About Both DLC Terra Geysers and Biomes...

[ZombieDupe]

So I checked the new bigger DLC Terra variant and though you are surrounded by warm temperatures, boy is this now singlehandedly THE BEST and most relaxed DLC asteroid out there now, which is a good thing. May be the world gen I got had random-spawning extra Cool Slush Geyser and Cool Salty Slush Geyser, but that doesn't matter, the other map has those two and those are guaranteed! The Forest DLC asteroid is a really nice change. A different challenge that is still relaxing and the Hydrogen Vent can actually synergise well with the awful Cool Steam Vent nearby for better power efficiency/generation and water extraction.

The smaller DLC Terra variant however, I call shenanigans that you have left the Spaced Out Terra map to be as awful as it is. All it has is surrounding germs, heat everywhere but near space and two of the worst kind of water sources, and the swamp asteroid you hop from it doesn't spawn the Cool Slush Geyser nor the Salty Slush Geyser, but who knows, may be that's a bug. Cool Steam Vents are awful and pain in the ass to tame, the idea of them being the only water source is terrible unless it's meant as a challenge. Please revisit this asteroid, people are going to play your game for the first time, by default probably pick the worst experience and we will be back to most new people quitting at mid game because they can't manage heat. Or just move it elsewhere and just admit the survival chances on it are more Slim than Ideal. Whoever designed this one has no clue how big of a threat heat can be without a cool geyser being present to rescue you.

If you do this, and make Cool Slush Geyser and Cool Salty Slush Geyser appear as guaranteed spawns in the base game for easier asteroids (for example both for Terra, multiples of the latter for Oceana) with cooler temperatures, I would not hesitate to recommend this game to pretty much anyone and it would be a close 10/10 for me personally. It would be goodbye steam turbine + aqua tuner meta and Cool Steam Vent frustrations, unless you play on harder difficulties specifically intended to be that hard. Oh and you might want to make a freezing cold Liquid Chlorine Geyser to replace the Chlorine Vent on the gaseous planetoids with a higher output rate, as it would be more fitting considering asteroid's starting temperatures and work better for growing Gas Grass, but provide some other challenges, like a huge power sink if you wanted to heat up the chlorine to make bleachstone through sqeaky pufts.

[babba]

6 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

So I checked the new bigger DLC Terra variant and though you are surrounded by warm temperatures, boy is this now singlehandedly THE BEST and most relaxed DLC asteroid out there now, which is a good thing.

...

I could not agree more 

6 minutes ago, ZombieDupe said:

...

The smaller DLC Terra variant however, I call shenanigans that you have left the Spaced Out Terra map to be as awful as it is. All it has is surrounding germs, heat everywhere but near space and two of the worst kind of water sources, and the swamp asteroid you hop from it doesn't spawn the Cool Slush Geyser nor the Salty Slush Geyser, but who knows, may be that's a bug. Cool Steam Vents are awful and pain in the ass to tame, the idea of them being the only water source is terrible unless it's meant as a challenge. Please revisit this asteroid, people are going to play your game for the first time, by default probably pick the worst experience and we will be back to most new people quitting at mid game because they can't manage heat. Or just move it elsewhere and just admit the survival chances on it are more Slim than Ideal. Whoever designed this one has no clue how big of a threat heat can be without a cool geyser being present to rescue you.

Also fully agree on this Raised the issue a few times in the past.

[ZombieDupe]

Although, I'm starting to like the new Forest map start the most. Bit tougher on the oxygen side at the beginning, but it has Dasha Salt Vines to eat up chlorine. It was never really necessary, but not feeling the need to make a liquid lock for accessing and freeing up those areas is really nice. Still, chlorine being an actual deadly gas instead would be awesome.

[babba]

There is so much great space in Marioland Terra DLC Classic

I started to lay a few pipes for rocket-petro-fuel-production and a bit of plastic making Its 1% of the final outcome.

[Yunru]

10 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Whoever designed this one has no clue how big of a threat heat can be without a cool geyser being present to rescue you.

Ah classic ZD. If it doesn't align with what you want, it must be the designer's incompetence. 

