Observations after 57 hours played

[saulysw]

I know that plenty of you have played for longer than me, but I thought I'd throw in my observations of the game after playing 57 hours (no AFK). I think I've made about 6 colonies, they have all gotten better with time and my best effort is still going 100+ days (but quite coal dependent, so perhaps not a lot longer). I've only played the current build, so I don't know how it compares to past versions.

Overall -

1. It's awesome! It's also fairly addictive, having caught myself still playing at 2am when I intended to get an early night.
2. The animations and artwork are fantastic. When the dupes eat or go to the toilet, they are adorable.
3. This is really a very cleaver gas/liquid/temp simulator, and complex pathing algorithms. This stuff is notoriously complex, so my hat tip to the programmers..

Stuff that didn't work so well -

1. Water flowing is weird, and mixing dirty/clean water seems to randomly double the volume and wobble about with huge meniscuses, which is a word I never thought I would write. Water seems overly "Sticky".
2. Sometimes when water is being strange, Dupes do odd things like collect 1kg of water, over and over again.
3. A group working on a project can often end up with one of them with their head in a tile, stuck.
4. I had a massage chair set to priority 9 with all other tasks at around 7 or less, and it was ignored completely.
5. If you pause then resume and have added some pipe and cable, the software can hang for a minute or so before resuming.

Suggestions for improvements -

1. If you set something to priority 9, the duplicates should drop EVERYTHING to do it, no exceptions.
2. Setting the priority could be improved. In a separate thread I suggested enabling the numeric keypad so you could type "P" then the number. Defaulting to 5 and not remembering the last setting is also odd.
3. Heavy and normal wire should look different in the overlay
4. The health of a Dupe should be listed in the summary page, so you don't have to click on each one. Actually, there should be a thing like the stress, but for health.
5. I would like to be able to colour tiles to make sections of the base stand out. A colored tile might have a slight decor buff too. Or maybe tiles made of different materials look different?
6. I would like to see in the tech tree some transport options, such as a lift (vertical) or perhaps carts (horizontal). Needing electricity and resources to create of course. Later in the game they run to the end of the map and then run back, wasting a lot of time.
7. Chlorine probably should be used to purify water, and a machine to extract it to liquid from gas. Yes, I know you can probably cool it into a liquid. Sand for air purification is fine. It should be more dangerous to the Dupes, at the moment it is fairly tame. It needs a use.
8. I feel there should be recipes to cook up things to lure mobs into farming areas. Drop them and they move towards it.
9. Needs to be more variety with artworks.
10. There is no sound when you select an sub-option for deconstruct (ie select just deconstruct wire).
11. Random buried artifacts with positive and negative effects would be cool. You could be very creative with this as it is clearly an alien world.
12. I'm on the side that thinks it should be possible to get a fully sustainable base with the right mix of tech and design. I'm not talking about all Dupes 100% puking either.
13. I also like the idea of some sort of end goal, even if it results in a new map, or gathering certain resources to build a final contraption. Having inevitable colony death at the end is somewhat depressing. I just stop playing before that happens.
14. I so want to be able to zoom out even more. Scrolling around becomes more and more of a problem as your base expands.
15. Despite my best efforts, my piping ends up in a bit of a tangle. It would be nice to be able to flip some machines so that the in/out were on the other side. I know some can be rotated with the O key already, but not all.

Stuff I still don't understand -

1. I've seen the map edge, but never dug over to it. I assume it is like bedrock.
2. I've made medicine but don't know if they take it automatically or if I need to assign the pill to a dupe or what.
3. I'm not exactly sure how heat transfer works in pipes, in or out. From what I read, it might be a bit bugged out anyway.

 

Anyway, I hope some or any of this feedback is useful! It is a great game already, and it looks to only get better from here. Happy to discuss anything here.

 

 

[Sicclee]

The only thing I'll mention is that I think indefinite sustainability is possible for sure. You need food, power and water. That's blossoms, hamster wheels, and geysers. As long as you've setup your base properly you should be able to harness all of those pretty well by cycle 150 or so, and if you setup a CO2 freezer the hatches can eat forever, sparing your dupes time. 

Obviously there is a limit to how many dupes can live off of said systems, but I think pushing that limit is the real end game. The real challenges are temperature related, but even those are fairly easily mitigated with proper planning and technique. 

