Suggestions for Seaquine™ buffs

[cheeees]

First off all seaquines are (objectively) bad, bad at everything. What is everything?

-Food production
-Resousrse production 

(these 2 are basically what almost every critter is used for, either food and some extra resourses or resourses and extra food as a side benefit)

The third thing they are bad at is their unique trait of producing ovolene.

 

How seaquines work

Seaquines have to be fed with pearls, pearls aren't really a problem, they very simple to produce.

You need 1 domesticated clampum to feed 2 seaquines or 2 wild clampums to feed 1 seaquine constantly.
(however clampums don't have a seed chance so the amount of seaquines you can ranch is limited to how many clampums seeds generated in the asteroid).

If you are using domesticated clampums, in a way you are feeding the seaquines 17.5 kg of sand per cycle.
In return from the sand, you get 1562.5 g of slime per cycle.

The way their repruduction works is they have a base 2% reproduction rate and a +3.75% reproduction rate per happiness point.
In addition they have the unique property of being milked for ovolene.

You can begin to extract the ovolene when they reach 50% reproduction rate, after the ovolene is extracted they loose 50% reproduction rate.
Meaning you can't get an egg and ovolene from them at the exact same time. You either get 1 egg or 200kg of ovolene from the 100% total reproduction rate.

Now to me ovolene is very bad in the state it's in the beta right now. All you can do with ovolene for now is to put the ovolene in a gleaner to get caviar, you get 9kg of caviar from every 100kg of ovolene.
All caviar does, is that it can be added to a food with a mess table to get a +3 morale and -10% stress/cycle buff.

Outside of a higher difficulty setting or space travel. That really isn't something that benefitial (in my opnion).

 

Why they suck as a food sourse

First thing to say: not getting an egg and ovolene at the same time. Since ovolene in a way, takes the kcal from the potential egg or critter and can't be used in a way to make food with it. This reduces any kcal they give.

The potential to use of them as a food sourse with their slow reproduction rate is very bad, 1000 kcal of fish fillet when ded and 1600 kcal of raw egg + 1Kg of egg shell (if craked).

Any other critter of the DLC outclases them in food production. (because they have a higher reproduction rate or give more kcals of meat and eggs)

 

Why they suck as resourse productors 

Usually a critter is better than other depending of what they produce. If it has many uses, if it makes a sustainable loop of resourses or some other reasons.

Seaquines give 1562.5 kg of slime per cycle and a variable amout of ovolene per cycle.

Ovolene has one use; just one; no more; 1. Caviar + mucin + carbon dioxide.

And slime also has it's problems. You can use the slime for mushrooms, algae, phyto oil + dirt, oakshells and sanishells.

1. The amount they give is low, you would need 2.56 seaquines to fertilize one mushroom, 9.6 seaquines to feed 1 sanishell, 44.8 seaquines for an oakshell, 64 times of them pooping for 1 phyto oil production.
2. Slime doesn't really have that many uses and is not used for any DLC critter or plant.

Their resourse production is a bit bad, in both the amount that they give and the utility they have.

 

Suggestions of buffs/changes/uses

Suggestions for food productions

• Increasing the kcal of fish fillet and raw egg they give. (kinda boring)
• Adding a food recipe that uses ovolene. (probably a +3 quality food).
• Changing caviar's use from a buff to a +4 great quality food with no spoilage time.
• Adding a food recipe that uses caviar.

Seaquine changes

• Increasing the amount of mass of their excreation.
• Changing the slime to another resourse (my suggestion would be sulfur ©/sulphur ®)
• Incresing seaquines reproduction rate.

Others

To make ovolene have more uses:

• Changing the mucin and carbon dioxide gotten from the gleaner to other resourses, my suggestion would be:
  Water, salt water, or brine, could make seaquines a renewable water source.
• Adding a use for it in the water cooler or juicer.

Also same thing I said; aquiatic milking station being unlocked very late in the game don't really help them

 

These are all what came to my mind, not really asking to do all of them but consider some.

[AugyBear]

Something I think that's worth analyzing is that Ovolene boils into Steam at 80*C with 90% efficiency. We get more Ovolene from Seaquines the happier they are thanks to the new Happiness mechanics, so for some examples:

Basic Seaquine Ranch

12 individuals in a 96 tile Ranch, 1 Aquatic Critter Condo, 1 Grooming Station.

• Each Seaquine has a Happiness of 5, giving them a Reproduction Rate of [Base +(2*Base*Happiness)] = 2 +(2*2*5) = 22%/cycle
• 50% Reproduction = 100kg Ovolene when milked
• 12 Seaquines * 22% Reproduction/cycle = 264% Reproduction/cycle = 5.28 Milkings = 528kg of Ovolene/cycle

If we boil this Ovolene by getting it to 80C*, we get 475.2kg Water/cycle, or 792g/s of Water, just a bit less than a Steam Vent.

