Thoughts and Feedback on overall game Play

[littled3mon]

(sorry in advance moderator, I had too many thoughts to try and find places to post them all and wanted to get them all put down.  feel free to push this to wherever you feel it might fit best on the forums)

I just want to start off by saying I am very much enjoying the game and am excited to see how the game progresses and becomes more complex. ( more then it already is)  also I wasn't sure where to post this, as I have many thoughts that i wanted to get down and couldn't find a good spot that fit them all.  this is all observations I have made after making a handful of colonies.

I first wanted to touch on duplicant's and their traits, as they are the main driving force of my space colonies.  I believe that their traits need some adjusting in a couple different areas.  most importantly is the pairing of stats with negative traits.

the biggest ones being: (learning + yokel) (cooking + gastrophobic) (construction + deminsionaly inept) these pairings make the stat completely useless if they show up together.

Duplicant Stats/Traits

Athletics: appears the be the single most important stat for a dupe.  gets you from point A to point B faster, as well as generating power faster when using a manual generator. (currently the manual generator feels like the most viable power so far, more on this later)

Cooking:  I literally never take this stat, as I never cook.  cooking is only avail able AFTER second tier research, which takes a while.  maybe incorporate some kind of cooking at tier one research or even without research.

Digging:  this is maybe the second most important stat tied with construction, as the majority of the game requires digging.  either to make space to build or simply to gain a resource.

Medicine: is a nice stat, but currently is not that necessary.  there are few things that cause damage to dupes currently and only later on in the game when forced to expand into other biomes does resistance to disease become important.  even when forced into toxic areas, dupes do not become diseased very often(even with 0 medicine stat).

Tinkering:  this stat is not very clear as to how it helps your dupes.  the tool tip talks about it helping the dupe operating machines.  does this mean it stacks on top of the other stats the help with machines? or are there specific machines that this works for.  I mention this because:

-athletics makes them use a manual generator faster.

- learning makes them use a research station faster.

- cooking I assume (because I don't utilize this stat) makes them use a microbe musher and cooking station faster (i personaly find both these machines very resource expensive(building cost + power source + dupe time spent using))

so where does tinkering fit into all this? does tinkering stack on top of these other stats? is there some other machine that I'm missing that this tat helps? the tool tip does not explain very well how this stat helps.

Construction:  this stat I believe ties with digging.  the majority of the game is building your colony, so this stat is very helpful.

Creativity:  This stat is useful for creating a nice environment for your dupes, for preventing stress.  though its not very efficient to have more then one dupe with this stat, as there are much more important stats.  I have found paintings to be the most useful, as they have a large decor radius and do not require a floor tile to sit on. 

Learning: Learning is a very useful skills, as it allows your dupes to level up their stats faster.  I would say this is probably the third best stat for your dupes to have.  I would rate it higher, except that It is not easy to get this stat paired with the other more important stats.  It's usually one or the other.

Strength: This stat is helpful, but not currently necessary.  there aren't any negative traits that affect strength, so pretty much any dupe you get will have at the very least the basic carrying capacity.  combat is almost non existent currently, so maybe this will become more important as the game grows and progresses. ( looking forward to find out!! )

Positive trait (Night owl):  this is very unclear as to how this helps.  I would assume this means they would receive stat bonuses for performing tasks during the "sleep" phase of the cycle.  currently this doesn't seem very feasible, as the only way to do this would be to hit red alert.  which wakes EVERYONE up.

That covers everything I can currently think of related to duplicant stats.  Next I will touch on resources, as this feels like the next most important thing to the game.

Most important resources: 

Water: Currently water tops the charts in my mind as the single most important resource in the game.  it is used food, oxygen, and research.  I had one colony that started with 0 clean water, which meant I was doomed.  I could not do any advanced research and was limited to powered oxygen generators.  I had no way of getting research done to gain the structures that allow me to filter out carbon dioxide.  yes, i could make algae habitats, but they were not usable as I had no water.  without water there is no way to combat Co2 build up, which is one of the first and most constant threats in the game.

