Did bionics kill anyone elses gameplay?

[BlueLance]

So I havn't been around in a while, a long while but I thought I would finally get into the game again and booted it up.

Seen that I could start with bionic dupes right away which was absolutely great but after about 40 cycles I hit the most unusual game killer for me. 

Excess Power. I have always had excess power as soon as I get my oxygen set-up running and even more when I manage to find either Natural gas, Hydrogen or the surface. Now usually that isnt a big issue because you still need to feed your dupes, they still need to sleep and so on. But my little robot dupes are just sitting fully charged and it honestly provides no challenge. I get that you CAN use normal dupes but it feels like a weird issue to have. Am I missing something or did I suddenly get easy mode DLC.

I feel I would have preferred upgrading dupes into mechanical dupes instead, because in early game I no longer need to worry about CO2 or other gasses because they permanently have a tank of oxygen attached to them. Which means that even a single one of these guys eliminates my need to build gas masks, create an oxygen flow etc so my early game just flies through.

Am I the only one who has this issue or thinks this? I love the whole idea but I feel that to play the game I might just need to avoid the mechanical dupes. 

[NeoDeusMachina]

What's so hard about feeding dupes? Find water, get O2 and food (bristle blossoms) -> done.

Try harder settings, where bionics need 400W each, meaning they cannot use the wheel to recharge themselves since it takes 480W to get 400W into eco batteries.Try smaller maps, where you don't have an abundance of everything. Try a combination of both bionics and normal dupes.

I've seen a lot of streams/YT content lately which are a lot within the theme "all bionics colonies" and focus mostly on the needs of those new dupes, and I get it. They are new, people are excited, etc. But imagine if you only focused on satisfying the needs of normal dupes - you'd find your game play was "killed" at about the cycle 40 too.

I mean, the options are the same as before, you just have more options? I'm not sure Bionics can be responsible for killing anyone's own game play.

[6Havok9]

Crank up their power consumption. Either you use your excess power or run out of metal.

[BlueLance]

12 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

What's so hard about feeding dupes? Find water, get O2 and food (bristle blossoms) -> done.

Try harder settings, where bionics need 400W each, meaning they cannot use the wheel to recharge themselves since it takes 480W to get 400W into eco batteries.Try smaller maps, where you don't have an abundance of everything. Try a combination of both bionics and normal dupes.

I've seen a lot of streams/YT content lately which are a lot within the theme "all bionics colonies" and focus mostly on the needs of those new dupes, and I get it. They are new, people are excited, etc. But imagine if you only focused on satisfying the needs of normal dupes - you'd ffind your game play was "killed" at about the cycle 40 too.

I mean, the options are the same as before, you just have more options? I'm not sure Bionics can be responsible for killing anyone's own game play.

Nothing is hard about feeding dupes, what I meant is that with the mechanical ones you can just skip it entirely. When it comes to the base game I have no issues in surviving, I just meant that bionic dupes just seem to be easy mode dupes.

I play using spaced out, so sadly there is almost always an abundance of everything I enjoy the space travel although it has been a long time since i did a single asteroid only. Might be worth trying that.

The problem with trying both bionic and normal dupes to me is that the bionic ones needs are too simply met, Just by playing the game normally for my normal dupes I automatically meet all the needs for the mechanical ones (Excluding the stations to de-gunk them unless you wanna clog toilets) if anything having to cater to my normal dupes means opening things like volcanoes/vents which ill use to cool and regulate temperature for their resources which turns into even more power for the bionics. Essentially everything in my normal gameplay loop just makes bionic dupes stand out more.

I dno maybe its just me, i just wish they had a different lifecycle vs being able to leach on a normal colony with no strings attached, if I had them go onto any of my other established colonies I could drop anywhere between 10-20 bionics on each asteroid and it would have zero impact on the normal dupes because there is just that much electricity floating around. My pc would die mind you.

12 hours ago, 6Havok9 said:

Crank up their power consumption. Either you use your excess power or run out of metal.

When you use Eco batteries metal becomes a non issue and considering the amount of abyssalite on the map (Especially if you think of on other asteroids etc) the battery side becomes a moot point.

Cranking up their power consumption might be worth a try, or maybe restricting myself in what power sources I can use, or a mix of both. 

[NeoDeusMachina]

7 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

I dno maybe its just me, i just wish they had a different lifecycle vs being able to leach on a normal colony with no strings attached, if I had them go onto any of my other established colonies I could drop anywhere between 10-20 bionics on each asteroid and it would have zero impact on the normal dupes because there is just that much electricity floating around. My pc would die mind you.

