A short list of suggestions / ideas / feedback ...

[Tika96]

I have to apologize, it's not that short. In fact it gets longer while I am writing it.

@ Forum mods: If you don't like this post or it breaks any rules, please let me know to adjust it. Thanks.
___

I have a bad habit. If I like a game very much, I start to make a list of notes about things I don’t like in the game … or better things that could be improved in my humble opinion. The following list a the translated version of my notes. It does not have a particular order. I only have used the numbers in case someone wants to discuss a detail. So he can use the numbers as reference.

Some suggestions could added very easily. Others are very unlikely to be implemented. I do know this. But you can always write “I want a pony next christmas” on your wishlist.

Some suggestions are already made available by mods - to some degree at least. See my first suggestion. Other ideas will already be mentioned by other players.

Please be gentle with me, I am not a native English speaker. Grammar and spelling mistake are very likely.

___

1) Game mods as a prompter / advisor
Klei, please take a look at the mods. There are several great ideas, small and large, among them. It will give you a hint, what might be missing in the vanilla game. To be honest, I am playing ONI with about 120 mods active. It would be better if some optional game changes were maintained by Klei.

2) Better options for the printer
* Determining ( and saving ) the actual printer offer by using the world seed and the cycle count. ( No saving and reloading )
* If the offer is rejected, the next day a new offer is granted. Plus the offer gets more valuable by each rejection.
* Offer scale up slowly by time. E.g. now on cycle 48 you can get 500 kg plastic. I think, if it starts on cycle 48 with only 200 kg and gets 100 kg more every 12 days up to 800 kg after cycle 120, it would be a good way to keep every care package interesting. Even a "ton" of nutrient bars would be a good offer.
* Some time after a printer offer has reached its maximum, it could become an "always-available" offer: The printing pod has finally learned to control its offers. Besides the regular random offers, you can browse through the learned offers and select one of them.
* A previous selected care package could be scaled down or become less likely.

3) A debug / preview mode for the automation grid
Duplicants can take some time to build a complex logic grid. Sometimes I have run into a flaw in the design. Sometimes it was caused by a misunderstanding of the logic elements ( e.g. a delay I have not considered ). I don't like to save my colony, load the other colony ("Sandcastle") with sandbox enabled, test it there and switch back to my regular colony to build it there ( by using the great blue print mod ). It works. But it feels out of order. The game flow is interrupted. A debug mode for a planned automation grid would be much appreciated. A testing probe to activate / deactivate an automation wire to simulate a state of sensors would really be helpful. The testing probe doesn't change anything in reality: It works on the ghost images and the already existing wires. But turning off the automation debug mode every wire, sensor, logic element and signal receiver is returned to the logic state before testing.

4) Explosives ... kind of
Some geysers and gravitas ruins are really annoying / in my way / ruining my plans for a decent little living quarter for my duplicants. There are already mods available to fix this nuisance. A vanilla solution like mixing sulfur, coal and fertilizer to blow up a geyser or the fifth spare neural vacillator right where I wanted to build my duplicants' brand new kitchen ... this would be fun ... and a bit risky perhaps, too. Explosives can be unpredictable. As another quick mining tool explosives could work as an alternative to the robo-miner. Quicker, funnier... and a bit more dangerous.

5) Rotation and (!) mirroring for most machines
Some mods have already fixed this. Sadly they are still incomplete. E.g. the mod "rotate everything" allows a better connection with input/output ports on most machines. But mirroring is not included. And for example I still need the option to mirror logic elements.

6) The "Automation Pack - extended"
Although I was aware of the automation grid, reading of the "Automation Pack" the first time, I have thought about something else. And I was a bit disappointed. Sweepy and 4-Bit wires are cool. But my hopes were different. I had an upgrade option for the processing machines in mind. You attach permanently a control device on a machine ... and from this moment on the machine is no longer depending on duplicants to press once in a while a button. You attach another device on a machine and all the inputs and outputs are available for gas pipes, liquid pipes and solid conveyor rails... without the need of the detour of auto sweepers. I have already the mods "piped outputs", "automated cannisters" and to some degree " Customize Buildings". Still it feels not like the "pony for Christmas". The input pipes are incomplete. There is no direct delivery/departure of solids. And I can't use a slow fully automated rock crusher next to a manually controlled but very fast rock crusher. I have to choose before I start the game.

