Are Beakons too overpowered?

[blakemw]

Beakons seem to be the strongest critter for fish fillet by a very large margin.

First off, the Beakon's basic lifecycle and general stats are the same as Pacu and Blowters. They live 25 cycles, make an egg every 1.5 cycles (baseline), the egg hatches in 1 cycle (incubated), and upon death drop 1 kg of fillet.

However Beakons have some things going for them that Pacu and Blowters do not.

1. Breath of Fresh Air buff is very trivial to get (probably bugged), and makes Beakons breed faster than other fish and also allows for early game labor-free ranching which becomes very good once you have Aquatic Critter Condo. While you need more critters for grooming-free ranching, it's trivial to pack up to 64 fish in a ranch (that's the most a Critter Sensor can count) - technically somewhere around 20-30 you start getting sunburn, but if you aren't grooming them... and anyway, even 20 groomless Beakons make a lot of fillet.
2. Beakons are trivial to feed as Phosphorite is simply mined from the ground. Also their consumption rate is low enough that it's never really an issue.
3. Beakons produce rather useful poop in the form of lime which does not require further crushing, and can even deliver it directly to Flue Coral to reduce duplicant labor: this quite honestly seems like stealing the gig of Blowters.
4. They also produce light.

 

If they were to be nerfed.

First would be to address Breath of fresh air. It basically seems to rely on "the thought that counts" rather than actual oxygen consumption, as in once the Beakon starts the errand, it'll get the buff regardless of whether the oxygen remains. An obvious fix to this would be to make buff duration depend on actual oxygen consumption.

Beakons could probably quite honestly use the "Pip" treatment. By this I mean, because Pips are a useful critter, they're basically only half as good as other critters for BBQ. Another critter which gets the old nerfio is the Longhair Slickster, which has a 150 lifecycle which makes it worse for BBQ than a standard critter.

One option to nerf Beakons would be giving them a longer lifecycle, such as 50 cycle, but retain the 1 kg of fillet. This would quite dramatically nerf their production of fish fillet and slow the exponential growth of a ranch, though with breath of fresh air they would still actually be a really good option, but without taking advantage of breath of fresh air they'd have only half the grooming efficiency of Pacu or Blowters. Also a longer lifecycle wouldn't harm their role as a light producer and lime producer/fertilizer.

Edited July 1 by blakemw

[Ceos]

I agree with every point and yet I love them as is. I think it is the interaction with the flue coral that makes them a bit overpowered. By themselves they are good but each consumes ~1/4 of a dupe's worth of oxygen which, as we know, is not included.  The lime is not that much more than crushing eggshells and you only get it if they are fed vs. dumping pacu into an "evolving pit" and harvesting like mad.

The sheer quantity of fish filet and oxygen for "no dupe" flue / beakon farm is amazing but it does require some pretty in depth understanding and mastey of the systems. My "no effort" farm required knowledge of the pool vs. room mechanics, shipping, gas dynamics, liquid locks and to be sustainable either a dreko ranch (lily) or space mining (coquina -> starfish) for the phosphorite. I sometimes fall into the "this is too easy" trap when really is too easy for me (with a disturbing 4 digit hours in the game)... And even then it took me some embarrassing failures, floods and reworks to get my setup working. To then partially oxygen starve to get the bonus is another layer of complexity. 

So yeah... they are great and maybe even too great but fun to master and like all things ONI the game is as difficult as you want it to be. My Aqua playthrough I am trying to avoid my standard builds (no SPOM this run) anf engage with new mechanics (beakon, flue, tidal springs) which has been a nice challenge.

All that said if they dropped the egg production rate, required more happiness, needed to feed more, or reduced fish filet dropped it would be fair (when groomed 112% / cycle does seem crazy).

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

On 7/1/2026 at 3:38 PM, Ceos said:

"this is too easy"

All you need to know is fluid dynamics, 1 cell rule, thermodynamics, logistics, critter/dupe/bionic mechanics, priorities, morale, room layout, tick speed, automation, heat duplication/deletion/creation, positive resource loops, traits, interests, countless exploits, farming mechanics, electrical grid, pathing, pipe direction/priority, door mechanics, and nuclear/rocket engineering. It's just that easy.

Edited July 5 by BLACKBERREST3