Suggestions for recipe changes

[kkirkfield]

Right now most of the recipes for power items are inconsistent or make no sense. What recipes would you like to see changed?

Here are a few examples.

• Wire, Wire Bridge, Heavi-Watt Wire, and Heavi-Watt Joint Plate use unrefined metals and Steel, but not other refined metals. These items should be made of unrefined metals only to keep the recipes consistent and the conductive versions should be made of only refined metals. There is no overheat temp for these items, so making the non-conductive versions out of higher tier metals doesn't really matter. Late game when you only have refined metals, you'll be using conductive versions anyway.
• The descriptions of the Heavi-Watt Joint Plate and Heavi Conductive Joint Plate make no indication how many kW they can hold. They should have it listed under effect on their description similar to the wires. Has anyone ever tested if they even overload? There doesn't seem to be a difference and they never seem to overload for me.
• Heavi-Watt Joint Plate costs 200 Steel. That's 100 more Steel than the conductive version which is supposed to be better.
• Battery, Jumbo Battery, Manual Generator, Coal Generator, Wood Burner, Hydrogen Generator, Natural Gas Generator, and Petroleum Generator use unrefined metals and Steel, but not other refined metals. These have an overheat temp and should probably allow any unrefined or refined metal.
• Power Transformer uses unrefined metals and Steel, but not other refined metals. It should allow for other refined metals since it has an overheat temp.
• Power Transformer and Large Power Transformer use the same amount of metal. Either the one needs to increase or the other needs to decrease to differentiate between them, otherwise there is no purpose for having one of them. Similar to the difference between Battery and Jumbo Battery.
• Switch and Power Shutoff use unrefined metals and Steel, but not other refined metals. These should allow for any metal so late game when you have no unrefined metal you can still make them.

 

 

TLDR

• Higher tier items should require only refined metal.
• Lower tier items should allow any metal, not just unrefined metal and Steel. This is useful for overheat temps and late game where there is little to no unrefined metal.
• Higher tier items should require more material than lower tier items. Right now that's not always true.
• Joint Plate descriptions need some work.

[Red Shark]

Heavi Joint Plates require 200 "Metal Ore", while Conductive Heavi require 100 "Refined Metal". Three materials -- Steel, Niobium, and Thermium -- have both the "Metal Ore" and "Refined Metal" tags, which means that you can use them for buildings that require either "Metal Ore" or "Refined Metal".

It does appear that the Heavi Joint Plate requires an extra 100 kgs for no apparent reason, since the only difference between the other wires and their conductive counterparts is in material, not count. (wire vs. conductive wire, heavi wire vs. heavi conductive wire, and wire bridge vs. conductive bridge)

On that note, the joint plates, at least, don't have a current rating -- they're akin to Wire Bridges, and simply connect two disparate pieces of Heavi-Watt or Heavi Conductive.

[PhailRaptor]

3 hours ago, kkirkfield said:

Power Transformer and Large Power Transformer use the same amount of metal. Either the one needs to increase or the other needs to decrease to differentiate between them, otherwise there is no purpose for having one of them. Similar to the difference between Battery and Jumbo Battery.

Agreed that it is silly they use the same amount of Metal, that is not the only difference between them.  It is often necessary to use a pair of small Transformers to properly limit the Wattage transferred to Conductive Wire to prevent overloads.  A single small Transformer only moves 1 kW, so you'd need 2 of them to adequately supply.  But if you used the Large Transformer, it's able to move 4 kW, which will cause Overloads if you have any Batteries and get close to the 2 kW limit of the Conductive Wire.

[TheGCat]

10 hours ago, kkirkfield said:

Right now most of the recipes for power items are inconsistent or make no sense. What recipes would you like to see changed?

Here are a few examples.

• The descriptions of the Heavi-Watt Joint Plate and Heavi Conductive Joint Plate make no indication how many kW they can hold. They should have it listed under effect on their description similar to the wires. Has anyone ever tested if they even overload? There doesn't seem to be a difference and they never seem to overload for me.

That is a point. Never seen this. But the fact that a Heavy-Watt-Wire and a Heavy-Conductive-Wire have the same KW limit is the real issue in my opinion. The game says:  Heavy-Conductive-Wire can transfer more KW than the normal one! That is not true currently! They still break like the normal heavy wires at ~20,8 KW usage (Guessed/Round about).

In my games I reach very fast the 20KW limit. So, what's the point to build Heavy-Conductive-Wire, if they breaks at 20KW usage too? The only difference is the better decor. That's it. With the spacerelics you don't need the "better" wire. The worse decor place can raise up in the positive. They should change it. Maybe they can transfer twice as much (40KW).

[nakomaru]

6 minutes ago, TheGCat said:

The game says:  Heavy-Conductive-Wire can transfer more KW than the normal one! That is not true currently!

[Siromatik]

Agreed on most of the points, the inconsistency of required material/mass to builds always trigger me :

Hydro, NG & Petro Generator cost 800 raw metal for 12 tiles build.
Wood Burner (4 tiles) & Coal Burner (9 tiles) cost 800 raw too, which seem too much, let it down to 400 and 600kg. (Manuel Gen. start at 400kg)
Steam Turbines cost 800kg Ref. Metal for a 15 tiles builds, seems not enought. Well okay its harder to get than raw metal and its almost a mandatory build for cooling, so not sure about changing this one (I said 'almost', dont go mad please).
Wire Bridge 25kg only ? I mean, its 3 tiles long. Okay, its 1 tiles effective, you still need 25kg of wire on both side. Still 'weird'.
Heavy Joint Plate, why those 100kg difference ?
Power Transfo no kg difference ? Really ?

