Underpowered and worthless buildings

[Technoincubus]

Ore Scrubber - the building completely misses any meaning. Remove germs from the ore? Why? This is so ineffective that you barely need to do it. Even germs in the water are not dangerous. In all my plays I noticed that I could easily ignore Ore Scrubber completely.

Planter Box - becomes obsolete within first 10-15 minutes. You research farm plot and...why do you need planter box anymore? To have gas flow beneath? Runspeed? They are both negligable factors. 

[Grimgaw]

4 minutes ago, Technoincubus said:

To have gas flow beneath?

That's how I use them.

[abud]

Relic from the past. I still remember how miserable I am when tried to move one puft with it in ranch update.

[Grimgaw]

8 minutes ago, abud said:

Relic from the past.

They have a use in creating an artificial sun.

[Saturnus]

Strange, I use planter boxes in every play through. They're excellent as temporary set ups such as placing bristle blossoms around the printing pod to get a few more seeds early (if you're lucky), or to place mealwood in on top of hydroponic tiles while you wait for more seeds to drop. Basically I find them indispensable.

[DarkMaster13]

8 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Strange, I use planter boxes in every play through. They're excellent as temporary set ups such as placing bristle blossoms around the printing pod to get a few more seeds early (if you're lucky), or to place mealwood in on top of hydroponic tiles while you wait for more seeds to drop. Basically I find them indispensable.

The argument being made is that there's no real reason you couldn't use a farm tile instead.  They both cost the same resources, have the same build times, but the planter box actually has a decor penalty and must sit on top of another tile which the farm tile does not.  The only real situation would be if you absolutely must leave a tile as is and putting a farm tile on top of it would block your dupes from moving past.  I'd be a different story if unlocking the farm tile was a much later technology that required significant time and effort to get.  This simply isn't the case, you can unlock it immediately after the box for almost no cost.  With muckroot, you have many cycles of grace period before you need to start farming, plenty of time for even unskilled researchers to pick up the majority of the starting techs.  There's a good chance you take the tech for farm tiles in order to build mess tables before you start farming at all.  The box essentially fills no niche.

[Saturnus]

35 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

 The box essentially fills no niche.

And I just explained why it does. Could I use farm tiles instead? Sure. But it's just an added hassle where planter boxes is the better option.

Not to mention as above that in some case you want the planter boxes because you want to have the plants on top of airflow or mesh tiles for airflow reasons.

EDIT: I forgot liquid flow as well. Not being a tile means that liquids dropping on them or on the floor doesn't affect the plants.

[metallichydra]

use planter boxes for stressing your dupes!

[Mariilyn]

My only complaint about the planter box is the negative decor.

Also : thermo regulator. I always feel I should wait to unlock the aquatuner instead. 

Edit : if we could also expand the subject of this thread to "useless bits of information" I would mention the given confortable temperature range of critters. I've been wondering if this information will be of any use in the future, hoping we can get some reward by maintaining them in the right temperature range.

[DarkMaster13]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

And I just explained why it does. Could I use farm tiles instead? Sure. But it's just an added hassle where planter boxes is the better option.

Not to mention as above that in some case you want the planter boxes because you want to have the plants on top of airflow or mesh tiles for airflow reasons.

EDIT: I forgot liquid flow as well. Not being a tile means that liquids dropping on them or on the floor doesn't affect the plants.

I'll give you that planter boxes are good if you need plants on top of airflow or mesh tiles.  I can't think of a situation where you'd need to do this or why you couldn't skip an occasional tile for airflow, but it is a legitimate use of the planter box over the farm tile. 

Maybe a balm lily farm at the bottom of a base and you need a tile underneath so the CO2 can get underneath the chlorine, with a skimmer to control the CO2 height?  A farm you absolutely need underneath a waterfall caused by a geyser?

[Saturnus]

@DarkMaster13 Sometimes you may want to move a pool of water from one side to the other, crossing you farm on the way. As I said, typically planter boxes are used in temporary, as in not permanent, set ups.

[Dosephshih]

I recently found that the planter boxes are built super fast, good for me to relocate with the new plant to eat the CO2, as the base develop.

while the ore scrubber I had almost forget it. 

