Various Balance Issues/Concerns

[beowulf2010]

6 minutes ago, chemie said:

locked doors on timer or timers on sweepers solves the polluted dirt issue easy peesy

Or horizontal doors to drop the polluted dirt once a day. Ideally directly into Pokeshell ranches. Plenty of solutions. 

[oosyrag]

Let pokeshells eat it all. Leave it on the floor to off gas and deodorize into O2 and clay.

[Nightinggale]

30 minutes ago, oosyrag said:

Leave it on the floor to off gas and deodorize into O2 and clay.

That's actually a good idea. Use the ethanol to make power to get polluted water and turn that into polluted oxygen too and clean the oxygen. Those two combined will give 71.5% of the mass of the processed wood as clay. Suddenly mass producing ceramics without mining clay doesn't seem as farfetched as I feared it would be.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Basically I've noticed that the "problem" in the Arboria world is things tend to get cold.  Oxygen production from rust emits liquid chlorine (which doesn't have much of a SHC and its conductivity is very low) which drops the temperature in the vicinity of the rust deoxidizer.. ethanol gets cold.. trees are always temperate...  So I think the ethanol loop fits in well with this sort of world.  Its the opposite problem of the original starting world.  There everything gets hot and you have to deal with heat.  Here, everything gets cold and you have to warm stuff back up.

Spoiler

I've had to turn my oxygen supply off twice to let my farm warm up, even with keeping all the extra mass in the area.

25 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

That's actually a good idea. Use the ethanol to make power to get polluted water and turn that into polluted oxygen too and clean the oxygen. Those two combined will give 71.5% of the mass of the processed wood as clay. Suddenly mass producing ceramics without mining clay doesn't seem as farfetched as I feared it would be.

Though, you'll ALSO have to crush rocks into sand.  At least on Arboria.

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Though, you'll ALSO have to crush rocks into sand.  At least on Arboria.

What's wrong with regolith? The deodorizers needs a filtration medium, which could be sand, but it doens't have to be.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, Nightinggale said:

What's wrong with regolith? The deodorizers needs a filtration medium, which could be sand, but it doens't have to be.

Where are you going to find regolith by cycle 20 or 30?  Yes, regolith is plentiful -- on the surface.  Most new players aren't going to be ranging far from the starting biome until they have a handle on survival.  The issue with Arboria is that getting STARTED is difficult.  Once you hit mid-game, its actually fairly easy.

[Nightinggale]

4 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Where are you going to find regolith by cycle 20 or 30? 

Fair point. For that early I would aim for the tidal pool biome, which actually has sand. Sure there are other astroids with more sand, but Arboria should have enough sand to keep you going until you reach the surface. Maybe it won't be right next to your stating location, but it's there.

[KittenIsAGeek]

13 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Fair point. For that early I would aim for the tidal pool biome, which actually has sand. 

Certainly.  But.. as you can see, I still haven't found mine.  

Spoiler

I only have rust and caustic so far.  Yes, I certainly could range farther, but my dupes are spending all their time just surviving.  I'm even cooking mush bars because last cycle I ran out of food (again!).  LOL.  I popped open debug and my closest sand is on the far left side of my map with a big obsidian boulder in the way.  So I'll have to dig around.  There's also a small pocket of sand in the caustic biome north-west through a band of iron, and apparently this map I chose "subsurface ocean" because that's where my ocean biomes are -- right near the surface.

Spoiler

Basically, while there IS sand on the map, it isn't anywhere close to the starting biome, so a new player will have to crush rocks for a bit if they want to use deoderizers or set up a plumbing loop.  Which was the point of my previous post: Arboria isn't a difficult map -- however, getting a starting foothold is definitely difficult and probably the hardest of the new maps to do so.

[oosyrag]

Pokeshells poop sand, and rock crusher isn't exactly high technology. I often run mine with just hamster wheels for some early metal. If you dig upwards to your subsurface ocean you'll have more sand than you'll ever need. There are pockets of sand in caustic as well.

As for starting, oxyferns can sustain your starting dupes for as long as you have water. Food can be tight without muckroots, but it's not hard to get meal lice up as you normally would for unlimited food from dirt, which is significantly more plentiful in Forest vs Temperate.

[beowulf2010]

10 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Which was the point of my previous post: Arboria isn't a difficult map -- however, getting a starting foothold is definitely difficult and probably the hardest of the new maps to do so.

Yeah, I'm definitely noticing this with all the non-sandstone starting maps. 

I think this may be why the survivability thing on the asteroid type selection seems to be so far off for us. We're all used to sandstone stsrts and the forest starting biomes are harder to get the foothold but overall, the other biomes make it easier in the long run. 

I'm still messing around in Verdante (I like my slime more than ice) and even in my newest map, I've had actually accurate starvation warnings multiple times through the first 25 or so cycles. Finally have my food stabilized but now I'm having to search for a rust biome for oxygen production (surprisingly little algea in the one bordering slime biome) while I get my Pip ranch and desalination plant up and running to feed dirt and water to an Oxyfern farm... 

