Electricity physics.

[cyberwarlord]

A "electrified" status for tiles that travels short distances. New game mechanic where water and refined metal structures can become electrified. Something the atmo suit won't help you with. A new biome type and accompanied flora/fauna. 

Damaged wires, machines(overheat,wrong material),new plants and animals, tesla coils. Can all cause discharge or sparks. Hydrogen/ natural gas etc. could ignite and transfer its mass to thermal energy.

 Imagine making a room where you use electricity to ignite hydrogen to heat the thermal tiles for a steam boiler or even a smelter. Regulated gas flow, ignition. We're building our own refiners and gas engines.

Damaged stations(etc) by electricity could catch fire(animation overlay) and consume some of the surrounding oxygen slowly and create heat.

Edited November 28, 2023 by cyberwarlord

[Denisrancis]

It seems to me that this is impossible to do in this game!

[cyberwarlord]

15 hours ago, Denisrancis said:

It seems to me that this is impossible to do in this game!

Why's that, I missed something ~~~

[pether]

That sounds like cool idea, but would be very easy to avoid and I fear devs would invest plenty of their time to achieve something we will never see in the game. I don't want another ignorable mechanics like germs

[cyberwarlord]

6 hours ago, pether said:

That sounds like cool idea, but would be very easy to avoid and I fear devs would invest plenty of their time to achieve something we will never see in the game. I don't want another ignorable mechanics like germs

Yeah, but you can "avoid"  any hazard with smart gameplay so I'm a little confused on the reasoning here.

[pether]

Slimelung requires smart gameplay to avoid - you need to purify PO2 or make germlocks with floral scent. Requires some planning, preparation, knowledge.

Zombie spores requires you to uproot one flower. Then they are gone forever. Requires one click.

Electric current in water sounds cool, but I fear counterplay would be just "don't put wires in the water" and that wouldn't enrich the gameplay as it doesn't require much from the player. It would need to be more than that

[cyberwarlord]

Ok so it ate my post 4 times now...

1 hour ago, pether said:

Slimelung requires smart gameplay to avoid - you need to purify PO2 or make germlocks with floral scent. Requires some planning, preparation, knowledge.

Zombie spores requires you to uproot one flower. Then they are gone forever. Requires one click.

Electric current in water sounds cool, but I fear counterplay would be just "don't put wires in the water" and that wouldn't enrich the gameplay as it doesn't require much from the player. It would need to be more than that

Well yeah, it's not just water an wires is bad.

Damaged wires, machines, new plants and animals.  Everything from liquids to refined metals could carry a charge.  Thermal plates and even pipes.

You could easily let a wire or machine get damaged an watch the poor pacu turn to BBQ along with the dupe running down the metal hall.

Machines that require power become damaged they too could electrify the surrounding tiles.

Slimelung only requires you pour clean water on it. Most germs only need the basic gas mask. 

Edited November 15, 2023 by cyberwarlord

[Sasza22]

If there was fire in the game then wires would be a hazard as they could cause sparks.

I`m not against the idea really. It could be it`s own effect. Regular wires would spark when in water or going through metal tiles but only when power passes through them. Shouldn`t do damage to dupes but would cause them to stop to do the reacting to spark animation (the same as for radiation but white) and get stressed a bit. Conductive wires wouldn`t spark as they are more advanced (or maybe introduce insulated wires for that dunno). All wires would spark when overloaded in the spot that takes damage.

[cyberwarlord]

7 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

If there was fire in the game then wires would be a hazard as they could cause sparks.

I`m not against the idea really. It could be it`s own effect. Regular wires would spark when in water or going through metal tiles but only when power passes through them. Shouldn`t do damage to dupes but would cause them to stop to do the reacting to spark animation (the same as for radiation but white) and get stressed a bit. Conductive wires wouldn`t spark as they are more advanced (or maybe introduce insulated wires for that dunno). All wires would spark when overloaded in the spot that takes damage.

I'm still thinking more like when things go very wrong. But mainly adding it to have a new hazard that can be used with plants and critters as well. It would travel along refined metals (gas lines, floor tiles etc) and most liquids X tiles from the source causing damage to dupes and most critters. Maybe a new kill box designe. Some plants or critters could also cause discharge.

It adds a "Electric charged" status to blocks.

Maybe a new oni material type, static resin or something. Electric crystal biome. Add tesla coils to the game to collect or safely discharge.

New pacu variety, Electric eels. The power slugs would also fit in nicely.

Still think fires could just be a status effect for machines that melt down in flammable gasses. Not spreading fire but something simple where it takes damage till destroyed, puts off alot of heat an burns any flammable gas and oxygen. So it's something  that could be prevented in say a dirty or steam brick. 

Edited November 16, 2023 by cyberwarlord

[squanter187]

On 11/13/2023 at 2:06 PM, cyberwarlord said:

Add a new game mechanic where water and refined metal tiles can become electrified. Something the atmo suit won't help you with. 

 

A "electrified" status for tiles. Perhaps a new biome type and accompanied flora/fauna. 

cool idea, I'm all for increasing either the learning curve or overall difficullty here- we simply don;t have enought things that can foobar your base anymore.

Your idea adds a problem with the games love for pure oxygen.... so as long as we are willing to set the entire base on fire with a broken wire i'm all for it. I fear however i will be in the minority here.

[cyberwarlord]

On 11/25/2023 at 1:18 PM, squanter187 said:

cool idea, I'm all for increasing either the learning curve or overall difficullty here- we simply don;t have enought things that can foobar your base anymore.