I agree with most of your feedback though, good insight. 

edit: I'll also add that I never had a problem with dupes prioritizing. Coal generators are always 9, as are massage tables, and they seem to utilize both as expected. I'm not a big fan of their failure to take into account the proximity of tasks/materials, and often have to wonder why one dupe is content walking across the map for supplies to build a ladder when there's a dupe a lot closer already and the granite is on the ground in front of the build site. I realize it's 'next available' and probably 'closest material to the dupe at the time of delegation' but sometimes it just doesn't make sense. 

[Kasuha]

30 minutes ago, saulysw said:

This is really a very cleaver gas/liquid/temp simulator, and complex pathing algorithms.

I guess you haven't played for long enough. Both physics simulation and pathfinding has a lot of room for improvements.

57 minutes ago, saulysw said:

I had a massage chair set to priority 9 with all other tasks at around 7 or less, and it was ignored completely.

You have to assign dupes to the table individually. They will un-assign themselves when they get their stress to zero.

58 minutes ago, saulysw said:

If you pause then resume and have added some pipe and cable, the software can hang for a minute or so before resuming.

That may happen even if you didn't do anything at all.

58 minutes ago, saulysw said:

A group working on a project can often end up with one of them with their head in a tile, stuck.

A dupe can build his head into ceiling even alone. Laying out the work so they don't harm themselves is I guess part of the challenge as there is IMO no feasible method to get them working in a way the player considers safe.

1 hour ago, saulysw said:

I'm not exactly sure how heat transfer works in pipes, in or out. From what I read, it might be a bit bugged out anyway.

Pipes are bugged. A medium moving in pipes retains the temperature it had when it entered the pipe while it warms up/cools down the pipe and everything around it. Only when it stops, it starts to change its temperature too, but as soon as it starts moving again, it immediately returns back to its original temperature. It can be (ab)used heavily, such as you can keep all your batteries cold with just one pipe circulating cold water or gas round and round using valve with no power spent.

[TopSloth]

45 minutes ago, Sicclee said:

The only thing I'll mention is that I think indefinite sustainability is possible for sure. You need food, power and water. That's blossoms, hamster wheels, and geysers. As long as you've setup your base properly you should be able to harness all of those pretty well by cycle 150 or so, and if you setup a CO2 freezer the hatches can eat forever, sparing your dupes time. 

Im on cycle 400 and can leave it on while doing other things, it would be 100% self sustainable if dupes auto harvested.

[Kasuha]

2 minutes ago, TopSloth said:

it would be 100% self sustainable if dupes auto harvested

If you give your plants enough time, they'll auto harvest themselves. You just needs more of them.

[TopSloth]

Just now, Kasuha said:

If you give your plants enough time, they'll auto harvest themselves. You just needs more of them.

I have so many already o.o the spaaaaace

[Kasuha]

Just now, TopSloth said:

I have so many already o.o the spaaaaace

I think it's somewhere around 4 bristle blossoms per dupe. If you want space (and upkeep) efficient design, check the image in this post. I filled it with hydrogen at appropriate temperature some 200 cycles ago and it keeps ideal conditions for them ever since. There's just a bit too few of them for my dupes so every once in a while I need to harvest four of them when I get the food alert, then they can go for the whole vegetation cycle (5 harvests) with no manual care.

[TopSloth]

1 minute ago, Kasuha said:

I think it's somewhere around 4 bristle blossoms per dupe. If you want space (and upkeep) efficient design, check the image in this post. I filled it with hydrogen at appropriate temperature some 200 cycles ago and it keeps ideal conditions for them ever since. There's just a bit too few of them for my dupes so every once in a while I need to harvest four of them when I get the food alert, then they can go for the whole vegetation cycle (5 harvests) with no manual care.

I got 14 mouths to feed right now with 35 blossoms and am just making the food quota with everyone set at 1,500 cals a day

[Ciderblock]

3 hours ago, Sicclee said:

if you setup a CO2 freezer the hatches can eat forever, sparing your dupes time.

Can hatches really survive in a room cold enough for solid CO2?

[saulysw]

8 hours ago, Sicclee said:

The only thing I'll mention is that I think indefinite sustainability is possible for sure.

