Late game is grind

[Loscil2]

Going to other plates brings back resources which can be used to send all the dupes to the rift thing so in my headcanon they all escape and game over; you won.

 

[Nitroturtle]

10 hours ago, cpy said:

I like endgame, I like to rebuild large parts of base to optimize with materials I didn't have before.

I very much enjoy this part of the game, EXCEPT that..

10 hours ago, cpy said:

lategame lag is insane and rocket travel time is totally stupid bonkers!

this part ruins it IMO.

[DemainaNyx]

Granted I've never really made it to late game cause I restart when a new patch is dropped, but I've never found the need to go to space. 

I played with gassy moos once before but didn't like that they didn't reproduce and didn't want to have to send rockets back and forth to get something to repopulate a ranch that wasn't gaining me anything.  Yeah, I can convert chlorine into nat gas, except I have so much power now that I don't see a need to do that.

 

Not saying ONI needs a late game goal, but I just don't see any purpose for space besides collecting the free refined metal and regolith from the asteroids.  Isoresin and florene is nice and all, but why?  So I can create a sour gas boiler to make more power that I have no use for.  Or so I can make LOX and LH to go to another planet that will gain me more of a resource I already have.  Or so I can find more blenders to add to my already high decor.

Now, maybe I'm missing something.  I know they added the temporal tear so that's something for me to aim for now but it's not that enticing for me.  I'll probably attempt to reach it in my current playthrough, but unless it's really interesting, I don't know if I'll attempt it again simply because the rockets don't really get me anything.

The food system is the same for me.  Now the best food is the frost burger, which means I only need a sleet wheat farm, a lettuce farm, and a vole ranch and I can give my dupes the best food.  No need to grow any other plants unless I want to.  So while the spicy tofu, mushroom wraps, sushi, surf n turf, and stuffed berries are nice, there's no benefit to have them.  Not saying I want to make things more complicated, but it just feels off.  I currently have my dupes eating raw meal lice while I set up my sleet wheat farm and squeaky puff ranch on cycle 400 some.  Yeah, it's a grisly meal but it doesn't hurt anything because I can balance it with decor.

I realize we are at launch soon but I feel like that would be something to balance.  Maybe after 200 cycles of eating the same thing, the dupe requires a different food type or they become stressed and that stress builds each day they are fed the same thing so 1 cycle only adds 1% stress but 100 cycles would add 100% stress.  The time frame prevents new players from being punished while setting up a base but gives a challenge for later bases.  That or maybe give dupes a favorite type of food.  So while Frost Burgers is the best in general since it requires 3 ingredients, maybe Bubbles really loves Spicy Tofu and that gives her +6 as well.  Or maybe it gives her +7 while giving Stinky Stuffed Berries gives him +7.  That way having multiple high tier foods benefits your dupes more since they can grab their favorite instead of just being fed the same standard meal every day.  That gives a later game challenge while rewarding the player for meeting it.

 

That's mostly my problem with late game though is that there are no more problems to solve.  Oxygen has long since been solved, heat is tamed, power is plentiful, food is simple, diseases basically non-existent, and stress is avoidable.  There's nothing left to threaten the colony.  Food and diseases are my biggest complaints as far as how easy they are to basically ignore.  I don't think I've ever built a med bay before.  Never used the coffee machine, arcade, or jukebot. My standard downtime room consists of 8 marble sculptures, a water cooler, and a painting. 

Even the fact that they can have 2 downtime slots for the entire game seems off.  I know that there are certain days that I definitely require more downtime than others, so maybe do something like the higher tier job they have, the more downtime or the more perks they need.  Like if they run around all day or work in a hot environment they really want a shower.  Or if they are in a cold environment a lot or work on research they want coffee.  If the ice machine was balanced a bit we could even do iced coffee maybe to appeal to favorites again or, as I've seen suggested, have carbonated beverages as well so that maybe our dupes require a drink with their meal after X number of cycles alive for more late game issues.  Bean milk, mushroom tea, berry juice, soda along with coffee and water.

Again, these things aren't needed, but it would give late game players a thing to do while waiting for rockets and such.  It would add some problems to address without murdering the new people.  None of these are earth shatteringly difficult for the player once lettuce and beans get a rebalance.  Right now the bleach stone is a PITA but doable.  It is rather tedious since we have no way to manufacture it without ranching.

 

Despite my rambliness, I feel like late game just becomes a waiting simulator.  I rarely have problems to deal with anyone more and the goal of visiting other asteroids doesn't appeal to me, so I more look to optomize things since there are no more problems.  Adding some more dupe requirements as they age or requires based on the job they do.  Changing diseases would do a lot but I don't know how drastic they want to make it.  Implementing a flu or common cold would be interesting if it just happened on a random basis.  Or perhaps being in an atmosuit increases the likelihood to encourage people not to trap dupes in suits constantly.  It wouldn't have to be insanely deadly but perhaps it spreads fast so it encourages medbays to keep those dupes quarantined.  If there were a dumbwaiter system or vending machine system where dupes could input what they wanted and have it delivered to the medbay (similar to converyors but requires an automation wire to receive input at the receiving end) instead of having a random refridgerator in there would be amazing but I don't expect to get that.  Perhaps adding that system converts the medbay to a hospital (I think it's called a hospital now) which allows for a bigger area dedicated to sick dupes so that sickness could be an actual problem again. 

I feel like the lack of late game issues is the reason it feels grindy.  You just wait for things to finish, unlike early game where you are putting down new buildings quite often.

[Vampyre_by]

24 minutes ago, DemainaNyx said:

 

I feel like the lack of late game issues is the reason it feels grindy.  You just wait for things to finish, unlike early game where you are putting down new buildings quite often.

The whole post is a most detailed and well-written description of my frustration that I definetely never can write on my own. Thank you.

Reaching temporal tear is also easy, ST/AT pair is OP now that you really don't care about cooling anything. But it took 200 cycles to produce all the steel/ceramics/insulation while I was boredly taming another geyser for unneeded power. 

 

[DemainaNyx]

1 hour ago, Vampyre_by said:

The whole post is a most detailed and well-written description of my frustration that I definetely never can write on my own. Thank you.

Never leave me alone with a keyboard, I will ramble my way to some good points eventually.