[Game Update] - Public Testing 565965

[asurendra]

6 hours ago, blakemw said:

Investigations into Brackwax.

It making Brine reminds me of something annoying: it'd be nice to have a route for growing Waterweed that doesn't require a Salt Water Geyser.

 

In SO it is possible with space mining. But in SO we always have access to salt geysers...

[Charletrom]

27 minutes ago, asurendra said:

In SO it is possible with space mining. But in SO we always have access to salt geysers...

It would be cool if dasha saltvines made “salt fruit” instead of plain salt, which could be pulverized into salt water and reed fiber

[Nova Starlight]

OR, hear me out, add a "dissolver" building that allows you to dissolve salt into water or dilute brine, however this generates tremendous amount of heat. 

[sakura_sk]

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

This is why I don't see why an alternative route to Brackene is necessary.

Did you make a lot of squaeky puft farms to produce bleach stone for hot tub? Because I never bothered with puft farms. And bleach stone was one of the things that had that single tedious route. I just appreciate having alternative options in order to produce things in the game

[JRup]

I too appreciate having any kind of plan B for resource production. But I must defend squeaky pufts, even a single wild one does produce more than enough for a hot tub and some hand sanitizers - long live the green chicken...

A small beef I have with hot tubs is their continuous heat production, even when not in operation...

Now that the milk has been spilled, when do the dupes get ice cream...? Maybe find a use for all that snow besides melting it...

[goboking]

15 minutes ago, JRup said:

Now that the milk has been spilled, when do the dupes get ice cream...? Maybe find a use for all that snow besides melting it...

Microbe Musher + Ice + Brakene + Sucrose = Ice Cream

[zach123b]

with some fiddling i found with brackene we can do 12 critters in a stable, with grooming, or 8 critters without grooming.  we could also use open stables, especially if we use phosphorus for sealing the stable open/close by melting/freezing a couple tiles.  as the fountain requires being in a stable

so a fully automated system for critter ranching will be possible (or more efficient) with brackene being added.  though brackene can't be fully automated.  in essence, you're trading grooming for 10kg brackene (i assume it'll be that much once fixed).  at 10kg, that's 2 uses per plant pulverizer use, for plants.  plant pulverizer brackene to the critter fountain for critters seems dumb if anyone does it other than from an RP perspective.  maybe klei can make the plant pulverizer not require a dupe or use a larger recipe for efficiency imo.  it is interesting that critters will starve quicker with brackene as they no longer have the 'glum' debuff for -80% calories

Edited July 24, 2023 by zach123b

[JRup]

@goboking: Sucrose is a Spaced out! thing... Meaning that no dlc, no ice cream with that recipe, boo. Besides, I'd be hard pressed to believe ice alone will make ice cream. Maybe a hand crank style gizmo that also uses salt could be credible...

[sakura_sk]

4 minutes ago, JRup said:

Sucrose is a Spaced out! thing...

Replace with salt then 

[Magheat2009]

51 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

Did you make a lot of squaeky puft farms to produce bleach stone for hot tub?

You are assuming that people do not use Pufts because they are too difficult. Pufts are the most complicated critter in the game, but not impossibly difficult. They appear so, because people simply don't bother even looking into them properly. Hot tub is simple not something players find themselves encouraged to build. Everything is difficult, until you have figured out how to do it. I promise you, if there was an easy alternative to every challenging mechanic in this game, most people would not bother with them, be it the Niobium volcano or Liquid H2 manufacturing. Remember meltdown some people had over the food preservation nerf on this forum?

Did I criticize oxygen masks? Did I criticize changes to the space scanners to make them a bit simpler? No. I am even recommending making Gassy Moos a bit simpler by removing the dirt requirement. However, a much easier and boring mechanic to be able to almost completely side step Moos, in my opinion, defeats the point of this update being called "The Song of The Moo Update".

As I have pointed out before, there are right ways to strike the balance between boring easy options vs. more interesting but complex options. Uranium Centrifuge achieves this by being aggressively inefficient compared to Beetas. If someone does not want to bother with them before they turn on their Research Reactor, they can put it off for a while using the Uranium Centrifuge. For me to find plant pulverizer acceptable, it needs to be much worse at producing Brackene than it currently is. The saving grace is the fact it cannot be automated, but I am not sure Klei wont simple add automation to it in a later patch. 

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Is this conversation going anywhere?

I'd say test the changes around the gassy moos and the introduction of brackene first, afterwards give feedback. The devs will listen!

[JRup]

4 minutes ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

I'd say test the changes around the gassy moos and the introduction of brackene first, afterwards give feedback. The devs will listen!

*Twiddles thumbs while pressing F5 on the forum and waiting for mooteors to be enabled on vanilla to continue "testing".

[fullerfamily]

Hurray! Looks like a big and exciting update. Thanks devs!

Also, I heard you can milk anything with nipples.

[blakemw]

5 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

For me to find plant pulverizer acceptable, it needs to be much worse at producing Brackene than it currently is. The saving grace is the fact it cannot be automated, but I am not sure Klei wont simple add automation to it in a later patch. 

We can't make definite statements until we find out how much the Critter Fountain is meant to consume, I'm thinking 10 kg would be "most balanced" but could also see 5 kg as a "good option" or 20 kg as a "bad option" depending how much the devs want players to use the fountain.

Brackene is largely a substitute for grooming, and grooming later in the game is "essentially free", as dupes have high attributes, run fast, provide a long grooming duration (more than 2 cycles), and a lot of other stuff has been automated, in Spaced Out I find there's a lot of idling on planetoids where active building projects are not happening.

