Rocket life support & the storage bin exploit

[MiniDeathStar]

It is a little strange that life support in the rocket cockpit amounts to pit toilets for pee, hamster wheels for power, food poisoning tabs in lieu of sinks, and exploits with storage bins that make the solid cargo module nearly obsolete.

To solve all of the above, I propose a few changes to how life support works in rockets. These modules, like the rocket control panel, would only be buildable inside rockets.

- Toilet cabin. Same footprint as a lavatory, works both as a toilet and as a sink. Needs to be periodically emptied out of polluted water and supplied with bottled clean water and bleachstone for disinfection.

- Life support machine. Functions as a fridge and oxygen maker. Needs to be supplied with ice, food, and either bottled oxygen or oxylite. Alternatively, instead of ice, uses 160 watts of power.

- Generator. Works as both a power generator and a small battery. Uses rocket exhaust for power, but is only operational while the rocket is in flight. Generates very little power though. (Self-powered rockets are already canon anyway, otherwise what's powering the pilot's computer?)

To that end, please also prevent storage bins, smart storage bins, conveyor loaders and automatic dispensers from being built inside the rocket. They are very abusable and unfun to play around, yet hugely outclass their competition.

Thanks and keep making this game great. <3

[Sweetsegi]

I may be wrong about this, but the cargo modules are to obtain materials, gas, or liquid at an asteroid that is NOT your home planet. That means storage bins are required for inside the rocket. That doesn't make it abusable or unfun. It makes your dupe prepared for longer journeys.

[Sasza22]

3 hours ago, Sweetsegi said:

I may be wrong about this, but the cargo modules are to obtain materials, gas, or liquid at an asteroid that is NOT your home planet. That means storage bins are required for inside the rocket. That doesn't make it abusable or unfun. It makes your dupe prepared for longer journeys.

The thing is we got special modules to carry solid cargo. But they make no sense when we can just put it in the command module. A single storage compactor stores 20t and the specialised cargo modules like 500 kg. Makes no sense to use them. It needs some balancing. If we had a special smaller storage box only for command modules it would be more balanced while still allowing to bring some seeds or eggs in the command module.

8 hours ago, MiniDeathStar said:

- Toilet cabin. Same footprint as a lavatory, works both as a toilet and as a sink. Needs to be periodically emptied out of polluted water and supplied with bottled clean water and bleachstone for disinfection.

Would be cool if it just ejected the waste into space. It would only work during flight which would fix another annoying issue of dupes using the toilet in the rocket instead of in your base.

8 hours ago, MiniDeathStar said:

- Life support machine. Functions as a fridge and oxygen maker. Needs to be supplied with ice, food, and either bottled oxygen or oxylite. Alternatively, instead of ice, uses 160 watts of power.

Sounds interesting but i`d prefer if it was separate. Like a 1x1 oxygen dispenser using oxylite (basiccally a refuelable oxylite block). As such it wouldn`t have to use power. Then a basic fridge would work for food.

8 hours ago, MiniDeathStar said:

- Generator. Works as both a power generator and a small battery. Uses rocket exhaust for power, but is only operational while the rocket is in flight. Generates very little power though. (Self-powered rockets are already canon anyway, otherwise what's powering the pilot's computer?)

I think we could use a portable battery, charged in the base and losing charge really slowly. It`s also a great place to consider an RTG a generator actually powering spacecraft. It could use radium and use it slowly enough to require refueling once per 50 cycles or so. If it generated someting around 200-250W it would be pretty useless for normal bases but enough for the spaceship.

Another thing we could use is an "outside vent" allowing to dump the CO2 from the bottom of the module into space. A simple automation sensor would be enough to control that one.

[MiniDeathStar]

@Sweetsegi This is true, but only because we have no alternatives at the moment. We are forced to store life support resources in storage bins in the pod, but there's literally nothing stopping you from storing 100t of raw materials by building and deleting bins. In comparison, the solid cargo module can only store 2 tons.

That's why I want building materials to go in the solid cargo module and life support to go in specialised buildings for life support.

