Bionic Power Consumption

[M3mory]

I truly appreciate the development team's effort to update the game every year, allowing players like me to enjoy fresh and diverse gameplay experiences. Especially The Frosty Planet Pack, which is filled with challenges in the base game. I finally managed to complete all the achievements on the hardest difficulty within 130 cycles without using any bugs. However, I feel a bit regretful that some achievements couldn’t be completed due to the lack of specific critters.

 

The latest Bionic Pack is an excellent idea. Introducing batteries early in the game effectively frees up manpower, and the concept of robots piloting rockets is fantastic. Unfortunately, some related technologies have been moved to the later stages of the tech tree. Additionally, the ability for bionics to work continuously without rest significantly enhances efficiency.

 

In the previous version, the energy consumption of 120 kJ per cycle already made bionics more advantageous than regular duplicants. However, in the latest version, the difficulty has been increased further: on the hardest difficulty, bionics now consume 400 kJ of energy per cycle (equivalent to 666.67 kg of metal), which is an incredibly high consumption rate. Recruiting three bionics at the start of a game, especially on a map with limited metal resources, becomes nearly catastrophic.

 

Although rechargeable batteries can be researched in the mid-game, the 400 kJ energy consumption remains a heavy burden that even mid-game power generation struggles to support.

 

Additionally, long-distance work requires transporting batteries to sustain bionics, further increasing the difficulty of remote operations.

 

I would suggest reducing the battery production cost from 200 kg of refined metal to 100 kg or adjusting the energy consumption on the hardest difficulty to 300 kJ per cycle, which might be more reasonable.

 

This is just a personal sentiment, not an official suggestion, as I’m not posting in the suggestions section.

 

I look forward to seeing even more innovative ideas integrated into the game next year. Many thanks to the development team for their dedication!

[M3mory]

Sorry, I mistook 400W for 400kJ, so it was my mistake. Personally, I think a consumption of 240kJ per cycle, or 333.34kg of metal, would be more reasonable

[asurendra]

I think that 400w per dupe is still too low. With highest difficulty bionics cant power itself running in wheels how they can do at normal. But full bionics 7 dupes colony consume only 2.8kW, and thats not that much. 1 tuned petroleum generator. In exchange you can not care about farms, critters, temperature controls, anything. Bionics still an easy mod compared to biologic dupes. 

 

Yep, metal costs are high. That means that you have to force eco battery research. Still much easier than having researching all things necessary for ranching. After all, max difficulty should be, you know, difficult

[NeoDeusMachina]

12 minutes ago, asurendra said:

I think that 400w per dupe is still too low. With highest difficulty bionics cant power itself running in wheels how they can do at normal. But full bionics 7 dupes colony consume only 2.8kW, and thats not that much. 1 tuned petroleum generator. In exchange you can not care about farms, critters, temperature controls, anything. Bionics still an easy mod compared to biologic dupes. 

 

Yep, metal costs are high. That means that you have to force eco battery research. Still much easier than having researching all things necessary for ranching. After all, max difficulty should be, you know, difficult

I think 400W is enough personally. It means with everything on hardest settings, it's very difficult to start with bionic duplicants because it's not like you can get your petroleum gen with tuning up running for quite some time. I'd say it's harder and longer to do so than setting up farming and ranching. Actually, ranching tech are all very easy to research and set up, not sure what you mean there... In any case, 400W per dupe also means you have to use normal dupes in the meantime, and then you're back to dealing with food etc., on top of bionics needs, on hardest settings.

You can't just think about introducing bionics in your late game colonies. Good luck getting 2.8kW or more with 100% uptime be cycle 30. Have you actually tried running max settings from the start with bionic duplicants before claiming 400W is too low? I'm not saying this as an argument, more out of curiosity - trying to understand if you only considered the late game context.

 

 

[asurendra]

40 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

it's very difficult to start with bionic duplicants because it's not like you can get your petroleum gen with tuning up running for quite some time.

Yep, but we have coal, nat.gas, wood economy. SPOM, after all. Plenty of early game energy. Things may become interesting with super sustainable, but full achievements arent possible with bionics only anyway, so why care about SS?