[Oxygenbreather]

Well I consider the terra start with 2 steam vents and without a hydrogen cooler not newbie friendly. A way to destroy heat with say a liquid cooler in a ceramic heat trap with a steam generator on top putting the liquid back in.. it maybe a "duh" thing for veterans. But as newbie you'd have to come up with this at the first place...

[marioespinho]

10 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

The smaller DLC Terra variant however, I call shenanigans that you have left the Spaced Out Terra map to be as awful as it is. All it has is surrounding germs, heat everywhere but near space and two of the worst kind of water sources, and the swamp asteroid you hop from it doesn't spawn the Cool Slush Geyser nor the Salty Slush Geyser, but who knows, may be that's a bug. Cool Steam Vents are awful and pain in the ass to tame, the idea of them being the only water source is terrible unless it's meant as a challenge. Please revisit this asteroid, people are going to play your game for the first time, by default probably pick the worst experience and we will be back to most new people quitting at mid game because they can't manage heat. Or just move it elsewhere and just admit the survival chances on it are more Slim than Ideal. Whoever designed this one has no clue how big of a threat heat can be without a cool geyser being present to rescue you.

Can you stop trying to use the "New players will quit" argument everytime you are trying to prove your point? It kinda gets annoying...

Every new player will quit midgame because they screwed up somewhere. I believe NONE OF US had a sucessful first colony in ONI, and classic map had all those features you ask. New players have various options at start, if they choose one, fail, and proceed to give up, then these kind of games just isn't for them.

What i get from you words is that YOU just don't want to bother with cooling mechanics, so you want easy, slushy starts everywhere. Maybe cooling stuff down comes as a challenge to you, but it isn't for most people. And not everyone needs to have their hands held at the start of the game because "they might quit".

I can understand people that complain that CSV are too close to the starting point on some seeds, but overall, the heat isn't that much of an issue as it used to be in classic. There you had to rely on early mealwood farms, so anything over 30C would be a problem. In Spaced Out you can easily get to grubfuit farms, that hold still till you get over 50C, wich is plenty of time to work out some ways to cool the water down enough to be useful or just move the base somewhere cooler.

I think you don't really understand what a game should be doing for new players. New players need to be introduced to the problems to find solutions for them, not to be given ways to just ignore those problems. Sure they could/should be given options if they want a different approach, and said options exist both in Spaced Out as in the base game.

[Gurgel]

12 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

Whoever designed this one has no clue how big of a threat heat can be without a cool geyser being present to rescue you.

Actually, this being a DLC, it just has a high-difficulty start there, but not an impossible one by any means. No connection to designer competence.

1 hour ago, Oxygenbreather said:

Well I consider the terra start with 2 steam vents and without a hydrogen cooler not newbie friendly. A way to destroy heat with say a liquid cooler in a ceramic heat trap with a steam generator on top putting the liquid back in.. it maybe a "duh" thing for veterans. But as newbie you'd have to come up with this at the first place...

Sure. But any newbie will have similar issues starting on Oasisse or Volcanea. Also, DLCs often have harder settings, because they do typically not target newbies. 

[Oxygenbreather]

55 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Sure. But any newbie will have similar issues starting on Oasisse or Volcanea. Also, DLCs often have harder settings, because they do typically not target newbies. 

Yes, but isn't "terra" advertised as newbie start?

IMHO putting an Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier into terra start as newbie map is a fair suggestion.

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, Oxygenbreather said:

Yes, but isn't "terra" advertised as newbie start?

IMHO putting an Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier into terra start as newbie map is a fair suggestion.

Terra "Classic start", yes. The rest, no.

[JRup]

4 hours ago, marioespinho said:

I believe NONE OF US had a sucessful first colony in ONI

I DID!

JK! I still gotta go back and fix that weird idea infested abyss.

Waitaminnit, mental gymnastics aside, what kind of newbie skips vanilla game (the "tutorial") and goes straight into the DLC? (Some acronyms come to mind, though.)

2 hours ago, Oxygenbreather said:

IMHO putting an Anti Entropy Thermo-Nullifier into terra start as newbie map is a fair suggestion.

I cool my Ice-Makers with AETNs, in a vacuum, with liquid locks, btw. So I vote for this.

[Electroely]

20 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Terra "Classic start", yes. The rest, no.

