We need more tool to manage the heat

[SamLogan]

Hello,

Since the Launch Upgrade, we have gone from overpowered cooling tools to no more efficient tools other than the Steam Turbine / AT combination and to a lesser extent the AETN. So instead of balancing the gampelay, it completely impoverished him. Because the idea is not to have powerful tools as before, but simply more opportunities to manage the heat.

The best example is the asteroid Rime which offers inverted gameplay where you have to fight the cold. I have already played 500 cycles on this asteroid and the challenges are many but since we have a large amount of tools allowing us to generate heat, the gameplay is really very rich and fun, without being easy.

The ideal would therefore be to have the same logic for the management of heat.

Add new machines to convert the heat into electricity or into a resource such as the turbine but available earlier in the game. With of course always counterparties and things to manage.

Thanks for your great work.

[AzulCrescent]

I am not a great ONI player, but to me, it feels like this update made heat management more tedious instead of more engaging, due to the lack of options.

 

I'm not sure if I should advocate for reverting the wheezewort change, as that change alone would have been quite easy to work around. That change combined with the many others though, has made heat significantly harder to deal with now. 

[Bluefoxfire]

Could have something to store heat like the batteries store power, then send it off via pipes to wherever. The element type itself could be treated as a vacuum.

[ONIfreak]

Since beginning heat management was for me the biggest concern and at some point you mostly care about this. It all about preventing the heat to leak out woth planning from cycle one ( lock down geysers. Don't destroy natural abbys tiles and carefully enter biomes). I think heat/cool tools has its equivalent it is just heat is more common in game and mire machines make heat rather than destroy it. It is however to possible to control it. Is there any particular place you have problems with heat ?

[mathmanican]

Has anyone played with running 4C food through rails to cool a base? The fridge destroys heat in food. Might be an effective way to keep heat out (unless genetic ooze ensues). This could b ea great new use for Berry Sludge (never expires), and a reason to never eat your nutrient bars.  

Update: YEP - Thanks to @Blazing Falken we now have the following:

 

[Junksteel]

Fixing Whorthlessworts would be a good step one. Ofc adding other tools would be more than welcome.

[Nightinggale]

2 minutes ago, AzulCrescent said:

I am not a great ONI player, but to me, it feels like this update made heat management more tedious instead of more engaging, due to the lack of options.

Pretty much this. For something to be engaging in the game, it should leave room for creativity. I like the steam turbine just the way it is right now. It has room for creativity (meteors, volcanoes etc) and it's a working solution for a heat sink, which people use. It should most certainly stay the way it is right now. It just shouldn't be alone because whenever you force the player to do something, it becomes a chore rather than an engaging task. Making the steam turbine+AT setup just one option out of multiple will make the setup more engaging because it's not forced upon the player.

I proposed ice based temperature management because it can't be a standard solution. The player have to figure out how to set it up and how to run it efficiently. Also because it's early game and the options in it improves with tech level, there can never be just one solution. It's more engaging because it forces the player to think without resorting to standard solutions. It shouldn't be a replacement for the steam turbine as that would once again be forcing the player to a specific solution.

Restore wheezeworts to be a valid alternative to heat management would be nice. One more totally different tool unlocks more options for creative players.

There is a proposal for a space radiator. Sounds like a good idea if balanced. It's late game (relatively speaking. You need space exposure) meaning it should be an addition to the other options rather than a replacement.

In short: the more valid tools the better. Ideally all tools are unique and in no way reskins of each other. If heat management should be an important and engaging part of the game, give us the tools needed to make it engaging.

While on the topic, don't bring us the water sieve heat sink back. It's non-intuitive and unbalanced. It also heated up the base during early game, which was annoying. This isn't about adding heat management tools for the sake of adding. They should be balanced, intuitive and fun.

[Andz]

What about a cryovolcano?

They exist in the solar system.

To make it more challenging make it excrete frozen solids maybe. Then these would have to be transported to the place where you need the cooling.

Or make rocket cargo bays loadable. If you fly to a ice asteroid the same mass returns at 90 kelvin.

Or make a cryo-geyser. But it only erupts if you pump liquid into it. The liquid that erupts is cooled.

 

[goboking]

12 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Pretty much this. For something to be engaging in the game, it should leave room for creativity. I like the steam turbine just the way it is right now. It has room for creativity (meteors, volcanoes etc) and it's a working solution for a heat sink, which people use. It should most certainly stay the way it is right now. It just shouldn't be alone because whenever you force the player to do something, it becomes a chore rather than an engaging task. Making the steam turbine+AT setup just one option out of multiple will make the setup more engaging because it's not forced upon the player.

We're still doing this a week later?  We're still pretending that steam turbines are the only option?  That we're forced to spam heat turbines or suffer colony failure due to heat death?  There's no creative freedom to use thermo regulators, aquatuners, radiators, and heat sinks to manage heat?

[Nightinggale]

2 minutes ago, goboking said:

There's no creative freedom to use thermo regulators, aquatuners, radiators, and heat sinks to manage heat?

