Floxes are too weak

[Mariolo]

Floxes can be sheared for 300kg of lumber. When they become adults at 5 cycles they have 50 scale growth so the overflow eggs won't produce any extra lumber. With 17% scale growth if fed, they can be sheared every 6 cycles for a total of 15 harvests per flox or 45kg/cycle of lumber (75g/s).

For comparison, a WILD arbor tree produces 139g/s of lumber, or 65g/s if not manually harvested.

Floxes are cheap, only requiring about 6kg/cylce of phosphorite, but wild arbor trees are completely free and produce almost twice as much.

Floxes also produce dirt. Every flox produces 1.2kg/cycle of dirt. This is ridiculous when compared to pips which make 20kg/cycle. 8 pips can be ranched for free with 3 wild arbor trees. It'd take 40 wild pikeapples to ranch 8 floxes and make 1/20 the dirt while also providing the exact same amount of meat.

As they currently stand, floxes are outclassed in all aspects by pips and trees, which is specially terrible when you consider that the map starts with a forest biome. Even if it didn't, they would have no late game applications regardless.

My suggestion is to buff them to 400kg per shear and make the babies grow ready to be shorn. This would get their numbers to 120kg/cycle or 200g/s accounting for the overflow eggs. Also buff their dirt production significantly. This would allow them to compete with other sources of lumber and meat while also not being overpowered.

Also it'd be cool if they could hit a tree and drop their antlers this way so they don't need to be shorn

[GluttonyMain]

54 minutes ago, Mariolo said:

Floxes are cheap, only requiring about 6kg/cylce of phosphorite, but wild arbor trees are completely free and produce almost twice as much.

Floxes with wild Piekapples are also free.

54 minutes ago, Mariolo said:

Floxes also produce dirt. Every flox produces 1.2kg/cycle of dirt

According to ingame database its 12kg, isnt it? Or is the ingame databse wrong? Or am I misremembering (not at my pc right now, cannot check)

54 minutes ago, Mariolo said:

and make the babies grow ready to be shorn

Please no, that looks stupid. Id rather they buff them per shear than to make babies have full antlers.

[PatrykC159753]

the last point is realy cool idea but i dont think they are too week they have strong resorse generation cykle with bammoths iand they trait is that they have all traits not just food, wood and dirt for toilets in biom where cold does not alow for whater powerd toilets. They allso use less space then wild planted arbor trees to get good resorse generation. If you look at them ass just wood generation then yes they are worst.

[Lacero]

the arbor tree makes 0 wood because it dies below 15C

[ghkbrew]

22 minutes ago, PatrykC159753 said:

They allso use less space then wild planted arbor trees

You can fit 10 wild planted arbor trees in a standard 24x4 ranch vs 8 floxes.

Maybe buffing their density to 16 per ranch would be a good solution.

[Mariolo]

1 hour ago, GluttonyMain said:

Floxes with wild Piekapples are also free.

8 pips can be fed with 3 wild abor trees

To feed 8 floxes, you'd need 40 wild pikeapple bushes. You can't physically fit that many

1 hour ago, GluttonyMain said:

According to ingame database its 12kg, isnt it? Or is the ingame databse wrong? Or am I misremembering

It says 1200g. I'm pretty sure I didn't missread it, but don't have the game open rn to check

1 hour ago, GluttonyMain said:

Please no, that looks stupid. Id rather they buff them per shear than to make babies have full antlers.

I'm not saying the babies should have antlers, I'm saying that once they become adults at cycle 5 they should be ready to harvest. Alternatively, maybe change the scale growth condition so you can get lumber from unfed floxes similar to dreckos. I think this would be a more interesting buff rather than just bigger numbers

[Tigin]

The lack of starvation shearing seems quite intentional given they also only grow scales after eating. However, a more apt comparison would be oakshells, which produce about 171.5kg of lumber a cycle for every critter, more than triple that of Flox and doesn't require shearing (and Oakshells aren't exactly the most popular critter to ranch either). I think bumping up the lumber production to 100kg/cycle or reducing their diet by half (to keep the critter early-game focused) makes a lot of sense

[Mariolo]

