Big issue with maps without Slime Biome

[beaninator77]

I have noticed a massive problem with world gen types without the slime biome, obivously you miss out on alot of algae and slime and reed plants all of which are annoying but you can work around them, the major issue is you end up with a world with not an ounce of gold. S you're left with absolutely no way to reliably pump hot liquids such as crude oil in the late game, this has got me quite stuck so if anyone has any ideas or I have missed something please let me know.

[DarkMaster13]

You can use steel instead to solve that problem.  There's a bigger one coming up later in that you cannot make Oxylite and the only alternative is pufts (which also don't spawn on the map and have to be gotten from care packages).  That means no rocketry for you unless you grind out a very large number of trips back and forth to the closest destinations until you can jump straight to liquid oxygen.  Then after that you can't make supercoolant without gold either.

[beaninator77]

19 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

You can use steel instead to solve that problem.  There's a bigger one coming up later in that you cannot make Oxylite and the only alternative is pufts (which also don't spawn on the map and have to be gotten from care packages).  That means no rocketry for you unless you grind out a very large number of trips back and forth to the closest destinations until you can jump straight to liquid oxygen.  Then after that you can't make supercoolant without gold either.

Would you consider that "intended challenge" or just a little too much, because for me it seems a little crazy.

[DarkMaster13]

No, I don't think forcing rocketry to be far more grindy than it already is to be an intended challenge.  Needing to go for steel is fine though.  You don't need that much to make a few pumps and get your oil industry started.

[flapee]

0.4t of steel for a pump is challenging, but ok;

but going for 1,2t steel for AT so you can use ST seems a bit ridonculous. 

[Vampyre_by]

32 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Then after that you can't make supercoolant without gold either.

you can make LOX with Thermo Regulator using Hydrogen gas and than farm planets with Gold. But yes, it's a PITA

[wronny]

22 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

There's a bigger one coming up later in that you cannot make Oxylite and the only alternative is pufts (which also don't spawn on the map and have to be gotten from care packages). 

The lack of Oxylite is not the issue when it comes to rocketry. Databanks can be farmed at a rate of 10 per research module per trip to the 10,000km destinations, usually utilizing one or more research (steam) rockets with 9 research modules. Then you can go straight to LOX (via Thermo Regulators). Arboria also has a decent chance to have the Oxylite spiral (24 blocks of 200 kg Oxylite → 2.4t after mining) to help you along.

The lack of gold for Super Coolant is the only real issue, because you'll have to make rather clever use of some really odd game mechanics to get your LH2 production going without it. Unless you get very lucky with your space destinations. Haven't seen any of the new gold planets close enough to be reachable by a petroleum-lox cargo rocket (<= 110,000 km). Not to mention that these locations only seem to be present on about 20% of the seeds.

7 minutes ago, beaninator77 said:

Would you consider that "intended challenge" or just a little too much, because for me it seems a little crazy.

The lack of Gold Amalgam causing you to use steel earlier: Definitely, yes. Because it is anything but crazy, it just changes the order in which you do things, which because of the knock-on effects that has, is very interesting.

Arboria has plenty of fossil available via Tide Pool biomes and the new critter (Pokeshells) that's found there and produces good amounts of lime (egg shell, small molt, big molt). Finally rushing down to the oil biome to get the Steel production going is an option that works on both Arboria and "The Badlands". Just need to craft one steel pump beforehand.

The lack of Oxylite is a more than acceptable, as it can be worked around with very little trouble. Early space should usually not be a stage where you do nothing but waiting for rockets, so taking a couple more trips is not an issue.

[Lurve]

If meteors were changed from all iron to a mostly-iron mix of all the natural metals, would that be enough gold to work with?  It'd also provide small amounts of tungsten for maps that lack ice biomes.

[chemie]

4 hours ago, Vampyre_by said:

you can make LOX with Thermo Regulator using Hydrogen gas and than farm planets with Gold. But yes, it's a PITA

Not all maps have a planet with gold within petroleum rocket range

[Gurgel]

9 hours ago, beaninator77 said:

S you're left with absolutely no way to reliably pump hot liquids such as crude oil in the late game, this has got me quite stuck so if anyone has any ideas or I have missed something please let me know.

