[Feedback] Arboria Playthrough Issues

[AndreyKl]

1. Start and oxygen issues
Upon spawning I immediately went setting up initial toilets and beds, then I was planing to work at oxygen but noticed distinct lack of algae in vicinity and also that there was no sand, but some rust was visible. So instead of building oxygen generation I went for research and rushed 'rust to oxygen' processing and rock crusher. On top of those I made pips re-plant some Oxyferns at the bottom, moved beds to be near/above such plants and avoided getting more dupes for a while. Game was really slow because I could not support more than 3 dupes and 3 dupes (1 dedicated to research) can do only 'so much' work.

Later 'care package' provided me 0.5T algae, and then I found some pockets of algae, finally reached rust and salt, so situation stabilized.

Note:

• I'm fairly sure new player won't know not to spawn new dupes, won't immediately figure out a way to 'abuse' pips and likely won't go for research so fast == dupes will suffocate
• First ~50 cycles were very slow for me
• Oxyferns need to mention in in-game encyclopedia their oxygen generation, and if it will be affected by being in plot or under 'farmer's touch'
• I also noticed that trees require large amount of work so I disabled tree harvesting.
• searching 'time' and 'cycle' in in-game encyclopedia brings no result (I haven't played for a while), yet 'domestic growth' of Oxyferns is per cycle, while oxygen production is per second.
• Nature preserve is overpowered early on, I just got +6 bonus instantly with minimum effort.

Suggestion: Either add a warning for new players to start from easier asteroids or swap oxygen diffuser with Rust Deoxidizer for this specific map. Players expect for their early tech to be usable (devs won't set them to die, right?). Please add 'Cycle' article to encyclopedia.

2. Early to mid game and the Grill

My population grew slightly and pip-planted mealwood was no longer sufficient, so I researched grill, only to find out that it had only 34(mush fry was not listed) receipts, first receipt for preserver mealwood (thus useless short term) and neither meat nor frost buns were available to me in usable quantities, mush fry is still emergency food even if dirt is a bit more accessible. As I understand it, grill is now 'mid level' tech, yet it provides no advantages to either early or 'mid' game since it is a bit too early for ranching, or for using 'wheat' as reliable food source (at least not without high frost-bite risk). I'm fairly sure new players will expect for grill to be at least useful. it might be better to have a bit more option than just mush fry (and new players might not print mush bar, so won't see the receipt)

3. Consequences of 'vent-rich' map

I explored less then quarter of the map (probably less) and I already found 3 cool slush geysers, 1 leacky oil, 1 cool steam, 1 salt water, 1 natural gas and at least one more unknown, this amount of vents is simply broken...

Natural reserve is way too overpowered...

Upd: Late-game the biggest issue for this map: lack of clay. Producing it from pwater is slow.

[Sasza22]

Grill is definetly useful if you go for mush bars. Frying them removes the food poisoning they tend to start with and rises the quality. Arboria has almost infinite dirt so going for mush bars isn`t that terrible in it.

I agree there needs to be some tooltip work for this start as you can`t build diffusers due to the lack of algae. Oxyferns can carry you through the early parts of the game as long as you actively farm them. Maybe they coulkd be buffed a bit, at least to the point of the wild ones spawning being able to sustain 3 dupes.

[AndreyKl]

3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Grill is definetly useful if you go for mush bars. Frying them removes the food poisoning they tend to start with and rises the quality. Arboria has almost infinite dirt so going for mush bars isn`t that terrible in it.

Oh, apparently receipts in grill populate only if I have ingredients... since I never printed mush bar, mush fry was not displayed and I assumed that receipt was moved to 'gas range'. Mush fry indeed makes grill somewhat usefull. Thanks for mentioning this, updated top post.

[Sasza22]

3 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

Oh, apparently receipts in grill populate only if I have ingredients...

Yes, you need at least one ingredient for it to appear. This makes me wonder how did you get the gristle berry if there are no bristles on Arboria.

Also BBQ and grilled pacu can be made on the grill, so if you run low you can always kill off the critters. Oh and omlettes if you get a raw egg. There`s quite a few hidden recipies for that one.

[DarkMaster13]

The problems you've run into are common on all forest starts.  If you replant the oxyferns inside planter pots, farming tiles, or hydroponic tiles (with water flow), you'll have a lot more oxygen for supporting your dupes.  There's 13 oxyferns (I think?) in each forest start, so you should be able to support your dupes off those no problem.  The real concern will be water supplies, since those tend to be very low on forest starts.  Once you get use to the different starting conditions, they aren't that much harder than sandstone starts.