..

I'll also add that I never had a problem with dupes prioritizing. Coal generators are always 9, as are massage tables, and they seem to utilize both as expected. I'm not a big fan of their failure to take into account the proximity of tasks/materials, and often have to wonder why one dupe is content walking across the map for supplies to build a ladder when there's a dupe a lot closer already and the granite is on the ground in front of the build site. I realize it's 'next available' and probably 'closest material to the dupe at the time of delegation' but sometimes it just doesn't make sense.

Sustainability : Yes, I think you are right and I can see it now, even if I have not quite managed it myself yet.

Prioritizing : Totally! Very well said. On thinking about what you wrote I also thought that this could be a very good Dupe stat, "Efficiency". When several jobs are of equal priority, a more efficient dupe would take a fraction of a second longer to work out what is closer and quicker to do first. This would stop them tracking half way across the map just to dig one block, then travel to the other side to dig another, etc. OR, is this "the game"? That is, is the role of the player to only give the dupes jobs to do in such a way as they are efficient? An interesting question - should it play itself if set up correctly, or do you always need a bit of micro-management?

[saulysw]

8 hours ago, Kasuha said:

I guess you haven't played for long enough. Both physics simulation and pathfinding has a lot of room for improvements.

Well, yes, it needs improvement (but see "Efficiency" idea above). Software like Powedertoy (http://powdertoy.co.uk/) show how far particle simulations can go, and it is a long way. Still, there is a lot going on under the hood with ONI, and I still think it is a joy to watch.

 

8 hours ago, Kasuha said:

You have to assign dupes to the table individually. They will un-assign themselves when they get their stress to zero.

Yeah, I did assign the dupe to the table, and it was P9. I watched the said dupe then go off an do P6 and P7 tasks. I know they like to finish what they are doing, but to then take on a new lower priority task is annoying. On reload - the issue seemed to go away and it then behaved itself, so I think it was some sort of bug. Also, I have seen them hop off the table when not at 0%...

[Kasuha]

2 minutes ago, saulysw said:

Yeah, I did assign the dupe to the table, and it was P9. I watched the said dupe then go off an do P6 and P7 tasks. I know they like to finish what they are doing, but to then take on a new lower priority task is annoying. On reload - the issue seemed to go away and it then behaved itself, so I think it was some sort of bug.

Oh right, I know that. There's whole range of issues that can appear after some time playing and get fixed by reloading the game. Currently, reload is the first thing I do when I find something behaving strangely.

[saulysw]

11 hours ago, saulysw said:

Despite my best efforts, my piping ends up in a bit of a tangle. It would be nice to be able to flip some machines so that the in/out were on the other side. I know some can be rotated with the O key already, but not all.

On this point - am I missing some general rule of thumb, like "input is always on the left and output on the right", for machines that can't be rotated? Is it somewhat random? I mostly get caught out by showers, toilets, air purifiers etc. I tend to have two pools of water - one clean and one dirty, and pump between them - so is it best to have clean on the left or the right? 

(Although, I'm wondering if one huge pool full of both might work too. I'm sure it would splash about like crazy)

[Lifegrow]

8 hours ago, Ciderblock said:

Can hatches really survive in a room cold enough for solid CO2?

Make a really tall room, cool your CO2 at the top, and it drops for the hatches to nom  (Or at least that's my approach  )

53 minutes ago, saulysw said:

On this point - am I missing some general rule of thumb, like "input is always on the left and output on the right", for machines that can't be rotated? Is it somewhat random? I mostly get caught out by showers, toilets, air purifiers etc. I tend to have two pools of water - one clean and one dirty, and pump between them - so is it best to have clean on the left or the right? 

(Although, I'm wondering if one huge pool full of both might work too. I'm sure it would splash about like crazy)

Input is normally green, output is normally white - unless it's a filter, in which case the "specified" output is orange.

Keep your pure water separate, if the polluted water starts to surround your pure water on multiple sides, it'll turn that pure water into polluted. See: 

Your feedback all seemed pretty fair and i've pondered a lot of it myself, but do always keep in the back of your mind that it's an alpha and bugs are bugs  

[saulysw]

Oh, I just realized this whole thread should be in the "Suggestions and Feedback" sub forum. If a mod could move it, thanks!