Food conservation : vacuum is overpowered

[SamLogan]

Hello,

Since the last patch, we have a new freezing level, the "Deep Freeze" that comes with -18°C and under temperature. But I feel the system is not logical, see those examples.

First, to have a perfect food conservation you have to associate : -18°C + sterile atmophere.

Example 1 : powered fridge + sterile atmosphere = -3% / cycle

 

Example 2 : fridge + sterile atmosphere + -18°C = 0% / cycle

(You can unpowered your fridge)

 

Example 3 : unplugged fridged in a vacuum = 0% / cycle

 

So you have two choices to have a perfect food conservation, use a cooling system + a sterile atmosphere OR just put your food in a vacuum. And the worst is a powered fridge in a sterile atmophere (temperature >= 4°C) is less powerfull than just an unplugged fridge in a vacuum that cost nothing.

Here's my propositions :

- Vacuum don't apply "Deep Freeze" bonus only sterile atmosphere, there's no thermal exchange in this environnement no reason to have this bonus.

- Powered Fridge is gas proof, unpowered fridge is not.

- New object : "freezer". When it's powered (250 Watts), it apply "Deep Freeze" to the food and it gas proof.

 

[Meltdown]

I think that the problem here is that food can get refrigeration/deep freeze statuses based on ambient temperature. It seems like powered fridge just counts as 4C, and separately from that actually cools its contents.

It would be simpler if food only counted its own temperature as a condition to get buffs, so vacuum wouldn't help to preserve food without it being cooled first, without any modifications to game logic.

4 hours ago, SamLogan said:

- New object : "freezer". When it's powered (250 Watts), it apply "Deep Freeze" to the food and it gas proof.

I think 250W for 0% spoilage is too cheap. I'd double/triple power consumption and still require sterile atmosphere. It would be nice alternative for those who don't want to build their own freezer contraptions.

[SamLogan]

1 hour ago, Meltdown said:

I think 250W for 0% spoilage is too cheap.

Vacuum is free.

[Magheat2009]

2 hours ago, Meltdown said:

It would be nice alternative for those who don't want to build their own freezer contraptions.

I don't think people who do not want to build their own freezer contraptions should be provided with an alternative or most people won't even think about building freezer contraptions as solar provides too much power already. I don't understand why never spoiling food is seen as a gameplay necessity. People can set up simple automation to not overproduce food. Storage of overproduced food is only necesssry for resin tree, which is again not something casual players need to bother with. Video games cannot cater to every quirky demand, and I find development of a freezer mod highly likely.

[Meltdown]

35 minutes ago, SamLogan said:

Vacuum is free.

Then again, current vacuum should be fixed (otherwise, recent spoilage changes are pointless). With fixed vacuum, you should bother with freezing contraption if you want to have infinite shelf life for your food. And in that case, machine that does the same thing for 250W is cheap, because "free vacuum" alone wouldn't accomplish the goals this machine would. You would need space, resources, automation for the same effect. 

30 minutes ago, Magheat2009 said:

I don't think people who do not want to build their own freezer contraptions should be provided with an alternative or most people won't even think about building freezer contraptions

Well, we have a building for people who don't want to build petroleum boilers. There is no reason not to allow people do the thing in simplified, but inefficient way. If that way has enough drawbacks, it would push some players to find their own solution.

Building freezer may be tuned to be not only power expensive, but have other drawbacks. Heat production, storage size (less storage = need more freezers = other costs multiply), may be some resource consumption. It's a matter of balance.

39 minutes ago, Magheat2009 said:

Video games cannot cater to every quirky demand

The mechanic for never spoiling food still exists, and it is still perfectly achievable milestone. Perfecting food preservation is as valid solution to spoilage problem as limiting overproduction, not a quirky demand that needs catering.

[Yunru]

8 hours ago, SamLogan said:

Vacuum don't apply "Deep Freeze" bonus only sterile atmosphere, there's no thermal exchange in this environnement no reason to have this bonus.

Much easier to just have deep freeze check the object's temperature, rather than the tile's.

[Technoincubus]

Ony downside is that dupes will get wet

[Magheat2009]

1 hour ago, Meltdown said:

The mechanic for never spoiling food still exists, and it is still perfectly achievable milestone. Perfecting food preservation is as valid solution to spoilage problem as limiting overproduction, not a quirky demand that needs catering.

'The game must allow me to have food never rot easily without any downsides' is the quirky demand I was refering to. 