When you use Eco batteries metal becomes a non issue and considering the amount of abyssalite on the map (Especially if you think of on other asteroids etc) the battery side becomes a moot point.

Cranking up their power consumption might be worth a try, or maybe restricting myself in what power sources I can use, or a mix of both. 

I hear you. I'd say the same about both normal and bionic dupes, if they visited any of my existing colonies where I have millions of kcal floating around, deep freezers or dehydration, and wasted power - I could add either type of dupes in large numbers and be fine. I think the challenges are always early game, when your resource burn rate is high, number of dupes is low, and you are setting production up. Anything past that is sandbox.

I think normal dupes could easily leech off the excess food my bionics are not eating but producing indirectly, the same way bionics could leech of normal dupe colonies with excess power. The only common point they have is they both require the same amount of O2.

Again, try a new game, with hardest settings (at least on the bionics wattage), and you will probably have a bit of a panic moment when you realize you have to burn through 1.2ton/cycle of metal ore from day 1 only to sustain your starting 3 bionics and that you cannot rely on hamster wheels to recharge eco power banks.

Then, of course, when you reach stable power production (there are a couple very strong options there), you'll be back to the same level of relaxed as you reach with any colony even on hardest settings.

[BlueLance]

Ill give it a try, your not wrong about the frozen food haha. But right now im actually producing 0 just whatever critters die and muckroots I happened to find.

Ill give it a whirr and see where things go, maybe as time goes on the devs might tweak things as well, they usually do. 

[Gurgel]

No issue here. I did screw up the oxygen first try in an all-bionic start as the warnings come much later than for bio-dupes and had to go back 20 cycles or so. But other than that, this works fine for me. Maybe try a harder map? I did Oasisse, which always is a race for insulation and then water and with an all-bionic start it is really not that much different. Digging down is a bit easier, because pooling CO2 does not slow you down so much, but that is a minor thing since I just starting to install a lot of CO2 crushers anyways. I also delay atmo-suits until I go to space, which is usually very late. This time it was cycle 15'000 or so. 

Obviously, with the time I have in ONI, I am not very impressed by anything now, but the other thing I do is to do some things differently every game and use some approaches I have not used before. That keeps things interesting. 

 

[Pproy]

On 2/8/2025 at 7:26 PM, BlueLance said:

Excess Power. I have always had excess power as soon as I get my oxygen set-up running and even more when I manage to find either Natural gas, Hydrogen or the surface.

To be fair, I feel that the issue we can feel like we acheive pseudo-stability for bionic dupe with a SPOM setup come from the fact that an electrolizer setup shouldn't be energy positive in the first place. But that a whole other thread in itself. Except for that, powerwise, they dont feel too OP, for me anyway.

However, the minute I was able to equip them with suit, making them impervious to their enviroment at all time made them feel OP. It was to the point that normal dupe felt like a liability.

I also do wonder if lubricating them is a bit to easy? By recycling the gunk they expel, I feel like I solve that problem very early. Maybe there could be a moral bonus attached to the grade of lubricant? Gear balm would be -1, good in a pinch but it would be better to upgrade, oil/phito oil (+1 or +2), and the absolute best could be brackwax (+5 or +6).

[NeoDeusMachina]

43 minutes ago, Pproy said:

I also do wonder if lubricating them is a bit to easy? By recycling the gunk they expel, I feel like I solve that problem very early. Maybe there could be a moral bonus attached to the grade of lubricant? Gear balm would be -1, good in a pinch but it would be better to upgrade, oil/phito oil (+1 or +2), and the absolute best could be brackwax (+5 or +6).

Yeah maybe. It is quite simple at first to recycle gunk into balm, with water->pwater as additional conversion. I'm trying to find an alternative, like balm lilly, but then it would be quite hard to get on some starts and the grinding gear debuff could quickly ruin harder setting runs. 

You do get a nice bonus if using oil/gear oil (fresh oil) that comes with stress reduction. Would be quite funny if they could use brackwax and get a similar effect as oil/phyto oil plus a speed buff in transit tubes without the tube being waxed as an alternative!

[Pproy]

7 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Yeah maybe. It is quite simple at first to recycle gunk into balm, with water->pwater as additional conversion. I'm trying to find an alternative, like balm lilly, but then it would be quite hard to get on some starts and the grinding gear debuff could quickly ruin harder setting runs. 

