Expeditions

[OrderedChaos]

I see a lot of complaints about this game being centered around sustainability, and well, I'm not sure I think it's a great idea to allow the game to contain completely sustainable systems.

If you look at what Klei did with Don't Starve, there was initially a ton of friction towards the lack of being able to build a proper house, and how it was difficult to achieve any sort of long term sustainability without having to go on long expeditions for necessary resources.

Based on the way the map is structured and how they currently dole out resources, it seems obvious to me they are going in a similar direction here, and trying to require players to expand. The yang to that ying though, is that bigger bases are exponentially more difficult to manage, leading most players to build a centralized base and dig out in various directions to get the resources they need. The problem with the current design is that once you dig far enough, there just isn't enough oxygen to go around, not to mention the time it takes for the dupes to go back for food/sleep/air/toilet etc.

I think the game would be very well served if they included some more mechanics that serve expeditions. Craftable oxygen helmets, or possibly temporary outpost facilities that provide air, food, and toiletries that could be deployed out in the world. This sort of thing would encourage players to dig and explore further out without having to actually colonize all that empty space.

I like the idea of forcing the player to explore the map more, but there are too many reasons not to do that right now, which usually leads to me turtling in the base until I've run far too low on resources to survive.

[OrderedChaos]

Another idea I just thought of is teleporters. That could solve the expedition problem without being too OP I think.