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So this is partially about a bug fix, but it's a very long-term bug (Since QoL 3 patch) that would be disruptive to fix. The suggestion, would be this would be an excellent time to tackle the bug and other issues.

Dreckos and other critters that eat plants, completely refill their calories when they eat a plant. So a mealwood which has grown to 25%, will provide 10000 calories to a Drecko that is starving. This bug allows grossly "underfeeding" critters without negative consequences, like having 1 mealwood feeding 3-6 Dreckos. The suggestion is to simply fix this bug, so that eating a plant provides an amount of calories proportional to the amount of plant eaten (for example in-game data indicate a mealwood plant should be worth 2000 calories to a Drecko).

The second issue is that Dreckos do not get any kind of scale growth penalty except for not being in hydrogen, this leads to "concentration camp" ranching of "excess" Dreckos, often called "starvation ranching". Poor helpless baby Dreckos are locked in a tiny chamber full of hydrogen where they grow up glum, overcrowded and (eventually) starving to death as they never see a single gram of food in their entire life. During this time a Glossy Drecko will be sheared 11 times, producing 1650 kg of plastic. It is only logical that Dreckos should involve some kind of conversion of dirt (mealwood) or water (bristle blossom) into reed fiber/plastic, rather than basically producing resources out of thin air. Of course if the player goes to the effort to make a substantial wild plant ranch that's fine too.

Simply applying the same penalty as Plug Slugs get to Drecko scale growth would go a long way to nerfing starvation ranching, and I don't want starvation ranching to be entirely pointless just not to be stupid overpowered. Another thing that would largely remedy it is applying the metabolism penalty, as starvation ranching is greatly enhanced by glumness, allowing the Dreckos to ward off starving for 5x longer, thus getting in several more shearings.

The bugfix for calories and the change to scale growth would not unduly impact a "noob" player's build where they provide Dreckos with a "reasonable looking" amount of mealwoods and actually groom the Dreckos, but would of course destroy the min-maxer build.

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2 minutes ago, hot focaccia said:

in the dlc if the dreko isnt groomed they grow their scales way slower

 

Doesn't seem to. This is a glum, ungroomed, tame Drecko with the full 33% scale growth per cycle.
drecko.thumb.jpg.3541fa800a3e52a2e16b966f44e9f530.jpg
I've also not seen any reference to such a thing in the patch notes. The most recent reference to Dreckos I can find is from 2018.

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24 minutes ago, blakemw said:

So a mealwood which has grown to 25%, will provide 10000 calories to a Drecko that is starving.

Is this the case? I remember putting a wild glossy drecko in a ranch with mealwood and it ate 5 plants before it was full. Looked like pacman. Granted it was a while ago but i can`t recall any patch that changed how much calories they gained.

Anyway i can agree that starving should stop or at least slow down scale regrowth.

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1 minute ago, Sasza22 said:

Is this the case? I remember putting a wild glossy drecko in a ranch with mealwood and it ate 5 plants before it was full. Looked like pacman. Granted it was a while ago but i can`t recall any patch that changed how much calories they gained.

In my observations Dreckos eat even if they have very high calories.

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Just now, blakemw said:

In my observations Dreckos eat even if they have very high calories.

Critters usually do that but that`s not the point. I remember they didn`t get 10k calories from a single plant before. They got like 2k or something. Was this changed?

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9 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Critters usually do that but that`s not the point. I remember they didn`t get 10k calories from a single plant before. They got like 2k or something. Was this changed?

I don't know if there are some circumstances where they don't get set to full calories but I can only reproduce them getting set to full calories. Btw, all testing I've done has been with Glossy Dreckos, not normal Dreckos.

The Mealwood is 25% in this video. Though even a fully grown mealwood should only provide 2000 calories I believe.

 

 

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16 hours ago, blakemw said:

I don't know if there are some circumstances where they don't get set to full calories but I can only reproduce them getting set to full calories. Btw, all testing I've done has been with Glossy Dreckos, not normal Dreckos.

The Mealwood is 25% in this video. Though even a fully grown mealwood should only provide 2000 calories I believe.

 

 

 

I see what you are trying to tell. But, that's not possible. According to the game, duplicants eat the meal lice from the mealwood (you already know that) but the dreckos eat the mealwood itself. They also eat 100% per cycle. If the mealwood didn't provide 10000 kcal for the drecko, but 2000 kcal (20% of 10000) they would have to eat 5 mealwoods per day.

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5 hours ago, TuxSam123 said:

They also eat 100% per cycle. If the mealwood didn't provide 10000 kcal for the drecko, but 2000 kcal (20% of 10000) they would have to eat 5 mealwoods per day.

