You can only experience certain mechanics when you make a mistake

[Sasza22]

This is a pretty omplex issue i realized after a while of playing. Some of the systems in the game rely on you mismanaging your dupes and your base to fully experience them. The germ system is a good example. If you know what you are doing you can completely nullify the system. Food poisoning is easily averted with sinks unless you produce mushbars which you can skip most of the time. Slimelung can be easily contained and zombie spores appear in a biome that already forces you to use atmo suits.

Another example is stress. Unless you make a mistake your dupes shouldn`t get a stress reaction. After you get a starting build you can easily avoid most of the stress and just keep dupes at minimal expectations and just teach the necessary jobs.

Now we got the reactor meltdown that has a cool animation, special mechanics attached and even it`s own music. But if you play properly a meltdown should never happen so you won`t experience all that and if you do you`ll feel like you messed up hard.

Now my point is that the game has multiple things that can happen when you fail but doesn`t have mechanics that lead you to that spot. There is no enemy attacking you, no random events, no traps you need to beat etc. You only fail if you do something wrong and it feels bad when you do unlike games like ftl for example where when you fail it`s casue the odds are stacked against you.

Now ONI is a different game and probably shouldn`t have a mechanic that agressively sabotages you but i feel like some of the scenarios are so unlikely to happen that it`s a wasted opportunity for some interesting gameplay. For example a dupe infected with slimleung could cause exposure to other dupes just by passing by so it actually spreads in the colony. Sporechids could spawn next to oil wells so it`s harder to avoid them and zombie spores could spread to oil so getting rid of them is harder. Cetain advanced tasks could cause stress by default so it doesn`t become a non issue later in the game (stuff like carrying nuclear waste or harvesting uranium from a beeta hive). Random sloar flares could hit the surface and cause radiation sickness if dupes aren`t shielded etc.

I`m not usre if it`s the right approach. I don`t want to make the game harder for the dake of being hard or tedious. I`m just sad when i see a lot of work being put into stuff that doesn`t even appear on the screen 90% of the time. Does anyone else feel this way?

[babba]

The possible experienced complexity of the game is astonishing, similar to RimWorld, Factorio and such games. I find the full potential of such games can only be assessed and valued by a player if played for thousands of hours. However, assessing and to value a game title is optional for every player and everyones entitled freedom - A lot of players dip for short time in to various game titles, some games stick...Other don`t.

For me the game is in the kind of top league of forementioned titles...Or at least approaching this kind of quality and complexity. I mean, would we else hang out here

I`ll never forget when I used the editor a few years ago, I was totally amazed...and the fantasy chemistry and thermal simulation are just some components of the entire game. I also love the colony manager aspect of the game, the graphics cuteness, setting up logistics + the cold war/space age feeling it gives me. A lot of things are down to the imagination of players.

Need to now install 100 toilets...

Wishing you a nice joyful weekend and a good next week, dear @Sasza22

[sakura_sk]

After playing ONI for many many hours, the vanilla game for me stayed stable for sure and starting a new map on Terra didn't offer much difference. Maybe a different setup of geysers but everything else (germs, food, oxygen) would be almost the same setup every time.

Playing the DLC though seemed completely different. The small size of map, makes progression faster and that leads to more collapses than what I was used to. You still can take your time and stabilize your base, before starting a space program, but a space program is possible at cycle 50 now (~50-100 cycles to be more accurate). It's like my hours of play have more value.

Zombie spores wasn't a problem before and it was easily containable but now a drop of ethanol can make most of an asteroid unlivable. Stress in vanilla didn't bother me after the first few weeks after release but managing my dupes while they travel to inhospitable asteroids with no infrastructure, brought stress back and I loved it  There is also the "duress to impress" which is super OP if you can manage it.

Spoiler

Meet my vacuum Max and my angry muffin Nisbet 

  

 I could go on about differences and how I play the game completely differently now than before but maybe it is just the hours of play piling up...? I don't know... I'm in a "oh well... Let's see how that goes" playing mode and not a "we need to survive at all costs!".

Maybe some RNG would make things more interesting but I wouldn't know how. It would probably kill the "left alone" colony approach (solar flares, sandstorms) and enclosed systems (random breaks of machinery or wires/pipes). I wouldn't say no to random vomiting when food-poisoned though.

[Sasza22]

I guess the dlc did a good job in making some of the systems relevant again, like stress for example. I just fear some of the things that can heppen in game will never happen to me after i know how to avoid them. For now i`ll wait to see how the research reactor eventually ties to the rest of the game. Maybe there will be a scenario where you want it to meltdown.