Once that's done I'll finally be about the same place as you start in a sandstone biome. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

2 minutes ago, oosyrag said:

Pokeshells poop sand, and rock crusher isn't exactly high technology. 

Pokeshells come from the ocean biome -- which isn't near my starting biome.  Besides, if I had access to the ocean biome, I'd have all the sand I want.  And no, the rock crusher isn't high technology -- but when you're running with only 3 or 4 dupes because you're constantly out of air and food,  there isn't any dupe time to spare for the rock crusher.

Again, my point isn't that Arboria is difficult in the long run.  It isn't.  Getting a starting foothold without losing a dupe IS.  By cycle 30 or so, things are generally going well on the Arboria maps I've played.  However, twice now I've nearly lost a dupe due to either starvation or lack of oxygen during the first 15 cycles.  Also, if your random three traits for an arboria map are "Small boulders, medium boulders, large boulders," then it becomes INSANELY difficult to get started.  "Oh, hey, there's some water and air over there... on the other side of that obsidian.. which I can't dig through until I get my digger's 3rd skill point..."

[mathmanican]

23 hours ago, Troxism said:

Ethanol

 

On 7/1/2019 at 1:31 PM, Troxism said:

Wild Farming

37 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

We may be able to name the other two gems now, thanks to @Troxism

[Troxism]

Pretty funny, although I wouldn't really consider Ethanol on the same level as those other ones (both because it does have an input and because it does have some limitations and problems). Also if your going to include fixed bugs, there is always drip-cooling which fits 'infinity cooling' pretty well  (They said they fixed pitcher pumps this update, not tested tho, and AFAIK they fixed power loop recently too but maybe not all variants of it)

[beowulf2010]

3 minutes ago, Troxism said:

Pretty funny, although I wouldn't really consider Ethanol on the same level as those other ones (both because it does have an input and because it does have some limitations and problems).

No, it's an entirely self contained loop. If you let the lumber drop naturally, there is nothing you need a dupe to do. Lumber to ethanol to polluted water to lumber. You get free power and extra material at every step. 

As for limitations and problems? Yeah, not sure what you're talking about... Easy to set up, doesn't take much room, the ethanol can cool the trees if needed, lots of extra polluted water and more CO2 than most people will ever need. 

[mathmanican]

34 minutes ago, Troxism said:

there is always drip-cooling which fits 'infinity cooling' pretty well  (They said they fixed pitcher pumps this update, not tested tho, and AFAIK they fixed power loop recently too but maybe not all variants of it)

I guess drip cooling should definitely be on the list (so drop ethanol and put in drip cooling).  @Sasza22, the original artwork is yours, so you get to make the choice and repost - if it's worth it.  

• Yes, the infinite power loop is gone, at least the loop power back on itself bug. Building lots of hamster wheels, to generate free power from a single dupe running, was still an issue last I checked.  However, that bug fixes itself on save/load (last I checked), so it's not really fully exploitable without lots of manual effort (at which point - just enable sandbox).
• Save/load still has issues, so maybe that's one of the stones.  
• I do believe the metal cannon is still in the game (try to melt doors, and you get bonus packs of hot liquid metal each time you open close - under suitable conditions). Free heat, and free metal.  

On a side note, I'm guessing that some of these (liquid duplication or matter conversion) will make it into the final version of the game.  They'll be there, if you want to exploit them, just like "fire farms" are still in Don't Starve.  You can abuse the fire mechanics to get infinite food in DS. There will most likely be things to abuse in ONI as well (provided you can avoid being abused by ONI). 

Unfortunately, if you ever have two gases in close proximity, or you every melt any solid, then you run the risk of using either bug. You CANNOT AVOID THEM. I hope these bugs don't kill some people's enthusiasm for the game. It really stinks when you design something on a spreadsheet, only to discover later that way too much liquid is appearing, or all your chlorine has vanished, or your geyser is outputting hydrogen instead of steam, etc., etc., etc....  There are so many complaints/issues that all stem down to these two bugs..

[Troxism]

22 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

Unfortunately, if you ever have two gases in close proximity, or you every melt any solid, then you run the risk of using either bug. You CANNOT AVOID THEM. I hope these bugs don't kill some people's enthusiasm for the game. It really stinks when you design something on a spreadsheet, only to discover later that way too much liquid is appearing, or all your chlorine has vanished, or your geyser is outputting hydrogen instead of steam, etc., etc., etc....  There are so many complaints/issues that all stem down to these two bugs..

Yeah I ran into the gas conversion bug a LONG time ago way before I remember anyone talking about it on the forums, and it was very frustrating because it forced me to change a bunch of designs (I didn't really fully understand what was happening at the time either just seeing the results). Also I've accidentally triggered matter duplication before and it actually caused some issues that time too. To be fair, there is a reason drip cooling took a while to fix (it wasn't a simple fix), so I do understand why some bugs are still sticking around. And stuff like all the avoiding over pressure exploits is likely not even fixable due to core mechanics sadly.

