a whole ton of suggestions in one.

[Astrologic]

tl;dr
I've been brainstorming about some innovative additions to the game.
a new little system with lots of room for future improvements, new ways to create, etc.  I've tried to be thorough in my ideas, and account for any issues that could arise, and how to mitigate any potential problems before they have a chance to manifest.

If you're interested, please read on.

I propose two different gas tiles:  Vapor, and cloud, and a new mechanic called rain.
As well as two different liquids: air-gel, repel-gel, created by new beeta morphs.

 

Four topics:

• Rain Mechanic and new Gas
• Or hey, how about new bee morphs?
• Contaminant Mechanic
• Fermentation
   

 

 

Rain Mechanic and new Gas

Firstly, the appearance in color of the new gas tiles (Vapor and Cloud) should range between white, bright yellow, yellow/dark yellow, and grey.
Clouds and vapor should have a thick appearance always, similar to the way all other gasses are thick when their levels get too high.

When water reaches specific temperature and density conditions (e.g., above 35°C and 1kg), it can off-gas Vapor, lighter than oxygen but heavier than hydrogen. Any germs will remain in the water, and not follow the vapor to the air.

If this vapor gas gets too hot (60c) or cold (20c), it'll turn into a cloud tile.
If too much vapor gathers, (too dense), say 1kg or so, it'll turn into a cloud tile.

all vapor tiles touching a cloud tile will also turn into a cloud tile after a very short delay.

Cloud tiles don't last, they are a volatile gas, they shrink at a constant rate, and drip water at that same rate until they are completely gone. There is no stopping the process once it begins. 
This process is called "rain".
The rain is produced in the tile directly below the cloud tile, and if that tile is occupied and the water can't be produced there, the cloud tile should instantly turn into water.

Cloud tiles shouldn't move as much as vapor or other gas, it should be mostly stationary unless forced to move, though I suppose if they move it shouldn't be a problem either, though I do think players might appreciate it more if they didn't, as it would slightly minimize the damage caused by unchecked rainfall. - punishing enough as it might be.

You can pump vapor, but if you try to pump cloud tiles, the pumped gas will instantly condense into water and break the gas pipes.

Vapor would be white, and look like fluffy clouds, unless it gets too thick, where it can start to change to a gray.
Cloud tiles of course would be a dark gray, indicating rain, and stay that way until it vanishes.
Gas in the game already looks like clouds, so I think making a white gas that is a cloud just makes sense.
Clouds and vapor should both instantly condense into water if placed in a "channel".  That is, a tile above and below, or a tile on the left and right.  This means vapor / cloud can not exist in a 1x1 box, or any narrow spaces..
one tile above and beside (corner) should be fine.  Airflow tiles should also be fine.
vapor/cloud can't pass through 1 tile wide areas, with the exception of carefully constructed zig-zags.


This could open the door for some extra dream related stuff, could have a cloud gazer trait, of course clouds in an uncontrolled setting - an area a little too warm and unsupervised could cause unfavorable downpours, which could add a little extra challenge to the game, without being overly so.  Though, there could be some benefits to rainfall as well.  Maybe some dupes like rain, some will get depressed when it rains.


I think this part is a fun idea.  Vapor can hold a germ called "Pollution" which it gets from making contact with polluted oxygen which is dense enough.  
When it turns into a cloud and starts to shrink and produce rain, the germ counter will also shrink, but as long as the germ counter is above 0, all rain will be polluted water, if the germ counter hits 0 before the cloud is done shrinking, it will produce regular water again.  The germ counter should be capped by the density of the cloud, never exceeding it, and so it will stop absorbing nearby polluted oxygen tiles.
If you attempt to pump vapor with pollution in it, the gas pipe will take damage, and polluted water will leave the pipe equal the the amount of pollution in the vapor, reducing the vapor by that amount as well, remaining vapor is piped normally.


The slimelung germs in the polluted oxygen which makes contact with the vapor will stay in the polluted oxygen, and since the vapor requires dense polluted oxygen to absorb pollution, it can not be exploited to remove slimelung.
Polluted vapor (normally white) should be a bright yellow depending on how much pollution it's absorbed, while a dense cloud should be a darker yellow.

I think having a bit of weather in such a way could be nice.  

A way to make a cloud look a little more like a cloud might be to make it want to keep a certain distance away from tiles as a preference of the gas.  Maybe the RNG of the vapor gas can strongly prefer to keep 4 squares away from any tiles when possible.  Of course, I don't know the visual effect that'd have until I see it in play.

