Space radiation - is it needed...?

[pether]

Nuclear additions to the game are really cool and I can't wait when the DLC is stable enough so I could start brand new game and play with the green glowy rocks.

But - is the space radiation really needed?

Nuclear techs feel nice and hard to research, like a big milestone of my colony development until somebody says "hey, just put it in space" - and then all charm is gone... There is no real challenge to get high-tier technology, no real accomplishment, you don't even need to travel on another planet to get it.

At first I was really happy that green research will balance currently out-of-balance solar panels, but people report they just get radbolts for it from space. Everytime something seems hard due to radbolt requirements - space. Ignore beetas, ignore radium, just space... I could understand if space radiation was somehow affecting other aspects of the game. During first days dupes got sick and died when they looked into the void for too long. But now they pee 60 rads away, so they would need to stay in space for more than 2 cycles to gather that much HighEnergyPee.

So it feels that space radiation has no downside and is too easy source of radbolts, making the game trivial and the 2nd colony redundant, harder and more expensive source of the radbolts...

Not sure how to feel about radioactive shinebugs and wheezeworts too... I mean - I don't mind the radioactive critters and plants, it is super cool idea, but having them avilable since cycle 1 kindof strips nuclear science from all its uniqueness...

So I think low radiation should be romoved from space and other easily accesible sources. OR - radbolt generators could require some radiation threshold before they start working. OR - easily accesible radiation should be more dangerous for dupes...

[babba]

+100 Sievert

[Sasza22]

The low amounts of radiation should be an annoyance not a resource. Currently they don`t affect you negatively in any way (with dupes losing 100 rads per cycle it would need to be 10 times stronger to matter). Meanwhile radbolt collectors + solar panels can provide infinite radbolts just from space alone.

[Ranah]

Exponential scaling of radbolt production instead of the current linear scaling might be solution for some problems. low level radiation can still be used for easier tech(5 points) and sending small packages but for larger tech and transport and the radbolt engine you would need stronger radiation sources. Might also cause some other problems on the other hand, like balancing issues it might be a bit overpowered on the high end.

When I first saw the space radiation it made me think of it as a replacement for meteors in keeping the surface from being too hospitable but in practice that's not really how it works.

[SharraShimada]

Yes, you can get enough radiation from space. But its just barely enough to use it for anything. You need a lot of collectors to do something useful, wasting a ton of energy, and producing a lot of heat. Its good for a start, but not worth later on. It takes ages to ship material from one planet to the other with the interplanetary launcher when you only use the tiny bit of space radiation.