1 hour ago, Lacero said:

the arbor tree makes 0 wood because it dies below 15C

That means that floxes are only useful in this very specitic map during the early game. Nothing stops you from farming arbor trees once you breach the forest biome in the map, and once you hit the lategame if you want lumber you can easily heat up an area to plant trees. For literally any other map, maintaining the temperature for floxes is harder and less rewarding

[GluttonyMain]

18 minutes ago, Mariolo said:

It says 1200g. I'm pretty sure I didn't missread it, but don't have the game open rn to check

You are correct, it was me who misremembered

[asurendra]

Well, its not floxes who useless. Its arbor trees which need huge nerf

Current floxes state is fine. They give wood in the same rate as dreckos give plastic. Both critters are almost free (6kg of phosphorite is nothing, really). And they doesnt need specific atmosphere or other difficult criterias to be met

[Lacero]

42 minutes ago, Mariolo said:

That means that floxes are only useful in this very specitic map during the early game. Nothing stops you from farming arbor trees once you breach the forest biome in the map, and once you hit the lategame if you want lumber you can easily heat up an area to plant trees. For literally any other map, maintaining the temperature for floxes is harder and less rewarding

oh, I had a tiny bit of forest on my map and hadn't got to it yet.  But yeah you're right it doesn't play great when you have both, the map is small enough to definitely get them if you know they're there.
Honestly it seems a bit odd to put forestHot on the frozen dlc spaced out asteroid, I'm not sure what it's giving us when everything it so well set up without it.  pips are nice but I'm not sure they're essential for play and the arbor trees are always a bit too good at what they do

[Paperbag]

13 hours ago, asurendra said:

Well, its not floxes who useless. Its arbor trees which need huge nerf

Current floxes state is fine. They give wood in the same rate as dreckos give plastic

Respectfully, I disagree with that. Plastic is a much higher tier material than wood, it doesn't really make sense that the Flox produces it at the same rate as plastic. Outside of this specific DLC map, wood is pretty unimportant. Before the DLC, wood was used for 2 recreation buildings, a wood burner that I'd bet good money most people forgot about, and ethanol. Ethanol is used to make beans and power. Beans aren't that good, and we have lots of reliable ways to make power already, ethanol is just one of them.

The DLC added, in uses for wood: The Ice Liquifier and Wood Burner, which are useful for the DLC map, and possibly the Frozen Forest start. The Wood Block, which isn't especially strong. The ability to build ladders, backwalls and tiles with it, which is useful only in the DLC, since it's the only map that doesn't provide you with the rocks you need. And... nothing else. Wood is just not that useful outside of the DLC starting planetoid.

Plastic, on the other hand, is used in all the important stuff. Like the almighty Steam Turbine. The Transit Tube. It's also necessary for Data Bank production. Plastic tiles and Comfy Beds. Every playthrough needs Plastic, while you can ignore wood everywhere except for the DLC start and do perfectly fine. The Flox needs to be buffed. It just doesn't make sense for it to be producing a much less useful material at the same rate as Glossy Dreckos do plastic. Trees don't need a nerf, they're in a good position.

Also, Floxes produce almost 5% of a Pip's dirt production a cycle. Did they miss a zero or something? You can't even feed a single mealwood with 1.2 kg/cycle of dirt.

15 hours ago, asurendra said:

And they doesnt need specific atmosphere or other difficult criterias to be met

Also, you've forgotten one very important detail here. While the Flox might be able to live up to 10C, their food, the Pikeapple bush, on the other hand, needs to be at a freezing -14C minimum. It's worse than Sleet Wheat (5C minimum). I'd say that that's a difficult criteria.

[imazined]

8 hours ago, Paperbag said:

Outside of this specific DLC map, wood is pretty unimportant.

Tell this mall the colonies that use the wood --> ethanol --> polluted water chain to get to sustainability. You get more O2 out of polluted water by running domesticated trees and use the polluted dirt from the ethanol to production to condense clean oxygen using sublimation stations.

[Paperbag]

Ah. Fair, lol. I guess I thought a bit too much about it being avoidable because there were alternatives. I still stand for buffing Floxes over changing trees though, their low production makes no sense to me.

[imazined]

Yep, floxes need a buff same as the new trees with the seals.

[asurendra]

11 hours ago, Paperbag said:

Ethanol is used to make beans and power. 