This is called "increased difficulty". If you do not want that or cannot deal, don't play maps w/o slime biome. 

[Nebbie]

Steel production pretty much needs rushing anyways with how heating and cooling is now, for aquatuners, but that puts even more pressure on getting a way to deal with hot liquids. Ultimately I think gold is actually too common with slime biome and too uncommon without, but also, I must note that pufts are at least in theory a really important source of materials, and should be present in some quantity on every map. The slime biome is also well-designed cause it introduces disease, but you have incentive to exploit it, so in my opinion it should be present at least a bit on every map.

[TLW]

On 7/26/2019 at 12:00 PM, Gurgel said:

This is called "increased difficulty".

No, it's called "increased tedium". This is often correlated with increased difficulty, but do not mistake correlation for causation.

[DarkMaster13]

5 minutes ago, TLW said:

No, it's called "increased tedium". This is often correlated with increased difficulty, but do not mistake correlation for causation.

Having to make and use steel without access to gold/oil is an extra challenge.  It presents a new puzzle for you to solve.  Mixing things up like this and demanding that you come up with new solutions is the best way for ONI to add more content to the game.  Making the game more tedious is what a lack of gold does to the rocketry part of the game, not oil.

[flapee]

16 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Having to make and use steel without access to gold/oil is an extra challenge. 

I dont mind making steel without gold,

just the fact you need WAY more steel and the bottle neck in my case is lime 

[Gurgel]

23 hours ago, Nebbie said:

Steel production pretty much needs rushing anyways with how heating

Not at all. I started doing steel in my current base at cycle 700.

1 hour ago, TLW said:

No, it's called "increased tedium". This is often correlated with increased difficulty, but do not mistake correlation for causation.

Did you overlook the quotes I used somehow?

[Mullematsch]

On 7/26/2019 at 4:56 PM, Lurve said:

If meteors were changed from all iron to a mostly-iron mix of all the natural metals, would that be enough gold to work with?  It'd also provide small amounts of tungsten for maps that lack ice biomes.

I like this. Otherwise guaranteed gold volcano would be nice or guaranteed gold on a close planet. 

I like the no gold = no oxylite and harder temps early game. 

I like having to rush liquid oxygen or ranching pufts.

I don't like having to rely on RNG to be able to make super coolant. 

 

[Lifegrow]

On 26/07/2019 at 3:56 PM, Lurve said:

If meteors were changed from all iron to a mostly-iron mix of all the natural metals, would that be enough gold to work with?  It'd also provide small amounts of tungsten for maps that lack ice biomes.

Love that idea - maybe some separate space debris that have to be put through a crusher (de-amalgaderpinator?) for an occasional 10-25kg of whatever is rare for your chosen start.

That'd be somewhat of a solution to all the bitching and whining that's been on the forums since the new starts were added....  

[OxCD]

On 26/07/2019 at 12:00 PM, DarkMaster13 said:

You can use steel instead to solve that problem.  There's a bigger one coming up later in that you cannot make Oxylite and the only alternative is pufts (which also don't spawn on the map and have to be gotten from care packages).  That means no rocketry for you unless you grind out a very large number of trips back and forth to the closest destinations until you can jump straight to liquid oxygen.  Then after that you can't make supercoolant without gold either.

I feel the same.

Those issues pop-up since new asteroids were introduced, they didn't change it yet. That's awkward to me.

[miauly]

Had a chance to play on a weekend so will reiterate a bit on the topic of steel vs gold.

I played on Oasisse (miscalculated pod and irregular oil traits), so in principle I had gold there. But I decided to see what's going to happen if I don't touch it. So I did not mine biomes, and random 400 gold I had from some random tiles are still with me. I also found a slush geyser, but in the spirit of this playthrough I did not touch it as well (contained, but did not use water), and instead used water from an open salt water one.

