Better together / hidden duplicant mission requirements and rewards balance

[DarkMaster13]

The mission rewards for the better together duplicant are likely in need of a rethink.  At the moment, the requirements and rewards are the following:

• Coral biome, bring pearls for a gasket and two flue coral seeds.
• Kelp biome, bring sushi for a gasket and two gum palm seeds.
• Basalt Depths biome, bring caviar for a gasket.
• Once all three are done, get Minnow as a recruit.

At the moment, the only one of these requirements and rewards that feels reasonable to me is the first, as this is fairly close to your start, requires a readily accessible resource, and gives non-renewable seeds.

Once you get to the second mission, you not only are going to be much further away from your start, but the Sushi requires that you unlock a technology that requires materials science (on Spaced Out).  This should be long after you have access to the ability to make your own gaskets via rubber and will probably already be farming gum palms, so the rewards are pointless to you.

The third mission calls for aquatic critter milking, which requires data analysis science.  On my current game, I didn't have enough data packs to be willing to pick up this research until almost cycle 180.  By that time I'd basically explored and exploited the entire map of my primary asteroid. At this point, an extra lv 1 dupe with great swimming ability simply doesn't matter to me.

Quick early gaskets are valuable on this start, since they give you a way to accelerate your early lack of power without needing to wait for research, but only the first one is something you can currently get without even more research than the gasket production takes. While the other rewards are mostly nothingburgers.  I think it would make sense to make all three of the mission goals be things you can get without any research at all, so rushing this mission becomes a neat way to gather some extra gaskets early or rush for a special swimming dupe to smooth out your mid game.  Oh, and the Depths mission should give a couple Pinpoket seeds, to match the others.  They're much harder to get than other crop seeds.

[Jussatoon]

I must ask: the Unknown Duplicant is currently exclusive to the aquatic asteroid? They can't, for example, be unlocked or obtained via the Printing Pod or as a starter after completing the Asteroid Imperative at least once?

[missasch]

I also worked really hard to get to sushi only to find that the next task was so far away that I shouldn't have focused on that. Then by the time I unlocked the milking station and got the caviar it was cycle 280 and she almost died trying to get to oxygen because she was so slow. Hopefully they can at least make her better skilled or something. But it took so long to get her she is pretty much pointless.

[blakemw]

I could've written the same myself.

I feel the pearls requirements are a bit excessive actually as in the request actively sabotages progression, and you'd be better off investing pearls into wide farms and just pursuing rubber (or on smaller maps, even digging down to free plastic) and making your own gaskets...

As for the later rewards, eh, they're completely irrelevant, but eh, it does lead to a victory condition.

But as for Minnow. She really needs "Jorgification", like Jorge has the Ancient Knowledge for +3 skill points, and has 7 all attributes. That makes Jorge immediately useful, and a nice reward.

What does Minnow get? Swimming I. No skill points. No attributes. And she can hold her breath while she crawls around like a geriatric sloth (relative to the speed your other dupes are moving at).

What would make me happy, is if Minnow had Ancient Knowledge, and let's say, +10 athletics. If she's speedy and a few skill points can be assigned she can be immediately useful, instead of having to be relegated to running on a hamster wheel for a dozen cycles to train her up.

[zoehange]

43 minutes ago, blakemw said:

I feel the pearls requirements are a bit excessive actually as in the request actively sabotages progression, and you'd be better off investing pearls into wide farms and just pursuing rubber (or on smaller maps, even digging down to free plastic) and making your own gaskets...

I delivered the first 100 pearls before realizing I needed those pearls ...to farm pearls. So completing the quest was sabotaged by trying to complete it, which was a real kick in the shins.

[DarkMaster13]

3 hours ago, blakemw said:

I feel the pearls requirements are a bit excessive actually as in the request actively sabotages progression, and you'd be better off investing pearls into wide farms and just pursuing rubber (or on smaller maps, even digging down to free plastic) and making your own gaskets...

I didn't even think of that when writing this post.  My map generation was so unfavorable towards finding and reaching the dupe that I already had pearl farms and had mined out a diamond geode that enabled substantial large farm expansion.  I was also long past the point of making my own rubber for gaskets, which you can get a decent amount of from wild farming.

However if you're going to prioritize getting a pearl farm up first, well you've now got the tech for the pulverizer and probably have had plenty of time to get the vulcanizer too. Making that first gasket an okay reward, but not exactly something to get excited over.  Meaning that the gaskets from the dupe aren't even relevant on the first reward and there's really no way around the very slow early game on this start thanks to the lack of solid early power generation options without gaskets.

Edited June 11 by DarkMaster13

[DarkMaster13]

Seems that I waited too long to post this feedback?  Now that the DLC has launched.  Even still, I do have some more thoughts:

• First mission requirement could be changed to lime.  That's a resource that's easy to get from many sources and fits with dealing with sea critters, including ranching beakons, crushing coral, and crushing molts.  The reward of flue coral seeds also matches with producing lime.
• Second mission could be where you put the pearls, or maybe something related to fish fillets?  Needing nori foods would unfortunately require tech deeper in the tree than I'd like to see for this spot. 
• Third mission's most obvious choice for fitting with local plants and critters is either pinpokets or squids.  Preferably something that doesn't require the milking stations, though the sushi bar would be fine at this point.