Interplanetary launcher is extremely overpowered [feedback]

[n_t_p]

The balance on this thing is way off. There is no cooldown. The building still accepts input during "rail cleaning", which means as soon as rail cleaning is done you can fire off all 6 shots at once. You can power the whole setup, pumps, radbolts and all on a single power line.

The current limit is just the throughput of the ports themselves. 20kg/s for solids, 10 kg/s liquids and 1kg/s gas. Total 31 kg/s. Just counting solids that would take 2.2 round trip rocket launches per cycle to match. At 1.3 tiles per cycle for an endgame hydrogen rocket you'd need... 20 rockets, assuming no downtime. Downtime is mandatory for unloading and refueling, so ??? 

This thing is completely broken. There's no point to use rockets for shipping when this thing exists. You've reduced rockets to glorified taxi cabs for dupes, and considering you can print dupes on the planet you want them to live on there's hardly even a need for that.

[Unfawkable]

Overall nerfs to this are needed as I've agreed, but it needs to be a direction of nerfs that still leaves it with a niche use. If both the rockets and the launcher have a role of transporting cargo between planets, the Rockets should obviously have the "transports lots of mass for bigger time and resource investment" role. This should have the role of "transports very little mass in a very convenient manner". Now whether the cost of that should match rockets is debatable, and it already has the convenience covered, so a couple of ways to bring it in line (One of these, or a combination of multiple):

1) Reduce (Drastically) the payload size and the frequency you can send them. By your calculations, this would require a significant nerf in reducation by a factor of 10 or more in order to bring it below rockets enough.

2) Make it only able to send one payload at max charge, and then have a more significant downtime before you can send another single payload. Somewhere between 2-3 cycles minimum.

3) Make it a late game option requiring exotic materials to use. If each launch required Thermium to use for the capsules, or Visco Gel to "fuel", it would discourage infinite use.

4) Limit the range it can launch so you can't cover the entire map with it and would at least have to build several on different planetoids. This one would definitely need to be a combo with some of the others, but I dislike this approach as it would reduce the convenience niche

5) The good ol' approach of give it a massive power cost wouldn't hurt as well, but with a catch. Say, it would need 1200 Watts to operate. BUT, you would need to keep it powered otherwise it would lose any stored radbolts and you'd have to charge radbolts from scratch when you turn the power back on.

[sakura_sk]

9 minutes ago, Unfawkable said:

2) Make it only able to send one payload at max charge, and then have a more significant downtime before you can send another single payload. Somewhere between 2-3 cycles minimum.

The only real reason you would need the launcher is if you were stack in an asteroid without food or oxygen and having a 2-3 cycles of cool down would make that impossible.

11 minutes ago, Unfawkable said:

you would need to keep it powered otherwise it would lose any stored radbolts and you'd have to charge radbolts from scratch when you turn the power back on.

Yeah.. Like how I power my radbolt generators? No exploitable at all... everything is fine. Maybe a potential frame-rate killer though. 

Spoiler

When shutoff starts flickering it flickers... a lot!

Also, if current storages of radbolts couldn't store radbolts then a proper storage for radbolts and radbolt detection is more urgent than any power consumption changes to interplanetary launcher.

[Unfawkable]

4 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

The only real reason you would need the launcher is if you were stack in an asteroid without food or oxygen and having a 2-3 cycles of cool down would make that impossible.

Well, if you expect to potentially need an emergency food delivery, you better make sure your emergency food delivery building is ready to send it and not use it for something trivial. And if you have an emergency more often than 2-3 cycles, you are doing something wrong.

[sakura_sk]

3 minutes ago, Unfawkable said:

And if you have an emergency more often than 2-3 cycles, you are doing something wrong.

I mean... if you planned everything perfectly you don't even need to bother about the interplanetary launch let alone nerfing it so much.

