discussion Yet another space station suggestion : 3000 words of in-depth analysis and concept creaton edition

[Fleefie]

Hello duplicants, printing pod AIs and other mysterious tree-like creatures ! Today I have for you something that has been talked about for cycles : the idea of adding space stations to the DLC. Though this has been a frequent suggestion, I've never seen proper mechanics being discussed. Let's talk about this from a game design perspective. Should this be added to the game, several criteria should be met :

• Does it add anything to the game that it is missing ?
• How does it interact with the existing mechanics ?
• Would it become an over-centralizing aspect ?
• How would it be balanced ?
• Would it be fun for most players ?

And today I'm here to pitch an idea that would fit all of these requirements ! So let's aboard them.

 

0. An introduction

 

A space station would be a pretty big addition. To be honest, it would probably require its own game stage in the skill tree, but more on that later. The idea is simple : It's pretty much just a very large rocket with its own rules to play with and around that, if set up correctly, would yield great rewards to the player. As rocketry is a very important aspect of the DLC, I believe that a thing such as what is essentially a rocket with the ability to be semi-sustainable should be thought of with a lot of care. Apart from all of this, the idea is simple : You spend a lot of resources on building a big rocket, you spend a lot of resources to send it to space, you put it in orbit, find a way to make it sustainable, and then you profit from the dopamine shot of having your own freakin' space station... as well as the ability to progress further into the game

 

1. Okay, but what's the point of adding a makeshift ISS to the game ?

 

Well, if you ask me, something that the game is missing is a sense of progression. The DLC made me realize this, after playing it a few times, it has a real feeling of colony development to it as compared to the base game. In standalone ONI, getting your oxygen and your food sorted out in a sustainable way is all that's required to "beat the game" as from there it's easy to work towards the temporal tear with time and boosters, lots of solid fuel boosters. In the DLC though, if you wish to have all of the resources available to you, you have to go through several stages of development, from a simple quasi-sustainable home planet to an interplanetary mining corporation with several smaller bases spread out in your asteroid field. Now, what if this path towards opening the temporal tear had another road block in the way ? Another game stage and challenge to take on that would, once finished, make everything you did so far much easier ? And this is where the space station comes in. It would be while being built a project with many requirements and things that need to be taken care of, right after being built it would be a symbol of your conquest of your new home, and after a while, be a hub of interplanetary communication to make travels much easier. Convinced yet ? What if I also added that it wasn't truly a necessary step of progression but merely a way to tackle it with style, much like super coolant and hydrogen engines ? In a nutshell : a space station is another step of progression which, though not strictly necessary, would be a way to get to the temporal tear and enable more options for the sandboxing aspect of the game and it would open up new doors as well. Oh, and of course, just like all mechanics in ONI, the core concept is easy to understand, but the execution making your own artificial planet would be hard to perfect and have many ways to be taken care of. And to spare the awesome team over at Klei some time, I made sure to make this concept not too difficult to implement as it would mainly use existing mechanics with a few modifications in order to be actually implemented in the game. Now, let's get started on turning this silly little concept into an actually designed plan.  

 

2. How would it work, and how would it work with the current game ?

 

Now, for the actual details. Let's go through the steps of making a station, from a player's perspective.

We're currently at the late mid-game. We have access to most resources, though it can be annoying at times to bring them from another planet. There's many smaller bases on a few planetoïds to take care of what we need in each one. Strangely, to open the temporal tear, the latest imaginary update added a requirement : building a "temporal battery" next to it. Strange, we can't find this building in our build menu, though we can find a weird "Zero-G Assembler" device that's a big 6x5 (?) machine and that needs to be built from the inside of a rocket. Well, right after cryofuel propulsion there's this research that grants us the "space station landing pad"... How about we try to build it ? Maybe it'll give us the answer to what this weird assembler is.

After building the space station landing pad that was twice as large as a rocket's, we can open the build menu. We're instantly asked to build two engines of our choice, though they have to be either radbolt engines or hydrogen engines. Seems hard to supply, but it should only be used once. The next step is building the habitat which takes... a whopping 10t of steel, 8t of glass, and 1t of insulation ??? This better be useful and give us the answer to how to open the tear ! As the habitat is formed, liquid, gas and solid storage modules were built right below the habitat module, lined up horizontally over the two engines. Well, let's see what the habitat looks like...

(just imagine that the tiles are rocket tiles and that the metal tiles have a different textures and are called rocket linking tiles)

Now, THAT'S huge ! Almost twice as big in terms of height and length (18*5 buildable area)

Our player will now place everything you'd expect in a rocket, with beds, toilets, a mess hall and all that's needed for dupe comfort. The space station's interior is meant to leave the player with the ability to put in more advanced systems than usual, like a built-in electrolysis chamber, an orbital research station and most importantly, our new Zero-G Assembler (ZGA). Now, for the mechanics of the space station.

