Tungsten and Niobium volcano output is a bit too hot

[Gurgel]

4 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

All I can say you are a masochist who doesn't understand game design. I explained my points clearly, you denied them thinking this is fine. It is not. The fact you can get to a point where there is no solution yet still play the game is not ok, it is never ok, ever.

Well, you disagree, that is fine. But your claims to absolute truth are deeply flawed. And here I refer you to

 

[Smithe37]

This post and the subsequent arguments can be boiled down to "I don't understand how basic game mechanics work and should be factored into engineering/design decisions. Therefore this content should be removed or tweaked for me specifically". 

New players are not going to land and colonize the niobium planet because it's difficult as is. When they do colonize it, they will have built up enough experience to deal with the challenge when they discover the niobium volcano

Read my post on the actual calculations and engineering to deal with the volcano if you cant deal with it yourself.

[nakomaru]

Hopefully this will give you an idea of the scale of things, and demonstrates how 4000K diamond tiles next to ceramic insulation very slowly transmits heat. Easily buildable by the newest of players who never use google. Of course insulated insulation would not transfer any heat.

Some notes:

• each tile of niobium painted represents one eruption event (occurs every 25 cycles on average for this volcano)
• the heat doesn't and cannot damage our structure
• the gas essentially doesn't cross the vacuum of space
• later on, we spawn nearly 575 cycles worth of erupted materials instantaneously
• the gas evacuates in less than a cycle
• except for the wavefront, most of the gas is actually around 3000C
• the diamond tiles cooled from ~3700C to ~3000C as a result of this
• nikola's death is entirely of my own design

[sakura_sk]

2 hours ago, nakomaru said:

the gas evacuates in less than a cycle

But it is raining magma! Isn't it beautiful? 

[ZombieDupe]

On 1/1/2021 at 6:00 AM, Smithe37 said:

This post and the subsequent arguments can be boiled down to "I don't understand how basic game mechanics work and should be factored into engineering/design decisions. Therefore this content should be removed or tweaked for me specifically". 

New players are not going to land and colonize the niobium planet because it's difficult as is. When they do colonize it, they will have built up enough experience to deal with the challenge when they discover the niobium volcano

Read my post on the actual calculations and engineering to deal with the volcano if you cant deal with it yourself.

Not really, I know the game pretty well and have a decent amount of hours in it as well as having seen plenty gameplay and tutorials. The point about new players is "player's first volcanic asteroid taming" and there are bound to be lots of mistakes, and coming close to if not encountering worst case scenarios for such players in particular. If you have never done it, and you want to play the game without external guides, the game should allow you to make mistakes with melting and boiling, and so long as you have at least one duplicant alive in a decent environment, you should not be gated from content like this for those mistakes.

@nakomaru I do appreciate you taking the time to put these points together, however this doesn't clear many of my previous points. The molten niobium could only accumulate so much. At worst (given the majority of the planetoid area was left over in a way for the volcano to erupt and fill) I suspect it would take 50 - 100 cycles or so for the space exposure area to clear. That is still quite a while. Something I had not considered myself was the use of diamond and window tiles, which does make the use of melting coal into refined carbon not the only way. However t isn't a renewable resource, at least not for now in any form. If it required refined carbon or some other material to make, it could help with the problem, however not solve it. Wolframite rovers could still melt, meaning the volcano itself could become inaccessible at the very least for a very long time. If the output was cooler for this particular volcano, which it easily can be, wolframite rovers could never melt and insulation buildings and tile in particular along side that. Same goes for the tungsten volcano, except in the case of wolframite rovers would not be viable. May be thermium could have a higher melting point? But it requires you to have tungsten to manufacture so we can could still run into a necessity-acquisition problem. Taming those volcanoes without a potential loss of renewable tungsten potential may need some more rigorous metal material stepping stone solution if we want to use rovers to clear the area in the worst case scenario.

Just to be clear, I have been saying all this because I believe the player should be necessitated to restart if the game is lost due to their own mistakes via losing all colonies. But losing access to any resources permanently or for a way too long of a time because of accumulation mistakes like this one does not seem fun or fair. This is not really just for myself, I'm more concerned about players who do not want to read guides and want to go through the game entirely on their own and what they discover in the game.

On 1/1/2021 at 10:44 AM, sakura_sk said:

But it is raining magma! Isn't it beautiful? 