If we run it through a Gleaner instead, we get 427.7kg of Mucin and 47.5kg of Caviar, and don't need to boil/cool anything. That's enough Mucin to make Sushi Rolls/Nigiri and season them with Caviar for 28 Dupes!

Advanced Seaquine Ranch

12 Seaquines in a 96 tile Ranch, 1 Aquatic Critter Condo, 1 Grooming Station, 1 Aquatic Critter Fountain (Brackene)

• Each Seaquine has a Happiness of 10, giving them a Reproduction Rate of [Base +(2*Base*Happiness)] = 2 +(2*2*10) = 42%/cycle
• 50% Reproduction = 100kg Ovolene when milked
• 12 Seaquines * 42% Reproduction/cycle = 504% Reproduction/cycle = 10 Milkings = 1000kg of Ovolene/cycle

If we boil this Ovolene by getting it to 80C*, we get 900kg Water/cycle, or 1.5kg/s of Water, on par with a Water Geyser.

 

At least from this quick look, I think Seaquines are a very interesting critter that doesn't fit into the standard mold of "edible critter" like we're used to. They don't need to produce a ton of food, and they don't need to be massively impactful early game, because I think their true value lies in late game Water harvesting/Sushi production. Like you suggested, making them a "Water Producer" is a great niche for them to fit in, and they already accomplish that with their Ovolene production.

Edited May 29 by AugyBear

[Tenedas]

Seaquine basically help you convert sand into seafood passing by clampum. That sounds like a great deal to me.

Easy to set up, reuse of a resource that is usually very abundant and very very easy to get early game.

Bonus points they make slime that usually is more complicated than simple ranching to get in a sustainable way.

We have lot of critters and lot of aquatic critters now. To me it's ok to have a slightly less efficient critter but with exotic possibilities.

With seaquine we have sand to food conversion, easy sustainable slime, ovolene late game. All of them open new paths 

They are nice because early in the game they help you with some easy food, late in the game you give up food for caviar and repurpose the whole ranch if you feel like it.

I am not sure if it's ok to talk about efficiency or similar if you are not taking into account the type of material you are converting into food and how. And even if done accordingly, still not all critter need to perform on th same metric the same.

[cheeees]

3 hours ago, AugyBear said:

Something I think that's worth analyzing is that Ovolene boils into Steam at 80*C with 90% efficiency. We get more Ovolene from Seaquines the happier they are thanks to the new Happiness mechanics, so for some examples:

Basic Seaquine Ranch

12 individuals in a 96 tile Ranch, 1 Aquatic Critter Condo, 1 Grooming Station.

• Each Seaquine has a Happiness of 5, giving them a Reproduction Rate of [Base +(2*Base*Happiness)] = 2 +(2*2*5) = 22%/cycle
• 50% Reproduction = 100kg Ovolene when milked
• 12 Seaquines * 22% Reproduction/cycle = 264% Reproduction/cycle = 5.28 Milkings = 528kg of Ovolene/cycle

If we boil this Ovolene by getting it to 80C*, we get 475.2kg Water/cycle, or 792g/s of Water, just a bit less than a Steam Vent.

If we run it through a Gleaner instead, we get 427.7kg of Mucin and 47.5kg of Caviar, and don't need to boil/cool anything. That's enough Mucin to make Sushi Rolls/Nigiri and season them with Caviar for 28 Dupes!

Advanced Seaquine Ranch

12 Seaquines in a 96 tile Ranch, 1 Aquatic Critter Condo, 1 Grooming Station, 1 Aquatic Critter Fountain (Brackene)

• Each Seaquine has a Happiness of 10, giving them a Reproduction Rate of [Base +(2*Base*Happiness)] = 2 +(2*2*10) = 42%/cycle
• 50% Reproduction = 100kg Ovolene when milked
• 12 Seaquines * 42% Reproduction/cycle = 504% Reproduction/cycle = 10 Milkings = 1000kg of Ovolene/cycle

If we boil this Ovolene by getting it to 80C*, we get 900kg Water/cycle, or 1.5kg/s of Water, on par with a Water Geyser.

 

At least from this quick look, I think Seaquines are a very interesting critter that doesn't fit into the standard mold of "edible critter" like we're used to. They don't need to produce a ton of food, and they don't need to be massively impactful early game, because I think their true value lies in late game Water harvesting/Sushi production. Like you suggested, making them a "Water Producer" is a great niche for them to fit in, and they already accomplish that with their Ovolene production.