To be fair, even the DLC Terra presents itself as the easiest:

Terra is said to have "a balanced variety of resources" and "everything needed to start a colony in a compact area." The forest cluster describes needing to venture out for metal, and the swamp cluster refers to itself as a polluted wasteland, both of which sound less beginner-friendly.

I'm a bit of a newer player myself. I did buy the game in alpha but I didn't really play much back then. The DLC's the one that got me to try to figure out the game and play it because I'm really enamored with the idea of a multi-planet colony.
So far I find Terra the easiest aside from the heat from the steam vents. The availability of Copper ore and Thimble Reeds helps a lot, and with the sand you get from the starting biome venturing out into the slimelung-infested marsh isn't too hard with an airlock and deodorizer. Once I got over my fear of the oil biome and a friend told me about how the aquatuner actually works (I wouldn't have figured out it needed to be submerged in liquid), the heat from the steam vent didn't seem like inevitable doom anymore, and the grubfruit plant's high temperature tolerance gave me ample time to figure out the situation before it got too deadly.
The swamp planet has a lot of little pools of water everywhere and the constantly melting Tundra usually gives me a lot of trouble. I enjoyed the Forest cluster the one time I tried it, but I got annoyed while playing it because I had to deal with 3 different kinds of metal ores (copper, aluminum, iron) instead of mainly copper with iron for steel. The Tundra that seemed to spawn with already-melted brine didn't help either as I found myself constantly trying to keep it from pouring into my base and mopping it up when it did. The Hydrogen vent was very useful for power, though.

 

[babba]

6 hours ago, Yunru said:

Ah classic ZD. If it doesn't align with what you want, it must be the designer's incompetence. 

Over the time there has been several players coming to the forum, often with 1 - 50 forum posts, describing their struggle with the "cool" 110 Celsius geyser(s).

As a general best practice, in my opinion, I seal off ( building tiles around it ) any heat source with a higher temperature above 30 Celsius in the map and recommend this as a general practice -  Especially for beginners.

If one loves playing challenges, especially when having played the game for more than 500-1000 hours, then ...hey, start a map with hot geysers. Having 2x 110 Celsius geysers spawning ( especially as only water sources ), is not beginner friendly.

Sure, one can start with a 50 Kilometer marathon if one never has run before...But I would start running with a few KM to see if I drop down dead. There is people which like to take the 12888 stairs to the top of a sky high building, 99.99% will take the elevator.

FPS - There is people which like to play only with a knife the whole time... others directly hop in to the nearby tank, standing 10 meters away, to have fun.

Klei gave me 1 glass of water for half a year sitting in a telephone booth , with the option to visit and play telephone booths somewhere else - With the Marioland DLC Terra Classic Map I now have got the 40 ton Pepsi tank waggon + Walmart + the entire BP refinery site + Cities:Skylines + Star Trek = FUN FUN FUN

For me this was what the original game had always been about, now I can play the game to the full extend again. Lots of options available, any play style is possible. Yeah !

[marioespinho]

@babba

“There is no growth in the comfort zone.” - Jocko Willink

What those players need is to learn how to play the game better, instead of requesting the developers to dumb it down for everyone every time they find some mechanic a bit harder.

If anything, i even think that the current cluster selection is awesome to help new players out. On one cluster you have heat to deal with, on the other you have cold.

Also, the vents won't even activate until you discover them, and even after that, it will take many, many cycles until that heat actually becomes a problem. So a begginer will have oxygen or food problems way sooner than temperature problems over those vents. To be honest, i would even expect a newbie to have more issues with all the falling mud and water all over the place on the swamp start.

 

[CheeseGromit]

What is the purpose of cool steam vents? Particularly in the context of being in the starting biome and close to the starting spawn. An early game renewable water source is incredible useful but not at that temperature. I've never 'tamed' one. All the videos, tutorials etc. I seen talk of using steel and steam turbines, which I wouldn't consider early game options.

Does a cool steam vent have an early game use? If no, why put it near the 'start'?

I've also attached an image of a common repeating piece of terrain, a cool steam vent near some thimble reeds. I don't understand the point of this layout. A natural source of wild thimble reeds is great but they're positioned next to something that will reasonably quickly change the environment to one that they cannot grow in. In my current game I've put a vertical two layer insulated tile barrier to the left of the vent and have one thimble read that's within it's temperature range. It's crude and ugly, and I'm not very happy with it but I've hopefully isolated at least some of the useful part. I just don't understand the design intention. To me that vent should be putting out water that's 22-37°C.