Raining magma does sound fun

[ZanthraSW]

I don't think there is much need to be concerned about new players first volcanic asteroid taming. Especially players who are playing without any external guides. There are a large multitude of problems that must be solved and many many mistakes will be made long before they ever get around to dealing with the problems of the basic temperatures of that asteroid. It's not even going to be on the radar of a new player to be concerned with. Problems of normal heat mechanics, boiling and freezing of materials, sustainability of water resouces and food, atmosphere issues, oxygen, etc, all much much closer to home. By the time they get to that point, they will have hundreds of hours and thousands of cycles of experience.

If on the off chance that they do end up boiling the entire asteroid, and being locked out of more niobium (beyond the many tons you can dig out of the normal terrain), it will only be one of many issues that seem insurmountable to that experience level, so is really not going to upset them or they would have been scared off before this.

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, ZombieDupe said:

This is not really just for myself, I'm more concerned about players who do not want to read guides and want to go through the game entirely on their own and what they discover in the game.

Ah, you are one of _those_. Here is my statement to that:

 

[user32167]

5 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Not really, I know the game pretty well and have a decent amount of hours in it as well as having seen plenty gameplay and tutorials. The point about new players is "player's first volcanic asteroid taming" and there are bound to be lots of mistakes, and coming close to if not encountering worst case scenarios for such players in particular.

If you have never done it, and you want to play the game without external guides, the game should allow you to make mistakes with melting and boiling, and so long as you have at least one duplicant alive in a decent environment, you should not be gated from content like this for those mistakes.

ONI is a pretty unforgiving game where new players can easily **** up and be forced to restart/reload due to more pressing issues such as:

• Running out of O2
• Running out of food
• Running out of water
• Base freezing over
• Base reaching scalding temperature
• [Vanilla] Meteors ******* up the base
• Failed attempt to tame a volcano or hot geyser
• Zombie spores
• Astronauts dying from missions

Niobium volcano doesn't even come into picture until the player has solved most of the challenges the game as to offer. It is also a completely optional challenge that requires a more firm grasp of the game mechanics

Quote

@nakomaru I do appreciate you taking the time to put these points together, however this doesn't clear many of my previous points.

[...]

Just to be clear, I have been saying all this because I believe the player should be necessitated to restart if the game is lost due to their own mistakes via losing all colonies. But losing access to any resources permanently or for a way too long of a time because of accumulation mistakes like this one does not seem fun or fair. This is not really just for myself, I'm more concerned about players who do not want to read guides and want to go through the game entirely on their own and what they discover in the game.

I think you are moving the goal post here just to avoid admitting you were wrong. Your original post was about how the volcanoes are too hot to be tamed rather than it being about a humanitarian mission to enhance the game play experience of newbie players. If you are so worried about casual players, you should be rest-assured that the dev's already have provided a sandbox mode for them to experiment with their challenges and fix their problems when needed.

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, user32167 said:

ONI is a pretty unforgiving game where new players can easily **** up and be forced to restart/reload due to more pressing issues such as:

• Running out of O2
• Running out of food
• Running out of water
• Base freezing over
• Base reaching scalding temperature
• [Vanilla] Meteors ******* up the base
• Failed attempt to tame a volcano or hot geyser
• Zombie spores
• Astronauts dying from missions

It is. And that is why I like playing it. You actually have to solve the problems or the game will be about as mercilessly kill your dupes as physical reality would. Solving the problems is easier, obviously, but still nicely hard. There are tons of mainstream games that will do their very best to never frustrate the player, but these are simply boring to me. Give me a challenge or do without me. If I want "story mode", I will read a book instead.

1 hour ago, user32167 said:

I think you are moving the goal post here just to avoid admitting you were wrong. Your original post was about how the volcanoes are too hot to be tamed rather than it being about a humanitarian mission to enhance the game play experience of newbie players. If you are so worried about casual players, you should be rest-assured that the dev's already have provided a sandbox mode for them to experiment with their challenges and fix their problems when needed.

That nicely sums it up.

[Smithe37]

@ZombieDupe You say you have a few hundred hours as if that makes your argument valid. The people you are arguing with look like this.



yes, we know that new players are go to struggle because they do not have those hours and experience. That is part of the journey. A niobium volcano taming is near the end of that journey - though I'm not going to repeat the points already made.

I'm struggling now because you are just point blank refusing to accept the completely valid points that people have made in contradiction to yours. 
If you're not going to accept these points, I'm not sure that there is any more productive discussion to be had here.

[Tyandy]

The approach I take with the volcanoes is to flood it with oil moderated by an aquatuner to keep it under 275 C. Above the oil about 20kg of natural gas per tile is used insulate and even out the heat so the steel sweeper/conveyor loader doesn't overheat. 

The volcano erupts, trickles into the oil/natural gas, solidifies on contact, then gets carted through a steam engine room to bring it down to 200 C then gets dumped in a pool of cold water.