Your idea adds a problem with the games love for pure oxygen.... so as long as we are willing to set the entire base on fire with a broken wire i'm all for it. I fear however i will be in the minority here.

Yeah, but super realistic is not the goal for the burning of building aspect. Just an add on with a minor animation overlay. Buildings that overheat or get damaged should potentially catch fire and consume some of the surrounding oxygen. It's the kind of thing that goes wrong an causes some minor panic. Waste a bit of rresources. The main idea is all the application of electric charge. 

Edit: same mechanic as the wheezewort taking in ambient gases. Except you don't get them back. Not igniting the gases, just destroying it in its surroundings. 

Edited November 28, 2023 by cyberwarlord

[cyberwarlord]

Bump.

[Explorifier]

On 11/15/2023 at 12:27 AM, pether said:

That sounds like cool idea, but would be very easy to avoid and I fear devs would invest plenty of their time to achieve something we will never see in the game. I don't want another ignorable mechanics like germs

Devs' germ concept is perfectly fine and a great idea, the reason it's not an important gameplay aspect is that germ mechanics don't follow the laws of a lot of very serious diseases. It could be updated to be realistic and the germs would not be ignorable. Initially, slimelung was overpowered and was colony doom, so it was toned down a lot, but the reason it had to be so deadly was the lack of real-world disease spreading models.

For example, consider a disease like HBO/game The Last of Us, a cordyceps spore or the doomfungus from Interstellar. The real-world scientists do say that a single spore evolved in Mongolia could catch the wind and make it to Iowa and basically wipe out the United States. Many sci fi doomsday scenarios are based on that. To add more detail,in real-world laboratories, it is known that real current fungal spores are present at a load of 10,000 per cubic meter basically everywhere. Fungus can thrive on building materials, clothing materials, etc., waiting for the perfect moment to strike and wipe out the food chain. The danger is so incredible that scientists propose we fix it or risk extinction. Many real life parasites jump to food then jump to human host. The ONI germ modeling by comparison is very weak, unless the germs are on the original substrate like slime or coming from a sporechid, the entire environment rapidly becomes totally sterile. There is no intermediary host jumping. The various weapons that make disease so deadly and terrible in the real world aren't implemented. Nor do duplicants have many tools to deal with germs, like downward-facing radiation lamps that would make you balance getting irradiated with getting sterile. We all lived through COVID, even a non sci-fi virus can escape containment repeatedly and shut down the world and wipe out millions.

If the sci-fi aspects applied to slicksters and hatches applied to germs, then germs that can jump to inert substrates like rocks would be totally logical, and could lead to clever yet algorithmic disasters with a tiny virus jumping hosts repeatedly and using intermediary substrates. Imagine for example a sporechid germ that uses plastic as a substrate like the real-world germs being engineered to decompose plastic, infects the bed like a terrible bed bug, and infects a whole luxury condo with the virus. Moreover, in the real world, plant diseases are much worse to deal with than human diseases (thanks to cultivars).

It's wrong to say germs couldn't be very effective, it seems that the situation is the science on why disease is so deadly wasn't fully understood and implemented with the germ update, and some key mechanics were not implemented (understandable, disease is a PHD topic). Disease avoidance is something we do in the real world, as with any hazard, but usually the cost of doing things like total lockdowns or total sterilization are unrealistic so we choose to “live with the virus" and perhaps prescribe some medications.

The mechanics themselves would not be hard to code in unity (think a couple weeks for a skilled programmer), but understanding how diseases spread and making it sci-fi, and creating a cat-and-mouse game with disease requires a lot of knowledge. 

Finally, I should note that food poisoning and slimelung are targeted to early-game players, a spore-based disease should be one that spreads everywhere, lives on inert substrates--i..e. if you're a fan of The Last of Us or COVID, China engineered a cordyceps variant that grows vigorously on plant seeds and is growing absolutely massive amounts of cordyceps--the sporechid spores is a good opportunity for beefing up since a genuine sci fi spore can grow on seeds, wheat, insects, and plastics. The ONI sporechid seems to have been modeled on cordyceps (the "zombie" fungus), however, none of the things that could make cordyceps deadly in science fiction are included. The tools for fighting infection aren't provided all that well, chlorine is usually vented into space where they could create an obvious NaOCl -> NaCl resource pathway and radiation lamps like used for real-world spore decontamination. However, given that meteors took a vacation for several years and came back recently (making a new run at ONI a must play), I wouldn't rule out disease coming back and reinvigorating the game later on. Lots of basic mechanics like thermodynamics and disease simply aren't present, getting them to work is ambitious, but is also a good commercial strategy in that it can drive a MineCraft effect where the player base grows over time just because you've got so much depth to keep people coming back.

[Greywanderer]

I can't properly express my disappointment that this thread was not about changing electricity in the game to more accurately model real-world circuits. The system that the devs created was clearly meant to be more simplistic than real circuits, but it grew into something complex that is very counterintuitive to anyone who has worked with electricity before. I know education isn't a direct goal of this game, but it couldn't hurt to let it happen with a more realistic circuitry model that would end up being less complicated than the current pseudocircuitry.

That aside, I think the electric hazards could add a good bit to the game, especially with an associated biome and/or planetoid. Even if the hazards aren't too difficult to avoid building from scratch, it could be a different story in a biome trapped with bad wiring, shocking story traits, and some fuzzy gastropods on the loose randomly powering everything.

[owner]

I actually had the same Idea to add fire to convert fuel into heat and exhaust:)