[marioespinho]

@CheeseGromit

The quick answer is that almost nothing in ONI comes free without some sort of drawback. Geysers/Vents are infinite sources of resources, but they all have some sort of drawback, usually in form of temperature management.

A Cool Steam Vent isn't supposed to be an early game source of water, that's why you have multiple water pools near the starting area. And those steel tamers you have seen are mostly used to either get the full output of water without having the vent overpressure, or to lower the temperature to manageable temperatures easier.

There are other ways to cool the water down, some requiring more hoops to be jumped than others. But being possible nonetheless. Want a very easy way to cool it down? Just dig a corridor on the cool upper area of the biome and snake  the water thought there, even on regular pipes it will be enough to lower it down by some degrees. Won't work forever, but it's easy to do and works for quite some time.

[babba]

33 minutes ago, marioespinho said:

@babba

...

What those players need is to learn how to play the game better...

...

I find it is about giving the player the options and time to learn more about the game and to enjoy it 

If one perhaps finds the DLC Terra Classic a dumbed down map, well...Wouldn`t that imply that the Vanilla Base Game, with awesome Steam ratings, was a dumbed down game ? Klei will offer various maps with various starting difficulties, sizes and options...Its not that anybody gets forced in to playing something they don`t like ? A lot of hardcore niche games die, so I find it important that the ONI dlc is a financial success and a fun experience for the average player...In order to have a long term development team work on it.

Where do you feel the game is dumbed down ? If you provide an exact list of your game issues, then Klei can look at it

[Red Oolong]

33 minutes ago, CheeseGromit said:

 

Does a cool steam vent have an early game use?

 

Yep. Just stick a pump in the water pool near it and feed an electrolyzer. It takes hundreds of cycles for the steam to actually stay steam, and by then you will likely have plastic and steel. Its not too difficult to get usable output from cool steam vents. Getting usable output that will last indefinitely is the hard part.

[Sasza22]

1 hour ago, CheeseGromit said:

What is the purpose of cool steam vents? Particularly in the context of being in the starting biome and close to the starting spawn. An early game renewable water source is incredible useful but not at that temperature. I've never 'tamed' one. All the videos, tutorials etc. I seen talk of using steel and steam turbines, which I wouldn't consider early game options.

For a long time those were the only guaranteed water geysers. In the early days we didn`t even have steam turbines to cool them down (back when turbines worked differently and were so complicated most players didn`t bother using them). Still somehow we used them.

Personally i never build a proper geyser tamer with steel and a steam turbine. But there were other options. Main thing i used was ice biomes. Pumping hot water through them melted the biome, cooling the water in the process. It took a few hunderd cycles before i had to switch to a different ice biome.

The main problems with the current small terra is the lack of ice biomes and occasional geyser spawns close to the starting biome (or basically inside it). On maps with no cold biomes i usually ignored the hot water until midgame and then used aquatuners in the polluted water pools which lasted long as well.

In the dlc the lack of easy transition into midgame due to lack of nat gas makes it harder. I still have to try pumping water through the near surface biome. Hydrogen naturally goes there and helps with thermal conductivity (i used polymer presses with no extra cooling there with no problem) so at -60 C it might be a method to cool down the geyser water for a while.

[CheeseGromit]

1 hour ago, marioespinho said:

The quick answer is that almost nothing in ONI comes free without some sort of drawback.

Yes, that's what I been thinking. It probably explains why I restart a lot. As much as I like solving problems, a lot of my solutions end up being short term kludges that annoy me and I want to start over fresh to see if I can do better but never manage to because something else happens.

 

6 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Main thing i used was ice biomes. Pumping hot water through them melted the biome, cooling the water in the process. It took a few hunderd cycles before i had to switch to a different ice biome.

That's fair. I'm pretty sure I've done that in the past. Not something I was ever a fan of since I didn't like the idea of premanently melting an ice biome. I have been putting a lot of the hot stuff near the surface recently. I've gone to the classic start in the DLC and it's taking me a lot longer to get to the surface now.