[chemie]

what about vacuum and no freezer?

[KonfigSys]

do you really want to destruct developers with such a really non-issue?

some people like to have zero-spoilage easily - they use vacuum - you remove the option from them, they will go and load a mod - either vacuum provides zero spoilage or special deep-freezer

some people like to have it harder and are not using vacuum for food storage so it does not make any change for them

you only cater to people who want to play harder but for some reasons cannot discipline themselves.

ok it may also slightly affect people who use vacuum for food conveyor delivery to rockets and food storage in rockets - but they are sub-parts of groups 1 and 2.

[NewWorldDan]

I would support a refrigerator/freezer that consumes bleach stone to sterilize food.

 

Sometimes, the game is about rules that you impose on yourself.  For that reason, I'm currently playing with no infinite food storage and no solar panels (except on rockets).  I've got my food in 6 unpowered refrigerators in a CO2 pit regulated to -30C.  A single wheezewort in hydrogen with a door temp regulator is enough to keep it chilled.  It's working quite well - 1.5M calories stored and counting.

[Tiru]

A new deep freezer structure would really be valuable and I think is absolutely necessary for outposts. This update hit my playstyle hard.

In your main base, if you're going for infinite food storage, getting a sterile atmosphere below -18C isn't too bad. I was losing more food than I would have liked early game but a room with CO2 and two wheezeworts was all it took for mid game and I'll upgrade it again to something more resilient in late game. That's fine for the main base.

The real issue is outposts where you are operating on a much smaller base. I used to leave food in a powered fridge and it was always ready to go whenever i had to send a dupe. Now I have to bring food with me or store the fridge in vacuum which means dupes go to the bathroom, grab their exosuit and climb a ladder up to space for food, then back down to the mess hall. We need a simpler building for all the outposts and trade offs are fine. If it only stores 50kg and uses a kilowatt of power that would be fair. 

With the current system I feel I'm essentially going to be forced to use nothing but berry sludge for any asteroid other than my main base

[Meltdown]

56 minutes ago, chemie said:

what about vacuum and no freezer?

Since "ambient temperature" of vacuum tile counts as absolute zero, food counts as having deep freeze and sterile atmosphere, so no spoilage.

52 minutes ago, KonfigSys said:

do you really want to destruct developers with such a really non-issue?

With this non-issue spoilage changes makes no sense. What the point of changing the way atmosphere and temperature affect food if simply keeping it in vacuum remains the ultimate solution? Personally, I think that this issue is about things devs added to the game not working properly, and therefore worth complaining about and attracting attention to.

52 minutes ago, KonfigSys said:

they will go and load a mod

Every nerf or complication can be argued with "people will be unhappy and try mod it out".

I remember the same argument was used when atmosuit durability was introduced into testing branch. But, in the end, durability has made it into live branch. All pressure on that topic resulted in devs adding an option to lower difficulty and avoid this new mechanic.

I don't think that bringing up mods is helpful. We are talking about the base game, about it's balance, bugs, and experience it delivers. There can be may reasons for people to use mods, and it doesn't mean that every single of those reasons caused by a mistake made by devs.

[Magheat2009]

46 minutes ago, Tiru said:

berry sludge for any asteroid other than my main base

Berry Sludge provides +8 morale, which combined with a mess hall, laterine and bedroom totals to 18 morale points.  

[SamLogan]

1 hour ago, KonfigSys said:

do you really want to destruct developers with such a really non-issue?

some people like to have zero-spoilage easily - they use vacuum - you remove the option from them, they will go and load a mod - either vacuum provides zero spoilage or special deep-freezer

some people like to have it harder and are not using vacuum for food storage so it does not make any change for them

you only cater to people who want to play harder but for some reasons cannot discipline themselves.

ok it may also slightly affect people who use vacuum for food conveyor delivery to rockets and food storage in rockets - but they are sub-parts of groups 1 and 2.

That's the developpers which breaks the food preservation meta by incite us to use plugged fridge. So if they want to do it completly they need to erase all the exploit. Otherwise, I don't see the utility.

Why fix a lot of glitch around fridge when you can still avoid it with vacuum.

[sakura_sk]

5 minutes ago, SamLogan said:

Why fix a lot of glitch around fridge when you can still avoid it with vacuum.

