Feedback 300 cycles: Disused tools and a rocket fool

[Machenoid]

An Old Rocket Problem:

In spite of having a spectacular launch, the actual lift-off and landing costs no fuel resources so long as the rocket does not leave orbit. However, it still generates heat as well as exhaust. It is possible to have a sugar rocket do nothing except enter and leave orbit just to generate CO2. I have already reported this as a balance issue to the Spaced Out! Alpha bug tracker, but...

... It did let me quickly recognize a still unresolved issue which is also present in the base game: The heat-blast area of the rocket exhaust is not mentioned anywhere when building the rocket platform or any rocket engine; not as an informative display to let the player know that things beneath the platform will get cooked from the rocket, like with the steam turbine's gas inputs or exosuit checkpoint's ghostly suit dock placement.

• Extra building graphics/information for the rocket launch platform similar to the exosuit docks, or the steam turbine, would be a huge improvement.
• Giving individual rocket engines heat-blast area overlays about where and how far their exhaust will exit would be ideal, but obviously more work compared to just a single "maximum" overlay on the platform itself. If the heat-blast is ever ejected to the sides at 90 degrees, or at other angles, this would be even more useful.
• "How hot is the exhaust on Bottle Rocket Engine compared to Nuclear Impulse Engine?" This kind of information should be on the info panel!
• "Where do I attach the Solid/Liquid/Gas ports to the rocket? Oh, I actually attach them to the platform... Time to move everything over by 6 tiles." Ghost overlays.
• "Wait, I can put the ports on the RIGHT HAND SIDE, TOO?!" You get the idea.

Speaking of Solid/Liquid/Gas Ports:

Mixing (reactive or volatile) cargo contents is currently possible and can result in horrible reactions when the contents exit the rocket through the port. Of course it should be possible for one rocket to contain multiple liquids, but those liquids should be seperated out into different containers or compartments on the same module, and the liquid port should be doing a better job of either detecting this... Or warning the player about mixed contents being in the rocket. Both the loading and unloading process should also be given the option for a more manual access approach on the port, similar to the oxidizer tank, so that automation to make sure things don't blow up is not immediately required as a first step. The port machines themselves also become very hot and if it were not for the high melting/overheating temperature of the building, the ports would need constant replacement/repairs (so, thank you for not causing that) However, the dupes themselves are not as heat resistant and any residual gasses, liquids and even the floor temperature can injure them.

• Solid/Liquid/Gas ports and their associated rocket cargo containers need better menu options... In fact, ANY menu options.
• Warn of state-changing stored content, temperatures or dupe-injuring temperatures, off-gassing contents warnings... Basically if something could blow up when removed from the rocket, the player should be told about it. (But the player should still be allowed to let it happen, if that's what they want to do (even if they didn't realise what they were told, until it's too late))
• Know that the ports are in a very hazardous area for dupes. The automatic connection to the platform is great, but the apparent design of the Alpha is "No Exosuits!" so having additional distance and safety would be better: Some kind of "Triple conduit" similar to the heavi-watt wire (and even more expensive; refined metal + "insulator"/ceramic) located under the "rocketry" structures menu would be ideal. It doesn't need to do much other than look at how "long" the conduit is, add some function delay based on that (short distances are still instant) then basically "teleport" contents between the port and the landing pad. Even prevent conduits which are too long from establishing a connection, for balance reasons.
• The ports are excessively automatic and requires the player to have an idea on what they want their port to do, in conjunction to the rocket landing at that pad... Before they do anything else. If the port could have a list of "load/unload rocket" jobs similar to how the rock crusher or other refinement buildings work, that would be better. Ideally, the port would provide a list of all the rocket storages or permitted contents in the rocket, and then give options on what materials the port has access to (INCLUDING MANUAL DELIVERY BY BOTTLE/CANISTER) would go into the rocket. Simply add more ports for more material control, and with the "Triple Conduit" above, this could be performed from a specific safe area, for the price of more infrastructure.
• Rocket Cargo (Solid/Liquid/Gas) containers appear to fill from the bottom going upwards, one at a time. Allowing only specific containers to hold certain elements, including limiting total mass similar to the oxidizer module, would be a start to giving the player more control over the contents of a rocket. If rocket total weight becomes important to rocket travel speed and/or burden, this may be required anyways for better control to that end.
• Rocket storage balance issues: No one in their right mind would ever accept using a Gas Cargo module with 50kg when they could liquefy (or even solidify) the element in question and store 10 times the mass (500kg) in other containers. Then going further with that, no one who wants to save time would think that shipping 500kg (or 1000kg) batches of elements per rocket trip would be efficient; the storage size itself is too small... Compared to the massive exploit that is storing several tens-of-thousands kilograms in storage bins in the pilot's area (or an entire asteroid in a single tile, but that's another issue entirely) The kinds of buildables for rocket internals, versus storage, versus life-support, should be taken into consideration very carefully. Even if that means doing a very specific, high-effort job implementing:
• Life-support modules and other dedicated rocketry-only internal buildings.