[marioespinho]

59 minutes ago, babba said:

I find it is about giving the player the options and time to learn more about the game and to enjoy it 

If one perhaps finds the DLC Terra Classic a dumbed down map, well...Wouldn`t that imply that the Vanilla Base Game, with awesome Steam ratings, was a dumbed down game ? Klei will offer various maps with various starting difficulties, sizes and options...Its not that anybody gets forced in to playing something they don`t like ? A lot of hardcore niche games die, so I find it important that the ONI dlc is a financial success and a fun experience for the average player...In order to have a long term development team work on it.

Where do you feel the game is dumbed down ? If you provide an exact list of your game issues, then Klei can look at it

And players have those options. In the cluster starting screen, where they have currently 4 available clusters to choose from. Out of the 3 small ones, you have a hot one, a cold one, and one with both hot and cold, so how is this not having options? Also, OP didn't want options, he wanted easy terra gaming. Notice he didn't request a CSV on swamp to "have options", and you didn't mention it either, wich takes me to the next point about dumbing the game down.

I think you don't get, or pretend you don't, what dumbing down the game is. Making a specific part of the game easier is not the same as making it better. DLC terra has it's challenges, like the other clusters have too. So the request isn't about balance or options, it's about making it easier for none other than refusal to adapt to the cluster rules. And trying to pull the classic terra map into the conversation like it has anything to do with what i said makes no sense. Classic terra had over 12 geysers/vents, DLC one has about 4, so tell me how is that even comparable?

Also, niche games don't survive by answering to players demands every time they rant because they can't/won't deal with some game mechanic. In fact, i know a lot of them that pretty much died because of trying to do exactly that.

What we need is to quit trying to pull hypothetical game sales or player base increase/decrease into arguments to try and validade a point.

 

[babba]

 

26 minutes ago, marioespinho said:

And trying to pull the classic terra map into the conversation like it has anything to do with what i said makes no sense.

22 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

So I checked the new bigger DLC Terra variant...

It is the introduction of this thread by ZombieDupe.

A lot of players have played the base game, so therefore they will often compare the base game with the dlc content. The dlc content now starts to have a variety of multiple maps, starting choices and options - Hopefully there will be more in the future

So, what do you find currently dumbed down in the game @marioespinho ? If you list some specifics, then they could be discussed or addressed by Klei.

What are you missing in the game currently and what would you like Klei to change, in your opinion ?

If one states, "I want this and that xyz or I think this and that about abc game content" - That is often a good solid discussion base and address point for a developer to investigate and consider. What do you want

[marioespinho]

18 minutes ago, babba said:

It is the introduction of this thread by ZombieDupe.

A lot of players have played the base game, so therefore they will often compare the base game with the dlc content. The dlc content now starts to have a variety of multiple maps, starting choices and options - Hopefully there will be more in the future

If you read my first reply, i only adressed the smaller DLC terra part.

25 minutes ago, babba said:

So, what do you find currently dumbed down in the game @marioespinho ? If you list some specifics, then they could be discussed or addressed by Klei.

I never mentioned anything being currently dumbed down.

 

31 minutes ago, babba said:

What are you missing in the game currently and what would you like Klei to change, in your opinion ?

I don't have many requests, and the things i would like are more personal preferences. I actually think the game is pretty balanced, for the most part, and the stuff that it isn't is actually on early acess, so i'm gonna wait until it's fully done.

But since you asked, stuff i wanted to see:

- Harder diseases, since almost all of them can pretty much be ignored.

- More dangerous critters, since almost all of them are harmless.

- More power sinks to give some use to the massive power options we currently have.

- Maybe suits rework so that there would be a reason to actually use them.

- Some new endgame goals.

Those are just on top of my head. Could be more.

[babba]

I find that are good suggestions...and they are popular forumista requests. Especially endgame goals would be very nice, my opinion

Nobody is taking your beloved dlc cluster gameplay away, I think that is your main concern

I`m off to a nice bath now and wish you a nice weekend

[Oxygenbreather]

6 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

For a long time those were the only guaranteed water geysers. In the early days we didn`t even have steam turbines to cool them down (back when turbines worked differently and were so complicated most players didn`t bother using them). Still somehow we used them.

Yes but wheezeworths were much more powerful and didn't need phosphor supply too.. and putting them in a hydrogen atmosphere to maximize their effect.