I think ONI would greatly benefit from an expanded difficulty level scale - anything you'd like to see?

[Ellilea]

I not only love to play this game, and would be delighted with a new (but cohesive - something an amalgamation of random mods struggles with) challenge, but I also love to watch people play it. A lot of seasoned ONI players who make fun content have to try and make the game more challenging by making up arbitrary rules which is finicky. I think it would be great if the game had a challenging mode as baseline content for both one's own challenge, and to give streamers/YouTubers something fun (and funny) to take on.

I think that with mode like that, it would also give the developers more freedom in evil. They removed dangerous disease mechanics, because they were too tricky to average players. But they could absolutely make a comeback in the challenge mode. And I think a lot of cool, fun things could be added without having to do a whole lot of coding. Are there any such things you'd like to see in the game?

1. The obvious one is dangerous diseases, of course. I want actual Zombie Dupes, that'd be hilarious and give those funky plants an actual danger aura. Plus deadly slimelung and vomitey food poisoning like in the good old days. Hypothermia should cause frostbite, that's so key! I've seen those 500K "challenge" runs lately, the cold can be pretty much ignored, lol. Proceed as usual.

2. Aggressive critters could add some reason to pay attention to what you free and where. And what you breed and where. Aggressive critters giving some valuable resource (but requiring specific management - either by automation or, say, delivering special treats to pacify them) could bring some life into farming.

3. Making some gasses and liquids dangerous to dupes would also spice up the base management. And make both suits and base isolation more key. I've once turned on that "chemical burns" mod which was a little crazy (afaik), but I think the idea definitely has potential.

4. I don't know exactly how many heat deletion and similar tricks remain in the game right now, but turning those features off on all the buildings would give the less experienced challengers a think. I know some were removed, but I bet a bunch still remain.

Anything fun you could think of?

 

[Steve8]

Gasses like hydrogen, chlorine and even polluted oxygen will irritate their skin in the next release. So chlorine doesn't melt off their faces, but it's a nice addition. Pushes people to clean up their gasses and have proper suit access.

[Gurgel]

3 hours ago, Ellilea said:

Anything fun you could think of?

I think the problem here is that there is a fine line between "harder" and "unplayable". And the worst thing is "unplayable, but you only find out after a few 100 cycles." Sure, they could put in an "insane hardcore" mode, but I think this comes with a real business risk: Some people think they are smart enough to beat a game on _any_ settings and when they cannot they rage-quit and start to bad-mouth things. That is one reason games with such a mode often only allow you to play it after you have beaten the game on the next lower tier. 

That said, I would like such settings, I am just not sure whether it is a good idea overall.

As to examples what I would like in addition to the ones you already mentioned:

1. Cold should definitely have more of a bad effect on dupes, I think it should slow them down and massively increase calories consumption. At some body temp (say 0C), it should kill them.

2. They may have longer phases (later in the game), where every geyser shuts down for, say, 100 cycles. 

What I do not want is anything that cause a need for long-term micro-management. Eventually, you must be able to run everything unattended or the nature of the game changes far too much.

 

1 hour ago, Steve8 said:

Gasses like hydrogen, chlorine and even polluted oxygen will irritate their skin in the next release. So chlorine doesn't melt off their faces, but it's a nice addition. Pushes people to clean up their gasses and have proper suit access.

What, no faces being melted off? Now I am disappointed! That could have made doctoring far more important and also required doctors to be artists or a face reconstruction may just gave gotten "crude" quality.

[Ellilea]

@Gurgel

I've yet to see a game like ONI being mauled by reviews of it being "unplayable" due to highest difficulty setting - sure, there's always gonna be a village idiot, but I'm a great fan of watching people play difficult things so I pay attention to games with such options. If anything, they get positively infamous for being brutal and unforgiving (Dark Souls, Sekiro from the total mainstream, I Wanna Be the Guy, select Mario Maker levels from more funky ones).