[Coolthulhu]

I agree, the game is set up in such a way that you have very distinct "DOs" and "DON'Ts".

For example, the hospital room, which says it helps prevent spread of disease, but it doesn't do anything at all. The diseases just aren't contagious, so there's no reason to prevent their spread.

The game should incentivize risk-taking more. For example, running the reactor at stupidly high temperature and pressure could be more efficient. Hand lotion that is removed when washing hands would be an incentive to keep dupe hands germy and risk disease. A planet, where food rots even when frozen and sterile, but which has unique plants/animals that die outside it, would force player to overproduce or risk starvation.

Placing sporechids in strategic locations is a good idea, but for as long as they are as deadly as they are now, they would still be handled completely safely (flooded and vacuumed). There's no reason to ever risk contact with zombie spores.

I don't think contagious dupes are a good idea. Sounds like a lot of micromanagement.

[pether]

Totally agree! The game has really nice systems that never happen in my games. Most of them are plain "do NOT do this" so I never do.

It would be super cool if the game encouraged and rewarded risky strategies. Like "you better not do this, but if you do this correctly you will be so happy"

DLC stress is good example. Before it was "don't overskill your dupes, let every dupe be good at something". Now it is "don't do this, but you might want to when going to another asteroid"

Other plain bad systems could learn from it. Germs could for example have positive effect on some plants/critters, so player was encouraged to risk exposure if he wanted some extra bonus. Not to say that germ exposure should be more severe - we should at least have option for this in menus.

Another idea I had some time ago was quest system. Every some time, your duplicant could come to you (using some popup or sth) with quest somhow related to his interests (eg diggers could request exploring distant part of the world). Each quest would be scripted so unexpected events could happen when you follow them (like earthqake trapping your diggers unconscious/germ outbreak/spawning aggresive critters etc). Failure to complete quest in given time would cause some bad effects, like triggering stress reaction for the questing duplicant. If you complete one you would get extra unique rewards. So you could accept penalties or risk even worse effects to get even better reward. Ofc the more dupes you have the more quests appear and the harder it is to complete all of them.

[babba]

40 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

...

I don't think contagious dupes are a good idea. Sounds like a lot of micromanagement.

Could be taken care of by the Doctor Profession. The elected Doctors ( Dr. Fred & Dr. Edna as example given player names ) run around and heal the infected, restock with elixirs, tablets and whatnot from apothecary stock.

The Priest runs around and gives dupes with very low morale a temporary morale boost by blessing them.

   Dr. Fred & Dr. Edna

The Radiology is the only building which could cure radiation sickness in the game.

 

[Sasza22]

1 hour ago, Coolthulhu said:

The game should incentivize risk-taking more.

That`s actually a good way to make the bad things happen more often so that we can experience them. Like in DST we got a lot of things that lower sanity for example and a lot of ways to get it back up. To get rare items you need to fight bosses or explore ruins which is risky.

In ONI to get rare stuff we need sophisitcated systems but when set up it`s not that risky for dupes or our base. Now if we had jobs that could cause extra stress, research or production that required germ exposure or even a chance for a positive mutation when dupes get irradiated maybe it could make it more interesting.

On the other hand it might just lead to more dupe torture chambers which isn`t exactly the way i like it to go.

[crbd115]

On the germ end of things, containing slimelung was the strategy before it was nerfed. While yes it is still a strategy, I find it easier to simply not bother with containing it and just bulldoze through the biome while depositing all the slime into water covered containers. I have my immune system set to as low as possible and I only ever get about 1 dupe sick out of 8 typically at a time. Then the deodorizers eventually convert all the pO2 to oxygen and slimelung eventually dies off. The problem is with its current design its meant to slow you down or annoy you but attempting to plan around it and circumvent it actually takes more time then just letting your dupes deal with it.
Now the slime biome isn't on every start, so you don't always have to deal with it in the early-mid game all the time. Which is where it's designed to be an annoyance. It also doesn't have much use either since mushrooms aren't used that much as a food source anymore. 
There was a mod that came out not that long ago that at least made germs have a use which gave a risk to reward. Meal lice covered in food poisoning gave more food, mushrooms that had slimelung germs gave off pO2 when they were harvested, and something with slicksters in with zombie germs but I don't remember what it was. I feel like this is a good direction for germs to have a risk to reward choice.
Though honestly I think there needs to be a few more germ types in the game. Right now I think the wasteland design with grubfruit and grubgrubs/sweetles is way too easy. Basically its just free food and resources with no real investment or threat. Heck the biome even has a bunch of free oxygen in it. I think this would be a good place for a new germ type. Maybe one that comes from the critters themselves since we don't have a critter based disease really. I mean we basically put them in every farm we make since they just give free growth bonuses to plants. 