Vapor might make some aspects of gas management better, as when pumped, could be used to shift gases toward walls, allowing those undesired gasses to be removed from a room a little easier.  Then, it could be easily condensed (far easier than steam) - to make a much faster process of turning a room into a vacuum.  
It'd be a little more involved than simply setting up a pump and waiting 20 cycles, but I think it would be an ultimately more pleasant process than the current way to vacuum a room.  More interaction, but slightly less time. 
You'd also need to make sure it rains on a cold tile, otherwise vapor could soon be created again.

I think water should also not off gas unless the tile above it is cooler than the water, still above 20 degrees, and for sure a gas, This ensures that an atmosphere is required in order to off gas, though perhaps still not doing so unless below 2kg..  Aside from that, the off gas mechanism shouldn't be much different from the way polluted water works currently, though with less bubbling.  

This will also ensure that waterlock designs don't stop functioning as waterlocks, as they are a very important aspect of the game.
They'll still maintain a vacuum, for example.
In situations where a waterlock is used to keep the gasses of two rooms separate, either temperature control, density control of either liquid or gas, or a different liquid can be used, so nothing breaks, and there are still many valid solutions to any issue that might arise.

Water is still very much manageable in the exact same way unless under a very specific circumstance.

It would also be neat to see what designs people could come up with to get clean water from contaminated water, or to help control some of the polluted oxygen in an area, or who knows what else it could be used for.

We can of course make water fall quite easily, but making rain chambers would be so much fun.

It might be kind of nice if these downpours could do something special, like water a specific plant that can't be irrigated by pipe, or maybe there could be a puft or something that likes clouds/vapor, maybe with a rainbow effect cause that'd be neato..

 

 

Or hey, how about new bee morphs?

As discussed above, with a new rain mechanic, a new morph becomes possible.
Bees exposed to enough vapor/clouds over time could start to purify and turn into something else, something... better....
They.. oh no here it comes... they bee-comb beeta than they were....I am so sorry.

I'd call them something like a Nimbuzz, or something that takes into consideration their propensity for clouds, (nimbus and buzz)
Let's say they fly up to a vapor tile, create some lightning or something cool while they collect some vapor, they bring it back to their hive, 
eventually their hive turns into a different form and produces "RepelGel" - a water like-substance, slightly more viscous, that doesn't give wet debuffs to dupes who walk through it, maybe quite temperature insulating as a liquid, something we don't yet have.
Heat it up too much, it becomes water, cool it down, it becomes ice.  Maybe you can use it for a food ingredient that helps fight radiation sickness.
Maybe it can also completely block radiation? Good for some water-locks that won't cause your dupes to start binge eating and vomiting in the same room.

If there's pollution in the vapor, as discussed above, they could prefer to collect that instead, and turn themselves into something a little different.
Maybe a Pollutionator.  Heh.. but it could collect pollution from vapor, and produce air-gel within it's hive.
a heavier gel-like substance that dupes can breathe in (as it has polluted oxygen in it).
Dump that into a hole, and you'll be able to dig for a while without running out of air, though maybe dupes that breathe in too much can slowly get radiation sickness.
Same as water, heat up too much, it turns into polluted water, cool it down, polluted ice.
Though, I don't think it should be anywhere near as dense as polluted water, so when it's heated into polluted water, it should shrink right down.
Maybe you can also use a bunch of the stuff to craft a one-time use oxygen mask that decays into polluted oxygen slowly until it vanishes, leaving little puffs of PO2 instead of CO2, though not lasting very long.  
 

Contaminant Mechanic

I like the idea of potentially saturating liquids with unique germ-types in order to change their properties.  
and I do think it could be explored a little more.  What about beneficial germs?
What else can they do?  If you put enough of a germ into some liquid, can it change the molecular structure of that liquid?
Maybe with the new beeta-gels mentioned above (repel-gel, air-gel), you can charge them with a specific germ-type to give them some temporary additional properties.

air-gel, once loaded with a micro-biome, could perhaps float on top of water, and slowly start to sink as the microbiomes die off.  Maybe at maximum germs, can float even in mid-air.  I can't think of much use for mid-air floating liquid, but it would be a lot of fun to play with, and I'm sure someone would eventually find a valid use for it, even if the effect is temporary.  Or maybe while it's loaded with a micro-biome, it can resist the vacuum of space.  Remember it's supposed to be a breathable liquid, so this could come in handy.