[n_t_p]

My suggestions would be:

Buff rockets, increasing the capacity of all cargo holds by 2x, and give us better tools for restocking the command capsule so automatic rockets are possible. Piping fittings through the cargo hold is unintuitive and counterproductive to the end goal of shipping. Piping duplicant's base needs in and then getting it back out to put in the actual materials being transported requires esoteric automation that people aren't going to be able to do without looking it up online.

Nerf this thing. Massively increase the power cost to a continuous 800w per second while loading, firing or cleaning. Double the radbolt cost. Make can opening take half as long as manual opening. Rail cleaning requires dupe labor. Halve the payload capacity. Add a 5s warm up to each firing just because it's weird to have them all fire at once.

I like the range limitation suggested by unfawkable. Chaining these together to bypass the range limit seems interesting, and gives rockets an undeniable advantage.

Another interesting nerf would be to massively increase the mass of the building. If it took, say 4t of refined metals I'd think twice about building multiple. This allows for interesting heat mechanics too. If you require a maximum firing temp of around -25 C and each firing adds a set amount of heat, enough to raise the temp to about 50 C for steel, then you've effectively got a rate limit that begs to be bypassed. Noobs will be able to use heat sinks on the starting planetoid's space biome and on the ice planet to dump the building's heat, and might even get creative about how fast they can get it out. Advanced players will build complex aquatuner setups that utilize supercoolant, or at least petroleum.

Leave the beacon how it is, that works fine.

1 hour ago, sakura_sk said:

I mean... if you planned everything perfectly you don't even need to bother about the interplanetary launch let alone nerfing it so much.

Building an endlessly sustainable base is easy enough by mid game. That's uninteresting though. Expanding is the challenge in spaced out, and the interplanetary launcher makes expanding extremely easy. You know how much oxygen a dupe can unpack from this thing in a day? If you max out one launcher you can sustain 9 dupes on an off-world oxygen source. That shouldn't be possible. I shouldn't have to weigh the difference between piping oxygen to a planetoid on the other side of the solar system vs building a local supply. 

[sakura_sk]

11 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

That shouldn't be possible. I shouldn't have to weigh the difference between piping oxygen to a planetoid on the other side of the solar system vs building a local supply. 

Why it shouldn't be possible..? Having multiple paths is an inconvenience to your play style? Not everyone needs to build or expand to every single planetoid and make a sustainable base there. If you do want to do that, interplanetary launcher is just another way to provide resources.

[Unfawkable]

12 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

Buff rockets, increasing the capacity of all cargo holds by 2x, and give us better tools for restocking the command capsule so automatic rockets are possible. Piping fittings through the cargo hold is unintuitive and counterproductive to the end goal of shipping. Piping duplicant's base needs in and then getting it back out to put in the actual materials being transported requires esoteric automation that people aren't going to be able to do without looking it up online.

Buffing rockets went way over my head, didn't even think of it. x2 might be overdoing it, but a 50% increase could be just the thing. As for the automation being difficult, I'd say it's supposed to be difficult. Most of automation beyond rudimentary things is aimed at advanced players as it is, and novice players wouldn't bother setting up automated rockets as it is even if it were easier to do. 

 

14 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

Another interesting nerf would be to massively increase the mass of the building. If it took, say 4t of refined metals I'd think twice about building multiple. This allows for interesting heat mechanics too. If you require a maximum firing temp of around -25 C and each firing adds a set amount of heat, enough to raise the temp to about 50 C for steel, then you've effectively got a rate limit that begs to be bypassed. Noobs will be able to use heat sinks on the starting planetoid's space biome and on the ice planet to dump the building's heat, and might even get creative about how fast they can get it out. Advanced players will build complex aquatuner setups that utilize supercoolant, or at least petroleum.

I like this, and increase the size of it drastically too, to reflect its mass, and since something that launches payloads to distant planets should be massive anyway.

Just now, sakura_sk said:

Why it shouldn't be possible..? Having multiple paths is an inconvenience to your play style? Not everyone needs to build or expand to every single planetoid and make a sustainable base there. If you do want to do that, interplanetary launcher is just another way to provide resources.