But I think if there's at all any concern about it, the Rimworld way is a good way to go - it has a hidden Merciless (now called "Losing is Fun") difficulty mode which unlocks after you've played for a while. Not sure exactly when or why. You can also enable it yourself after clicking a confirmation, because of fresh install and all that.

But like I said - games being difficult are nowadays more of a draw than not from my experience. Indie-wise, even, you've got Darkest Dungeon. And even Klei's own Don't Starve which is, let's be honest, absolutely brutal when you're new and clueless! Didn't hurt it much at all

@Steve

That really depends what it means "irritate". If it's like popped eardrums or soggy feet that's completely inconsequential beyond just wanting things nice and proper. It should give them actual health conditions, just maybe not eradicate their snouts instantly

[jcc]

I feel like considering the complexity of the game that personal rules are honestly the best way to go.

Nearly any arbitrary challenge can be defeated by exploiting existing mechanics.

Personally I try to play without using any of the bugs. I also don't use liquid locks until visco gel, no corner building, no starvation ranching, no exploiting liquid stacking to create voids and the like. Heat deletion really is a non-issue since it's a pretty legit thing in the real world. Steam turbines are a thing. Heat is one form of energy and thermodynamics allows changing it into other forms such as mechanical energy. I don't intentionally preheat stuff that's going to get deleted though(where energy is just magically added or deleted due to matter changes). But some of these rules(generally stuff to do with creating vacuums) do get kind of tedious and it's not so much adding difficulty as making things take longer(you can still make an airlock lobby, lock in a dupe, suck out the air, deconstruct the pump, build a wall and then let the dupe out... it's just time consuming and annoying)

They could throw in more toxic environments and the like but it just forces you into a 95% suited playstyle which isn't really an extra challenge, just an extra step to take. Perhaps they could nerf power production on higher difficulties meaning that things like spoms are impossible and need external power?

[Steve8]

Could certainly more severe, but it's something. And at the beginning you can't avoid it. Swamp asteroids are a total mess

It also seems like dupes are getting hypothermia from walking through water more easily, but I might imagining things. Could just be a result of the overall mess and cold leaking to the base from ice biomes. But I don't remember dupes being hypothermic all the time even when dipping into the water tank now and then

[goboking]

I'm 100% on board with TC.  I think the game becomes too City Builder after oxygen, food, water, etc are stabilized.  Not that that's a bad thing, per se, but I'd rather the Colony Survival aspect of the game not fall by the wayside somewhere in the mid-game.  Here's how I'd like to see them shake things up.

Hardcore Diseases

Allow us to toggle Hardcore Diseases on, reverting Food Poisoning and Slimelung to their original iteration and making Zombie Spores actually Zombify dupes.  Also, add an ONI analogue to rabies that makes critters aggressive towards dupes if not properly cared for by colony doctors.

Aggressive Flora and Fauna

Add some aggressive plants and critters than will attack dupes on sight.  Doing so introduces new problems to solve for, makes the Pacifist trait negative (as it's supposed to be), and elevates the importance of colony doctors.  It opens the door for new jobs, technologies, buildings, and animations.  Seriously, tell me you wouldn't be giddy watching a flamethrower-totting Meep clearing a nest of aggressive critters.

As with Hardcore Diseases, this should be something players have to explicitly opt into when creating a new game.

Hazardous Environments

It sounds like Spaced Out is taking steps in the right direction with with caustic gasses causing debuffs and radiation causing sickness.  I'd like to see them add Frostbite as the cold equivalent to Scalding.  Doing so would make the Textile Loom useful for something other than Snazzy Suits.

Fire

Fire is a hazard I desperately want to see in the game.  Buildings that overheat and circuits that overload could start fires that can be manually extinguished by dupes willing to risk injury, or by systems of sensors and pipes filled with fire-suppressing liquids and gases.  Admittedly, liberties would need to be taken to ensure a flame in a pure oxygen environment doesn't spell game over.