7) Conveyor Rail Filters
Speaking of the "Automation Pack" Your conveyor rail filter.
That's a bad joke, isn't it? A filter that allows only a single item to be sorted out is not really helpful. Even in my semi automatic kitchen / chlorine gas refrige / great dining hall, the filter is not sufficient. I can't send all ingredients with a single filter in one direction and the prepared food in another direction. A filter like the storage filters would be much, much better. A workaround is a drop to the ground and an auto sweepee doing the sorting ( like Cinderella "Good ones here, bad ones there").

8) Cooled / heated pipes exist ... what about conveyors ?
For a little power consumption I would like to see conveyor rails that can maintain the heat of solids or cool down transported solids. ( My dining elevator is still delivering rotten food )

9) Disinfection of pipes
The big tanks for liquids or gases are cleaning their contents if surrounded by chlorine. Sadly the pipes are protecting their germ ridden contents from the surrounding. To make this little problem to a big design flaw, you can't attach a gas/liquid shutoff directly to a tank. There is always a small pipe between. If you pump waste water into a tank surrounded by chlorine, there is always a small amount of water that can't be disinfected ... 'cos it slipped through the tank and is trapped between the tank and the shutoff. The germs do not mind. I do.

10) Priorities - don't work well for me
You can set up which duplicant prefers what task. You can set up which task needs more attention. Sadly these two are combined in the wrong order IMHO. If you have
enough duplicants, you won't notice this as a problem, since there are enough workers available. But it takes some time before you can get a proper duplicant team. With a small number of duplicants the priority system works like "Dupe is looking for his favourite job ( ignoring the needs the admin has identified ). Then if he has found two or more equally preferred jobs, he considers the advice from the admin." But I need this the other way around. "First the dupes look at the priorities set up for the jobs. And then they choose who will be best for the job ( likes the task, most experience and closest to the area ). At the moment, I have quit using the priorities for dupes. If I were set them up on their experience and favourites, I would end up using only priority 5, 9 and yellow alarm.

 

11) Sweepy Robot more like a critter
I don't know, why Klei has made Sweepy so different from critters although it inherited most behaviour from them. Why is there no workshop for creating ( perhaps repairing ) Sweepies? Why is the Sweepy dock not like a critter drop off plus a critter feeder plus a smart storage bin plus eventually a piped output / conveyor rail output port ? I don't like the exploding Sweepy, the not being able to control by filters storage of its dock. Nor do I like the need of additional auto sweepers / conveyor loaders next to the dock. A portable Sweepy assigned by dropping it off at a specific dock or assigned by naming the docks and Sweepies individually and selecting the dock in the Sweepy ( like a bed to a dupe, but other way around ). This would be really great. Multiple Sweepy Bots assigned to a single dock could be possible by this way.

12) A heavy duty Sweepy besides the small cleaning Sweepy
The regular Sweepy ( Size 1×1 ) small enough to clean even in false ceilings is okay for dupes making a mess or throwing around with meal lice or dropping whatever they have carried when the end of working shift is signalled by the honking horn. But it could need a big brother ( Size 2*2 ). That guy is suitable for cleaning up the mess a bunch of robo-miners are making ( or the big pile of trash after an admin's lesson not to use too many explosives at once )

13) "Reversed" Sweepy : Delivery Bot
Like the regular Sweepy it is bond to a single floor. There it patrols and looks for machines requesting materials. If there is a storage or another machine providing the requested material, it picks up the goods and delivers them to the machine in need. Pretty old school ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guided_vehicle )

14) More variety in the kitchen
Every day a Frost Burger will become boring. A little bit randomness might be interesting: The duplicants could request on a day by day basis different food. Sure no one likes mush bars. But perhaps a duplicant would like cooked fish, fried mushrooms and tofu today ( only 333 kcal each portion he takes )? If he finds every menu item in the fridge, this would be his soul food for today. The other food types provide a bonus, too. But only half of the bonus is fixed. The other half depends on the duplicant and his daily wishlist.

15) Thirst ?
I wonder how long duplicants can survive without anything to drink. With a hand sanitizer, an outhouse and e.g. fried mushrooms it sounds like a very dry diet. But they won't notice the lack of anything to drink. Please make water, juice, soda and coffee a part of the needed meals.

