Various Balance Issues/Concerns

[Troxism]

2 hours ago, nakomaru said:

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

There actually is a glitchy way to get more seeds with Pips btw, I just didn't mention it because it doesn't appear intended or at least doesn't seem hooked up right, and having seeds be obtained in the same manner as other plants is a reasonable extrapolation to make. Either way, I already mentioned the possibilities even without seed expansion in the OP using a rough estimate of total trees/seeds observed in Forest starts.

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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.

Not really sure how this relates to anything?

[PhailRaptor]

6 hours 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.

I agree with the first, but not the second.

If every little thing that the top 0.0001% of players ever latched onto was nerfed because of what could be done with it, you'd have a very boring game with a very small playerbase of super optimizer players and pretty much no one else even able to play it.

On the other hand, when I see the term "casual majority", I'm thinking a mobile gamer idling away time on the bus or whatever.  Those players don't spend enough time playing the game to get a grasp on much more than the absolute basics of gameplay, and just repeat that ad infinium.  They don't know enough to even know what is broken, let alone how to take advantage of it.

The ideal balancing point should be somewhere around the....  which direction do you notate percentiles....  top 25th?  That way the vast majority of the players will be assured of having a balanced play experience, and the remaining players should all be capable of either collectively avoiding or effectively playing around the things that are broken.

[miauly]

In my opinion, exploitable and game-breaking can have two different definitions. If something can be used for seemingly too large profit, it's an exploit. But if something can be used in a way that makes a whole game part obsolete, it's game-breaking. For example, if we take Elder Scrolls character evolution and combat system, that's game-breaking in many ways when most of them do not come as an exploit - it's just if you follow nearly any plan you end up with a character that can smash enemies left and right without any effort. Some of them are based on things we can call exploits though.

So speaking about ONI, if we take petroleum boiling for example, one might say it provides too much and is an exploit. But it does make obsolete just one building and then it's not a simple feat to construct a boiler even following someone's design, let alone design your own. On the other hand, wild farming is not that profitable, but it can render farming and even ranching obsolete for small colonies, and that's a huge part of the game. Matter duplication is more of a nuisance if anything, for example, I had to get all CO2 out of cold biomes with AETNs powered on just to keep wild plants alive. Getting it happening in designs must be a nightmare.

I'd say that game-breaking and highly annoying things are something worth fixing no matter the playerbase. They leave the impression of an unfinished game. Exploits are the other thing - it's hard to say actually if certain production chain is balanced or not. After all, production chains should be different in the game, otherwise why have more than one.

[Troxism]

To address changes just made in latest update:

Ethanol seems to output at 72C now, which is great. Helps reduce the ridiculous cooling potential, as now you actually have to cool the generators some other way to get coolant water from those, which adds complexity to the setup, and reduces the 'free lunch' aspect of it greatly. Doesn't really fix the Water/CO2/Dirt thing however (honestly the water is the main issue as converting the dirt takes a bunch of labour via Composts), but it's a great change. I don't think they changed anything else regarding trees, but obviously no chance to test any changes to seeds being obtained via Pips or just harvesting.

Edit: Having said that, I don't think they changed output temp of trees themselves, so using the 20C lumber on conveyors is still a decent way to cool your base. Probably should be bumped to like 35C.

Lettuce is 5kg/cycle salt water and 500g/s bleach stone, which is about right, and puts it into the same bracket as Mushrooms (easy midgame food, as there is a lot of bleachstone in the tidal pools/rust/caustic biomes, but difficult to renew in the long term (well you can't renew salt water without a geyser, but there is a lot of it on any given map) unless you actually put some effort into it). Ofc you can just wild farm it and it's easy to get a lot of seeds so it's mostly a moot point (hence the problem with wild farming). But a great step in the right direction and I am happy to see it.

Gas Range is still kind of ridiculous tbh, as it would still take an effective 1128W to run counting the 240W base cost, but I guess it's at least realistically usable now unlike before. I could see it staying this way forever, although it still seems a bit much.

Nosh Beans basically didn't change at all, since you would have wild farmed them anyways, and even if that was made impossible, radiator cooling was perfectly viable the same way you farmed sleet wheat before. They still produce too few calories for what they offer. The only food you can make from them is Tofu, which requires 12 beans per 4000kcal, and it takes 21 cycles to grow 12 Nosh Beans even if you irrigate. which takes a ridiculous 35kg of polluted water a cycle. This means it takes 184kg of polluted water PER cycle to feed a dupe on NORMAL difficulty with Tofu, not including the cost of the Peppernut. Compare that to Pepper Bread, which only takes a mere 50kg/cycle of clean water not including the peppernut (both foods use the same amount of peppernut so it can be safely omitted from the comparison). Not to mention beans have a tighter temp range then wheat. And getting dirt for wheat isn't a challenge with Ethanol being in the game, so that is a moot point anyways (and you could get dirt from space via slime cooking even before this patch in a sustainable way, point is it would never be worth using over 3x as much water just to save a few kg of dirt).

