The State of Radiation

[FoldableHuman]

This past week I've been having a number of interesting discussions on stream about the state of nuclear in the game, the overall shape and purpose of it, and I wanted to get some of those thoughts out into the wild.

The thing that really tipped this all off was playing the beta branch and getting a Glow Stick dupe. For those who aren't watching the patch notes, this is a new positive trait that makes the dupe emit a constant aura of light and radiation. On the plus side this gives the dupe (and others near them) the benefits of being in a lit environment at all times and a 33% resistance to rads. On the downside, despite the personal resistance, the dupe's 112 rads/cycle still works out to 75 rads absorbed, net +15 rads after using the lavatory. Without medical intervention Glow Sticks will die of radiation poisoning within 60 cycles.

It is honestly some of the most fun I've had in the game.

It's a really interesting trait that has a strong benefit (Well Lit at all times) and comes with a downside, but the downside turns into catastrophe slow enough that there's plenty of time to respond. It's the most fun I've had with the whole medicine system in a long time because I had to work out how to get her a steady supply of rad pills. It wasn't a difficult solution, but it was a thing that needed to be dealt with, I couldn't just wait it out. Then after some testing I noticed that being in a lead suit protected Leira from herself, built her a custom entrance/exit from the habitat, and now she doesn't even need her meds very often since as long as she's got work outside the habitat her rad exposure is dramatically cut.

It's great, and it gave me exactly the experience that I feel has been missing from the radiation game.

At the moment the radiation systems in the game are designed around two opposing design philosophies. One cluster of elements assumes radiation is plentiful but dangerous (lead suits, decontamination showers, rad pills, plant mutations). This is the arm of things that makes the uranium biome look scary, and oppressive, like an area that you should best dig your way around until you're prepared, an area that requires the same kind of prep as the oil biome: you *can* send unprotected dupes into the area to do some quick work, if you're willing to nurse them in a cot for a couple cycles afterwards.

Unfortunately the uranium biome, despite its wonderfully spooky aesthetic, is toothless on its own. In Classic maps the biggest risk is warming a pocket of liquid CO2 and flooding your base. On Irradiated moons the biggest risk is accidentally killing all the Beetas. The strongest source of radiation in the biome are the wheezeworts. Radiation poisoning is only a thing that happens because a dupe stood in concentrated rocket exhaust with 1m+ radioactive contaminants for the entire build time of a tempshift plate. Lead suits are built mostly for aesthetic because nothing in the game exposes dupes consistently to the radiation levels needed to overcome their daily cleansing. I'm not sure anyone has built a decontamination shower with intent, as most sources of radiation don't even produce radioactive contaminants.

This is because the second cluster of elements assume rads are scarce and slow to acquire (see the cost of basically every rad-powered machine). This is understandable, rad powered stuff is really good, but it's also pretty frustrating, hence the "accepted solution" to radbolt generation isn't to run a research reactor for the rads it gives off (which honestly aren't great from a throughput perspective, given the massive infrastructure required) but for the nuclear waste. This waste is also pretty weak and harmless on its own, but can be compacted into an infinite storage tank that eventually produces a respectable amount of radiation.

That kinda sucks.

So that's kinda the state of things at the moment.

I like the outline of the radiation system, I think the component parts are interesting, but at the moment they don't quite come together. I think the low-level stuff works, using wheezewort as an introduction to the basic functionality of generators and reflectors and a source of rads for research, but above that it's a mix of too expensive (incentivizing exploits) and simultaneously too safe.

To compare it again to the oil biome: the oil biome works. It's a major stepping stone in the game progression that requires multiple fundamentals to come together. The heat is potentially lethal, so dupes need protection. Protection requires fibre (farming or ranching), refined metal (mining and refinement), and a pure source of O2 (controlled oxygen generation.) Putting all of that together yields oil, diamond, and lead, which enable a whole new tier of infrastructure. Uranium, on paper, seems to be the next step beyond that. Lead suits require a lot of the same fundamentals as atmo suits, but also glass and lead, making it naturally gated behind oil. Uranium unlocks another tier of power generation, plant mutations, and space harvesting. But it's actually safer to get than oil, and you don't even really need it because it's ultimately less convenient and less potent than trapping 80 shine bugs in a water lock.

