Radbolt-related annoyances/suggestions collection

[myxal]

Hi, I got into radbolt usage a few months ago, apologies if I'm repeating old stuff here:

• I find it really annoying that radbolt consumers do the opposite of the usual "output green to request supply/charging" that batteries and gas/liquid storage tanks do. Deconstructed/broken machines might request radbolt generation/deflection, wasting resources, possibly endangering dupes cleaning up. I know I can override with an OR/XOR gate+switch, or NOT gate + cable disconnect, but that's 4/2 extra automation port cells, possibly 1 foreground building for something that already needs a spaghetti of automation around the radbolt chambers for the fire trigger.
• Would appreciate if the radbolt joint plate also had an automation input, like the reflectors (or there was a separate building that had it). Would be nice to have a dupe-inaccessible radbolt channel below the machines, rather than having the mess of scaffolding, especially with how huge the IPL building is.
• Interplanetary launcher doesn't accept resources while the path is blocked. It did work as a motivation to check out meteor blasters, but still... I'd hate to have to send gasses with the thing without a meteor-handling setup in place.
• I read that radbolts (as units) were originally whole-numbers only. The switch to fractions/floating point wasn't fully carried out, it seems. I find myself in a situation where the Interplanetary launcher doesn't accept more radbolts, yet is unable to launch 4 shots consecutively when the launch cost is said to be 50 radbolts and the storage is full.
• If the radbolt chamber wasn't completely filled, it's almost guaranteed that you won't be able to empty it fully, as there's no way to fire fractional radbolts, or even know how much exactly is in the chamber. I wouldn't care as much if there wasn't a potential to save the 120W by storing nothing instead of the 0.x radbolt which I can't eject. A reset port the shoots out whatever's in the chamber, or a building setting that enables to chamber to shoot below threshold (since automation on the trigger input is pretty much mandatory anyway), or perhaps an energy-saver mode, like the fridge got?
• A numerical total of the materials loaded in the IPL would be very welcome. (Or perhaps something on the IPL's load display, like a flashing section of the progress bar as you cross the 200kg thresholds?) Counting up the masses of the 12 different food items to pad the rest of the 200kg bullet with something else is not fun. I don't remember if IPL provided an option to empty its storage, but I got annoyed by this, so I'm guessing it doesn't, apologies if it actually does and I missed it. (Worked around it by having everything come in through a meter)
• Beetas - oh dear, where do I even begin.. the supercooled waste they drop on death causes problems - solidifies into a block upon reload (unless it solidifies immediately into debris by thermally interacting with something else), the bug of "tiles/cells not melting when heated by debris sitting on them" very much applies here - can't melt individual nuclear waste tiles by setting a 5t 95°C water bottle on them, unless there's another tile/material cell interacting with the waste block. If the supercooled liquid falls into liquids, it can mess up layers, so feeding bees CO2 from submerged petrol generators below them is prone to breaking as the falling waste eventually breaks the surface layer of clear water that prevents PH2O from evaporating.
• Beetas - can we please get an answer on what the intended protection from bee stings is? There's a scene in the SO launch trailer where dupe works around non-aggressive beetas in a lead suit. But to my knowledge, this doesn't protect dupes (reliably). There's the CO2-sleeping mechanic, but the cost of doing that is insanely high. Would love if the lead suit was the official bee-protection suit - it would make sense as sleeping beetas are a radiation hazard.
• Beeta hives - it's a bit confusing under what conditions hives stop working - missing floor disables them only until next reload, but without this knowledge I was confused why some of the hives in the uranium biome were inactive, when other hive with missing floor were clearly functional.
• Lastly, not strictly related to radbolts, I would love to have a dupe's most recent injury (negative health delta) event recorded, maybe similar to how germ exposure is done now (place, and maybe cause). I see these below-full-health dupes running around and have no idea where/how they're getting hurt. I suppose it's manageable for players who know the mechanics inside-out and account for everything when playing, but beginner-friendly this is not.

Edited April 4 by myxal

[Sasza22]

On 4/4/2024 at 4:34 PM, myxal said:

there's no way to fire fractional radbolts

Iirc radbolts lose 0.1 radboltpower per tile travelled. Knowing that you can design a weird contraption that delivers the right amount of bolts where you want them. As for others there`s a lot of QoL to be done there.