Spaced Out Balance Suggestions

[JaxckLl]

To start off, Spaced Out is brilliant! ONI is a whole new game, a much smoother running & interesting one. However there are a few balance oddities that I've run in to that make the early game a big awkward:

• We have four options for Oxygen generation, Water => O2 + Hydrogen (Electrolyzer), PDirt/PWater => PO2 (Sublimation Station, Deodorizer), Algae => Oxygen (Terrarium, Diffuser), Rust + Salt => O2 + Iron + Chlorine (Deoxidizer). On the starting asteroid, Swampy, we have access to the Water, PDirt, and Rust routes. However we also don't have a good source of Iron or Chlorine, and an abundance of both Rust & Salt. This makes the Rust route not just a valid option, but almost essential if we also want access to Iron & Chlorine. Electrolyzers remain the long term option, but Deoxidizers by far the best early game option. My suggestion would be to take away the extreme quality of the Deoxidizer by making either Iron or Chlorine more available early. A Chlorine Geyser on either the Swampy or second asteroid would go a long way to making Sublimation a better early game option, by reducing the secondary benefits of Rust Deoxidization.
• Oil is currently immediately available on the second asteroid. In many ways, it's easier to access than in vanilla. Petroleum boiling is almost a midgame option, which is only exacerbated by the inferiority of Sucrose & CO2 as rocket fuels (both of those fuels could be twice as good and it really wouldn't make them great options). This in turns make Petroleum more attractive, as does the plentiful supply of wild Ethanol on the second asteroid. I do not feel the solution is to reduce the amount of available Ethanol, Ethanol is an interesting & underused resource in the game which serves an interesting role as a mid-game power source. Rather, I believe the solution is to push renewable Oil out to the third, perhaps even fourth asteroid. Keep pockets of Oil, Ethanol, and Nat Gas on the second asteroid, but remove the Oil Geysers. To balance the need for renewable power, add a Nat Gas Geyser or two. The other direction to go would be to add low-grade Ethanol & Petroleum geysers, or perhaps a Sour Gas Vent (a hot Ethanol Vent I've always felt would be a really good new-player challenge to tackle).
• Sulphur is an extremely important resource on the Swampy asteroid. However currently we do not have a good renewable source. My suggestion would be to add a machine that can break down Nat Gas into Hydrogen & Sulphur. This opens up early game power options substantially, as well as transforming Nat Gas Geysers into a powerful source of calories. Hydrogen in real life is mostly a product of Natural Gas not hydrolysis, and I feel it would better fit the design goal of the Electrolyzer to keep its focus on Oxygen generation as opposed to Hydrogen generation. Such a machine could be a vital part of an extremely late game base which prefers to run duplicant rich.
• Additional options surrounding Ethanol would be appreciated, to make its finicky temperature requirements attractive for high skill players. My suggestion would be a crop that consumes Ethanol and produces Cellulose, which can then be used to make Plastic in place of Petroleum. Cellulose could also be mushed into "Organic Chow". This would make Ethanol an attractive source of Plastic & Calories, making it a properly competitive alternative to Petroleum boiling.
• Chlorine is in a weird spot right now. A small amount is essential to prevent the spread of dangerous diseases (such as zombie spores), but a lot of it just hangs out and does very little. It's almost like Chlorine is performing a similar role to Nitrogen in real life, just another gas that takes up space. My suggestion would be to change the way Chlorine interacts with diseases & Water by adding a new hybrid material, "Chlorinated Water". Chlorinated Water would form when a body of Water interacts with a layer of Chlorine, the Water slowly absorbing the Chlorine until the Chlorine is exhausted. This provides two interesting elements 1) a unique challenge for gas management which encourages more careful tank design (no longer can you just cut out entire biomes and just dump all the water to the bottom of your base), and 2) it introduces a currently non-existent relationship between liquids and gases (any passive interaction right now is always liquid => gas). Chlorinated Water would be the new way to remove disease from bodies of Water (or from ores being washed) and would thus be a useful material for bathroom loops (creating an upgrade path for players who want to complicate their loos). Chlorinated Water however cannot be used for crops (unless they accept both Chlorine & Water, in which case CWater would be perfect) and would kill off Pacus. Chlorine can only be removed from the Water via boiling or Electrolysis. This second path would also complicate SPOM design and allow for a new variety of builds without changing any of the current tools. Finally, CWater also solves the problem of Deoxidization being a more useful early game option than Electrolysis or Sublimation by creating a trade off that requires gas management.
• Zombie spores are currently a massive threat. However the way the Oil biome is designed, they're a self-solving threat. Slicksters consume CO2, and will sooner rather than later vacuum any sealed space into which they are placed. This prevents zombie spores from spreading, by just placing slicksters in the same area as the spore producers. My suggestion would be to separate Slicksters & Zombie Spores into two variants of the current Oil biome. The "Cold Oil" biome would be in the 40-70C range and house Slicksters & Nat Gas Geysers (and the occasional Hydrogen Vent), with large pockets of liquid Oil but no Reservoirs. The "Toxic Oil" biome would be in the 70-90C range and contain plentiful Zombie Spores, some trace radioactive elements, and Oil Reservoirs. Each Oil biome has its own variant of renewable oil (Slicksters or Reservoirs), each has additional secondary benefits (Nat Gas/Hydrogen or radioactive rocks), and each has its own hazards (heat for both, plus zombie spores & radioactivity for the toxic variant). This would be even better if Zombie Spores were produced faster in the presence of radiation, making an interesting question "do I cut before I'm fully prepared, to try and reduce the total number of zombie spores, or do I wait till I'm fully prepared and have to deal  with a constant stream of spores?". The Cold Oil biome would also be the perfect fit for the second asteroid, a stopgap which gives you the resources to make it to the truly sustainable asteroids.