You do get a nice bonus if using oil/gear oil (fresh oil) that comes with stress reduction. Would be quite funny if they could use brackwax and get a similar effect as oil/phyto oil plus a speed buff in transit tubes without the tube being waxed as an alternative!

Ah fair, didn't know that oil actually give a stress debuff. While I'll admit that I'm not playing on the hardest difficulty, my bionic dupe are equiped with suit at all time so they are immune to environmental stress. So its not like I would need that stress debuff.

I think the recipe for gear balm is fine as is (maybe it could cost a bit more water). Its not game breaking, I just think a small nerf would be good just to gently nudge player to get and use better lubricant as the game advance. 

For brackwax, in addition to a speed buff, it would be hilarious if once applied, bionic dupe would just skate around instead of walking. Additionnal point if they do tricks while jumping, going down ladder, etc. 

Edit:

After reading the wiki, turn out that using the lubricating station with phyto oil/oil give the "applied oil" buff, for a moral bonus of +2 and -5% stress for phyto oil and +3 and -10% stress for oil... Oops

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 2/8/2025 at 5:26 PM, BlueLance said:

Seen that I could start with bionic dupes right away which was absolutely great but after about 40 cycles I hit the most unusual game killer for me. 

Excess Power.

<snip>

I no longer need to worry about CO2 or other gasses because they permanently have a tank of oxygen attached to them.

Bionic dupes have some positives and some negatives.  A couple of positives are that they don't eat food, and they carry their own oxygen.  They also run for two full cycles before they even think about having some downtime.  Another positive is that they don't need food.

They do have some negatives.  First, they do require power.  This isn't generally an issue, but there are some asteroids that make power production difficult. So your difficulty with being power positive might be mitigated with a different asteroid.  Another negative is that they short out in fluids which slow them down and adds to their stress and I've found is definitely an issue later in the game when all their slots are full.  Finally, you have to manage gear oil and gunk.  Even with "Improved Gears" they get a penalty for running out of oil.  Gunk. Gunk everywhere.  If you've got oil, you still need to process or dispose of that gunk somewhere.  At least until you can produce the materials necessary to boil it into petroleum.

I'm currently running on Ceres, and the fact that the bionic dupes don't produce CO2 is definitely a problem.  If I wanted to give up Super Sustainable, I could use wood stoves for power, or generators a bit later.  Its either that or build a hot room to turn ice into water for electrolyzers. I had so many broken pipes on my first attempt.. 

Anyway I'm not sure that I find your issues a "game killer."  Sure they make some things "easier" in some ways, but you don't have to play the same way every time all the time.  Impose your own challenges.  Decide that you're not going to use electrolyzers at all for any reason and see how that changes the game.  Maybe try to design a more elaborate way to refine petrol.

Heck, if you want ez-mode food, open up your ranch.  Train one dupe to ranch and cook, turn off all his other priorities and soon you'll be swimming in BBQ.

Every so often I queue up 20 BBQ at the grill.  Maybe I'll automate it at some point. Whatever.  The point is the game is as easy or as difficult as you decide to make it.

[cyberwarlord]

On 2/8/2025 at 7:26 PM, BlueLance said:

So I havn't been around in a while, a long while but I thought I would finally get into the game again and booted it up.

Seen that I could start with bionic dupes right away which was absolutely great but after about 40 cycles I hit the most unusual game killer for me. 

Excess Power. I have always had excess power as soon as I get my oxygen set-up running and even more when I manage to find either Natural gas, Hydrogen or the surface. Now usually that isnt a big issue because you still need to feed your dupes, they still need to sleep and so on. But my little robot dupes are just sitting fully charged and it honestly provides no challenge. I get that you CAN use normal dupes but it feels like a weird issue to have. Am I missing something or did I suddenly get easy mode DLC.

I feel I would have preferred upgrading dupes into mechanical dupes instead, because in early game I no longer need to worry about CO2 or other gasses because they permanently have a tank of oxygen attached to them. Which means that even a single one of these guys eliminates my need to build gas masks, create an oxygen flow etc so my early game just flies through.

Am I the only one who has this issue or thinks this? I love the whole idea but I feel that to play the game I might just need to avoid the mechanical dupes. 

 

On 2/8/2025 at 7:26 PM, BlueLance said:

So I havn't been around in a while, a long while but I thought I would finally get into the game again and booted it up.

