Materials Science > Orbital Research??

[ravalox]

With respect to the Tech Tree, I've always had the nagging question:

Why am I traveling to another planet to continue to progress in tech level?  In my first playthrough, I blindly pursued orbital research only to find it did nothing for me.  I found this to be counter-intuitive.

• I'm given access to another planetoid for oil, petrol and plastic production.  Hoorah, time to pollute!
• Plastic is necessary for all the "goodies" that made the game less tedius: Steam power, high pressure vents, critter traps, etc.  And now a requirement for orbital research.
• Now hold your horses, there pardner. Why don't you make a HUGE detour and colonize another planetoid?  You were bored trying to make two worlds self-sufficient, weren't you?  And although you've never been there, you can flip a coin to see if there's a way to progress in tech.  How can you possibly achieve high-tech logic circuits and miniature pumps without space travel?

Sorry for the dripping sarcasm, but this had me quit the DLC after the initial alpha release.  I still wince when thinking about that third planetoid being the key to tech level progression.  Three planets to colonize before achieving tier 2 tech (smh).  If ONI wasn't prone to micromanagement to work around certain issues (for me at least), it might not be a problem.  But it's usually a few hundred cycles before I want to space travel, even using pause.

Sooooooo....if you made it this far Klei, I've given this design choice several chances.  However, I think there needs to be a role reversal in research to be a little more useful to the player, as opposed to fast space travel for space travel's sake.  I find it too much of a grind and have yet to make it to a fourth planetoid before saying to hell with it.

Just my 1/100th of a cent.

[Yobbo]

You don't need to travel to another planet to research anything...?

Unless you mean the need for radbolt production, which is easily obtained at the crashed satellite. But there are plenty of low-production radiation sources on the starting planetoid (wheezeworts, shinebugs, surface radiation). A shinebug reactor handily outperforms the crashed satellite even with only two breeder bugs, and a wheezewort collector is simple to set up.

Even when you need orbital research to progress, you can do that just by sending a rocket to orbit, no need to colonize anything.

[ravalox]

I've only played using the new swamp biome, so no wheezeworts (you get one seed from the satellite, oddly enough) and no shinebugs.  I had initially presumed Beetas/Uranium were intended for radbolt production.  I never used the radiation overlay on the surface until well after I sent my first dupe and she kept covering her face near the sat.  This was my introduction to the DLC and what has guided my gameplay.

Sure, I kinda get that hand to face feeling with regards to surface radiation. But as you state, it's a low-production source of radiation, which more or less proves my point that this is grindy and counter-intuitive when one sees Beetas and a satellite with higher radiation thresholds.

[edit] I've peaked at my other saves, and I did have one worldgen with three wheezeworts (but were seeds from ice melt) and a single shinebug.  But the update with new POIs and artifacts hit and I scrapped it early game.  Two other worldgens since April had no secondary source of radiation other than sunlight.

[Yobbo]

IIRC there should be a few wheezeworts in the frozen biomes on the swamp start. But yeah i agree that it's not exactly intuitive. I don't think i even realized they emit radiation until i saw it mentioned here on the forums.

When i first picked up the DLC the tech requirements weren't uniformly materials science, i think it was split with some techs requiring orbital research, some mat sci? I liked it quite a lot better. Ironically the orbital research is far easier to get without colonizing, as you can just send a simple CO₂ rocket up to orbit and back.

I basically agree with everything you're saying, just wanted to point out that it is possible to play the DLC as you seem to want to :).

For me the mat sci research grind is only really bearable because i figured out the hack of cramming 30 shinebugs into a single tile and not needing any other radiation source for the entire rest of the game.

[Sasza22]

The game is designed to give you an incentive to travel. Kinda like Astroneer where you need resources from other planets to progress. But it`s not mandatory. Recently they added dreckos to all starts iirc and you should always have at least 2 wheezeworts spawning on your starting planetoid and even without them space radiation is a radbolt source as well. This means you can complete the tech tree without moving from your planetoid at all.

But the idea for the dlc was to start space travel earlier. Not to wait to lategame. Instead of building a huge base you build several smaller ones. At least that`s the idea. You can do it the way you want. Just build outposts and drain resources from other planetoids to the base. Or start on the lassic big planetoid that has most resources home (including some beetas for radiation).