Sand:  This I feel ties for second most important, as it is currently the ONLY filtration medium.  you need this to filter out toxic gas from the air and to filter contaminated water into usable water.  Oxygen = important  Water = important

Algae:  this ties with sand in my mind in second place, as it is the ONLY resource that produces oxygen. both oxygen producing structures take algae to function.

Slime:  this comes in third.  slime allows you to create more algae AND water.  slime is about the only good way to create more water, aside from duplicant puke.  which doesn't seem like a very good route to take.  though this resource is not helpful without water,  as you need second tier research to utilize this.  also you need obsidian to pipe the contaminated water.

Copper/Obsidian: these two tie for next most important.  these are both used for important things, power cables and piping, though copper is far easier to find and dig then obsidian. you need obsidian if you want to be able to filter water or to smash your slime into algae and contaminated water.

thoughts on other resources

there are definitely other resources to be used, though i have found them quite limited in there usefulness.  most notably, coal and hydrogen.  these can be utilized to generate power.  currently the only way to not have your dupes acting the part of hamsters.  both of these power sources are very limited though.  there just isn't much of it on the map and what is there gets used up pretty quickly.  on top of being a very finite resource, they also each have their own draw backs.

Coal: ends up creating Co2, which either needs to be housed in a separate area or needs to be filtered.  shutting it in a room seems the best option, as filtering it is costly.  either you need enough algae habitats to filter it, or an air scrubber which takes water and some of that power you just created. not to mention more power if you are then going to filter the contaminated water you just made, in addition to the sand and obsidian (used for filtration and piping) needed to accompish this.

Hydrogen:  utilizing this seems a bit clunky, as you have to first generate power before you can even start generating power.  you have to use a gas pump to get the hydrogen into the generator, so you have to initially have to in order to create power.  again you will also need obsidian for the piping. this power source at the least does not have any other draw backs to it, other then construction cost of pipes.

there are other resources currently on the map, though they currently do not have uses(chlorine gas, abyssalite, phosphorite, gold amalgam, neutronium which cant be mined and im assuming is meant as an edge to the map).  there is also bleach stone, which can be used to create a hand sanitizer.  this is definitely useful to prevent stress, though this resource is often extremely hard to get to.  it also appears the that hand sanitizer creates chlorine gas each time it is used( i may be wrong about this, but i noticed toxic gas showing up in my base and i wasn't sure where it was coming from. though it was generally clumped around the hand sanitizer i had created.  ill try to get a screen shot of my base up at some point.) if this is the case, that the hand sanitizer creates chlorine gas when used.  this would be very helpful to add this fact to the tool tip, as this would greatly change my thoughts on creating this. ok, well that about covers resources, as my thoughts seem to be bleeding into structures now.

Structures

Medical

 

Hand sanitizer: as mentioned above, if this creates chlorine gas when it is used.  please at this fact to the tool tip.

apothecary/ medical cot/ rejuvenator:  currently none of these feel useful in the least bit,  especially the apothecary and rejuvanator (as these take tier 2 research to have access to).  these might become useful in the future of the game, but currently there is not much combat and diseases don't happen often enough to warrant construction.

Base

Tiles, regular/gas permeable/ liquid + gas permeable/ thermal:  each of the tiles has their own uses, except (in my mind) the insulated tiles.  heat only really seems to be an issue for plants you are trying to grow, aside from that I have not had any problems with heat.  maybe this is just me and how I laid out my base.

Doors, Pneumatic, manual, mechanized:  out of these options i have only ever regularly used manual doors.  pneumatic doors don't block anything, so their only real use is to make your dupes happier about having their own personal room for sleeping or peeing.  with the decor options available, i haven't found this especially helpful, though i could be wrong. I might try a pneumatic door bathroom later. I use manual doors the most as they block liquid and gas and do not take power. while mechanized doors are faster, they take up power which i find to be much more important to use for other things besides a faster door. not to mention the construction cost of the wires.

Oxygen

Algae deoxydizer/ Algae terrarium: these feel like the two best options for generating oxygen.  the deoxydizer generates oxygen faster, but it takes up more algae.  the terrarium filters out Co2, but it takes up water. 