Seen that I could start with bionic dupes right away which was absolutely great but after about 40 cycles I hit the most unusual game killer for me. 

Excess Power. I have always had excess power as soon as I get my oxygen set-up running and even more when I manage to find either Natural gas, Hydrogen or the surface. Now usually that isnt a big issue because you still need to feed your dupes, they still need to sleep and so on. But my little robot dupes are just sitting fully charged and it honestly provides no challenge. I get that you CAN use normal dupes but it feels like a weird issue to have. Am I missing something or did I suddenly get easy mode DLC.

I feel I would have preferred upgrading dupes into mechanical dupes instead, because in early game I no longer need to worry about CO2 or other gasses because they permanently have a tank of oxygen attached to them. Which means that even a single one of these guys eliminates my need to build gas masks, create an oxygen flow etc so my early game just flies through.

Am I the only one who has this issue or thinks this? I love the whole idea but I feel that to play the game I might just need to avoid the mechanical dupes. 

Yeah, some features just completely remove the need for so much of the gameplay and problem solving.

Worried oni will be another bloated indie game mess of features without direction.

Lots of great ideas but somehow not fun..

[KittenIsAGeek]

18 hours ago, cyberwarlord said:

Lots of great ideas but somehow not fun.

I see people saying this from time to time, and I really don't understand the position.  At this point, Steam claims I've spent 8000 hours in the game.  I don't think that's accurate, but I've definitely put more hours into the game than others that I play.

Then again, I'm the sort of person that enjoys taking stuff apart and putting it back together differently.  Over and over again.  There's a significant part of my mind that likes to take an object and figure out all the different ways I can do something with it.  For example, as a young adult I took apart an old camera flash and shuffled some of the electronics around and.. made a thing that would light up a florescent light bulb using a AAA battery.  The battery would run the light for about an hour at a useful brightness.

Anyway, my approach to ONI is to "Do Something Interesting" every time I start a game.  The idea isn't necessarily to reach the end-game or even reach any of the goals set by the game.  I mean, I do enjoy the bit of story that pops up with various discoveries, and I sometimes use the end-game goals as part of my challenge, but they're not key to my enjoyment of the game.  I like to see if I can come up with a different ways of solving the problems I encounter in the game.   I'm not interested in speed runs, or in playing with the sandbox -- though I did do some of that early on.  I'm interested in being creative with my problem solving.  Sure, a SPOM will solve all your O2 needs for 10 dupes, but that's boring!  Why not use trees to produce lumber to produce ethanol to run a petrol generator to produce polluted water that you then use air purifiers on to produce your oxygen?  Yeah, that sounds fun.. how many trees do I need for 10 dupes?

So, TL;dr.. I don't understand people who don't enjoy ONI, because my brain doesn't work that way.

[Pproy]

On 2/11/2025 at 10:59 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

They do have some negatives.  First, they do require power.  This isn't generally an issue, but there are some asteroids that make power production difficult. So your difficulty with being power positive might be mitigated with a different asteroid.  Another negative is that they short out in fluids which slow them down and adds to their stress and I've found is definitely an issue later in the game when all their slots are full.  Finally, you have to manage gear oil and gunk.  Even with "Improved Gears" they get a penalty for running out of oil.  Gunk. Gunk everywhere.  If you've got oil, you still need to process or dispose of that gunk somewhere.  At least until you can produce the materials necessary to boil it into petroleum.

The weakness to liquid get completely solved once we equip bionic dupe an atmosuit, hence why there should be a penalty for them not unequiping the suit once in a while. There was a reason that suit deterioration was introduced after all.

Stress management should be an issue with bionic dupe since they dont eat food. In my mind, toward mid to late game, we should have to make recreation room to be sure that they have enough moral. Currently, its not really the case since they become immune to environmental stress. Maybe some change could be made to their skill tree?

For oil and grinding gear, while I was completely wrong about the fact that I thought there was no benefits to upgrade to oil, I still feel that the recipe to make gear balm is a bit too conveniant (but that just my opinion).

 

3 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

So, TL;dr.. I don't understand people who don't enjoy ONI, because my brain doesn't work that way.

Just because someone critics an aspect of the game doesn't mean that they dont enjoy ONI. Someone that doesn't enjoy the game wont bother coming to the forum to voice their concern.

[cyberwarlord]

4 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I see people saying this from time to time, and I really don't understand the position.  At this point, Steam claims I've spent 8000 hours in the game.  I don't think that's accurate, but I've definitely put more hours into the game than others that I play.

