Plastium recipe

[pether]

I really like the idea of temperature-resistant Plastic in a form of Plastium, but I'm not sure if the cost of making it isn't too high. Thermium is the last element the player discoveres in the game, at this point Plastium doesn't feel needed. Also, I'm not sure how many players continue they games up to this point, I reached thermium only once... I fear new cool feature won't be used as much.

I wonder if Plastium recipe shouldn't drop Thermium as a ingridient and replace it with eg. Steel. Or Isoresin maybe? Or mabe don't replace it with anything, and leave only Plastic and Brackwax?

I'm super excited to make cool Moo ranches focusing on exporting Brackene or Brackwax, but the idea of Thermium hunt before that makes me think twice about how log and hard will it be... And if the final reward will be rewarding enough at this point of the game...

How do you think?

[juni3227]

at the point you need heat resistant plastic, that probably when you need tubes crossing very hot industrial zone, since plastic melts at 150C

[Pproy]

Could bleach stone be a good replacement instead of thermium? Chlorination is a way to improve thermal properties of some plastic.

[gigamoi]

I think it is fine as it is. As I see it the rare resources are meant to allow players to circumvent the hard limits intentionally induced by mid game materials, thus differentiating late game from mid game. Giving those earlier would trivialize game play.

Switching thermium for isoresin as you suggested would keep plastium locked behind a late game ressources, but I find thermium way easier to get than isoresin, so I don't really see the point. Furthermore, thematically speaking, thermium is most appropriate as it is the rare ressources associated with high temp machinery.

[Farsight]

More reasons to go for thermium are probably a good thing.

I always make a little of it to say I did, then never use it.

A Gravitas Story Trait that requires some wild end-game material builds would be a fun add.

[Pproy]

@gigamoiI have to disagree here. The main application I can think of for plastium is for transit tube to go into a hot room, or for the radbolt joint plate for SO. Now, it might just be my opinion, but it would be a shame if players have to wait until they get thermium to be able to build the radbolt joint plate in their nuclear reactor.

Sure, mid game access to plastium mean that we could build 900°C resistant minipump, but I fail to see how that would trivialize the end game. If anything, it would give a small taste of what is possible to do with late game materials, and encourage player to actually get thermium, isoresin, etc...

Beside, before you get cows, making brackwax from plant seem to be very labor intensive. You need 600kg of brackene for 54kg of wax, enough for 3 batch of plastium. In nosh bean value, it would mean 30 bean and 540kg of water, and im not even counting the amount of wood, dirt, etc...

1 hour ago, Farsight said:

More reasons to go for thermium are probably a good thing.

I always make a little of it to say I did, then never use it.

A Gravitas Story Trait that requires some wild end-game material builds would be a fun add.

A cool addition for the use of thermium (and plastium) could be new atmo suit that resist REALLY hot temperature (like swimming in magma level of hot).

[sakura_sk]

Plastium magma resistant atmo suit would be sweet!

I find plastium recipe fine (until intensively testing it in a playthrough in the late late game) but a in-between mid game one wouldn't be bad to exist. Weren't the most recent "complaints"/suggestions to have more things late game though? It seems this update will give some.

[fpx007]

Plastium itself is completely OK. However, the isuue is the absence of mid-tier plastic. I guess it would be better to add plastell, which functions as steel-like plastic.

By the way, I think a better mineral type material is needed. Now we only have ceramic and insulation. Ceramic only have +200 resistance while insulation just don’t have any! We should also have mineral which provides +900 heat resistance. (Insulation’s low thermal conductivity is double-sided. It makes insulation a poor choice when building a structure which generates heat on its own.)

[JRup]

2 hours ago, fpx007 said:

It makes insulation a poor choice when building a structure which generates heat on its own.

I temporarily ran out of polluted dirt, but this puppy peaked at 1136ºC. Will wait and see if it goes higher:

[fpx007]

2 minutes ago, JRup said:

I temporarily ran out of polluted dirt, but this puppy peaked at 1136ºC. Will wait and see if it goes higher:

Well, I mean the structures that may overheat, like metal refinery.

[JRup]

31 minutes ago, fpx007 said:

Well, I mean the structures that may overheat, like metal refinery.

The glass forge is particularly vulnerable in this aspect.

[blakemw]

I think Plastium would still be almost as useful with +500 Overheat like Niobium, or frankly even like +300 C. The melting point is fine but it also wouldn't really make a big difference if it were like 1000 C: the main cases it will be used are things like Radbolt Joint Plates into Research Reactor chambers.

A lower but still large overheat bonus and perhaps melting point could justify a simpler recipe.

Personally I'm not a fan at all of "super materials" that trivialize aspects of the game, like I absolutely despise supercoolant as a "this is way better and makes all your problems go away" coolant, when they could have done something with helium gas for energy-intensive deep cooling. So I'd genuinely prefer a "modestly useful" high temp plastic over a superplastic.