It takes a full tank of radbolts / LOX and LH2 (which are built into the engines used for the space station) to send it to space. One into space, it will orbit the planetoïd that it was launched from, changing which tile it's in in a clockwise manner around said planetoïd every 5 cycles. It can move manually, but to do so, you are required to refill its tank of LOX and LH2 (yes, only the cryofuel engines can be refueled, to give more value to them as compared to the currently meta radbolt engines. This gives the player a choice between being able to refuel their space station or a simpler way to put it in orbit). But wait ! How do you refuel it ? How can you refuel a rocket that's already in space ? Well, I'm glad you asked, introducing the rocket linking tiles ! The concept is simple : any rocket that's currently flying in space can attach itself to the space station. The duplicants can then travel between the rocket and the station using the top door, and the rocket's tanks can be directly accessed through putting fittings on the rocket linking tiles. Furthermore, we'd the the addition of two new fittings : the fuel input fitting and the oxidizer input fitting, and i hope that i don't have to explain what these would do

This means that any rocket can just unload their cargo into the space station or get refueled there. For example, a way that the new station and the old rocketry would interact would be by having an on-board electrolysis and supercooling set up that would allow you to make more LH2 and LOX for your rockets to avoid having to refuel at a planet. Perhaps the worldgen could calculate a spot in space that would require a space station refueling to get to ? Maybe this spot could house the temporal tear, too. Either way, you effectively have your own artificial asteroid to land one rocket at a time to and easily refuel the rocket with an on-board cryofuel production that is fuel itself by a rocket bringing in a cargo of water. The possibilities for automation are endless with this ! Maybe the station could travel to a place with lots of natural radiation to grow mutated crops. Maybe the station could be used to have a more sustainable research station. Either way, the sustainability of a space station is required for the ZGA : This monster takes in 1200W of power ! Well, you could run it in a normal rocket, but good luck with that. This ZGA would require the station to have its own power generation (the upper tiles being window tiles could help with solar by flying to a spot with tons of light, or a rocket could come in and bring in a new kind of fuel that I'll elaborate on later. Either way, the ZGA opens up a few things through being used as a manufacturing building (requires mechatronics engineering to operate (and build btw)) :

First, the temporal battery to power the tear opener. Takes in ten units of "RTG fuel cells" and a bunch of steel to create.

Wait, "RTG fuel cells" you said ? Well. Second, it could make RTGs and RTG fuel cells. The RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) is a 2x2 building similar to a research reactor that takes in one fuel cell per cycle to create enough heat to power three steam turbines. The fuel cells take in 100 kg of processed nuclear waste which itself is made from 500 kg of nuclear waste put through a centrifuge. Many other things could require a ZGA but let's keep it at that for now. In a nutshell, the RTG is the best way to power any remote base with no other way to power itself, but the ability to have a ZGA on-board makes it the ideal fuel source of a space station. For example, here's a design of a research and ZGA-focused space station design that  made up quickly as a mean of giving a visual idea of what we'd get :

(i did move the door here, i guess ti could go anywhere. Again, imagine reaaaally hard that the two supply bins are the small 2x2 RTG and that the reactor is actually the ZGA. In this case, the O2 and water for the toilets would be provided by the built-in tanks and fittings, being periodically restocked by a refueling rocket.)

The RTG would also help with the current issue of what to do with nuclear waste. It's never an issue as you can vent it into space, so how about making it not just waste but a wanted byproduct to encourage another reason to build a research reactor ? The RTG and its fuel cells would fix this issue

All in all, the space station would fit right in with the rocketry and radiation systems, utilizing both in an interesting way in order to create a fun and balanced challenge to tackle. But well this seems good and all, but if the ZGA is required to beat the game (open the tear and access it), wouldn't it be over centralizing ?

 

3. The balance

 

Now, keep in mind, I am nowhere near as skilled as Klei and its members. I'm a mere player of the game who has a funny idea. But here are my takes on how to balance this monster :