Then again, I'm the sort of person that enjoys taking stuff apart and putting it back together differently.  Over and over again.  There's a significant part of my mind that likes to take an object and figure out all the different ways I can do something with it.  For example, as a young adult I took apart an old camera flash and shuffled some of the electronics around and.. made a thing that would light up a florescent light bulb using a AAA battery.  The battery would run the light for about an hour at a useful brightness.

Anyway, my approach to ONI is to "Do Something Interesting" every time I start a game.  The idea isn't necessarily to reach the end-game or even reach any of the goals set by the game.  I mean, I do enjoy the bit of story that pops up with various discoveries, and I sometimes use the end-game goals as part of my challenge, but they're not key to my enjoyment of the game.  I like to see if I can come up with a different ways of solving the problems I encounter in the game.   I'm not interested in speed runs, or in playing with the sandbox -- though I did do some of that early on.  I'm interested in being creative with my problem solving.  Sure, a SPOM will solve all your O2 needs for 10 dupes, but that's boring!  Why not use trees to produce lumber to produce ethanol to run a petrol generator to produce polluted water that you then use air purifiers on to produce your oxygen?  Yeah, that sounds fun.. how many trees do I need for 10 dupes?

So, TL;dr.. I don't understand people who don't enjoy ONI, because my brain doesn't work that way.

Currently 2k + hours. I've done everything the game allows worth trying. Even scented the bathroom water and did a no resource refinement building playthrough. Do not recommend...

I've enjoyed the game extensively but, I also encounter points where the game lacks any uniqueness from the other playthroughs. It can also get very tedious at times building the same solutions in a different way, optimized the fun out.

Why I've been suggesting a bit more variety and uses for older game features. Let's make a planets with 10 days of day then night. Solar storms. Uses for germs in new ways.

Also small things like polluted germy water not getting on dupes submerged in it breaks the immersion. The germs don't bother sinks or showers still. Diseases and sickness all have the same cure, time. 

I just hope they remember not to optimize the fun out with too many simple solutions or redundant features.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 2/25/2025 at 5:48 PM, cyberwarlord said:

The germs don't bother sinks or showers still.

You can wash your hands and shower in fairly dirty water -- even without soap -- that wouldn't be safe to drink, and you'll both get clean and won't get sick.  On the other hand, I do know someone who got sick after using a clean-looking drinking fountain.  So it makes sense that dupes won't get sick from showering or washing hands at a sink with contaminated water, but they DO get sick if germ-infested water is used in the drinking fountain.  But, whatever. Its all anecdotal, so make of it what you will.

On 2/25/2025 at 4:28 PM, Pproy said:

The weakness to liquid get completely solved once we equip bionic dupe an atmosuit,

There are a LOT of status debuffs to all dupes, bionic or not, that get eliminated with an atmosuit.  

On 2/25/2025 at 4:28 PM, Pproy said:

Stress management should be an issue with bionic dupe since they dont eat food. In my mind, toward mid to late game, we should have to make recreation room to be sure that they have enough moral.

Yep.  My bionic dupes have to use a rec room in order to keep their morale high enough.  Even using a suit, fresh oil, etc, I still need the rec room bonuses.

[Pproy]

18 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

There are a LOT of status debuffs to all dupes, bionic or not, that get eliminated with an atmosuit.  

Sure, but for normal dupe, we still need to make them a suitable living area free from environmental stress, have a source of reed fiber to maintain suits, set up dock at key position, etc.

For bionic dupe, just need to equip the suit manually and they will forever be protected from their environment. Puddle of water right under their bed? Not a problem. 10k Of gas in the living quarter? Who care. All that for 2 reed fiber and 300 kg of refined metal.

[cyberwarlord]

6 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

You can wash your hands and shower in fairly dirty water -- even without soap -- that wouldn't be safe to drink, and you'll both get clean and won't get sick.  On the other hand, I do know someone who got sick after using a clean-looking drinking fountain.  So it makes sense that dupes won't get sick from showering or washing hands at a sink with contaminated water, but they DO get sick if germ-infested water is used in the drinking fountain.  But, whatever. Its all anecdotal, so make of it what you will.

Not sick, but germ contamination from poo water is not something I'd shower or wash my hands in before eating.

Cross contamination is real and will make you very sick. 

Personally I wish soap/sanitizer could be made with liquid chlorine and some other elements. Not many machines require a state change. Something I'd love to see more of.