Rocket woes

[DarkMaster13]

This thread is pretty much just about bringing up major issues with rockets as they're currently implemented in Spaced Out!  I absolutely love the base game of ONI, but have never been able to seriously get into Spaced Out like I did with the base game purely because of these problems with rockets.

Rocket interiors

So something that's pretty unfortunate about rockets in general is the normal ONI gameplay just wasn't built to play with the incredibly small spaces you have to work with in rockets.  In fact, you really should be using builds and dupes such that the interior matters as little as possible.  Leaving you in the situation where the rocket interiors might as well not exist for what you can actually do with them.  But if we absolutely must keep them, there's some things that would make them less frustrating, such as disabling the idle dupe alert inside rockets that are in transit.

You also have the problem of waste products, CO2 and polluted water, that are not easy to get out of the rocket interior while in transit without storage of some kind for them.  Wall toilets are nice, but aren't an option without plastic, leaving the player to use outhouses which require micromanagement before every trip.  There isn't even space in a small rocket capsule to include both outhouses and washbasins and their alternatives require special resources.  Air pumps to remove CO2 either need to be periodically built and removed to fit inside rockets with filters on them to avoid wasting resources, or else also require plastic.  And once you do finally have a design that takes care of everything itself and does not require micromanagement, now you never touch rocket interiors again.

Reducing required micromanagement in every possible respect should be a major goal to make rocketry far less frustrating to deal with for anyone who doesn't want to micromanage it.

Height limits and life support

Covering the absolute most basic requirements for dupes to survive long term in space requires either an oxygen producer inside the rocket, or a gas cargo container set to carry only a tiny fraction of its total capacity in oxygen.  If you're running either an electrolizer or toilet, now you need a water storage tank too.  Both of these cost 3 units of height and are only being used for less than 1/10th their total capacity.  That dramatically reduces how much you can put on a rocket, when an absolute minimum of 10 height needs to be spent on the engine, nosecone, battery, and oxygen or water supply modules.

Adding a small and cheap life support module to store oxygen and water unlocked alongside the capsule would help this problem immensely.  The life support module should hold a small amount of oxygen (say 500 kg) and a small amount of water (again, 500 kg works).  Without this, you have to either be running some kind of oxygen generator inside your rocket, micromanage oxygen storage inside the rocket, or have small storage modules for oxygen/water where you only use a tiny part of their storage on every flight.

CO2 rocket engine

While incredibly easy to fuel, this rocket is unfortunately almost useless.  The rocket height limit of 10 means that you cannot fit a small gas storage and either a trailblazer or rover module on it at the same time.  This is especially unfortunate, since if you don't have access to sugar or oil on your starting asteroid, your only other option for rocketry is the steam rocket which has its own problems.  This seriously restricts potential early rocket play unless you can finagle a diffuser or deoxidizer inside the solo nose cone.  The life support module proposed above would help immensely if it were 2 height, but you then would not be able to include either a battery or solar panel module and would need to put power generation inside the extremely cramped rocket capsule.  Either another look at rocket height restrictions or a serious rework of how rockets are built would be nice, lest this only be useful as a cheap research capsule long after you've been using other better rockets.

Steam rocket

The problems here mostly come down to trying to handle steam in the game without having a constant continuous flow.  Rockets have intermittent need by definition.  The game doesn't really offer a means of keeping steam completely out of pipes when you don't need it, and so long as steam is in pipes its eventually going to condense, break the pipe, and make a mess.  If there were some way to quickly and cleanly request exactly the amount of steam to refuel a rocket and leave the rest somewhere it won't break anything then working with this kind of rocket wouldn't be such a massive pain to constantly micromanage.

Filling cargo bays and relocating dupes

Moving resources from one asteroid to another one is something that the devs obviously want players to do.  And with how much stuff you can fit inside a rocket vs an interplanetary launcher its clear they want you to rely on rockets for bulk movement.  The problem we run into here is the need to have a mechatronics dupe on hand to build the rails and conveyor loaders.  Moving dupes between asteroids is extremely stressful if they have a lot of skills and many of the ways to increase morale are cut off on rocket interiors.  You only really have decor and food quality.  They'll become especially stressed out if your forward bases run with fewer amenities since they're probably only being used to extract raw resources to ship home.  Your best solution at the moment?  Only send low skill dupes over rockets and skill scrub high skill dupes before and after they fly around and keep them at the absolute lowest morale requirements possible.