Gold and Tungsten are similar in thermal capacity, so an aquatuner using naphtha should be okay, but will only recover about 25% of the energy used to cool it.  You can use polluted water to recover 50% but this requires more fidgeting since the range is only 90 C of operation vs naphtha's 300 usable range.  To build in a buffer the oil room can be chilled to just above its freezing point at -30 C.

This took me 3 attempts (and a perpetually scalded Meep) to get to a stage where it was set and forget. 

This screenshot is the of my older base; the cartage through a steam engine room wasn't necessary as the cooling loop for the steam room ran past the drop off point.

This was all done with access to steel

 

[ZanthraSW]

1 hour ago, Tyandy said:

The approach I take with the volcanoes is to flood it with oil moderated by an aquatuner to keep it under 275 C. Above the oil about 20kg of natural gas per tile is used insulate and even out the heat so the steel sweeper/conveyor loader doesn't overheat. 

The volcano erupts, trickles into the oil/natural gas, solidifies on contact, then gets carted through a steam engine room to bring it down to 200 C then gets dumped in a pool of cold water.

Gold and Tungsten are similar in thermal capacity, so an aquatuner using naphtha should be okay, but will only recover about 25% of the energy used to cool it.  You can use polluted water to recover 50% but this requires more fidgeting since the range is only 90 C of operation vs naphtha's 300 usable range.  To build in a buffer the oil room can be chilled to just above its freezing point at -30 C.

This took me 3 attempts (and a perpetually scalded Meep) to get to a stage where it was set and forget. 

This screenshot is the of my older base; the cartage through a steam engine room wasn't necessary as the cooling loop for the steam room ran past the drop off point.

This was all done with access to steel

 

That would work for Tungsten, but the Niobium output rate makes it freeze to natural tiles instead of dropping on the ground and will tile over the volcano almost instantly when it goes active.

[0xFADE]

I have not tried it with niobium or tungsten but if it is true that iron has more total heat then some variation on Brothgars design works just fine[at least for tungsten].  They work very well.  I'm thinking I don't need the pool of liquid at the bottom since I convey the metal through the metal tiles to get them down to ~20c.  Moving the triggering thermometer to inside the steam room makes setup very easy.  The logic on the tuner keeps it from running while the metal is being cooled.  Those were built from gold if I remember right.

[JRup]

On 1/4/2021 at 1:36 AM, Gurgel said:

Give me a challenge or do without me.

Agreed... It has been that way for a while.

 

[ZombieDupe]

On 1/4/2021 at 2:24 AM, Gurgel said:

Ah, you are one of _those_. Here is my statement to that:

 

I would agree that trying to speak on behalf of others isn't good. I don't think I'm doing that, unless, let's say, in a scenario where a developer saying their players would enjoy their game more with a change they plan to implement from the developer's experience and reading up on feedback is "speaking for others". I have heard other player complaints, and as I played and learned the game (through guides at times), I noticed a trend. Putting the two together I found issues with the game that I can safely say would make the game better.

In this particular scenario, it would be incredibly easy for a player landing there for the first time without much experience in volcano taming to get rock gas boiling continuously without them being able to ever fix it. Additionally insulation being possible to melt also doesn't seem fair since there is no better alternative. You can cool the insulation tiles with radiant pipes inside them, but it's very likely that if you don't know the potential danger of it melting, you won't care, and if you neglect it and a single insulation tile melts, you could have the entire rest of the asteroid unmanageable from there on out.

@Smithe37 I have a bit over half of the hours you have put into the game (~1400 hours). The reason I put that forward here was because it invalidates the argument you made that "I don't understand the game". I don't think it has anything to do with anything else pointed out here really.

On 1/1/2021 at 6:00 AM, Smithe37 said:

This post and the subsequent arguments can be boiled down to "I don't understand how basic game mechanics work and should be factored into engineering/design decisions. Therefore this content should be removed or tweaked for me specifically". 

New players are not going to land and colonize the niobium planet because it's difficult as is. When they do colonize it, they will have built up enough experience to deal with the challenge when they discover the niobium volcano

Read my post on the actual calculations and engineering to deal with the volcano if you cant deal with it yourself.

Concerning everything else you said here:

On 1/4/2021 at 8:50 AM, Smithe37 said:

yes, we know that new players are go to struggle because they do not have those hours and experience. That is part of the journey. A niobium volcano taming is near the end of that journey - though I'm not going to repeat the points already made.

I'm struggling now because you are just point blank refusing to accept the completely valid points that people have made in contradiction to yours. 
If you're not going to accept these points, I'm not sure that there is any more productive discussion to be had here.

