Airlocks: we don't need a complete building- just better tools/system

[dearmad]

I really don't like the idea of there being a building that makes a perfect airlock/heat lock for us- and am really confused why so many users are asking for this. I enjoy building specially made ones for where I need them and think that half the game is designing little machines and strange systems out of the parts and "odd rules of physics" they gave us.

Too much ready-made or premade stuff isn't in keeping in the spirit of the game, IMO. I guess I like the LEGO aspect of the game. Or early, technics style lego aspect I should say- LEGO ready made crap isn't fun anymore to me.

However, I DO understand the frustration with a door being called an airlock when it's not.

And I do understand the frustration that waterlocks are so much easier and perfect compared to what we can manufacture/design with the pieces they have for us in the game. I do think those pieces and the systems that make it so frustrating for people to build an airlocking (or temperature guarding) system of doors. The gas deleting method with a middle door is gamey and cheesy, and I do think that Klei should come up with tools that allow us to do it better. Or a better gas system that isn't so... um... checkerboard like.

For me, though, when I first built my own system and got it up and running, and have honed how to execute it over time, that was a lot of fun and worth it. IMO.

Lastly, the pieces involved in an airlocking system for automation, to various metals, and pumps (or whatever system you do) require certain other systems to support them and gain access to them- an airlock isn't a single machine- it's a system of them.

All above just IMO obviously. I could be convinced to to the other side but not yet with the arguments I've seen in this forum.

[Harlequin80]

A 6 x 4 airlock building which requires steel, an input gas supply, a gas output and lots of power would be a great addition to the game and would fit with the existing concepts of things like oil refineries, & liquid / gas filters.  It would represent a solution that you could implement, but a manual built one would be cheaper and more efficient in the same vein as shutoff valves or a bridge circle for element filtering.

[CannedSmeef]

A lot of people are requesting it because you can just exploit liquid for a perfect seal anyway.  Like seriously, why would you ever waste all of that extra power, time, and materials making a functional airlock when you can just drop a few grams of water or dig a hole?  Or if you're feelin' fancy you can fill a trench with water for an even better perfect seal!  That's why we're asking for a airlock door that actually works on its own because we already have something better.  Completely passive, no energy draw needed.

Now, you could just make gas push around water to solve the 38 gram part of the water seal problem...  But why?  Vacuum seals are essential for many, many projects, why would you bottle neck players into one of two choices (water trench or overly complicated and power hungry airlock dynamo), one of which is better than the other in practically anyway.  What's a mood debuff when you can use all of that saved power on massage tables?

Making airlocks passively block gas/liquid when powered is not only the correct decision but it reeks of elegance.  Newer players will intuitively understand how the door works and will be able to make a seal quite easily, instead of having to rely on water exploits or look up a tutorial on youtube on how to make an actual airlock (btw, if you can't figure out how to perform something as basic as a vacuum seal in a heavily physics based game like ONI without looking it up online, then it's not good for the game).  Seasoned players will rejoice, many will gladly adopt the airlock door instead of just using them as unpowered auto input blockers or filling a trench with 4000 kg of water.  It simplifies many projects and serves such an essential function I genuinely do not understand how it's not already a feature.

[badgamer123]

the problem is ...waterlock is so good,and ,AND the only good one that consistently work.
there many door + pump airlock.I did a few of them ,only the door-- mini pump--door thing is somewhat useful(not 100% safe)

the problem in air-lock option:airlock door lock very slow without power.for fxxk sake dupe will stay inside the airlock door doing animation,,stopping it from closing.
mini-pump don't pump fast enough in some case,and the large air pump having huge problem on pump range + don't have rotation.
air pump cost too much power ,with doors ,air- pump and a checkpoint you talking about 1000kw of power usage in peak level...

you only get viso gel as late game option(which is a water actually....)
a bit too boring for old player and lack of good alternative.

[Nickerooni]

This is top of my list for what makes the game newbie unfriendly. I really like the idea of simply making powdered airlocks work to block the air. Alternatively, explain water locks in an in-game tutorial. Make it cannon.