There is data in the game indicating at what rate Dreckos are meant to consume mealwood plants, and this data indicates that a Glossy Drecko should eat one fully grown mealwood plant per cycle (or four quarter grown mealwood plants). Since a domesticated mealwood grows in 3 cycles, that means a Glossy Drecko would need 3 mealwoods to remain fully fed, this would equate to a dirt-to-plastic conversion rate of 50 g/s dirt to 83.33 g/s plastic, or if using the Bristle Blossom consumption rate (which also requires 3 Bristle Blossoms - which grow half as fast but provide twice as many calories per feed), it would equate to 100 g/s water to 83.33 g/s plastic.

The water to plastic conversion can be compared directly with the most obvious industrial route which is to convert 100 g/s water to 333 g/s crude oil via the Oil Well, which becomes 166 g/s of petroleum via the Oil Refinery and 100 g/s plastic via the Polymer Press, a number suspiciously close to the rate at which Glossies fully fed by by Bristle Blossom would produce plastic. Except the industrial route provides natural gas, and the Drecko route provides eggs, meat and bonus shearings of offspring even if the offspring aren't fed. Even if the calories bug were fixed, Dreckos being fed Bristle Blossom would still be a bit better than the naive industrial route for producing plastic because of offspring shearings, and at least comparable with using a petroleum boiler to avoid the Oil Refinery inefficiency with the Polymer Press route.

1 hour ago, hot focaccia said:

either its only on the dlc or i am very confused why they grow way slower but oh well

Post a screenshot if possible.

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3 minutes ago, hot focaccia said:

ok so i am not wrong being wild makes the dreckos trash with only a 3% scale growth rate

Oh, I thought you meant "not groomed" as in tame but glum, that's a common strategy to be miserly on food because it reduces metabolism by 80% allowing a tame Drecko spawned from the breeder Dreckos to live 5x longer before it starts to starve, getting many more shearings out of it than if you groomed it.

Yes, it's always been the case that being wild causes a large penalty to scale growth.

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2 minutes ago, blakemw said:

Oh, I thought you meant "not groomed" as in tame but glum, that's a common strategy to be miserly on food because it reduces metabolism by 80% allowing a tame Drecko spawned from the breeder Dreckos to live 5x longer before it starts to starve, getting many more shearings out of it than if you groomed it.

wait so since the baby drekos are tame wouldnt they loes calories at the same speed and if not then i can just leave them there and get a lot more shearings therefore a lot more reedfiber?

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9 minutes ago, hot focaccia said:

wait so since the baby drekos are tame wouldnt they loes calories at the same speed and if not then i can just leave them there and get a lot more shearings therefore a lot more reedfiber?

Any critter that is tame but glum has its metabolism reduced by 80%, this causes its calories to last 5x longer. Now in the case of critters like Hatches, the -80% metabolism also means that it transforms only 1/5th as much rock/whatever into coal (and applying to production of phosphorite for properly fed Dreckos), but that metabolism penalty doesn't apply to scale growth so Dreckos that are tame but glum produce fiber/plastic just as quickly as tame happy dreckos, but consume only 1/5th as much calories. This is basically a case of being well-rewarded for neglecting critters since neglect produces a much better outcome than grooming them. (but Breeder dreckos should be groomed, because being glum causes a very large penalty to reproduction)

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These don't seem like bugs, but rather ways to encourage use of an otherwise redundant critter. Dreckos have a number of advantages right now:

  • They're a resource efficient source of Calories, Reed Fibre, and Plastic.
  • They're abundant and easy to feed.
  • Both morphs are available using only simple Mealwoods.

The disadvantages are several however

  • While resource efficient, Dreckos are not dupe-time efficient compared to alternatives. This makes them unattractive early when it feels like they're actually intended to be most useful. A couple of Irrigation Tiles with Reed Fibre plants can easily be added to a bathroom loop early, providing ample Reed Fibre for ExoSuits & Furniture well into a couple hundred cycles of a base.
  • Their late game resource efficiency diminishes compared to alternatives for Calories & Plastic, making Dreckos only long term purpose being Reed Fibre. While Reed Fibre is a long term requirement now that ExoSuits decay, it's a tiny need compared to the scale of even a single breeding Stable with associated starvation room. Especially if one has multiple Planetoids with full bases, Reed Fibre needs will often be distributed and better served by a couple of plants than a full stable of Dreckos.
  • Dreckos have very annoying behaviour compared to other ground critters (don't even get me started on flyers), with there being no reasonable way to contain them without first building a for-purpose Stable.
  • Dreckos need a hybrid atmosphere in order to grow their scales, specifically a mix of Hydrogen and one of Chlorine, Oxygen, or Carbon Dioxide. If Plastic is the goal, Chlorine is not an option. In practice this atmospheric requirement typically means that a proper Drecko stable has to be isolated from other parts of the base and is effectively locked until after a proper Ventilation system is established (of course lucky map spawns can allow a clever player to create a Hydrogen bubble around which they can then build a Drecko stable, but that's not typical for most seeds and not a reasonable expectation of the average player).

