Notes after 3 colonies.

[2tallyGr8]

Mod used for all colonies, to make starting dupe selection easier:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856555858

No other mods were used.

 

I have played 3 colonies (plus a sandbox one that I used to check what new POIs there were). - 2 using Ceres (the new asteroid), 1 with Rime, frozen core, & the new biomes guaranteed. All were using base game (no Spaced Out) After 4-5ish hours of playtime, here is a summary of my experiences:

Observations (in no particular order):

1) Biomes above 0C are common on Ceres, and I was able to dig within site of them within 5 cycles or so. Entering only required 2 skill points on my digger (abyssalite). The oil biome remains hot. The sand and hydrogen biome (Ocean) was at 30C, and I was able to enter it around cycle 25. I was tempted to move my base there, to have a more comfortable temperature for my dupes, but decided to stay to maintain the challenge. Rime does not have this, the oil biome is sub-zero (not a new thing), and the challenge is warming the oil up to the point where it is usable.

2) There is A LOT of wood in the starting bundle. I played one colony using wood for everything I could (even using it to fuel my generators until I could get ethanol), and didn't go below 8k wood remaining in nearly 45 cycles.

3) Neither petroleum nor nectar shows that it can be used to produce plastic on its database entry. The entry for plastic only says that a "Pre-Plastic" is required. The polymer press does mention that either one can be used. There is no entry for the pre-plastics category, despite there being a link to it, and an entry for plastics

4) Despite rolling ~50-60 seeds, I did not see magma channels, volcanic activity, or frozen core once. I wanted to play frozen core for my second (longer) run, to give myself some extra challenge.

5) Refined carbon was the bottleneck for steel, not lime. I had lime and a metal refinery using an ethanol pool ready by cycle 30, but had to dig around and find the shipping container POI to get any coal (to get refined carbon). I was surprised that the biome with iron ore didn't have any, since I am used to the jungle biome having both coal and iron ore. I did not see any hatches.

6) It feels like geysers spawn further away. On both of my Ceres runs, I didn't have any geysers within view of the starting biome.

7) Tallow exists, and so do deep-fried foods.
8) A bammoth licking the ground in front of a caregiver can be a sign of either deep affection, or mineral deficiency.

9) I did not see any of the fossil POIs in my runs.
10) Mercury has been added/enabled, but it's melting temp is very low.

11) A new category has been added to the storage bin (and bottle emptier); non-standard. This includes sublimators.

New POIs (Spoilers):

Spoiler

12) There is a geothermal plant or something at the bottom of the world. Currently non-functional, but it looks cool.

13) There is a new gravitas building at the top of the asteroid.

 

Thoughts (in no particular order):

1) Perhaps adding some cold variant of the barren biome could help alleviate the lack of refined carbon, since there isn't any obvious way to get coal without rockets (which require steel in the base game, which requires refined carbon).

2) I would find it funny if tallow could also be obtained by shearing the seals, at which point they would become skinny, and gradually growing bigger and bigger.

3) Could tallow be used to create some kind of lubricant, which could work similar to how the power control station does, but on a different set of machines? Ex. Improving the work speed of the metal refinery/pumps.

4) It feels like there is too much wood in the starting wood pile. As I said before, I used it extremely liberally in my colony, and never came close to running out. Perhaps the capacity of the wood pile could be increased, but the starting fill could be controlled by a difficulty setting. I would like to start with 5k or so wood, but I understand if other people would prefer more. Perhaps the highest difficulty could leave the wood pile completely empty, so people have to dig around to find floxes (floxen?).

5) There should be no biome (aside from the magma core) above 0C, as moving into/near a warmer biome would take away the challenge of this asteroid. On this note, if frozen core is disabled for Ceres (I didn't see anything about that in the notes, but I might've been blind), I'd like to play with it.

6) The floxen's tails seem rather stiff when idling. Making them curl and uncurl slightly when standing in one spot might help

7) Letting the player choose what the Ice Liquifier uses for fuel would be nice (even though coal is not very available).

8) A snow cone machine, as a colder counterpart to the water cooler. Alternatively, it could use bristle berries or pikeapples to flavor snow cones. (or both, having an option for flavored and unflavored snow cones)

9) Going along with #8, an ice shredder that could take ice and output snow would also make bonbon gourds sustainable, even without meteorites.

10) I personally think pdirt and slime should be added to the sublimators category in storage bins, but I understand them being kept under organic.

11) Wood generators are now useful, albeit still bad in terms of power output. Previously, I only had enough wood to run them when I was overflowing on petroleum and nat gas.
 

Spoiler

12) If the geothermal plant intakes water and outputs steam, it should ideally match a whole number of steam turbines, or some multiple of 10kg/s (a full pip of water).

13) If it just outputs dry heat, I think that letting it get too hot should trigger a meltdown of some kind, forcing the player to rebuild it in case of carelessness. I personally would prefer this over #10, but the overheat temperature should be high enough that it could be used to run steam turbines.

Currently 30 cycles into my Rime colony, will post more if I come up with anything.

Colony 2 (Ceres):

Colony 1 (Ceres):

Colony 3 (Rime, with frozen core. AFK while I typed this up):

Turns out, those ethanol puddles spawn in regardless of asteroid. I suppose I should've expected that. Turner found some here on Rime:

Well, that's early game power sorted.

[PatrykC159753]

I agree With lumber its acutaly eaziest start of all.

