Info & feedback on new critters

[ghkbrew]

On 5/6/2022 at 3:49 PM, Fradow said:

Cuddle Pip
...snip...

They replace Incubators, giving the same buff duration at no power cost.

Cuddle pips give a separate "Hugged" buff that increases incubation by 100%, vs the "Lullabied" buff which does +400%.

The buffs are stackable and cuddle pips can hug an egg in an incubator.

They're reminiscent of the divergents which give smaller crop growth buffs that don't require dupe labor and can stack with the farming station.

 

[Magheat2009]

On 5/7/2022 at 2:00 AM, LadenSwallow said:

Could the curried beans be a 'treatment' for flatulent dupes?

People rarely print flatulent dupes. There are too many harmless negative traits for most players to justify printing flatulent dupes.

[Primalflower]

2 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

People rarely print flatulent dupes. There are too many harmless negative traits for most players to justify printing flatulent dupes.

The problem isn't harmless traits, I'm totally up for printing duplicants that I can handle medicating. Allergy duplicants on a colony that is constantly producing blossom seeds, for example.

The problem with the idea of it curing flatulent duplicants is that it's so far away. I don't think I would get that many people shaking their heads with disagreement if I were to say that the asteroid shove voles are located in is probably one of the most directly perilous ones, and one that I don't think one gets to until hundreds, and hundreds of cycles into the game.

To put a cure to duplicant farts, long, long after a player is probably actively printing duplicants would be weird.

[NeoDeusMachina]

On 5/6/2022 at 9:49 PM, Fradow said:

They replace Incubators, giving the same buff duration at no power cost.
Since powered incubators are currently not used a lot, it's unlikely Cuddle pips will either.

Just a small precision here: they do not replace the incubators, they complement them. Cuddle pips can hug eggs that are inside incubators or on the floor. They give the "Hugged" buff (+100% incubation rate for 1 cycle), while the incubator gives the "Lullabied" buff (+400% for 1 cycle). The two buffs stack, so you can get up to +500% incubation rate.

It does look unreliable though (as you said) even if they cuddle eggs without getting hugged by dupes. It's easy enough to dump a few extra eggs in an incubation room of another critter you want to ranch and incubate faster (passively get the buff and let those eggs incubate 2x faster). Otherwise, pretty niche.

About the tonic root from the vole morph, right now it seems only used for that curried beans recipe. However, looking at the database entry for the tonic root, it says something about how it "relieves gassiness". I wonder if they are planning on adding some sort of tonic recipe for flatulent dupes at some point, or if that is just some random piece of lore?  

Edit:Had completely missed @ghkbrew post, my bad. The screenshot wasn't big enough I guess 

[Fradow]

5 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

I peeked at the code.  They drop 0.2 molt if they're not in ethanol and they haven't dropped a molt for more than 600s.

 

I'm thinking keep them in 1 wide cell on a mesh tile, then dry them out once every 600s by opening a door below them and dropping the ethanol.  (similar to the flopping pacu setup)

Edit: looks like the check is only done when the critter moves.  So they will need at least a 2 wide cell. 

Thanks for the confirmation! Yeah, 2 cells wide ranch it is.

4 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

Cuddle pips give a separate "Hugged" buff that increases incubation by 100%, vs the "Lullabied" buff which does +400%.

The buffs are stackable and cuddle pips can hug an egg in an incubator.

They're reminiscent of the divergents which give smaller crop growth buffs that don't require dupe labor and can stack with the farming station.

Indeed, I completely missed that, thanks for the correction. I updated the main post to reflect that. It doesn't change my impression of Cuddle Pips: very cute, but very niche, probably won't see much use.

[kampfer91]

Just my opinion but oakshell not that great practically . 

My reason is : 

+ wood is extremely abundant . With a working pip farm and a few plots of abor i can gather trillion ton of wood with no extra cost , depend if you use wild abor or not , but you can easily gain polluted water as by-product of your energy generator or geyser . 

+ wood have less utility than most material . 

+ Ethanol also suffer the same . You gonna make ethanol not because you want to use it as fuel but for feeding nosh bean , and they even not need that much ethanol . Wood burner generate pure power with wood without the needs of refining wood to something else .  Petrol have better efficiency .

+it eat polluted dirt which is a messy resources  so it compete with normal pokeshell to create something that is already too abundant and not always in demand like sand or lime . 

The oakshell wont make pip farm obsolete because the other method is much more practical and honestly i dont see them so attractive despite all the math you show . All because wood have way less use than most . 

iT would be better if it eat wood and poop out polluted dirt or sand . That way my trillion ton of wood will have more use .

[Magheat2009]

12 hours ago, Primalflower said:

I'm totally up for printing duplicants that I can handle medicating.

It is hard to argue on this without hard data, but I would wager that allergic dupes are also seldom printed by players. It pales in comparison to something like unempathetic or shabby dresser. Flatulent dupes are not impossible to manage, but a player is usually in the mode of avoiding unnecessary headache as much as possible. Too many meaningless duplicant traits are in my opinion, are definately a problem.