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Actually, ranching tech are all very easy to research and set up, not sure what you mean there

If we speak about full achievements again, to get carnivore you need incubators. Especially on Space Out, where not much wild critters available. And incubators is quite high on research tree, also you need 200kg of refined metal for each and dupe with proper skill. Getting all that in limited time isnt that easy for my taste. 

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In any case, 400W per dupe also means you have to use normal dupes in the meantime, and then you're back to dealing with food etc., on top of bionics needs, on hardest settings

Nope. Full bionics run is available, again, if we dont care about achievements. Map with lowest amount of metal, rad ocean, still offers you about 200 tons of ore. Thats not counting teleporter asteroid where is 400 additional tons awaits you. More than enough to survive to get eco batteries. 

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Good luck getting 2.8kW or more with 100% uptime be cycle 30

Do you really has 7 normal dupes on cycle 30? On hardest hunger? Usually full achivements runners use 3-4 before they get their ranches going, and only after that they take more. Bionics is even better for that because you can freely change their boosters meaning that you actually dont need more than 3, you still has access to any skill you want at any time

 

40 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

more out of curiosity - trying to understand if you only considered the late game context

I see no reason to combine regular dupes with bionic ones. Its logical to choose either one or other type, but mixing them just adds so much mess without any actual advantages. So yes, when I say "400 watt is too low" I mean full bionics from the start to finish. 

[NeoDeusMachina]

@asurendra

Okay I see better what you meant now.

I'm leaving any achievment talk out as I feel this is a whole other topic of it's own and the player should make strategic decisions to get them in their chosen starting setup. I'll also leave the no teleporter runs out, as they are purely optional even though they are my preferred way of playing.

Coal isn't readily available on all starting clusters, same for natural gas. Spom excess isn't practically enough to sustain bionics and setting it up competes with other techs and can be long to build with few dupes. Oil takes time and is often on another asteroid (I never play classic starts, so some resources are "harder" to come by). Wood is very situational (forest/ceres start or in another asteroid).

I will wait and try it out myself at 400W from the start, and for different starts, before asking for more power requirement on bionics. At the moment, it seems like it'll require burning through a lot of metal ore for quite some time, and them burning through a lot of abyssalite and struggling to get enough power sustainably to recharge eco batteries. It might feel like a race against time for a few hundred cycles before catching a breather and having something sustainable on hardest settings with bionics only. 

As a side note, every run I ever made on rad ocean without teleporters always reached a point where I had to scavenge my buildings for metal ore when reaching space. 200t might seem like a lot, but buildings using 400kg-800kg combined with heavy watt wire etc. Burns through that quite fast. I'm not excited about trying it with the extra metal ore consumption from power banks. And radbatteries on hardest settings where dupes get rad sickness by just thinking about it will also offer quite a challenge.

I agree that any hybrid colony adds infrastructure complexity. That can be both good and bad. If the bionics require too much power, then they might just be incredibly tedious to work with in the beginning where you just stare at 3 dupes non stop building metal banks and maybe place down a ladder piece every other cycle (exaggeration), but you get the idea. Or you start with normal dupes until you can afford bionics. Anyway, like I said, I'll try it out at 400W and see if it is enjoyable and reasonable before asking a higher power option  Seems fine to me for now, having done 200W only.

[mitboy]

Perhaps having bionics sleep more  to produce chips early game for tuning up your hydrogens and coal gens can allow for more sustainable power production. Though of course this would mean they spend less time working.

[Henlikuoth]

I just cannot get into the "higher consumption" difficulty settings.

The hunger, durability, and bionic wattage settings only aim to increase or decrease the consumption of their respective resources. I don’t see any reason to adjust them since increased consumption simply means increased production. I cannot see any interesting difficulty or challenge besides mindless grinding.

I usually put on all other settings at maximum. 

[Curry MAMA]

You don't need an incubator to get the "Carnivore" achievement. Just build a stable a little earlier and have them learn the skill. In fact, I don't remember using an incubator recently.

