Spaced Out Laundry List

[JaxckLl]

A laundry list of new feature requests, balance suggestions, and expansion ideas. I'll try to be brief with each idea/request and I have too many for each to get a dedicated thread.

Quality of Life / New Player Experience

• An Airlock building that serves as gas-proof door. Something along the lines of this mod that allows players to make proper gas-proof environments without needed to use liquid locks. Personally I find liquid locks to be quite exploity and the game explicitly punishes their use pre-ExoSuits with the "wet" penalty on dupes. Liquid locks are also not super intuitive for new players and require a level of micromanagement that is unusual for the rest of the game (that last complaint about micromanagement also applies to Rocket Interiors)
• 2-high Bottle Emptiers. This would allow for much more space-efficient liquid cleanup stations, a necessity in light of the Spaced Out additions of tiny Oil slicks in the Teleporter rooms and Nuclear Waste. This would also allow for much easier construction of many builds in particular those inside a rocket interior.
• Insulated Doors that block temperature exchange on the same scale as Insulated Tiles. I'm imagining these as a late/mid game alternative to Automated Doors, requiring power to open and Refined Metal & Abyssalite for construction.
• A late game way to empty Bottles directly into pipes. Liquid cleanup is a constant affair that must be performed on every Planetoid, often multiple times for different liquids and relative locations. Currently this involves a fairly complicated Bottle Emptier + basin made of tiles + Pump. Having a single building that takes over this function would massively speed up the mid game and significantly reduce the complexity of many late game builds. This in turn would make the game much more accessible without affecting the early game challenges of liquid management. Bottle Emptiers & Pumps would still absolutely have a place, especially with liquids such as Nuclear Waste.
• A wall-mounted Medicine Cabinet that stores ALL types of Medicine. It's very confusing for new players why some Medicine is stored in Chests while some is stored in Refrigerators (all of the dozen people I've introduced the game to have mentioned this oddity). Additionally this would give us another building to add to Hospitals and allow for bringing Medicines on rockets. I'd imagine this would simply be a 1x1 wall mount, considering it's specialist use and the tiny size of most medicines.
• High-Pressure Reservoirs that can store 10x the liquid/gas. Requires a High-Pressure Pump and High-Pressure piping on the input side, all of which costs Steel as well as whatever pipe/building material. Reservoirs would also have two outputs.

Base/Early Game Additions

• Single-tile Cranks for pipes that block flow and require dupe use. For a game that allows for a steampunk fantasy of confused pipe networks, ONI is remarkably lacking in manual tools for manipulating that pipe network. Cranks would simply have two states, open or closed, allowing full flow if open. They require manual use, using the Plumbing skill. This gives much more purpose to Plumbers, allows for proper bi-directional pipe networks (without constantly rebuilding either end), and enables a wide variety of liquid-lock puzzles.
• A Clinic Room. The Clinic is a smaller version of the Hospital, servicing only a single sick dupe at a time. Each Doctor in a base will assign themselves to a Clinic, where they can then administer regular checkups to healthy dupes (Doctors without a Clinic will get a "desperate med student" debuff that stresses them out). Checkups reduce the spread of germs principally, but when administered by higher-skill Doctors they also increase movement speed and provide immunity & radiation bonuses. This serves as a stopgap in suppressing "long commutes" inbetween early game small bases and late game transit tube networks. Additionally, dupes can no longer access pills by themselves instead requiring they be given them by a Doctor during a Checkup.
• A Hydrogen-releasing stone ala Oxylite & Bleach Stone. Hydrogen is currently kind of awkward to produce, coming principally from Electrolysis. It would be nice to have a mineable/Puft form, especially for building Drecko ranches. (It's also ironic that Oxygen & Chlorine, both highly reactive elements in real life that are often bound readily into rock, have stones that release their gas while Hydrogen, a relatively non-reactive element readily released by an enormous variety of rocks for all sorts of reasons, does not)
• Wild Stone Hatches on especially rocky or barren starts (such as the Desert). This would enable faster Smooth Hatch ranching, varying early game priorities substantially while also restricting access to 100% Coal-efficient Sage Hatches.
• Brimstone Volcanoes that release gaseous Sulphur as well as Magma. Volcanoes right now are fairly bland, with no variation in magma type. It would be interesting to add some variety here by giving each a unique type of super-heated bonus gas, such as Sulphur, Carbon Dioxide, or Chlorine. (Volcanoes are in real life one of the primary sources of Sulphur.)
• A cold variant of Slicksters that morphs out of Longhairs and produces Ethanol, the Ethanol Slickster. Right now Oxygen is easily overproduced compared to demand when one is looking to produce Hydrogen (via a SPOM). At the same time, there is a trap Slickster that consumes Oxygen but doesn't produce any useful or unique resource. This variant would allow for a unique version of the Oily biome for Rime starts that relies on Ethanol instead of Petroleum for power (and is thus dependent on Dreckos for Plastic pre-Rocketry).
• Let us use the Shearing Station to change Dupe Haircuts. Why? Cause it would be adorable. Would also justify not using a hat.