Klei went full symmetry on dupe traits, adding meaningless +3, -3 traits for every duplicant skill and attribute out there without realizing how this will crowd out the more interesting traits that make the game more dynamic like duress to impress, flatulent, allergic etc.

While more people might print flatulent dupes if a cure was available early on, I am not sure that will significantly raise the number of people doing so.

[Primalflower]

9 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

It is hard to argue on this without hard data, but I would wager that allergic dupes are also seldom printed by players. It pales in comparison to something like unempathetic or shabby dresser.

Its hard to argue on this without data. I just think that in an actual gameplay scenario, the game will absolutely throw at you duplicants that are realy good at a thing you want to have happen, but have a pretty bad downside, and in those scenarios I think duplicants with downsides like allergic are totally fine, and flatulent would be cool too, if we could stop it.

9 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

While more people might print flatulent dupes if a cure was available early on, I am not sure that will significantly raise the number of people doing so.

I don't enjoy this reasoning. In sandbox games like this, there can indeed exist a path of technical least resistance, but going that way every time, at least in my experience, is boring. I could be more eloquent or convincing in this statement, but like, solving problems is a big part of this video game, and medicating duplicants who need it is a part of that for me.

[Ixenzo]

4 hours ago, Primalflower said:

the game will absolutely throw at you duplicants that are realy good at a thing you want to have happen, but have a pretty bad downside

Dupes are blank slates that just happen to rarely have unique traits: diver's lung, loner, rad to calories, etc., that can't be obtained through skills. Otherwise they're shaped into whichever profession you want just by waiting for skills. Taking a blank slate that has an effectively negative trait over a blank slate that does not is, ultimately, masochism. It's good for challenge/novelty runs, but nothing else.

[Fradow]

I've updated the main post for Public Testing 507045.

Notably, there were some buffs to the Cuddle Pips, making it better at its task.
Unfortunately, it's not enough to change my conclusion on them (though time might prove me wrong).

First significant buff, they require only 4 cells now, so for example they can be with a single egg in a 8 cells room:

Or you can house 24 Cuddle Pips in a max-sized ranch (though obviously, the point of the buff is to house them with eggs):

That buff is nice, but you'll still need infrastructure to limit the number of eggs inside the ranch, and it will still take a lot of room, and doubling the incubation rate (assuming on incubator) is underwhelming for all that.

Dupes now get a small buff when hugging a Cuddle Pip, which really make sense:

That's funny and an interesting reason to do that to be nice to your Dupes, but from a min-maxxing perspective, it's nothing (stress isn't an issue in the first place, and -5% for 0.5 cycles considering this investment is not worth it).

[goboking]

1 hour ago, Fradow said:

That's funny and an interesting reason to do that to be nice to your Dupes, but from a min-maxxing perspective, it's nothing (stress isn't an issue in the first place, and -5% for 0.5 cycles considering this investment is not worth it).

As you implied, it's okay for some stuff to exist because it's fun, or funny, or adds to the game's distinctive charm.  Not everything has to be tuned with min-maxers in mind.

[Fradow]

Indeed. My main post is focused on balance from an optimization perspective, but Cuddle Pips are a prime example of critters you'd want to ranch because they are cute.

From that point of view, they fit a good balance of being cute enough for that and still have some utility. More than Longhair Slicksters on both counts in my opinion.

[ghkbrew]

8 hours ago, Fradow said:

Or you can house 24 Cuddle Pips in a max-sized ranch (though obviously, the point of the buff is to house them with eggs):

So Cuddles Pips have entered the food production game...

I.e you get more meat out of a single ranch of Cuddle Pips than you do for hatches or slicksters.  You can feed ~8 dupes on bbq with one ranch.  Or a little over 11 on omelets.

How many wild reed fiber does it take to feed 24 cuddle pips? You can fit 12 in a 24x4 ranch, or 17 in a 32x3 ranch.

 

[blakemw]

2 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

So Cuddles Pips have entered the food production game...

I.e you get more meat out of a single ranch of Cuddle Pips than you do for hatches or slicksters.  You can feed ~8 dupes on bbq with one ranch.  Or a little over 11 on omelets.

How many wild reed fiber does it take to feed 24 cuddle pips? You can fit 12 in a 24x4 ranch, or 17 in a 32x3 ranch.

 

Unfortunately Cuddle Pips like normal Pips are not very meaty, dropping only 1 kg of meat.  A Cuddle Pip is only good for 2 kcal of BBQ or 2.8 kcal of Omelette. Vs 4 kcal of BBQ for most critters.

For a given ranch area, Cuddle Pips would produce 50% more meat than other critters (except Shovels of course), but at the expense of 3x the grooming. Or 2.1x more calories in Omelette, for 3x the grooming. But being much worse for Omelette than the mighty pacu, which produces 2x the raw egg and lays eggs 4x more frequently.

[LadenSwallow]

How does their enhancement to egg hatching effect the math of getting a stable up and running from 0?

20 cycle base, 5 cycle with incubator, 3⅓ with incubator and cuddle? So another adult after 8⅓ cycles. Who with grooming take 6 cycles to lay an egg. 

Shaving 1⅔ cycles off every egg after the first adult cuddle pip and so getting more adults sooner means the ranch scales up to full operation size much quicker.