This particular issue is most noticeable for mechatronics dupes because they require 5 skills totaling 9 morale required to avoid stress, while any other skills require at most 6-7 morale, which easily fits under the 8 morale you can easily pick up from room bonuses even with no decor and terrible food quality.  And most players are probably going to give their dupes more skills than that in their main base, while any colonies that are only gathering resources to ship home are otherwise strongly incentivized not to bother with more than the bare minimum skills.

I play on maximum stress difficulty and the only time that stress is a serious problem is when trying to use rockets or temporarily moving a high skill dupe like mechatronics or researcher to another asteroid to do jobs there.

The worst part is you can still throw standard storage containers into a rocket interior that hold 20t each, avoiding the problems with cargo bays entirely and relying on dupes to move the materials.  If they're smart bins you can put a custom alert on them when they're full.

Oxygen/suit docks

I forgot to mention that if you want to minimize micromanagement inside rockets, you also need to include oxygen mask docks.  Further reducing your available space inside the rocket.

[Primalflower]

I don't know how to tell you this in such a way that avoids any possibility of rudeness but the large majority of these problems are less problems with the game and more you just aren't exploring the solutions that would make your life easier

[NeoDeusMachina]

1 hour ago, Primalflower said:

I don't know how to tell you this in such a way that avoids any possibility of rudeness but the large majority of these problems are less problems with the game and more you just aren't exploring the solutions that would make your life easier

^This.

I could elaborate, but part of the fun in ONI is to try and find solutions to your problems. Unless you specifically ask, I am not just going to make a bullet point list of how you can solve all the issues you mentioned. And yes, even on hardest settings, there are rather simple solutions to make sure your dupes will enjoy their rocket trips.

[Gurgel]

3 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

I could elaborate, but part of the fun in ONI is to try and find solutions to your problems. 

Exactly. Making all these things obvious and easy removes the core of the game and leaves a simplistic simulator that is probably not fun for most Oni players. Still, anybody that wants that can play in sandbox.

[DarkMaster13]

I appreciate you guys encouraging me to play the game that way.  I also appreciate the irony of my own advice being given back to me when talking to new players for ONI.

So I booted the game up in sandbox mode to just try all sorts of different combinations to try and make my rocket designs.  The sublimation station was the one big building that I'd overlooked when I made the OP, as it's an oxygen source that you can supply with a single storage bin and can be reliably supplied on any start.  I also completely gave up on any amenities at all, so no beds or eating tables.  I'm sending out dupes with 1 skill max anyway, what do they need morale for?  Toilets are included only to avoid alerts and needing to place mop orders.

Firstly I tried to make a CO2 rocket work.  There was just no way to fit all the things you might want inside the solo nosecone to make it fully automatic after launching.  Ditching the oxygen mask stations and manually unequipping oxygen masks was unavoidable.  I could pack in everything needed for an orbital data collection lab to run for a bit over a cycle, thanks to the external oxygen tank and battery.  Or I could put in a sublimation station when I need a trailblazer or rover module.  Lastly there's enough room for a single liquid tank or a couple storage bins for moving stuff around.  You still have to manually order the outhouse cleaned and periodically deconstruct stuff to remove the CO2, but it's much more workable than what I'd originally thought.  Aside from manually equipping and unequipping oxygen masks or exo suits, a travel rocket with this setup can be run without too much micro during the trip.

If you can go up to any other larger rocket size, this isn't a problem anymore with access to the much better spacefarer module.  However if you don't have access to either oil or sugar due to your starting asteroid, things get much messier.since the only option is the steam engine.  Running a boiler that you need to start and stop manually once the fuel tank is full that's otherwise going to constantly break your gas pipes is still an issue.  On reflection, I think you can maybe trap a gas inside a tank using airlocks to disable the tank?  I've never used airlocks to disable stuff before or even builds that use them as a base for buildings.

The spacefarer module is far easier to design a fully automated interior, especially if you don't bother with any amenities.  It just feels really, off(?), to not use any of the external modules and contain all your life support and storage inside the rocket.  If your dupes don't get tables, beds, or sinks and live with food poisoning, you can easily fit all the fluid or solid storage you need not only for life support but also to move goods from one base to another.  The only thing that you cannot really transport inside the module are gases, but the interplanetary launcher is pretty good at moving that around.  This avoids the height problem, but makes the morale problem when moving dupes around worse.