[QuQuasar]

I'm with Saturnus on this one, I also use planter boxes. They're fast to research, extremely fast to both build and deconstruct, and don't block airflow. Also I am incredibly paranoid about running out of food and getting mealwood going is priority number one after toilets and a research station.

 

I've never used the ore scrubber or the critter lure, so I'll grant you those.

 

However, ultimately this is a purely subjective subject. I could argue that the Carbon Skimmer is a waste of perfectly good slickster-food, that the Incubator is utterly useless since eggs hatch on their own, that the Switch and Signal Switch are both rendered obsolete by automation switches like the atmo-sensor that don't require dupe operation, that the Power Control Station is useless (does anyone actually trade dupe time for electicity? I've never played on a map where that was necessary),  and that the Tasteful Memorial is only for ABSOLUTE MONSTERS who value their own refusal to savescum over an innocent duplicant's life and whose terrible and immoral ways shouldn't be encouraged by Klei.

 

Some of those are opinions I actually hold!

[metallichydra]

6 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

snip

traits too

small bladder is just more free water.

with gourmet, you can cook using less power / gas

 

you could maybe use narcoleptic to have that dupe have less sleep time on their schedule

mouth breathers can convert more oxygen into slickster food

and of course, if you have only loud sleepers, your whole base could be lit up with lights, since they can sleep in light (as far as i know).

[Greybear]

The ore scrubber seems pointless. Mostly because the germ system is a bit of a mess.

The plater boxes clearly have their uses. Allowing different titles underneath for airflow or run-speed, and avoiding trouble with co2 or liquids on the floor. Just wish they've remove the decor penalty.

I think the Co2 scrubber is very underwhelming, comparing it to a pump. It's slower and more complicated to set-up, and it turns water into polluted water in the process. It does have uses, but maybe if it removes a lot more co2 per second (600 at least) it would fit it's niche role better.

[wronny]

Let's see, which buildings do I usually fail to find a use for:

• Manual Airlocks
• Switch
• Microbe Musher
• Mini Pumps, Germ Sensors
• Fertilizer Synthesizer, Algae Distiller
• Massage Table, Tasteful Memorial
• Lamp, Sculpting Block, Corner Moulding
• Power Control Station, Farm Station
• Ice-E Fan, Thermo Regulator
• Ore Scrubber
• Duplicant Checkpoint
• Sight-Seeing Module

For a subset of them I could see some use based on settings and asteroid choice or if going for certain projects or challenges, but during normal play those buildings have no use to me - these days.

[EnderCN]

4 hours ago, Technoincubus said:

Planter Box - becomes obsolete within first 10-15 minutes. You research farm plot and...why do you need planter box anymore? To have gas flow beneath? Runspeed? They are both negligable factors. 

They are faster to build and deconstruct than farm tiles, they also allow a floor below them to improve run speed.  The only reason to ever build a farm tile is because you need it to act like a floor or you really want +10 decor, other than that farm tiles are just cruddier planter boxes.  You certainly shouldn't be deconstructing your planter boxes just to make farm tiles at any point in the game.  Planter boxes are also far superior for any plant you plan on moving like oxyferns early game.  If I had to pick between these two I would keep the planter and get rid of the farm tile.

Now for the person who finds no use for manual airlock, do you power/automate all of your mechanized airlocks?  If you don't power them they are just slow manual airlocks.  I see people in videos building mechanized airlocks where they should be using manual all of the time and I never quite understood it.

[TheGCat]

The ore scrubber was introduced at the outbreak update and was useful there. But after some updates the diseases were harmless and the ore scrubber useless. In comparison from the outbreak update and now, the germ part is something that exist, but nothing special anymore. Since then, I haven't build it either. The only bad disease is the zombie spores and nearly impossible to get infected. They are in the oil biome. Too hot to go in without an atmo-suit. So, no risk. And I don't think anybody put these plant into the base near the fridges with CO2. That would be a bad idea.

I think through the continuous updates we have the problem, that buildings were introduced, but they will be useless after a couple of updates.

The user: wronny listed many buildings. But the most is the truth.

The same with the germ sensors or the mini pumps. Maybe some people use them, but I see no use for these buildings.

