Radioactive biome should be more... radioactive

[Sasza22]

When i first landed on the radioactive planetoid i thought i was going to need some radiation protection to mine the uranium. Given that a slime biome for example needs some germ protection it would seem logical i would need radiation protection for the uranium one. But instead the only threat are the beetas. It`s cool and all but you don`t really need the fancy lead suits or the decontamination shower when accessing that biome. It was a bit of dissapointment.

Then i got an idea. What if radioactive contaminants (the ones that are coded as germs) worked similarly to slimelung in the slime biome? Raw uranium ore would be a place where those would reside and mining it would release them all over the place. Dupes would get covered in large amounts of contaminants and it would make sense to wash them off before returning to base.

[Unfawkable]

The lead suits are honestly solely for Research Reactor management at the moment. I didn't even have to use them on my Crashed Satellites planet. The reason the biome itself is not too radioactive is that you could use the passive radiation for Radbolt production. I don't know why they kept it on Wheezeworts though, it's still a lot.

[Spoonwood]

Were you playing with the difficulty for radiation set on maximum difficulty?

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, Spoonwood said:

Were you playing with the difficulty for radiation set on maximum difficulty?

It`s on my list of things to try. Still with that on i would need more protection from space radiaiton getting through the "roof" of the planetoid than the biomes beneath and of course the crashed satelite would be pretty dangerous as well.

[Coolthulhu]

I don't think radiation germs would help much. Washing hands is not a lot of effort and oxygen mask would protect well enough against the germs in gas, unless the germ explosion was so huge it caused immediate danger.

If the germs were so plentiful that they posed immediate danger, lead suits would get only a bit more useful. It would lead to a lot of corner digging and liquid locks instead.

For as long as background radiation of the uranium biome is lower than space radiation, it will be safe.

[pether]

11 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

I don't think radiation germs would help much.

Radiation germs cause radiation. You can observe this after eg launching nuclear rocket - it will spawn a lot of germs and tiles below the rocket will start glowing green.

Another thing is - there is really not that much in that biome to go there. Saturn traps are great for hydrogen production, but the main export product - enriched uranium - is used only in ultra-end-game building and it is fine not to use it (fine and safer). I wished beetas had another application apart enrched uranium. Gathrering radbolts from them is tideous and require near-exploity builds to work...

[Coolthulhu]

28 minutes ago, pether said:

Radiation germs cause radiation.

Yes, I included that in my post.

[Sasza22]

8 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

I don't think radiation germs would help much. Washing hands is not a lot of effort and oxygen mask would protect well enough against the germs in gas, unless the germ explosion was so huge it caused immediate danger.

If the germs were so plentiful that they posed immediate danger, lead suits would get only a bit more useful. It would lead to a lot of corner digging and liquid locks instead.

For as long as background radiation of the uranium biome is lower than space radiation, it will be safe.

I was thinking more like slime germs work. The ore would be "infected" with contaminants that would "grow" on them so that dupes would get covered with large amounts of contaminants when mining it which would pose some threat if they weren`t in lead suits and stayed in them for a while. It would also make more sense to use the decontamination shower to keep the suits clean (iirc that would also clean the ore they are carrying).

I don`t think the contaminants should spread to the air though, and even if so then in small amounts. They should exist mostly in the ore and maybe nearby minerals so they would pose a threat when mining and hauling resources out of the biome and could contaminate stuff in your base if dupes didn`t at least wash their hands but that would be rather minor.

[Coolthulhu]

8 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

I was thinking more like slime germs work. The ore would be "infected" with contaminants that would "grow" on them so that dupes would get covered with large amounts of contaminants when mining it which would pose some threat if they weren`t in lead suits and stayed in them for a while. It would also make more sense to use the decontamination shower to keep the suits clean (iirc that would also clean the ore they are carrying).

That's even easier to handle: just wash hands after last handling of the ore.

There isn't a lot of uranium in the biome and it's in small chunks, so unless the germ amounts were absolutely massive, it would be safe to work without lead suits in there, as long as you don't do it all day.

[Sasza22]

On 2/8/2022 at 8:51 AM, Coolthulhu said:

That's even easier to handle: just wash hands after last handling of the ore.

There isn't a lot of uranium in the biome and it's in small chunks, so unless the germ amounts were absolutely massive, it would be safe to work without lead suits in there, as long as you don't do it all day.

Well i don`t want it to be deadly. More of a slight nuisance that needs some countermeasures like digging through other biomes. What germs would do is produce localized radiation around veins of uranium and mined chunks of it, maybe spreading a bit to other tiles. Dupes digging through it and picking it up will produce radiation as well.

Yes this can be avoided with just a sink (i`m not sure if the sink will be radioactive from that) and they don`t spend much time in there but on harder difficulty it might cause some effect. I`m thinking the radiation levels from the germs should be comparable to the space levels maybe slightly higher so if a dupe forgets to wash he might get minor radiation sickness at the end of the cycle.

[Coolthulhu]

2 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

so if a dupe forgets to wash he might get minor radiation sickness at the end of the cycle.

If it depends on "forgetting to wash", it's more of an annoyance than a threat.

In my rather long run on second-to-hardest radiation difficulty, only dupes working near satellites or confined to space (niobium volcano colonization) actually needed basic rad pills. No lead suits used.

[calibayzone]

Realism dictates low radioactivity of uranium (note: the main risk is radon exposure, not the radiation levels itself in the mines).

So we can make the bees more dangerous? They don't even seem to attack.

 

[goboking]

I think they could have made the entire biome more interesting, to be honest.  As is, it's mostly rock and ice, and is home to beetas and wheezworts.  If they'd made it warmer they could have removed the wheezeworts, replacing them with a new radioactive plant.  This in turn means they can revert wheezeworts to their old form, making them less of the super plant as they are now.  They could have also made placed wild saturn critter traps in the biome so they'd regularly feed on beeta larva.  And with the biome being warmer, domesticating the critter traps would be more viable.  And yeah, the biome's radiation levels could have been more threatening to unprotected dupes.

[Sasza22]

20 hours ago, calibayzone said:

Realism dictates low radioactivity of uranium (note: the main risk is radon exposure, not the radiation levels itself in the mines).

Radon in that case could be trated as a contaminant (well technically it`s a gas but there are also other radioactive fission products). The threat in the biome wouldn`t come directly from the ore but from the contaminants present inside. Dupes would get exposed to radiation when picking up the ore and spread it around the base unless decontaminated.

7 hours ago, goboking said:

I think they could have made the entire biome more interesting, to be honest.  As is, it's mostly rock and ice, and is home to beetas and wheezworts.  If they'd made it warmer they could have removed the wheezeworts, replacing them with a new radioactive plant.  This in turn means they can revert wheezeworts to their old form, making them less of the super plant as they are now.  They could have also made placed wild saturn critter traps in the biome so they'd regularly feed on beeta larva.  And with the biome being warmer, domesticating the critter traps would be more viable.  And yeah, the biome's radiation levels could have been more threatening to unprotected dupes.

I`m not sure why they decided that the biome needs to be so cold. Anyway i think a special radioactive plant could have been an interesting option. There could also be an interaction between beetas and the plant. Like imagine if the plant just produced radiation when fertilized but if a beeta pollinates it then it could produce something interesting (like some extra ore for sustainability).