So, by cycle 250 I have stabilized my cool water with turbine + tuner, powered by ethanol gen and wheels, to a point where I could afford waterclosets for dupes (10 of them by that time). Funny to have all that tech and all that morale (thanks to nature reserves) and still using outhouses because I was still stretching starting cool water for oxyferns and wash basins. At that point I even thought that going without gold is fine, the game was progressing rather quick (for me), all thanks to lead being available in large quantities and letting me to conductive wire and automate right and left. I think lead is a great addition - you can't build machines, but you don't need to grind for your wires and pipes. Although I usually used 3 smooth hatches and they covered refined metal just as well. Should probably do them this time too, to cover iron and have less issues. Sedimentary rock is available in the tide biome - by the way, is there a map where it's not available at all and smooth hatches can't be breed?

But then things started to go less fun. Ethanol-based gen finally overheated (was keeping itself for quite some time by the fixed water output, nice it's still there), and I had to replace it with steel, as well as batteries and transformers. I also needed steel to cover oil-based power - refinery, reservoirs, generators, related pumps, batteries again (although smart ones can do with iron). That's quite a lot and it feels grindy, especially because you need dupe time to power it without petroleum or coal. I was cooling refinery with oil, dumping it back to the oil biome to another pool, after bootstrapping a steel pump for the oil itself on the toilet water. This way I used quite a large pool just to get a smallest petroleum setup up and running, which won't be readily available if for example buried oil trait is in effect. So with all that, it took me another ~40 cycles to get my petroleum-based power running in a minimal way.

So, going without gold is definitely doable, even if you are going with added impediments that you have on Oasisse. It's grindy, but not that terrible grindy. As Arboria has more water around, getting refinery running there will be easier. The second map without gold is Badlands if I remember correctly - I have not played it and can't compare how it will fare in early and mid game.

On a side note, oxyferns do not spread food poisoning as of now. If it keeps the same, it's really nice as it allows to put toilet water to an effective use without any shenanigans.

PS. The above only applies to the early and mid game, since absence of super coolant (gold) or thermium (tungsten) is a reason to scrape a whole colony indeed, if you were planning to play the end game. I just wanted to add this as I changed my opinion on the mid game steel grind from "it's too boring and needs to be fixed" to "it's somewhat tedious but I can agree it's a challenge too".

[wronny]

3 hours ago, miauly said:

Sedimentary rock is available in the tide biome - by the way, is there a map where it's not available at all and smooth hatches can't be breed?

On "The Badlands" neither Swamp nor Tide Pool biomes are available by default, so you'd need to crush it from Fossil (5kg Lime, 95kg Sedimentary Rock)

[avc15]

On 7/26/2019 at 3:20 AM, beaninator77 said:

Would you consider that "intended challenge" or just a little too much, because for me it seems a little crazy.

Klei is on record stating that it's part of the challenge of the varied maps, some resources being missing in this one, other resources being missing in that one. The context was this specific gold issue.

Where's that bug report...

Print a puft or two, puft ranches are an interesting challenge. (with the lighted bonuses + new effects on ranching skill, one skilled rancher should be able to produce at least 2tons of oxylite per day, up to around 3 at skill level 20)

 

[stoeberhai]

no way this is intentional since it limits your colony. gold is the early case but it also applies to wolframite on other planet types. i had to scrap a ~600 cycle colony because there was no way to obtain the latter. this makes the lategame tech pretty much unachievable.

removing specific material requirements is not the solution but they should make sure that these specifics are guaranteed to be obtainable. if there is no gold volcano then there should be gold on the first row of planets; tungsten somewhat later. i'm sure they will address this issue at some point

[avc15]

Here it is.

Klei says, yeah, that's what we were planning for with some worlds that lack the slime biome.

Get creative! It doesn't have to be just "more grind".

 

[Nitroturtle]

39 minutes ago, stoeberhai said:

i had to scrap a ~600 cycle colony because there was no way to obtain the latter. this makes the lategame tech pretty much unachievable.

This right here.  Nobody should feel they have to scrap their game (600 cycles = 30 hours of play, if run continously at 3x speed) because they realize this far in that they are locked out of end game content.

Everyone arguing that "it's fine" can feel free to continue that train of thought, but you are never going to convince me that this represents good game design.

[avc15]

That's a false dilemma: with ~2-3 tons of steel or so you can build every bit of heat resistant machinery you need until rockets.

Scrapping a 30 hour game because you prefer starting over to making a refinery is a little irrational.