200W per second is too tow

[asurendra]

Idea of dupe working on electricity only is cool, but right now they use too low energy. 200W per second mean that bionic can recharge itself just running in wheel and still has half the cycle to do another tasks. Considering that they dont need to sleep thats too OP. That rate need to be enlarged at least twice

[StarvingAngler]

Calling it OP might be a significant stretch, but I see what you are thinking, even though I don't quite agree with it. If the bionics were to consume more than 200W, then each power bank would last less than a cycle, which is incredibly inconvenient and would drastically raise the cost of running a bionic and make starting the game out with them much more difficult. Additionally, the rechargeable power banks are locked behind a bit of research and abyssalite mining, so they are not available from the start, and the power consumption of a recharger is 480W which is slightly higher than a manual generator's 400W. Also, using a manual generator for a bionic to power itself effectively cuts the time your bionics can work in half, and likely more considering commute times, and all dupe labor is very valuable, so missing out on half of it is pretty significant. Although they technically don't need to sleep, their upgrades require sleep, so at least some bionics would have to be redirected to sleeping as well.

At the same time though, producing 400W by consuming 200W violates all known laws of thermodynamics, so maybe their consumption could be doubled when using a manual generator. However, to be honest, I fail to see many scenarios in which having dupes power themselves with manual generators would be more effective than just using other sources of power that do not take up large quantities of a dupe's time.

53 minutes ago, asurendra said:

200W per second

 Additionally, this is something really stupid, but I already got called pedantic, so no shame here I guess. It would just be 200W, not 200W per second, as the W stands for watts, and watts are joules per second, so the term 200W already means 200 joules per second, so saying 200 W per second would be the equivalent of saying 200 joules per second per second, which would refer to the rate at which the wattage is increasing or decreasing.

Hope you find that helpful and not inconveniently annoying

[asurendra]

Batteries capacity can be adjusted ofc. 

Dupes labor is not valuable if you don't need to spend resources to sustain them. Just take more dupes, they are self-powered... 

 

By the way, regular dupes spend half the cycle to eating, sleeping and running to dinner room. So its the same amount of labor time, but zero costs...

[mitboy]

Bionic dupes dont get passive attribute leveling, this is an insane downside, which at first I almost thought would make them worthless completely in lategame. 

This alone  I feel makes me not want to ever have  a full bionic colony  unless I do a challenge run or something.

[Henlikuoth]

The intention is to mix your normal and bionic dupes for different tasks.

I guess that makes sense.

I'm just not yet sure how many bionic dupes a colony should have, percentage-wise. 

[ALCRD]

Nah it's fine like that.

[Carib94]

1 hour ago, Henlikuoth said:

The intention is to mix your normal and bionic dupes for different tasks.

Bionic Dupes are there to do task or projects I think would have normal dupes require atmo suits to do. This I think is true especially early to mid game. Altho they are still affected by toasty and chill surroundings they are still good at exploring the planetoid. In my current playthrough so far I have 8 dupes total 3 of them are bionic. So far they doing what they suppose to do Dig, Build + Mecharonics, and supply and tidy up on the side.

 

2 hours ago, mitboy said:

Bionic dupes dont get passive attribute leveling, this is an insane downside, which at first I almost thought would make them worthless completely in lategame. 

I can understand this point but that is why the bionic dupes work overtime 4 days straight without rest to make up for their lack of improving at their jobs XD.

[arvenil]

OK, but robots charging themselves with hamster wheel and surplus energy? What kind of physics is that? Better than perpetuum mobile. Looks like a major whoopsie as I don't see how they could require more energy than hamster wheel generates.

[mitboy]

1 hour ago, arvenil said:

OK, but robots charging themselves with hamster wheel and surplus energy? What kind of physics is that? Better than perpetuum mobile. Looks like a major whoopsie as I don't see how they could require more energy than hamster wheel generates.

They also consume oxygen and oil

 

Quote

can understand this point but that is why the bionic dupes work overtime 4 days straight without rest to make up for their lack of improving at their jobs XD.