It's not the option of the multiple paths, it's one easily setup building completely overshadowing rockets in terms of cargo delivery that's the issue. It just needs toning down, not making it impossible for supplying. Supplying 9 dupes with Oxygen with one building is just over the top, but it can still be an option in gameplay if it could supply 3 of them, or even 1 but you'd have to build multiple if you want that convenience. You couldn't have a big base with lots of dupes without producing your own oxygen, but you still have a choice to make small outposts that you need to supply instead. But rockets need to do a better job at this to not be obsolete as cargo delivery.

[n_t_p]

9 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

Why it shouldn't be possible..? Having multiple paths is an inconvenience to your play style? Not everyone needs to build or expand to every single planetoid and make a sustainable base there. If you do want to do that, interplanetary launcher is just another way to provide resources.

I thought this would be useful for like, sending the 10kg of chlorine I'd need on a random planetoid for some reason because that planet literally doesn't have any and I just needed a tiny amount. Not for like, mining out and shipping the entire planet and the output of all it's geysers because that's literally what this thing is capable of.

[sakura_sk]

6 minutes ago, Unfawkable said:

Supplying 9 dupes with Oxygen with one building is just over the top

Doesn't 1 diffuser provide oxygen for 6 and 1 electrolyzer for 8? Why would an advancement by 1 be "over the top"?  Playing with absolute numbers is easy.. 

My opinion since early DLC about cargo modules was to remove them completely and either have 1 module for every element or non at all and use only spacefarer. But there are many players attached to base game mechanics so...

5 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

Not for like, mining out and shipping the entire planet and the output of all it's geysers because that's literally what this thing is capable of.

And I think after playing like that you could show it off  

But until then I don't think interplanetary launcher needs that many nerfs

[n_t_p]

10 minutes ago, Unfawkable said:

As for the automation being difficult, I'd say it's supposed to be difficult. Most of automation beyond rudimentary things is aimed at advanced players as it is, and novice players wouldn't bother setting up automated rockets as it is even if it were easier to do. 

It's just soooo weird! I have no doubt I could figure it out, but why are we pumping things in and out of a rocket every time it lands??? I should just be able to top it off with fuel and oxygen and water and send the launch signal. That alone would take plenty of interesting automation, but with the way things are right now I gotta like, count packets and weirdness that just doesn't make sense. Like, why am I doing this? Why am I routing my dupe's oxygen through the cargo hold I just used to transport natural gas? And why am I obligated to include a solids and gas module on every automatic rocket? If I just want to ship petrol and water back and fourth I should be able to do that without having to figure out how to deal with the dupe's pee inside or how to build an electrolyser inside a spacefarer module to turn water into oxygen. I shouldn't have to crush CO2 just to keep a dupe alive. How do you even feed a dupe on an automatic rocket fitted with double liquid cargo tanks?

[Unfawkable]

1 minute ago, sakura_sk said:

Doesn't 1 diffuser provide oxygen for 6 and 1 electrolyzer for 8? Why would an advancement by 1 be "over the top"?  Playing with absolute numbers is easy.. 

Because the diffuser is on your planet, not on another one. And the number isn't the problem by itself, the problem is that it's bigger number than the rocket when it definitely shouldn't be due to ease of use, less resource investment and convenience.

[n_t_p]

2 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

Doesn't 1 diffuser provide oxygen for 6 and 1 electrolyzer for 8? Why would an advancement by 1 be "over the top"?  Playing with absolute numbers is easy.. 

The challenge isn't making the oxygen it's getting it where it needs to go. Namely the other side of the solarsystem. This building enables you, if you have a 12 dupe colony, to use nothing but your final starting base oxygen system to keep them breathing no matter where they go in the game.