Darkness

That's always been my favorite ONI pic (credit to @van_tarkin) .  I'd be thrilled if there was a Darkness setting we could opt into to recreate this atmosphere.  Such a setting would add a new challenge to exploration, making it harder to find valuable resources while shrouding potential threats.

 

[pether]

3 hours ago, goboking said:

Hardcore Diseases

yes, please!
I see, why the germs were nerfed and why KLEI cares for new players experience. Cool! But it wouldn't hurt to add one slider in the menu, so we could change germ lethality. Doesn't seem to be big dev investment as well... One option in the menu, some variables, and viola! dupes are now dying! At last!

3 hours ago, goboking said:

Aggressive Flora and Fauna

That's common idea, but could be a little micro intensive... I'm not saying I don't like it, but after some time it could become boring and annoying. Also - you could just kill all those animals and don't see the issue for the next part of the game. Nice idea, but requires some tweaks here and there

3 hours ago, goboking said:

Hazardous Environments

Yes, please! Again, could be adjusted via menu options, doesn't look like a big investment, just few variables

3 hours ago, goboking said:

Fire

I'd love to see some fire, but this looks like HUUGE balance change for EVERYTHING and I believe it's closer to separate DLC than "oh, by the way, with the space DLC please include this small HUUUUGE CHANGE

3 hours ago, goboking said:

Darkness

Looks great, I love it! Doesn't resolve empty hospital issue, but gives new life to light management. I like it

19 hours ago, Ellilea said:

Anything fun you could think of?

Acid. Liquid that deals damage to most of known things, including dupes, but with some usage in the industrial projects.

Someone had this really nice idea of huge tummor-like ancient creature growing its tentacles through the asteroid, consuming the resources, polluting water and oxygen, and making your dupes' lifes more and more miserable. 

[goboking]

7 minutes ago, pether said:

That's common idea, but could be a little micro intensive... I'm not saying I don't like it, but after some time it could become boring and annoying. Also - you could just kill all those animals and don't see the issue for the next part of the game. Nice idea, but requires some tweaks here and there

The micromanagement could be solved via patrols.  A Patrol or Security Overlay could allow you to paint different areas of the map and assign dupes to patrol them.  Tie in a task in the priority menu, and you've got the option to have dupes patrol when they've got nothing better to do or roll with dedicated security teams.

As to killing them threats off to be done with them, you'd have to give a reason to keep them around.  If aggressive creatures produce a valuable resource, then players have a choice between eradicating them or taking their lumps in exchange for whatever it is they produce.

12 minutes ago, pether said:

Looks great, I love it! Doesn't resolve empty hospital issue, but gives new life to light management. I like it

True.  There could be stress modifiers for being in the dark.  Mental health matters too. 

[kerosene]

You know the diseases and threats to health in this game were nerfed too hard when you don't need medical facilities. A problem is that atmo suits are just way too good and prevent any oxygen, disease or temperature threats to health. For more of a challenge, they need to become specialized equipment, not something that everyone wears all the time.

Another reason the game is not hard is that there are just too many resources, especially renewable resources like geysers. In another thread a while ago I proposed a scarcity game mode:

Quote

The idea is that you start out on an asteroid where very few key resources are renewable and the rest are scarce and available in limited quantity. You need to manage these resources well and go into space early and set up resource harvesting operations elsewhere and supply chains. I want to see rockets bringing cargo with vital resources (like oxygen) back to the home base. You're going to have to explore and prioritize which resources to start bringing in first. It's meant to put pressure on players to expand and carefully balance things. Asteroids are also smaller and there might have to be mechanics to put time pressure on players (to discourage strategies that delaying having additional dupes for as long as possible). Expanding into other asteroids is tied to tech progression and better tech will enable you to expand into richer asteroids. Over time you'll not depend on nonrenewable resources as much but probably have to deal more with the complexities of supply chains.

 

I am regularly seeing people asking for ways to make the game harder in interesting ways and I hope the devs listen.

[pether]

45 minutes ago, kerosene said:

A problem is that atmo suits are just way too good and prevent any oxygen, disease or temperature threats to health.