Any normal dupe in a lategame base has close to 20 athletics, 10+ strenghth, 10+ machinery 10+ building and a bunch of other attributes leveled up randomly. Bionic dupes can only be good at one or at best 2 things at a time. 

[imazined]

18 hours ago, StarvingAngler said:

At the same time though, producing 400W by consuming 200W violates all known laws of thermodynamics

Since when do we care about the conversation of energy in ONI?

[missasch]

37 minutes ago, mitboy said:

They also consume oxygen and oil

 

Any normal dupe in a lategame base has close to 20 athletics, 10+ strenghth, 10+ machinery 10+ building and a bunch of other attributes leveled up randomly. Bionic dupes can only be good at one or at best 2 things at a time. 

They don't gain skills like dupes do, but they over time unlock the ability to have more modules installed. So in the early game you can switch out the modules instantly, so you can switch easily between mechatronics engineering to master work artist and back as soon as the bionic dupe has painted a painting or made a sculpture. They can then go back to being a mechatronics engineer. The more time goes on the more of their skill tree they unlock, which allows for more modules to be installed so that they can have up to 8 (I believe, I don't have the game open right now) installed at one time. Since the modules increase their stats significantly as well as most skills update their athletics I believe they will end up as good as a late game dupe. I am only on cycle 50 or so, so I haven't got a late game colony to look at yet, but it seems that there are uses for both kinds of dupes. I had my 2 bionics digging down at the bottom of the map for 2 days straight at a time to get me visibility and it was much much faster than if I had normal dupes, I would have had to install some kind of oxygen or it just wouldn't have gotten done.

So far I am really enjoying the differences between them and trying to find the best way to use these new kinds of dupes. It is a challenge to get them morale since they can't use a great hall or barracks/bedrooms. I don't usually use a nature reserve because I don't generally need it with the other morale like food and a great hall, but it might make sense to do next to their bathroom, which I have their oil filling machine and the oxygen filler. 

I do really like how they have early game access by way temporary things like the outhouse and the apothecary table until you can get up the proper buildings. And making phyto oil from slime until you have access to crude oil. So I appreciate the multiple ways of doing things to fit different situations and different goals. So far I am really enjoying the early game and shifting into the mid game. I had access to mechatronics and master work decorators earlier than I would have because I wouldn't have had the skill points yet with normal dupes to specialize them unless I was running a lot of dupes or was really focused on those things.

[asurendra]

17 hours ago, mitboy said:

Bionic dupes dont get passive attribute leveling, this is an insane downside, which at first I almost thought would make them worthless completely in lategame. 

This alone  I feel makes me not want to ever have  a full bionic colony  unless I do a challenge run or something.

Your starting bionics can have +20 in main stat at cycle 30-40. Thats cant be achieved by regular dupes at any means. And who cares about other stats? What use for rancher to have +10 strengths if rancher will never move heavy things? Specialists are much better than universals...

 

7 hours ago, imazined said:

Since when do we care about the conversation of energy in ONI?

Since most energy-generating builds are broken and useless. There is just no use for excess energy in lategame. Adding another thing that can generate energy out of nowhere is not heathy for game balance. 

 

8 hours ago, mitboy said:

They also consume oxygen and oil

Any base game map can support at least 50 dupes with all its guaranteed water geysers. Usually there is more. SO maps even simpler on that term. And bionics can be oiled with their own gunk. That will cost you nothing except some working time on apothecary. Its doesnt even consume water... 

[NeoDeusMachina]

2 hours ago, asurendra said:

Your starting bionics can have +20 in main stat at cycle 30-40. Thats cant be achieved by regular dupes at any means. And who cares about other stats? What use for rancher to have +10 strengths if rancher will never move heavy things? Specialists are much better than universals...

That's subjective. Any of your super specialized bionic dupe will have garbage athletics (and everything else). They might do whatever they can do really fast, but they will move around at a slow pace compared to 20 athletics dupes, so they lose efficiency on that. Not all tasks can be done with the remote robot thingie as far as I know. People tend to put new dupes on wheels late game for a reason.

And some don't like having many extremely specialized dupes because late game performance takes a hit, so it's preferable in some cases to have fewer more well rounded dupes.

