Is lettuce OP?

[Machenoid]

The description says it has a poisonous portion to it; do something with that which makes farming them more difficult or labor/machine intensive:

1. When the bulb rots, instead of producing a rot pile it produces polluted water. Since Waterweed doesn't grow within Pwater, there must be a dupe who gets their feet wet in order to mop the liquid. At least until an atmos suit and infrastructure is made. Also considering the neighboring tiles will have liquid, that means they have to mop the space dry or have the mop job cancled, and then the mopped water /salt water /brine be reinserted to the farm to keep it wet.
2. Harvesting the plant releases Waterweed Poisoning "germs" into the liquid on that tile and onto the dupe doing the harvesting, which means they have to clean themselves before they can eat (how many people put a wash station outside their farm?) and the whole farm liquid needs decontamination from poisoning before it can be reused. The poison would only rapidly decontaminate within Brine or being boiled into steam (or being present in gas) and inhaling the poison should be even worse than ingesting it (to prevent players from simply using the electrolyzer)
3. Seperating the edible leafs from the "poisonous" bulb on top of the plant. The bulb could be a seperate food item that requires microbe musher to become something edible, which contains the majority of the kcal from the plant. If the bulbs are mushed then it would be as it is now, only slightly better than meal lice. Otherwise the number of plants required should be worse than raw meal lice, either from space used or time spent.
4. Pokeshells could injest the poisonous bulb and become a poisonous or hostile subspecies, requiring better tidying/sweeping operation to prevent them from eating it if they're in the fields being fed by rot piles of unswept harvests.
5. The bulb (or empty shell of the bulb) is simply a waste product that has to be thrown out and composted, making dupes spend time flipping compost.
6. Harvesting speed reduction, with a farming skill level that removes the speed penalty from harvesting waterweed.
7. Growth time is influenced by atmosphere. Only by planting in brine do you get the current kcal/cycle. Salt water is worse than brine, and clean water is worst of all.

[Wintersdark]

3 hours ago, nonoxyl said:

The balance does not seem appropriate to me. This kind of easy to setup farm mechanic seems more appropriate in the starter biome. With the lack of buried objects in the forest, it's a bit of a struggle to get your mealwood farm up and going. Then, when you can finally get out of the starter biome, you find the easy farm. Seems backwards.

They added buried mealwood seeds to the forest starts in the last update.

[Gurgel]

11 hours ago, Machenoid said:

The description says it has a poisonous portion to it; do something with that which makes farming them more difficult or labor/machine intensive:

1. When the bulb rots, instead of producing a rot pile it produces polluted water. Since Waterweed doesn't grow within Pwater, there must be a dupe who gets their feet wet in order to mop the liquid. At least until an atmos suit and infrastructure is made. Also considering the neighboring tiles will have liquid, that means they have to mop the space dry or have the mop job cancled, and then the mopped water /salt water /brine be reinserted to the farm to keep it wet.
2. Harvesting the plant releases Waterweed Poisoning "germs" into the liquid on that tile and onto the dupe doing the harvesting, which means they have to clean themselves before they can eat (how many people put a wash station outside their farm?) and the whole farm liquid needs decontamination from poisoning before it can be reused. The poison would only rapidly decontaminate within Brine or being boiled into steam (or being present in gas) and inhaling the poison should be even worse than ingesting it (to prevent players from simply using the electrolyzer)
3. Seperating the edible leafs from the "poisonous" bulb on top of the plant. The bulb could be a seperate food item that requires microbe musher to become something edible, which contains the majority of the kcal from the plant. If the bulbs are mushed then it would be as it is now, only slightly better than meal lice. Otherwise the number of plants required should be worse than raw meal lice, either from space used or time spent.
4. Pokeshells could injest the poisonous bulb and become a poisonous or hostile subspecies, requiring better tidying/sweeping operation to prevent them from eating it if they're in the fields being fed by rot piles of unswept harvests.
5. The bulb (or empty shell of the bulb) is simply a waste product that has to be thrown out and composted, making dupes spend time flipping compost.
6. Harvesting speed reduction, with a farming skill level that removes the speed penalty from harvesting waterweed.
7. Growth time is influenced by atmosphere. Only by planting in brine do you get the current kcal/cycle. Salt water is worse than brine, and clean water is worst of all.

Dude, Oceania is slow and difficult enough as it is. Really do not want or need any of the things you propose.

[DarkMaster13]

11 hours ago, MustardWarrior said:

What recipes are there for lettuce and what is their quality.

Mushroom wrap: 1,200 kcal lettuce + 2,400 kcal mushroom -> 4,000 kcal - Quality 3 (+8 morale)

Sushi: 1,600 kcal pacu fillet + 300 kcal lettuce -> 4,000 kcal - Quality 4 (+12 morale)

These recipes require the new cooking appliance (Gas Range), which takes natural gas to run and uses the same amount of power as the microbe musher.  The Mushroom wrap has the same overall calorie count as making fried mushrooms instead.

