[Discussion] Conservation of Mass in ONI

[blash365]

7 hours ago, KonfigSys said:

Plants convert CO2 to oxygen only if they are under light (Photosynthesis). If there is no light, plants generally generate CO2. So the only plant in ONI which requires light is blossom bristle. It is even strange to see oxyfern having this green (due to chlorophyll) nice leaf  produces oxygen without light.  Also water is being consumed in the process and not going into fruits (so it is not like you get a close loop here either).

"CO₂carbon dioxide + 2H₂Owater + photonslight energy → [CH₂O]carbohydrate + O₂oxygen + H₂Owater"

In my view, dupes, plants and critters have the liberty to not have a perfect fit with our earthly chemical and physical processes.

So a dupe "deleting" oxygen would be fine for me, since it is a good way to balance the dupes interaction with the world.

The plants "deleting" water is similar, but if you think about it, they actually do not delete it, instead the "teleport" it straight to the latrines, where the dupes relieve themselves.

So instead of programming a tiny little bladder for every dupe, the devs simply opted to assume that all dupes will add water and most plants consume water. While not 100% clean, it is a fair bypass to take.

[TheKilltech]

36 minutes ago, blash365 said:

So a dupe "deleting" oxygen would be fine for me, since it is a good way to balance the dupes interaction with the world.

The plants "deleting" water is similar, but if you think about it, they actually do not delete it, instead the "teleport" it straight to the latrines, where the dupes relieve themselves.

So instead of programming a tiny little bladder for every dupe, the devs simply opted to assume that all dupes will add water and most plants consume water. While not 100% clean, it is a fair bypass to take.

nope, the "deleting" is part makes balancing a lot more complicated, because you have to introduce a lot of artificial sources to the game and whatnot. you make it very hard to predict the long term consequence of any change you make.

you also take a lot of options from the player by removing them the ability to recycle stuff due to which devs have to introduce a lot of duct tape solutions... which just make the game unnecessarily complicated.

as for water... latrines do not even get close to recovering the water spend. almost all water going into farming gets simply deleted. 

 

as for the reasoning behind dupes deleting oxygen: it's obviously to solve a single problem that occurs during the first few minutes of the game: if it was implemented realistically, CO2 would build up very quickly and oxygen generation (that doesn't take out the CO2) would stop working due atmospheric pressure and your colony dies. so instead of fixing CO2 recycling for very early game they went on to make everything a lot more complicated. perhaps at that development stage it seemed like the simpler solution... but it wasn't. really, just making plants (especially the wild) do the CO2 to O2 recycling for free would have solve it much better. then just make it so you always start with enough plants around. But to be fair.. without playing the game i don't think it would that clear to me how huge implication that will have on the gameplay... because without having a game you easily misjudge what the future gameplay will focus around.