Electrolyzer: I have yet to experiment with the electrolyzer, as it does not seem like a good option.  i will probably try it out at some point just to see.  it might be possible to utilize it for the hydrogen to help generate power.  I mostly view it as not a good option, due to the fact of the water consumption.  which I find to be extremely costly.

Air scrubber:  this has its use, to remove Co2 build up. aside from that though, you do not gain any oxygen.  this feels like more of an emergency situation construction.  if you have not been filtering Co2 or compartmentalizing it, this can be used to help reduce the build up.  you do get your water back out of it, in the form of contaminated water(so that's nice).  though you then have to spend more power, sand, and obsidian to make that water usable again through filtration. over all, decent Co2 build up solution, but does not help with oxygen.

air deodorize: I end up utilizing this a lot.  very early in the game, you end up with toxic gas that will build up.  either from a compost pile, or a flatulent dupe.  this ends up taking up a lot of my sand, though I do get clay out of it to be used in planter boxes.  this also becomes important when you expand into other biomes, as any biome except the starting biome has toxic gas in it.

Power
Pretty much all of these are useful and I only really want to touch on 4 of these structures. 

Hydrogen/Coal generators:  I touched on both these earlier, they are each useful in their own way.  mostly they feel like you don't get a lot of return on your investment.

insulated wire:  do wires break down in extreme heat? I have yet to run into this happening, so currently these don't seem helpful.

Wire bridge:  I have not need the use of these yet, but if it is anything like the liquid pipe bridge and gas pipe bridge, then it will probably have the same issue as i see in those.  I will touch on that later on.

food

about the only thing I would suggest here, is to adjust the cooking station and possibly add some kind of option for "cooking" before the fine dining station research.

1) allow the cooking station to be used with cultivated foods, such as mealwood.

2) offer some kind of cooking option for food before this construction becomes available.  I mostly mention this, becuase of the cooking stat on duplicants.  this stat is useless without the cooking station.  so if you are wanting a cook, it is pointless to have a dupe with this stat before you have the research complete and have constructed a cooking station.

Utilities

Both of these require tier 3 research, which is a huge investment(largely in the cost of water).  these both seem useful in their own way. though as i mentioned before, heat only really seems to currently be a problem for farming plants.  so these may become more useful later on.

Plumbing

Bridges, gas,liquid,electric:  these babies are awesome and useful, but at the same time they are flawed.  they are great when you have several things being used that you want to all flow in the same general direction. however, these bridges have to be place AHEAD of time.  I will list an example to make my point.

I expand my base into the "slime biome" (as i call it), so that I can filter toxic water into fresh water.  so i have a pipe going back into my base with clean water.  i later decide I want to start using a bio distiller and need to setup the pipe to drain the contaminated water, however i have a pipe in the way that is running filtered water. alright, well ill use a bridge to go over it.  the problem that occurs here, is it does not allow you to place the bridge over the previously constructed pipe.  a pipe that i am currently using.  in order to get it let me construct the bridge, I must first deconstruct the section of pipe i wish to bridge over.  this makes my filtration stop during the course of this.

(I hope I explained that well enough for it to make sense)

one other thing that i took note of about the bridges, they cannot be constructed where there is a ladder or a tile.  this seems a little odd to me, as wires and both kinds of pipes can be constructed behind these. it is only the bridges that are not allowed to be constructed as such.

Lavatory/showers:  I want to make a suggestion for these as an alternative to using a pump.  what about the possibility of using gravity to feed water through pipes.  granted I have not tested to see if this is already the case, but I will most likely test this very soon to see if it does work that way. what i mean by this is, if you have a pocket of water over head and you construct one of these below it.  construct a water intake pipe from over head, leading down into the lavatory/shower and let gravity do the pumping. boom, no pump required.  again, i have not tested if this already works, but think it would be awesome if it does.

Refinement

the only structure here i want to take note of, is the "fertilizer maker".  this seems not helpful in the least.  first off, it takes tier 2 research to obtain when their is a tier 1 structure(compost pile) that produces fertilizer.  more importantly the compost pile takes care of your contaminated dirt from your outhouse, during the early game.  which is a MUST HAVE.  the other thing is fertilizer isn't really used for much of anything currently.  this might change in the future.

