Is it just me, or is water intended to be extremely abundant in the late game?

[lee1026]

Poking around on mapgen, it feels like most maps can support a large number of dupes than it used to be normal on QoL. Back then, you can get struck with a map with only two cool vents and had to figure out how to support your team on that. Now, it feels like saltwater geysers are practically mandatory outside of the badlands, and saltwater geysers usually produce a lot of water; I generally only have to tap a single saltwater geyser to fulfill all of my water needs.

 

Is it time to change our attitudes toward water usage? Since water is so plentiful anyway, auto-farmed stuffed berries should be far more meta than it already is; it isn't like you are going to run out of the water! Stuffed berries only roughly double water usage from oxygen making anyway.

[MorsDux]

Food production can be built up to be waterless. Yes berry is a low labor food (we really need a harvester arm mod) but after a while you might find yourself wanting more than just feeding the easiest to your dupes. The game supports many styles, all have factors of fun. 

[Gurgel]

I think it is mostly that you have an (almost) assured salt water geyser. toolsnotincluded has 1366 maps overall and 1299 of those have at least one salt-water geyser. The rest is probably missing this one because it spawned to close to the walls. 

[SharraShimada]

1 hour ago, MorsDux said:

(we really need a harvester arm mod)

There is a mod forcing plants to drop fruits right after they are fully grown. The only thing sweepers cant do is doing the farmes touch from the station. 

[psusi]

10 hours ago, lee1026 said:

Poking around on mapgen, it feels like most maps can support a large number of dupes than it used to be normal on QoL

Yep.  I too was used to living off of only two cool steam vents back then, but my last world I had a pwater vent that provided almost all of my water.  I partially used one of the two cool steam vents, and didn't bother with the other one or the four salt water vents.

 

[DarkMaster13]

The various water geysers are the most common ones in the game, so you're more likely than not to have an excess of them.  Unless they're consolidated somehow to reduce their frequency, this means that you will inevitably have way more water than you'll ever need.

[suicide commando]

Having an abundance of water is pretty much required for everything else to have a sustainable base. Having more means you can support more systems/dupes and build crazier things. Also, since you NEED water to build a sustainable base, not having the player dig out the entire map to find it is good game design. This means that you will have to ensure that whichever way a player digs, there's chances of finding a sustainable source of water. Otherwise, players will get frustrated when playing when they can't find a good source of water 'anywhere' and have to curb a lot of things because until they have a good source of water, everything else has to go on hold.

 

[Gurgel]

7 hours ago, psusi said:

Yep.  I too was used to living off of only two cool steam vents back then, but my last world I had a pwater vent that provided almost all of my water.  I partially used one of the two cool steam vents, and didn't bother with the other one or the four salt water vents.

I have not even used the cool steam vents since the release, I think. No need.

[beowulf2010]

3 hours ago, Gurgel said:

I have not even used the cool steam vents since the release, I think. No need.

Yeah. I stiil dig them out and build a condenser for them, but the water they put out just sits unused in an infinite storage space. 

[psusi]

16 hours ago, suicide commando said:

Having an abundance of water is pretty much required for everything else to have a sustainable base. Having more means you can support more systems/dupes and build crazier things. Also, since you NEED water to build a sustainable base, not having the player dig out the entire map to find it is good game design. This means that you will have to ensure that whichever way a player digs, there's chances of finding a sustainable source of water. Otherwise, players will get frustrated when playing when they can't find a good source of water 'anywhere' and have to curb a lot of things because until they have a good source of water, everything else has to go on hold.

 

It used to be that you were guaranteed to find an open cool steam vent and NG vent just outside the starting biome.  There typically would be 1 or 2 more of each somewhere on the map.  Before release I had never found a water, pwater, or cool slush vent but that cool steam vent was always close by.  Now it seems like you are guaranteed one of those plus a few salt water vents to boot.