I don't build them and I don't need them. Yes, i play until the late game with rockets. No need to build these buildings. It's maybe a playstyle thing, Thermo Regulators are a bad choice too. They exist a real long time now. They were the first thing to cool the environment. U remember the Thermal update?  If you want to cool quick and dirty the environment, use super-coolant and a radiator to cool the air. Extremely fast and much better than the Thermo Regulators. Combine it with other things to make liquid O2 for the rockets. So, over the time, buildings get useless or being removed.

The power control station makes only sense, if you have high power buildings. The Petrol Gen for example. For "tuning" your wheels it is maybe a bad choice. So, each building have mostly just one meaningful use. Other uses were waste of time and not efficient. But that is just my point of view. So for me, all in all the user wronny has right. U can build it, but then, you waste more than that you get.

[wronny]

1 hour ago, EnderCN said:

Now for the person who finds no use for manual airlock, do you power/automate all of your mechanized airlocks?  If you don't power them they are just slow manual airlocks. 

The mechanized airlocks that I use in space as proper doors are powered. If they're used in contraptions, they are usually not powered and just hooked up to automation signals. In the living area I use pneumatic doors exclusively. The industrial area uses liquid locks.

[goboking]

The planter box is an early tech that allows you to farm while researching other things that are higher priorities for you in the early game.  That, in my book, isn't useless.

[Sasza22]

Anybody remember the critter trap? It was useful only during ranching mk1. Maybe still useful for morbs but that`s it.

As for the ore scrubber i used it once. It`s pretty clunky. Requires to set up multiple of those so dupes won`t pass by like with wash basins and even then a single one won`t remove all germs from slime. They would be much easier to use if they accepted bottled chlorine.

4 hours ago, wronny said:

• Manual Airlocks
• Switch
• Microbe Musher
• Mini Pumps, Germ Sensors
• Fertilizer Synthesizer, Algae Distiller
• Massage Table, Tasteful Memorial
• Lamp, Sculpting Block, Corner Moulding
• Power Control Station, Farm Station
• Ice-E Fan, Thermo Regulator
• Ore Scrubber
• Duplicant Checkpoint
• Sight-Seeing Module

Some of those are purely situational. Like you only need massage tables when yu got morale problems (might be a balance issue). Tasteful memeorial are only useful if a dupe dies. Microbe musher can be ignored on normal settings but not with hard hunger setting. Germ sensors would be useful if we had some proper disinfection buildings. Dupe checkpoints are nice if you want them to wait (sometimes you want). Manual airlocks are cheaper (imo automated should use refined metals but w/e).

[Kerd]

Personally I like Planter boxes because I can tile underneath them.  Early on, normal for runspeed.  Later on as I'm converting to greenhouses I can set up the greenhouse with Planters until I'm ready to switch to Bristles.  Replace the tiles with Hydroponics and when everything is complete, just tear out the Planters and plant away.

 

The decor malus is trivial when you're talking about mealwood in them, the faster build time and move speed is less so.  The better question is why you'd ever plant mealwood in farm tiles.

[wronny]

1 minute ago, Sasza22 said:

Microbe musher can be ignored on normal settings but not with hard hunger setting.

Even on ravenous hunger it is very much possible [1] to get the farms up before nutrient bars, meat and (forest) muckroot run out. At least on the asteroids that allow for a somewhat normal start. The starting biome on terra should have about 140.000 kcal Muckroot and about 32.000kcal Meat (Hatches) avaialble, that's about 30 cycles worth of food for the 3 starting duplicants on ravaging hunger without any farmed produce or care packages. Gaining that knowledge during my last max settings colony was really eye opening and is part of the reason why I'm far less reluctant to add duplicants early now.

I haven't checked the kcal values for the forest starting biome yet, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't in the same ballpark after the forest muckroot addition.

[1] Whether it is feasible (depending on playstyle) or at all sensible to do is a different matter. I just know, that I like to avoid the Musher at all costs.

[creidieki]

Wait, how do you guys get slimelung out of slime without the ore scrubber? Just storing it at a weird temperature? Are you not using algae distillers either?

[Lurve]

3 minutes ago, creidieki said:

Wait, how do you guys get slimelung out of slime without the ore scrubber? Just storing it at a weird temperature? Are you not using algae distillers either?

They don't.  If the slime is underwater (>2 kg of liquid), it won't offgas and the slimelung is otherwise harmless.  Putting it in a storage bin in a puddle works too.