[Unfawkable]

1 minute ago, n_t_p said:

It's just soooo weird! I have no doubt I could figure it out, but why are we pumping things in and out of a rocket every time it lands??? I should just be able to top it off with fuel and oxygen and water and send the launch signal. That alone would take plenty of interesting automation, but with the way things are right now I gotta like, count packets and weirdness that just doesn't make sense. Like, why am I doing this? Why am I routing my dupe's oxygen through the cargo hold I just used to transport natural gas? And why am I obligated to include a solids and gas module on every automatic rocket? If I just want to ship petrol and water back and fourth I should be able to do that without having to figure out how to deal with the dupe's pee inside or how to build an electrolyser inside a spacefarer module to turn water into oxygen. I shouldn't have to crush CO2 just to keep a dupe alive. How do you even feed a dupe on an automatic rocket fitted with double liquid cargo tanks?

Oh that, yes that all is definitely weird and I don't think that's how they picture it working in the long run. It just seems it was implemented rather quickly, and they just decided to iron it out later. As for all the finicky survival in space, I'm still hoping for the life support module.

[n_t_p]

2 minutes ago, Unfawkable said:

Oh that, yes that all is definitely weird and I don't think that's how they picture it working in the long run. It just seems it was implemented rather quickly, and they just decided to iron it out later. As for all the finicky survival in space, I'm still hoping for the life support module.

YES. A life support module would make so much sense. With a life support module and the fittings going to that instead of the cargo hold planning for trips and running a rocket would make so much more sense. All it needs is an IO for each phase and it only accepts small quantities of certain elements. 

oxygen, CO2 for gas

water, pwater for liquid
dirt, food, sand for solid

[Unfawkable]

1 minute ago, n_t_p said:

YES. A life support module would make so much sense. With a life support module and the fittings going to that instead of the cargo hold planning for trips and running a rocket would make so much more sense. All it needs is an IO for each phase and it only accepts small quantities of certain elements. 

oxygen, CO2 for gas

water, pwater for liquid
dirt, food, sand for solid

If I may direct you to the neighboring thread then so we don't derail this.

 

[sakura_sk]

7 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

This building enables you, if you have a 12 dupe colony, to use nothing but your final starting base oxygen system to keep them breathing no matter where they go in the game.

And why should inventing extreme ways of making a sustainable habitat be a "must" instead of paying a price to transport?

[Unfawkable]

4 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

And why should inventing extreme ways of making a sustainable habitat be a "must" instead of paying a price to transport?

Alright, let's say it shouldn't. Do you also think the price currently is okay? The investment resource-wise as well is well below rockets. My solution number 3 should be according to your taste.

[n_t_p]

5 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

And why should inventing extreme ways of making a sustainable habitat be a "must" instead of paying a price to transport?

Because that's not real gameplay. There's no engagement or room for creativity in solving the problem presented. It's just a matter of how much resources you can throw at the problem, which in the case of the interplanetary launcher is a laughably small requirement.

[sakura_sk]

5 minutes ago, Unfawkable said:

Alright, let's say it shouldn't. Do you also think the price currently is okay? The investment resource-wise as well is well below rockets. My solution number 3 should be according to your taste.

The price sure need tweaking but needing exotic materials would make it unusable (needing exotic materials to launch things to exotic materials planets?)

6 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

There's no engagement or room for creativity in solving the problem presented.

Creative for me would be to have a set amount of resources and figuring out a solution to utilize the best out of them. Not having any materials in hand and needing to build an infrastructure abusing game mechanics and limits, no, I don't find it creative. I would say it is at best a "nothing else to do anymore" and at  worst just a pain.

[pether]

TBH I really like how the launchers work. Didn't play long enough to risk statements that they are 100% OK, but at this moment I don't see the issues with them. About exotic cost - I feel like radbolts are one. The only problem is that they can be gathered from space for free - the same issue we have with too easy nuclear tech.

So instead of nerfing them, how about we focused on making rocket transport more usefull and easier to setup?

[Sasza22]

15 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

1) Reduce (Drastically) the payload size and the frequency you can send them. By your calculations, this would require a significant nerf in reducation by a factor of 10 or more in order to bring it below rockets enough.

I`d prefer if we buffed rockets instead of nerfing the launcher to the ground. Eventually we want to use it to sustain production chains on other worlds so it should be compared to the telporter rather than rockets imo.

