The Spewer, an alternative Geyser/Vent

[JaxckLl]

This is a pretty simple suggestion which I feel would open up some interesting & totally new environment types to ONI,

• The Spewer. Shaped like the hill in Nightmare Before Christmas, this is a Geyser/Vent which ejects small solids rather than liquids or gases (I'm imagining the solid rolling up the inside curve like a pinball machine). Spewers generally have a very low but steady output, and would serve as a way to provide renewable access to basic resources in a fundamentally different way than the high volume output of Geysers or the high energy output of Vents.
• The basic Spewer would be the Sandstone Spewer. Basic minerals have never been renewable, it would be interesting to explore this space.
• The Sediment Spewer. Most of the time it deposits a small amount of Sedimentary Rock, but occasionally it shoots out a small Fossil.
• The Slime Spewer. Self-explanatory. An alternative to Pufts.
• The Oxylite Spewer. A very rare Spewer which only ever spawns buried in the Space biome. Yet another thing which encourages exploration in that direction and lowers the barrier to building high end rockets.
• The Hydrolox Spewer. Hydrolox is a new mineral which off-gases Hydrogen, analogous to Oxylite or Bleachstone. Hydrolox can be produced renewably by a new pink Puft
• The Rust Spewer. An alternative early game source of renewable Ore & renewable Oxygen. Something like this, an early-game renewable source of metal ore, is sorely needed to make Plug Slugs viable. Would still require a renewable source of Salt, such as from a Salt Water Geyser.
• The Fool Spewer. Shoots out Pyrite, an alternative source of early-game renewable ore.
• The Sulphur Spewer. Obvious. Another way to increase the availability of Sulphur.

EDIT: As suggested further in the thread,

• The Mud Geyser. A special kind of Geyser which ejects Liquidized Mud. Liquidized Mud will solidify if allowed to rest, potentially covering the Geyser. This creates an early game need for the auto-miner, as well as providing an interesting source of renewable Water & Dirt. The Polluted Mud Geyser additionally makes Sublimation must more interesting, especially if Sublimation Stations were capable of taking the Mud directly.
• Spewer lumps are associated with a small jet of gas that provides the pressure to shoot the lump out the Spewer. By default this would be CO2 for minerals, although it could also be Oxygen for Oxylite, Hydrogen for Hydrolox, and Chlorine for Rust. It might be interesting to have some junk gases come through as well, such as Sour Gas for Sulphur or Nat Gas for Pyrite.

[Sasza22]

We actually could use some sort of solid generating pseudo geyser. I don`t really see the need for extra sandstone but why not. Personally i`d prefer a deposit that requires active mining but has infinite supplies as it makes a bit more logical sense but not everything needs to be realisitc. For sure those would help a lot with getting extra metal ore for the usual deficit we can run into later in the game.

I`d like to see those especially for slime and mud. Both of those are very water rich so maybe they could implement a liquid that solidifies into those after a few seconds so we could have a mud volcano (those actually exist irl) and a slime volcano.

For sulfur i`m ok with it being a geyser spewing hot sulfur but again why not something else.

[pether]

It doesn't need to be a geyser. It could be critter, plant, meteors or other weather conditions

[JaxckLl]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

We actually could use some sort of solid generating pseudo geyser. I don`t really see the need for extra sandstone but why not. Personally i`d prefer a deposit that requires active mining but has infinite supplies as it makes a bit more logical sense but not everything needs to be realisitc. For sure those would help a lot with getting extra metal ore for the usual deficit we can run into later in the game.

I`d like to see those especially for slime and mud. Both of those are very water rich so maybe they could implement a liquid that solidifies into those after a few seconds so we could have a mud volcano (those actually exist irl) and a slime volcano.

For sulfur i`m ok with it being a geyser spewing hot sulfur but again why not something else.

The point of Sandstone is that it makes basic Hatch ranching permanently viable. It's also a resource that's currently completely non-renewable. The same logic applies to the Sediment Spewer. Perhaps with these Smooth Hatches will see more than a 2% use.

Realism is irrelevant. Things need to be logically connected, but actual realism is far from the goal.

Mud is a good call, can't believe I missed that one. The other way to go with Mud would be to allow Mud to be deposited by a special liquid which comes out of a Geyser. So long as Liquid Mud has somewhere to flow, it remains a Liquid. As soon as it pools, it solidifies. Would create an interesting niche for the auto-miner, now that meteors don't exist on the first two asteroids. EDIT: Just reread your comment and realized that's exactly what you suggested. Well I guess we totally agree!