[suicide commando]

Lettuce can also  be eaten raw as quality 0 food. This last bit is what makes it really OP imho. Food that doesn't require any resources to grow nor anything added to make it edible. In the very least, if it's going to require 0 resources to grow, don't allow for it to be eaten raw, but use it as an ingredient for recipes only. The fact the new gas range requires NG to run and a lot more power than the grill is good, this makes high end recipes which give the biggest buffs to morale harder to produce. Since Lettuce as ingredient is only used in those, having a 'free' ingredient for it isn't too OP.

 

 

[Sasza22]

10 minutes ago, suicide commando said:

Lettuce can also  be eaten raw as quality 0 food. This last bit is what makes it really OP imho.

It`s kinda like old mealwood used to be. Before they added dirt as fertilizer.

Those things take really long to grow. I wonder how many you need to sustain. Before setting the whole thing up you might as well move to higher quality food already. If it`s still OP this way maybe it should slowly absorb the surrownding water. So that you need to refill the pool after a while.

[suicide commando]

They produce 3600 Calories per 12 cyles, so 300 calories per cycle. So you need 3.3 of them per dupe. The only issues you have to contend with is that since it takes so long to grow that you need to have sufficient storage and a good buffer.

 

[blash365]

Did anybody here manage to get additional Waterweed seeds from harvesting? So far i have been unlucky with it.:/

[beowulf2010]

8 hours ago, blash365 said:

Did anybody here manage to get additional Waterweed seeds from harvesting? So far i have been unlucky with it.:/

Yeah, I have. It's the normal 10% chance so it's pretty streaky. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

10 hours ago, suicide commando said:

Lettuce can also  be eaten raw as quality 0 food. This last bit is what makes it really OP imho. Food that doesn't require any resources to grow nor anything added to make it edible.

Hello? Mealwood?  I can't tell you how many times I've sustained my early base on naturally growing mealwood.  All you gotta do is harvest it.

10 hours ago, suicide commando said:

They produce 3600 Calories per 12 cyles, so 300 calories per cycle. So you need 3.3 of them per dupe. The only issues you have to contend with is that since it takes so long to grow that you need to have sufficient storage and a good buffer.

 

Definitely.  The lettuce decays quickly, so until you build a fridge (or cold/gas/whatever storage room) to keep it fresh longer, its very difficult to sustain the base.  For those above who keep complaining that "lettuce is OP," the short decay of the leaves are a definite downside to offset their otherwise free growth.

[DarkMaster13]

6 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Hello? Mealwood?  I can't tell you how many times I've sustained my early base on naturally growing mealwood.  All you gotta do is harvest it.

Definitely.  The lettuce decays quickly, so until you build a fridge (or cold/gas/whatever storage room) to keep it fresh longer, its very difficult to sustain the base.  For those above who keep complaining that "lettuce is OP," the short decay of the leaves are a definite downside to offset their otherwise free growth.

That would only really be the case if it wasn't so trivial to create a perfect refrigerator with a simple CO2 pit.  A pit almost anywhere in your base will naturally fill with CO2 and you can store food in there that will not decay at all.  Even if that's removed, a fridge does not draw a huge amount of power, it's just continuous.  So a lot of fridges will add up their power costs fast.  This is only an issue if you need a lot of storage, which would only be the case if you have a lot of dupes.  If you have a lot of dupes, you need more of everything anyway, so it's just scaling things up.  Having to power too many fridges is unlikely to be what brings your base down if you're taking on too many dupes.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, DarkMaster13 said:

That would only really be the case if it wasn't so trivial to create a perfect refrigerator with a simple CO2 pit. 

OK, so you're saying that a plant that has a faster decay than others, takes up more storage space per calorie than others, takes a relatively long time to mature, and will likely result in the wet feet penalty for dupes ... is overpowered?  Yes, you can mitigate those drawbacks, but they're still things that have to be considered AND dealt with.

Mealwood needs dirt.  So what?  Its been a very long time since I ran out of dirt while farming mealwood.  In fact, the only time I ever DID was when I tried to sustain 20 dupes on it with a map that didn't have a lot of dirt... ...and it still took me until around cycle 600 or so to run out.  Plus, with only 3 cycles to maturity for the domesticated plant, you don't even have to bother storing the meal lice. As long as you have enough plants to sustain your dupes, you'll have food fresh enough for them to eat for as long as it takes for you to set up a system for higher-morale food.

