Rephycalized - Mod aiming at acheiving full* Mass Conservation

[mitboy]

Do you get bothered by mass creation and deletion in ONI? That combustion doesn't consume oxygen? That plants can't just absorb water spilled on it? That metals don't have much difference between them besides decor?  That you lose 50% of the tile's mass when you dig it up?

No, just me? Well, still, I made this. 

This mod aims to have mass conservation in most ingame systems - buildings do not destroy resources, critters and plants track mass they consume, and will give back recycleable materials!

To have mass conserved I couldn't just crunch some numbers, since this would throw the games balance out of whack, so new mechanics had to be introduced as well, so here's some of them: 

Gastrolith diet - some critters will eat rocks/ice and other materials and store them - this doesn't actuall give them calories, but will allow them to produce large amount of poop. 

Lumb is an example: It will gulp up various types of sedimentary rocks and convert them at 100% into peat when it gets to eat actual food. You can just give him the fruits without rocks, but it will only grow its own mass and no peat is produced.

Also, lumbs don't have magical 400kg of weight anymore - their egg contains 4kg of... egg, so little lumblets will start with just the 4 kg of mass, and will slowly grow over time as they eat fruits. The amount of meat dropped from them is quite a bit less now - you can only fit 4kg of meat into 4 kg of critter, right? However in adddition to this 4 initial kg, when the lumbs dies, its accumulated mass will drop as meat + rot! So at the end of the day, mass is conserved, yay! 

The reverse of critters is often the plants - they will consume hundreds of kgs of resouces and then drop just a measely 1kg of some berries? Not cool! 

 

So here's a Blossom, absorbing the water (No need to manually deliver into the farm tile btw, Liquid consuming plants can now absorb it into the farm storage directly). Once it gets harvested, the tracker will take accumulated mass, subtract the harvest amount from it, then subtract plant husk (if it's being gathered), and drop the rest as mud and a bit of oxygen. And you get to recycle quite a bit of water now! Mass saved once again. Different plant can drop various stuff, spill liquids or fart gases, which allows you to partially recycle them. 
Note the Growing % and the plant mass are disconnected variables - Animals that eat plants directly will now target plant mass, while plant growth % is subtracted as a "bonus". 

More complex plant may have tricker mass accumulation mechanics - arbor and bonbon trees, for example, will drain the main trunk from mass to grow branches or produce nectar. 

Some other random example of mass preservation. You know how normally Research Reactor produces tonnes of nuclear waste? Would be not great to remove this feature, since Nuclear Waste does have its uses. Still, with rephysicalized, it will only produce NW equal to Unriched Uranium consumption; However, if you use unpure coolant, some of it will get contaminated! Also Nuclear Waste now hurts duplicants and critters and will corrode tiles made of soft materials, good luck!

Also extended enviromental cooking, various foods can be cooked using the sim under certain conditions, requiring specific element, temperature or pressure. Though you need to be careful to not overheat them , since some foods will turn into ash!

I have some more demonstrations in the showcase. 

 

Since this mod changes... a lot, I can't say for sure everything is balanced in it, even after playing quite a bit. I'm open to feedback on balance and Im also interested in continuation of developing since there are more things which can be rephysicalized - More systems can be included into mass conservation, like, right now Critters do not lose mass when they lay eggs - they probably should? Or  add more sim chemisty - debris like salt can turn water into salty water, or have Iron get rusty. 

Anyway, here's a steam workshop link https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3609531831

Edited November 22, 2025 by mitboy

[CraziFuzzy]

Something I will point out, is that, in general, biological life doesn't 'excrete' 100% of what it consumes.  A not insignificant amount of the mass we eat is actually breathed out, as our exhalation is greater than our inhalation.  The lack of breathing on most critters (and plants, for that matter) aside from dupes is a bit of a frustration for me.

Edited November 26, 2025 by CraziFuzzy