Vulcanea not very hard either

[Gurgel]

Just started Vulcanea. I did think I would need to make it easier by rolling Frozen Core and I got Large Glaciers on top without really wanting them. Now, there were a few dicey moments sealing a leaking magma bubble with dupes that have no exo-suits and could not breathe in that location. A second one was very easy to seal. Now I am at cycle 140 and I have no temperature problems, plenty of non-renewable and renewable cooling (just found a cold slush geyser on top of things) a lot of the starting water left. I have 6 dupes which I see no problem to expand to 12 as soon as I have Oxygen from pwater, of which the map has plenty. I have not really used the one glacier I see, and I have not even started digging down. At the same time, everything needed seems to work nicely now and I do not expect any major challenges from here on out.

What are your experiences with Vulcanea?

[Coolthulhu]

That's just how it has to be.

Asteroid difficulty is about 50% due to starting biome (water, metals, early farming), 40% to immediate surroundings of the starting biome (creeping heat, metals, slimelung), 10% to the rest of the biomes on the map. Since even vulcanea has a sane starting biome, the difficulty doesn't differ that much.

A slime biome start would be harder than copper/aluminum start with magma neighbors.

[miauly]

4 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Asteroid difficulty is about 50% due to starting biome (water, metals, early farming), 40% to immediate surroundings of the starting biome (creeping heat, metals, slimelung), 10% to the rest of the biomes on the map.

That feels like a correct estimation to me, but I consider it being a sad state of the game. In a somewhat complete play-through, start can take up to say 200 cycles and then it's say 800 more to get rockets and play with them for some time, maybe even more. So the current state of different maps means that game varies only in it's 1/5th. I am not sure how this could be addressed, by to me it seems that it needs to be addressed.

[Coolthulhu]

8 minutes ago, miauly said:

I am not sure how this could be addressed, by to me it seems that it needs to be addressed.

It would require something important to persist in biomes after they're "cleared". At the moment the only things that fit this are geysers and most are not dependent on asteroid.

If asteroid selection affected geysers, this could heavily affect difficulty. Say, volcanea turning half geysers to volcanos, turning all water geysers (especially slush) to steam vents.

[Gurgel]

I agree on these estimates. But I think not much can be done. Taking more stuff away does not make things more difficult, it just makes them take longer. I do thing that Rime does actually provide a nice change (not harder, but different), but I only played to cycle 200 or so. In the end, this is a simulation with somewhat random map creation and there is only so much you can do if you want most maps to be still winnable.

[avc15]

IMO aridio is the most challenging start.

 

Now do it without geoactive.

[EnderCN]

The basic game offers no challenge at all (outside of learning curve obviously which is big) so you need to be on one of the harder maps and get a difficult set of starting options to make it actually hard to survive.  I don't like that this is true but the game seems to be aimed more at the sandbox you can win every game crowd rather than the challenge in every game crowd.  Just a difference of opinion on game design.  I really enjoyed the game, got over 400 hours out of it which is a lot for me, but starting to think it just has no future longevity for me.

[natanstarke]

Just challenge yourselves like only eat omelletrs from smooth hatches etc. Any colony game or survival once you get the hang of things you wont lose! Now i posted some time ago that volcanea and oceanea should start in forest biome that is harder than copper but a slime start could be fun who knows...and maybe the devs will even surprise us more with the launch!

[minespatch]

Which is easier: Arborium or Volcanea?

[KittenIsAGeek]

In my Volcanea, I have Volcanoes, magma channels, geoactive, and boulders.  The first 50 cycles were easy-peasy.  Then it turned into a nightmare.

[DarkMaster13]

Here's a thread where we tried to figure out the difficulty of all the starts:

In short, the hardest asteroids are Aridio, Oassea, and The Badlands.

3 hours ago, EnderCN said:

The basic game offers no challenge at all (outside of learning curve obviously which is big) so you need to be on one of the harder maps and get a difficult set of starting options to make it actually hard to survive.  I don't like that this is true but the game seems to be aimed more at the sandbox you can win every game crowd rather than the challenge in every game crowd.  Just a difference of opinion on game design.  I really enjoyed the game, got over 400 hours out of it which is a lot for me, but starting to think it just has no future longevity for me.