Mealwood should be your principle initial food source on all maps except Aridio and possibly Rime.

Arboria actually has a much more serious issue in the mid to late game, since it doesn't have any gold on it by default.  That makes it harder to get high temperature machines and more or less blocks you from rocketry entirely since you can't make oxylite (you can still farm pufts, but those are somewhat finicky and you have to get them from care packages since there are none on the map to begin with).

[woodenstars]

1 hour ago, DarkMaster13 said:

The problems you've run into are common on all forest starts.  If you replant the oxyferns inside planter pots, farming tiles, or hydroponic tiles (with water flow), you'll have a lot more oxygen for supporting your dupes.  There's 13 oxyferns (I think?) in each forest start, so you should be able to support your dupes off those no problem.  The real concern will be water supplies, since those tend to be very low on forest starts.  Once you get use to the different starting conditions, they aren't that much harder than sandstone starts.

Mealwood should be your principle initial food source on all maps except Aridio and possibly Rime.

Arboria actually has a much more serious issue in the mid to late game, since it doesn't have any gold on it by default.  That makes it harder to get high temperature machines and more or less blocks you from rocketry entirely since you can't make oxylite (you can still farm pufts, but those are somewhat finicky and you have to get them from care packages since there are none on the map to begin with).

^ This. Please, Klei, add Gold Amalgam to printer delivery. There is no way to get use of Cool Steam Vent or Salt Water Geiser without overheating pumps (and boiling your dupes who attempts to repair them) at pre-steel stage. There is also no free PW lakes on Arboria to use it as a coolant whenever you finally research steel.

In my playthrough I haven't cooked any of food bars (no water used for kitchen, pickled meal only; maximum wild grown mealwood as possible) and I was lucky to find one additional POI water pool, still I run out of water at cycle 70 and half of my dupes are cooked at Cool Steam Vent. 

[DarkMaster13]

5 minutes ago, woodenstars said:

^ This. Please, Klei, add Gold Amalgam to printer delivery. There is no way to get use of Cool Steam Vent or Salt Water Geiser without overheating pumps (and boiling your dupes who attempts to repair them) at pre-steel stage. There is also no free PW lakes on Arboria to use it as a coolant whenever you finally research steel.

In my playthrough I haven't cooked any of food bars (no water used for kitchen, pickled meal only; maximum wild grown mealwood as possible) and I was lucky to find one additional POI water pool, still I run out of water at cycle 70 and half of my dupes are cooked at Cool Steam Vent. 

You do have ice biomes though.  Just throw ice into the water.  There's actually a lot of alternative sources of water than just the steam geysers.  You don't have to, and in fact should not, use the same strategy on every single map.  Otherwise what's the point in having multiple asteroid types?

The lack of gold is a serious issue in the late game though, as alternatives are extremely limited.  Pufts are the only other way to get oxylite and you can't make supercoolant at all without gold itself.

[AndreyKl]

23 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

If you replant the oxyferns inside planter pots, farming tiles, or hydroponic tiles (with water flow), you'll have a lot more oxygen for supporting your dupes. There's 13 oxyferns (I think?) in each forest start, so you should be able to support your dupes off those no problem.

The ones I made pip plant only produce 8g/s of oxygen. Domestically planted provide 31g/s, but require noticeable amount of water which I had to little to even try.

23 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Once you get use to the different starting conditions, they aren't that much harder than sandstone starts.

That's exactly why I'm complaining. I did not found this start to be harder, but it clearly needs more experience with the game. New players will have an mush bigger issue with it than with normal start.

23 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

hat makes it harder to get high temperature machines

Found no issue with this one yet. There are small pockets of fossil, so I fast-tracked to steel and made steel pump to supply electrolyzer. But not having super coolant late-game might become annoying.

21 hours ago, woodenstars said:

In my playthrough I haven't cooked any of food bars (no water used for kitchen, pickled meal only; maximum wild grown mealwood as possible) and I was lucky to find one additional POI water pool, still I run out of water at cycle 70 and half of my dupes are cooked at Cool Steam Vent. 