[TykoTek]

I think my source of confusion as a newbie was that the Airtight Doors were named "Airlock". They're not airlocks, AFAIK you can't have a single door that works as an airlock. They're Airtight / watertight doors.

I would totally like to see a 3 x 4 building that was essentially two airtight doors with a 2x2 gap between them, would require power and would let one dupe at a time pass through with a small but noticeable delay.

If the whole game were lego I would understand why airlocks were too. We have many other more complex buildings in the game like refineries, filters, pumps, etc. To single out airlocks as the one mechanism that requires player construction while all these other complex processes are black-boxed is odd.

[nakomaru]

If you use two airtight doors to build an airlock, do they graduate to airlock doors?

I disagree that new players must be able to build the perfect airlock with one 2x1 door. What better time to deconstruct their assumptions. Challenging themselves to come up with a solution or learning from someone else is the whole game.

I do really agree that tile mechanics are not intuitive at the start, and they should be explained with key examples such as the liquid lock and the mechanical filter.

[badgamer123]

they should show the air pump range...it took me time in forum to know that top right is dead spot...(why the hell we cannot have a pump with no dead spot)

[dearmad]

All the complaints about pumps this and that are my point- they need to be improved and made much more user friendly- electricity and everything so that building airlock systems would work well.

 

And filters and pumps are the black boxes that go IN to making an airlock system- they are the component pieces along with airtight doors. That's why those BBs are fine but I'm not enjoying the idea of there just being an airlock system added to the game. I liken adding an airlock system to the same as adding in a cleansing room system that cleans all the germs off things with just electricity required. I mean come on.

And the waterlock thing should be done away with. Completely. It's so cheesy and gamey.

I don't want Klei just not fixing all the other underlying problems as if this system would fix that. It doesn't,

[dearmad]

hahaha!

well something is offgassing.

[RonEmpire]

I agree there needs to be something better for new players.  When I first played the games and saw the airlock doors  said airlock on it and I was expecting a door that keeps gasses and pressure separated between the doors  even upon opening via auto state.      Like how   doors keep critters from escaping a room.   

Also I was expecting that when the doors were powered  it was going to maintain the separation.   And thought maybe with some power it would work correctly.       

 

Obviously I was frustrated and annoyed that it was not a real airlock.   And that led me to the forums and Google searches to find out how to get a real airlock or method to keep gas separated. 

While it got me to understand the game mechanics.   I do not think the game does a good job handling air separation for new players.    Maybe reword the airlock on the doors.   Or at least say when this door opens  gas and liquid will pass through.    

 

 

The confusion lies here is   having  3 doors.   One cage door that let's gas pass on closed and auto state.    And then door solid doors   one with power and with no power but can be used like a no power.   And the states of auto and open.   It's not properly conveyed how they work in the description. 

[goboking]

20 minutes ago, dearmad said:

And the waterlock thing should be done away with. Completely. It's so cheesy and gamey.

The same principle is used to keep sewer gas from blowing into your bathroom.

[mathmanican]

13 minutes ago, goboking said:

The same principle is used to keep sewer gas from blowing into your bathroom.

What happens if the sewage line builds up an insane amount of pressure? 

Also, the picture above assumes you used "full tiles" of liquid.  What about 36g airlocks, or a drop of liquid in a corner.  

In the toilet picture above, if crude oil started flowing back up the pipes (imagine the sewage lines accidentally got connected to high pressure underground oil) the oil would seep out destroying the waterlock (both in real life and in ONI).  However, if the lock were made of oil, and then a high pressure petroleum vent tried to come up the toilet, the lock would hold against any amount of pressure in ONI (not in real life). 

By the way, I do love the analogy.  I just figured I'd throw in a few differences that newbies will definitely find strange.  

[miauly]

Liquid locks are messy in all kinds of ways until you have viscogel. If airlock building is added, then what purpose will viscogel serve? Will you upgrade from in-game airlocks to gel to save energy or dupe time? Unlikely in the late game. 

Liquid locks are quite a part of the game indeed. They are deeply tied with one-element-per-tile mechanics, and also there are many aspects you have to pay attention too - water freezes or vaporizes (yes, I have made both mistakes), another liquid may spill into the lock, etc. But the 3-tile-wide configuration, combined with that for temperature seal you need two of them makes them really ugly spatially unless you do two-tile stacking or viscogel. I personally dislike their appearance enough to say that I'd wish a proper building was in the game.

