[Feedback] A bit disappointed with OU

[Grimgaw]

Let me start of that the list bug/exploit/QOL fixes and water cooler had me very excited.

The whole germs simulation system seams to me as wasted time though. It's not compelling game play. It's artificial and unfun, perhaps a forced way to delay player from exploring. Adding washbasins around base doesn't create fun for me. Instead of just building a toilet now I need to add another uninteresting building.

It's cool that sickness system got fleshed out, but ultimately it's as boring as current art/decor system - something devs admitted they are unhappy about.

I'm still undecided how I feel about scrapping of part of AU in favour of simplified farming. Having very complicated systems for best food was fun. High risk, high reward is what makes players play.

What got me playing ONI for hundreds of hours and in game cycles is the interplay of building, substances, playing with phase changes etc. I want more buildings/machines/gizmos/upgrades. I want to end up with ever more complex base as cycles pass. 

I hope that's the way devs envision the future of the game.

That's just my 2 cents. Keep up the good work ONI devs!

[Pi2]

1 hour ago, Grimgaw said:

Let me start of that the list bug/exploit/QOL fixes and water cooler had me very excited.

The whole germs simulation system seams to me as wasted time though. It's not compelling game play. It's artificial and unfun, perhaps a forced way to delay player from exploring. Adding washbasins around base doesn't create fun for me. Instead of just building a toilet now I need to add another uninteresting building.

It's cool that sickness system got fleshed out, but ultimately it's as boring as current art/decor system - something devs admitted they are unhappy about.

I'm still undecided how I feel about scrapping of part of AU in favour of simplified farming. Having very complicated systems for best food was fun. High risk, high reward is what makes players play.

What got me playing ONI for hundreds of hours and in game cycles is the interplay of building, substances, playing with phase changes etc. I want more buildings/machines/gizmos/upgrades. I want to end up with ever more complex base as cycles pass. 

I hope that's the way devs envision the future of the game.

That's just my 2 cents. Keep up the good work ONI devs!

Well I too am not to happy with this upgrade, don't get me wrong, I love all the new features like the change in size of the bullets in the gas a liquid pipes, the water cooler, etc... (lots more)  But I am either doing something very wrong or just not getting the hang of it.

I have so many wash basins around now that the dups don't even dig or build any more, and still they are getting sick and P'ing and puking every where.  I have med beds for everyone and with in 10 tiles of bathrooms and fridges, but still they are getting sick basically stopping the whole game play.  Do they have to wait until zero immunity to use the med beds?  It seems so, all I have been doing after 25 cycles is mopping and sanitizing everything.  I haven't had a chance to try out any of the cool new stuff, I am basically stuck.  Can any one help? 

[brummbar7]

13 minutes ago, Pi2 said:

Can any one help? 

Let me ask this - in your initial selection, did you prioritize immunity at all?  Or are all your dupes 0 immunity stat?   Also, it sounds like your problem is with food poisoning?  You haven't broken into any slime biomes yet?  Might want to post a picture of your base. 

[Sevio]

18 minutes ago, Pi2 said:

Well I too am not to happy with this upgrade, don't get me wrong, I love all the new features like the change in size of the bullets in the gas a liquid pipes, the water cooler, etc... (lots more)  But I am either doing something very wrong or just not getting the hang of it.

I have so many wash basins around now that the dups don't even dig or build any more, and still they are getting sick and P'ing and puking every where.  I have med beds for everyone and with in 10 tiles of bathrooms and fridges, but still they are getting sick basically stopping the whole game play.  Do they have to wait until zero immunity to use the med beds?  It seems so, all I have been doing after 25 cycles is mopping and sanitizing everything.  I haven't had a chance to try out any of the cool new stuff, I am basically stuck.  Can any one help? 

You're still in the learning curve for handling germs, give it a little bit of time. Starting a new colony and trying a new way to handle it from the beginning might work better for you than trying to mend and make do with your existing save that has spiralled out of control.

Specific tips I can give you: Put each outhouse in its own dead end corridor, and make sure there's a wash basin there, with the arrow pointing away from the outhouse. Putting the compost bin behind the outhouse is also good since that's where the germy polluted dirt goes. An example here:

This makes it much less likely for dupes to skip washing their hands after coming out of the outhouse. The polluted water from wash basins is also germy, so wherever you choose to dump it, it's a good idea to have a wash basin there as well. Research Sanitation quickly and switch to Lavatories as soon as you can, they put far less germs on your dupes which helps a lot for those inevitable cases where a dupe slips by the wash basin.

Sticking by these guidelines should get you safely to expanding into your entire starting area and ready to break into the other biomes. Be wary of breaking into a slime biome without precautions, as polluted oxygen is an excellent carrier for the slimelung that lives there. Airlocks and gas filters will help keep your base from getting slimelung infested, and try not to store slime inside your base. Good luck!