Late Game / Space Out

• A Laboratory Room. Now that we have four Science Stations, it only makes sense that we finally get a dedicated room for their use. The Lab would provide a Morale bonus for Researchers, but it's primary purpose would be to allow Researchers to gain the "academic excitement" buff. This buff in turn would allow Researchers to share their excitement with other dupes when in a Rec Room or around an active Water Cooler, giving those other dupes a skill-gain buff. This would encourage the use of Rec Rooms early, discourage the "disabled Water Cooler in a Great Hall" exploit, and allow all dupes to benefit from the skill-gain of a high Science dupe.
• Generic techs. These would consume resources like other techs, but would have no associated unlockables. Instead, finishing them would provide some minor temporary bonus such as a stress relief, skill levelling, or accelerated printing pod turnover. All other major demands (Oxygen, Calories, Power) are endless, why not Research? Would be especially interesting if we had a repeatable tech that could manipulate the available Printer options next time the Printer activates. This would solve a lot of the RNG feeling that comes from playing Spaced Out, especially if one is playing without Teleporters. Need Pufts? Repeat the tech that forces the Printer to give you a Critter egg/baby as an option.
• A Dehydrator added to the Juicer tech. The Dehydrator allows for the creation of "Space Food" with superior (if not infinite) spoilage time. Non-Space Food would now give them "giggly innards" debuff, representing the difficulty of zero-g eating.
• A power-inefficient way to produce Methane from CO2. This is a realistic & practical process used to produce rocket fuel when power is abundant. Additionally this would enable Gourmet foods pre-Oil if your seed doesn't have a convenient Natural Gas Vent (to give an example, my current seed's NatGas Geyser is on the edge of the Oily biome on the absolute edge of the map. This is literally as far away from my spawn as possible without being actually in the Oily biome, and has meant that I haven't been able to do anything Gourmet in over 200 cycles).
• A way of extracting Hydrogen from Natural Gas. In real life, almost all industrial Hydrogen is produced from Natural Gas since it is so much more energy efficient than electrolysis. This process in ONI should be less energy efficient than just using Natural Gas Generators, with the purpose instead being to balance Oxygen production from SPOMs or to allow for artificial Hydrogen atmospheres for critters & plants without Electrolyzer use. To balance this, the same process could also produce a small amount of Sulphur. This would make Natural Gas Geysers a reliable source of renewable Sulphur and vary their early game uses substantially.
• The Magmafuge (Magma + Centrifuge) that can extract Nuclear Waste from Magma. Magma in real life stems almost completely from the Earth's mantle, which is itself kept molten not by pressure but by the steady release of heat from radioactive decay. Magma as a result is highly radioactive compared to most rocks. This would be a Dwarf Fortress-y late game source of renewable radiation that doesn't require the use of Space. Perhaps the Magmafuge also has a low chance to produce some metal ore crystals when spun, allowing for a fun late game roulette mechanic while also making Ore renewable in a new way with a different Industrial Process.
• The Slime Tank. Consumes Radiation, Salt, and lukewarm Water (precisely between 35 to 40C) to produce Slime. A tech-based alternative to Pufts for unlucky spawns (that don't have Pufts and never got any through the Printer) that allows for a true alternative to SPOMs when it comes to long term Oxygen production. As a radiation consumer, also enables an alternative mid game where one rushes Radiation & Slime Tanks in order to set up an Algae-based source of renewable Oxygen instead of using Electrolyzers and building a SPOM. As a Salt consumer, also gives a specific advantage to Salt Geysers over other kind of Water Geysers. The specific temperature requirement creates a unique building challenge that is very doable, but does require automation and some more sophisticated management of pipes.
• The Bananohm, a new plant. The fruit would be a useful food (especially with the Dehydrator) but it can also be used with the Juicer to produce Ohm Pits. Ohm Pits are the actual seeds of the plant and they release a small amount of radiation (the Bananohm cannot mutate). However their primary use is that they can be fed to Plug Slugs enabling renewable Plug Slug use. To encourage the use of metal ore, Plug Slugs that eat Ohm Pits would get the "ohm diet" debuff that massively reduces their power & hydrogen output (I'd imagine for domestic slugs it would cut it down by a factor of eight, one half of the output of wilds). The advantage of using Ohms would thus be sustainability and the low-heat power of Plug Slugs, without out-competing Petroleum, NatGas, Hydrogen, or Solar.
• Rubber as a new intermediary resource. Replaces some of the early game uses of Plastic and is required for building all larger rocket components (also required for Airlocks). Rubber can be produced directly from a new type of tree or synthesized from Petroleum/Ethanol + Bleach Stone. This differentiates the mid game a little bit more, as well as giving us something to do with Ethanol & Bleach Stone. 
• Optical Fibre, a new material that can be spun from liquid Glass at the Forge. Optical Fibre can be placed into the world and passes on automation signals, but at a much reduced cost compared to Automation Wire (1 unit of Glass per tile instead of 5 units of Refined Metal). Automation inputs will prioritize any signal they receive via Wire first and there would be no bundled form of Fibre ala Ribbons. However Fibre & Wire can be run in the same tile without interference, only exchanging signals at automation input/outputs. This would enable some new forms of automation while also allowing for affordable cross-base automation.