At least three ways:

• Steel
• Ice biomes.
• door-pump/door-gate + Aquatuner. Divide and conquer: separate part of liquid, cool, push to pump.

23 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Yes, you need at least one ingredient for it to appear. This makes me wonder how did you get the gristle berry if there are no bristles on Arboria.

Care packages probably.

[AndreyKl]

3 cool slush geysers just on the portion of the map I had explored... and I haven't explored much. It feels broken. With such amount of liquid geysers game can become too easy (essentially free oxygen, free coolant, dirt).

[ruslanbes]

On 7/25/2019 at 12:04 AM, Sasza22 said:

Yes, you need at least one ingredient for it to appear. This makes me wonder how did you get the gristle berry if there are no bristles on Arboria.

 

From Care package I guess. 

[Nebbie]

On 7/24/2019 at 5:45 PM, woodenstars said:

^ This. Please, Klei, add Gold Amalgam to printer delivery. There is no way to get use of Cool Steam Vent or Salt Water Geiser without overheating pumps (and boiling your dupes who attempts to repair them) at pre-steel stage. There is also no free PW lakes on Arboria to use it as a coolant whenever you finally research steel.

In my playthrough I haven't cooked any of food bars (no water used for kitchen, pickled meal only; maximum wild grown mealwood as possible) and I was lucky to find one additional POI water pool, still I run out of water at cycle 70 and half of my dupes are cooked at Cool Steam Vent. 

I'm fairly certain I've gotten gold amalgam from the printer pod recently...but maybe it's one of those that requires discovery first, like copper? If you ask me, discovery-requirement on only some things is just annoying.

I definitely think they need to add at least a tiny, tiny bit of slime biome, cause making lategame grindier and gating things to steel is just crazy.

[AndreyKl]

On 28.07.2019 at 7:41 AM, Nebbie said:

gating things to steel is just crazy.

Well, steel definitely takes a while to produce and sometimes to set up... lets just say that on current map single turbine setup is the only one that currently use steel aquatunners and I probably won't be building new ones any time soon.

P.S. Nature preserve is a bit overpowered. It is not that hard to find 4 natural plants together so I had instant +6 morale for all my dupes.

Would have been much better with morale bonus that depends onto plant variety, size, e t c

[AndreyKl]

On 25.07.2019 at 2:50 AM, DarkMaster13 said:

The lack of gold is a serious issue in the late game though, as alternatives are extremely limited.

From [Game Update] - 357226: 

• Added two new meteor showers, one with Copper meteors, and one with Gold meteors.

I think this solves the issue)

P.S. My 'Geoactive' map is ridiculous, gold, copper, magma and gold volcanoes are present, and I already stopped counting cool slush geysers.

[Rockou_]

When i start a new save on Arboria i rush the rust deoxidizer research, i also pick a good digger as soon as i can (newly spawned dupes always have 1 free skill point) so i can have a dupe that can dig granite to get rust, i always manage to get rust deoxidizer before cycle 4(if i can get a ok digging dupe at cycle 3) they should def add a way to make oxygen without needing to exit the main biome on forest starting maps

[Sasza22]

8 hours ago, Rockou_ said:

they should def add a way to make oxygen without needing to exit the main biome on forest starting maps

Oxyferns planted in planter boxes or farm tiles are 4x as effective as those in the wild. I found i can get oxygen for 5 dupes using just them. Not ideal but enough to stabilise and dig out some algae from the caustic biomes and set up terrariums.

[AndreyKl]

Slight update:

Cycle 1500 on Arboria (and a 'funny' notification about pet 'rats'). The biggest issue so far: lack of clay/ceramics (using deodorizers to generate clay). Between, pips, ridiculous amount of water/pwater/salt water, huge amount of Lead and liberal usage' of steam generator the game was disappointingly easy.

1. Pips - way to powerful, I use zero farms, a lot of food goes to waste. At least in previous games I needed to maintain farms, make sure I don't overheat those by accident e t c, in this game, even if some plants don't grow, I simply don care with how many I got without even trying...
2. Liquids - I have a ridiculous amount of various liquids in form of multimple geysers/vents. Access to oxygen as result is not an issues.
3. Lead - I'm not sure what to feel about this one. From one point, I like not having to process a lot of resources, from another I lost all restrains in terms of building cables and tiles...
4. Lack of germs - in previous games at least slimelung was posing some challenge. I had two zombie spore sources, but those are trivial to avoid.