[Pi2]

I didn't know you had to dump the wash basins, how do you go about doing that?  I guess I will figure it out, and yes, I opened the bionome, I usually do that right away to start a coal generator.  So you keyed on some good points, I will start again only move out a bit slower this time.

 

[brummbar7]

27 minutes ago, Pi2 said:

I didn't know you had to dump the wash basins, how do you go about doing that?  I guess I will figure it out, and yes, I opened the bionome, I usually do that right away to start a coal generator.  So you keyed on some good points, I will start again only move out a bit slower this time.

Yes, when their fresh water is used up, the wash basins drop a jug of polluted water on the ground, full of germs, that starts offgassing into polluted oxygen.  You need to have a liquid DE-bottler, for them to empty the PW into.  Remember to select the type of water you want it to empty, or it won't work.

The general effect of this update is to indeed slow down expansion into slime biomes.  In theory anyway.  Breaking into a slime biome without proper preparations is asking for trouble.

[Pi2]

2 minutes ago, brummbar7 said:

Yes, when their fresh water is used up, the wash basins drop a jug of polluted water on the ground, full of germs, that starts offgassing into polluted oxygen.  You need to have a liquid DE-bottler, for them to empty the PW into.  Remember to select the type of water you want it to empty, or it won't work.

The general effect of this update is to indeed slow down expansion into slime biomes.  In theory anyway.  Breaking into a slime biome without proper preparations is asking for trouble.

Ok, thanks for that bit of info, that alone should make a big difference, and I will keep away from the biomes until I get one of those ore cleaner things up and running, so it seems it is not a bit thing to have a bit of chlorine gas floating about now.  I did notice that the biomes are much farther away when you start the game now, and that would explain it, I think I was trying to do too much too fast, many thanks you guys for the very helpful advice, I am at cycle 12 now and all is well.  

Thanks for saving the fun !!!!

 

[brummbar7]

17 minutes ago, Pi2 said:

I will keep away from the biomes until I get one of those ore cleaner things up and running

Be aware, that one ore scrubber will only clean 500,000 germs, then the dupe moves on.  Your mined slime will typically have over 1 million germs on a given chunk, and I've had occasions with 2 million.  So one scrubber will probably not be enough.

[Tml90]

30 minutes ago, brummbar7 said:

Be aware, that one ore scrubber will only clean 500,000 germs, then the dupe moves on.  Your mined slime will typically have over 1 million germs on a given chunk, and I've had occasions with 2 million.  So one scrubber will probably not be enough.

Like WHAT!? I haven't even played this update yet, but that is insane. I don't want to wash f* slime. That's just completely retarted and doesn't sounds fun at all. This whole sick system is ruining a great game. I don't want to micro-manage germs on that level. This is a great engineering/science/psysics game they are ruining with boring tasks.

[Ciderblock]

1 hour ago, Tml90 said:

Like WHAT!? I haven't even played this update yet, but that is insane. I don't want to wash f* slime. That's just completely retarted and doesn't sounds fun at all. This whole sick system is ruining a great game. I don't want to micro-manage germs on that level. This is a great engineering/science/psysics game they are ruining with boring tasks.

Then don't bring slime into your base if you don't need it. I never ran a bio distiller in TU or AU, I don't see much reason to start now. My one concern is that IIRC gold amalgam pretty much exclusively spawns in toxic biomes...and you do want to have that for certain purposes (pumps going in boiling water, thermoregulators, liquid tepidizers, etc.)

[brummbar7]

2 hours ago, Tml90 said:

Like WHAT!? I haven't even played this update yet, but that is insane.

Ya, I mean, nobody is forcing you to bring the slime in.  You can distill the slime, or farm mushrooms, or put slime storage lockers, outside the base core.  You don't *have* to bring it inside.  The name of the ore scrubber is a little misleading.  It will scrub anything the dupes carry by it (except bottles of liquid?) not just metal ore.  Ore scrubbers are relatively maintenance-free, given that they use up an otherwise useless resource, and do not output any bad byproducts.  They just take up a lot of space.   Some people are freaking out perhaps a bit more than they need to over some of the new stuff.  Just because it's there doesn't necessarily mean its mandatory.  Any more than algae terrariums, hydrofans, or microbe mushers are mandatory.  You just have to look at the new mechanics, and consider how best to adapt your base to them.  I don't necessarily agree with all the choices that were made in the update, but I do like that it forces one to reconsider their base design, and not just mindlessly continue the same practices from the Ag Update.  I'd suggest trying it, and not necessarily just going off the word of a few extremely vocal members of the community.  I do think it still needs adjustment, but I think it will get there.  I do kind of hope it doesn't take 6 weeks though.