Struggling isn't what I have a problem with. My problem is with the volcanoes having the potential to melt insulation tiles and having the potential for the asteroid to become impossible to land on due to niobium boiling magma indefinitely in a worst case scenario (provided we get volcanoes stationed on the asteroid in later updates for outputting magma indefinitely, but even without them there, the rock gas below space exposure area can make it unworkable to get niobium for an extremely long time, as you can actually see from nakomaru's testing). The points that "it isn't that bad" are valid points, but the possibility of such drastic error is still there and I simply don't think it should be possible. If the output of the volcanoes is made lower and rovers could be made of a material that would not melt them inside the molten tungsten output from the tungsten volcanoes, I would have zero problems.

There is no journey to be had past a certain point if the game doesn't teach you eventually, and this game could really do with better explaining some things without external guides.

On 1/4/2021 at 5:57 AM, user32167 said:

ONI is a pretty unforgiving game where new players can easily **** up and be forced to restart/reload due to more pressing issues such as:

• Running out of O2
• Running out of food
• Running out of water
• Base freezing over
• Base reaching scalding temperature
• [Vanilla] Meteors ******* up the base
• Failed attempt to tame a volcano or hot geyser
• Zombie spores
• Astronauts dying from missions

Niobium volcano doesn't even come into picture until the player has solved most of the challenges the game as to offer. It is also a completely optional challenge that requires a more firm grasp of the game mechanics

I knew this argument was coming. Those issues are something you can learn along the way and are rather well done and you have plenty of room for error. You can recover from worst case scenarios on asteroids, given you don't trap your last duplicant to suffocate/starve/cool with no chance of getting out in time. In the case of a worst-case scenario for tungsten/niobium volcanoes, all you have to do is have is an insulated tile melt and you can lose access to the entire asteroid even though you can still play the rest of the game. That is not the case for other volcanoes, because their output won't melt insulation or wolframite rovers, which are the best there are. That's why this isn't a problem with the cold asteroid's iron volcanoes for instance. If you screw up, just make rovers out of wolframite and insulate the area with insulation, heck even just obsidian would have no chance of melting there and you could let them insulate the volcanoes and other areas so you can progress from there. There is a chance of permanent failure if you run out of wolframite or obsidian, but that's an entirely different topic.

Yes, it is optional to get niobium and tungsten and not required for indefinite survival. But the fact that is can become near impossible to use those asteroids long-term under certain circumstances is my problem here.

On 1/4/2021 at 5:57 AM, user32167 said:

I think you are moving the goal post here just to avoid admitting you were wrong. Your original post was about how the volcanoes are too hot to be tamed rather than it being about a humanitarian mission to enhance the game play experience of newbie players. If you are so worried about casual players, you should be rest-assured that the dev's already have provided a sandbox mode for them to experiment with their challenges and fix their problems when needed.

No it wasn't, that appears to be the misunderstanding of many people posting in this topic. The volcanoes are very much possible to tame, I'm not denying that, I even say I know hot to tame volcanoes in general myself, and I could tame these two types no problem myself given what I know. Guess I should have been more specific to begin with and that is my fault. My problems here have always been:

* Insulation material could be melted by these volcanoes (my problem is the very FACT that it could even be melted by the volcano output).

* There is no material that rovers could be built from which could withstand such high temperatures to fix such a problem as infinite/near infinite rock gas faster without the chance of them melting.

I don't think it's fair for a player to have to use sandbox mode at a certain point and spend hours tinkering with obscure text or things that haven't even been specified. It's not even some sort of humanitarian mission philosophy to make a point about game design either, it's common sense if you want more people to play, understand and enjoy your game. Otherwise you will just end up with a game that garners elitism more than anything. If you can't just enjoy the game casually and figure things out purely from regular gameplay to the end of the game because of some obscure obstacle at a specific juncture, then there is something wrong with the game.

On 1/4/2021 at 1:48 AM, ZanthraSW said:

I don't think there is much need to be concerned about new players first volcanic asteroid taming. Especially players who are playing without any external guides. There are a large multitude of problems that must be solved and many many mistakes will be made long before they ever get around to dealing with the problems of the basic temperatures of that asteroid. It's not even going to be on the radar of a new player to be concerned with. Problems of normal heat mechanics, boiling and freezing of materials, sustainability of water resouces and food, atmosphere issues, oxygen, etc, all much much closer to home. By the time they get to that point, they will have hundreds of hours and thousands of cycles of experience.

If on the off chance that they do end up boiling the entire asteroid, and being locked out of more niobium (beyond the many tons you can dig out of the normal terrain), it will only be one of many issues that seem insurmountable to that experience level, so is really not going to upset them or they would have been scared off before this.