Yea I kinda went over the fact that ovolene can be boiled and mucin from the gleaner can also be boiled.So lemme add to why the change

Boiling the ovolene for water is an option, getting brackwax is aldo not bad. 90% of the mass turned into water is good. But boiling it gives no caviar (a bit funny).

Seaquines are already a water sourse because it can be boiled, and if you pass the ovolene through a gleaner you get mucin which is 70% P.Water and 30% slime.

Boiling the mucin gives us some extra slime. 100Kg of ovolene = 81Kg of mucin = 24.3 kg of slime and 56.7 Kg of polluted water.

When looking at it like that their slime production isn't as low as I innitially thought. And that polluted water is still some renewable water sourse.

My idea to make the gleaner give water, salt water or brine, was that it wouldn't requiere that many extra steps to get the water, and if it was salt water or brine you can recycle some of that salt in the seaquine loop by turning the salt table salt.

But I still feel that their numbers are lower than they should be, given that the milking station is far in the reaserch tree and the amount of efford put into these guys gives a very low reward compared to the other critters.

As an example orehulls can infinitely be feed with the same resourse they excreate, and you even get some extra polluted mud, which would be another water sourse. So the resourses needed to maintain have a very simliar simple maintanance like pearls.

The orehulls have the same repruduction as seaquines and give 6000 kcal of raw shell fish or 3200 kcal of raw egg.
And produce free iron ore.

The efford you need to maintain orehulls is almost none, no need to get a polluted mud producer since they are the polluted mud producer, give more kcal and give you metal for free.

Glo squids are kind of the same, same reproduction, 9600 kcal of calamari or 3200 kcal of raw egg.
And they can also be milked for squid ink. You can use the squid ink to further boost the happiness of any critter.
Glo squids are more resourse intensive but they give more resourses in return

The squids need a lot more planning put into them and mass of sulfur, but you get a lot of usefullness from the squid ink.
A usefullness ovolene lacks right now

Squid ink can be used for the +3 critter happiness, can be put in a water cooler for a -15% stress reduction to duplicants, it can be boiled to mucin and refined carbon. 90% mucin 10% refined carbon.

Which just makes seaquines worse, since both of them can produce mucin and refined carbon is also a usefull resourse.

All of this you get from the squids is also not tied to their egg production.

When you compare sequines to any critter of this DLC they seem worse in both being a food sourse or resourse production.
And even a worse comparasion would be the critters from Frosty Planet Pack ™ or Prehistoric Planet Pack™.
The resourses any of the other DLC critters give are all good, in a way that they all enable either an alternative sourse to a resourse or a way to get the new resourses of their DLC's. (like floxes or lumbs).

Edited May 30 by cheeees

[cheeees]

Just remembered sanishells can take 15 kg of slime and give 10 kg of sand per cycle, so the change to the gleaner to make salt water or brines isn't that relevant. (Oops)
Boiling the mucin you get from the gleaner can feed more sanishells per seaquine.
I think it would be a slightly negative mass cycle so sustaining seaquines and sanishells would still need an external sand sourse.

[cheeees]

Oh well, part of my argument feel off after some calculations. Ha.

So after re-analizing the mucin gotten from ovolene a resourse loop of sand exists with seaquines and sanishells.

Sand -> Pearl -> Slime and ovolene, from ovolene you get caviar and carbon dioxide out and keep the mucin in the loop.
Mucin turns to P.Water and more slime. So you would also be getting P.water out of the loop.

The slime gotten is then fed to sanishells for food and sand.

Since the main sourse of slime, caviar, carbon dioxide and polluted water is ovolene. The amount of reasourses gotten varies with the happiness of seaquines with the exception of the 1.5625 kg of slime they excreate.

(all of these numbers would realistically be lower since happiness is not permanent and has to be constantly raised)

These are in theory the amount of slime you would get from how happy they are. 

4 Happiness -> 9.8225 kg/cycle
5 Happiness -> 11.6425 kg/cycle
7 Happiness -> 15.2925 kg/cycle
8 Happiness -> 17.1195 kg/cycle
10 Happiness -> 20.7715 kg/cycle

Seaquines needed to feed 1 Sanishell every cycle.

4 Happiness -> 1.5271
5 Happiness -> 1.2883
7 Happiness -> 0.9808
8 Happiness -> 0.8761
10 Happiness -> 0.7221

This sand loop is not resourse positive, you loose a variable amount of sand depending of how happy they are.
And not even a 10 happiness seaquine can make it resourse positive.

