Wood burners make too much CO2

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Sure, I can reframe my problem then.  "I think the early game on forest and frosty starts should have an early game power plant similar to the coal generator and plug slugs, but with its own trade offs, that is a perfectly reasonable choice for new players to rely on for a hundred cycles. The wood burner is positioned and presented to fit this purpose, but produces so much CO2 to essentially be a new player trap if they try to use it in this role."

I think you do not understand at all what I wrote. 

[imazined]

3 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

The wood burner is positioned and presented to fit this purpose, but produces so much CO2 to essentially be a new player trap if they try to use it in this role."

I would agree if the wood burner has a pressure limit. But doesn't hence liquid lock.

Also wood can be refined to ethanol. I know players that skip the wood burner for going straight into ethanol production. You don't even need an aquatuner to cool it. It can cool itself.

The incoming wood absorbs the heat an keeps the temperatures stable.

 

Edited July 5, 2025 by imazined
Triple posted

[blakemw]

21 hours ago, Gurgel said:

I see your problem: You try to find out what the developers intended. That is the wrong approach. In case you have not noticed, ONI is a simulation. That means almost _nothing_ has a "primary purpose" or "primary intended function" and your "problems" result from trying to find one. The actual question you should be asking instead is "what can this thing be used for?". And suddenly there is no problem anymore.  

IMO this is the best take of the thread.

From time to time the developers decide a "puzzle piece" should be altered, for example, insulating the storage for Glass Forges so the glass wouldn't freeze inside the Forge.

So this is not to say that every piece is at it should be, but changes are usually more along the lines of bug fixes and edge cases or respecting an overall consistency (like which buildings should have insulated storage).

As ONI is a "rolling crisis simulator", most things have a benefit they give, and a "gotcha!". For Coal Generators, the clear and obvious gotcha! is relying on them and then running out of coal! The experience of literally every new player. Coal like Algae is basically "too good to be true", and is! Coal is hard to mass produce even with hatch ranches, you're meant to use it to bootstrap and for backup power while being punished for relying on it.

Wood Burners don't have this gotcha, they use a fully sustainable fuel which you're never going to run out of, and on most maps (putting aside Frozen Forest) you aren't even in serious risk of the wild Arbor Trees stifling. The potential gotcha for the Wood Burner, like petroleum generators (which also use a fully sustainable fuel source), is a huge amount of "pollution", it's not so much about breathability, dupes filter out the O2 packets emitted by Oxyferns just fine, but popped ear drums, potentially even plants stifling from excessive pressure. On the other hand, this pollution also has uses like pressurizing forest biomes to avoid plants stifling from low pressure but it's not a turnkey solution, as you either need to manually toggle it as required, or get atmo sensors to automate it. On the other hand, if you want to use them for power, the gotcha can be mitigated with other game mechanics, you can build it behind a liquid lock making a potential ticking time bomb of CO2, or you can build it behind a Mechanical Airlock, and use another Mechanical Airlock toggling open and shut to atom-smash the CO2 out of existence. The ability to mitigate or even benefit from the downsides is also intended. Also you use Wood Burners on more advanced starts, by which time you should've figured out more game mechanics.

The point is, the game doesn't give the player anything on a silver platter, it gives flawed puzzle pieces which the player has to figure out how to use. It's just as how nearly ever Duplicant you bring comes with deliberate defects, some worse than others. Is the Wood Burner roughly equivalent to the Flatulent dupe? well yeah, in most cases you'd probably rather not use it at all. And that's okay. But there will be cases like forest starts where you have tons of free wood where you just shove one behind a liquid lock and enjoy the free power, or situations where you need some quick pressure so your mealwoods don't stifle, or you want to feed some Slicksters you printed.

Edited July 6, 2025 by blakemw

[Gurgel]

On 7/6/2025 at 10:12 AM, blakemw said:

IMO this is the best take of the thread.

Thanks! I try.

On 7/6/2025 at 10:12 AM, blakemw said:

The point is, the game doesn't give the player anything on a silver platter, it gives flawed puzzle pieces which the player has to figure out how to use.

That is the whole point of the game. This is not a straightforward colony builder where everything is obvious. Instead, everything is tricky and nothing "just works" and that is by design and by intent. It very much is not a "cozy game" or clear and obvious. There is nothing wrong with wanting such a game and these do exist and are out there. But calling for the nature of ONI to be changed is the wrong approach. 

[JRup]

22 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

calling for the nature of ONI to be changed is the wrong approach

Can't stress this enough. This will emerge in many a thread over time. (This topic will be derailed if I dare mention any example.)

Also, wood burners are very compact (find a smaller generator without modding the game, go ahead)... How come this particular fact isn't appreciated enough? Sure, coal gens produce more power but go ahead and look at its dimensions...

[Gurgel]

21 minutes ago, JRup said:

Can't stress this enough. This will emerge in many a thread over time. (This topic will be derailed if I dare mention any example.)

I have a long list and I have made very similar comments many times before. 

[psusi]

Producing plenty of CO2 is a sort of valuable role of the wood burner on forest and ceres starts, but... it really could use toned down a bit.  It just produces SO much.

[speckle21]

Trapping the CO2 behind an air lock with infinite overpressure kinda makes the CO2 problem moot. You just have to know the trick. I was neutral on it before, but i kinda like the wood burner now. The infinite pressure lock makes it sort of like a reward for figuring it out. Then at some future cycle you convert the CO2 into polluted water, or just vent it into space. 

Every time i think i know what i'm doing, something comes along and surprises me. I love this game. 

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, speckle21 said:

Every time i think i know what i'm doing, something comes along and surprises me. I love this game. 

Same here. And every new colony I can do some things I never did before.