Repel-gel, when it reaches enough quantity of a micro-biome, could change into gloop. 
You can drop gloop into a body of water, and as long as there are no pre-existing germs in that water, the gloop will vanish, and the gloop germ will infect the liquid, making it stop flowing until all the germs die off (or forced by pumps or what have you), almost like it's frozen, but still liquid.  

How do you charge these liquids?  With the new sponge slug for the air-gel.  They'd simply suck it up, spew it out, it's now loaded with germs.
Of course, germs die off faster in the wrong conditions, so the gel would have to be maintained at a specific temperature, and far away from hydrogen/chlorine, and anything else that already has germs in it, including floral scent.
For the repel-gel, you'd have to get a smog slug to suck up vapor, it'd spew out that vapor, then you'd have to maintain that now contaminated vapor long enough for the germs in the vapor to accumulate in the gel in order to transform it.

Fermentation / contamination

We could have food items with germs that when allowed to grow to certain levels, will transform the food to either make it last longer, provide more calories, maybe fight sickness, etc..
Place a food item in either air or liquid with a contaminant, some kind of germ, as it spreads to the food, the food will eventually transform.
Maybe it can transform no matter what - over time, and depending on how much contaminate (germs or whatever) have accumulated, you get a different quality item.  If you managed to maintain a high level of germs, you'll get a nice cheese-like food, but a medium level of germs, something generic, and a low level of germs, you'll get what is basically a mush-bar.

One gas contaminant I thought might be interesting is one which shifts the weight of the gas it comes in contact with.
Slowly all your oxygen could become heavy and sink.  A little scary, but you could also control it and use it to your advantage, or perhaps a contaminant (germ) that could make oxygen completely unbreathable at high concentrations.
Or a contaminant that can cause gas to spread out more than it normally would, thinning the air.
Or perhaps a contaminant which causes a liquid to off-gas something, like water that off gasses CO2.

How about electrical charge as a contaminant of a liquid?  
Or how about a pacu morph that has a high chance of being created when the liquid it's in is contaminated with something?
Some kind of jelly-fish looking pacu that splits into two as a means of reproduction, creating a clone of itself at age 0 (no baby stage aside from the first egg hatch), eats a harmful contaminant, replaces it with a more beneficial one 


Well, I'm done brainstorming for now.
If you read all this, thank you.



Klei team, If you like any of these ideas, please use them.
If anyone has further suggestions to improve on the ideas, or possible issues that might arise from implementing such things, let me know.
If you think something here is a stupid idea, please tell me how it can improve, or what you don't like about it.
If you're a modder and think you can draw inspiration from anything here, I'd love to hear about it.
I don't see any issue with having more fun in the game, and this is definitely some harmless fun to be had.

Thanks for reading.

[cyberwarlord]

I like the idea of cheese. I mean, fermentation. Something that uses rot piles for fuel maybe. Idk.

[Astrologic]

I wanted new morphs for bees.  I like bees, and I like morph variations.
I know we have pufts that already change morph depending on the gas they are in, but I felt it was too easy.  Fully saturate a room with a gas and wait.
Now with bees, they are all about radiation, but it'd be difficult to use that as the basis for their evolution, since there aren't multiple types of radiation.
There's no hot radiation, cold radiation, there's no blue radiation, red radiation, etc.
we don't have alpha waves, gamma waves, or whatever.  We either have rads, or we don't.
So, I figured what other factor can go into deciding the behavior of a bee?  Climatization of course, but we already have slicksters and pacus that change depending on temp, and I wanted something that would feel different.

But you know, when it comes to morphs, Klei has done well.  I'm sure when they figure out bee morphs, whatever it is, they'll do a good job.  I just wanted to highlight one possibility that might be fun, and of course comes with some new liquids - which I think is great.
I want liquids that behave differently when on the ground, not just in buildings.
Also, I like the idea of a gas that could help create vacuums a little easier, as I often vacuum out my entire world every time I play, and sometimes it's just a matter of setting up 20/ 30 gas pumps, a whole bunch of pipes to space, and then waiting 1000 cycles, either sleeping or reading a book while I wait.  Not exactly fun.  
I've thought of pumping the base with CO2 or something, then freezing it all, but trying to get it all down to the right temp takes forever as it's not very thermally reactive, getting worse and worse the less there is - meaning it still takes forever.
So I thought, what if there was a gas that could condense without relying on temperature?  That would speed up the process substantially.
But, how to make it reasonable?  Why not a dense water cloud that would condense if it gets too dense?

Anyway, they were fun ideas to contemplate.