My dupes rarely ever only get good at one thing, my diggers also have a lot of carry capacity (from perks mostly which is limited by boosters on bionics), a lot of building, a lot of digging, a lot of athletics, a lot of machinery, a lot of piloting. By a lot I mean they usually end up at 20 skill points more or less in each. It takes time, yes, but you still can do it and there comes a point where you will have a crew of very skilled dupes that bionics can't really rival with. At that point, skill scrubbing is not an issue either, you can afford the power.

I think bionics can scale quicker in one thing in the very early game, it's super easy to re-spec them, but they never maintain the lead compared to normal dupes in terms of overall skill performance.

I actually like that. There are pros and cons. At the moment I see them more as a better early game on standard maps (haven't tried a super cold map where the gunk would freeze below -8degC ish) and a handicap compared to organic dupes late game (when it comes to dupe performance). I still think they offer a really nice alternative throughout the entire game, and I am looking forward to see what they can do for colonizing new planets and space in general. I can already see that they will offer a relief on some aspects (food preservation in space, oxygen reserve when landing for the first time) and be worst in some others (low digging / building / carry weight combo, so a bit more of a hassle to set up new colonies from scratch).

10 hours ago, imazined said:

Since when do we care about the conversation of energy in ONI?

I'm starting to think all of us should make a collaborative post on the forum with a list of all aspects of ONI we can think of that break some real world law of physics, not to ask Klei to "fix" any of it, just for fun. Are we that far? Are we that close? Is it only on some aspects or is it a little bit in every aspect of the game? I'd be curious to see a list like that

[Carib94]

6 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

That's subjective. Any of your super specialized bionic dupe will have garbage athletics (and everything else).

All bionic boosters increases athletics +2 except the exosuit booster gives +5, bionic dupes have 8 booster slot which is a total of +16 athletics if you max out slots, then bionic dupes entire skill tree gives a total of +8 athletics. So these bionics can indeed match normal dupes in terms of athletics in the late game. Bionic Dupes 4 slots can max out any skill so a bionic dupe can be +20 on any 2 skills. and ofc everything else is 0, now you can have them specialized but it might best even with normal dupes that you have them specialized in 1 to 2 things then be decent at other things. In bionic dupes case max out 1 skill then +10 2 others, or you can do +15 +15 +10.

Overall we can talk about their lack of improving skills but like I said before the advantage to bionic dupes is that they can work extensive cycles straight without rest and while every normal dupe needs 4 to 6 or more schedule slots for downtime and sleep every cycle. Meaning that even tho bionic dupes skills will not be as good in the late game, you will still have a strong labor force every cycle meaning that **** will get done.

We are still in Beta and it seems like the devs might release this on Christmas who knows, but their is still plenty of time for the devs to tweak/ make changes to the bionic dupes for better.

[Primalflower]

On 11/30/2024 at 3:43 AM, mitboy said:

Bionic dupes dont get passive attribute leveling, this is an insane downside, which at first I almost thought would make them worthless completely in lategame. 

Bionic dupes slowly accumulate skills, which let them acquire 8 booster slots max, and a total of +8 athletics from select nodes. Each of these 8 booster slots represents +5 in X skill and +2 athletics, meaning a fully maxed bionic duplicant will achieve +24 athletics and 40 attribute points to spend. You can have a bionic duplicant work quite literally twice as fast at any given task  or give boosts twice as long.

So yes, they technically do level themselves slowly. The tradeoff is just that the format heavily rewards speccing into 1-2 particular skills as opposed to a wide birth. They're definitely a sidegrade, but I feel it is very, very unfair to say they are worthless at any stage of the game

In practice, I find bionics extremely useful as researchers in the early game as they can achieve +15 or +25 science in a matter of moments, and their presence guarantees the player access to mechatronics/ranching/obsidian digging without having to wait as long.

In theory, I have no reason to believe that +40 in cooking, or +40 in machinery, or +40 in ranching, or 5t carrying capacity bionics, would be any less useful than they sound.