Sulphur is new, and extremely useful. I'd like to see any Spaced Out systems & chains getting more attention because they justify the DLC. I imagine Spewers would be mostly an easy to access, but low volume renewable resource. So you'd start with a Sulphur spewer with barely enough output for half a stable of Grubs, and later on you get a Liquid Sulphur Geyser which can support an entire Grub farm/ranch. Spewers would generally NOT be hot, because that's a niche for Geysers & Vents.

58 minutes ago, pether said:

It doesn't need to be a geyser. It could be critter, plant, meteors or other weather conditions

I don't get the point of this comment. What are you trying to say?

[pether]

10 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

I don't get the point of this comment. What are you trying to say?

The whole point of geysers is to have renewable source of an element. The same purpose can have critters and plants. You don't need to have wood geyser - you have arbor trees. For some types of resources geysers would feel better and more intuitive, for others - plants or critters would work nicer

[Sasza22]

16 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

The point of Sandstone is that it makes basic Hatch ranching permanently viable. It's also a resource that's currently completely non-renewable.

Iirc they can also eat sand which makes them permanently viable with the extra rock crusher step but i get the idea.

[JaxckLl]

There's five types of renewables in the game right now

• Geysers/Vents: The main source of resources, namely Water & Oil. It would be nice to have some more diversity here, the Sulphur Geyser is a huge step in the right direction. These do not scale with the player.
• Plants: Consumes some combination of Gas, Liquids, and Fertilizer to produce a specific output. Generally low efficiency, but the primary source of calories. Primarily converts Water to Calories. Plants scale with the player.
• Critters: Consumes specific resources to produce specific outputs. Generally high efficiency, but requires large amount of dupe time & skill to manage. Additionally can become very expensive when the resources consumed aren't properly renewable themselves. Hatches convert minerals to Coal, Pufts gases to off-gasing solids, Slicksters CO2 to Oil/Petrol (the rest have other specific purposes outside of resource conversion). Main issue with long term renewability is the limited renewability of minerals for Hatches and metal ore for Smooth Hatches & Plug Slugs. Critters scale with the player.
• Meteors: Destroys the top of the map, but is a renewable source of minerals & metal ore. Also produces a large amount of heat which can be consumed as power. Currently does not exist in Space Out making metal ore & minerals critically non-renewable. Meteors do not scale with the player in vanilla, but it remains to be seen how they will scale in Spaced Out.
• Conversion: Various processes will magically create additional output mass/energy than they take in. Bathroom loops for example, and many machines offput enough heat to fundamentally change their efficiency ratio when that heat is properly exploited. Wild plants & critters are the other big standout here, most notably Arbor Trees & Pokeshells. Conversion generally scales with the player, since there are only a couple of wild conversion loops which will remain resource positive long term without player input (hence why I mentioned Arbor Trees & Pokeshells).

My suggestion is to add a source of solids for early/mid game renewability which enable some strategies earlier (such as using Oxylite in a rocket before ranching Pufts) that are scaled to the map not the player. Something Space Out does a much better job than Vanilla is in how it enables players to explore late game tech by making the barrier one of implementation & research, not one of initial resource availability. Solar is fun for a new player when they can just build it. Solar is not fun when they have to build a Glass Refinery, **** up the temperature in their base, and end up spending 20 cycles building a hospital & emergency cooling loop instead of that one Solar panel they actually wanted.

Real life success is about the development of infrastructure not technology. Electric vehicles have been viable for urban commutes since at least the mid 70s, but it's only in the last decade that enough has been invested in the infrastructure to make the technology relevant. The same principal applies to ONI. Research is only relevant if you already have the infrastructure to support the building of what you will research. Right now it is exceptionally easy to sprint through the entire tech tree, but exceptionally difficult to actually build enough support infrastructure to make that technology usable. I'd like to see more late game resources available in drip before they become available en masse.

Oxylite is an interesting resource when the player has a small, steady supply to mess around with. It's substantially less interesting when Pufts have to be ranched first, a process that takes tens of cycles and literally hours of game time. And that's just one minor & unessential resource! Imagine how bad it was with Glass & Plastic & Steel in vanilla. If you really want to make Spewers more "realistic" why don't we include a small jet of gas that comes along with the solid lump? This would also fit the Oxylite, Hydrolox, and Slime Spewers in particular as they produce off-gasing materials.