The end result of the above is that Dreckos often end up being a luxury that has to wait until after Plumbing, SPOMs, and Hatches are built. At that point in the game, why go for Dreckos when instead you can start into Petroleum processing and get the advantages of a diversified power network as well as Plastic (not to mention better rocket fuels)? Additionally it's rare that there's enough easy to access Hydrogen for more than one Drecko enclosure until a player is producing it for themselves from Electrolyzers, a point at which Calories should already be solved for a long time and Reed Fibre will already have been gathered from wild sources in sizeable enough quantities for early ExoSuit usage.

------

The way I see it, Dreckos are in an awkward middle space of being good, but not unique enough for even the average playthrough. I've only built one Drecko enclosure I was actually happy with, and I've never had issues with Reed Fibre or Plastic in thousands of cycles over many bases. Dreckos need a rework to make them more attractive and an actual solution to a real problem:

  1. Dreckos no longer need Hydrogen in order to grow their scales. Instead, their scales grow when they are well-fed & happy. Dreckos can now eat three times as many calories, with additional calories increasing the rate at which their scales grow. This makes Dreckos a resource intensive, but high turnover source of Reed Fibre ala domesticated Plug Slugs are to power. A balance of one plant to one critter should be necessary for max speed growth of scales.
  2. The Shearer can now be automated, requiring no dupe presence if sent a green signal. This cuts down the dupe-time needed to run a Drecko Stable to be comparable to Hatches or Divergents. This also allows for properly automatic starvation chambers for Dreckos, a major restricting for end game base designs.
  3. Dreckos are blocked by Pneumatic Doors in the same way as Shove Voles, expect now they also cannot climb on them. This allows for simple enclosures that use Pnuematic Doors as the walls & ceiling, allowing for constricted breeding Stables that again boost Dupe-time efficiency. The biggest downside of Dreckos to my mind is how much time they take to run compared to other ground critters.
  4. Dreckos morph when exposed to Hydrogen atmospheres. This keeps the Hydrogen pockets as part of getting Plastic, but proper Ventilation & gas management is no longer required for a basic Reed Fibre-focused Drecko enclosure. Additionally it makes wild Drecko populations highly attractive towards the mid game, as a decent supply should at that time have morphed. This "wild Plastic" would serve as a superb bridge into early Rocketry and enable Space science without first Oil biome exploitation. We already have decent wild sources of Glass & Refined Metals, it's kind of silly that the one resource actually needed for Science is locked behind an enormous production chain.
  5. Dreckos poop Clay. This is the big one, as it makes both Reed Fibre & Plastic Dreckos an important source of a late game resource (Ceramic), without invalidating any other existing strategies. This also makes Clay renewable without needing to cut into the complicated PWater -> Dirt renewal cycle, if one is feeding Dreckos with Balm Lilies in a Chlorine atmosphere. Additionally, this gives purpose to Reed Fibre Dreckos that is widely scalable (in other words, it gives Reed Fibre Dreckos a produced resource that you'll want on the scale of tons not hundreds of kg)
  6. The above "bug" fixes as you mentioned OP. While I wouldn't classify these as bugs, it would be nice to have Dreckos behave more like other critters and be a little less exploity.
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On 6/7/2021 at 3:26 PM, JaxckLl said:

These don't seem like bugs, but rather ways to encourage use of an otherwise redundant critter. Dreckos have a number of advantages right now:

  • They're a resource efficient source of Calories, Reed Fibre, and Plastic.
  • They're abundant and easy to feed.
  • Both morphs are available using only simple Mealwoods.