So actual questions now:

• Should you only send single skill dupes on rockets unless you've got good food for them, or skill scrub before transporting?  If you need a mechatronics dupe on a colony say to build a couple rail sections off an interplanetary launcher, skill scrub them, send them over, have them build what's needed, then immediately scrub them again before they go back home.  I really wanted to avoid fiddly micromanagement like this but I don't see any way around it.
• Can you prevent morale problems inside rockets without access to good food or dedicating large sections of the rocket to space intensive things like room bonuses, entertainment, or decor?  It feels really off compared to the rest of the game to print a dupe just to be a lv1 rocket pilot with no other skills.
• Are most external rocket storage modules for storage a waste of time compared to internal ones due to the height limits?  The only value I can see for sure is the ability to run multiple pipes at once for faster loading/unloading.
• Has anyone played with rocket interiors to do something other than transport materials and orbital data collection?  How much did it add to the game?

[NeoDeusMachina]

5 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

So actual questions now:

• Should you only send single skill dupes on rockets unless you've got good food for them, or skill scrub before transporting?  If you need a mechatronics dupe on a colony say to build a couple rail sections off an interplanetary launcher, skill scrub them, send them over, have them build what's needed, then immediately scrub them again before they go back home.  I really wanted to avoid fiddly micromanagement like this but I don't see any way around it.

- At the beginning, like first couple of launches with the solo spacefarer nosecone and CO2 rocket, for example, scrubbing can be a way to send dupes if you cannot provide them with good enough food or living conditions, yes. It is quite micro-managy, so I would personally try to avoid doing it as much as possible and actually swap to the larger spacefarer module as soon as possible and tech up to steam engine. I don't think the solo spacefarer module is intended for elaborate builds or long term travels or end-game stuff. The one thing I know they are really good at even late game is carry a dupe on short distance really fast (< 1 cycle).

5 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

• Can you prevent morale problems inside rockets without access to good food or dedicating large sections of the rocket to space intensive things like room bonuses, entertainment, or decor?  It feels really off compared to the rest of the game to print a dupe just to be a lv1 rocket pilot with no other skills.

- Decor is really the solution here for me, and I usually do that by using carpet tiles wherever I can (even for wall sections) or metal tiles if I cannot get carpet tiles. The carpet tiles give very good decor and also a stress reduction that can help a bit during long travels. You can get up to +12 morale from decor only. Combined with great hall, that's +18 morale, plenty to carry your mechatronics around without worrying about them being happy. If you are interested, see below in the "spoiler" an example of rocket interior with carpet tiles that is more or less above 120 (max) in the majority of the module. To get the great hall, I usually use artifacts, even encrusted ones - they are not temperature sensitive and only take 2 tiles. So no need for a lot of space for decor, just integrate it in your build.

Spoiler

 

5 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

• Are most external rocket storage modules for storage a waste of time compared to internal ones due to the height limits?  The only value I can see for sure is the ability to run multiple pipes at once for faster loading/unloading.

- Gas and liquid waste are not a waste - gas especially are critical in all my rocket builds as I like pumping in cold O2 in my rockets. I like using the liquid gas tanks as well, they can haul a pretty large amount of liquid (27t,) and even use steam rockets with 2 large liquid tanks to haul water from asteroid to asteroid, for example.

- The solid storage are in my opinion harder to justify in a hauling scenario, because it is so easy to use storage bins or dump a lot of debris inside rockets. I guess they could be interesting in a fully automated rocket scenario? Maybe.  In any case, they are essential for space mining, but that is definitely a late game thing.

5 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

• Has anyone played with rocket interiors to do something other than transport materials and orbital data collection?  How much did it add to the game?

- They are essential to my preferred playstyle, whether it is for hauling, exploring space, colonizing, etc. I don't use teleporters, and I use the interplanetary space launcher minimally and more on a "need 100kg of this over there real quick" kind of scenario. 

- I have seen people making specialized rocket interiors (like living quarters, power production, o2, etc.) and move their entire colonies with their fleet of specialized rockets.

- I like seeing all the different designs people come up with to do even the same kind of tasks. The one thing I noticed, though, is that people seem to converged to a preferred design quite rapidly and then it becomes tedious to repeat the same build from one rocket to another without mods.