[Sasza22]

A lot of good ideas here. Some solid old ideas like insulated airlocks.

23 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

empty Bottles directly into pipes

This would be really handy when it comes to gasses actually. Handling gas can be all sorts of annoying.

23 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

Hydrogen-releasing stone

Hydrites are a real life thing that releases large amounts of hydrogen when you add water. We could get something like that. But we now got a few alternatives to hydrogen production. (not gonna mention plug slugs knowing how you hate them) There`s the saturn critter trap that could be fed with extra critters to produce hydrogen. We just need this thing to come with more seeds and be able to produce more of them. I can see people farming hatches just to feed those things.

23 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

Rubber

I`d really love some rubber. But also more uses for plastic materials. Maybe for some late game stuff.

23 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

Optical Fibre

Glass fibres could just replace refined metal for automation wires. I`m not sure why would they take less mass though. Glass is already pretty cheap to produce.

[babba]

I would so love a washing machine, iron board + dry cleaner in the game The dupes often say they are soaping wet, we need to help them in to dry clothes !

Also, various dupe clothes styles would be great...Imagine being able to apply steam punk outfits to dupes

[goboking]

Aside from the shorter bottle emptiers, I agree with everything in your Quality of Life / New Player Experience section.

[TuxSam123]

Lots of good ideas, however, I see a few that in my eyes don't really make sense.

On 6/7/2021 at 8:01 PM, JaxckLl said:

An Airlock building that serves as gas-proof door. Something along the lines of this mod that allows players to make proper gas-proof environments without needed to use liquid locks. Personally I find liquid locks to be quite exploity and the game explicitly punishes their use pre-ExoSuits with the "wet" penalty on dupes. Liquid locks are also not super intuitive for new players and require a level of micromanagement that is unusual for the rest of the game (that last complaint about micromanagement also applies to Rocket Interiors)

Insulated Doors that block temperature exchange on the same scale as Insulated Tiles. I'm imagining these as a late/mid game alternative to Automated Doors, requiring power to open and Refined Metal & Abyssalite for construction.

