Is it just me or are the diamond presses kinda absurd?

[AzulCrescent]

An order to create 100kg of diamond needs 1000 radbolts, which is, uh... a lot. It feels like you need the sheer output of radbolt generators sandwiched between 2 researched reactors if you wanna have any respectable output without resorting to infinite nuclear waste storage. Thoughts? 

[tuxii]

Diamond is not an essential material in ONI and you can get by without it very easily.  However diamond is very useful for decor and diamond is also great for high temperature applications, again, none of this is essential.  A cobalt metal tile is better than a diamond window tile is a better conductor.

Since Diamond is optional but still very useful, it is perfectly fine for it to be expensive.  Once you set up something that supplies radbolts generally your radbolt supply outstrips your demand fixes itself and you can direct your excess radbolts into diamond presses.  As radbolts are infinitely renewable, diamond is free aside from duplicant labor and time and infrastructure setup.

Honestly I wish they put up more hurdles to end game materials.  In the base game you almost always had everything you needed within range of a petroleum rocket and there ended up being this kind of dead time on a plathrough when you already had every useable material in the game, a self-sustaining base and all the was left to go to the temporal tear.  Diamond in the base game was far too easily attained from the oil biome or short range space missions, before Spaced Out many players probably never actually made a window tile out of glass as diamond was so common.

I am all for endgame materials being harder to attain, I'm looking forward to feeding the tree myself when the DLC leaves early access.

[NeoDeusMachina]

Not really. I think the diamond press is in a good place right now - it used to produce a lot less per use.

Although there are other options to generate radbolts, I have had a lot of success with shinebugs. A single reactor produces 2000 radbolts/cycle and powers up 4 panels 100% of the time. I am using it to power my space infrastructure, 4 radbolt rockets, and a diamond press and I am currently sitting on 98000 stored radbolts. They pile up faster than I can use them. My current concern is if the game will crash at some point if I store too many radbolts.

I would suggest you explore different alternatives for radbolt generation if you havent already!

[AzulCrescent]

Fair responses, appreciate the replies!

I can see the value in things not being too easy, or not too low effort to get. I like that they added the tree and made an entire niobium planet, which I thought was pretty cool.

Also, I prolly need more fiddling around with radbolts in general. They just feel rather unintuitive for me at times. Still it's another aspect of the game that I can play around with so that's nice.

 

[hackcasual]

Late game it just doesn't seem like power is a problem at all with 4-5 oil wells available and the huge power output of uranium, so it's really just a matter of spamming a bunch of radbolt generators.

[Twf3d]

Having to spam a lot of radbolt generators with low sources doesnt feel right, even if we have excess power. Shine bug reactors imho as legit as they are to me is just another one of those legit on the line, just like an infinite pacu farm. If that kind of abuse is better regarded by the community or klei than infinite storage is above me.

But I'd agree that in both cases, diamond and radbolt generation, mostly everyone uses some kind of shortcut aka QoL exploit, like previously mentioned and others, to generate the big amounts that are needed, so I'd think it's correct to agree it's not really in a good spot.

Examples: Shine bug reactors, launcher radbolt requirement exploit, infinite storage, rockets launching and landing, rockets bugged aura, broken reactors in space..

Anyone trying to use space, worts or something that doesn't break space time like exploits will have a hard time, most i've seen is a research powered by a reactor.

Haven't toyed with it much myself but this has been my feeling, change my mind.

[AzulCrescent]

Twf3d, that is indeed my feeling on it, which is why i made this post. The methods to get rads are very limited, and even with a research reactor, you can't get 1 operation of diamond press in a cycle seems rather odd.

 

The above comments do make a good point that there *are* methods around that, although whether one likes the methods or not is up to the individual i guess. The game has a lot to do with breaking the mechanics too after all. 

[NeoDeusMachina]

48 minutes ago, AzulCrescent said:

The methods to get rads are very limited, and even with a research reactor, you can't get 1 operation of diamond press in a cycle seems rather odd.

To be fair, you can get 1 operation of the diamond press per cycle and even more by using the research reactor. I remember a few patches back I had designed a rather simple reactor with 4 radbolt generators and a small sage hatch ranch specifically to do that. The hatches were fed dirt from pips so as to create diamond sustainably. The whole thing generated more power than needed so i could have squeezes in more radbolt generators.

[AzulCrescent]

Ah my bad. I meant with just 1 radbolt generator near a research reactor. The method you said is indeed viable but it seems like a rather big commitment lol. Tho tbf power isn't an issue once you start playing with nuclear. 