[DarkMaster13]

Decor is something I almost never touch at all beyond scattering around grand sculptures and filling in the empty space for my main rooms.  On many runs I ignored it entirely and I never clean up chunks anymore.  So the mechanics around it and how much morale you can get from it were completely unknown to me and I never thought I'd ever need to engage in the system.  Using fancy tiles as a solution to the morale problem never crossed my mind, I thought you'd need to make giant sculptures or paintings which could instead be taken up by storage bins or tanks.  I am familiar with the carpet stress reduction, I sometimes threw a few tiles down on tiles every dupe would walk over like my bathroom exit for that but hadn't recently since Spaced Out maps usually make it hard to mass reed fiber.  Metal tiles I never bothered with at all since the only value I saw with them was the +50% movement speed and didn't think that was worth their build price.  Though metal tiles made of lead comes to mind as a good use of that resource.

It feels less like what I got hit with here is that rocket interiors are very one dimensional and my particular playstyle clashed very hard with how you can succeed with them.  Combined with me trying to use rocket modules in ways that just aren't good.  Like I was dedicating the entire interior of my first large rocket to room amenities for my dupes, with no power or storage at all in favor of external modules instead.  So I found the height limitations very frustrating since I wanted to run a whole bunch of different external storage tanks all with preset maximum resources they could carry and felt like I had to include at least 2 tanks to store oxygen and water even though they would barely use their capacity at all, which took up all my height.  The external oxygen gas tank still feels useful, but only because an internal gas tank takes up so much space and doesn't have much capacity, you almost certainly aren't using the massive 3.9 t capacity that three height gives you on most trips though.

I can see using a rocket as a single dupe's personal space and moving that around from asteroid to asteroid.  It's probably not as travel time efficient as building a local base more centrally located on each asteroid, but it sounds viable and a fun challenge/playstyle.  Maybe more my issue with rocket interiors is they feel pointless while in transit?  Like, would the game be seriously changed if while a rocket is moving any dupes inside were basically frozen in time except for slowly consumed oxygen/water/food?  There just doesn't seem like much for them to do in that time.

[MiniDeathStar]

7 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

If you can go up to any other larger rocket size, this isn't a problem anymore with access to the much better spacefarer module.  However if you don't have access to either oil or sugar due to your starting asteroid, things get much messier.since the only option is the steam engine.  Running a boiler that you need to start and stop manually once the fuel tank is full that's otherwise going to constantly break your gas pipes is still an issue.  On reflection, I think you can maybe trap a gas inside a tank using airlocks to disable the tank?  I've never used airlocks to disable stuff before or even builds that use them as a base for buildings.

There is a gas meter valve building that lets you run exactly as much gas as you need through the pipe. Simply put it inside your boiler and meter out 150 kg. But AFAIK there is no setup where you don't have access to neither oil nor sugar on your starting asteroid, unless you play with teleporters disabled. But that would be your own fault. :P 

7 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

• Are most external rocket storage modules for storage a waste of time compared to internal ones due to the height limits?  The only value I can see for sure is the ability to run multiple pipes at once for faster loading/unloading.

They are dramatically undertuned. I've modded mine to transport 50t / 200t (solid), 20t / 80t (liquid) and 3.6t / 14.4t (gas). Gas is the only one that's OK tuned in the base game, I just increased the large tank capacity to match the others and support 4 normal dupes for 60 cycles. We should not have a situation where we are tempted to use infinite storage exploits inside the spacefarer module because the dedicated modules are useless.

7 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

• Has anyone played with rocket interiors to do something other than transport materials and orbital data collection?  How much did it add to the game?

When colonising a new world, I like making the rocket into a portable habitat with everything dupes need for the first 20-40 cycles until I establish a proper, oxygenated, temperature controlled base.

[Primalflower]

41 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

you almost certainly aren't using the massive 3.9 t capacity that three height gives you on most trips though.

space mining comes to mind.

 

41 minutes ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Maybe more my issue with rocket interiors is they feel pointless while in transit?  Like, would the game be seriously changed if while a rocket is moving any dupes inside were basically frozen in time except for slowly consumed oxygen/water/food?  There just doesn't seem like much for them to do in that time.