 

A bit more on Wild Farming

I sort of realised one of the reasons Wild Farming really bugs me (or I should say put one of my subconscious objections into actual words), which is that it's basically balanced around tedium/annoyance. Think about it. Wild farming removes all the challenges of having to provide resources/cooling, but at the cost of having to tediously either leave behind natural tiles or make ones yourself, and then planting seeds via Pips or storage compactors. The benefit is obviously worth it, and once the farm is setup it's just free food, but it's annoying. Just does not seem like a good way to design; incentivising players into tedious but optimal strategies.

This is also why it confuses me when some people say that there is no reason to nerf Wild Farming because only a small fraction of players can abuse it. It's actually much easier to wild farm for plants like Sleet Wheat/Nosh Bean then to actually farm them normally. If it was extremely complex to setup wild farms, I would probably be more or less okay with it (there is a reason I don't complain about Sour Gas boiling but did about the Ethanol, and that is the key difference). The problem is it's actually simpler then 'real' farms for many plants for all the reasons I went over before. It is a problem for pretty much every skill level, as the concept is extremely simple to pull off. Building bigger to account for slower growth isn't something that has to do with skill at the game  And unlike Pacu starvation ranching, Wild Farming isn't even CPU intensive/limited (which admittedly wasn't a great limiter/balancer on Pacu ranching either, but it was/is the reason a lot of people refused to do it in practice as they didn't want to tank their framerate).

[Nightinggale]

25 minutes ago, Troxism said:

I don't think they changed anything else regarding trees

They nerfed automated branches though. There was an exploit where the player could seal off the trees and dupes wouldn't harvest the branches. Once they got old enough, they would fall off by themselves and a transfer arm could then pick them up.

It's still possible, but now the branches falls off when they are much older. They still mature at the same rate though meaning no chance to dupe harvested branches.

[Troxism]

That is how all plants worked, without details on timing changes it's up in the air. And doesn't affect the core process as that method was always kind of inefficient for domestic plants.

[Nickerooni]

@Troxism I think your (and my) concerns for wild farming would be addressed by requiring wild plants to have some additional requirements that are already satisfied during map generation. Eg. Each plant has some minimum range from all other plants and/or distance from machinery. That way, at least space becomes a limiting resource for how it can be abused - without breaking current wild plants.

I like how wild farming fixes my concerns about tearing apart biomes. The existing wild plants are free unlimited resources, but unlike geysers you could destroy them permanently! Considering this game has an aspect of limited renewable resources, there some counter-play here that isn’t all that “fun” in my opinion.

[Nightinggale]

I'm not sure nerfing wild plants even more is a good idea. Right now even experienced players have issues producing enough food on some of the new maps and making food production even harder is not a wise move for welcoming new players.

[pacovf]

3 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

I'm not sure nerfing wild plants even more is a good idea. Right now even experienced players have issues producing enough food on some of the new maps and making food production even harder is not a wise move for welcoming new players.

New players won’t think about wild farming. It’s not an intuitive system at all. They will use regular farming, because that’s what the research pushes you towards.

The solution to food problems isn’t to make wild farming strong (and hence domestic farming obsolete). It’s to rebalance domestic farming. And that won’t happen while wild farming is as strong as it currently is.

Some ideas to “nerf” wild farming while keeping the concept alive are to severely limit their productivity:

- if they have been planted during the last x cycles (100?). The penalty would decrease as the plant grows older.

- if they are planted outside their biome / on the wrong material type.

- if they are planted too close together.

 

[Troxism]

21 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

I'm not sure nerfing wild plants even more is a good idea. Right now even experienced players have issues producing enough food on some of the new maps and making food production even harder is not a wise move for welcoming new players.

Not sure how that was possible with lettuce being how it was (yes it changed, but any complaints would have been from before the change). Also the issues with food were strictly extremely early game on higher food difficulties due to lack of buried Muckroot in the forest biome. I don't remember anyone talking about having any issues with food on the old start biome, or past the early game in general.

Also, as mentioned just above, even if domestic farming is supposedly too weak, that isn't really a good reason to keep wild farming so strong. If domestic farming can't keep up (I completely disagree with this premise btw, nothing has changed with domestic farming and it was perfectly usable before), then it should be improved to be a viable alternative. Else what is the point of even having domestic farming in the game if it is just a newbie trap and you are 'supposed to' wild farm?