Stations/Furniture/Decor

these all appear to have their own specific uses.  the massage table is the currently ONLY way to destress your dupes.  another option would be nice.  the massage table also doesn't feel like it does much.  most of the time, if i need to get a dupe onto the table.  they need to stay on the table for 2 cycles to really remove their stress.

mess tables seem mostly useful for wrangling your dupes into eating where you want. often I find my dupes grabbing food, only to run to the complete opposite side of the base to actually eat the food. not completely sure why they behave this way, but it is frustrating.

 

General Game mechanics/ Dupe shenanigans

I have noticed some general dupe behavior mechanics that seem off to me.  as i just mentioned their eating habits seem quite odd to me, not sure why they have to run to the opposite side of the base to eat their food.  they definitely aren't the smartest builders either, as on multiple occasions I have had dupes build other dupes heads into a tile. murderous little guys these dupes are.  they usually happens when trying to dig and build in close proximity.  one dupe is down below digging. while there is a dupe right above constructing a tile in the space the others head is sitting, who will carelessly complete his take, encasing the others head in a tile and suffocating him/her.  i have noticed an odd movement of dupes over newly constructed tiles, this is usually immediately after a tile is created.  they will step down into the tile, where there used to be an empty space(even though there isn't anymore).  my guess is this is due to their pathing calculations.  they had previously determined their path before the tile was finished and only correct it after they had magically ghosted into the tile. (again this only ever happens immediately after a tile has been made.  once the tile has been there for a little, they no longer calculate it as being an empty space.)  maybe somehow make them aware of tiles that are currently under construction?

some dupes just like it dirty?  i have seen some dupes that will go into an area with toxic gas to complete a task.  the dupe then goes idle, because i have not queued any further tasks.  instead of moving out of the toxic area and into a more breathable area, they are perfectly happy to sit in the toxic gas walking back and forth.

dupes would make the worst delivery drivers. i often find dupes delivering water or algae to a machine.  they will gather only a tiny bit of resources for the machine and deliver it. then go back for another tiny bit of resources and deliver.  its like if you ordered Chinese food and the driver brought you just the rice, then 5 minutes later your wantons, then 5 minutes later your chicken and so on.  would be nice if they would gather up a larger amount of resources before delivering. either that, or if its a matter of there being enough available to pick up, have them do some other task until there is a larger amount ready for them to pick up. like the deliver driver waiting for your entire order of Chinese to be ready, before taking it to you.

dupes aren't the best gardeners or janitors.  I have noticed a lapse in dupes willingness to harvest, sweep, and mop.  even if I use any of these 3 actions at a priority of 9,  they will still go deliver/construct/generate power/dig, just about any other action before getting to the harvest/sweep/mop action.  even if the other actions are only set to priority 5. only i think there is a rare small bug with the sweep command.  every so often when i click and drag to sweep, a dupe will be inside the box i make and the dupe will have a sweep icon added to him. which is kinda funny.  i don't think it hurts anything.  just the dupe has a sweep icon on him following him around.

Well my brain has finally run out of steam on thoughts about the game so far.  I have definitely been enjoying the game and look forward to seeing the space frontier expanded in the future. I guess i should have posted sooner, so as to not pile so much info into one spot XD (sorry again to the moderator looking over this, feel free to move it to a place on the forums that might fit this post.  i wasn't sure where to post as i had so much i wanted to talk about)  keep up the awesome and fun work guys   Maybe soon i will post up some screen shots of my base to the base forums.

 

[littled3mon]

oh, i just remembered a couple things.

Priority levels

for the most part priority levels are nice, but there are a few things that seem off.

Statues :decor statues have a priority level still attached to them after they have been constructed and sculpted. so.... the dupes have to sit and consider the statue to receive its decor bonus? not sure why the statue has a priority level still at that point.

potted plant: same as the statues. after it has been constructed and a seed is planted. it still maintains a priority level stat.

painted pictures: same thing here. they maintain a priority level even after being painted.

I mostly bring this up, because i have a feeling it might be mucking up the dupes ability to calculate what job they are supposed to be doing next as these structures are being tossed into the equation when they don't need to be.

sweep/mop/harvest:  these actions once queued are the opposite of the above.  if you queue these actions and go into the prioritize menu. the priority levels are not listed and cannot be adjust for these actions.