Especially late game, there isn't much for the duplicants to do in rocket interiors during flight. Something I've started doing is having many of my rockets contain orbital labs with a handful of plastic so while the duplicant is in space, they are constantly generating science so I can get through the tech tree much, much quicker. Still, this doesn't carry over into the late game, and many of my duplicants are idle in rockets while they mine space. But here is where I present my thought that the presentation of having the duplicant 100% alive and simulating like exactly as they do on the ground in there absolutely contributes to my player experience and spaced out rockets would be, simply put, a whole lot effing lamer conceptually, if I wasn't allowed to peek in there, and they only technically existed, like in the base game. Its something thats difficult to describe because it feels like its inherently rooted in something subjective, but I can say with certainty that duplicants walking around in there and playing arcade machines and talking on the phone and tending to the spaceship's routing 10000% simply, inexplicably feels better in practice to me than them just sort of shooting off to the distance and I don't see them again for several cycles and as far as the game is concerned they simply don't exist during that time

[DolphinWing]

I just came up with a new idea: get all your idle dupes in spacefarers to sleep. If you enable Somnium Synthesizer story, maybe that is good way to keep they busy (sleeping). 

[DarkMaster13]

10 hours ago, MiniDeathStar said:

There is a gas meter valve building that lets you run exactly as much gas as you need through the pipe. Simply put it inside your boiler and meter out 150 kg. But AFAIK there is no setup where you don't have access to neither oil nor sugar on your starting asteroid, unless you play with teleporters disabled. But that would be your own fault. :P

Near as I could tell, there wasn't a way to stop gas flow based on if a rocket was full or not and then clear the whole line.  A fixed volume of gas wouldn't work on refuels.  You could stop flow inside pipes, but not prevent it gas from exiting a storage tank.  I ended up with a steam setup that automatically shut off when it backed up, but had to be cleared and reset manually after use since it would break if I left it idle.  Recently I by accident noticed that storage tanks don't output when not on solid ground, so I might be able to use that to gather up all the leftover steam in a buffer tank.

I did turn teleporters off to force myself to play with rockets.  To actually learn how to use them rather than discarding them for being too fiddly.  I had no idea what I was getting into for my asteroid selection since the game doesn't say ahead of time what the asteroids have and I didn't research what was inside them.  I also hadn't played for like a year and didn't know what might have changed in that time.  I did go to research that after getting burned though.

10 hours ago, MiniDeathStar said:

They are dramatically undertuned. I've modded mine to transport 50t / 200t (solid), 20t / 80t (liquid) and 3.6t / 14.4t (gas). Gas is the only one that's OK tuned in the base game, I just increased the large tank capacity to match the others and support 4 normal dupes for 60 cycles. We should not have a situation where we are tempted to use infinite storage exploits inside the spacefarer module because the dedicated modules are useless.

That sounds like it would probably take a very long time to move stuff in and out of the rocket?  Those large tanks need like 17/13/24 output ports just to unload them in a single cycle.  I've been tumbling around the idea that maybe we need some kind of high pressure/volume pipes/rails for bulk transport.  Especially for gases.  It would make things like loading and unloading rockets far faster.  A bit like ribbon automation wires?

[MiniDeathStar]

@DarkMaster13 For the steam boiler I was thinking something like this:

Spoiler

If the valve is reset, it closes the vent and activates the pumps. When 150kg have passed, it turns off the pumps and opens the vent to empty the pipes. Sadly rocket fuel can't be fully automated because if there is some fuel left in the tank when the rocket lands, the meter's value will be wrong.

 

11 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

That sounds like it would probably take a very long time to move stuff in and out of the rocket?  Those large tanks need like 17/13/24 output ports just to unload them in a single cycle.  I've been tumbling around the idea that maybe we need some kind of high pressure/volume pipes/rails for bulk transport.  Especially for gases.  It would make things like loading and unloading rockets far faster.  A bit like ribbon automation wires?

Normally, yes. I've tuned my conveyor rails to transport 100kg (by analogy to liquid pipes 10kg and gas pipes 1kg, also this makes them actually worth using to transport stuff that isn't food). There's also Ronivan's mod High Pressure Applications that is very nice, although I would prefer it if Klei added high pressure pipes that (like heavi-watt wires) can't be run through floors and walls without a joint plate.

Before installing the high pressure mod I simply chained multiple loaders and unloaders together and even that awful pipe spaghetti still felt better than infinite storage expoits.