For a it to be resourse neutral a seaquine would have to produce around 26.04 Kg of slime per cycle and to be resourse positive a higher number that that. (Since sanishells give 2/3 of the mass eaten).

My conclusion is that they aren't as useless as I thought they were, they have a resourse loop and those are always welcome.

Still they could use some changes, increasing the slime they excreate could help for something extra.

• If the slime they give gets increased or mucin gotten from the gleaner gets increased to a point where they give more sand than needed they can make a nice sustainable and infinete loop that would give: Sand, P.Water, Caviar, Slime, and maybe carbon dioxide but the carbon dioxide would be reduced if the mucin gotten from the gleaner is increased. And of course the kcal gotten from sani shells.
• Caviar could be changed to do something more (or not).
• They still are bad withouth extracting the ovolene and the sanishells, so ranching them alone won't give you much of anything and their usefullness is still locked behind orbital resarch data with Spaced out anabled.
• They also have a scalability problem, since clampums don't give seeds and can't be fertilized, so the seaquines you could run are locked to how many clampums generated in the asteroid or relying on the care packages/printersceptor.

 

Edit: buffing clam pums could make this loop of sand resourse positive. Even withouth reducing the sand they need or increasing the pearls they give.
With just them being able to get farmer's touch buff you can start the loop.

Edited May 30 by cheeees

[Wharflord]

Initially I agreed with OP that seaquines seem underpowered, but after analyzing the reproduction mechanics and seeing where the resource loop takes us I have completely changed my mind.

Seaquines allow for an infinite resource loop, all parts of which are available on the aquatic asteroid.

Let's start with a seaquine ranch. You can fit the aquatic grooming station, aquatic milking station, fish release, aquatic critter condo, and aquatic critter fountain, 6 wide hydroponic farms, and 4 auto sweepers into a 3x32 ranch. This sustains 12 seaquines with 10 happiness. It requires 210 kg/cycle of sand to feed the 6 clumpums. Theoretically, at 10 happiness the seaquines should reach 42% reproduction increase per cycle, but having built this in my game, it only gets to 39% in practice. This gives 78 kg/cycle of ovolene per seaquine, or 936 kg/cycle for the entire ranch, plus 18.75 kg/cycle of slime.

Running the ovolene through a gleaner gives caviar and CO2 (which I will treat as byproducts) plus 758.16 kg/cycle of mucin. Because we need 5 kg/cycle of brackene to keep the each seaquine happy, we will reserve 54 kg/cycle of mucin for that purpose. The remaining 704.16 kg/cycle of mucin can be boiled into 492 kg/cycle of polluted water and 211.25 kg/cycle of slime.

The 492 kg/cycle of polluted water feeds 7.04 domestic arbor trees, which I will round down to exactly 7. Harvesting the trees we get 466.9 kg/cycle of wood.

Refining the wood in an ethanol distiller, we get 233.45 kg/cycle of ethanol and 155.63 kg/cycle of polluted dirt, plus CO2 (which I still consider a waste product).

Recall that we need brackene to feed the seaquines. We will use the recipe requiring nosh sprouts and mucin. To feed 12 seaquines, we need 6 nosh beans per cycle, or 10.53 domestic plans, rounded up to 11. This requires 220 kg/cycle of ethanol, which we produce from the ethanol distilleries with some to spare. It also requires 55 kg/cycle of dirt, which is easy to get from another source. However, to demonstrate that this is in fact an infinite loop, I will instead imagine that we boil 55 kg/cycle of slime into dirt. Combining the 54 kg/cycle of mucin we reserved earlier with the nosh beans gives us 60 kg/cycle of brackeen to feed the seaquines.

Combining the two sources of slime - direct excretion and boiled mucin - minus what we need to make dirt, we have 175 kg/cycle of slime. Add in the 155.63 kg/cycle of polluted dirt and we can feed 22.04 sanishells, again rounding down to 22. This gives us 220 kg/cycle of sand, more than the 210 kg/cycle required to feed the clampums at the start of the loop.

 

This gives us an infinite loop that throws off a gargantuan amount of cooked seafood and caviar to feed dupes for +5 morale. Unfortunately it is not power positive, mostly because of the cooling required to feed the ethanol to nosh sprouts without stifling them. It gets way better when paired with wild pip farms, but I didn't include those in the calculations since they are already incredibly powerful on their own. However, paired with other systems this loop should be a powerful tool in the ONI arsenal.

Edited May 30 by Wharflord

[cheeees]

Wow I feel happy that writing an opinion did something : D.They buffed excreation of seaquines from 1.5625 Kg to 12 Kg.
Wowas