I believe that this might be making it hard for the dupes to figure out what jobs/actions they should be doing next.

[littled3mon]

Third times the charm. forgot about my little note pad of things i noticed that could be adjusted/changed that i wrote down so i wouldn't forget them.

- visual interaction of dug up materials and plants.  dug up materials will visually cover up plants, which can make it confusing when you are trying to build something in that square.  possibly push the plant to the front and have the dug up materials behind the plant, so that you can visually see why you cant build there.

- the option to flip/rotate more buildings.  specifically the buildings that have inputs and outputs. so many times i have to make weird bends and turns in pipes in order to accommodate where the intake and output is on the building. easy fix, as this is already an action for pipe/wire bridges(hotkey o).  just allow other buildings to be flipped/rotated. (lavatory, gas pump, liquid pump, shower, bio distiller, hydrogen generator, water filter, electrolyzer, air scrubber)

- algae receive a boost from a light source, why not plants too?  give plants in planter boxes a growth boost from a light source?

- the outhouse "fullness meter" seems to have a slight refresh bug.  after it is cleaned, the visual "fullness meter" does not reset to empty until it is used.  once it has been used after cleaning, the visual indicator will reset.

- buildings that produce heat, still produce heat even once they are disabled.  i mostly noticed this with the two research stations, as most the other buildings i did not disable that often.  also the research stations are the more relevant heat producers out of structures.  if you disable these buildings they are still showing as extremely hot.  have buildings cool down if disabled?

[Pink_Infatuation]

You can prioritize sweep/mop/harvest, although personally it doesn't help a lot. When you click the button on the bottom right before you command them to actually sweep anything, a number scale will pop up below the button you pressed- you can then click nine, then click what you want harvest/whatever and usually they take it as priority 9. 

The reason you can't prioritize it afterwards is probably just because it would create too much clutter if you're building things and there's like 5 layers of actions required on one spot. I still think it should be tinkered with though

[littled3mon]

yea, you have a point that it could be cluttered.  I just think it would be nice to some how know that it does actually have a priority level, as you cant really tell.  mostly do to me having issues getting dupes to actually perform sweep/mop/harvest.  even when assigning these at priority 9, they will not do them.  only after turning down other jobs to priority 4 or lower do they seem to actually do these actions. 

i did see someone post up mentioning about being able to set priority levels for jobs. like within the dupe jobs menu. not only can you decide what jobs you want them to do and not do, but also give a priority level to the jobs for that dupe.  so your sweeper or energy generator for example could have those jobs set to a priority of 9 and you could lower the others.  i think this might be a viable option.

[littled3mon]

so, I figured i would continue to add my own thoughts to this thread so that i keep all my feedback in one area.

Prioritize menu

air deodorizer: one new thing i noticed that could be adjusted in the area of prioritizing things.  air deodorizers do not have an option to give it a priority level, even though it requires sand delivered to it for it to keep functioning.  i feel this ends up affecting my dupes efficiency, because i cannot lower the priority of keeping it running.  mainly because later in the game i find it necessary to have several air deodorizers going in different areas.  so my dupes are spending lots of time delivering sand when its not really needed. 

maybe add the option of setting a level at which point they should refilled.  kind of like the manual generators have for charging a battery.  set a percentage of empty, before they go to give it more sand.

not sure if it was in the most recent update, but i did notice that my dupes are now harvesting/sweeping/mopping better.  its no longer as much of a struggle to get them to perform these task.  I didn't see it in the update notes, but it there was an adjustment to this, THANK YOU! it helps so much.

chlorine gas:  I just realized today that there is literally no way to get rid of chlorine gas.  the air deodorizers only filter contaminated air into air, but does not do anything for chlorine.  at least it doesn't seem to, nor does the tool tip say that it does if it does actually filter chlorine.  it would be nice if there was some way to filter chlorine.  currently I just do my best to avoid letting it into my colony.

 

[littled3mon]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but i have seen it happen twice now.  if you try to use the "move to" command for a dupe and then right click to cancel the command.  it leaves behind the marker of where you were going to move them and it will not go away.