Imagine you have a table and a drawer. You don't want anything lying around on your table and each time somebody leaves anything on the table, you move it to the drawer. At some point the drawer is full. You then figure out you can use your left hand instead of right hand to move items, but that doesn't solve the problem that the drawer is full.

The same thing is true for heat management. Having multiple ways to move heat around doesn't solve the problem of ending up with nowhere to put it other than steam turbines or venting into space. Trying to make hot areas and move your heat there will only delay the problem, not fix it.

[goboking]

17 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Imagine you have a table and a drawer. You don't want anything lying around on your table and each time somebody leaves anything on the table, you move it to the drawer. At some point the drawer is full. You then figure out you can use your left hand instead of right hand to move items, but that doesn't solve the problem that the drawer is full.

The same thing is true for heat management. Having multiple ways to move heat around doesn't solve the problem of ending up with nowhere to put it other than steam turbines or venting into space. Trying to make hot areas and move your heat there will only delay the problem, not fix it.

In your first post you said steam turbines and AETNs didn't leave us enough options to manage heat.  Now you're acknowledging that venting coolants into space is also an option.  Great!  We've just expanded the number of options available to us by 50%!  What If I told plants, via irrigation, can also destroy heat?  Or that hydrogen generators can destroy heat?  How many options do we need before we can put the "no options" argument to pasture?

Edit:  Heat sinks aren't drawers, they're black holes.  They're not limited by volume in their capacity to destroy heat.  You can pump a literal infinite amount of hot liquid or gas into space.

[Nightinggale]

5 minutes ago, goboking said:

In your first post you said steam turbines and AETNs didn't leave us enough options to manage heat.  Now you're acknowledging that venting coolants into space is also an option.

End of "discussion". All I can see here is I have to "acknowledge" that you are right and that the game is perfect because "it's in the game". If you are happy with the way the game is right now, then fine. I'm happy for you. If I'm not happy and think it could be better, then I would like to say so and not hold back because the game is currently different.

If I'm proposing something, which would break something for your preferred way of playing, then sure speak up (constructively). However I fail to see how anything of what I wrote would be able to do that and you didn't say anything about that either. As I have stated in some other thread recently, the game should target (be fun for) all of us, but that's not the same as every single feature of the game should target everybody because that will never work. We are different and the game should leave room for different ways of playing the game.

Continuing this kind of "conversation" would only result in yet another flamewar and I want no part of it.

[BaloneyOs]

Agreed that more variety is needed but they're trying really hard to move away from outright heat deletion even though the turbine still exists in its current form. Also straight up heat deletion mechanics are very one-dimensional and scales up in a boring manner unless they are weaker compared to heat moving.

There are a plethora of ways of dealing with heat but many don't feel very fun or engaging. Stuff like venting stuff into space and massing turbines both feel kinda "meh" and lead to the late game feeling monolithic. On the other hand earlier in the game you can just dump massive amounts of heat into most biomes without hurting wildlife. As a result, a lot of active cooling is done only after you've stabilized which means unless you're playing Aridio your early game cooling options are likely to end up being wasted design space.

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, mathmanican said:

Has anyone played with running 4C food through rails to cool a base? The fridge destroys heat in food. Might be an effective way to keep heat out (unless genetic ooze ensues). This could b ea great new use for Berry Sludge (never expires), and a reason to never eat your nutrient bars.  

Hmmm. Finally a really good use for Berry Sludge? 

[goboking]

6 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

End of "discussion". All I can see here is I have to "acknowledge" that you are right and that the game is perfect because "it's in the game". If you are happy with the way the game is right now, then fine. I'm happy for you. If I'm not happy and think it could be better, then I would like to say so and not hold back because the game is currently different.

You're being emotional.  I'm not saying the game is perfect and I'm certainly not saying you're not entitled to voice your opinion.  I'm correcting the oft-repeated erroneous claim that there aren't options for dealing with heat beyond steam turbines.  That's factually incorrect and there's nothing wrong with correcting such a statement.  There's no personal attack anything I've said, so I'm not sure what you're taking offense to.

[Junksteel]

1 hour ago, goboking said:

We're still doing this a week later?

You know, many aren't happy with the current state of things and will most likely keep repeating themselves. When it's said there are 'no options' besides turbine, in many cases people mean the available options don't match the ways they like to play the game. If a feature is considered boring for a considerable portion of players, they will most likely neglect that feature as much as possible. If it's not neglectable, it will lead to frustration. So, I guess what we have here is a bunch of frustrated players trying to show they aren't happy with an aspect of recent changes even if through an hyperbole. It's possible to make everyone happy concerning heat management and I guess Klei will address that soon. I see no reason for them to force something so clearly controversial among the community.***

Ps***.: Unless they plan to make us suffer to sell the Icefrost Cooling Very Chill Alaska Gardening DLC in the winter. 

[Sasza22]

Can`t wheezeworts be just made 2x as effective to balance the stuff out? And maybe the AETN as well?

