A Planetary Review

[Farsight]

So, I've hit the end game, colonizing everywhere I'd like, running multiple colonies, shipping resources across the stars... and I found myself thinking of each planet and how it 'fits' into the game. Some are great, and some... not so much. It seems like a few could really use some tweaks to give them something unique/fun, that would also translate over to their biomes and the non-SO! game.

My six colonies:

Radioactive Ocean: my favorite world. With saturns, beetas, uranium and tone of water, it's a great home base.

Oily: Between oil and lead, it has a nice slot to provide resources short and long-term.

Forest: It seems to often have volcanoes, which paired with the big satellite give it a unique feel.

Metal: Well, yeah, metal volcanoes make it highly valuable.

Iron: With the iron and the Rift, its role seems pretty clear.

Tungsten/Tree: It's another one with unique stuff to make it highly useful.

The five I'm clearing and leaving empty:

Reversed: Besides the lava-on-the-roof gimmick, it has divergents and sulfur... but neither feel useful enough to justify a colony. Perhaps if grubgrub rubs enhanced plant mutations? Their current fertilizer-lite boost feels underpowered for the effort involved.

Water: By the time we get to this world, does anyone still need more water? This feels like a world designed for a game that can support 100+ dupes. But ONI slows to a crawl long before that. Plus, for a 'water world', it's not much water. Perhaps it could have a unique geyser that produced "enhanced water" (with one of morale/health/stress boost)?

Regolith: Other than popping in to kidnap some voles, it's hard to see why I'd want to spend any time here. I'm lining the roof with bunker doors and wiping this one clean.

Niobium: Well, it's easy to see what the point of this world is. But we can create niobium/thermium forever just by digging out the map, making taming its volcano a challenge with no real reward.

Moo: I don't get it.

Anyone have any ideas for spicing up worlds they find lacking? Or ways to get more use out of ones that seem underwhelming?

[asurendra]

Flipped: after last update this is the only habitable asteroid without meteors. So good option for some who love solars. Also perfect for super sustainable achievement

 

Multiplying niobium is an exploit. Not everybody like exploits. Also it need manual labor while  volcano can be fully automated. 

 

Moo: for cow-lowers  Also a lot of energy for really, really populated bases. Nat.gas can be easily shipped and produce water as byproduct. Mini-asteroids has only one guaranteed nat.gas geyser, that's not so much

[Farsight]

I wouldn't call niobium an exploit. The building and recipes are working as intended. It's not taking advantage of a quirk in the game rules - it's literally following the rules.

Does anyone actually use the cows for energy/water? In theory, it makes sense, but I've never heard of anyone actually doing it. It seems that there are much, much easier ways to get plentiful supplies of both.

My current game has only one natgas geyser in the entire system... and I don't even use it. 

It really seems like a lot of the later worlds are designed for a theoretical version of the game with hundreds of dupes across multiple full colonies. But that's not the game we actually play...

[Pedro_L]

18 hours ago, Farsight said:

I wouldn't call niobium an exploit. The building and recipes are working as intended. It's not taking advantage of a quirk in the game rules - it's literally following the rules.

Does anyone actually use the cows for energy/water? In theory, it makes sense, but I've never heard of anyone actually doing it. It seems that there are much, much easier ways to get plentiful supplies of both.

My current game has only one natgas geyser in the entire system... and I don't even use it. 

It really seems like a lot of the later worlds are designed for a theoretical version of the game with hundreds of dupes across multiple full colonies. But that's not the game we actually play...

you'd need 27 moos to run a single generator (oh the lag!) while a single natural gas geyser should be able to run one half the time

[melquiades]

On 4/22/2023 at 1:25 PM, Farsight said:

Regolith:

I installed a nuclear reactor there, and now i am dispensing regolith to all the planets that needs it, and i need a lot cause i like crafting clay out of polluted oxygen or CO2. It is shooting by default to the planet with the experiment where i have a vole farm to feed it barbecue (probably unneeded, cause i already have a Grubfruit Preserve industry in the main base).

Pretty much think the same about the other asteroids.

[misotoma]

so basically a percentage of this game is... lacking lol

[meekay]

On 4/22/2023 at 1:25 PM, Farsight said:

Perhaps if grubgrub rubs enhanced plant mutations? Their current fertilizer-lite boost feels underpowered for the effort involved.

If you leave the sweetles and grubgrubs wild, they'll tend your plants without any effort at all. 

And if you have wild sweetles in a room with a feeder full of sulfur, they'll still produce enough sucrose to make lots of preserves.