My thoughts, comments, and suggestions after playing the new DLC for forty hours + Video

[evilcat19xx]

Hello guys: you can either read my comments here (5mins read) or watch it via the following link (same thing 6 mins watch):

 

 

First of all, well done, and thank you KLEI. You guys did a great job again. You have provided us with a fundamental change that generally, the game developers are afraid to make. This opens the capacity for further development in the future. Space mechanics are excellent. At this point, the DLC has content for up to 300-500 hundreds of turns. You need to pause much more since now you have to simultaneously manage several colonies, which also means more playtime.

Regarding the spaced-out DLC value, the game provides you much more than the price. You can not compare this game with any other indie or even AAA games. In that regard, the game is 10/10. As a result, we should compare the Oxygen not included with its potential to have a meaningful discussion.

The graphics, animations, and gameplays are amazing as always. Space was the best place to expand the game, and making it harder to get to exo-suits (as an example), shows that KLEI listens to its community. You can feel the passion of developers in your dupes.

 

And now  my thoughts regarding the current version of the game:

First, my two main concerns with the base game and DLC:

 

1. We are eating the planetoids, and after that, we remain with a blank space. After digging everything, the planetoids become lifeless. This was the case for the base game, and you feel it much more in the DLC since the planetoids are generally smaller compared to the base game. I wish there was a way to regenerate the blocks. Currently, we only have geysers, but they are not solving this problem.  
2. What is the objective of the game? Hopefully, there will be an answer for that down in the road. The early game plan is to survive, but after that, the game becomes a sandbox, where the players should generate challenges for themselves. 

 

Some minor comments about the DLC:

1. Spaceships are not communicating smoothly with the bases. 
2.  How we can have a steel rocket when we do not have steel in our base.
3.  Rovers are not well defined. You can send them to the same planetoid to dig the surface instead of dupes.
4.  Moral of dupes when they go to new planetoids decrease so fast, the best way to deal with them is to scrub their skills. It feels like cheating to me. If a dupe is an astronaut, they should have stronger morals.
5. Solar panels need nerfing. 
6. The alarm system needs tuning.

 

Finally, here are my suggestions. I know they may be challenging to implement.:

1.  Change the way we get dupes: In the current format, we are going for the best dupes (most of us) , and we never have to challenge ourselves to deal with different types of dupes. As an example, I never get dupes that are allergic. What if pods have limited capacity, and we may need to have kid dupes (imagine how cute they would be)? Taking care of moms and dupes can be challenging and fun. Or there would be refugee dupes on other planetoids, and we can accept them or reject them. Something similar to Frost punk. Protecting and raising kids has been an excellent objective for humanity since ancient times.
2. What if there be an alien race in space, in some of the planetoids, that if we want to go there, we should develop our defense and attack systems. We already have cool rockets and spaceships. Suppose if we start the war, the alien can attack our main base something like the meteor shower we used to have.
3. Having pet critters add additional life to bases. 
4. We need hostile critters. It is currently too safe to explore the map; that is why we do not feel the grind was worth it when we explore. Just imagine there were no hostile mobs in Minecraft caves when you were looking for diamonds. As a rule of thumb, I think we should feel safe in our base, we should secure the biomes before expanding our base, and it should be risky to explore new biomes.
5. There should always be a trade-off. Nothing should be dominant: solar panels, mushrooms, exo-suits, anything.

And the last thing I want to add is that with this new DLC, the multiplayer foundation is here. Maybe we will hear more about it in the near future.

Thank you KLEI.

[acidboy]

I like the alien race concept, but in my opinion, that will probably have to await a subsequent DLC, if at all.  I confess, when I very first started playing ONI, I was excited about the "Attack" skill, until I realized it was almost entirely pointless.  (I had thought eventually there would be such aliens that would warrant the skill, but that was not to be)

[pether]

2 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

Moral of dupes when they go to new planetoids decrease so fast, the best way to deal with them is to scrub their skills. It feels like cheating to me. If a dupe is an astronaut, they should have stronger morals.

Oh, I loved when this happened in my game  I feel that reaching 100% was very hard to do before the DLC and de facto stress did never matter. Now one of my dupes is crying in a corner and another one is hitting walls with his head. So much fun, now caring about stress is a thing again!

2 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

we may need to have kid dupes (imagine how cute they would be)? Taking care of moms and dupes can be challenging

Nope. Just no. This isn't "the Sims". I would hate that change. Nope.

2 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

What if there be an alien race in space, in some of the planetoids, that if we want to go there, we should develop our defense and attack systems. We already have cool rockets and spaceships. Suppose if we start the war, the alien can attack our main base something like the meteor shower we used to have.

well... aliens yes. war - not exactly. I mean, maybe KLEI may make this work, but I don't feel it... Lets leave war to total war games...

2 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

Having pet critters add additional life to bases. 