I like the ideas suggested about making them grow slower if planted close together/near sweepers. It sort of keeps the old system of wild farming being a bonus rather then an exclusive food source, and most importantly keeps the extra labour it required before due to travel times to collect the harvest (which sweepers allow you to bypass with the current design), making it not always a clear win depending on how you look at it.

Not sure how I would feel about biome/material specifics. Forcing specific materials just adds more annoyance, and I already talked about how I dislike the idea of balancing via tedium/annoyance (adding dupe labour isn't the same thing btw, talking about player tedium here). As for biomes, it would be the only mechanic in the game that cares about what biome something is in, which would be a pretty big addition to the game for something relatively minor.

[Nightinggale]

1 minute ago, pacovf said:

New players won’t think about wild farming. It’s not an intuitive system at all. They will use regular farming, because that’s what the research pushes you towards.

That's debatable. When I played my first game ages ago, first I noticed I couldn't build farms. When I could farms, I noticed resource requirements and being unsure if I could continue to provide the resources, I continued to preserve wild plants.

I don't know how common that approach is, but I don't think I'm the only new player who started out hoarding everything and watching spending everything because it's unknown what will be in short supply later. I don't remember much about my early games other than I feared running out of food because it took me ages to figure out a sustainable way to produce food. Also at first I thought I should get a new dupe whenever possible, which really made food a serious concern.

33 minutes ago, Troxism said:

Not sure how that was possible with lettuce being how it was (yes it changed, but any complaints would have been from before the change).

Nerfing all wild plants isn't the same as adjusting a half implemented new plant.

[pacovf]

Oh ok, I misunderstood your point. I think worldgen wild plants should stay as they are. It’s replanted wild plants that can use a nerf.

[natanstarke]

3 hours ago, pacovf said:

New players won’t think about wild farming. It’s not an intuitive system at all. They will use regular farming, because that’s what the research pushes you towards.

The solution to food problems isn’t to make wild farming strong (and hence domestic farming obsolete). It’s to rebalance domestic farming. And that won’t happen while wild farming is as strong as it currently is.

Some ideas to “nerf” wild farming while keeping the concept alive are to severely limit their productivity:

- if they have been planted during the last x cycles (100?). The penalty would decrease as the plant grows older.

- if they are planted outside their biome / on the wrong material type.

- if they are planted too close together.

 

I really dont think wild farming is as strong as ppl are stating it. Actually im seeing it lucrative moreeeee or less for mealwood and maybe not even then. Late game you would still need to control the temperature of the room for sleet wheat " that are also even less abundant naturally on map different than before where j always lived on wild sleet without even trying to preserve them".

Beans are complete waste of time also waterweeds " that maybe the only real good option for wild farming...

[Chaoticlusts]

3 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

When I played my first game ages ago, first I noticed I couldn't build farms. When I could farms, I noticed resource requirements and being unsure if I could continue to provide the resources, I continued to preserve wild plants.

I don't know how common that approach is

Even in my most recent pre-launch colony I was doing this to an extent.  When I expand into the ice biome I generally make sure to leave any sleet wheat intact right up until I start farming it (which is usually quite a while later).  You get a fair chunk just from the wild stuff, enough that it ends up keeping your colony going for a lot of cycles especially if you start collecting when you find it and don't start using it till you need the morale. 

I'm definitely on the side of the wild farming needing a hefty nerf too. Partially because the production loss vs the resource requirements are just too big a trade off in favour of wild (even taking into account dupe labour).  But even moreso because it just feels so wrong and counter-intuitive mechanically.  Just think about it, you're getting your dupes to go gather up a bunch of seeds and drop them on dirt so food will grow for free rather than getting your dupes to go grab seeds and digging a hole then planting said seeds in dirt because the latter is less efficient.........

[nakomaru]

17 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

There was an exploit where the player could seal off the trees and dupes wouldn't harvest the branches. Once they got old enough, they would fall off by themselves and a transfer arm could then pick them up.

There's also an exploit where you can set a dupe to harvest a plant and they will go harvest it before it falls off.

And another exploit where if you order them to build a ladder they will build it.

[Nightinggale]

35 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

There's also an exploit where you can set a dupe to harvest a plant and they will go harvest it before it falls off.

And another exploit where if you order them to build a ladder they will build it.

That's intended behavior. Exploits are players gaining something good by using unintended behavior. In this case the intended game balance is to make dupes spend time harvest branches. Since dupes require food and oxygen, dupe time isn't free. If you can set up farming to gain nearly the same output without dupe time, you get the branches cheaper than intended, hence breaking game balance. That's what makes it an exploit.

[nakomaru]

Self harvesting plants has been an intentional part of the game for like two years. It's still a function of every productive plant including trees. The metal cannon is an exploit. This is just basic know-how.