[blakemw]

11 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Near as I could tell, there wasn't a way to stop gas flow based on if a rocket was full or not and then clear the whole line.  A fixed volume of gas wouldn't work on refuels.  You could stop flow inside pipes, but not prevent it gas from exiting a storage tank.  I ended up with a steam setup that automatically shut off when it backed up, but had to be cleared and reset manually after use since it would break if I left it idle.  Recently I by accident noticed that storage tanks don't output when not on solid ground, so I might be able to use that to gather up all the leftover steam in a buffer tank.

Most players just recirculate steam, liquid oxygen and the like, bringing it back through the chamber to reheat/recool. An alternative approach which works for steam in particular is to just make everything really hot and don't use insulated pipes instead use pipes with very low thermal mass like obsidian or tungsten, this works especially well for rocketry if the steam chamber is located in space as rockets are very happy to heat things up to well over 100 C so barring the existence of cold meteors there's nothing to cool the pipes back down. You have to pass over insulated tiles using a bridge otherwise the insulated tile will slowly cool the pipe down, though if committed to the hot strategy the steam chamber doesn't need to be insulated and can just be made of low thermal mass tiles.

However I almost never use Steam rockets, if I do it's just for fun, I think on all maps CO2 rockets have enough range to make a one-way trip to somewhere with petroleum, and are pretty easy to refuel for the return trip. It's also possible to self-destruct a CO2 rocket to toss the contents further than its range normally allows, I don't think the acquisition of petroleum ever requires that though but if there is some map where the crude oil is especially far a tosser strat would likely work to cheaply acquire the crude oil, once there the dupe can build a small petroleum engine to come home.

[Charletrom]

While I agree with that there are solutions to many of these problems, I agree with OP that the current implementation of the rocketry system requires far too much micromanagement. We need better automation of POI mining, less atmosuit micromanagement, and more options to boost morale (I use mods to solve some of these problems but it's not a perfect solution)

I think there's a big opportunity here for Klei to make some improvements, probably could be accomplished with a few tweaks and new buildings. Honestly if they just let dupes fly rockets remotely from the mission control station that would almost be enough all on its own.

 

 

 

 

[Hechicera]

I've never messed with rocket interiors because it doesn't look fun. Entirely subjective, doesn't contradict the ability people have to find solutions. And, maybe they have fun doing that. With Spaced Out additions available planet side, I'm also happy enough. Not sure how many like me are out there, I like the concept of rockets, FWIW,  just not the interior implementation.

[Orzelek]

19 hours ago, Hechicera said:

I've never messed with rocket interiors because it doesn't look fun. Entirely subjective, doesn't contradict the ability people have to find solutions. And, maybe they have fun doing that. With Spaced Out additions available planet side, I'm also happy enough. Not sure how many like me are out there, I like the concept of rockets, FWIW,  just not the interior implementation.

I'm in similar boat(rocket?) I think.
I find a lot of interior designs based on basically tricks to make sure that dupes have everything to live and are happy enough.
There is a lot of "missing" things that could be added meant for rocket interiors to make them actually functional without need to place stuff in awkward ways to get that great hall bonus etc.
And up till now we got special toilet and bed to make interiors a bit easier but I don't think they help that much.

I think that those interiors should be bigger in general but the also much more rstricted what you can put in them and have more specialised stuff to build them from.

And add actual auto-pilot for stuff like mining (instead of trailblazing the dupe out of rocket instantly :D)

[SGT_Imalas]

On 4/9/2023 at 6:46 PM, Orzelek said:

There is a lot of "missing" things that could be added meant for rocket interiors to make them actually functional without need to place stuff in awkward ways to get that great hall bonus etc.

wanna make a list?

Im currently in the process of adding some to Rocketry Expanded, external input in that regard helps a lot

(also you can use my mod "AI controlled rockets" to have auto mining rockets without pilot)

[Orzelek]

49 minutes ago, SGT_Imalas said:

wanna make a list?

Im currently in the process of adding some to Rocketry Expanded, external input in that regard helps a lot

(also you can use my mod "AI controlled rockets" to have auto mining rockets without pilot)

I've been staying away from mods for long time and using customizable buildings now since it makes many things so much more pleasant to use. And two more taht add nice big starts without asteroids (my dislike for rockets is strong).

I might take a peek at automated rockets when I get to them at some point.

I'm not sure if you could mod in new types of rooms with new special items like sleeping capsule or space shower to make dupes get morale bonus from even 2x2 room with proper building in it. And there would be a lot of graphics needed most likely thats usually a pain in modding.