[6Havok9]

16 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

40 in cooking, or +40 in machinery, or +40 in ranching

That's... wow. I'm trying really hard to avoid spoilers by NOT installing the beta. And those skills you wrote.. are exactly the thought I'm fighting with. I think I'm losing. 

[asurendra]

Yep, they definitely not worse than regular dupes. And again, instead of doing farms, building temperature control, cooking, deep freezing all you need is to put 1 petroleum generator. Or few wheels. Thats not right. Their cost need to be increased. Bionics removes all troubles out of ONI. That not fair

[Mariolo]

They've added difficulty options to increase that. However 200Watts is quite a lot already. Most machines you build won't have anywhere close to 100% uptime. Bionic dupes are active all the time and you can't turn them off. The thing is 200 watts are very hard to sustain early game but trivial late game, so increasing it would make early game incredibly difficult but wouldn't really change late game

[dez3940]

On 11/30/2024 at 4:43 AM, mitboy said:

Bionic dupes dont get passive attribute leveling, this is an insane downside, which at first I almost thought would make them worthless completely in lategame. 

This alone  I feel makes me not want to ever have  a full bionic colony  unless I do a challenge run or something.

not really. they just need to be hyper specilized with bosters and they will get higher than dupes unless your in the 3k cycle range 

[SkunkMaster]

I've been playing the bionics on highest difficulty (400w drain).

The difference is you now just have a specialized crafter who crafts batteries and you dont use any hamsters at all (other then for the very beginning tech and to craft the first batteries)

 

Rest of game is kinda the same, without the need to produce food however. Gunk is a surplus loop, giving you more gear balm than you consume.
The income of free chips mean you can tune-up your hydrogen power to the point where the whole base is powered by it.

All in all, even on highest difficulty, using the bionic dupes is still far easier on highest difficulty, than with regular dupes.

400w Should be the "normal" drain i think, it is silly that a hamster produces 400w if the bionic only needs 200w. If anything it would make much more sense if the numbers where reversed.

And to the argument "BuT tHeY AlsO ConSuMe OxyGen" - oxygen production is a positive, it means you make hydrogen power which is strong and clean and therefor simple and hence also desireable. 1200w for a single tuned-up hydrogen generator is what is broken about bionic dupes, you have access to it the moment you produce oxygen.

[Cmagik]

On 11/30/2024 at 9:25 PM, imazined said:

Since when do we care about the conversation of energy in ONI?

I mean no one is shocked at a SPOM for some reason. It costs less energy to break water than what you get from the hydrogen waste.

People scream over that 200w creating 400w but electrolyzer is way worse. 120w  for 112g/s of hydrogen which in term gives 896w as the hydrogen generator consummes 100g/s for 800w..

Oddly enough, a 9 : 1 conversion is fine but a 2 : 1 isn't.

 

Anyway back to the topic.

I do not believe 200w is cheap. Sure if you consider endgame standard it is but at this points everything kinda is...

Imagining a colonly of 6, you'll have a much harder time early game running sustainably 1200w (+ whatever the base requires) than 6 dupes worth of food.

[NeoDeusMachina]

1 hour ago, Cmagik said:

I mean no one is shocked at a SPOM for some reason. It costs less energy to break water than what you get from the hydrogen waste.

People scream over that 200w creating 400w but electrolyzer is way worse. 120w  for 112g/s of hydrogen which in term gives 896w as the hydrogen generator consummes 100g/s for 800w..

Oddly enough, a 9 : 1 conversion is fine but a 2 : 1 isn't.

 

Anyway back to the topic.

I do not believe 200w is cheap. Sure if you consider endgame standard it is but at this points everything kinda is...

Imagining a colonly of 6, you'll have a much harder time early game running sustainably 1200w (+ whatever the base requires) than 6 dupes worth of food.

I agree with pretty much everything here^.