16) A little lock for the material selection
Occasionally I run out of my preferred building material. Something that I don't like is the silent switch to an alternative material. I would like to see an option to lock a building type to a material ( e.g. RMB on the material selection to lock / unlock the selected material )

17) An optional assignment from duplicants to machines
I thought of an assignment setting like the door setup. You could select one or more duplicants at a machine ( or any other equipment that needs a duplicant's attention from time to time). If the equipment needs a duplicant's operation, this would rise a high priority task for this particular duplicant.

18) Ramps / Slopes There is a mod in the Workshop for stairs ("Stairs" and "Asphalt Stairs" ... great mod, I love it ... and it provides scaffolding, too ). I was thinking about something similar. The differences would be * Ramps are always solid. While the stairs still allow to pass them without going up. * Ramps could allow Sweepies to climb to a higher floor level * Ramps affect liquids.

19) Moving sensors into the automation grid

Thiscould allow to build them directly at the spots that matter. For example, you could build the atmo sensor and the gas element sensor behind a gas pump within its area of effect. There is already a mod with filtered pumps out (gas element sensor included) there and I can place the atmo sensor in the only spot of the area of effect next to the gas pump. Sadly this workaround covers only have of the situations. I need in several circumstances a "reversed filtered pump". For example to pump everything but chlorine gas out of the disinfection drop off area. With atmo sensor, gas element sensor, an AND gate and a NOT gate this is easy. But the sensors are a bit out of place.

20) Door assignments for Sweepy

Should be self explanatory. Sweepies can open doors. But sometimes you want to forbid the passage. Workaround so far: A step in the doorway ( plus eventually stairs ). But sometimes you don't have enough room to add another height.

21) Parasites, Carnivore critters, termites etc. 

I have separated some brainstorming about an eco system within a different thread.  With termites I mean some small rodents living in solids like Shove Voles. But they dig tunnels in natural solids by reducing the weight slowly. Constructed structures will be damaged by these critters until they break. A layer of vacuum or some gases and most fluids could be harmful to the rodents. Maybe one or two raw materials are not tasty enough ( Abyssalite (!), Wolframite (?), coal (?), steel (?) ). All other materials are in danger of being used as food.

22) A small diode for the automation grid

The automation grid can really get clumsy, if you need to control the direction of the signal flow. Buffers and Filters are okay, if you have enough space. But a 1x1 diode (only to be able to manage the direction flow) would be better.

23)Checkpoint and lockers for Warm / Cold Sweater

A cheap, early stage, low tech helper for high / low temperature areas with breathable gas would be nice to have. Please give the sweaters some love and purpose.

24) MOAR different Hazardous Material Suits

Only the all purpose atmo suit feels a bit boring. For example a "wired" Hazmat Suit with ventilation hose and power cord ( with a limited range ! ) for working in a stable with poisonous critters or plants. An isolated heat protection suit for working with liquefied metals. A climbing equipment as an early helper in not hazardous areas.

25) A better explanation of bridges ( gas, liquid, solid ) within the game could be useful. Although I have already learned how they priorize their inputs and outputs, I feel a new player could benefit from an in-game explanation. Perhaps a 1x1 junction ( gas, liquid and solid ) with obvious, adjustable priorities for small builds could be handy. The little drawback could be a much higher construction price and build time.

[meepmoop]

1) Good point. A lot of games take insperation from the mods and I hope Klei isn't afraid of 'copying' good ideas from mods. I would also like to see easier mod support but that could be hard to implement.

2) I dont know. I play with 'printer packages' off so its irrelevant for me.

3) Good idea. Not just for the automation but a general "planning toolbar" could be a welcome addition imo.

4) Mixed feeling. I think there is a reference here to two boomerang suggestions. One is the addition of explosions/fire/pressure into the game which I think is great but its a huge leap and I dont think it can be done (some dreams are too big maybe). The second is changing the undistractable buildings to become distractable, which I think is a great idea. As stated in point 1 - there are already mods for this and it should be part of the vanilla package, the devs shouldn't be afraid to 'copy' this from the mods.