Also the inconsistency of overheating (or not) builds.
A bit off-topic but on recipes anyway, materials subjet, provided informations and counter-intuitive.
e.g. : I'm building a liquid pump in an hot room. Oh wait, its melting ! Lets switch it to a gold one. Oh and change that thermo sensor too. Later : hey, i miss to change that hydro sensor made of copper, but... why isnt it already destroyed like my previous pump ?!
My girlfiend give a try to the game last week and it really bothering me to tell her which material is okay in that temp and which is not, and we dont have to care about that build. Like playing this game over two years gave me habits that I can't even explain, 'why ?' 'because !'. Some core builds tooks logic material to build with, some annex builds aren't. It's a 250°c room (523K) ? Aquatuner and valve, no, you need steel. Wires, vents, sensors, automation? Who cares, drop your copper.
At least summary in buildings tabs with Overheat Temperature finally helped her, I didnt even notice it as if it were automatic for me (core builds vs annex builds in mind)

BTW  the overheat temp summary tab is a total no sense :

-And why all Refinement Builds are made of metals except the Metal Refinery and Glass Forge ?
-Because they're producting hot things ? -So what about the Molecular Forge ?
I'd give up at some point

[TheGCat]

11 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

It is misleading. U have opened the infoscreen of the Heavy Conductive Wire on the left. Why they are talking in the next step about normal wires with a link to the wrong entry? The link should point to the heavi normal wire (same category), not the small ones. Make no sense! The sentence is still wrong and misleading.

if you have opened the conductive vs. normal wires, okay, that would make sense. In this constellation not! So, either they remove the toptext of the heavi wires or they change the max wattage and point to the right cable category.

[wronny]

On building materials, bridges and more:

Spoiler

 

13 hours ago, kkirkfield said:

Battery, Jumbo Battery, Manual Generator, Coal Generator, Wood Burner, Hydrogen Generator, Natural Gas Generator, and Petroleum Generator use unrefined metals and Steel, but not other refined metals. These have an overheat temp and should probably allow any unrefined or refined metal.

If that were to be changed for some form of consistency, then the overheat temperature bonus would need a major balancing pass. 

Anything that opens up more options for these buildings besides the current transition, would have a huge balance impacts Most negatively felt on the Arboria and "The Badlands", since having to find ways to produce clay in larger quantities and having to substitute Gold Amalgam with Steel makes these two asteroids very interesting beyond the initial survival phase.

While the current split (Metal Ore + Higher Tier materials vs. Refined Metals + Higher Tier materials) may seem odd, if you look too closely, it is in a good spot in terms of balancing and progression.

13 hours ago, kkirkfield said:

The descriptions of the Heavi-Watt Joint Plate and Heavi Conductive Joint Plate make no indication how many kW they can hold.

Neither of the Wire Bridges does. All of them should mention their "Max Power".

13 hours ago, kkirkfield said:

Higher tier items should require more material than lower tier items. Right now that's not always true.

If they simply need higher tier materials, that does not need to be the case at all times. Deciding that on a case by case basis opens up another metric, in which the higher tier version can be ... different.

13 hours ago, kkirkfield said:

Power Transformer and Large Power Transformer use the same amount of metal. Either the one needs to increase or the other needs to decrease to differentiate between them, otherwise there is no purpose for having one of them.

The former transfers 1kW between circuits, the latter 4kW. With 1kJ/4kJ storage respectively. One is made from raw metals the other from refined metals. The Large Power Transformer is also one tile wider. Plenty differences already.

On Heavi-Watt variants:

Spoiler

 

2 hours ago, TheGCat said:

That is a point. Never seen this. But the fact that a Heavy-Watt-Wire and a Heavy-Conductive-Wire have the same KW limit is the real issue in my opinion. The game says:  Heavy-Conductive-Wire can transfer more KW than the normal one! That is not true currently!

(Edit: This paragraph somehow went missing): 

Only the Heavi-Conductive joint plate refers to its Heavi-Watt counterpart, while mentioning a higher overload tolerance it currently doesn't have. Heavi-Watt Wire and Heavi-Conductive wire refer to the normal Wire in both comparisons (building menu, database), but probably should either refer to conductive wire or both normal wires.

HC-Wire has two benefits at the moment, it incurs a lower decor penalty and it requires refined metals, which have more renewable sources than Metal Ores. Additionally 20kW are plenty for most players. For those of us who go beyond 20kW, it creates a problem that calls for a different solution than "upgrade your wire for third time", which seems fine.

 

2 hours ago, Siromatik said:

Wires, vents, sensors, automation? Who cares, drop your copper.

With (automation) Wires and Vents one could at least argue that there are no moving parts, the lack of a overheat temperature is fine.

The automation devices on the other hand...

[bobucles]

2 hours ago, Siromatik said:

BTW  the overheat temp summary tab is a total no sense :

That's because the scale starts from 0K, or -273C. It could look nicer since when talking about C, it's kind of assumed to be working from 0C and not -273C.

[Siromatik]

31 minutes ago, bobucles said:

That's because the scale starts from 0K, or -273C. It could look nicer since when talking about C, it's kind of assumed to be working from 0C and not -273C.

That's make sense now ty !

[Daxterr]

Now that I think about it, how the heck are you supposed to make stuff out of metal ore?

[xialeth]

16 minutes ago, Daxterr said:

Now that I think about it, how the heck are you supposed to make stuff out of metal ore?

Might be some fancy technology within their working guns? (I'm not that deep into the lore yet, so it might that?)

[Siromatik]

4 minutes ago, xialeth said:

Might be some fancy technology within their working guns?

Look closer, its not guns !