 

Honestly, I don't know what to make of this thread anymore.  Clearly I see things differently than the other posters here.  I think the lettuce is just fine.  Sure it doesn't take any fertilizer, but it has plenty of drawbacks.  If you want a plant with a similar growth time that is also free, then use free-range mealwood.  It'll actually be easier, since the harvested food lasts longer and it can be cooked/pickled/etc early in the research tree.

[Rhogar]

How many lettuce would it take to sustain a dupe's O2 if you let it rot?

[DarkMaster13]

17 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

OK, so you're saying that a plant that has a faster decay than others, takes up more storage space per calorie than others, takes a relatively long time to mature, and will likely result in the wet feet penalty for dupes ... is overpowered?  Yes, you can mitigate those drawbacks, but they're still things that have to be considered AND dealt with.

Mealwood needs dirt.  So what?  Its been a very long time since I ran out of dirt while farming mealwood.  In fact, the only time I ever DID was when I tried to sustain 20 dupes on it with a map that didn't have a lot of dirt... ...and it still took me until around cycle 600 or so to run out.  Plus, with only 3 cycles to maturity for the domesticated plant, you don't even have to bother storing the meal lice. As long as you have enough plants to sustain your dupes, you'll have food fresh enough for them to eat for as long as it takes for you to set up a system for higher-morale food.

 

Honestly, I don't know what to make of this thread anymore.  Clearly I see things differently than the other posters here.  I think the lettuce is just fine.  Sure it doesn't take any fertilizer, but it has plenty of drawbacks.  If you want a plant with a similar growth time that is also free, then use free-range mealwood.  It'll actually be easier, since the harvested food lasts longer and it can be cooked/pickled/etc early in the research tree.

Mealwood not only takes dirt, it also takes clean water and significant work time on the microbe musher to get the full calorie gain.  More frequent harvests are actually worse than less frequent ones because your dupes spend more time harvesting the plants.  Dupes also have to constantly refill the dirt for those mealwood plants.  The real reason you should want to get away from mealwood isn't usually because you want the morale boost, it's because it's incredibly labor intensive.  Basic room bonuses will cover all your morale needs for the first few skill points without any issue.  Mealwood is actually the most labor intensive plant to grow in the game.  It's the same reason why you want to use coal power plants instead of manual generators or add in fire poles and transit tubes, you save dupe time for other things.

I want to emphasize that lettuce needs to be harvested 1/4 as often, does not require that the dupes deliver anything to them, and does not require any work cooking to get effectively a 0 morale food source that provides roughly the same amount of calories / cycle as mealwood.  In fact, it gives pretty much the same amount of calories as all the other crops when they are cooked.  The decay factor isn't even a real problem if you just stagger your plant growth (with twelve plants, you can have 3 ready to harvest every 3 cycles for a continuous food income on par with 12 mealwood plants maturing at the same time).  You end up with the exact same benefit as growing mealwood, minus all the costs and some huge labor savings.  The only true cost is soggy feet on a farmer every few cycles, how horrible.

[chemie]

So now lettuce is useless when domestic.  Bleach stone?  What were they thinking? You need salt water geyser AND a chlorine geysers...the probably of getting both is near zero so there is no actual way to grow these.

I guess you can still go OP wild farming but the domestic is totally pointless now.

[TheGCat]

The only two recipes who use the lettuce is the Mushroom Wrap (+3) and the Sushi (+5)!

On an Arboria Asteriod the Mushroom Wrap is impossible because you have no slime! No slime => no mushrooms => No Mushrooms Wrap (+3).

Sushi is the only need for me and the wild growing lettuce is enough to make it.

But a little hint. I normally produce all or the most of the recipes and not only one! I am not dependent on one recipe or one ingredient.

Large selection => happy dupes.

[chemie]

5 minutes ago, DustFireSky said:

The only two recipes who use the lettuce is the Mushroom Wrap (+3) and the Sushi (+5)!

On an Arboria Asteriod the Mushroom Wrap is impossible because you have no slime! No slime => no mushrooms => No Mushrooms Wrap (+3).

Sushi is the only need for me and the wild growing lettuce is enough to make it.

But a little hint. I normally produce all or the most of the recipes and not only one! I am not dependent on one recipe or one ingredient.

Large selection => happy dupes.

But they are basically saying,:

1. You must not use lettuce as a primary food source

2. You must never grow domestic lettuce

3. You must only grow wild lettuce for higher tier.

[Nightinggale]

8 minutes ago, chemie said:

You must never grow domestic lettuce

The plant morb. It's futile to come up with a domestication plan.

[TheGCat]

13 minutes ago, chemie said:

But they are basically saying,:

1. You must not use lettuce as a primary food source

2. You must never grow domestic lettuce

3. You must only grow wild lettuce for higher tier.

Personally i have had domestic some lettuce, but that was for a while ago. Now, i had cancel the operation and use only the wild growing too. The path the developers are going isn't my path. They try to push us in the direction to ranch critters. But this path is with the amount of the output from these critters a bad decision. Just my honest opinion.