5) Good point

6) I saw "androids" suggested that could work and replace dupe operation in certain machines. I think this is kinda big change and maybe the devs experimented with that and found it faulty (maybe it makes the game less interesting or doesnt add much depth or what not). This idea doesn't interest me personally much like other ideas.

7) You can build a complex filter using the basic ones though... As I see it the devs created tools so players can create needed machines with. This is something I wont mind to remain as a mod.

8) again... idk. This point doesn't speak to me.

9) Like I said in point 7, you have the tools to make something that disinfects itself (like you mentioned with chlorine) I made designs that combat that myself so I am very confident that its possible to do. This can remain in the 'mod zone' in my book.

10) Good point. More customized priorities settings.

11-14) no opinion.

15) I could find it interesting but im not sure if it could be vanilla or should stay mod. Some people could find it annoying and un-welcome so I wont want to force it. Maybe make it something tag-able.

16) good point.

17) good point.

[Tika96]

Hi Meepmoop,

all my suggestions are meant to be optional. In case they are changing the rules, there should be a setting in the game menu to turn on/off the changes. I don't want to "force" someone to play my ONI playing style. Favourites differ from person to person. If ONI offers a wide variety of playing styles, this would be beneficial to Klei and especially ONI. Mods help here a lot to customize your game experience. But community driven mods - even if they are very popular - tend to be abandoned and/or not up to date with the game. Additionally most mods overwrite a game feature instead of cloning it and providing the changes to the clone ( e g. the mod changing storage sizes ... or the "heavy duty Sweepy" ).

Just my opinion.

20 hours ago, meepmoop said:

[...]

7) You can build a complex filter using the basic ones though... As I see it the devs created tools so players can create needed machines with. This is something I wont mind to remain as a mod

[...]

 

Sadly this is not really working. My chlorine gas surrounded tanks are disinfected. But the slipping first gulp stays with germs. Without mods you can't 100% disinfect water ( or oxygen ). There will always be a small amount full of germs. I think, it's a design flaw, since in the disinfection / germ overlay there are pipes separately mentioned ! Guessing I would say it was clipped due to performance problems with pipes running through a chlorine gas filled area.

Btw : Added some more translated items from my list

[meepmoop]

3 hours ago, Tika96 said:

Sadly this is not really working. My chlorine gas surrounded tanks are disinfected. But the slipping first gulp stays with germs. Without mods you can't 100% disinfect water ( or oxygen ). There will always be a small amount full of germs. I think, it's a design flaw, since in the disinfection / germ overlay there are pipes separately mentioned ! Guessing I would say it was clipped due to performance problems with pipes running through a chlorine gas filled area.

Btw : Added some more translated items from my list

I am away from computer rn so I cant print screen the design I made. I remember making something that seemed to work 100% for me. basically it was:

[pipe containing contaminated water] -> [shutoff] -> [tank surrounded by chlorine]. with some clock automation around

1. The tank starts closed. will fill up to half.

2. once it is half-full. shutoff will prevent any more contaminated water get into the tank (or be in the pipe that connected to it).

3. water in tank sits in tank for amount of time.

4. once clean, tank will open up letting water flow. there is no gulp here. all the water in the (half full) tank is disinfected.

5. once (almost) empty, close the tank. This way the final bit of water (I think this is the 'glup' you describe) that gets into the exit/output position is not contaminated as well.

Then you start from step 1 again. This is how I remember making it. I did not have contaminated water in the end. But then again memory is a faulty thing so I may be wrong.

[Tika96]

My vanilla cleaning facility looks the same. But the problem is situated at your position (1) "The tanks starts closed."

You can not close a tank directly. The shutoff valve is not attached to the tank. There are are least two pipe pieces needed: One piece attached to the tank's output. One piece attached to the shutoff valve's input. These two pipe pieces contain 20 liter contaminated water. It rushed through the tank before it can get completely disinfected. Once you close the input to the tank, wait one cycle to be seemingly on the safe side ( the water in the tank might be germ free for a long time already ) ... and open the output shutoff valve: The first 20 liter is still infectious.

I have now added a "liquid germ scrubber" provided by the corresponding mod as an output guardian. Additionally bottled water ("automated cannister filler") is waiting within the chlorine gas filled area. Bottled water is affected by the surrounding like solids do.