Two solid ideas. Those are needed. I wish they were on the game.

On 6/7/2021 at 8:01 PM, JaxckLl said:

The Bananohm, a new plant. The fruit would be a useful food (especially with the Dehydrator) but it can also be used with the Juicer to produce Ohm Pits. Ohm Pits are the actual seeds of the plant and they release a small amount of radiation (the Bananohm cannot mutate). However their primary use is that they can be fed to Plug Slugs enabling renewable Plug Slug use. To encourage the use of metal ore, Plug Slugs that eat Ohm Pits would get the "ohm diet" debuff that massively reduces their power & hydrogen output (I'd imagine for domestic slugs it would cut it down by a factor of eight, one half of the output of wilds). The advantage of using Ohms would thus be sustainability and the low-heat power of Plug Slugs, without out-competing Petroleum, NatGas, Hydrogen, or Solar.

Rubber as a new intermediary resource. Replaces some of the early game uses of Plastic and is required for building all larger rocket components (also required for Airlocks). Rubber can be produced directly from a new type of tree or synthesized from Petroleum/Ethanol + Bleach Stone. This differentiates the mid game a little bit more, as well as giving us something to do with Ethanol & Bleach Stone. 

I'm not so sure about the rubber. A radioactive fruit? Maybe. I don't like the part where we can feed it to plug slugs. Right now, slugs are pretty worthless. They eat a finite resource and are too much work for what it's worth. I do think we need more versatile radiation sources.

On 6/7/2021 at 8:01 PM, JaxckLl said:

 

A Laboratory Room. Now that we have four Science Stations, it only makes sense that we finally get a dedicated room for their use. The Lab would provide a Morale bonus for Researchers, but it's primary purpose would be to allow Researchers to gain the "academic excitement" buff. This buff in turn would allow Researchers to share their excitement with other dupes when in a Rec Room or around an active Water Cooler, giving those other dupes a skill-gain buff. This would encourage the use of Rec Rooms early, discourage the "disabled Water Cooler in a Great Hall" exploit, and allow all dupes to benefit from the skill-gain of a high Science dupe.

Generic techs. These would consume resources like other techs, but would have no associated unlockables. Instead, finishing them would provide some minor temporary bonus such as a stress relief, skill levelling, or accelerated printing pod turnover. All other major demands (Oxygen, Calories, Power) are endless, why not Research? Would be especially interesting if we had a repeatable tech that could manipulate the available Printer options next time the Printer activates. This would solve a lot of the RNG feeling that comes from playing Spaced Out, especially if one is playing without Teleporters. Need Pufts? Repeat the tech that forces the Printer to give you a Critter egg/baby as an option.

A way of extracting Hydrogen from Natural Gas. In real life, almost all industrial Hydrogen is produced from Natural Gas since it is so much more energy efficient than electrolysis. This process in ONI should be less energy efficient than just using Natural Gas Generators, with the purpose instead being to balance Oxygen production from SPOMs or to allow for artificial Hydrogen atmospheres for critters & plants without Electrolyzer use. To balance this, the same process could also produce a small amount of Sulphur. This would make Natural Gas Geysers a reliable source of renewable Sulphur and vary their early game uses substantially.

I like this Laboratory suggestion. I do think we need more rooms, like a kitchen, which increases food production, or the Laboratory, which increases research speed. However, I'm not so sure about these other two. Why would you spend resources and energy to get a finite buff which would end shortly? I also don't know why you said that Spaced Out! has a RNG feeling. But back to the subject at hand. Why would you need to extract hydrogen from natural gas? It doesn't have much use other than power and drecko scale growth. We also already have renewable sulfur sources, though I think there should be more.

 

On 6/7/2021 at 8:01 PM, JaxckLl said:

A Dehydrator added to the Juicer tech. The Dehydrator allows for the creation of "Space Food" with superior (if not infinite) spoilage time. Non-Space Food would now give them "giggly innards" debuff, representing the difficulty of zero-g eating.