[pether]

Thanks for the feedback about the new trait, when I saw it I was sure it is badly designed and doesn't affect anything, I wasn't awared that it is so cool. Death in 60 cycles is something I would love to see more in this game and I am officialy sorry for all bad things I said about Glow Stick trait - now I am super excited to play with it! Thanks!

Abouth the rest - totally agree, big +1 to all what you said.

I really hope that the radiation is currently in EA state and Klei wants to rebalance it before the release. It is really bad that the wheezeworts and shinebugs are main soruces of radbolt generation, waste from the reactor is more desider than its product and the radiation is too safe to harm anybody. I like how you compared it to next-step oil biome and I hope it will end that way - even more dangerous, but more rewarding.

I guess you forgot to include mutated plants to the topic.

I think its a super cool idea and I really like it. What am I missing in its current design is lack of stable, non-hacky way of sustaining radiation for mutated plants, some kind of rad-lamp. I don't really want to trap many laggy bugs just to keep my farms growing. Also, I like how mutated plants are hard to aquire and getting one is really rewarding, but I guess that after unlocking specific plant you should be able to easily multiply your seeds - either by collecting the seeds from mutated plants of the same mutation, or by being able to modify normal seeds with radbolts to get mutation you previously discovered.

[KonfigSys]

it can be simply corrected 

- just change all r/a materials to emit radiation - uranium ore, enriched uranium, byproducts - all should emit radiation and have different half-decay time. So the buildings also can be made of these materials and they should be radioactive also. 

[Sasza22]

Yeah the radiation needs work. It`s just not scary. Imo a lot more things should radiate and produce more rads on a much longer range. Radioactive materials should produce contaminants like slime produces slimelung. Dupes covered in contaminants should get irradiated faster. Radbolt collectors should be nerfed to compensate for the increased radiation.

[Coolthulhu]

The biggest mistake Klei did was adding the radbolt generator, or possibly making "radiation science" required (and doable) early on. Radiation can't be dangerous and endgame, yet accessible by early midgame at the same time, so the end result had to be either lukewarm or noob-wrecking.

This must have caused the whole "let's limit radiation because it's too useful", which made it not dangerous at all.

It would make perfect sense for radiation science to be generated by an aptly named "research reactor". Then there would be reasons to set it up as anything other than radioactive "waste" producer.

[FoldableHuman]

Thing is that I think the current tech tree, with material science as the fourth tier, only requiring 20 points per node, is a good balance point for making radiation more generally hazardous without making it a noob killer.

In fact I think a typical wheezewort research lab is a good example of how the hazards of radiation could be pretty effectively tutorialized. If standing in the same room as 5 wheezeworts while researching for several cycles in a row is enough rads to give radiation sickeness, if normal dupes only purged 10 rads per cycle and thus any regular exposure actually built up to meaningful levels, you're demonstrating the hazard in slow motion. 100 rads for the onset of sickness, but 900 for lethality, gives a lot of slack for things to be dangerous, or even just feel dangerous, without flash frying dupes. Running past 1 wheezewort once or twice every few cycles is meaningless, standing next to them all day is a slow killer, being unprotected next to a research reactor will put you in the hospital.

Radiation research being a prerequisite for radiation protection is already in line with a lot of other systems in the game, where things like heat management, or industrial scale production, are contingent on high-heat processes or less efficient production. You lightly irradiate a dupe to do the research to get the stuff to protect dupes from getting irradiated. Fits perfectly within the existing game loops.

I think a tuning pass needs to start from a danger curve, then all the consumption numbers can be tweaked from there. Like, I really don't care if a full tank in a rad rocket is 4000 rads or 400,000. The number's just a number.