NewGame+ feature request

[pether]

We all love progress in our games and we are not really happy to abandon our colonies and loose all we earned. But on the other hand, early game is most exciting stage - after oxygen and food are stabilized, most of the challenge is gone and the game turns into waiting for another project to comlplete. Yes, it's still fulfilling, but not really challenging...

And the final project, breaching Temporal Tear? It's not really satisfying tbh... we sacrifice one dupe (probably the one that just got printed for that purpose, because who would like to sacrifice their best dupe?) to get the achievement and end-of-game message with a clip that promise more than there is to it. Not really rewarding...

So here is an idea how to make Temporal Tear more significant and how to increase early game amount without the feeling of loosing game progress:

NewGame+
After our dupes enter temporal tear, they are saved in some "Breached" pool with all their traits, interests and experience (not skills). That unlocks NewGame+ button in main menu - it starts a new game, but for starting dupes you can select only the ones that survived breaching the Tear. That means your first NewGame+ will start with only one dupe, but you can make sure it is really good for the task. (Yes, I know you can send more that 1 dupe to the tear, so maybe let's save only one of them not to make things too easy). If a Breached dupe enters the Tear in the next game, it is updated in the pool, not duplicated.

Breached Resources
Your rockets can now build additional modules, similar to current cargo modules, but smaller and immune to devastating effects of the Tear. Or maybe they could be storages buildable in your interior...? Anyway, they allow you to save some resources/eggs/seeds/items between games. If you do, you will be able to select those breached resources at the beginning of NewGame+ game (at the time you select 3 starting dupes). So, what you will save? Some plastic for quick steam turbines? Thermium? Or simply enough oxylite to last for a few cycles? What will be your opening build during next game?

Continue Game Tear Rewards
Breaching the Tear should also reward you in your current game without the need of starting a new one. After you send your dupe to it, your Printing Pod unlocks new printables: dupes and resources from the "Breached" pool. Also, you should be able to study/mine breached Tear to get some rare, endgame resource that could be used in most advanced builds and recipes - eg said rocket modules that allow resource saving.

Increasing Difficulty
It would look like starting your next game with super dupe could make things easier, so let's spice things up: NewGame+ cannot start on the same asteroid any of your Breached dupes originated from. After a few games, you will be left with only the ones that are quite difficult. And if you complete all of them? Well, maybe we shall reset starting asteroid pool, but increase all your game difficulties? Oh, and ofc - in NewGame+ you cannot set lower difficulties than you had in any of your previous games finished with Breached dupe. On top of that, there could be some drawback unique to this game mode. You know, to make things harder, but with better dupes to deal with the challenges.

Story Traits
NewGame+ rewards you for saving dupes with good trait combinations. I assume those dupes will have all 4 traits unlocked with NV on top of thier great starting traits, but why should we stop there? Let's the trait hunting begin! Now with Story Traits system, those stories could reward participating dupes with cool, unique traits. Maybe something on the level of NV traits for just one dupe in your whole colony? Or maybe something smaller, but for every dupe in current save? Both options are great, let's obtain the traits and save them for the next game. And then? Let's gather even more traits on that dupe and send him to the Tear again! Let's see how OP single dupe can become! Have you gathered all Story Traits? Don't worry, new one will be released in next game update!

TLDR
Connect all your ONI games by saving one dupe in each game to be possible starting dupe in your next game. Allow for meta-game builds and strategies. Let the game never end!