A power-inefficient way to produce Methane from CO2. This is a realistic & practical process used to produce rocket fuel when power is abundant. Additionally this would enable Gourmet foods pre-Oil if your seed doesn't have a convenient Natural Gas Vent (to give an example, my current seed's NatGas Geyser is on the edge of the Oily biome on the absolute edge of the map. This is literally as far away from my spawn as possible without being actually in the Oily biome, and has meant that I haven't been able to do anything Gourmet in over 200 cycles).

The Magmafuge (Magma + Centrifuge) that can extract Nuclear Waste from Magma. Magma in real life stems almost completely from the Earth's mantle, which is itself kept molten not by pressure but by the steady release of heat from radioactive decay. Magma as a result is highly radioactive compared to most rocks. This would be a Dwarf Fortress-y late game source of renewable radiation that doesn't require the use of Space. Perhaps the Magmafuge also has a low chance to produce some metal ore crystals when spun, allowing for a fun late game roulette mechanic while also making Ore renewable in a new way with a different Industrial Process.

Optical Fibre, a new material that can be spun from liquid Glass at the Forge. Optical Fibre can be placed into the world and passes on automation signals, but at a much reduced cost compared to Automation Wire (1 unit of Glass per tile instead of 5 units of Refined Metal). Automation inputs will prioritize any signal they receive via Wire first and there would be no bundled form of Fibre ala Ribbons. However Fibre & Wire can be run in the same tile without interference, only exchanging signals at automation input/outputs. This would enable some new forms of automation while also allowing for affordable cross-base automation.

I like the first idea, we really need a way to make "space food". I also like the "giggly innards" debuff idea. I'm not sure about the rest though. The same thing about hydrogen applies to Natural Gas and Nuclear Waste. Why would you need more? There are only a few uses. I also don't like the Automation Wire 2.0. When you get to the oil biome, these concerns are fixed.

On 6/7/2021 at 8:01 PM, JaxckLl said:

 

Wild Stone Hatches on especially rocky or barren starts (such as the Desert). This would enable faster Smooth Hatch ranching, varying early game priorities substantially while also restricting access to 100% Coal-efficient Sage Hatches.

Brimstone Volcanoes that release gaseous Sulphur as well as Magma. Volcanoes right now are fairly bland, with no variation in magma type. It would be interesting to add some variety here by giving each a unique type of super-heated bonus gas, such as Sulphur, Carbon Dioxide, or Chlorine. (Volcanoes are in real life one of the primary sources of Sulphur.)

A cold variant of Slicksters that morphs out of Longhairs and produces Ethanol, the Ethanol Slickster. Right now Oxygen is easily overproduced compared to demand when one is looking to produce Hydrogen (via a SPOM). At the same time, there is a trap Slickster that consumes Oxygen but doesn't produce any useful or unique resource. This variant would allow for a unique version of the Oily biome for Rime starts that relies on Ethanol instead of Petroleum for power (and is thus dependent on Dreckos for Plastic pre-Rocketry).

Let us use the Shearing Station to change Dupe Haircuts. Why? Cause it would be adorable. Would also justify not using a hat.

The Slime Tank. Consumes Radiation, Salt, and lukewarm Water (precisely between 35 to 40C) to produce Slime. A tech-based alternative to Pufts for unlucky spawns (that don't have Pufts and never got any through the Printer) that allows for a true alternative to SPOMs when it comes to long term Oxygen production. As a radiation consumer, also enables an alternative mid game where one rushes Radiation & Slime Tanks in order to set up an Algae-based source of renewable Oxygen instead of using Electrolyzers and building a SPOM. As a Salt consumer, also gives a specific advantage to Salt Geysers over other kind of Water Geysers. The specific temperature requirement creates a unique building challenge that is very doable, but does require automation and some more sophisticated management of pipes.

No, no, no, yes and yes. Wild stone hatches would be too op, period. Oni is a space simulation game, so it doesn't need to be the same as real life. Having these ethanol slicksters is almost as having a cold ethanol geyser. Too OP. I like this small change, though I think it would have to be a different building. This last one is a good one. We do need some better way to get slime. The devs must implement it in a way that doesn't make pufts obsolete, though.