15 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

2) Make it only able to send one payload at max charge, and then have a more significant downtime before you can send another single payload. Somewhere between 2-3 cycles minimum.

I like the idea of it shooting only at max charge. The amount of cycles you wait will be based on the amount of radbolts you gather. If you just use space 3 cycles are ok but you should be able to bring it down to multiple launches per cycle with a nearby reactor imo.

15 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

3) Make it a late game option requiring exotic materials to use. If each launch required Thermium to use for the capsules, or Visco Gel to "fuel", it would discourage infinite use.

I don`t like this direction. It`s ok for it to be late game but it`s purpose is to automate delivery and semi phase out rockets rather than being limited use. This change would kill it.

15 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

4) Limit the range it can launch so you can't cover the entire map with it and would at least have to build several on different planetoids. This one would definitely need to be a combo with some of the others, but I dislike this approach as it would reduce the convenience niche

This would actually differentiate it from rockets a bit. Lategame rockets can cover a lot of distance now. With launchers having limited range we would need to build an infrastructure on multiple planetoids being like a trade route. It`s more interesting than just fire and forget.

15 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

5) The good ol' approach of give it a massive power cost wouldn't hurt as well, but with a catch. Say, it would need 1200 Watts to operate. BUT, you would need to keep it powered otherwise it would lose any stored radbolts and you'd have to charge radbolts from scratch when you turn the power back on.

It probably needs to use more power honestly. And i`m all for radbolts decaying in storage. Storing them infinitely in generators is broken. A large power cost makes sense for such a building and also differentiates it from rockets that need different types of fuel.

[n_t_p]

8 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

it`s purpose is to automate delivery and semi phase out rockets

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHY 

Why would you EVER want this? Wtf is the spaced out dlc without ROCKETS? Space IS spaceflight. The entire theme of the dlc is space. The majority of the trailer is dedicated to space, spaceflight, rocket features, and rockets. The teleporter is shown only briefly and it's hardly even clear what it is or what it does without further investigation. The whole point of the teleporter was to get the player warmed up to the idea of connecting planetoids and ready to go out on a rocket to explore.

The payload launcher keeps dupes grounded, keeps gameplay isolated, it completely breaks the core gameplay loop of jumping from planet to planet scrambling to get established and gradually getting everything interconnected and working cooperatively enough to not die. It removes all risk and lets you funnel resources practically for free. Compared to rockets there's no investment, no complexity, no engagement or interest in what happens to that planet after you build it. It's literally set and forget.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Sasza22]

21 minutes ago, n_t_p said:

Why would you EVER want this? Wtf is the spaced out dlc without ROCKETS?

Rockets already have a ton of use. You use them to setup new bases, for research and transport. But automating them requires a lot of effort and i think after we got our bases set up the launcher is a good alternative for some hands off transport. It doesn`t remove rockets from the core loop at all. You still need them to build the bases beforehand and for eventual dupe transport.

Also lets be honest, you won`t be able to sustain launchers on every planetoid. That would mean a base with a radbolt source. Rockets will still have their place in transport. Making interplanetary launchers viable doesn`t eliminate rockets from the game. It provides options.

[n_t_p]

6 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Rockets already have a ton of use. You use them to setup new bases, for research and transport. But automating them requires a lot of effort and i think after we got our bases set up the launcher is a good alternative for some hands off transport. It doesn`t remove rockets from the core loop at all. You still need them to build the bases beforehand and for eventual dupe transport.

Also lets be honest, you won`t be able to sustain launchers on every planetoid. That would mean a base with a radbolt source. Rockets will still have their place in transport. Making interplanetary launchers viable doesn`t eliminate rockets from the game. It provides options.

Space/wheezewort rads -> nuclear rocket launch -> nuclear waste exhaust -> payload launcher -> infinite rad source on any planet you want, all without ever touching down on another asteroid. 

Not to mention the infinite rad generator exploit exists