Please fix the science

[trukogre]

Self sustainability is already possible in ONI, which seems to torpedo your argument at a macro level.  I'm not going to read and respond to your entire linked post here, but I'll give one example.  You have dupes drink some liters of water per day for realism.  However, you don't simulate sweat or water evaporation from the lungs, which is where humans actually lose the majority of water when working in warm conditions, such as they do often in ONI.  There are other games which do this, and have machines which recover that water from the air, which is something we also saw in the movie 'the martian' IIRC.  Anyway, sweat and water evaporation doesn't work in ONI physics, because of their gas modeling system.  This is the crux of any attempt to make ONI have more realistic physics.  The first step always boils down to dumping their gas modeling system, because it is super unrealistic.  At some point you have accept that ONI is what it is, and if you want to make a different game, you should make a different game.  There are isolated cases where some small change could be made to improve gameplay and realism, but ONI is too good of a game right now to completely blow it up and start over like this.

[sadovsf]

Guys, this is just a game not a reality simulator. You would probably be surprised how much phisics does not much with reality in games (same way as in holywood). Simply goal is that it looks and plays good not that it muches reality. Making games is about finding simplest approximation of required simulation while it still has desired results. I guarantee you that 100% real like simulator would come out boring as hell. And if you want that wait for 100th generation of personal quantum computer by then home pc will maybe able to simulate reality in real time

[Oozinator]

8 hours ago, sadovsf said:

..I guarantee you that 100% real like simulator would come out boring as hell. ..

Can i have a dazillion in gold, when you are wrong?

[sadovsf]

Yes, there was few games trying that partially and they failed horribly. Movie recorded as things are in reality would be boring as well. This is same thing

[eobet]

Maybe someone has mentioned, but a hydrogen power generator really should produce clean water as a byproduct.

(Especially since the natural gas power generator produces polluted water...)

[Nebbie]

Whenever a game makes a break from reality, it should be for the better. Sometimes, a break from reality makes the game worse.

I think conservation of mass in specifically gas conversions would help gameplay by making gas management more intuitive. Players intuitively expect carbon skimmers and algae terrariums to convert CO2 into O2, but the former just deletes CO2 and the latter always produces O2, but also deletes CO2 if it's around. With all the various gas imbalances, the game ends up having some bizarre pressure problems.

That's not to say it'd be easier with conserving gas conversions, just that it'd be more intuitive because the gas challenges would be primarily turning CO2 back into O2 (bearing in mind your power system is trying to do the opposite) and finding ways to turn gases into non-gases to lower pressure, as opposed to the current gas challenges of spitting out tons of O2 while deleting CO2 from existence and trying to raise the pressure because things just want to be vacuum.

Even if we don't get conservation of gases like that, I'd at least like to see some plants requiring CO2 to eat and generators requiring O2. That would make O2/CO2 management far more interesting than "keep O2 in dupes areas, let CO2 pool down low and skim it".

[Crimeo]

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Anyway, sweat and water evaporation doesn't work in ONI physics, because of their gas modeling system.

Yes, as mentioned in the link, the gas modeling system would be much more fun and interesting AND realistic and open-ended for creative uses if made less ridiculous. It barely even needs to change, just have different gases on different layers and do some partial pressure calculations behind the scenes that players need not worry about if they don't want. UI-wise, though, it's the same as now, with the different viewing filters, but just view each gas alone, then they could easily mix, which is all you need to fix everything about the gas system.

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At some point you have accept that ONI is what it is

Uh, it's a game in development still, and we are currently in the SUGGESTIONS FORUM, i.e. a place that by definition, is where you suggest things that you think should be true other than "what it is" now... "It is what it is" is a nonsense response in any suggestions forum thread.

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ONI is too good of a game right now to completely blow it up and start over like this.

Nobody suggested anything of the sort. I exclusively suggested tweaks only to just the recipes of conversions, all using the existing features in the game, not redoing anything (other than the gas system, which as mentioned above, can be done to fit the current UI theme easily while being fixed), certainly  not "starting over" -- I even kept all the same critters and every single individual machine......???

Mainly, the issue is that the obvious, intuitive end game for a set of colonists locked in a closed system is to fully recycle everything, since nothing can leave or exit. The core concept of the game SCREAMS this as an obvious goal, and yet the game then completely undermines this intuition. And it can be fixed without any major macro level gameplay changes.

If you had a game about Noah's ark, everyone would assume it was about surviving a flood, not having that be true would be weird and jarring. If you had a game about manufacturing microchips, everyone would assume you are supposed to maximize profit, and it would be weird and jarring if you weren't. In a closed system cave, everyone will assume that the goal is to eventually perfectly recycle everything. It's weird and jarring that it isn't, when you find out. That's a problem with FUN, not ultimately realism.

[trukogre]

"Assume it was about surviving a flood." is a nonsense response when we're talking about oxygen in space.  I'm not talking about floods, I'm talking about the simple fact that Klei probably isn't going to completely change their gas system to include mixing . I'm not personally against it, I just don't think it's likely.  We'll see who's right: if they leave the gas system alone I'm right, if they make the game about surviving a flood then you'll be right.

[Nebbie]

I think in the long term, gas mixing has to happen because of the continual frustration of tiny pockets of undesirable gases completely overriding the presence of literal tons of desirable ones. A common particular problem is natural gas and mealwood; an entire plant refusing to grow because there's a single fart on top of it is both ridiculous and actually impactful to gameplay. The especially bad part is that these pockets of tiny gases also come with low pressure, which can halt growth for pressure reasons too (it's real fun when a tiny little sliver of oxygen makes sleet wheat not grow despite having a few tons of CO2).

Also, something I noticed today while playing in relation to gas conversion: the tooltip of algae terrariums is actually wrong. It says that they recycle CO2 into oxygen (they don't, they produce oxygen and optionally consume CO2, and in different amounts). That's not just counterintuitive, that's actively misleading the player. Really hoping the next update cleans up some of the game's nonsense.