[SGT_Imalas]

17 hours ago, Orzelek said:

And there would be a lot of graphics needed most likely thats usually a pain in modding.

Not that much of a problem, I know a few wonderful people who help me with creating animations for my mods and I have created quite a few myself.

example for rockets:

some are created from scratch, some reuse existing vanilla anims, some use unused animations found in the game files, others are remixed from exisiting modules

[Orzelek]

Thats a lot of goodies in one mod
One thing that was mentioned above that could be useful for earlier game rockets would be some small life support module that could store small amount of oxygen and water. If it's possible to make a dual type storage module? If not then maybe small 1 tile high gas and liquid storage.

[MiniDeathStar]

On 4/13/2023 at 11:24 PM, SGT_Imalas said:

wanna make a list?

Honestly I love your mod and I would just be happy with a 2-tile oxygen dispenser building that takes in oxylite and outputs oxygen into a pipe. Oxylite in theory is perfect for rockets, but there is a bug (feature) where outgassing overrides CO2 blobs that happen to pass over the storage bin and the oxygen ends up overpressurising the capsule.

But since we're talking lists and all, I'll try to think of something.

1. A food dispenser that is basically a fridge that shares inventory with the freezer module. It would make that module much less finicky to use. It could look like a lid in the wall.
2. Options to configure tonnage of colossal cargo bays.
3. A plastic bin that holds up to 5t and is only buildable inside command modules (but doesn't need to be on the floor). Normal storage and dispenser bins can't be build inside there anymore. This is to make infinite storage exploits a bit harder and encourage using the cargo bay for transporting goods. (I'd also buff the small/large solid bay to 50/200t while at it.)

Lastly, uhh, maybe not declaring classes as internal and sealed so I can make mini-patches on them for myself? ^^;

[SGT_Imalas]

1. is basically done

2/3. I would only add the capacity thing as an activatable option, I dont like to take away ways on how to play a game (removing bins from rockets would do that). Besides, people would just circumvent sth like this with dropping sign/ other modded storages.
 

the sealed/internal stuff is done by vs automatically, but it shouln't matter if you modify via reflection

[evilcat19xx]

On 4/13/2023 at 3:24 PM, SGT_Imalas said:

wanna make a list?

Im currently in the process of adding some to Rocketry Expanded, external input in that regard helps a lot

(also you can use my mod "AI controlled rockets" to have auto mining rockets without pilot)

Fantastic mod and it should be part of the base game. Yet, I wish there were more reasons to explore the space. 
By the way, is there an easy way to edit the interior rocket size? I edited a text file and changed the size of my map. Could I do the same for the Rockets? I am looking to have a mini map-size rocket interior. 

[fpx007]

I guess the orbital cargos need a buff. Currently, they are not good supply carriers. As you have to make your rocketsreach your destination to distribute packages, it is usually better to land and manually move resource instead.There capacity is also rather low compared to either storage bins or (large) cargo bay.

Currently I use them as tools for landing new asteriods.(orbital cargo+trailblazer is shorter than 2 trailblazers) But the random behaviour really annoys me. As it is impossible to build a beacon prior to first land, the packages will always randomly scatter across the whole surface. Although usualy this is not an isuue, it becomes one when the target is the ocean/superconductive one. When the packages are distributed torwards these asteriod, there is a chance that some packages deployed into water/magma, which causes great troubles.

I think the player should be able to set target deployment zone when distributing goods from orbital cargos. As you do, packages will be sent around the target zone as if there were a virtual beacon. This is totally fair because unlike fully-automated interplanetary launchers, rockets always launch with at least 1 skilled crew. Dupe-controlled rockets should have better precision.

Besides, the large solid oxidizer tanks should also get a buff. Despite requireing a more advanced tech, they are mostly less efficient than double amount of small solid oxidizer tanks. I guess it should have 1800kg capacity or 3 height instead.

[Farsight]

Orbital cargo is intended to be used -after- you've built a base... or at least enough of one to have power, a beacon and a can opener set up. It's designed for automating ongoing supply drops and resource extraction.

For colonizing a new asteroid, it's way better to just bring the supplies along in the rocket.

Then once the rocket arrives, the orbital cans allow you to not have to go back and forth in the rocket to send more supplies. Used that way, I find them very helpful and easy to work with.