On 6/7/2021 at 8:01 PM, JaxckLl said:

 

• 2-high Bottle Emptiers. This would allow for much more space-efficient liquid cleanup stations, a necessity in light of the Spaced Out additions of tiny Oil slicks in the Teleporter rooms and Nuclear Waste. This would also allow for much easier construction of many builds in particular those inside a rocket interior.
• A late game way to empty Bottles directly into pipes. Liquid cleanup is a constant affair that must be performed on every Planetoid, often multiple times for different liquids and relative locations. Currently this involves a fairly complicated Bottle Emptier + basin made of tiles + Pump. Having a single building that takes over this function would massively speed up the mid game and significantly reduce the complexity of many late game builds. This in turn would make the game much more accessible without affecting the early game challenges of liquid management. Bottle Emptiers & Pumps would still absolutely have a place, especially with liquids such as Nuclear Waste.
• A wall-mounted Medicine Cabinet that stores ALL types of Medicine. It's very confusing for new players why some Medicine is stored in Chests while some is stored in Refrigerators (all of the dozen people I've introduced the game to have mentioned this oddity). Additionally this would give us another building to add to Hospitals and allow for bringing Medicines on rockets. I'd imagine this would simply be a 1x1 wall mount, considering it's specialist use and the tiny size of most medicines.
• High-Pressure Reservoirs that can store 10x the liquid/gas. Requires a High-Pressure Pump and High-Pressure piping on the input side, all of which costs Steel as well as whatever pipe/building material. Reservoirs would also have two outputs.
• Single-tile Cranks for pipes that block flow and require dupe use. For a game that allows for a steampunk fantasy of confused pipe networks, ONI is remarkably lacking in manual tools for manipulating that pipe network. Cranks would simply have two states, open or closed, allowing full flow if open. They require manual use, using the Plumbing skill. This gives much more purpose to Plumbers, allows for proper bi-directional pipe networks (without constantly rebuilding either end), and enables a wide variety of liquid-lock puzzles.
• A Clinic Room. The Clinic is a smaller version of the Hospital, servicing only a single sick dupe at a time. Each Doctor in a base will assign themselves to a Clinic, where they can then administer regular checkups to healthy dupes (Doctors without a Clinic will get a "desperate med student" debuff that stresses them out). Checkups reduce the spread of germs principally, but when administered by higher-skill Doctors they also increase movement speed and provide immunity & radiation bonuses. This serves as a stopgap in suppressing "long commutes" inbetween early game small bases and late game transit tube networks. Additionally, dupes can no longer access pills by themselves instead requiring they be given them by a Doctor during a Checkup.
• A Hydrogen-releasing stone ala Oxylite & Bleach Stone. Hydrogen is currently kind of awkward to produce, coming principally from Electrolysis. It would be nice to have a mineable/Puft form, especially for building Drecko ranches. (It's also ironic that Oxygen & Chlorine, both highly reactive elements in real life that are often bound readily into rock, have stones that release their gas while Hydrogen, a relatively non-reactive element readily released by an enormous variety of rocks for all sorts of reasons, does not)

Finally, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, and yes. These first ones are small QoL changes which I would be really nice to have. I don't know why you would need a high pressure reservoir when you've got your good 'ol reservoir. We already have an hospital on the game. Pretty useless though. We also already have liquid and gas valves, so no cranks. This last one is also a small one, but I don't see how it could damage the game, so that's a yes.

[JaxckLl]

@Sasza22: Optical Fibre could just be a crafting material for Automation Wire (should still be another tech that requires Orbital & Material science). The point is to have something that allows for cross-base automation. To my mind this needs to be cheap and producible in large quantities easily. Refined Metal is kind of neither of those things. Yes it is renewable via Volcanoes, but the throughput needed to make proper cross-base automation is generally out of the reach until the game is effectively over. Automation Wire could cost 1 or 2 units of material and honestly it wouldn't be a major change. The bulk of Refined Metal generally goes into actual buildings, lowering the cost of wire would just make it easier for newer players.

