After playing, game seems intended to not conserve matter -- Major flaw if so IMO

[Crimeo]

Hi, I watched a few let's plays of this, and was really excited by the concept of a new Klei equilibrium strategy/logistics game. The theme of the game jumps right out at you very quickly as "fluid dynamics in a closed system" which is pretty awesome and novel.

I was very disappointed therefore to find out that the game seems to be intentionally designed to NOT be a closed fluid dynamics system, and I'd like to strongly suggest this be changed in later development. The core concept of a cave system with fluid management and balancing (which is what the game is mostly advertised as, and seems to be aimed at at surface glance, and which is the coolest most innovative concept it seems to pursue at first) should be conservation of mass. 

And this is pretty flagrantly violated, it turns out, which undermines that core concept. In an alpha release, I'm not worried about things like small rounding error bugs causing mass to disappear in small fractions in some functions (those should be fixed too, but whatever. Alpha). I AM really worried, though, about clearly INTENTIONAL decisions to not conserve mass, such as the duplicants consuming 50x as much oxygen as they exhale CO2 by mass!!! That's not a bug, that's a decision.

And one that seems to very much be aimed in the wrong direction for this game. The obvious goal of the game after playing for even just a few minutes is that you'd want to set up a sustainable loop, but it turns out later on "lol, nope! Impossible." This robs all your satisfaction in the mid to late game when you finally realize it and go "Oh well darn. I can't even do anything one could conceive of as winning without exploiting bugs. I can, at best, twiddle my thumbs until non-renewable resources required due to destruction of mass run out and we all die. Well that sucks."

It'd be like playing Oregon Trail, and there's just a big canyon 80% of the way there that you can't go around, and "oh well, guess you can't make it" or something. 

Please please change this going forward.

[Wormerine]

I think that is a design choice and one I approve of. I find sustainable loops boring. The fact that you always have to look for resources to survive is a perk in my opinion. Forces you to be engaged with the game, thinking on how to expand. It is difficult to say what Klei has in mind long term (victory condition?, final research allowing you to move to new world?, just how long you can survive?.)  Knowing Klei they will allow for some more fogiving way to play it if you just want to sandbox it. I am sure there is A LOT yet to come.

[awaymsg]

@Wormerine i cremeo is right and the sustainable loop should be something that can be achieved in the endgame but very hard to do (like you'd have to build/create contraptions that allow you to convert different types of matter and survive long enough to build it, kind of like what people are doing with steam purification). a game based on conservation of mass would also be really cool and novel.

[Crimeo]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

I think that is a design choice and one I approve of. I find sustainable loops boring. The fact that you always have to look for resources to survive is a perk in my opinion. Forces you to be engaged with the game, thinking on how to expand. It is difficult to say what Klei has in mind long term (victory condition?, final research allowing you to move to new world?, just how long you can survive?.)  Knowing Klei they will allow for some more fogiving way to play it if you just want to sandbox it. I am sure there is A LOT yet to come.

That's only if you do it badly and make a sustained loop EASY.

"Sustained" is in no way synonymous with "easy." Notice that humans in general have in real life despite far more advanced tech than oxygen not included and no artificial external constraints, have not managed to achieve anything near sustainability. The closest we got were bio domes that stil took in huge amounts of external energy in the form of sunlight, and were still unsuccessful anyway IIRC. Or the international space station which despite many countries and our best and brightest and billions of dollars AND external sunlight, still can't even sustain a handful of people without constant supply runs.

So it's not inherently boring nor easy. My point is the game makes most sense given its setting and marketing and so on that the end game/essentially win condition is mayyybe getting a just barely sustainable loop as a player, with MUCH difficulty and full maxxed out technology and MUCH cleverness.

The average player wouldn't have to ever even achieve it, and might not, fully. You could still play it just like now, with a less clever setup and using up resources non-sustainably until you got bored of a colony. But the possibility being there = a proper "end game" that the game clearly suggests in its structure, and that allows high end gameplay for veterans to try for.

As well as trailblazing the first of its kind that would do that AFAIK. Awesome marketing bonus (especially topical in our current energy situation in the world) and a better place in gaming history.

[The_Fez_Guy]

There is a semi loop with routing a water to air thing with hydrogen energy powering it then hooking up a lavatory but you would eventually run out of sand to filter it.

[HaraldB]

I think a big obstacle to more realistic O2/CO2 management right now is how gases seem to not mix within a tile. If dupes breathed out as much co2 as they breathe in oxygen, there would be rather a lot more majority-co2 tiles, which the game would then count as unbreatheable. Likewise it would be quite bothersome if plants could only grow when in a majority-co2 tile. IMO the game obviously needs to have gas mixtures within tiles with the ability to quickly see the percentages of each. I fully expect to see a system like that by the time the game moves to beta, so I try not to be too bothered in the meantime.

But yes, once that is out of the way I hope to see at least near-sustainability (where your cycle is not perfect but you can make limited resources last for months without too much trouble) as early tech for oxygen and mid-to-late tech for water, with true sustainability being non-trivial for oxygen, hard for water and nigh-impossible for food and non-treadmill electricity.