No, that is not the issue...

Last game I had no atmo suits at all, buit nice hospital before going into slimelung area... and then nothing happened  Maybe someone sneezed once, but it didn't require any medical attention at all

[Steve8]

10 minutes ago, pether said:

Last game I had no atmo suits at all, buit nice hospital before going into slimelung area... and then nothing happened  Maybe someone sneezed once, but it didn't require any medical attention at all

I've had people get slimelung here and there. They are instantly cured. So even with the hospital it's way too easy. Rimworld's system where people need to stay in bed for several days and require repeated tending is much better.

[goboking]

46 minutes ago, Steve8 said:

I've had people get slimelung here and there. They are instantly cured. So even with the hospital it's way too easy. Rimworld's system where people need to stay in bed for several days and require repeated tending is much better.

When diseases were first introduced, dupes infected with slimelung died after a few days unless they got treatment and rested.  The hospital had an actual purpose since the dupe would be bedridden for days at a time, and even if they survived (which was likely), you still felt their absence as the rest of your colony had to pick up the slack.  It was so much better than what we have now, in my humble opinion.

[Ellilea]

Original slimelung was fun. And also if a dupe coughing spread germs into the air it gave big reason to a) keep them isolated b) keep oxygen clean in the base. Getting vitamins/meds/early protection actually had a reason beyond "well, I'll make it nice and clean because". Food poisoning also made it much more fun to manage cleanliness of water/food sources cause it was noticeably annoying due to vomit.

 

Personally I wouldn't play on scarcity mode cause my goal is always a nice self-sustaining, abundant colony, but I do like to struggle to get there. It could absolutely be a good option to choose though! I guess "geodormant" and "metal poor" do a little bit of it.

[Hakon]

I really like the idea of a scarcity mode.

In my current playtrough I found a water geysir at about cycle 100 and now at cycle 565 with 20 duplicants this one water geysir is still the only water I need. I have a salt water geysir and  two steam vents that I haven't used yet. 

Things you can do to save water:

Spoiler

-Use carbon dioxide as a resource via slicksters instead of destroying it with a carbon skimmer and a sieve.

-ranch dreckos instead of pumping tons of water into reed fiber.

-make a petrolium boiler or sour gas boiler in combination with oil wells as a water source not just for the power

-ranch hatchlings or ranch puftlets for slime to grow mushrooms instead of using water intensive crops

-building a long rocket silo to harvest steam and carbon dioxide

-capture carbon dioxide form meteors

-actually use carbon dioxide and polluted oxygen vents.

All these interesting ways of saving water are not really that much fun to make when they are essentially redundant. 

I think an abundance in easy water sources is generally a good thing but I would like to be able to choose an asteroid with low output geysirs (maybe 50% or less of the normal output). The geodormant trait kind of does this but the reason I don't like it is because geysirs pose fun and interesting problems. If you pick geodormant you make your asteroid less interesting. Also even if you pick geodormant you most often still have an abundance of water. 

For me this setting would make scaling up duplicants an interesting challenge for the midgame and lategame.

[QuQuasar]

+1 to bringing back food poisoning pukery and deadly slimelung, and an additional +1 for fire. Fire suppression systems would fit in perfectly with ONI's mechanics and add something to think about when designing certain rooms (labs, power rooms, etc).

* New Diseases
  - Parasites. Found in wild pacu and crabs, and in the meat dropped by them. If infected meat rots in water, it releases the germs to infect other creatures. Ingested. Symptoms: the dupe consumes double calories until cured.
  - Hydrogen Microbubbles: Grows in hydrogen. Inhaled. Symptoms: increased temperature sensitivity. Also, the dupe occasionally swells up and starts floating into the air, then they burp and fall back to the ground.
  - Zombie spores: Yes please.
 
* Variable temperature ranges for crops.
  - Tightening the range for low tier crops would make early game heat management far more important.
  - Tightening it dramatically for high-tier crops would make improved temperature regulation and a full mastery of the heat and cooling systems essential.
  - The original crops included the ability to grow faster when within an 'optimal' range, which was great since it encouraged sealed, climate-controlled greenhouses.
 