[blakemw]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:10 AM, Twf3d said:

Having to spam a lot of radbolt generators with low sources doesnt feel right, even if we have excess power.

Though something else which doesn't feel right to me is having tons of excess power with no power sink. There's sort of this glorification of energy-efficiency in the community so any build that can do the most with the least power (or heat) is exalted. But in truth, there is so much sustainable power that can be generated in the game that there is no practical reason to value energy efficiency in the end game.

[Korbin]

On 9/4/2021 at 6:25 AM, AzulCrescent said:

Twf3d, that is indeed my feeling on it, which is why i made this post. The methods to get rads are very limited, and even with a research reactor, you can't get 1 operation of diamond press in a cycle seems rather odd.

And you need 1k of diamond PER drill operation. The ONLY way to get a decent amount of rads for diamond press in that situation it to compress nuclear waste as far as I know. If you don't compress nuclear waste, getting on serving of diamond for one mining trip takes 10 cycles at generating 1k bolts a cycle, which takes 1.5kwh of power if you are running 3 radbolt generators. I feel like there is something I'm missing at a power/radbolt cost that high. I have to assume that that will be rebalanced when the DLC is released.  

[NeoDeusMachina]

1 hour ago, Korbin said:

And you need 1k of diamond PER drill operation. The ONLY way to get a decent amount of rads for diamond press in that situation it to compress nuclear waste as far as I know. If you don't compress nuclear waste, getting on serving of diamond for one mining trip takes 10 cycles at generating 1k bolts a cycle, which takes 1.5kwh of power if you are running 3 radbolt generators. I feel like there is something I'm missing at a power/radbolt cost that high. I have to assume that that will be rebalanced when the DLC is released.  

It really isn't the ONLY way to get a decent amount of rads for diamond press. Some ways are more exploit-y than others, but there are definitely other ways, like using the exhaust of radbolt engines, shinebug reactors, research reactors, etc.

[Yunru]

6 hours ago, blakemw said:

Though something else which doesn't feel right to me is having tons of excess power with no power sink. There's sort of this glorification of energy-efficiency in the community so any build that can do the most with the least power (or heat) is exalted. But in truth, there is so much sustainable power that can be generated in the game that there is no practical reason to value energy efficiency in the end game.

Oh there's definitely practical reasons: The nice wires can only take 2k load, so keeping builds below that is of much value.

[lee1026]

15 hours ago, Korbin said:

And you need 1k of diamond PER drill operation. The ONLY way to get a decent amount of rads for diamond press in that situation it to compress nuclear waste as far as I know. If you don't compress nuclear waste, getting on serving of diamond for one mining trip takes 10 cycles at generating 1k bolts a cycle, which takes 1.5kwh of power if you are running 3 radbolt generators. I feel like there is something I'm missing at a power/radbolt cost that high. I have to assume that that will be rebalanced when the DLC is released.  

Me: is 1.5kwh a lot?

Seriously. 3 radbolt generators is 1.5kw of power. That is a lot by early game power sources standards, but then again, we are no longer dealing with early game power sources when we are using the diamond press. Mapgen gives you a lot of diamonds, and by the time you are out, I would hope that you have a proper power source up and running. A nuclear reactor can 8kw and allow for 350 rads/cycle on the generators. 

 

Putting it differently, a nuclear reactor can put support 16 radbolt generators at 350 rads/cycle, or about a half ton per cycle. One drillcone mission every two cycles is a lot.

[Gurgel]

There is one application that consumes Diamond: the drill-cone. So Diamond was made renewable, just not very easily so. 

[spike4597]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:32 AM, tuxii said:

Diamond is not an essential material in ONI and you can get by without it very easily.

I strongly disagree. it is required for some setups, gives much more decor bonus and is easier to get than glass, and is required for the drillcone.

[AndreyKl]

On 9/2/2021 at 9:08 PM, AzulCrescent said:

An order to create 100kg of diamond needs 1000 radbolts, which is, uh... a lot. It feels like you need the sheer output of radbolt generators sandwiched between 2 researched reactors if you wanna have any respectable output without resorting to infinite nuclear waste storage. Thoughts? 

Personally I use crashed satellite to generate those radbols, combined with ~250 radbolds per cycle means that I have an income of 25kg of diamond per cycle. More then enough to cover my needs and I have literal tons accumulated. Feels fair to me.