[bonzaiferroni]

With the ethanol plant, I don't see any balance issues particularly now that they've fixed the ethanol temp. It's middling at best in terms of power output, and it will require some decent design to make sure it is maintainable. Assuming you are use domestic farms to grow the trees, that is only about 1 kg/s water, which is the equivalent of a lower output vent/geyser. You are still limited by the number of arbor trees, only on certain planets could you make these at a scale where they might be considered exploitable. I have a 4000 W plant and it I need an army of crabs just to eat all the polluted dirt. 

I also see the general trend of moving toward more interesting game goals than just providing sustainability. There are new objectives, and it seems you can even move on to new worlds. Sure, with some decent engineering you can do wild farming at a scale that can support a colony or provide limitless water or power. That's an interesting game objective. But it doesn't make the other goals less fun. There's a reason and a situation to use just about everything in the game, nothing is currently broken. Although I'm sure there will be plenty of balancing ahead.

[Troxism]

Well with the addition of the new 'forest muckroot' (very happy to see this as it makes forest starts much more comparable to sandstone starts on max food difficulty) and some changes to wild farming almost everything on the original list has been at least partially addressed in some way or another. The only things left are Nosh Beans (and frankly they are such an outlier in terms of resource consumption compared to any other food plant atm I would be surprised if they weren't changed) and Supercoolant/Oxylite production on maps lacking gold (remember maps without gold also lack pufts as they spawn in the same biome, meaning even Dense Pufts would require printing from the pod).

To be fair, I'm not a 100% fan of the specific details of the change to wild farming, because while I really like the increased space required (it has more effects then it might immediately seem, since using sweepers for wild plants is now far less efficient, adding more overhead with having to build more sweepers/loaders/rails), so far it seems like it's also just adding even more annoyance to the process which is an awkward way to balance (one thing to keep in mind however is you still don't need to make any more dirt tiles then before as the fallow tiles can just be regular tiles now). But it's a lot better then what it was before at least.

Also I would have liked/would like to see some tweaks to the irrigation requirements of trees for the purposes of Ethanol production, so that it doesn't produce quite as much extra water (the dirt/CO2/power are sort of the point TBH, else what is the point at all, and the cooling has basically been completely 'fixed'). 

Edit: You know, I actually forgot about table salt. It's pretty damn terrible currently (+1 morale, even if you use sweepers to deliver to the mess tables, you still have to waste labour crushing it up in the granulator, and Salt Vines are sort of annoying to sustain ATM as well for how much they actually produce, meaning Table Salt is actually just more of a way to get rid of salt from Desalination then something actually useful.

Still ultimately I'm happy to see so many things looked at in a relatively short period of time. I do realise not everyone is going to happy with all the changes however for various reasons, which isn't ideal.

[DarkMaster13]

Just 1 morale from salt?  So they're basically the same as a shower.  I haven't actually bothered with showers since my first game for that reason, they just aren't worth the trouble.

[Sasza22]

5 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Just 1 morale from salt?  So they're basically the same as a shower.

Shower is +3 morale. Isn`t salt +1 food quality? That would be more morale for higher tier food. Or is it just a flat +1 morale buff?

[DarkMaster13]

12 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Shower is +3 morale. Isn`t salt +1 food quality? That would be more morale for higher tier food. Or is it just a flat +1 morale buff?

Ah, I must have been confused while watching old let's plays.  That's a very good reason to add showers if you don't mind losing the 30 seconds.

[Troxism]

It's a flat +1 morale buff. Changing it to food quality might help, but they would need to add a 'tier 6' quality then (something like +20 morale instead of +16 for quality 5). And even then, it would still be very bad until you got to at least +1 base food quality.

[wronny]

1 hour ago, Troxism said:

and Supercoolant/Oxylite production on maps lacking gold (remember maps without gold also lack pufts as they spawn in the same biome, meaning even Dense Pufts would require printing from the pod).

The question how this should be resolved remains:

• Add recipes for Oxylite / Supercoolant that don't use gold (or change the existing recipes)
• Add different types of metal meteors to the meteor showers
• Add gold or gold amalgam to a biome that's present on both Arboria and The Badlands
• Add a guaranteed uncovered gold volcano to the rust biome (or just anywhere on Arboria and The Badlands)
• ...

Considering that Arboria and The Badlands are missing the two uncovered geysers from the swamp biome and somehow none of the new biomes feature uncovered geysers or AETN like structures, I'd love to see a guaranteed gold volcano on those maps.

In general I'd rather see refined gold than gold amalgam added to those asteriods, as this keeps the problem of not having access to the overheat temperature bonus of gold amalgam, while still solving the lategame issues caused by the lack of gold.

[Gurgel]

On 7/3/2019 at 4:01 AM, Ambaire said:

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.

Most rabid, definitely. They think only their view of things is valid.