I agree.  For me, the game's only source of fun is solving the problems it throws at you.  Once you know all the solutions, the game just isn't fun anymore because I don't really find crazy projects very engaging.  I'd pretty much finished with the game after around 80-100 hours playing QoL3 and really needed something like the new starts to bring me back in.

[6Havok9]

3 hours ago, EnderCN said:

The basic game offers no challenge at all (outside of learning curve obviously which is big) so you need to be on one of the harder maps and get a difficult set of starting options to make it actually hard to survive.  I don't like that this is true but the game seems to be aimed more at the sandbox you can win every game crowd rather than the challenge in every game crowd.  Just a difference of opinion on game design.  I really enjoyed the game, got over 400 hours out of it which is a lot for me, but starting to think it just has no future longevity for me.

You, me, we should probably remember that there are mostly experienced players here, who can take on pretty much everything the game can throw at them.

Yes, the learning curve is steep and long, and I can see new players helplessly watching as their dupes starve, freeze, get roasted (medium rare) or suffocate in co2 or hydrogen.

Once you master the systems, which may take a long time, you can only scale the difficulty up so much, be it through self imposed rules, unforgiving or downright masochistic settings, or mods. Going over that is asking for something to be impossible. By that point you have officially earned the status of "godlike". If you still have fun you keep doing what you like, if your fun comes from taking on the challenge you move on. I think that most of the challenge, in that case, is trying and learning something new and partly scaling it up after that.

There are human beings that can speedrun games or drive racecars blindfolded, instantly solve complex equations, hit a pebble kilometers away, or solve three rubik cubes at once while juggling them. Can they crank the difficulty up another notch? Also, would you even consider "playing at their difficulty settings"?

[SakuraKoi]

30 minutes ago, 6Havok9 said:

Going over that is asking for something to be impossible.

Or just to be utterly bad game design.

"Let's have everything outside the starting biome be at 0K! Only two layers of Abyssalite between you and death! Or maybe none?"

"Helpu!"

"You just need to get tepidizers and space heaters ASAP plus a lot of time (oh, and luck that the resources don't run out meanwhile)~"

[Saturnus]

Some ideas that could make the game harder.

Reverse the map with oil biome and magma biome at the top and change the neutronium in the magma biome to abyssalite. That would make it much harder to reach space because you have to deal with first hot oil, and then magma without space age materials.

On rime most POIs should be rolled as permanently on AETNs. Simply AETNs with a large enough internal hydrogen storage to last at least 1000 cycles making everything colder and colder.

Different maps should affect the chance of which geysers and POIs the map has. Slush geysers should be extremely rare on Vulcanea but much more common on Rime for example.

[Nightinggale]

12 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Frozen Core and I got Large Glaciers [snip] cold slush geyser

As interesting as it is to read about your experience, I can't help wondering how much different your game would be without any of the quoted features. What if it was a volcano instead?

What I'm thinking is there a risk of being unlucky with geysers and end up rage quitting because you suffer an unavoidable heat death? Hard maps are ok. Hard enough to rage quit not so much.

[watermelen671]

6 hours ago, 6Havok9 said:

get roasted (medium rare)

Spoiler

 

I see what you did there.

Me personally, I like my dupes well done.

Also, it honestly baffles me how some people here manage to get to 1000+ cycles routinely, meanwhile I'm just sitting here content with playing the first 30 over and over again in sandbox mode.

...this may be due to the fact that I tend to start up a new world every day. Because GASH DANGIT if I can't do everything in a day's time I'll nuke it and try again tomorrow!

[Grimgaw]

1 hour ago, Nightinggale said:

What I'm thinking is there a risk of being unlucky with geysers and end up rage quitting because you suffer an unavoidable heat death?

Which geysers stop or cause you 'unavoidable heat death'? 

[Gurgel]

10 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

In my Volcanea, I have Volcanoes, magma channels, geoactive, and boulders.  The first 50 cycles were easy-peasy.  Then it turned into a nightmare.

As far as I can see, you get a breached magma-node below the starting biome by construction of this world. At least the 3 maps I looked at had this. If you do not know or notice, that is a killer. If you notice, you will have to do some dicey things to seal it. I had to dump water in there because the dupes got scalded too fast from hot air. And the dupes typically cannot breathe there either to make it even more interesting. In the map I play currently, another magma node was breached from a geyser, but that was pretty easy to seal.