@TuxSham123: Bunch of points, here's my thoughts:

• Right now Plug Slugs have the major downside of not being easily renewable and not having a unique function. There's really no reason to breed them except if you have to, and even then it's best to keep them wild. The goal of the Bananohm is to remove the first downside enabling long term use easily. A simple setup with a Bananohm, a Juicer (this might need to be an earlier machine. Perhaps the Composter), and a Plug Slug stable would serve as an interesting early game alternative to the Hatch -> Coal ranching starter that is currently the best option. We also lack an easy to access early source of radiation that is also infinite (aka we don't have a radioactive plant that can produce seeds). More early game radiation sources encourages players to build more Radbolt infrastructure, which in turn encourages heavier use of high end Radiation sources later in the game.
• Generic Techs are intended principally to allow for continuous skill growth for researchers. As a side effect they also give your base a flat demand for science-inputs such as Water, Radbolts, and Dirt. This is a good thing since it encourages players to build better, more sustainable systems as well as to explore for alternative sources of key resources. As techs, they'd be optional so demand could scale to whatever the player is comfortable with. The way I'm imagining things, the Laboratory providing general skill buffs to ALL your dupes via a Rec Room would also encourage and reward maintenance of a constant science demand.
• Magma is kind of an uninteresting resource. It has tons of heat that can be used for power (or Sand/Glass production) and it can be solidified to produce Igneous Rock (which can also be crushed into Sand). However both power and minerals (especially Sand) are already super abundant and unlikely to be in high demand in the later stages of the game when one is building mega-projects. The Magmafuge is meant to add an alternative form of long term renewability and make Magma an exciting base resource that can be used for Radiation and Ore production. It's not about the resources produced being unique, it's about the process being different.
• What makes you say that Wild Stone Hatches are "OP"? Genuinely curious since most of the community considers Stones & Smooths to be significantly weaker than Sages and other forms of metal refining.
• I really, really want to see some cold temp critters. Rime is a super dull start because invariably all the wild critters end up dying. Maybe an Ethanol Slickster isn't the right way to go. Perhaps it takes in Oxygen and outputs liquid Chlorine or liquid CO2.
• Normal Reservoirs are sooo small and for liquids they actually store less than an equivalent amount of tank space (6-tiles to 5 tons for a liquid reservoir holding Water compared to 6-tiles for 6 tons and change in an open tank). The main advantage is the separation of different materials and their "pre-pumped" position in the reservoir. Gas Reservoirs are enormous and storing any decent amount of waster gas is often impossible for a mature base (at least not without entire sections of the map becoming reservoirs). Higher end reservoirs would let us be more efficient with our builds and would allow for players on lower end machines to do more with their storage since it would be less spam needed.
• Liquid & Gas Valves would still have purpose since they would be automatable. Cranks will always require a Plumber to come over and do a job. The Clinic is to encourage players to invest in early Doctors, something which right now is a total trap (having any skills in Doctoring is usually a mistake in the game on default settings).

 

In the current game there's a number of bottlenecks that must be overcome in order to access the next tier of base building. The two biggest are securing a renewable source of Oxygen and tapping the Oil biome. Renewable Oxygen right now has two main routes, PDirt/PWater -> POxygen or Electrolyzers in a SPOM. POxygen is more materially efficient, but has lower throughput for the same amount of complexity and is highly dupe time dependent (because it generally involves ranching). SPOMs are much more powerful (literally) with superior throughput if lower Water efficiency for Oxygen. There's enough smaller bells and whistles to play with to make both systems interesting, although SPOMs are by far the easier option in most situations. Oil is the other bottleneck and has a similar split pattern with two different trees. On the one hand you have Crude -> Petrol -> Power & Plastic, on the other you have Lumber -> Ethanol -> Power. There's quite a bit more variation to the former than the later, but critically it is also uniquely a source of Plastic & Natural Gas. Natural Gas is used mainly as a power source, but it is also essential for operating the Gourmet Grill. Unless you have a good NatGas Geyser placement you are thus denied access to Gourmet Grilling until long after you've tapped the Oil biome and started producing Petrol en mass.