Possibly, my most important comment about rockets: (which is why i left it to last)

• Why are engines not loaded through a special "Engine" Port? I mean you go through all this nice effort of making a brand new system for loading materials in to and out of a rocket, but then you go right back to the original design of piping gasses into a rocket component that, while it won't change places, it will change shapes... But most importantly, the engine will change loading requirements. Which means that a pipe originally meant for CO2 will now carry Steam and all that gas is going to get dumped into your rocket silo, because the new engine doesn't take the old fuel. Rebuilds should be expected, but the location that a pipe input is located should not change on a rocket. This also helps function as a tutorial for the other Ports: If you required a rocket engine port on the rocket platform in order for the rocket platform to build an engine, it would move the player to learning the interface immediately and step-by-step.

1. Player builds the rocket platform
2. Player builds their chosen rocket engine
3. Rocket engine has a disabled warning; "Needs Rocket Engine Port"
4. Ghostly rocket engine ports appear to left and right of the rocket platform when the player selects it from the Rocketry building menu.
5. The engine port gets built and the engine can request its fuel, delivered into it by the port.

• The reverse could also be possible, where the rocket engine port is built first and then rocket platforms appear to the left or right. If matter ports for rockets are going to be static "left/right of the rocket platform" things, there should always be the notification of legal placement options, like with the exosuit checkpoints.

Visibly Opaque Glass:

As to why the glass tiles are preventing line-of-sight (the symbol to the right of the hard-hat) to space for the telescope... It is a mystery. (More likely actually just copy/pasted Observatory code) But at least it can see through 30kg of brine, contained by airflow tiles, allowing the dupe to simultaneously observe the universe, not suffocate from space and not get roasted from sunburns. Telescopes, no matter how many you have, become completely useless once the surrounding tiles of the asteroid have been discovered. As well, the player has absolutely no control over where the telescope will point to or any ability to enhance the power of the device, or even simply turn the item into a morale booster for idle dupes.

• Rewrite how the telescope "detects" space, so it can properly "see" through objects that allow light through.
• Space map interactivity is currently near non-existent, but it seems like a good idea to have the star map pull double-duty and function like a proper research screen. Ideally reducing how automatic the discovery process is. Given that the top-left most hexagon in the perimeter of the telescope's host asteroid is always targeted first, then moves clockwise, it's entirely possible to either discover the nearest neighbor asteroid instantly, or be in the last possible position. Instead, it should target positions randomly with a uniform distribution to prevent that, or better yet let the player select between a priority target, or automatic random search. It's possible to even add a layer of secondary telescope research targets; a teapot floating in space that can be recovered by sending a rocket to it, for example.
• Ultimately, Telescopes become useless once the job is done and yet, despite the focus on reaching space travel, no dupe seems to have any interest in viewing the stars. It's a building that exists for a few cycles, then can disappear almost forever. (Until the player realises they need to put one inside the larger "Spacefarer" module to find more asteroids) What if a telescope has an "Entertainment" toggle, so idle dupes would use it for a morale bonus? Out of every tile in range of the telescope, the idle dupe looking through it "just for fun" randomly selects one of those tiles in range. If the tile has something in it, the dupe gets an additional bonus "Seen our rocket travel through space" "Seen a nearby asteroid" or maybe some random gag "Saw a giant space spider" or they looked directly into the sun and got slightly irritated. Something other than just "Ok it's researched... Deconstruct it." This could even apply to the Super Computer and Research stations, for marginal resource fees for morale bonuses.

It's taken a while to write this out and double-check and test a few things. There are other gripes but most are very small and likely to be erased by future changes. I will mention that the new asteroid seems remarkably easy to keep clean and free of food-poisoning: it doesn't matter if polluted mud (or regular mud) falls into food-poisoning contaminated water, you'll still be able to press uninfected polluted water (or clean water) out of it. If debris could be contaminated by liquids it falls into, and dupes could trasfer surface contamination just by moving through liquids, things would be much more difficult to keep clean once someone has an "accident."