2 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

As interesting as it is to read about your experience, I can't help wondering how much different your game would be without any of the quoted features. What if it was a volcano instead?

My point was that I did not yet use any of those at that time. And it was still pretty easy.

[SakuraKoi]

24 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Which geysers stop or cause you 'unavoidable heat death'? 

Probably not those which produce liquid CO2. Maybe a Salt Water Geyser?

Seriously though, what I find odd is that only Rime, the coolest world anyway, has a volcano subworld in the magma layer while others have not.

Meanwhile, I'm really waiting for this:

To become official(ly adapted).

Why? Because rewriting all the temperatures is a huge PITA, there are around 6000 instances of different "temperature:" for each block and building  when I meant to make a FrozenCore Version. I use notepad++ and the simple wildcard * is not working... and more than that I am not able to do. Note: Personal use since no permission given. it might perhaps be better to start from scratch...

[Giltirn]

My first map on the launch update was volcanea, and I had 2 breached lava geodes right outside my base that I had to rush insulation to contain. My current map is also volcanea but I have only one breached geode below my base that I was able to lazily fence off with insulation before it became a problem. My current issue is that I can't seem to find an oil biome so I can't make turbines to suck up all that sweet sweet heat.

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, Giltirn said:

My first map on the launch update was volcanea, and I had 2 breached lava geodes right outside my base that I had to rush insulation to contain. My current map is also volcanea but I have only one breached geode below my base that I was able to lazily fence off with insulation before it became a problem. My current issue is that I can't seem to find an oil biome so I can't make turbines to suck up all that sweet sweet heat.

You probably need to get through the lava-layer for that. I expect that requires a lot of cooling.

[Gurgel]

So, I have this at long-term sustainability. The only thing to do now is to cool and get rid of the magma nodes. Not difficult, just time-consuming.

I would say that overall both Vulcanea and Oceania, and also Rime were interesting for early to mid-game, but not particularly hard and from mid-game onwards they just cause more effort than other maps. I will probably not play them again for that reason.

I can also say that boulders, glaciers and geodes are just a hassle that I will avoid in the future. They seem to add nothing positive. I do like the presence of the other traits.

[Gunhaver]

I think I understand your crtique. Maybe later they can add map specific obstacles like a lava creature/ monster for volcana or a living wheezewort creature that sucks up heat for rime or a creature that eats base elements under 25 firmness on the badlands. Then add different ways to "dispose" of them other than just zapping em. It would also allow players to find interesting ways to harness them too.

[gotnoface]

Reading this topic and seeing people considering badlands, oasis and arid as difficult, while I couldn't breach volcanea cycle 60 on 4 different maps. I'm led to believe that this is not really about map difficulty, but about how much rng mapgen decides to screw you or help you start the game.

But once you manage to establish equilibrium all maps are the same.

[Aevum]

On 7/14/2019 at 8:48 AM, 6Havok9 said:

You, me, we should probably remember that there are mostly experienced players here, who can take on pretty much everything the game can throw at them.

Yes, the learning curve is steep and long, and I can see new players helplessly watching as their dupes starve, freeze, get roasted (medium rare) or suffocate in co2 or hydrogen.

Once you master the systems, which may take a long time, you can only scale the difficulty up so much, be it through self imposed rules, unforgiving or downright masochistic settings, or mods. Going over that is asking for something to be impossible. By that point you have officially earned the status of "godlike". If you still have fun you keep doing what you like, if your fun comes from taking on the challenge you move on. I think that most of the challenge, in that case, is trying and learning something new and partly scaling it up after that.

There are human beings that can speedrun games or drive racecars blindfolded, instantly solve complex equations, hit a pebble kilometers away, or solve three rubik cubes at once while juggling them. Can they crank the difficulty up another notch? Also, would you even consider "playing at their difficulty settings"?

 

 

I think the game would benefit a lot from having less "mundane" obstacles like the starving/suffocating/freezing/roasting. To counteract this I would like to see more exciting external threats to a base ranging from easy to deal with like an extrme Puft outbreak to potentially catastrophic like an alien attack.

 

I miss the threat of a Deerclops showing up to undo all the careful work I did.

 

Maybe an idea for future dlc. Or maybe I should just play more Stellaris.