[Game Update] - Public Testing 477316

[NeoDeusMachina]

47 minutes ago, Kderosa said:

On one hand I don't think it's quite as linear as you're portraying (you could always go the glossy drecko route for plastic and you don't need steel to refine metals with the metal refinery thus allowing you to jump to radbolts) but on the other the game, by it's nature, is somewhat linear because the inherent challenges do force you to do take certain actions in roughly the same order whether you want to or not. Also, whether you like it or not, if you want to get into the petroleum business on the teleport planet you have a 100+ cycle project in front of you and a colony to maintain while production is ongoing, and in the DLC that colony has to be a fairly well designed so you'll be able to ignore it afterwards as you deal with other things on other planets.  Same goes for uranium and the metal volcanoes on the pip planet.

I think we sorta agree on a lot of things, perhaps we just express it differently? I was sorta saying what you said above in different words to explain that we "already" have delays no matter which route we take (petroleum vs radbolt vs hydrogen) - and I am fine with that. What I was not fine with was this:  

On 9/3/2021 at 6:36 PM, Kderosa said:

I'm thinking from a gameplay standpoint, there's an opportunity to limit the player's ability to use any engines but the CO2/sucrose engines by keeping the higher tech locked up longer (say 100 cycles) before the more powerful engines become available.

and it is because of the reasons you and I mentioned already. I think those are sufficient delays we have to deal with.

47 minutes ago, Kderosa said:

My real point is more along the lines of technologies shouldn't be instantly obsolete upon discovery like CO2 rockets are in the DLC and steam rockets in the base game and this is because of the presence of a combination (too) easily researched improved technologies and no natural resource constraints (sucrose and petroleum are readily available), and the lack of interesting close by POIs to explore.  The base game didn't really have this issue - petroleum rockets remained useful after you finally managed to get a viable hydrogen rocket - it had a different problem - there was hardly anything to do with the hydrogen rockets.  The DLC mostly solves this problem but for the time being has introduced two classes of rocket tech with limited (I'd say too limiting) use. It may be that the petroleum rockets need to consume more fuel making it more expensive to run them (like in the base game) and the radbolt rockets need the "nuclear waste and take-off radition exploits" nerfed as well.

I agree - the CO2 and sucrose engines do become obsolete for the most part. As it is, petroleum (small and large), radbolt, and hydrogen rockets are the 4 engines I can see having good use as soon as they become available. They each have advantages and disadvantages, they have just been rebalanced, and I think we can justify using any of those for different reasons. I might push it a bit further and say that the steam engine could be useful for some sort of cheap short range transport that does not require processing water/pwater into oil then into petroleum. A lot of people don't "bother" with the steam engine, but that doesn't mean they are useless.

I think the purpose of the CO2 and sucrose engines are to offer earlier access to space at a rather cheap cost (fuel readily available). I personally don't have an issue with them not being used in the later stages of the game, just like I eventually stop using the oxygen diffuser as soon as I can setup electrolyzers, or just like I stop using normal or heavy watt wires as soon as I can produce enough refined metal for conductive wires. I do understand that some people would prefer that everything stays relevant from cycle 1 to 5000, though. Regarding the CO2 and sucrose engines, I remember reading some posts of the forum from people saying they would still use CO2 engines late game as fast transport to the closest asteroids (I don't, but some people do apparently, it's a matter of preference). Edit: got ninja'd, see @sakura_sk's previous post.

47 minutes ago, Kderosa said:

Last, the outer planets need more of a reason to colonize them and use the end-game technology to its fullest, not just a quick jaunt to plunk down a printing pod  and pick up some artifacts then skedaddle home,  Ideally, you'd have to maintain some sort of colony to extract some sort of natural resource, turn it into some sort of commodity, transport that commodity somewhere else where it then gets used as part of some end game goal.  This would satisfy both the gamer camp and the sandbox camp.  Presently, though the game has good replayability, there's dissatisfaction with either having an end game consist of building needless vanity projects with no real goal or tedious infrastructure that serves no real purpose because there's no end game goal/project to achieve (traveling to the tear (base game) and opening the tear with radbolts (DLC) are kinda just tacked on anti-climactic ends).