I think the bigger problem is that I don't have a dupe to feed meat for "Carnivore"...

And don't forget that you can choose the difficulty of power consumption. If you think it's not enough, just increase it, and if you think it's too much, just decrease it. (It's difficult to change after you start.

This is just a guess, but there will probably be mods that increase or decrease power consumption (or even reduce it to 0). You can consider using them.

[asurendra]

23 minutes ago, Henlikuoth said:

I just cannot get into the "higher consumption" difficulty settings.

The hunger, durability, and bionic wattage settings only aim to increase or decrease the consumption of their respective resources. I don’t see any reason to adjust them since increased consumption simply means increased production. I cannot see any interesting difficulty or challenge besides mindless grinding.

I usually put on all other settings at maximum. 

It helps you to try different builds and manage different sources of resources. For example on normal hunger you can just tame guaranteed salt water geyser and feed your dupes with bristles. Its will be enough water both to feed 7 dupes and to produce O2 for them. On max hunger you will need more blossoms so you will run out of water, and you have to manage something new. 

Normal difficulty just doesnt allow to use all resources map offers you. You cant take too many dupes because of FPS, and having them cheap leads to boring gameplay. 

[Henlikuoth]

3 minutes ago, asurendra said:

...

I am willing to try and be convinced. 

However, I was hoping for something else. For example, in a high-hunger setting, the dupes may expect a higher variety of foods. On hunger max, the dupes may expect a minimum of five food types in the fridge to allow a varied diet. If that is not given, the dupes could incur a penalty, maybe stress and immunity, etc.

Similarly, the durability setting could require more materials, such as glass, steel, and plastic, to be used for the Atmo suits. 

There was a discussion about this a longer time ago. 

[asurendra]

7 minutes ago, Henlikuoth said:

However, I was hoping for something else. For example, in a high-hunger setting, the dupes may expect a higher variety of foods. On hunger max, the dupes may expect a minimum of five food types in the fridge to allow a varied diet. If that is not given, the dupes could incur a penalty, maybe stress and immunity, etc.

There is a mod thats adds exactly that mechanic. 

Yes, I agree that add wight in game will  be extremely cool. But we have to work with what we have

[Henlikuoth]

4 minutes ago, asurendra said:

But we have to work with what we have

Maybe Klei can add such features to the difficulty settings.

Actually, I think you were right. Higher consumption settings force players to look for alternatives and be more creative.

Which is what I like!

Additionally, maybe Klei can refine the settings more, including more material demands like the ones mentioned above.

I certainly hope so. 

[mitboy]

The main thing I  feel like I would dislike about max difficulty is that dupes don't get larger stomach so you don't only need to use more resources but also babysit them more and make sure they never go anywhere without food. 

[Carib94]

4 hours ago, asurendra said:

I see no reason to combine regular dupes with bionic ones. Its logical to choose either one or other type, but mixing them just adds so much mess without any actual advantages. So yes, when I say "400 watt is too low" I mean full bionics from the start to finish. 

Combining regular dupes with bionics adds so much mess? as in more of challenge or just inconvenience and tedious, trying to understand this

[speckle21]

"Klei, I demand you make the game hard for ME, I want a complex game, and i'm going to deliberately avoid going hybrid, because i don't want a complex game, even through i want you to make the game complex for me."

Personally, i'm of the mindset the game doesn't need to be more difficult... it just needs more incentives for complex strategy.

For example for food, we can easily get by just feeding our dupes the bare minimum like meal lice or bristle berries. But we're incentivized to make the more complex foods because its rewarding (with higher morale bonuses) but also just because its FUN. I love rigging up complex farms and animals because i feel an accomplishment doing so... and i'm incentivized into doing so because of a higher morale bonus... which to be honest doesn't help me in my colony because my dupes are already crack-happy. But i do it anyway because i'm an optimization fanatic.

