Some thoughts after 100 cycles

[kultcher]

I'll preface by saying that while ONI is one of my favorite and most-played games, I'm by no means an expert and haven't properly "beat" the base game. That said, here're my impressions from a 100-cycle playthough and my first DLC rocket launch:

General Stuff

Swamp biome is fine, maybe too similar to the standard biome if anything.

I didn't play much with a Forest Biome start in Vanilla, but that seemed like it had more interesting alternative mechanics going on with the trees and Oxyferns as alternate power/oxygen sources. In Swamp, I feel like the Sublimation Stations just feel like Algae Diffusers.

On a related note, the fact that your dupes seem to be stuck breathing exclusively PO2 for awhile feels... off. Like, it seems intuitively like something you should be trying to fix but there's really not much cost to just leaving it for a long while. Polluted Dirt/Mud is so plentiful you don't risk running out (I have like 10 bins of it), so even if your dupes are breathing in more O2 you have it to spare. The only real notable downside seems to be that PO2 causes the Irritation debuff to last longer.

Plug Slugs are a fun idea. As others have pointed out, mass-farming them seems a little tenuous because they eat all your ore. I suppose it makes sense if they are meant to be primarily an early game option.

I like the modular rocket system and the idea behind being able to customize your rocket internals is interesting but obviously still needs some work and is a little confusing at first. Maybe I'm not understanding a mechanic but I couldn't figure out an easy way to use gas canisters to provide oxygen to the cockpit without overpressurizing and causing popped eardrums.

Game Flow

So I have mixed feelings on the overall game flow as it stands now. On the one hand, exploring new areas and planning bases is fun. On the other hand, it kind of feels like you're getting your main base rolling and then you have to kind of "pause" your main base and restart the game to get a new base up to a basic level of sustainability, which can take significant effort depending on the biomes at play.

This may just be an issue with the limited scope of the alpha, but: for example right now I'm working on establishing myself on the oil asteroid, which makes sense because the original asteroid has such limited power options and no access to plastic, of course. Seems like it'll be a nightmare without access to exosuits but that's another story.

Meanwhile, I also launched my first rocket to the Forest planet and it feels like the only reason to be there would be to use it as a stepping stone to get to another asteroid, and maybe for some additional metals since it seems metal-rich. There's all the radioactive materials which I assume will be used for nuclear power, but I don't know if I would need/want both that and oil power for my main base.

Similarly, I can see running through the loop of establishing mini-colonies a couple times will be fun, but I don't know if I want to do it for each new core resource, or if it'll feel that satisfying to establish little "waystations" to extend rocket reach.

So yeah, without knowing the full scope of what Klei has in mind, for now it feels a little... uneven. It's like you're able to work through 90% of the tech tree from your main base, then you have to spend a couple hours establishing a new base from the ground up to get the next 2% of progress, then the same for the next 2% and so on. Feels like it could get a little tedious, so I'd say that's my primary concern for right now.

[misotoma]

21 hours ago, kultcher said:

Feels like it could get a little tedious

It's been my main concern from the start.. It seems fun because it's new.. now wait for it to start getting old.

Wait 'til you reach that stage when you get annoyed to return to an asteroid because you forgot to build this or now head back to another because you HAVE to build that.. man.. it seems very cumbersome gameplay. But I want to reach that stage.. only then can I say if I like it or not. It's a valid concern.