Expert Research Ideas

[Falcore555]

I have over 300 hours on ONI and I've come up with many ideas that would add a lot more diversity in gameplay.

First thing is there needs to be a station that makes expert research that requires materials that you will only have an abundance of later in the game.

1) Hostile aliens could be added that set up small bases that house materials and other useful things.  After X cycles they could attack your base which you would need to fight off making the combat skill important.  Along with this there could be a blacksmith, or equivalent, that can craft an assortment of weapons and armor or even tools that improve certain skills (digging, building, etc), each one requiring different levels of skills such as strength or science.

2) Speaking of Science, after the research is finished it becomes useless.  If there was a station that required Science to operate such as a microchip manufacturing station that could be implanted in other machines to give different properties but would require periodic tuning from science dupes, that would make scientists an important late game asset.  A couple ideas for upgrades are resource efficiency, light production, and heat sink.

3) With all of this there would need to be an Expert crafting material which is where the Smelter comes in.  I'm sure this will be added eventually but I felt I should still include it in my list.

4) Chlorine needs a way to deal with it.  I suggest something like the deodorizer but instead of sand it would require a crafted filtration medium that changed chlorine gas to bleach stone.  With this the hand sanitizer would actually be useful since it is avoided for the most part because of the chlorine it emits.

I have other ideas but I would like to see what everyone thinks of these before mentioning them.