So my suggestion for the bionics is not to increase power difficulty even more, but to incentivize power production. I think tying extra power usage to booster count would work for that. like each booster consumes an extra 200w or even more. Make a fully loaded dupe cost 3kw-5kw of power or something. It's not more difficult because you can choose to not use too many boosters, or just make more dupes. But you are incentivized to try building more complex power systems. Just like how we're incentivized to make larger more complex food systems to get better food. If you manage your morale right you don't need more complex food... but we want to.  I think thats how power should be approached. And it also gives breathing room for players to build out their infrastructure slowly and carefully rather than mad rush to solve an imminent catastrophe. 

Remember how we all learned we needed to make oxygen the hard way when we ran out of air? I don't think we need a similar catastrophe mechanic like that for bionic power. I would prefer food mechanics more. 

I prefer Incentives, not difficulty. 

 

 

[asurendra]

On 12/8/2024 at 1:30 AM, Carib94 said:

Combining regular dupes with bionics adds so much mess? as in more of challenge or just inconvenience and tedious, trying to understand this

Its about 'have to remember how many of each type i have". Game doesnt show that anywhere.  Have to count manually how many oxygen bottles need to prepare for bionics, provide oxygen vents for regular dupes, do both systems means twice more pipes, twice more time to build all this. Its annoying, intensive micromanagement which I usually avoid

Some people like it, I know. Me personally - not

8 hours ago, speckle21 said:

"Klei, I demand you make the game hard for ME, I want a complex game, and i'm going to deliberately avoid going hybrid, because i don't want a complex game, even through i want you to make the game complex for me."

 

Bionic is an alternative to regular dupes. Alternative shouldnt be worse than original IMHO. We have max hunger and its difficult. Bionics max energy is not.

Hybrid doesnt add any difficulty or complexity, it adds tedious micromanagement. Which is not good. Also noone force you to play on max difficulty if you dont want to, just choose normal. But allow people who like it to have difficulty they like, please

[speckle21]

1 hour ago, asurendra said:

Bionic is an alternative to regular dupes. Alternative shouldnt be worse than original IMHO. We have max hunger and its difficult. Bionics max energy is not.

Hybrid doesnt add any difficulty or complexity, it adds tedious micromanagement. Which is not good. Also noone force you to play on max difficulty if you dont want to, just choose normal. But allow people who like it to have difficulty they like, please

And no one force you to buy the bionic DLC if you don't want to. I don't see why the difficulty issue is bothering you so much. I'm sure given enough time someone will mod it so you can set power to Abyssal-black-hole mode and have dupes sucking 10kw or whatever value you like. It seems like a simple line item. So i'm sure you'll get it eventually. 

You don't like micromanagement. Okay cool, i totally get that. I'll buy the DLC, because i DO like the micromanagement, and you can wait for the next one, please.

 

 

[Gurgel]

18 hours ago, speckle21 said:

"Klei, I demand you make the game hard for ME, I want a complex game, and i'm going to deliberately avoid going hybrid, because i don't want a complex game, even through i want you to make the game complex for me."

Yep, always some of _those_ people around. No idea what their defect is. Next they will start to claim what they do is "virtuous" and a we are getting "seduced" by things too being easy and that will destroy our Karma or such crap. 

Let me also reference: 

 

[Carib94]

9 hours ago, asurendra said:

Hybrid doesnt add any difficulty or complexity, it adds tedious micromanagement. Which is not good

So basically "Hybrid i have to deal with 2 different types of dupes and I dont wanna deal with the difficulty of having to micromanage them cause thats too tedious and, so instead I want devs to make my 100% bionic colony more difficult" Did I get that right? LOL

On a serious note tho, i mean technically the micromanagement side of it can be considered as a challenge or some form of difficulty. Basically you have to pay attention more than usual so I dont see how thats a bad thing when it was intended to be hybrid, but to each their own I guess,

Anyone is free to play how they want tho so it is what it is cant satisfy everyone.

[Gurgel]

Also, what micromanagement? That only happens if people do not go for automating things. If somebody does not, then they chose to play with micromanagement and that is certainly a valid choice. Complaining about their own choices is not valid though. 

[asurendra]

33 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Also, what micromanagement? That only happens if people do not go for automating things. If somebody does not, then they chose to play with micromanagement and that is certainly a valid choice. Complaining about their own choices is not valid though. 

