if you like. Magma based steam turbine power, here I come

[Cypher-7]

2 minutes ago, Darkin Coaled said:

that picture is a naturally occurring sour gas boiler? somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

It’s likely a pocket of oil that has been boiled into petroleum and then into sour gas due to the magma. 

[Darkin Coaled]

1 minute ago, Cypher-7 said:

It’s likely a pocket of oil that has been boiled into petroleum and then into sour gas due to the magma. 

No, what I meant is, dig out a bit of that obsidian to almost touch the magma, start pouring oil in, it will cook off if you don't flood it. no fancy heating loops or steel tiles required. It works in my head, am I wrong?

[Cypher-7]

5 minutes ago, Darkin Coaled said:

No, what I meant is, dig out a bit of that obsidian to almost touch the magma, start pouring oil in, it will cook off if you don't flood it. no fancy heating loops or steel tiles required. It works in my head, am I wrong?

It seems like you have a lot more potential for putting all that magma to use with the obsidian there, after you cool the sour gas you should be good to go.  

[Glassyfo]

41 minutes ago, Trego said:

at the world generation you can have small, medium, large, or no, obsidian boulders.  You appear to have a large one there?  Just don't play with large boulders in your world if you don't like them?  I like that they are putting in many ways of making the game harder if you're looking for a challenge.

Is there a no boulder option?

[Dracian]

21 minutes ago, bleeter6 said:

Is there a no boulder option?

Technically, you can reroll your asteroid until you have no boulders in the list, though, even then, boulders are present...

This was supposed to be an asteroid without any boulder, though I have counted 16 of them, of various sizes, on the map.

I'm not really fond of that, and I wish I didn't had to reroll ad nauseam to not have these :/

EDIT : submitted the bug in the bug tracker

 

[goboking]

I actually hate (a strong but appropriate word in this case) these things.  They're HUGE.  They're ugly.  They disrupt biomes and displace other, more interesting features and topography.  They add one and only one thing to the map, and that one thing isn't needed in such massive quantities.  I was thinking they were a bug in the worldgen until it struck me that they're the boulders mentioned at game creation.  I haven't wanted a feature reversed this bad since the Occupation Upgrade's changes to priority.

[Glassyfo]

Checkbox option to not have these in a custom game PLEASE Klei!

[Trego]

5 minutes ago, goboking said:

I actually hate (a strong but appropriate word in this case) these things.  They're HUGE.  They're ugly.  They disrupt biomes and displace other, more interesting features and topography.  They add one and only one thing to the map, and that one thing isn't needed in such massive quantities.  I was thinking they were a bug in the worldgen until it struck me that they're the boulders mentioned at game creation.  I haven't wanted a feature reversed this bad since the Occupation Upgrade's changes to priority.

They add one thing to the map: obstruction, which is a form of difficulty-and quite realistic as well.  I think they are great, as an optional feature, but not if you can't choose not to have them.

[Machenoid]

20 minutes ago, Trego said:

They add one thing to the map: obstruction

They also add the need to have a miner who can dig through them.

If there's one place they should exist it's on the borders between biomes and not within the biomes themselves... If it's possible they should be worked into world generation to actually be built into the terrain as a sub-biome, and not as an ugly-looking "rubber stamp" like:

38 minutes ago, Dracian said:

If i saw this when i first started the map i would immediately abandon the colony and start over. The diameter of the boulder at that level and placement is completely inappropriate. It would be a constant hinderance until i can get a dupe with a skill level to deal with it, which is several dozen cycles. Worst of all it's effectively "eaten" all the resources which could've spawned there, which in the starting biome you really need. The smaller 9 tile diameter one to the left is much more acceptable.

Boulder generation should be biased so that larger and less numerous boulders at placed at the bottom of the map, and that smaller but more numerous boulders at placed at the top of the map. The ones at the bottom should be obsidian as that's obviously a magma bubble that broke free and cooled (or are in the process of cooling...) while the ones at the top could be granite/obsidian/iron mixes representing massive asteroid impact long ago.

[Glassyfo]

This is a biome, not a boulder. I don't think I'll be touching this game until we're given the option to not have boulders at all.

Edit: Found out I can revert to pre-beta. I can play ONI again!

[mathmanican]

4 minutes ago, bleeter6 said:

This is a biome, not a boulder.

Looks like a boulder, not a biome. Crazy stuff is happening. 

[Glassyfo]

Just now, mathmanican said:

Looks like a boulder, not a biome. Crazy stuff is happening. 

No I meant that the boulder is the size of a biome.

[bobucles]

Boulders are big enough to count as their own asteroids. They're pretty big.

[Machenoid]

Just now, bleeter6 said:

No I meant that the boulder is the size of a biome.

Maybe someone confused a radius value for a diameter value? Making every boulder twice as large as it should've been?

[Glassyfo]

Just now, Machenoid said:

Maybe someone confused a radius value for a diameter value? Making every boulder twice as large as it should've been?

I should mention that I specifically rerolled until I got a seed that didn't list any boulders at all.

[BlackGoat]

Agree I think boulders are too big, too numerous, and waste too much map. Only thing I really don't like so far about the beta.

[Ellilea]

Personally not a fan of these. They look ugly, like a ball of hard dung disrupting my mojo. Will definitely avoid them during the world creation. Certainly wouldn't mind a "no boulders" check box since I'm just gonna reroll till there aren't any anyway :c

I'd much prefer abyssalite barriers between biomes as the obstruction if I was looking for an added difficulty/need for a specialized miner to progress.

Ugliness aside, these boulders feel like they're taking place of fun, diverse things that could've spawned in their place and don't really provide much in terms of gameplay. Maybe realism to some folks, but I'm not one of those folks so off with their (the boulders'!) heads.

[EnderCN]

2 hours ago, goboking said:

I actually hate (a strong but appropriate word in this case) these things.  They're HUGE.  They're ugly.  They disrupt biomes and displace other, more interesting features and topography.  They add one and only one thing to the map, and that one thing isn't needed in such massive quantities.  I was thinking they were a bug in the worldgen until it struck me that they're the boulders mentioned at game creation.  I haven't wanted a feature reversed this bad since the Occupation Upgrade's changes to priority.

They add one thing to the map, a reason to deviate from your same old boring base you build every time.  These are absolutely fantastic though they need some minor tweaks.  They are exactly what the game needed.

[Glassyfo]

18 minutes ago, EnderCN said:

They add one thing to the map, a reason to deviate from your same old boring base you build every time.  These are absolutely fantastic though they need some minor tweaks.  They are exactly what the game needed.

In what way would they make people deviate? That makes no sense.

[EnderCN]

9 minutes ago, bleeter6 said:

In what way would they make people deviate? That makes no sense.

I really don't understand what you are saying here?  Dropping a big old boulder in the middle of my base before I can dig it means I have to completely restructure everything I do.  If I have a base layout in my head going into a game and a boulder drops anywhere near my printing pod it makes me completely redo my base layout.  These make the game different every single time you play whereas the old patch I built the same base every single game because there really was no reason to not do that.   I could show you a screenshot of the last 4 bases I made and in the core middle section every single one of them is exactly the same, you could just copy and paste them.  This adds a mechanic that makes me move out of that basic design and that is good.

Yeah they may be too big at times, that just takes more testing.  But the basic mechanic is a good one.  This game is way too easy and it is way too easy to just autopilot with the same design every game, this really needed to change for the long term health of the game.