[ZombieDupe]

Absolutely agree. When something really bad happens, it can be the downfall of the colony and you might not even learn things. If to some degree they were inevitable for progress, but not enough to scare you from progressing completely, you could have a lot more fun while playing and experience problem solving as the problems happen. Here is one way a progression system involving risk-taking could be made.

One cool approach with multiple challenges could be to have cold biomes for example have zombie spores instead of the oil biome, along with frostbite as a mechanic, working like scalding does but below -10C or so. The chill from there, particularly with the cold slush geysers that are available are your main solution to pretty much all problems, especially cooling. The below sub zero temperatures at first would signal to you that you need the atmo suits to enter there or else your duplicants could die from frostbite. But even then when having suits, zombie spores could still be an issue when grabbing some things from there that could be produced by something like wheezeworts or something else, sitting on solids and spreading in the air. These spores would get on the suits when airborne or if a duplicant picks up something solid that has it, then when the duplicant takes off their suit before the spores get cleaned from the suit, they could get the spores on themselves as well, leaving them with potential infection. Then if they were actually deadly or incredibly bad in some other way and were prone to outbreaks, and also incredibly hard to kill, you would need serious medication as well as chlorine. To avoid sinks/wash basins from being the simple end-all solution to it, if you use water that is already full of germs, it would instead exchange germs, so you would need completely clean water for a clean wash (or use different germ types could kill each other may be), something that should have really been done long ago.

Now if chlorine itself is deadly, getting reed fibre from dreckos could require oxygen masks or even atmo suits (not sure how bad chlorine is irl if you are not inhaling it), and if the latter, then the only way to progress would be to get into the slime biome and get reed fibre for the suits from there first, which would require oxygen masks to minimise exposure, but not necessarily eliminate it, requiring medication and possibly sanitation besides bleachstone, such as sinks or basic wash basins. And if the only access you can get to a swamp biome is through space travel, rockets can become more appealing earlier on. Rovers could be another method to deal with situations such as this, but you could balance them in such a way that would make them just as accessible to use as the alternative method, such as limiting them to higher end research and requiring materials that need manufacturing and taking risks for obtain.

Many changes would need to be made to facilitate a progression system like this, but problems could be found and engaged with regardless of how well you play. But you must also make sure that the player does not get soft locked, such as needing two resources that require the other to progress. And of course not have the player get stuck in a loop of not knowing what to do, like has been the case with heat for many for so long.

[CheeseGromit]

Interesting discussion topic, it's made me analyse why I play the way I play.

Generally I would have said that for me these things are best experienced on a rare basis. The recent patch that introduced radiation sickness was an interesting experience, with mild radiation sickness causing mass vomiting and death by starvation. I will remember that for quite a while but will be perfectly happy if I never see it again. The memory is part of not wanting it to be a regular thing but there's also the time component and hassle of cleaning up. It's a bit of a different case as an under development feature, if it wasn't patched I would have been restart.

I've been choosing to play on no-sweat mode since it was added to the game, so I haven't experienced anything like the above for a while. The main reason is time. Despite playing for years there's a lot of this game I haven't experienced. My early experiences of the game taught me that things will cacade out of control very quickly in ONI. Solving one problem with invariably create another. Even if an event is fairly benign it can still take a long time to clean up after it. This is where I will often restart if I don't want to invest the time to go through the process of cleaning up. Thinking about it, my desire to avoid mess and problems heavily influences my play-style, makes me risk averse and probably holds back my progress and desire to experiment.

I'm bemused by my first 'proper' encounter with slimeling, which was only fairly recently. I avoided it as a possible threat for years, not really knowing how to deal with it in a way I was happy with, i.e. not creating a massive mess. Some of this is limited by game mechanics. In the end as an event it was completely benign. I made a mess, unearthed an aluminium volcano which started spewing heat into a wide open area. New patches meant I've moved onto new starts so I don't know what the consequences of that would have been.

Anyway, interesting topic. I play at a much lower level and still want to avoid these mechanics where possible. Maybe one day I'll get comfortable ennough with the game to want to add these in for flavour.

[goboking]

Nuclear meltdowns are fun to watch, but they're also quite devastating.  I don't think it's fair to force such a thing on players who have taken proper measures to avoid such a thing.  If players want the chance of something like this to happen randomly, then it probably needs to be something they opt into during game setup.