The disadvantages are several however

  • While resource efficient, Dreckos are not dupe-time efficient compared to alternatives. This makes them unattractive early when it feels like they're actually intended to be most useful. A couple of Irrigation Tiles with Reed Fibre plants can easily be added to a bathroom loop early, providing ample Reed Fibre for ExoSuits & Furniture well into a couple hundred cycles of a base.
  • Their late game resource efficiency diminishes compared to alternatives for Calories & Plastic, making Dreckos only long term purpose being Reed Fibre. While Reed Fibre is a long term requirement now that ExoSuits decay, it's a tiny need compared to the scale of even a single breeding Stable with associated starvation room. Especially if one has multiple Planetoids with full bases, Reed Fibre needs will often be distributed and better served by a couple of plants than a full stable of Dreckos.
  • Dreckos have very annoying behaviour compared to other ground critters (don't even get me started on flyers), with there being no reasonable way to contain them without first building a for-purpose Stable.
  • Dreckos need a hybrid atmosphere in order to grow their scales, specifically a mix of Hydrogen and one of Chlorine, Oxygen, or Carbon Dioxide. If Plastic is the goal, Chlorine is not an option. In practice this atmospheric requirement typically means that a proper Drecko stable has to be isolated from other parts of the base and is effectively locked until after a proper Ventilation system is established (of course lucky map spawns can allow a clever player to create a Hydrogen bubble around which they can then build a Drecko stable, but that's not typical for most seeds and not a reasonable expectation of the average player).

The end result of the above is that Dreckos often end up being a luxury that has to wait until after Plumbing, SPOMs, and Hatches are built. At that point in the game, why go for Dreckos when instead you can start into Petroleum processing and get the advantages of a diversified power network as well as Plastic (not to mention better rocket fuels)? Additionally it's rare that there's enough easy to access Hydrogen for more than one Drecko enclosure until a player is producing it for themselves from Electrolyzers, a point at which Calories should already be solved for a long time and Reed Fibre will already have been gathered from wild sources in sizeable enough quantities for early ExoSuit usage.

------

The way I see it, Dreckos are in an awkward middle space of being good, but not unique enough for even the average playthrough. I've only built one Drecko enclosure I was actually happy with, and I've never had issues with Reed Fibre or Plastic in thousands of cycles over many bases. Dreckos need a rework to make them more attractive and an actual solution to a real problem:

  1. Dreckos no longer need Hydrogen in order to grow their scales. Instead, their scales grow when they are well-fed & happy. Dreckos can now eat three times as many calories, with additional calories increasing the rate at which their scales grow. This makes Dreckos a resource intensive, but high turnover source of Reed Fibre ala domesticated Plug Slugs are to power. A balance of one plant to one critter should be necessary for max speed growth of scales.
  2. The Shearer can now be automated, requiring no dupe presence if sent a green signal. This cuts down the dupe-time needed to run a Drecko Stable to be comparable to Hatches or Divergents. This also allows for properly automatic starvation chambers for Dreckos, a major restricting for end game base designs.
  3. Dreckos are blocked by Pneumatic Doors in the same way as Shove Voles, expect now they also cannot climb on them. This allows for simple enclosures that use Pnuematic Doors as the walls & ceiling, allowing for constricted breeding Stables that again boost Dupe-time efficiency. The biggest downside of Dreckos to my mind is how much time they take to run compared to other ground critters.
  4. Dreckos morph when exposed to Hydrogen atmospheres. This keeps the Hydrogen pockets as part of getting Plastic, but proper Ventilation & gas management is no longer required for a basic Reed Fibre-focused Drecko enclosure. Additionally it makes wild Drecko populations highly attractive towards the mid game, as a decent supply should at that time have morphed. This "wild Plastic" would serve as a superb bridge into early Rocketry and enable Space science without first Oil biome exploitation. We already have decent wild sources of Glass & Refined Metals, it's kind of silly that the one resource actually needed for Science is locked behind an enormous production chain.
  5. Dreckos poop Clay. This is the big one, as it makes both Reed Fibre & Plastic Dreckos an important source of a late game resource (Ceramic), without invalidating any other existing strategies. This also makes Clay renewable without needing to cut into the complicated PWater -> Dirt renewal cycle, if one is feeding Dreckos with Balm Lilies in a Chlorine atmosphere. Additionally, this gives purpose to Reed Fibre Dreckos that is widely scalable (in other words, it gives Reed Fibre Dreckos a produced resource that you'll want on the scale of tons not hundreds of kg)
  6. The above "bug" fixes as you mentioned OP. While I wouldn't classify these as bugs, it would be nice to have Dreckos behave more like other critters and be a little less exploity.

1 and 3 agreed wholeheartedly. Thinking on the rest, I don't like them pooping clay given it'd screw with how useful phosphorite is and how much clay I tend to get in bases from random polluted oxygen, and I'm starting to think that this whole mess with needing hydrogen is just outright bad.

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