I get the feeling that the reduced space considerations for these pips are more intended so you can run incubators in the same ranch for no or reduced space lost. How do mixed critters act in the same stable, is it a case of adding each critters personal space together and comparing with stable size? Do eggs take the same 'space' as hatched critters?

Would mixing a grubgrub in with the cuddle pips be worthwhile if the plant consumption is large for the 50% boost?

[ghkbrew]

3 hours ago, LadenSwallow said:

How do mixed critters act in the same stable, is it a case of adding each critters personal space together and comparing with stable size? Do eggs take the same 'space' as hatched critters?

Each critter decides if the total number of critters (and eggs) times their own space requirement is less than the room size. So if you have, e.g 4 hatches and 12 cuddle pips in a 96 tile ranch the hatches will be overcrowded, but the cuddle pips will be happy.

It should work fine if you keep a few other critter eggs in a less than full cuddle pip ranch. You just need to remove them to their own ranches when they hatch, or they'll be overcrowded.

[Magheat2009]

On 5/10/2022 at 8:38 PM, Primalflower said:

In sandbox games like this, there can indeed exist a path of technical least resistance

I am all for a cure for flatulent trait being added to the game.

[Fradow]

I updated the main post for public testing 507983. It was a big Oakshell nerf.

Let us remember that quick maths that was an indicator of a glorious setup, that is just not meant to be:

Over its lifetime, if fully fed and not groomed, Oakshells would consume 1365kg of pdirt (7kg/cycle when baby, 14kg/cycle when adult due to being Glum instead of 70kg/cycle) and produce 10t of Lumber, averaging 100kg/cycle of lumber for 17kg/cycle of pdirt (without optimizations). You would have needed 24 Oakshells to produce 4kg/s lumber, which eat 0.68kg/s pdirt. That lumber is used by 4 ethanol distillers, which returns 1.33kg/s pdirt, for a net gain of 0.65kg/s pdirt after feeding the Oakshells. Combined with the fact they can be 100% automated, it would have been the best option, as it's probably easier to setup than wild arbor trees.

[Fradow]

Welp, here we go again. I updated the main post for public testing 508497.

Those are relatively minor changes:

• Curried Beans have been buffed, which improves Delecta Voles from "very underwhelming" to "vanity project": there are now good enough to make it worth ranching them as a vanity project. Considering how late-game they are and the fact that the food needs are already well covered by regular voles, it's unlikely they'll make it to "part of the meta". Which is fine.
• Oakshells and Sanishells can eat Slime. It will be a boon to quickstart a ranch since Slime is generally abundant, but producing Slime in quantity is a vanity project, so it doesn't change their overall rating.

[OxCD]

10 hours ago, Fradow said:

• producing Slime in quantity is a vanity project

This.

To me slime has always been a pain in the bum to produce. Because you often need a MOGOM to produce enough po2 to feed a full ranch, and because of prince management, which makes it a puzzle to auto-manage.

I even find it beeing heavier and more an hassle than Gassy Moos 

[ALCRD]

Is this Spaced Out only or for Base game too? 

[sakura_sk]

3 hours ago, ALCRD said:

Is this Spaced Out only or for Base game too? 

It's Base game so.. Spaced Out too. It's the current testing branch

[Primalflower]

On 5/21/2022 at 1:42 AM, OxCD said:

Because you often need a MOGOM to produce enough po2 to feed a full ranch, and because of prince management

What prince management? You're only doing slime, you barely need to touch them.

[zach123b]

i'm trying to make an oakshell ranch and it's annoying.  the grooming station can't be in the ethanol so either a patch of dry ground or automation and moving the ethanol.  if i do a patch of dry ground, the oakshells seem to not want to stay in the ethanol enough and slowly move to 100% oakshell for the eggs.  the automation is annoying cause then i have glum oakshells while they wait for the automation to cycle round

this is the best rough design i have so far, cycle sensor for controlling the door and a duplicant sensor for holding the door open while grooming with a filter sensor cause dupes run in for dumb errands.  might try 2 cycle sensors for 2 attempts at grooming a cycle for less glum / more eggs.  i don't have a critter dropoff here but you could add one in, just add another mesh tile/ethanol

you could trade out the ethanol for water for sanishells.  seeing as oakshells basically trade 25% sand (17.5kg sand) for 0.2 molt (100kg lumber) a cycle, i think i'll try to use oakshells for breeders from now on

looking at the opening post, you could do 3 starvation ranched oakshells per fed oakshell to make up for the difference in pdirt loss, right?  like a pseudo starvation ranch.  that or maybe 1 or 2 outhouses per fed/ranched oakshell, if you have a source of dirt

[OxCD]

21 hours ago, Primalflower said:

What prince management? You're only doing slime, you barely need to touch them.

A full ranch to get max output from it needs prince management. Otherwise you may often (or always) end up with more than one prince (which is unproductive), or no prince at all (which will lead to an only prince egg generation => unproductive again).

If you just want the ranch to survive, then I guess it's not necessary to sort eggs. If you want always the max slime output, you'll need 5 pufts and 1 prince at any time.