Then eventually we could get some sort of space building that radiates the heat out.

[goboking]

3 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

When it's said there are 'no options' besides turbine, in many cases people mean the available options don't match the ways they like to play the game.

Wouldn't it be to everyone's benefit (especially Klei's) if that was clearly and concisely communicated?

 

6 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

If a feature is considered boring for a considerable portion of players, they will most likely neglect that feature as much as possible.

Absolutely true, but it's worth mentioning that we, the forum community, don't constitute a "considerable portion" of the player base (SteamSpy says between half a million and one million people own the game, if you trust their numbers).  All we can do is communicate (again, clearly, concisely) how we feel about the game and trust the developers to consider our opinions and weigh them vs their vision of the game before making the choices that are right for the most players.

 

12 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

It's possible to make everyone happy

The next time it happens will be the first.  If you cloned yourself four times and the five of you wanted to order a pizza, two of you would probably want pepperoni, one would want sausage, one veggie, and the last would insist on wings instead of pizza. 

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, BaloneyOs said:

There are a plethora of ways of dealing with heat but many don't feel very fun or engaging.

I fully agree. There are plenty of direct and indirect heatsinks, but they aren't fun. I feel like most of them are water sieve kind of design flaws, like using near boiling water for plants and then cooling the air to avoid overheated plants. It's really hard to prevent from a game mechanics point of view, but using it feels more like bug exploitation and it isn't fun.

1 hour ago, BaloneyOs said:

Stuff like venting stuff into space and massing turbines both feel kinda "meh" and lead to the late game feeling monolithic.

Many people don't like venting into space. The game is about collecting elements you need and suddenly there is something where you have to just throw away elements. In one game the base is near dead due to low oxygen and another base vent hot oxygen into space to get rid of heat. It just doesn't feel right. It's also not that intuitive and feels a bit like dumping heat in plants. The game kills elements without detecting temperature, which in turn makes it a heat sink.

The steam turbine is good when you have an external heat source. In some cases you use an aquatuner, which is ok. Having to spam turbines and aquatuners kills the fun in what is otherwise two great buildings. It's not a fault with either building. It's the fault of too few valid alternatives.

We need more ideas for adding diversity to the cooling game. I came up with some ice ideas, but I would love to see what other people can come up with for getting rid of heat, which aren't either just moving heat or heat sinks. It has to be something more.. interesting. Something you need to think about and build without resulting in a single design you just build over and over. Something, which is intuitive and doesn't feel like exploiting some other game mechanic.

[camelot]

We're talking about this again? There's no point to arguing this at this moment

The ultimate question is "Is this fun?"

Some people don't think it's fun enough with current solutions, some think it's fun enough. Let's cast your vote and wait

[Junksteel]

2 minutes ago, goboking said:

Wouldn't it be to everyone's benefit (especially Klei's) if that was clearly and concisely communicated?

It's hard to order that pizza man. Gotta have some patience. 

[Grimgaw]

50 minutes ago, BaloneyOs said:

There are a plethora of ways of dealing with heat but many don't feel very fun or engaging.

Is this a way of saying that Sieve and Wheezewort were fun and engaging, or we are looking for new cooling methods?

 

[Nightinggale]

1 minute ago, Grimgaw said:

Is this a way of saying that Sieve and Wheezewort were fun and engaging, or we are looking for new cooling methods?

We should have new methods of cooling. The water sieve was a poor design and certainly not intuitive. However it was simple. This means you could just set it up in very short time and move on. Now that we have cooling solutions you have to spend way more time setting up, it's just not good enough to make them "just as good as the water sieve". If you make a time consuming game mechanic, the demands for "fun" is much higher than if it's something, which is dealt with in no time and the player moved on.

[Grimgaw]

8 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Many people don't like venting into space. The game is about collecting elements you need and suddenly there is something where you have to just throw away elements

That's a problematic thinking. I'm quite certain that ONI map is constantly adding more materials as you play. Often times hot stuff. Always with heat more than 0. It stands to a reason that there should be ways of destroying it and, unless you're some sort of heat hoarder, you should utilise it in some form.

15 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Having to spam turbines and aquatuners kills the fun in what is otherwise two great buildings.

As opposed to spamming WWs?

[Eternal Firesea]

One thing I feel I need to stress is that suggesting things like the Thermal Nullifier and geysers doesn't help.  The player isn't guaranteed to have them, and the ones they do have may not be accessible.  Piping everything halfway across the asteroid really isn't an effective or scalable  long-term solution in the early-mid game.  As for natural heat sinks...  In my current game, my starting area is completely surrounded by hot biomes.  Using natural heat sinks would actually heat up my base fairly quickly.

The real issues is having tools available.  Not a variety of tools, just any tools at all.  Ice and the Ice-E Fan certainly help, but they're awkward, and don't scale well unless you're deep into the darker sections of automation.  No one's asking for magic heat deletion, just something that can be used to throttle the heat production down a bit until we reach the more "open" stages of the game.