[Steve8]

17 hours ago, Tika96 said:

Without mods you can't 100% disinfect water ( or oxygen ). There will always be a small amount full of germs

Not true. There are several ways to do that. 

1.) You can loop back a germy packet into a reservoir until it's cleaned. Keep in mind that a liquid shutoff has priority unless it's closed. In several games I've used a three reservoir design where new water gets into the first reservoir and the mostly cleaned water is looped back into the middle one if it still contains some germs. If there are no germs left the water flows into the shutoff instead. This works great when all reservoirs are full as the incoming water will quickly be diluted in less germy water.

2.) You can base the whole cleaning on timer sensors. Leave the water sitting long enough and you can be sure that it's clean. A single reservoir is enough with that. Cleaning takes less than a cycle. So if you let in water at the beginning of the cycle and out at the end it'll be clean. Could maybe be combined with a loop if you want a fail safe.

3.) You can use the new reservoir automation to regulate the liquid levels between two of them

4.) With enough reservoirs you can only let out water from the last one if the first one is full. This too is partially based on the incoming germs being greatly diluted in the tons of mostly germ-free water

Quote

You can not close a tank directly.

Not directly, but you can deactivate a reservoir by building it on an airlock door. Same as with other buildings. A deactivated reservoir won't let out water.

Options 3 and 4 use the door "trick". 2 may use it. 1 doesn't

Rather than introduce an extra cleaning building an easier solution would be to introduce an automation input for the reservoir to deactivate it

[Tika96]

On 4/28/2020 at 9:08 PM, Steve8 said:

[...]

Not directly, but you can deactivate a reservoir by building it on an airlock door. Same as with other buildings. A deactivated reservoir won't let out water.

Options 3 and 4 use the door "trick". 2 may use it. 1 doesn't

Rather than introduce an extra cleaning building an easier solution would be to introduce an automation input for the reservoir to deactivate it

 

Don't know how you think, I have asked for another new building to be implemented. I have pointed to a strange behaviour of bulky tanks being disinfected and slim pipes staying filled with germs.

Within the game you might be stumbling upon this tank disinfection feature. It is not very well documented. In fact, you have to be lucky to read the notice about the chlorine surrounding affecting the germs inside the tanks.

The 100% fail safe solution "airlock under the tank" is not a tiny bit documented in-game. You call it a trick. In other games this would be called an exploit. Whatever. I still think it's a bit too cheesy.

If you are interested : I have added a few screenshots from my cleaning facility in this post Polluted water decontamination with continuous 10 kg/s flow, by Hvitbardur

[V Ean]

I agree, especially with 10, because my cycle 128 base with 8 dupe, no one worked on the priority 8 cooking grill, and they all starved and died with 128 unit of sleet wheat.

 

[pether]

On 4/27/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tika96 said:

1) Game mods as a prompter / advisor
Klei, please take a look at the mods.

Last update (automation pack) included around 7 mods to the game. They look at the mods or at least listen to the community - same effect  Of course Rome wasn't built in one day, nor all mods can be implemented at once. Of course some mods are not worthy to be included and should stay in mod area.

On 4/27/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tika96 said:

3) A debug / preview mode for the automation grid

I use switches to debug my automation grid, and I am pretty sure nothing more is needed.

 

On 4/27/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tika96 said:

4) Explosives ... kind of

That's a new idea, I like it!

 

On 4/27/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tika96 said:

7) Conveyor Rail Filters

Gas and liquid filters work the same. Agreed, they could be upgraded to filter several elements, but even without this - new filters are great improvement to the game, highly requested from the community and I wouldn't ever call it a bad joke! Klei, don't listen to it, you made great job over there!

On 4/27/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tika96 said:

12) A heavy duty Sweepy besides the small cleaning Sweepy

I'm pretty sure that simple Sweepy is just a teaser for Robotics tech tree and other robots incomming. That is why it performs only the most basic task possible. Future robots will do more advanced stuff.

 

On 4/27/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tika96 said:

22) A small diode for the automation grid

You can use buffer gate with minimal delay, works the same (but with minimal delay). Diode would be nice, but it is not essential

 

On 4/27/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tika96 said:

23)Checkpoint and lockers for Warm / Cold Sweater

Another new, nice idea! Plus, giving those clothes more impact on the game would be nice - right now I never use them.