There absolutely is, because that's what good game design is about. Imagine if you played a game, and it's fun and all, but then when you are 80% through the game, you get stuck trying to get past a certain point for hours on end, you just cannot get past it. You will either quit the game or have to look it up. For a game to be good, this is a scenario that has to be avoided as much as possible.

I still stand by the idea that it should not be possible to fail access entirely to the asteroid. The chances of super-heated rock gas covering the entire asteroid for someone who does not follow guides would be huge, there is no question about it. But if that could be contained away using rovers made from wolframite or some other material that could not melt and insulation tiles (which would act as a requirement in such a scenario), there would be no problem.

[sakura_sk]

2 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Additionally insulation being possible to melt

Sorry.. TL;DR.. but I'm curious... Did you actually see insulation melting? The only case I've seen insulation melting is a build to produce tungsten and in that build what melts is regular pipes made of insulation not anything "insulated".

[Yunru]

1 hour ago, sakura_sk said:

Sorry.. TL;DR.. but I'm curious... Did you actually see insulation melting? The only case I've seen insulation melting is a build to produce tungsten and in that build what melts is regular pipes made of insulation not anything "insulated".

Oh it's possible.

What they're omitting (presumably because it wouldn't help their case) is that it would take literally hundreds of cycles.

(Just to prove it, here we are at cycle 45, I'll update when it finally melts))

Edit: For the life of me I can't get debug mode to work, so the slow way it is:

[sakura_sk]

28 minutes ago, Yunru said:

it would take literally hundreds of cycles.

Ceramic probably. Insulation... I don't think so. Well... I'll wait to see how long it will take for ceramic to melt (I'll probably forget it... so fill free to tag me after several weeks of play if it melts  )

[nakomaru]

4 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Did you actually see insulation melting?

This is my fault, sorry. I believed insulation to be flake-able by e.g. 6000K gas, but it is not.

[Yunru]

Update: If this rate of change keeps up, pretty sure we can completely debunk ZombieDupe's argument:

[Gurgel]

7 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

I would agree that trying to speak on behalf of others isn't good. I don't think I'm doing that, unless, let's say, in a scenario where a developer saying their players would enjoy their game more with a change they plan to implement from the developer's experience and reading up on feedback is "speaking for others". I have heard other player complaints, and as I played and learned the game (through guides at times), I noticed a trend. Putting the two together I found issues with the game that I can safely say would make the game better.

I think you _are_ doing that. And I think you did not notice a "trend", but noticed what fits your intended narrative and ignored what does not. 

7 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

In this particular scenario, it would be incredibly easy for a player landing there for the first time without much experience in volcano taming to get rock gas boiling continuously without them being able to ever fix it.

No. A player landing there already has significant experience. That does not count as "incredibly easy". It is incredibly easy to have your dupes starve, boil, suffocate, vomit themselves to death, etc. when you play ONI the first time. That is _indented_. The very principle of ONI is that you have to find things out to avoid a series of catastrophes, many of which are not really recoverable. 

A player landing there will immediately notice this asteroid is a real challenge. A player without much experience in volcano taming that tries this asteroid is basically doing "insane mode". Making this easy would be incredibly bad design given how the rest of the game works. 

[Yunru]

1 hour ago, Gurgel said:

I think you _are_ doing that. And I think you did not notice a "trend", but noticed what fits your intended narrative and ignored what does not. 

To be fair, confirmation bias is quite often subconscious.

Anyway, after many hours and ~100 cycles, I can confirm that ZombieDupe did no practical tests before complaining:

[Gurgel]

44 minutes ago, Yunru said:

To be fair, confirmation bias is quite often subconscious.

True. If that was not clear, I am not accusing him of maliciousness. 

Also good to know that "temporary" builds made out of insulated tiles should do the job nicely on that asteroid. I was going to try that, but I do not have much time at the moment.

[Sasza22]

We should all keep in mind that it`s still early in development and the magma planet isn`t even fully done. I imagine it will eventually have a mini biome above the lava for easier landing and maybe some pre build stuff so it`s easier for new players to handle (so they don`t just get stuck easily). We might also get other means of handling super hot temperatures. If our current materials don`t cut it (or maybe they actually do) we might get better alternatives eventually.

[ghkbrew]

4 hours ago, nakomaru said:

This is my fault, sorry. I believed insulation to be flake-able by e.g. 6000K gas, but it is not.

There was a patch a while ago where they stopped built tiles from flaking.  I think it was all material backed buildings actually. (including doors, joint plates, etc)