[Coolthulhu]

Good:

• Simpler farming means less tedium. That 5 degree temperature requirement was a pain.
• Sleets are no longer free food
• Water cooler, though it is only really useful to prepare coolant for generators and to move massive amounts of heat, as there are no liquids as good as hydrogen. It can make steam without exploits.
• The new shroom "plant" gets rid of slime, stacks well in fridges, doesn't suck
• Bleach stone stopped being useless
• No more gathering water by hand
• Fridges kill slimelung on food by low temperature. It's cool and also gives them a role not covered by CO2 pits.
• The UI additions

Bad:

• Once infected with slimelung, there is only one course of action: let the dupe rest. No choice here, can't wait it out, can't have the dupe just work slower - the death clock and lack of passive healing means rest is the only option.
• Stopping future slimelung infections is easy: just spam deodorizers. No other way is as good.
• Stacked pO2 over polluted water still not fixed, despite being "buffed" here. I really hope it isn't treated like a feature, because it would be a really ****ty one. Slimelung kinda relies on it to have the pO2 to spread to, which is extra bad.
• Food poisoning spreads through water, but water doesn't get on food in any way. I didn't get a single food poisoning infection despite playing with weak immune systems on my first try.
• Germ populations mechanics are wonky. Overpopulation doesn't depend on mass, meaning low-pressure pO2 is most dangerous.
• Sleets are useless now
• Lice now trivialize calories like old sleets
• Strict atmospheric requirements mean lots of "dancing" (dead<->alive) plants when someone farts/opens door
• Light/darkness requirements for plants change nearly nothing.
• The whole idea of the bottler. Just make everything use pipes.
• There is too much chlorine in the mapgen. It is still nearly useless. Chlorine geyser = uselessness overload.
• The ruins are an eyesore+pathfinding sore, can't be removed, don't add much to the game
• The new mopping (can't mop "deep" water) means anything deeper than a puddle takes extra player effort to clean

[CobraA1]

11 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

• The whole idea of the bottler. Just make everything use pipes.
• The ruins are an eyesore+pathfinding sore, can't be removed, don't add much to the game

I agree with most of what you said. These I will respectfully disagree with.

I do think that starting out with some manual labor and moving towards pipes later is a natural progression. The bottler is a better than the old idea of having the dupes get water from any body of water they happen to find. Now you can control where they can get water from.

From the point of view of the developers, it also simplifies pathfinding a bit, so it's win-win.

The ruins are pretty cool, I'm having some fun finding them. I do agree you should be able to remove them, though.

[Pi2]

Well I have taken everyones advice and restarted a game being mindful of the germs.. etc... at cycle 100 a few dups got sick but recovered, but, to be honest, I would rather give up the new stuff and go back to thermal upgrade, the game is turning into more work and less fun.

Is there a way I can go back to the last release with out steam auto upgrading me back to the outbreak addition?

[TheGCat]

I love the most of the changes in the game, but GEMS are not a good change. It slows u down. It's not a fun part. Its just annoying. I have a Game Save with round about 200 Cycles. One time, i had 10 dupes of 20 with food poisoning .That wasn't funny.

The food part without the gems is just to easy in my opinion. 

- Instead of spam mealwood (-3) or meallice (-2) u should spam fried mushrooms with a quality of +1. The easiest plant with a high quality level. Carbon dioxide and a dark place plus slime ? NO PROBLEM. The most of the map is dark. That isn't a requirement. The only plant that needs light is the bristlebossum. The other are still boring to make.

- The electric grill heats in the ice biome up to 90+ C with an environment temperature of -40 C ? That's incredible

- I love the ruins. But the vending machine give u 1 item and that's it ? Disappointing. The locker, okay, one item, but the food machine just one thing. The graphic for this machine shows u ~9 food items, but u get just 1 ? And the machine doesn't recharge.Disappointing.

- The Aqua Cooler doesn't work for me. I build it in the ICE Biome and feed it with 56 C Water. The machine itself is  overheating to 296 C (environment temperature of -45 C 2KG Oxygen) and taken damage. Don't know how is that possible. But after that, i ignore the machine.

- The Ore Scrubber just works in the early game. I saw at the beginning few people clean the ore. But now, at cycle 200, no one use it anymore. Don't know why.

- The Game performance is horrible. Worse as the previous update. But, why i say that, it was clear for all... Adding GEMS that require more CPU Power isn't a optimization, its a degradation.

[Mjello]

6 hours ago, Pi2 said:

Well I have taken everyones advice and restarted a game being mindful of the germs.. etc... at cycle 100 a few dups got sick but recovered, but, to be honest, I would rather give up the new stuff and go back to thermal upgrade, the game is turning into more work and less fun.

Is there a way I can go back to the last release with out steam auto upgrading me back to the outbreak addition?