Oh yes! this may be not the highest priority, but would add a nice touch if a rancher could have some pet. Not every dupe, just few of them. Make them unique. Give them a glimpse of personality by having pet-pip. I love such details in this game

2 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

We need hostile critters. It is currently too safe to explore the map

There will be hornets in radioactive biome. Nobody knows how would they work, but they sound dangerous. On top of that - lethal diseases! And yes, the game should have some possibility for more dangerous challenges, so we could fail and watch our dupes cry in the corner

2 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

Nothing should be dominant: solar panels, mushrooms, exo-suits, anything.

I feel that DLC is handling exosuits really well. Mid-game rocket system buffed solar panel a lot, I like how on this map I don't need to fear about energy, but yes, if that was a case on every map it may become boring. Someone suggested dust storm that reduce efficiency of solar panels (up to 0) unless you clean them from time to time, I like this idea

[evilcat19xx]

4 hours ago, acidboy said:

I like the alien race concept, but in my opinion, that will probably have to await a subsequent DLC, if at all.  I confess, when I very first started playing ONI, I was excited about the "Attack" skill, until I realized it was almost entirely pointless.  (I had thought eventually there would be such aliens that would warrant the skill, but that was not to be)

I also think the alien race is out of the scope of this DLC. The concept will add life and goal to the game. All the dupes already have weapons to kill the critters. Maybe they can use it to defend the base as well. Having soldier dupes can be super fun. 

[evilcat19xx]

5 hours ago, acidboy said:

I like the alien race concept, but in my opinion, that will probably have to await a subsequent DLC, if at all.  I confess, when I very first started playing ONI, I was excited about the "Attack" skill, until I realized it was almost entirely pointless.  (I had thought eventually there would be such aliens that would warrant the skill, but that was not to be)

My problem is that, there is almost no return after their stress levels reached 100%. The only way is to scrub their skills. 

4 hours ago, pether said:

Nope. Just no. This isn't "the Sims". I would hate that change. Nope.

Something like Fallout shelter, and it also can be optional that players can activate it before starting a new game. Btw I do not like SIMS and most of EA games

4 hours ago, pether said:

well... aliens yes. war - not exactly. I mean, maybe KLEI may make this work, but I don't feel it... Lets leave war to total war games..

It can be optional and total war games are awesome.

4 hours ago, pether said:

There will be hornets in radioactive biome. Nobody knows how would they work, but they sound dangerous. On top of that - lethal diseases! And yes, the game should have some possibility for more dangerous challenges, so we could fail and watch our dupes cry in the corner

Bring back the diseases. I forgot about that. I never even do the medicine research branch.

 

4 hours ago, pether said:

I feel that DLC is handling exosuits really well. Mid-game rocket system buffed solar panel a lot, I like how on this map I don't need to fear about energy, but yes, if that was a case on every map it may become boring. Someone suggested dust storm that reduce efficiency of solar panels (up to 0) unless you clean them from time to time, I like this idea

Isn't now the game a little bit more linear? Yes that can help with the solar, probably they also can bring back the meteor shower with some modifications later.

and still this is my biggest problem with the game:

7 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

We are eating the planetoids, and after that, we remain with a blank space. After digging everything, the planetoids become lifeless. This was the case for the base game, and you feel it much more in the DLC since the planetoids are generally smaller compared to the base game. I wish there was a way to regenerate the blocks. Currently, we only have geysers, but they are not solving this problem.  

 

 

[_Q_]

Well the game is moving away from colony survival sim and moves towards build silly contraptions area. Survival is more or less granted now, germs could be removed whatsoever at this point since they do nothing beside taking cpu cycles to track the germ numbers and growth, food poisoning dose absolutely nothing to duplicants, they still work and do other stuff, stress is not existing as well, I have colony and all dupes have 0% stress at all times and that with eating low quality food and in low oxygen area.

So I can imagine the final goal for this DLC will be competition who builds most efficient, biggest nuclear power plant.

It seems like this is more of the Satisfactory/Factorio than survival colony sim.

Every survival aspect got thrown out the window, the whole balance (was bad before) is now not existing at all.

I guess people don't know that there is sandbox mode where they could build their silly contraptions to heart content, and then come here and complain that game is to hard, while its not hard at all, and its getting easier with every update.

[evilcat19xx]

 @_Q_, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

 

31 minutes ago, _Q_ said:

Well the game is moving away from colony survival sim and moves towards build silly contraptions area.

I know there is a portion of the Oni players  that are interested in those "Optimal contraptions". However, in my view, those contraptions never made sense. Putting so much effort to improve the efficiency of something 10% when you do not need it. These contraptions sometimes can be intimidating for new players, because they would think it is necessary to learn these overcomplicated designs to play the game. 

40 minutes ago, _Q_ said:

Survival is more or less granted now, germs could be removed whatsoever at this point since they do nothing beside taking cpu cycles to track the germ numbers and growth, food poisoning dose absolutely nothing to duplicants, they still work and do other stuff, stress is not existing as well, I have colony and all dupes have 0% stress at all times and that with eating low quality food and in low oxygen area.

Unfortunately, 100% true.

41 minutes ago, _Q_ said:

So I can imagine the final goal for this DLC will be competition who builds most efficient, biggest nuclear power plant.

I hope not. At least they are trying to make the space more accessible for new ONI players.