I dont know about other stuff but it makes sense that u cant select frozen core 
lower there are work in progres Geotermal plants. you cant have Geotermal without magma.

[JaxckLl]

Lol at the idea of shearing the seals. One of my suggestions was to have Floxes periodically drop their fully grown horns, providing a constant but minimal source of wood from the wild population. Plus a reduced starting capacity of Wood I feel that would make the start play a lot better over time.

Completely agree on all your points about temp. Ceres should be COLD everywhere. It would be cool to have jellification be a thing, as super-chilled Oil can behave more like a super soft solid than a true liquid.

[2tallyGr8]

10 hours ago, PatrykC159753 said:

I agree With lumber its acutaly eaziest start of all.

Yeah, I think the devs just haven't gotten around to balancing the starting wood amount yet. This is still an early beta. As I said before, I think the starting amount of wood should be an option available to the player when creating the asteroid (same place as duplicant hunger/stress can be set).

10 hours ago, PatrykC159753 said:

I dont know about other stuff but it makes sense that u cant select frozen core 
lower there are work in progres Geotermal plants. you cant have Geotermal without magma.

I looked at the geothermal plant POI in sandbox, and it doesn't seem to be connected to the magma. I think it would produce heat all on its own. Regardless, I think that allowing frozen core could create an interesting challenge. I enjoy struggling to find ways to heat up my base using limited resources, and having a giant pool of magma I can slap a dozen steam turbines on doesn't make it harder. I get that frozen core might be a challenge for newer players on Ceres, but as it is, it seems to be intended to be a more difficult asteroid.

6 minutes ago, JaxckLl said:

Completely agree on all your points about temp. Ceres should be COLD everywhere. It would be cool to have jellification be a thing, as super-chilled Oil can behave more like a super soft solid than a true liquid.

I believe I mentioned this previously, but Rime has cold everywhere (so long as you have frozen core, which I like to play with). I think Ceres should be like Rime, but colder and with fewer materials. On Rime, the black liquid in the oil biome isn't oil, but carbon dioxide (the oil is frozen solid). On Ceres, perhaps the CO2 could also be frozen solid down there. Like Rime, the strategy could be to use conveyors/dupe labor to carry the solid chunks of oil up to the main base, where they can be warmed and pumped into a refinery. (or heat them up first, and pray that the oil doesn't stop flowing and freeze in the pipes).

 

I'm not sure how jellification could work, unless oil turned into another liquid with a higher viscosity as a lower temperature.

 

I agree completely with your points on wood. Floxes dropping a baby (much smaller set) of antlers when they stop being fawns, and then another when they die, like pokeshells, makes sense.

[JaxckLl]

No I mean periodically dropping antlers as adults, like how antelope do in real life.

[ALCRD]

20 hours ago, 2tallyGr8 said:

There is A LOT of wood in the starting bundle. I played one colony using wood for everything I could (even using it to fuel my generators until I could get ethanol), and didn't go below 8k wood remaining in nearly 45 cycles.

I have like one heater only and built only 33 wood tiles and I'm at 3,8k wood on Cycle 10 lol .. not sure how i managed it but yea there go all my wood supply

[goboking]

4 hours ago, 2tallyGr8 said:

I believe I mentioned this previously, but Rime has cold everywhere (so long as you have frozen core, which I like to play with). I think Ceres should be like Rime, but colder and with fewer materials. On Rime, the black liquid in the oil biome isn't oil, but carbon dioxide (the oil is frozen solid). On Ceres, perhaps the CO2 could also be frozen solid down there. Like Rime, the strategy could be to use conveyors/dupe labor to carry the solid chunks of oil up to the main base, where they can be warmed and pumped into a refinery. (or heat them up first, and pray that the oil doesn't stop flowing and freeze in the pipes).

I'm glad Ceres isn't omni-cold like Rime.  It would feel too samey if it was.  I look at the them like Iceland (cold with some geothermal heat) vs Antarctica (cold top to bottom), and I'm okay with that.  That said, I do hope mixing the DLC elements into Rime nicely combines the omni-cold of Rime with the starting biome, flora, and fauna of Ceres. 

[NewWorldDan]

On 6/25/2024 at 10:40 PM, 2tallyGr8 said:

10) Mercury has been added/enabled, but it's melting temp is very low.

I'm hoping/expecting there to be a use for it somewhere. Right now, it's just a nuisance to be dealt with. Good for liquid locks, but otherwise just dump it to space. 

[larsonco]

I think the starting wood amount is okay.  Wood can be a trap when you're starting a new colony, since it is the only thing to build ladders out of until you can mine granite.  And if you start building tiles and other buildings (beds) out of it, it can disappear really fast.

There should be a variant of the mess table that uses wood.

I disagree about the cold core of the planet.  I like the warmer biomes as a transition just above the hot biome where the geothermal power is generated.  to have you geothermal, you need thermal.  This is also why frozen core isn't available.  Magma channels, and volcanic activity I think are fine to leave out since it ruins the theme of the planet.

Yes nectar>petroleum isn't clear.

I think wood generators are bad and a trap.  I would increase their power generation, lower their CO2 output, lower their wood input amount, or some combination of the three to balance them similar to coal generators.

[B.Olson]

I'm sure there are some players that can make do with less wood, however I find myself running out of wood for the sake of heating. 
I know Floxes can be sheared for wood and there are new trees. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is the wood pile should not be reduced.