But then there's a question how this should be implemented. For weak temperature blocking, like separating biomes, I do doors + regular pump, that works good enough even with unpowered doors. Having exactly this as a building does not make much sense, you can build it already. If a building is introduced, it should not pump the gas out, because what side do you choose? What if you have more than one gas on one of the sides? To be better than pump plus doors, it should block the gas passage and also provide insulation.

If it's implemented like a change to existing airlock doors, like one mod does, then it will be much cleaner and make things simpler, but then viscogel will lose its main use? Or maybe there're another uses of it I just don't know of.

[tseitsei]

7 hours ago, goboking said:

The same principle is used to keep sewer gas from blowing into your bathroom.

Yeah. Now try using it with vacuum on the other side and high pressure on the other in the real world. It is really cheesy that lquidlocks are the best solution as an airlock in pretty much every use case in the game.

[Ellilea]

If the water physics were working similar to real life I wouldn't mind the water locks at all. But with the finicky sticky water I just can't get myself to use waterlocks cause they feel... wrong to me. Like some lame mechanics abuse. I know you could see it as intended or whatnot, to each their own, but to me a standing wall of water just won't do Unless the water was a dense jelly all the time in every situation. Which it doesnt feel like it is.

[Yunru]

8 hours ago, dearmad said:

And the waterlock thing should be done away with. Completely. It's so cheesy and gamey.

Tell that to your toilet's U-Bend. Or your sink's. Or...

EDIT: Majorly ninja'd. That's what I get for being distracted testing something before hitting post.

[Lurve]

9 hours ago, goboking said:

The same principle is used to keep sewer gas from blowing into your bathroom.

Sure, but THIS is what they look like in game:

I would have less of a problem with water locks if they worked like a toilet bowl, instead of vertical stacks of water or tiny vacuum sealing puddles.  The only way those resemble toilet bends is that the excuse is crap.

[nakomaru]

2 hours ago, tseitsei said:

cheesy that lquidlocks are the best solution as an airlock

This is really a matter of personal intuition I think. I don't see at as any sort of cheese.

We don't have ideal gas for boiling under low pressure, or density, or incompressible liquids, or gravity, or radiation, or navier stokes, or mass conservation, or any semblance of realistic electrical units.

We have ONI and what it implies. Adding those things would be a different game, but it's not an obvious assumption to me that it would be a better game. Maybe someone will make that game! I'll try it out.

[Yunru]

13 minutes ago, Lurve said:

Sure, but THIS is what they look like in game:

I would have less of a problem with water locks if they worked like a toilet bowl, instead of vertical stacks of water or tiny vacuum sealing puddles.  The only way those resemble toilet bends is that the excuse is crap.

Sure, and if real life physics mirrored ONI's, that's what a real life toilet would look like. 

[Lurve]

2 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Sure, and if real life physics mirrored ONI's, that's what a real life toilet would look like. 

No it wouldn't.  The polluted water would stack on top of the puddle and overflow the bowl.

[Yunru]

1 minute ago, Lurve said:

No it wouldn't.  The polluted water would stack on top of the puddle and overflow the bowl.

And it couldn't be polluted water because it would off-gas, damn! 

[avc15]

10 hours ago, goboking said:

The same principle is used to keep sewer gas from blowing into your bathroom.

Water seals fail under any kind of differential pressure at all.

Waterlocks and gas traps aren't like the water traps found on your toilet or kitchen sink. A waterlock in ONI stops wildly huge pressure gradients from crossing the boundary, passively. Liquid locks only begin to fail when temperatures get extreme. Gas traps only fail briefly when a dupe exhales standing right on the threshold.

[Radam]

Perfect airlock without using waterlock? Transit tubes...

[CannedSmeef]

51 minutes ago, Radam said:

Perfect airlock without using waterlock? Transit tubes...

Yet another expensive, powerhungry solution.  Except this one can't even be used until you have a bunch of plastic and a strong source of power.