The Plant Pulverizer will tend to be "less free" than grooming, it consumes plant harvest and water, frankly the labor of pumping the water is probably more significant than the water quantity itself, but it's essentially going to be something like, instead of a dupe running by every couple of cycles to groom the critter, instead every couple of cycles a dupe has to run by, pump a bottle of water, and run the Plant Pulverizer - which can be supplied with plants in an automated manner.

Using Plant Pulverized Brackwax to accelerate transit tube seems like a highly dubious investment, or one could call it "fairly balanced", I don't really notice dupes moving faster when waxed, but measurement does show they arrive at their destination faster, I'm even thinking the bonus might be underwhelming considering the effort involved (perhaps it'd be better to double the bonus and double the brackwax consumption to make it feel more rewarding).

I'm still undecided on Plastium, the +900 C overheat is very significant, but it applies to very few, specialized, buildings, with only the two mini-pumps benefiting from the +900 C overheat. The very high melting point has some niche applications, like radbolt joint plates and transit tubes passing through hot areas. Probably the most common use for Plastium for me will by using mini-gas pumps to evacuate hot areas (like I often have Gas Pumps in my petroleum boilers). These niche applications should generally only require tiny amounts of Plastium and it's one of those things where having it is the important thing and efficiency of production is irrelevant. Presently the recipe for plastium has thermium as an ingredient and I'm not sold on that, its so incredibly niche that I don't think it'd be all that overpowered if it were available earlier than thermium but I can see the logic and consistency.

Edited July 25, 2023 by blakemw

[fpx007]

5 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

You are assuming that people do not use Pufts because they are too difficult.

I guess the most important isuue people don’t raise pufts, or at least for me, is the game performance.

First, critter pathfinding, especially of airbrone ones like pufts, is a major performance killer. (Thankfully they did something for this in the update.)

Second, pufts (and slicksters) feed themselves by CONSTANTLY absorbing corresponding gases. As game goes on, performance drops significantly, so these critters breathe less frequently, reducing their efficiency in production. This is rather common when game is accelerated to 3*speed. Even these critters are in a high-pressure gas environment, their info card still often show “starving”, indicating they didn’t eat adequate gas as intended.

Actually, I ranched pufts in a previous playthrough several years ago (LU patch) to get oxylite and bleachstone. But the performacne issues described above really annoyed me. So I guess I’d never raise them until both issues are solved.

[ALCRD]

9 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Replace with salt then 

Given the conflicting taste and how salt reacts with ice. That would turn it into foul tasting watery slush. 

[sakura_sk]

11 minutes ago, ALCRD said:

conflicting taste

I meant it as a joke...

Like how you would accidentally substitute salt instead of sugar in a coffee and well.. being salty that sugar is only a thing for SO! 

[Magheat2009]

5 hours ago, blakemw said:

Presently the recipe for plastium has thermium as an ingredient and I'm not sold on that, its so incredibly niche that I don't think it'd be all that overpowered if it were available earlier than thermium but I can see the logic and consistency.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Brackene plus plastic should give plastium. There is no need to gate it behind Thermium. Only two things benefit from Plastium's high heat resistance- Plastic tile and Transit Tubes. I don't see why having excess to high temperature resistant tiles in mid game will be a problem. Gating plastium behind thermium will make it appear too late in the game in my opinion.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Magheat2009

[ALCRD]

33 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

I meant it as a joke...

Like how you would accidentally substitute salt instead of sugar in a coffee and well.. being salty that sugar is only a thing for SO! 

Maybe hmm.

Sugarless ice cream? Base game would get diet ice cream 

Less tasty variant with less morale boost.

Edited July 25, 2023 by ALCRD

[fpx007]

25 minutes ago, Magheat2009 said:

Only two things benefit from Plastium's high heat resistance- Plastic tile and Transit Tubes. I don't see why having excess to high temperature resistant tiles in mid game will be a problem.

Actually, there are mini pumps, which I guess is the major reason.

For midgame, I guess we can have plasteel, which utilizes steel in recipe and have +200 overheat threshold. That would be awesome.

10 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Replace with salt then 

Egg! It makes sense to add egg in icecream recipe.

[DolphinWing]

For heat resistance, I would think about Abyssalite. But it's not a sustainable resource. I guess that's why they choose Thermium in the recipe.

[Magheat2009]

49 minutes ago, fpx007 said:

Actually, there are mini pumps, which I guess is the major reason.

I don't understand why having mini-pumps that can sustain temperatures up-to 900C without overheating will be particularly overpowered? Mini-pumps can only pump out 1/10th the amount as normal pumps.

[Atro]

8 hours ago, fpx007 said:

Second, pufts (and slicksters) feed themselves by CONSTANTLY absorbing corresponding gases. As game goes on, performance drops significantly, so these critters breathe less frequently, reducing their efficiency in production. This is rather common when game is accelerated to 3*speed. Even these critters are in a high-pressure gas environment, their info card still often show “starving”, indicating they didn’t eat adequate gas as intended.

There is a mod that solves Puft starving elegantly, by making them dynamically eat more to stay fed as if they weren't lagging.

 

[Farsight]

11 hours ago, ALCRD said:

Given the conflicting taste and how salt reacts with ice. That would turn it into foul tasting watery slush. 

Salt IS used to make ice cream!

Not directly, but packed around it, it causes it to freeze at the proper consistency.

Add bristle berry to the recipe, and make it sherbet! 

[JRup]

13 minutes ago, Farsight said:

Not directly, but packed around it, it causes it to freeze at the proper consistency.

I present to you, a sample of a hand cranked gizmo I mentioned earlier:

Some "innovators" slapped an electric motor on these, heathens.