For example: usually I have SPOM setup with 2 output pipes. 1 go for vents in colony, one supply atmosuits. In most cases thats enough. With bionics I build bottlers instead of vents, and thats fine again. Vents not necessary as bionics do not need an atmosphere. But if I do hybrid I have to have both vents (for regular dupes) and bottlers. Because if I dont bionics will suck all O2 from base and thats will harm regular dupes. Thats mean 3 or even 4 pipes. Which is twice more materials, twice more clicks, headache to fit them all in one corridor... And again I have manually count how much of each type I have. I need that to know how many bottlers I need to prepare, how many charging stations, how many food etc. .But game doesnt show me that critical info. I have to open list and count one by one. Every single time.

All that spagetti is unavoidable. You have to build two systems which are in conflict with each other. and every time you add another dupe you have to balance them manually again. And again. And again... Thats micromanagement I talked about. Repeated boring counting and clicking. Solo type works much better

2 hours ago, Carib94 said:

So basically "Hybrid i have to deal with 2 different types of dupes and I dont wanna deal with the difficulty of having to micromanage them cause thats too tedious and, so instead I want devs to make my 100% bionic colony more difficult" Did I get that right? LOL

 

Micromanagement and difficulty is different things. Difficulty for me when you have to use complex game mechanics, balance limited resources to get max efficiency out of them. Its creativity task. Micromanagement is you just clicked on one button 200 times when necessary. Brain not involved.  Proper task for bot, not for player. 

But ofc you can play how you like. If you like that - enjoy it, ONI is a single player game, after all

[GluttonyMain]

3 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Yep, always some of _those_ people around. No idea what their defect is. Next they will start to claim what they do is "virtuous" and a we are getting "seduced" by things too being easy and that will destroy our Karma or such crap. 

Let me also reference: 

 

Oh no, people wanted to fix a bug. The horror.

[speckle21]

49 minutes ago, GluttonyMain said:

Oh no, people wanted to fix a bug. The horror.

Is it a bug... or a feature? 

I love ONI because you can play the game... and you can SCREW with the game and its still fun both ways! its awesome. 

I think that type of game play should be encouraged or at least allowed. But nuking it to satisfy one set of players at the expense of another i think would diminish the game. The set of players that doesn't like it doesn't have to use it. I think klei is right to not care about the infinite storage bug because if it bothers you, you can very easily avoid it. But if you like it, you can exploit the CRAP out of it. 

Its a single player game, as asurendra says. People should be allowed to play it like they want. Fixing a big like that, which you can easily avoid, is more punishing to other players rather than supportive of you. 

"How DARE anyone else exploit bug that i choose not to exploit. Everyone ELSE should play the game the way I play it."

[Gurgel]

Infinite storage is a) not actually infinite and b) not a bug. Some people just like to call it a bug to make their complaint look more important. 

4 hours ago, speckle21 said:

"Everyone ELSE should play the game the way I play it."

Exactly. That mind-set has no place in a single-player game. Yet some people time and again try to push it aggressively and often with the most bizarre "arguments". To me, the most bizarre one is still "Physics does not work that way!" completely ignoring that the Physics of Oni is 2D, does not allow mixing of elements and does a number of really fundamental things _completely_ different than real-world Physics. 

5 hours ago, asurendra said:

For example: usually I have SPOM setup with 2 output pipes. 1 go for vents in colony, one supply atmosuits. In most cases thats enough. With bionics I build bottlers instead of vents, and thats fine again. Vents not necessary as bionics do not need an atmosphere. But if I do hybrid I have to have both vents (for regular dupes) and bottlers. Because if I dont bionics will suck all O2 from base and thats will harm regular dupes. Thats mean 3 or even 4 pipes.

So, you have to place one bottling station or a few of them somewhere on the vent network. That strikes me as a tiny adjustment. No idea where you get that you need a separate oxygen distribution network for that. And that is not even "micromanagement". You set this up once and adjust only when you have more dupes. At best this is occasional regular management.