Oil Upgrade: Feedback & Suggestions

[goboking]

Here are my feedback and suggestions on the Oil Upgrade.

Exosuits

I love these things.  They are a bit oxygen-hungry, but they are a great addition to the game.  Them being made from metal doesn't make a ton of sense from an immersion point of view, but I understand why they need to be available before plastics are obtainable.  One suggestion I have is looking at how the Grimy debuff works with the Exosuit.  I had to lock those of my dupes working in suits out of my latrine because they kept running back for showers every time they got dirty.

 

Rooms

Another home run, in my humble opinion.  I've built my bases in ways that resemble places real people would live and work, so I'm already working with tightly organized rooms.  Getting a small bonus for sacrificing efficiency for aesthetics is a nice reward.  I'd love to see this idea expanded upon with new rooms (laboratories, recreational rooms, workshops, kitchens, warehouses, etc).  I would caution you guys to keep the bonuses for rooms small so that they are a carrot and not a stick, though.  I would also recommend labeling anything that qualifies as an industrial machine as such in the tool tip and changing the "one bed' to "one or more beds" to avoid confusion .

 

Medicine

I'm happy to see the Apothecary back in the game.  It is a bit weird that it uses Tinkering instead of Medicine.  Using the latter skill would be  both intuitive and a means of leveling Medicine before we're called upon to care for sick dupes.  I presume more medicines will be added as more diseases are introduced to the game.  We still need a way to sweep and store medicine.  I suggest some type of medicine cabinet that can be placed in Medbays without disrupting the room bonus. 

It would be useful if we could choose who works the Apothecary in the jobs menu.  I do understand how bloated that menu will get if you include an entry for every machine in the game.  With that in mind, perhaps a blanket "Fabricate" job could be included for the Refinery, Apothecary, Textile Loom, etc.  We could then use door access to sort the rest.

 

Sink

Another great addition.  Plumbing for a Wash Basin seemed like a natural progression.  I would like to see it also function as a bottler for whatever liquid is being piped into its intake valve.  This would allow us to have to move away from the manual pumps altogether if we so desire.  The prospect of a fully functioning kitchen is an appealing one.

 

Oil

I may have missed it, but digging a tunnel from one side of the map to the other through the oil biome revealed no oil reserves, meaning I was unable to test the Well Cap.  If these aren't guaranteed to spawn on every map, then oil - which I suspect will be very important to the eventual end-game - will be finite. 

I'm not entirely sold on the numbers (water, power, etc) involved in extracting and refining crude oil, fabricating plastic, and managing heat and other outputs.  As is it is a lot of effort to squeeze out a bit of plastic and petroleum.  Admittedly I haven't played around with it long enough to question the balance of the numbers on any solid ground. 

I'm also unsure if manually running an Oil Refinery is the best way to go.  It's a huge machine that outputs a ton of heat and unbreathable gas, so naturally we'll have it tucked away in the bowels of our bases.  Anyone working in such a place is bound to hate their job with a passion.

 

Miscellaneous Thoughs

* Making the Comfy Bed three tiles wide wrecked the layout of my sleeping quarters, which are naturally designed around beds that are two tiles wide.  

* I hope the graphic used for the Plastic Ladders is temporary.  Right now the disjointed look is weird.

* This is a personal preference issue, but I greatly dislike the new beeping sounds for clicking and un-clicking objects.  It not only pierces the ear, it doesn't gel with the sounds already in the game.

* The Animal Traps being made of plastic means they're coming into use long after they're desired.  I imagine most players have their Hatches (and other animals) sorted by the time they're refining Crude Oil and fabricating Plastic.

 

That's all I've got for now.  I'm having a ton of fun with the Oil Upgrade and look forward to what you guys have in store for us next.

 

[Goatzilla]

I would agree with you on the Animal traps, it would make more sense for them to be made of metal, so you can get them much earlier in the game. 

[goboking]

18 hours ago, Goatzilla said:

I would agree with you on the Animal traps, it would make more sense for them to be made of metal, so you can get them much earlier in the game. 

Metal or minerals would work just fine.  Thematically and especially from a gameplay standpoint, I don't see the justification in requiring plastic for animal traps.

[NurdRage]

19 hours ago, goboking said:

 

Sink

Another great addition.  Plumbing for a Wash Basin seemed like a natural progression.  I would like to see it also function as a bottler for whatever liquid is being piped into its intake valve.  This would allow us to have to move away from the manual pumps altogether if we so desire.  The prospect of a fully functioning kitchen is an appealing one.

 

 

Bottling from the sink? BRILLIANT!

To take it a step further. Maybe we can also empty bottles into the sink. Would be a great way to deal with pesky vomit.

[brummbar7]

I realize current traps don't work for pufts, but assuming they will eventually, I think it would be a bit OP to allow pufts to be so easily relocated.   I think requiring plastic is quite appropriate, assuming pufts will be capturable eventually.  Not to mention slicksters, and who know what else there is to come.