Stress is like food, oxygen, etc, in that once you learn to manage it, you never unlearn how do to so.  Difficulty settings can make things like starvation and stress breakdowns more likely, but generally speaking, players aren't going to see these things in their colonies once they learn how to solve for them.  That's just the nature of the game, for better or worse.

I feel a bit differently on germs.  It's my humble opinion that germs work best with both proactive and reactive counterplays.  Preventative measures like sterile environments, vitamin supplements, physical checkups should reduce the likelihood of illness, but not eliminate it.  But in my book, the system is never going to feel complete until the threat of illness is not only real, but scary.  Only then will people the value of doctors, hospitals, etc, be fully realized.

[Sasza22]

13 hours ago, goboking said:

Nuclear meltdowns are fun to watch, but they're also quite devastating.  I don't think it's fair to force such a thing on players who have taken proper measures to avoid such a thing.  If players want the chance of something like this to happen randomly, then it probably needs to be something they opt into during game setup.

Yeah, i don`t want to force bad events on anyone. Especially ones that can basically end your colony. But with the amount of work the devs put into the meltdown it feels like it shouldn`t be a thing that never happens. Maybe there could be a puzzle piece PoI that involves a reactor and can be solved only by causing meltdown.

[sakura_sk]

3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Maybe there could be a puzzle piece PoI that involves a reactor and can be solved only by causing meltdown.

or... the need to use Corium for something, although I don't think corium is stable enough to stay put. It is produced only on meltdown but it off-gasses nuclear waste (or something...) and dissolves like slime.

 

[babba]

On 4/26/2021 at 7:41 PM, sakura_sk said:

or... the need to use Corium for something, although I don't think corium is stable enough to stay put. It is produced only on meltdown but it off-gasses nuclear waste (or something...) and dissolves like slime.

 

...Corium can dissolve in to Radioactive Slime

Radioactive Slime can be split in to StrontiumSlimeCheesebits & regular Slime, with the help of the Nickelsplitter building !

 

[Rainbowdesign]

On 4/24/2021 at 12:54 AM, Sasza22 said:

This is a pretty omplex issue i realized after a while of playing. Some of the systems in the game rely on you mismanaging your dupes and your base to fully experience them. The germ system is a good example. If you know what you are doing you can completely nullify the system. Food poisoning is easily averted with sinks unless you produce mushbars which you can skip most of the time. Slimelung can be easily contained and zombie spores appear in a biome that already forces you to use atmo suits.

Another example is stress. Unless you make a mistake your dupes shouldn`t get a stress reaction. After you get a starting build you can easily avoid most of the stress and just keep dupes at minimal expectations and just teach the necessary jobs.

Now we got the reactor meltdown that has a cool animation, special mechanics attached and even it`s own music. But if you play properly a meltdown should never happen so you won`t experience all that and if you do you`ll feel like you messed up hard.

Now my point is that the game has multiple things that can happen when you fail but doesn`t have mechanics that lead you to that spot. There is no enemy attacking you, no random events, no traps you need to beat etc. You only fail if you do something wrong and it feels bad when you do unlike games like ftl for example where when you fail it`s casue the odds are stacked against you.

Now ONI is a different game and probably shouldn`t have a mechanic that agressively sabotages you but i feel like some of the scenarios are so unlikely to happen that it`s a wasted opportunity for some interesting gameplay. For example a dupe infected with slimleung could cause exposure to other dupes just by passing by so it actually spreads in the colony. Sporechids could spawn next to oil wells so it`s harder to avoid them and zombie spores could spread to oil so getting rid of them is harder. Cetain advanced tasks could cause stress by default so it doesn`t become a non issue later in the game (stuff like carrying nuclear waste or harvesting uranium from a beeta hive). Random sloar flares could hit the surface and cause radiation sickness if dupes aren`t shielded etc.

I`m not usre if it`s the right approach. I don`t want to make the game harder for the dake of being hard or tedious. I`m just sad when i see a lot of work being put into stuff that doesn`t even appear on the screen 90% of the time. Does anyone else feel this way?

Hey saza, 

I am working on a mod that will make things very configurable.

As example its ready to make you start with -270 degree on the whole map.

Which is certainly a different experience, i found while testing the biggest problem is that dupes will start suffocate at the beginning because the oxygen falls from the air.

 

Btw i really would like to see pirates some day that mine the asteroids your on unless you drive them away.

[babba]

21 hours ago, Rainbowdesign said:

Btw i really would like to see pirates some day that mine the asteroids your on unless you drive them away.

I would love this Somehow I have to think of...