The base game has a great early game and mid game.  The DLC improved the midgame and has a great late mid-game.  But we still need a better late game to wrap it up.  And, I'm hoping the funds and interest are sufficient for the dev team to reach that point.

It is quite difficult to satisfy those two camps, but I do hope the game reaches that point as well! At the end of the day, even in survival mode, ONI is essentially a sandbox game and I don't see it having an "end" where you just cannot keep playing your colony because you have achieved a certain goal. Let's see how things develop

Edited September 5, 2021 by NeoDeusMachina

[Kderosa]

4 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

I think we sorta agree on a lot of things, perhaps we just express it differently?

Yes. We’re both offering slightly different takes to improve the game. 
 

4 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

I do understand that some people would prefer that everything stays relevant from cycle 1 to 5000, though.

This is a bit much. Some tech deserves to be retired like the outhouse after you have better tech. And I’d go as far as saying the CO2 rockets too or at least relegated to a specialized role. I’m just saying I think it’d be better if they were a little more useful or relevant. 

 

4 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

At the end of the day, even in survival mode, ONI is essentially a sandbox game and I don't see it having an "end" where you just cannot keep playing your colony because you have achieved a certain goal.

That’s because there’s no late game really so people make up their own goals. I’d like there to be both. A satisfying end game goal and the option to keep on playing in sandbox fashion. 
 

 

4 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

If you find that CO2 rocket is totally useless, why don't you take it as a challenge to use only CO2 rockets for SO start? You would be amazed how far they can go if the worldgen allows it. 

I’m not saying they’re useless per se, I’m just saying it’s just way too easy to immediately upgrade to “better” tech. And I agree you certainly can make use of them if you wanted to instead of upgrading, I just think it’s too easy to upgrade to more powerful rockets and not enough to do within 3 hexes of the home planet to justify rushing them. And to be honest, I wish there were more of a reason to rush into space in the DLC. 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Kderosa

[TuxSam123]

On 9/2/2021 at 9:02 PM, JarrettM said:

The Automation Broadcaster and Automation Broadcast Receiver buildings allow automation signals to be sent wirelessly so long as both buildings have a view of space. This even works between asteroids and spacecraft. The broadcast has a range of 5 hexes on the starmap.

MY PLEAS HAVE BEEN HEARD!

[pether]

On 9/3/2021 at 2:02 AM, JarrettM said:

The Automation Broadcaster and Automation Broadcast Receiver buildings allow automation signals to be sent wirelessly so long as both buildings have a view of space.

Can we have better way to distinguish those two buildings? They are very similar, especially when the round signal waves start their animation. Even flipping one of them from left to right would be a big improvement to visibility.

[EricKlei]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:26 AM, Mujinzo said:

this test build has brought back windows cursor bug.

On 9/4/2021 at 3:35 AM, sakura_sk said:

If you mean "windows cursor appears instead of the game cursor" it's been  happening for a while now... *but not all the time

@Mujinzo Assuming it's what sakura_sk mentioned, it's most likely a configuration issue with your antivirus/security software preventing file access to your Temp folder as discussed in this thread. Previously the game would display this as a crash, now we ignore these errors from Unity. It doesn't appear to be causing other issues. If you or anyone else figures out which software is causing this please let me know.

[Gurgel]

I have to say that things have gotten choppy for me with this update. There are noticeable and non-uniform delays, for example when scrolling or planting tiles now to the degree as to be really annoying. Menus are slow to respond and sometimes do not respond at all. Since I seem to be one of the people usually least affected, this indicates debug-instrumentation may have been taken too far or there is some problem now that was not there before. I have only 12 dupes and most debris in compactors, so that is not it. 

Does anybody else have similar observations? 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Gurgel