[goboking]

3 hours ago, brummbar7 said:

I realize current traps don't work for pufts, but assuming they will eventually, I think it would be a bit OP to allow pufts to be so easily relocated.   I think requiring plastic is quite appropriate, assuming pufts will be capturable eventually.  Not to mention slicksters, and who know what else there is to come.

Because of the way I handle slime storage and decontamination, Puffts are Kill On Sight for me.  Because of that, I can't really argue one way or the other about the balance issues around capturing them earlier in the game.  I do know that Hatches aren't as useful once we've cleaned our base and progressed from coal to natural gas for power, making late-game traps far less useful as far as Hatches are concerned.

[brummbar7]

@goboking Agreed on the hatches.  I always build my coal gens at the bottom of the base so it's fairly easy to herd them there, well before plastics.  I actually use coal continuously though - I don't play super-long-time-scale bases, and there's plenty of coal on the map to last a very long time.  It might be good if there were a lower grade of trap that only works on hatches and maybe shine bugs, while the plastic ones work for other resource-useful mobs, like pufts morbs and slicksters.

[Grimgaw]

On 25/09/2017 at 11:45 PM, goboking said:

Making the Comfy Bed three tiles wide wrecked the layout of my sleeping quarters, which are naturally designed around beds that are two tiles wide.

Just would like to point out that they're 4 tiles wide.

[goboking]

Just now, Grimgaw said:

Just would like to point out that they're 4 tiles wide.

That seals it; my dupes will continue to sleep in their rickety old cots and they'll like it!

Thanks for the clarification. 

[goboking]

One final note.  This one's purely personal preference, but I liked the Pharma Chamber better as a Rejuvenator.  It looks like a stasis chamber that could accelerate tissue regeneration.  More than that, though, late game germs are virtually non-existent if you've been diligent in your cleaning stations and waste storage.  But now that we have the risk of scalding with all these very hot industrial machines, the ability to rapidly restore that lost health would go a long way towards keeping a burned dupe on his feet.

[LeadfootSlim]

Rooms are great and I'd love to see more, such as;

-Private Shower: 1x shower, 1x door in and out, reduces stress while showering

-Storage Room: Storage units and no furniture/stations/industry, reduce negative thoughts from lack of decor

-Science Lab: 2x each of Research and Advanced Research stations, increase research speed or decrease stress while researching

-Kitchen: 1x each of Grill, Fridge, Microbe Musher, +cooking speed and/or reduce disinfect times in kitchen

One thing that's bugging me, however, is that cold biomes seem to be super far away and rare now. I have to dig through so many hot biomes to find one that my base is practically cooked by the time I can even begin building a cooling apparatus.

[Qarnage]

On 26/09/2017 at 2:06 PM, NurdRage said:

Sink

Another great addition.  Plumbing for a Wash Basin seemed like a natural progression.  I would like to see it also function as a bottler for whatever liquid is being piped into its intake valve.  This would allow us to have to move away from the manual pumps altogether if we so desire.  The prospect of a fully functioning kitchen is an appealing one.

 

I really like this idea as well, it would be the natural progression to efficiency optimisation for rooms like the kitchen, or optimisation for rooms with stuff that requires water (only thing that comes to my mind is Algae Terrarium, but there could be more future uses).

[Executive_Lurker]

On 9/25/2017 at 5:45 PM, goboking said:

This is a personal preference issue, but I greatly dislike the new beeping sounds for clicking and un-clicking objects.  It not only pierces the ear, it doesn't gel with the sounds already in the game

but... but.. that was one of my favorite additions

[Executive_Lurker]

On 9/26/2017 at 1:06 PM, NurdRage said:

Bottling from the sink? BRILLIANT!

To take it a step further. Maybe we can also empty bottles into the sink. Would be a great way to deal with pesky vomit

This. I rushed sanitation to get the sink thinking this was already a feature.

I mean intuitively that is how it should work, I cant stand having unsealed septic tanks.

[Emptymess]

About the exosuits I would also add : They should have a recharge threshold at which they can be used (0% - 100%) because a lot of my dupes just use the suit for like 30 sec then put it back and they have to wait idling in my base for the air to go back through the pipes to charge it, which is very long.

I also think one exosuit should be assigned to one station and return to that one only, because the switching makes my dupes always come back to one station which is already full and empty the other one (right one on the picture) , and I have to request an exosuit like every 1-2 min.

In the meantime if you want to avoid this problem I had to set the doors to 5 dupes maximum so they all enter/leave through the same gate each time.

Also, the exosuit checkpoint could also be a door-like mechanism, and an option should allow people out without having to disable it entirely. Otherwise it really is a blessing, my dupes are no longer scorched all the time.

 

EDIT : I would also add that it'd be awesome if they switched between exosuit / sweater automatically so that they can put their nice shirts when they get home