 * Optional habitat requirements for beasties.
   - Hatches: Need to sleep underground one cycle out of every 5 to remain happy, but they will sleep every cycle if allowed.
   - Dreckos: No change. Quite frankly, they're enough of a pain as is. Gas layering is tough.
   - Voles: Must be kept in near-vacuum at all times (take damage if exposed to standard atmospheric pressures). Additionally, please re-add the overcrowded debuff, vole meat farms kind of render all other meat farms redundant.

[cpy]

This game have no endgame challenge. But with new dlc asteroids it might come! Let's hope so, because they are saying they will include some challenging asteroids.

500K challenge map? That seems impossible to do! You won't have liquid water for research and if everything was that hot you'd have overheating on everything, water would be steam and that's just impossible to do.

I mean starting with 226.85°C is just too much, not even dirt or algae or slime would survive this.

[goboking]

14 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

- Hydrogen Microbubbles: Grows in hydrogen. Inhaled. Symptoms: increased temperature sensitivity. Also, the dupe occasionally swells up and starts floating into the air, then they burp and fall back to the ground.

I don't think it's mechanically possible for dupes to inhale hydrogen.

14 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

* Variable temperature ranges for crops.
  - Tightening the range for low tier crops would make early game heat management far more important.
  - Tightening it dramatically for high-tier crops would make improved temperature regulation and a full mastery of the heat and cooling systems essential.
  - The original crops included the ability to grow faster when within an 'optimal' range, which was great since it encouraged sealed, climate-controlled greenhouses.

I really wish they'd revisit the old agriculture system.  Better yields for hitting more of the plant's sweet spots for temperature, irrigation, etc, really incentivized players to engineer effective climate control measures.  The only problem is the plants didn't reproduce, meaning new/uninitiated players might run out of a way to feed their dupes before they got a handle on things.  But now that plants don't die upon harvest, that's no longer a issue.

[village_idiot]

On 11/19/2020 at 10:03 PM, Ellilea said:

@Gurgel

I've yet to see a game like ONI being mauled by reviews of it being "unplayable" due to highest difficulty setting - sure, there's always gonna be a village idiot, but I'm a great fan of watching people play difficult things so I pay attention to games with such options. If anything, they get positively infamous for being brutal and unforgiving (Dark Souls, Sekiro from the total mainstream, I Wanna Be the Guy, select Mario Maker levels from more funky ones).

But I think if there's at all any concern about it, the Rimworld way is a good way to go - it has a hidden Merciless (now called "Losing is Fun") difficulty mode which unlocks after you've played for a while. Not sure exactly when or why. You can also enable it yourself after clicking a confirmation, because of fresh install and all that.

But like I said - games being difficult are nowadays more of a draw than not from my experience. Indie-wise, even, you've got Darkest Dungeon. And even Klei's own Don't Starve which is, let's be honest, absolutely brutal when you're new and clueless! Didn't hurt it much at all

@Steve

That really depends what it means "irritate". If it's like popped eardrums or soggy feet that's completely inconsequential beyond just wanting things nice and proper. It should give them actual health conditions, just maybe not eradicate their snouts instantly

You rang?

I think the solution to making ONI more fun over time isn't to add extra difficulty, but to add extra complexity. I think the main shortcomings here are:
 

• The tech tree is either too small or too easy to get through
• There's a lot of stuff in the tech tree you never really need to use
• Some tasks can be accomplished with mechanisms that feel a bit cheap

I think a rework of the tech tree, combined with the closing of some loopholes would do the trick.

[kerosene]

A difficulty setting where resources are scarce and survival and eventual sustainability of the colony can only be achieved by exploiting geysers on other asteroids because there are no good geysers on the starting asteroid. I'm assuming that in the new DLC, rockets will be much easier to work with and automate so that you can create your own automated space port.