[nivodeus]

We just have to wait and see what are they going to do with it between preview and the launch date this month. 

[beowulf2010]

Water weed needed to be looked at, but it feels that they went a bit too far. I'm sure they'll bring it back to somewhere in the middle. 

Salt water irrigation or bleach stone feels about right to me. Maybe flooded with salt water or brine like originally released and then bleach stone only for fertilization. 

This way we only need to figure out how to renew 1 resource for the farm instead of both.

Ranching squeaky pufts is a win win in this case. Bleach stone and meat. Yum. 

[miauly]

A swing from completely free to bleach stone fertilizing gives a mixed impression. Why change things so drastically if you have a plan on how the balance should look like? Do designers actually want to promote wild farming?

Also it's sad to see that Ranching had no balancing pass. Pacus still eat 10 times more in mass than Pufts produce - is there any reason for this to stay so? Are pufts in fact colibri-sized , or maybe Pacus are actually shark-sized ? The food production overall looks about the same it was before the patch - options are so different in their maintenance cost and sustainability that the whole picture seems random rather than designed, and player choices feel forced regardless of the map situation rather than made in accordance with the map situation.

Given that power is abundant end-game, food is the only limitation to the colony economy and it's in this sad state.

[nivodeus]

1 hour ago, beowulf2010 said:

Water weed needed to be looked at, but it feels that they went a bit too far. I'm sure they'll bring it back to somewhere in the middle. 

Salt water irrigation or bleach stone feels about right to me. Maybe flooded with salt water or brine like originally released and then bleach stone only for fertilization. 

This way we only need to figure out how to renew 1 resource for the farm instead of both.

Ranching squeaky pufts is a win win in this case. Bleach stone and meat. Yum. 

Agree with this, either one is fine. Salt water irrigation or bleach stone, but not both. Or change the fertiliser, or they need to find a way for us to produce bleach stone more efficiently. I mean, there are many things can be done still. 

[DarkMaster13]

5 hours ago, nivodeus said:

Agree with this, either one is fine. Salt water irrigation or bleach stone, but not both. Or change the fertiliser, or they need to find a way for us to produce bleach stone more efficiently. I mean, there are many things can be done still. 

Especially because you have to ask what niche the food source is intended to fill. 

Is it early game?  Raw it's on par with mealwood in terms of food quality, but requires salt water instead of water (cooking) and bleachstone instead of dirt.  Mealwood also has the option of forgoing the water.  The only thing in waterweed's favor is the better temperature range.  However you need to venture out and find a salt water biome first, either tide pool or ocean.  So it can't be relied on early game.

Is it mid game?  Now you're comparing to dusk cap and bristle berry.  One only requires fertilization, the other only requires irrigation.  So both of those are easier to farm than waterweed.  Both of them also give better quality food too, since you can cook either of them into a +1 meal and a better caloric count per plant per cycle than waterweed.  Again, the only point in favor of waterweed is the better temperature range.  However, there'll never be a situation where you can't farm mushrooms but can farm waterweed.  The aridio map is the only one that has no areas below 30 C to grow bristle blossom, but it does have areas that are between 30-35 C for the dusk caps.

Late game?  This was were dusk caps normally failed, since they had no advanced recipes.  Either bristle blossom or sleet wheat were the crops of choice, as they had the highest quality foods.  How does lettuce stack up?  Well it gets two recipies, one of which requires a laughably low amount of lettuce to make, sushi, so it's basically a minor pincha peppernut at that point that you grow a few plants for and cover all your needs (or just leave a few wild).  So that doesn't count.  That leaves mushroom wrap, so then something you only pick up after you've already got mushrooms going for an upgrade?  Unfortunately it seems like it would be far easier to convert over to bristle blossoms or sleet wheat instead, rather than upgrading your mushrooms to mushroom wrap since that's a better food quality.  The only reason I can see not to is if you have salt water in abundance and can't afford to desalinate it.  So maybe a mid-late game aridio without a cooling system?  Still not a final solution though, you'll need to switch to something that doesn't consume bleachstone eventually.

[DekothOGN]

Let's just call it what it is, Waterweed is dead until the next balancing pass. Bleachstone isn't even remotely reasonable. That said, I knew it needed to be nerfed as it was just far too easy and good. However right now it is worse than basically every food in the game as far as effort to grow. That little update set my one colony back to the stone age as I got a map seed that my choices are mealwood or WW. No mushrooms, no bristle blossom, no where near far enough in to harvest any amount of sleet wheat. Oh I'll eventually get there, but boy howdy was that a rude awakening this morning haha.