• Make moving it, as I said, require a full tank of LH2 and LOX.
• Only allow the creation of one space station, any more seems simply overpowered.
• Make the ZGA buildable in a normal large rocket interior. It'd be very hard to make it work, but it would make the space station not truly necessary if the temporal tear isn't moved to a place requiring refueling at a station.
• Make some areas of space have high radiation and light, encouraging the creation of solar-powered space greenhouses there. This would make the station not necessary but make things way easier if one is ready to pay the resource and time costs of getting one in orbit.
• Perhaps fine tune the size of the interior until it's just large enough to be able to fit everything in and feel like a proper station while not being too easy to find a design (mine still has many tiles left that aren't occupied for example and i made it without even thinking)
• As I said, make the station costly to build and to maintain but these costs should come from 100% renewable resources. Oh, and since the RTG cells aren't technically renewable, maybe add a way to make the space station make them very slowly with a highly energy and resource negative way of processing them to not soft-lock the player if they want to open the tear but vented all the waste and used all the uranium available (maybe make uranium itself renewable through a slowly regenerating mineable asteroid field ?)
• Do NOT add a building like a radiator to just vent heat into space, as it would make heat management trivial. The player should have to make some form of heat management system that takes a lot of energy to run (see my example which requires an aquatuner and therefore a battery buffer to not have brown outs when both the tuner and the ZGA are running. I guess the station would also need a built-in battery buffer, perhaps one of 60kj that needs thermium to be built ?). If there is a need to add passive heat radiation, it should be a threat that can freeze the station and turn the dupes into solid oxygen popsicles if unmanaged.

That's it for my ideas on how to balance this idea. I do fear that this would become an over-centralizing build for everything related to balance, but perhaps this is the price to pay for such an interesting mechanic. Oh, about that !

 

4. Okay, but is it fun ?

 

Well, i feel like for anyone that enjoyed the DLC and its rocket management mechanics as well as the radiation systems, putting these into one big endgame build that makes rocket travel easier and opens up the end of the game will be an interesting challenge. But this is where the fact that this is posted in these forums comes in handy : You, the one who might be affected by such an update (yes, you !) have the ability to voice your opinions on this. Would you enjoy it ? Why did you answer yes / no ? Any ideas on how to make this fun and interesting ? Should i delete this post and never make bad ideas again ? It's all up to you and your feedback ! My opinion is that this is a culmination of all of a run's management of rockets and radiation, and therefore deserves to be (or something similar) the final build of the Spaced Out! tech tree.

5. Conclusion

 

To finish this very lengthy post, I'd like to say that this isn't truly a serious proposal but rather a fun idea I had. There are so many people suggesting a space station (remember when we could break out of the rocket's walls and people had fun making their own station ?) but I never saw an idea that was explained in-depth enough and that respected the game design principles that i talked about earlier. So as I was bored and thought that i wasn't active enough on these forums for someone who bought the DLC back in the very first ten minutes of early access I thought "Well, what if..." and tied to make a functional system that would fit in the DLC and, of course, add to the game something fun. Such a concept would simply add so many possibilities and I felt like it was a waste not to talk about how I'd see it work. I'd also like to add that I hope that this sparks a discussion that brings the game forward and makes us all have an even more enjoyable experience and hopefully make the game more popular and even more loved. As a final point, if anyone wants to take inspiration from this post, that being either mod developers or Klei themselves, feel free to do so, after all, my goal was to make us as a community think of how such a concept could work.

 

On that note, I say to you, the reader (yes, you, again !) : Have a nice day, and make sure that your dupes don't suffocate ! Oh, and if you're a duplicant, don't you have a rock crusher to operate ?  

 

 

EDIT : Welp I'm stupid. Mods, could you move this to the Feedback and suggestion section please :S

[Gurgel]

25 minutes ago, Fleefie said:

EDIT : Welp I'm stupid. Mods, could you move this to the Feedback and suggestion section please :S

It is almost a tradition to post to the wrong forum first

[SackMaggie]

Too long marked read later.

[Sasza22]

I think it might be just a bit too complicated in this form but i generally like the idea of a space station. The ability to keep some stuff floating out there in space would be nice as a refueling station. I think it would be the best if the station was a buildable module for the rocket. A really big one so only the largest rockets could carry it. When reaching it`s destination it would sedtroy the rocket and turn it into the station (maybe keep the spacefarer module interior in the corner of the new space station interior so you won`t lose resources).

I also like the RTG idea. But i`d change it a tiny bit. Maybe we could process nuclear waste into plutonium or something that has high radiation on it`s own and can be used as a rad source (but slowly dissipates while producing tons of radiation contaminants) for mutated plants for example. That could be turned into an RTG that would work as a generator that produces relatively little power but takes very little room and doesn`t need to be refueled for 100-200 cycles.

[silverbluep]

Honestly; like the idea of a space station. I like that it plays into the main scenario in opening the tear. i don't like the mechanics you described; but i'm sure if klei wanted to implement they can find good implementation options. Look at where rockets were and where are they now.

I like this idea; but I think the dlc is probably at polish stage rn judging from what the updates have been; so probably there is no room for a big overhaul like this. Maybe a future DLC?

[SharraShimada]

23 hours ago, SackMaggie said:

Too long marked read later.

I´ll wait for the film i guess.

[misotoma]

On 9/1/2021 at 1:03 PM, Fleefie said:

several criteria should be met :

Does it add more lag?

honestly this is the only limiting factor lol