[Nightinggale]

11 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

No, it's an entirely self contained loop. If you let the lumber drop naturally, there is nothing you need a dupe to do. Lumber to ethanol to polluted water to lumber. You get free power and extra material at every step. 

I don't get why people are so into the fact that you can set ethanol power production up to make it run in a loop. There are plenty of ways to do that. Solar power, oil cooker (use polluted water to gain more oil), meteor heat to steam turbines. There are plenty of infinite power sources and a number of them can be set up without dupe interaction.

The whole point in the ethanol power production is that it should produce more power than it consumes. It is a valid power production approach on maps where the player starts without a bunch of coal around the starting location, meaning it is a candidate for the first power production after manual generators. For this purpose I think it seems balanced. When you start building ethanol power, you most likely won't be automating anything. Make the ethanol power production worse and manual generators can become valid competitors to consider.

I don't think the possibility of setting ethanol power production up as a loop is an issue. In fact I prefer it to be an option for the skilled players because what really makes ONI stand out as a game is the sandbox approach where there is no "right" solution and player creativity is rewarded.

[Sasza22]

28 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

@Sasza22, the original artwork is yours, so you get to make the choice and repost - if it's worth it.  

I`d wait a bit. The preview is too fresh to jump to conclusions on some infinity exploits. There might still be some balance done. If we end up with some more weirdness i will complete the gauntlet.

[Troxism]

1 minute ago, Nightinggale said:

I don't get why people are so into the fact that you can set ethanol power production up to make it run in a loop. There are plenty of ways to do that. Solar power, oil cooker (use polluted water to gain more oil), meteor heat to steam turbines. There are plenty of infinite power sources and a number of them can be set up without dupe interaction.

The whole point in the ethanol power production is that it should produce more power than it consumes. It is a valid power production approach on maps where the player starts without a bunch of coal around the starting location, meaning it is a candidate for the first power production after manual generators. For this purpose I think it seems balanced. When you start building ethanol power, you most likely won't be automating anything. Make the ethanol power production worse and manual generators can become valid competitors to consider.

I don't think the possibility of setting ethanol power production up as a loop is an issue. In fact I prefer it to be an option for the skilled players because what really makes ONI stand out as a game is the sandbox approach where there is no "right" solution and player creativity is rewarded.

Pretty much. There is a reason I didn't suggest nerfing the power (I would even be okay with a minor buff). It isn't really the issue. And if they made it useless for that, what would even be the point of making ethanol at all? There are lots of easy ways to make power. It's all the other products in such large quantities, with the ability to scale up production since I presume seeds never dropping isn't intended, esp key resources like water. I know I sound like a broken record on hammering this point, but it is an important distinction.

[beowulf2010]

For me, the reason the ethanol loop is so ridiculous is the sheer amount of extra that you create from literally nothing. I guess I'll have to build a machine to show all the extras. 

Compared to the old natural gas generator fertilizer maker loop, the ethanol loop generates way more material for free. 

Ignoring the polluted dirt and CO2 from the distillers (I'm at work and can't find the numbers for it) we are generating a surplus, per cycle, 310kg of polluted water, 300kg of CO2, 66kg of lumber and 1.5kg of ethanol for absolutely free. 

The power? Half goes to the ethanol distillers but 1 liquid pump can handle 13 petroleum generators and you only need 1 gas pump for every 2 generators. 

To put it another way, if we sieve just the extra water, we can grow 15.5 bristle blossom plants per generator. You can also feed 15 slickster with the CO2. 

[nakomaru]

2 hours ago, Troxism said:

with the ability to scale up production since I presume seeds never dropping isn't intended

People really spend a lot of time worrying about a different game than the one they are playing.

[Ambaire]

Main problem I see with this topic is that people are asking Klei to nerf stuff based on what a very small subset of the population, the ultra optimizers, will do.

 

Klei should balance stuff around the casual majority, if anything. And I think Wild Farming sounds awesome and something I might mess around with but certainly wouldn't design an entire colony around.

[pacovf]

1 hour ago, Ambaire said:

Main problem I see with this topic is that people are asking Klei to nerf stuff based on what a very small subset of the population, the ultra optimizers, will do.

 

Klei should balance stuff around the casual majority, if anything. And I think Wild Farming sounds awesome and something I might mess around with but certainly wouldn't design an entire colony around.

I see what you are saying, but on the other hand, the implication of that approach would imply that Klei doesn't care about their most invested fans, which doesn't seem right either.

[bobucles]

The best way to discuss balance is to show off what can be done. One very cute example is with the Pacu Paradise. It took existing mechanics and created an war crime abomination that pumps out huge quantities of fish meat. All the other sources of meat ended up trivial by comparison.

[Ambaire]

24 minutes ago, pacovf said:

I see what you are saying, but on the other hand, the implication of that approach would imply that Klei doesn't care about their most invested fans, which doesn't seem right either.

Most invested, or most rabid? I still remember how marvelous Starbound was in early access, with the grappling hooks and all, and how fun got nerfed into the ground or removed because the hardcore fanbois protested against it.