In steam under game->beta. There is an archive branch. You can try that

[Mjello]

12 minutes ago, DustFireSky said:

The Aqua Cooler doesn't work for me. I build it in the ICE Biome and feed it with 56 C Water. The machine itself is  overheating to 296 C (environment temperature of -45 C 2KG Oxygen) and taken damage. Don't know how is that possible. But after that, i ignore the machine.

 

The aqua cooler is meant to be build under water

[TheGCat]

What the hell ? U must feed the Water Cooler with Water via pipes and it must be under water ? Isn't logic. The Water Heater is still a heater. Place it in Water and that's it.  But the cooler need both ? Stupid as hell.

[Ciderblock]

58 minutes ago, DustFireSky said:

What the hell ? U must feed the Water Cooler with Water via pipes and it must be under water ? Isn't logic. The Water Heater is still a heater. Place it in Water and that's it.  But the cooler need both ? Stupid as hell.

The water in the pipe gets cooled. The heat that was in it gets dumped into the machine itself. Liquid has extremely high heat capacity per mass and extremely high mass. Consequently there is too much of this heat for gas to cool it (probably, except maybe for supercooled hydrogen). So instead you use liquid.

Thermoregulators have had the same problem since TU, but since it's gases the actual amount of heat energy was not so bad, so that gas cooling would work.

Think of this as a feature, not a bug: there is probably a way to make aquatuners cool water from geysers and use the heat to boil polluted water.

[Reaniel]

21 hours ago, Pi2 said:

I have so many wash basins around now that the dups don't even dig or build any more, and still they are getting sick and P'ing and puking every where.  I have med beds for everyone and with in 10 tiles of bathrooms and fridges, but still they are getting sick basically stopping the whole game play.  Do they have to wait until zero immunity to use the med beds?  It seems so, all I have been doing after 25 cycles is mopping and sanitizing everything.  I haven't had a chance to try out any of the cool new stuff, I am basically stuck.  Can any one help? 

Food poisoning is actually really easy to deal with.  After a few test runs, you can pretty much have it under control by cycle 2~3.

Basically, you just need to dig to your left (or right), and stop at a wall.  Before you put down any Outhouses, have the water bottler set up and then 1~2 water basins.  Finally, build 1~2 out houses and you're done.  No more food poisoning forever.

Sure, you'll need to dig another hole for the diseased polluted water, but you don't actually have to deal with it until maybe cycle 6 or cycle 7.

Here's a screenshot of my setup in an older save.

 

[Reaniel]

1 hour ago, DustFireSky said:

What the hell ? U must feed the Water Cooler with Water via pipes and it must be under water ? Isn't logic. The Water Heater is still a heater. Place it in Water and that's it.  But the cooler need both ? Stupid as hell.

It's not stupid as hell... They made the Aquatuner into a dual-purpose machine that actually recycles heat (instead of producing new heat into the world).  Think of it as both a Liquid Thermo Regulator AND a liquid Tepidizer that can actually boil water.

[TheGCat]

24 minutes ago, Ciderblock said:

Think of this as a feature, not a bug: there is probably a way to make aquatuners cool water from geysers and use the heat to boil polluted water.

Then the liquid Tepidizer  is just useless. But Okay, u are right.

[Ciderblock]

13 minutes ago, DustFireSky said:

Then the liquid Tepidizer  is just useless. But Okay, u are right.

It depends: is there enough heat already in the world to do what you want? Then you can use thermoregulators/aquatuners to just move it against its gradient. Is there not enough? Then you can use space heaters/liquid tepidizers to create more from scratch. As it happens, the world is quite hot, so moving heat is better, but that could change.

[Ray S]

And I thought handling stress and the original diseases were enough of a problem. I would go with game dynamics and scratch disease all together. Sleep/stress is plenty enough while trying to figure out power/resources/oxygen/heat/cooling/ preserving food/growing food, etc.. a job by itself..lol.

[Ciderblock]

12 minutes ago, Ray S said:

And I thought handling stress and the original diseases were enough of a problem. I would go with game dynamics and scratch disease all together. Sleep/stress is plenty enough while trying to figure out power/resources/oxygen/heat/cooling/ preserving food/growing food, etc.. a job by itself..lol.

Something really needed to be done to make polluted oxygen not functionally equivalent to clean oxygen. In TU and AU, slime biomes were basically just free air with no consequences; you could delay building electrolyzers for 100+ cycles if you wanted.

However, I still don't think a germ system was required. The game already detected a dupe breathing in polluted oxygen or coming into contact with polluted water. It already had a way to make dupes contract diseases through such exposure. Klei could've just made it easier to get infected (it would take 10+ cycles before), made the diseases actually matter (the old diseases were a joke, except for Hypothermia, which had nothing to do with infection), and made the medicines produced by the Apothecary actually useful. That would've worked fine; in particular, it would have given slime biomes some real teeth.