 

Ethanol is used to make everything! 8 trees + 4 distillers + petroleum generator just slightly water negative (and possible to make positive with some wild tree planting) But at the same time they produce 800kg of pDirt per cycle out of nowhere. 800kg, Karl! Its better than best geysers, and it doesnt need timing, and its expandable forever. And with pDirt you can make anything: food, O2, energy, sand, coal... You need just nothing except arbor trees to make your colony fully sustainable

[Primalflower]

I don't really want to consider wild plants. How are the numbers compared to domesticated arbor trees? How much water do floxes intake through their pikeapple consumption compared to arbor trees? is using floxes any more water efficient?

[imazined]

Floxes don't need any water. Their food takes phosphorite and you can it from bammothes which need ethanol.

[larsonco]

they cute tho

[asurendra]

48 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

I don't really want to consider wild plants. How are the numbers compared to domesticated arbor trees? How much water do floxes intake through their pikeapple consumption compared to arbor trees? is using floxes any more water efficient?

Domesticated arbor tree gives you 333.33 kg of lumber per cycle. Floxe gives only 50kg per cycle. And again: I think this rate is fine. Arbor trees need tweaking, not floxes

[Primalflower]

1 minute ago, asurendra said:

Domesticated arbor tree gives you 333.33 kg of lumber per cycle. Floxe gives only 50kg per cycle. And again: I think this rate is fine. Arbor trees need tweaking, not floxes

23 minutes ago, imazined said:

Floxes don't need any water. Their food takes phosphorite and you can it from bammothes which need ethanol.

Wait, if floxes only take phosphorite, then huh? It's totally fine then, ain't it? Floxes take very trivial amounts of resources in for a passive lumber gain that's nothing to sneeze at.

I'm not sure where the arbor tree nerf call is coming from. to my memory, unless you do very specific things with both fertilizer and grubgrub rubs, they're going to be water negative or at the very most neutral. I would argue they're finely balanced and if anything the fact that wild growth is being considered is the more concerning thing that would ever need to be addressed

[Wharflord]

I agree that floxes feel underpowered. In order to run flox and bammoth ranches sustainably you need approximately a 3:5 ratio due to the phosphorous requirement, as shown in the table. Refining wood to ethanol for the plume squash leaves only 100kg/cycle of wood per flox ranch as net output, which is very meager for such a large setup. Plus, this system requires far more power than the excess wood can produce, especially for cooling the ethanol back down below -14C to not stifle the plants.

 

1.2kg/cycle of dirt is also extremely pitiful. You cannot make a sustainable pairing of flox and drecko ranches as an alternative source of phosphorous, since it would take 7 flox ranches to provide the dirt for a single mealwood drecko ranch. I hope it is an error and is meant to be 12kg/cycle. At the very least 5kg/cycle would allow a sustainable pairing of 3 flox : 2 drecko ranches, which seems like a reasonable quantity.

[asurendra]

1 hour ago, Primalflower said:

I'm not sure where the arbor tree nerf call is coming from. to my memory, unless you do very specific things with both fertilizer and grubgrub rubs, they're going to be water negative or at the very most neutral. I would argue they're finely balanced and if anything the fact that wild growth is being considered is the more concerning thing that would ever need to be addressed

Water - yes, water is fine. pDirt is not. Just some numbers: to support petrolium generator 100% of time you need 7,2 domesticated arbor trees. Thats means 504kg pWater and 72kg of dirt  In exchange you generate 450kg of pWater, 800kg of pDirt and some CO2 (which is not so useful). 

So you spend 576kg per cycle and get 1250kg per cycle. More than twice time mass production! And its even energy positive...

[imazined]

33 minutes ago, asurendra said:

So you spend 576kg per cycle and get 1250kg per cycle. More than twice time mass production! And its even energy positive...

That's why so many people like it. It allows you to build else impossible colonies.

[Primalflower]

1 minute ago, asurendra said:

Water - yes, water is fine. pDirt is not. Just some numbers: to support petrolium generator 100% of time you need 7,2 domesticated arbor trees. Thats means 504kg pWater and 72kg of dirt  In exchange you generate 450kg of pWater, 800kg of pDirt and some CO2 (which is not so useful). 

So you spend 576kg per cycle and get 1250kg per cycle. More than twice time mass production! And its even energy positive...

well, okay, I acknowledge that you get a lot of pdirt out of it. but like, why is this out of wack, though? are we talking about pufts?