@Sasza22 We have a biological cargo module for seeds, eggs, critters etc from the base game. Any storage module in the cockpit is inherently abusable because it can be spammed and then emptied out of the contents and filled again.

Agree about the food and the vent.

Portable batteries are kind of tricky because they would need stations. You can't move buildings otherwise without deconstructing them in the current engine. Overall I think it's just too much hassle only for that use case. Also with radium the issue is that it's only found on the third planet, so until you get there it would still have to be hamster wheels, and I just feel way too ridiculous with those.

[sakura_sk]

36 minutes ago, MiniDeathStar said:

That's why I want building materials to go in the solid cargo module and life support to go in specialised buildings for life support.

Why shouldn't it be the other way around?

I think a possibility would be to scratch cargo modules and have the current rocket ports take care of loading inside the command module with anything that leads (underwater command station..?  ). In DLC we can take care of temperature of any material of other planetoids before loading (something that wasn't possible before). So... why do we actually need cargo modules for transport if not for extremely high/low temperatures of cargo? In the base game it was "load whatever dupes find" but in DLC you choose what to transport.

Every cargo at the moment can fit in a spacefarer module (1 tile for solids, 1 tile for gasses, 2-3 tiles for liquids for large cargo modules). It would restrict gasses/liquids to one resource (different element need different tile space) but we do that anyway (choosing what to transport) and solids would make more sense. 

[MiniDeathStar]

1 hour ago, sakura_sk said:

Why shouldn't it be the other way around?

Because it makes sense for rockets to have cargo bays for cargo, and spacefarer modules for spacefarers? Rather than storing everything in quantum containers that ignore speed/burden mechanics? Plus getting rid of cargo bays would really break how the rocket module system works, and we'll also end up with the exact same rocket design of just fuel tanks and nosecone for everything.

Plus I really like the idea of ferrying substances in specialised containers. It's immersive and makes supply chains feel more supply chainy.

[sakura_sk]

21 minutes ago, MiniDeathStar said:

Plus getting rid of cargo bays would really break how the rocket module system works

It's already completely broken.. Making buildable space in rockets possible made external cargo obsolete. There is no benefit having less capacity and longer travel times just for esthetic purposes.

[MiniDeathStar]

1 minute ago, sakura_sk said:

It's already completely broken.. Making buildable space in rockets possible made external cargo obsolete. There is no benefit having less capacity and longer travel times just for esthetic purposes.

Hence I proposed to make storage containers unbuildable inside the cockpit. Did you read the first post at all?

[sakura_sk]

Just now, MiniDeathStar said:

Hence I proposed to make storage containers unbuildable inside the cockpit.

That's why I would like it to stay how it is and scratch the cargo modules 

Currently small cargo modules take 9 tiles (3x3) to store 500kg solid (~55 kg/tile), 900kg liquid (100 kg/tile) or 360kg gas (40 kg/tile), which is useless unless it is an extremely rare resource that you can't find anywhere else. Or some sort of other inconvenience... (I'm still waiting to see how radiation will work)

Large cargo modules take 20 (!) tiles  (4x5) to store 2700kg solid (135 kg/tile), 2700kg liquid (135 kg/tile) or 1100kg gas (55 kg/tile), still useless when you have a burden of +6,+5,+4 to handle and height of rocket starts being a problem.

If storage bin is the problem (20t sure is a lot..) even if it is nerfed to 2000kg it is still more efficient to use (1000kg/tile) than large cargo bay

Before DLC cargos where used only for finding rare resources (at least in my terra playthroughs) but now you need building materials (or other resources)  transferred between planetoids with rockets, which is impossible using cargo modules especially cargo bay for solids (well... not completely impossible but very very veeery time consuming).

I just don't find making building restrictions a legitimate way to balance the current system (I won't say no to any other space saving builds like toilet cabins  )

[Yunru]

2 hours ago, MiniDeathStar said:

Hence I proposed to make storage containers unbuildable inside the cockpit. Did you read the first post at all?

Then people'd just build item droppers. (Although it would succeed on limiting what can be mass-stored.)

 

A better option would be to have the rocket's modules connect to storage in the cockpit directly. Have a special container that lets you access it. More storage modules is more space in the container.