One thing I have been wondering about is those who believe 200W (or 400W on hardest settings) is too low - are they also using every tool in the box to save as much power as possible? Such as, automation on everything that can be automated all the way down to 10W light bulbs and pumps, mechanical (powerless) filters instead of paying the "120W" power cost on normal filters (somehow that's too much to pay even if they don't work all the time), powerless compression mechanisms for infinite storage (escher waterfalls or unpowered door compactors), etc.? Because if that is the case, then the whole arguing for more flat power cost to just "own" a dupe seems a bit out of place to me. There's nothing wrong with any of the above strategies, but the people who "choose" not to rely on them will feel the power increase on bionics a lot more (provided they even know all of those exist).

Early-mid game power consumption is nothing like end game. Spamming battery production all day drains metal ore a lot, which matters in the long run if you are planning on playing a map for more than just getting the achievements and then moving on to the next map. Some maps have very limited sources of renewable power until late game. I mean some maps don't even have natural gas vents on the starting/teleporter asteroids, and those typically support ~1 generator full time, which is 800W without tuning up. I don't think anything should be balanced for end game only, because end game is a big sandbox and the constraints are very small on resources anyway. It needs to be balanced for the entire game duration.

I would like incentives to build more "complex" power systems, but I do not see any complexity in building 1 or 20 times the same generators. It's just repeating the same build over and over, and I find it personally boring. What do we really have that are complex power systems? Nuclear power plants and sour gas boilers? Geothermal (excluding the POI)? That's pretty much it. What is a realistic guess on the fraction of players who have built those once? or systematically every game? My guess would be abysmal. It would be nice to have alternatives that would actually be complex and rewarding to build, not just slamming down more generators.

When I read suggestions to have bionics dupes power scale with modules up to values like 3-5kW per bionic dupe, that's like asking people to build nuclear plants or sour gas boilers just to maintain a low number of bionics. It's a bit out of proportion. Anyhow, I don't think I have much else to add to the discussion, I'll see where the bionics power requirements end at release and after that and hope it's in a good place for it to be enjoyable for as many people as possible.

[suicide commando]

Another great aspect of bionic dupes is their versatility and lack of required training to get good at something. if your colony desperately needs a specific skill, print the required boosters, insert them into a bionic dupe and Boom instant +20. Even a dupe fresh off the printer can have +15 in a skill. This makes them very useful and totally makes the need for dupes to train 20+ cycles on a wheel to get their athletics up in late game moot.

I'm greatly enjoying them. Oh, and yes, you CAN get super sustainable with a bionic only colony. The secret is plug slugs.

[speckle21]

9 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

When I read suggestions to have bionics dupes power scale with modules up to values like 3-5kW per bionic dupe, that's like asking people to build nuclear plants or sour gas boilers just to maintain a low number of bionics. It's a bit out of proportion. Anyhow, I don't think I have much else to add to the discussion, I'll see where the bionics power requirements end at release and after that and hope it's in a good place for it to be enjoyable for as many people as possible.

I apologize for my bad suggestion, you make a good point. I'll delete.

[SkunkMaster]

13 hours ago, Cmagik said:

I mean no one is shocked at a SPOM for some reason. It costs less energy to break water than what you get from the hydrogen waste.

People scream over that 200w creating 400w but electrolyzer is way worse. 120w  for 112g/s of hydrogen which in term gives 896w as the hydrogen generator consummes 100g/s for 800w..

Oddly enough, a 9 : 1 conversion is fine but a 2 : 1 isn't.

 

Anyway back to the topic.

I do not believe 200w is cheap. Sure if you consider endgame standard it is but at this points everything kinda is...

Imagining a colonly of 6, you'll have a much harder time early game running sustainably 1200w (+ whatever the base requires) than 6 dupes worth of food.

The electrolyzer to bionic dupes comparison is so bad.
in the sense of conervation of energy, The electrolyzer actually "frees" potential energy out of the water. Technically speaking it is not a oxygen/hydrogen producer, but a water splitter. The oxygen/hydrogen comes from the splitting of the water, not the electrolyzer it self.

Bionic dupes how ever do not split any products that could be argued as a "energy freeing process". They are what you would call consumers and as such should not be able to generate energy that exceeds the energy they require to operate.

So in other words, a bionic dupe, with a power requirement of a measly 200w, running a hamster for 400w is silly.