Well... to be fair they also tried making the fridge always require power at the beginning but that sunk pretty quick 

[Khullag]

completely agree, vacuum for food has to go - i've always built vacuum storage for my food especially for the endgame which seems ridiculous - my dupes are using rockets and flying around in tubes but have to pick the food from the floor from the vacuum instead of using fridge like advanced species. 

• vacuum should not give deep freeze
• current fridge should require 60W (powering it in early/mid game makes no sense - powering fridge all the time takes literally 50% of power consumption of my 6 dupe base on the swampy asteroid). current fridge should be more affordable for early/mid game
• introduce new building "freezer" (as it was mentioned above) - 2x2 tiles, 480W (same as gas range as far as i remember, which is high-end cooking station), 50-200kg storage, gives "deep freeze" bonus, gas proof (so you can put it like a normal person next to the dining area and not force dupes to go into suites and the vacuum chamber to get a snack)
• if you want to make "freezer" even more end-game - make it require constant supply of chlorine like gas range requires natural gas, just make the consumption rate of chlorine similar to consumption rate of hydrogen in AETN

then you'll have a balanced early/mid game + solution for the endgame

actually i have one more solution (can be addition to the freezer or standalone):

• new building "food vacuum sealer"
• requires 10kg plastic per use
• seals 10000 calories of food into air-tight bags (which means food in them will be not affected by e.g. polluted oxygen, but still has to be frozen to preserve infinitely)
• increased lifetime of food in the bag, but not infinite - still requires freezing
• increased lifetime allows to send food packets via payload shooter (forgot the building name) to other asteroids and food not spoiling on the way (without the bag food should then spoin while travelling as payload)
• if combined with "freezer" building the plan would be to produce food, package it in bags and store in the freezer
• as result you spend plastic (meaning oil or drecko farms), energy for the freezer 24/7 and you have even more stuff to do with food
• to use "food vacuum sealer" you should have a skill which allows dupe to operate gas range since it's a end-game building
• sealed bag with 10000 calories of food is unpacked by dupe and becomes regular food which can be actually consumed and spoils in bad gases as it is currently
• if you want, you can move chlorine requirement (which i mentioned above) from the freezer into this building and as result require some chlorine and plastic to produce this sealed food bag

[Artorias36]

Vacuum should be gone. There should be 3 fridges ingame. One for 60w with 50 or 100 kg of storage for early game. One for 120w with 100 or 200 kg for mid game. And the last for 500w with 500kg for late game. All fridges should prevent spoilage if they have power. This makes fridges viable.

[KonfigSys]

3 hours ago, Meltdown said:

 

With this non-issue spoilage changes makes no sense. What the point of changing the way atmosphere and temperature affect food if simply keeping it in vacuum remains the ultimate solution? Personally, I think that this issue is about things devs added to the game not working properly, and therefore worth complaining about and attracting attention to.

Every nerf or complication can be argued with "people will be unhappy and try mod it out".

I remember the same argument was used when atmosuit durability was introduced into testing branch. But, in the end, durability has made it into live branch. All pressure on that topic resulted in devs adding an option to lower difficulty and avoid this new mechanic.

I don't think that bringing up mods is helpful. We are talking about the base game, about it's balance, bugs, and experience it delivers. There can be may reasons for people to use mods, and it doesn't mean that every single of those reasons caused by a mistake made by devs.

it makes perfect sense for me to have zero spoilage in vacuum. Any food looses water in vacuum and hence all spoilage stops; temperature is not a point anymore. That is what used in real space stations (dehydrated food packages). I ate one of those which was stored for like two years. 

The fact that some people are trying to shortcut and make a one-tile-with-a drop-of-water vacuum storage is not relevant. My point is if there are some people who is using the shortcut, they can simply go and load a mod if the nerf comes.

I did not say that people will be unhappy. What I said SOME people, who want to have an easy vacuum storage will do it without any hassles by using mods if the nerf happens. So it does not really matter for them.

The others - like me, I do not use one tile vacuum storage and use deep freeze + CO2/Cl even from the vanilla game time - do not care. Again if I choose whether developers try to fix vacuum storage OR introduce critters/seed collection on the new POIs, then I know what option I will feel incline to.

Good that you raise the atmosuit issue. It does not add much to the game play. I do not pay attention if I choose durable or not in my settings. I simply have unlimited option set to the worn suits to be repaired and do not care when it is done or it was not required. So there is a game mechanics which probably takes some processing power (to count wear per tick) but it does not add any thing to the game. How does it enrich your game experience? Do not even start with thimble reed usage - the atmosuit repair usage is a drop in a sea when you compare with carpeted tiles or thermo-insulation production.