42 minutes ago, _Q_ said:

It seems like this is more of the Satisfactory/Factorio than survival colony sim.

That is my fear. We already had those lifeless games.  

43 minutes ago, _Q_ said:

Every survival aspect got thrown out the window, the whole balance (was bad before) is now not existing at all.

I guess people don't know that there is sandbox mode where they could build their silly contraptions to heart content, and then come here and complain that game is to hard, while its not hard at all, and its getting easier with every update.

I hope KLEI can find the right balance. As you mentioned,  there is already a sandbox/creative mode available. I know, the nuclear power is coming, and here I am thinking, what I will use it for? I never had power problem after early games. You can see my concern about your point in my original post:

13 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

What is the objective of the game? Hopefully, there will be an answer for that down in the road. The early game plan is to survive, but after that, the game becomes a sandbox, where the players should generate challenges for themselves. 

 

[babba]

8 minutes ago, evilcat19xx said:

...

I hope KLEI can find the right balance. As you mentioned,  there is already a sandbox/creative mode available. I know, the nuclear power is coming, and here I am thinking, what I will use it for? I never had power problem after early games.

Somewhere was a video of the temporary thing producing nuclear waste and lots of heat, great to run 10-100 steam engines in my future dlc rocket silo, when the big rockets are back in the game. Super in combo with 50-500k watt colony power circuits Total endgame, hoping for big radiation colony accidents

[evilcat19xx]

1 hour ago, babba said:

Somewhere was a video of the temporary thing producing nuclear waste and lots of heat, great to run 10-100 steam engines in my future dlc rocket silo, when the big rockets are back in the game. Super in combo with 50-500k watt colony power circuits Total endgame, hoping for big radiation colony accidents

Right after reactor meltdown you should use all those 10-100 steam rockets to move all the colony to a new planetoid.

[babba]

16 minutes ago, evilcat19xx said:

Right after reactor meltdown you should use all those 10-100 steam rockets to move all the colony to a new planetoid.

"Dupe Mass Evacuation in progress...Lift off in 3-2-1 ! Warning - Ship exceeds maximum carry capacity. Warning !"

[Gamatron332]

I WANT SOMETHING TO GO WRONG. Seriously. Early game a lotta things go wrong. But as soon as you get past that it becomes to easy. I want the side of my base blowing out. I want terrible poison running rampant. I want to set up half assed barely working machines to hold my colony together as I pool my resources to save the dupes. I want chaos. I want dispair. And I want to fix it all for it to happen again! 

[babba]

3 hours ago, Gamatron332 said:

I WANT SOMETHING TO GO WRONG. Seriously. Early game a lotta things go wrong. But as soon as you get past that it becomes to easy. I want the side of my base blowing out. I want terrible poison running rampant. I want to set up half assed barely working machines to hold my colony together as I pool my resources to save the dupes. I want chaos. I want dispair. And I want to fix it all for it to happen again! 

Still no bulldozers and mines in the game...How cool would it be to have mines caving in because we saved on cheap tunnel structures, with dupes trapped inside and we can then assemble a new tunnel drilling machine to rescue them ?

It would be so nice to setup a dupe fire engine and emergency crew to take care of Klei designed occuring accidents, I so miss accident event challenges...

If we had more dangerous gameplay components to toy around with, then much more player gameplay accidents could arise for solving. Rescue equipment would be great !

[Scrabac76]

19 hours ago, evilcat19xx said:

 

1. We are eating the planetoids, and after that, we remain with a blank space. After digging everything, the planetoids become lifeless. This was the case for the base game, and you feel it much more in the DLC since the planetoids are generally smaller compared to the base game. I wish there was a way to regenerate the blocks. Currently, we only have geysers, but they are not solving this problem.  

I'm with you on blank space making a very boring map. Not to be cheeky, but then why do you dig everything? Much like creating a dinosaur theme park, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. You get more than enough resources by just mining small tunnels (and from geysers/volcanoes) to make a fully functional colony, if you prefer the natural look instead of perfectly symmetrical floating boxes.

Actually the DLC may be a bet better in this regard, you can strip mine an uninhabited planetoid and take as many resources as you want back home without fear of despoiling it's natural splendour.

[evilcat19xx]

2 hours ago, Scrabac76 said:

I'm with you on blank space making a very boring map. Not to be cheeky, but then why do you dig everything? Much like creating a dinosaur theme park, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. You get more than enough resources by just mining small tunnels (and from geysers/volcanoes) to make a fully functional colony, if you prefer the natural look instead of perfectly symmetrical floating boxes.

I always try to minimize the digging and also personally, I prefer a chaotic, asymmetrical base like yours. However in a long run you finally need to dig the base bit by bit (either because you need more room or because you need more resources). I wish there was a way to regenerate the biomes.

2 hours ago, Scrabac76 said:

Actually the DLC may be a bet better in this regard, you can strip mine an uninhabited planetoid and take as many resources as you want back home without fear of despoiling it's natural splendour.

You are right. I am not sure if it is a viable choice now, but maybe after they finalized the DLC that would be possible.

Nice base btw, I see your dupes live a life of luxury.