[Sasza22]

On 6/11/2021 at 12:17 AM, JaxckLl said:

Optical Fibre could just be a crafting material for Automation Wire (should still be another tech that requires Orbital & Material science). The point is to have something that allows for cross-base automation. To my mind this needs to be cheap and producible in large quantities easily. Refined Metal is kind of neither of those things. Yes it is renewable via Volcanoes, but the throughput needed to make proper cross-base automation is generally out of the reach until the game is effectively over. Automation Wire could cost 1 or 2 units of material and honestly it wouldn't be a major change. The bulk of Refined Metal generally goes into actual buildings, lowering the cost of wire would just make it easier for newer players.

I just wonder why couldn`t it be constructed straight up from glass. Do we really need glass fiber as a separate resource? Glass is already a redfined resource in the meaning that we need to process something to make it. And the only use for the new resource would be automation.

On 6/11/2021 at 12:17 AM, JaxckLl said:

Magma is kind of an uninteresting resource. It has tons of heat that can be used for power (or Sand/Glass production) and it can be solidified to produce Igneous Rock (which can also be crushed into Sand). However both power and minerals (especially Sand) are already super abundant and unlikely to be in high demand in the later stages of the game when one is building mega-projects. The Magmafuge is meant to add an alternative form of long term renewability and make Magma an exciting base resource that can be used for Radiation and Ore production. It's not about the resources produced being unique, it's about the process being different.

I actually like the idea of a lategame magma processing facility. Reminds me of Star Wars and the droids working on Mustafar gathering lava for whatever purpose. Extracting stuff out of it sounds interesting but would need special materials to handle it.

[Shrglwyddes]

@JaxckLl

If we are making a Laundry list of things that need to be added to the base game, then I would submit that some of the currently most subscribed mods should be integrated into the base game. Honestly, how often do you see a YouTuber/streamer not use Gas Overlay mod? 

One request, not found in a mod - any object used for storage that lets you select all manner of items should have a menu for text input so you can type in what item you are looking for rather than digging through menus. Debug mode has this already.

 

Much thanks to the modders listed below. My list of mods that I think are QOL improvements that ought to be in the base game:

better automation overlay - This is a solid QOL feature that should be on every streamer's installation. Having all of the automation data right there accessible is a godsend and it saves me clicking through a 45 minute video just to find the section where francis john specifies the numbers needed for something i need to built. 

Rooms Expanded - Laboratory, Kitchen, Shower Room, Aquarium, Gym Room, Museum, Graveyard. Who could argue we shouldn't have a kitchen room? Or a graveyard? I really like how this mod mandates lights and decor so it seems even more plausible than the base game sometimes is. I like everything in this mod, and not having a kitchen room just bugs me.

better info cards - no more info cards sliding off the screen. it is peculiar to be able to make tiles that can store more than we can even see what is in the pile, let alone be unable to individually select our sweep by type commands.

Useful Tags Lite - Given how elaborate bases have become and how screenshots and overlays and YouTubers go about explaining the various sections of their bases, it seems odd we don't have any Tags, decorated by art skills, that designate portions of bases with labels like "bathroom" or "Polluted Water"

Wallpaper - not even brothgar could get this installed in the base game. it is immensely popular.

Paint walls - Drywalls and Tempshifts are colored with the color of the material used to built them. Like material color or better automation overlay, it just makes the game harder to not have this information at hand

Flip Anything - The rules for flipping things seem arbitrary and inconsistent.

Settlings change tool - this is also a no-brainer. It is bizarre we don't have this in the base game.

Assignable showers - again, why dont we have this?

Sweep by type - QOL 

Critter inventory - ranching can make it quite challenging to determine how many critters you have.

Material Color - gone are the days of wondering "what did he make that out of?" it adds a lot of visual flair too.

show building ranges - basic common sense to want that as a base feature. the game is hard enough without misplacing my autosweeper by one tile

Gas overlay - should be a toggle in the game settings.

schedule master - save schedules between bases. 

suppress notifications - should be a toggle in the game options.

Traffic visualizer- to have "long commutes" notification without this overlay is obtuse.

pliers mod - debatable, but imho it really belongs in the game.