There are so many requests to fix what is not necessary should be fixed. At least it does not spoil anybody game experience unless

- the people have no self discipline and they cannot avoid to use some bugs or even features that make the game play too easy for them; so they complain to remove the feature or bug so they are not teased to use it

- they are jealous of others using it. I do not know why but may be the case.

I will give you so many examples:

deconstruction of rocket tiles. 

it was a bug or a feature which allowed me to build an entire base in a habitat module. I really enjoyed planning it and then flying this star base to colonize planets. Or even better not colonize but extract resources and move away.

Yes, it added another game experience which I like at the time.

Then I did not use it anymore. I have even mode installed that I can deconstruct the tiles but I have never done it after that. I had my moments of joy. And by the way it was a way better experience for me than with the nuclear reactor.

I do understand the efforts to fix bugs and similar features in multiplayer game. In ONI where you compete just with your self it does not make much difference. Everyone can change the game with mods to the style he/her prefers to play.

I never deconstruct POI glasses to build solar panels. I really like the nice view of the POIs. Some people deconstructed. Now it is fixed. I do not care but someone got really upset with OTHERS using the glass from POIs and complain to Klei?

Are there the same people who cannot control themselves in game decisions? Why it is so important for them? That what I am trying to understand. The vacuum storage does not bother me a bit. You can search the forum where in day one of the deep freeze+CO2 update I posted my OLD designs of such storages.

Because vacuum no-spoilage is unreal? What is real in the game? Also un-spoilage of vacuumed food at room temperature is well known fact in real life.

 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, SamLogan said:

That's the developpers which breaks the food preservation meta by incite us to use plugged fridge. So if they want to do it completly they need to erase all the exploit. Otherwise, I don't see the utility.

Why fix a lot of glitch around fridge when you can still avoid it with vacuum.

You cannot erase all exploit. Even having the fridge in CO2 can be considered an exploit.

I do not see vacuum storage as too much of the problem. There is a bug in the game that gasses may migrate into the one-water-drop vacuum storage destroying the vacuum and rendering all food spoiled. 

What about simply not using vacuum storages for your bases like I do?

As someone correctly pointed it is not about the main basis usage but mainly for remote outposts that are rarely visited by dupes. And again I do not care as there are preserves in the game or the interplanetary launcher for a quick food delivery.

[spkthed]

There are no exploits in single player games only gameplay choices. I'm fine with vacuum going but do not see a need and there needs to be a replacement. You can get 'spoil-free' food IRL too. Maybe a late game station that uses radiation and adds a huge spoil debuff?

[gabberworld]

you know that Bacteria cant live in vacuum , if there no Bacteria then there is nothing what can spoil food

[Gurgel]

37 minutes ago, spkthed said:

There are no exploits in single player games only gameplay choices. I'm fine with vacuum going but do not see a need and there needs to be a replacement. You can get 'spoil-free' food IRL too. Maybe a late game station that uses radiation and adds a huge spoil debuff?

An end-game gamma-sterilizer for food would be welcome. Could make food keep forever, even if that is not quite how it works in reality.

 

[Hellshound38]

1 hour ago, spkthed said:

There are no exploits in single player games only gameplay choices. I'm fine with vacuum going but do not see a need and there needs to be a replacement. You can get 'spoil-free' food IRL too. Maybe a late game station that uses radiation and adds a huge spoil debuff?

There are no exploiters in multiplayer games either then?

Arbitrarily adding other people doesn't change the fact your exploiting unintentional mistakes in the game design or programming.

[spkthed]

Why would changing the rules of a game to match your preferences when you are playing by yourself be cheating? Who is going to judge you, your mother?

 

Obviously when you cheat and remove someone else's fun (multiplayer) that is a different situation.

1 hour ago, Gurgel said:

An end-game gamma-sterilizer for food would be welcome. Could make food keep forever, even if that is not quite how it works in reality.

 

Man and maybe a real use for table salt. The process makes it bland AF unless you have table salt. +0 morale for all foods without salt. With maybe -1 to the standard stat?

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, Hellshound38 said:

Arbitrarily adding other people doesn't change the fact your exploiting unintentional mistakes in the game design or programming.

There is no cheating in single-player games. "Exploit" has no negative connotations in single player games. Seriously. 

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