Oh, and make the modules big enough to be worth it.

[MiniDeathStar]

1 hour ago, Yunru said:

A better option would be to have the rocket's modules connect to storage in the cockpit directly. Have a special container that lets you access it. More storage modules is more space in the container.

And this in turn would make the rocket loading machines obsolete. I'm quite fond of the systems already in place, the storage bins and the primitive pit latrines are literally the only thing wrong with it.

[Yunru]

There are no rocket loading machines? There's autosweepers, which maintain their use because automation, and then there's dupes sticking stuff in the tanks, which happens whether at the unreachably large modules, or in the cabin.

[MiniDeathStar]

7 minutes ago, Yunru said:

There are no rocket loading machines? There's autosweepers, which maintain their use because automation, and then there's dupes sticking stuff in the tanks, which happens whether at the unreachably large modules, or in the cabin.

Nooo, there are special machines that load/unload stuff, and different machines for solids, liquids and gases. They consume 480W each, too.

[sakura_sk]

17 minutes ago, Yunru said:

There are no rocket loading machines?

*Rocket ports (I think is what MiniDeathStar means...?). That thingy you stick to rocket platform to load cargo modules

[Sasza22]

8 hours ago, MiniDeathStar said:

Portable batteries are kind of tricky because they would need stations. You can't move buildings otherwise without deconstructing them in the current engine. Overall I think it's just too much hassle only for that use case. Also with radium the issue is that it's only found on the third planet, so until you get there it would still have to be hamster wheels, and I just feel way too ridiculous with those.

A portable battery would work like bottled power. The charging station would hold a certain amount of joules and you could pick up some of them as a portable battery and conncet that to the grid for example in the rocket. It would be a simple delivery task. This would be enough for the short trips. After that you could switch to the RTG after exploring the radiated planetoid.

[Yunru]

I may have been getting confused with the solid fuel tanks.

[Steve8]

Getting rid of cargo modules is stupid. It shouldn't be too difficult to take the weight of materials in the command module into account. Stuff on the ground and in cargo bins can be counted on launch attempts and be factored into burden/speed/range calculations. A rocket that is too heavy shouldn't be able to launch.

[AndreyKl]

On 1/30/2021 at 9:09 PM, Steve8 said:

Getting rid of cargo modules is stupid. It shouldn't be too difficult to take the weight of materials in the command module into account. Stuff on the ground and in cargo bins can be counted on launch attempts and be factored into burden/speed/range calculations. A rocket that is too heavy shouldn't be able to launch.

+1, but even with rockets taking weight of command modules into account cargo modules still have to be adjusted a lot. Current capacity was roughly fine for asteroids in base game, it isn't fine for DLC.

Command module requires literal tones of content and cargo module will need to have much more advantages over storing in command module.

P.S. Or cargo modules can get a different purpose, like gathering space dusts and small meteorites.

[Yunru]

3 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

P.S. Or cargo modules can get a different purpose, like gathering space dusts and small meteorites.

But they're already gathering space dust as-is! :P

[cddx]

On 29/01/2021 at 16:44, MiniDeathStar said:

Pour résoudre tout ce qui précède, je propose quelques changements sur le fonctionnement du maintien de la vie dans les fusées. Ces modules, comme le panneau de contrôle des fusées, ne pourraient être construits qu'à l'intérieur des fusées.

- Cabine de toilettes. Même encombrement qu'un lavabo, fonctionne à la fois comme toilette et comme lavabo. Doit être périodiquement vidé de l'eau polluée et fourni avec de l'eau propre en bouteille et de la pierre de javel pour la désinfection.

It will especially make more sense to have different toilets, just for the rocket.
Because there is no gravity in rockets that is in space, much less a sink.

[babba]

On 2/1/2021 at 2:41 PM, Yunru said:

But they're already gathering space dust as-is! :P

Specific rocket indoor designs, new dedicated rocket interior components and an overhaul of rocket storage + in/out connectors + the option to not be forced to play inside rockets would be good.

As long there is no World Generation update from Klei I'm not playing the game and it's collecting dust.