Should animal trap and release point require plastic ?

[Lumina]

Hi,

So i tested a little the new update. And i'm not sure the animal trap and the release point should ask for plastic. Because I feel that theses options would make more sense if they are available more early, when it will be more useful, rather than later when the benefit of having an animal at the right spot will be less significant.

I don't have a problem with the research itself (because it create choice to make), just the plastic cost, because you can't have plastic without a working end game system with crude oil and all, and the others end game research.

So you don't have real choice of strategy at the moment.

 

Of course, since plastic has limited use at the moment, it would be better if the change happen with the addition of new uses for plastic.

 

 

[Exa]

I totally agree with this.

Traping animals should be very early in the game

other options like breed them or mutate them could be later

[Saturnus]

The uses for plastic is poorly implemented at the moment. Given it's antiseptic properties basically everything that would normally come in contact with germs should have the option to be made from plastic, like outhouses, lavatories, wash basin, sink, showers, grill, fridge etc etc. On the other hand I really see no need for petroleum generator, or animal trap to require plastic at all.

[chemie]

56 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

The uses for plastic is poorly implemented at the moment. Given it's antiseptic properties basically everything that would normally come in contact with germs should have the option to be made from plastic, like outhouses, lavatories, wash basin, sink, showers, grill, fridge etc etc. On the other hand I really see no need for petroleum generator, or animal trap to require plastic at all.

This.  As currently implemented, I think you skip plastic all together.

Slickers will be nice for CO2 removal is about all the petroleum brings right now.  Pet gens require too much power/water, even after today's tweaks

[brummbar7]

I disagree.   Animal traps should *not* be early game.  At least, not any version that moves pufts and morbs and slicksters.  Some low tier version for just hatches and shine bugs - fine.  Hatches are already easy enough to herd and shine bugs are useless.    The thing is, pufts and slicksters are both easy-mode ways to get rid of undesirable things, and not only get rid of them but turn them into desirable things.   morbs straight up produce PO2 for nothing, and if you can put them in a room with pufts easily, well gg.   At least right now, if the player wants to take advantage of them in the early game they have to either do a ton of tedious herding, or just deal with them where they're at using a lot of piping.  I think these are reasonable costs considering the benefits.  If you let the player be able to trap and move them in the early game and so get them all in one room easily, then you've just removed a challenging element from the game, and challenging elements are already few enough as it is.   It's already bad enough with the underwater morb exploit, and being able to produce as many of them as you like from outhouses (which imo should go away).  It has nothing to do with logic, it's about game balance.  I would assert that the interesting and fun part of this game is machinery and mechanical systems, and having easy-mode mob collection in the early game will dilute that.

[Lumina]

Someone mentioned early-game, but my suggestion would be more about mid-game.

It's not really about logic, it's more about gameplay and choices : so of course, the most interesting animals could require better traps (and so plastic) to capture.

[Lifegrow]

Animal traps being late game makes the most sense to me to be fair - let's face it, most of your early game game base is about surviving/exploring/mapping out your space so that you can set up your bigger systems, i.e. expanding your power setup, making better food sources, or whatever your personal goals are.

For me, the ability to move my hatches is something i'd only need late game when i'm "prettifying", and relocating them to either my fertilizer synth area, or somewhere closer to coal gens (which probably aren't even being used all that much any more...

I have little need to move slicksters early, and instead just expose them for my co2 trap, I doubt i'd bother relocating them at all - rather i'd use traps only for consolidating them all into roughly the same area.

Considering morbs can be spawned anywhere, I have no urgent need to move those either. I normally murder any I find in the wild ASAP to stop them emitting slime lung tbh.

[Byste]

14 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

For me, the ability to move my hatches is something i'd only need late game when i'm "prettifying", and relocating them to either my fertilizer synth area, or somewhere closer to coal gens (which probably aren't even being used all that much any more...

I like getting a hatch stuck in each of my bathrooms early game. They're +decor and they eat up polluted dirt and polluted water that drop from the outhouses and wash basins.

[Lifegrow]

3 minutes ago, Byste said:

I like getting a hatch stuck in each of my bathrooms early game. They're +decor and they eat up polluted dirt and polluted water that drop from the outhouses and wash basins.

I do exactly the same buddy  I also put 2 compactors in the same area - one for rotten food, one for polluted dirt. I always over produce meal lice, so when they rot I want them dealt with

 

[Lumina]

25 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

which probably aren't even being used all that much any more...

Yes, it's the point : if it's already too late when you are able to cacht hatch, maybe it should happen a little sooner. The thing is, with the plastic requirement, you don't have that much space for choice anyway.

[Lifegrow]

5 minutes ago, Lumina said:

Yes, it's the point : if it's already too late when you are able to cacht hatch, maybe it should happen a little sooner. The thing is, with the plastic requirement, you don't have that much space for choice anyway.

But arguably you'd have plenty of early game coal just from mining - you wouldn't need to start farming it hard until later game. I use hatches early as garbage disposal - I don't really start feeding them until I start cleaning up my world - why sweep things twice  

[The Plum Gate]

There is no "late game" just yet - there is no story to define what late game really is supposed to be - just research that's far off from the root of the tree. I think having them where they are in the tree is nicely done. The materials, not so much. The better solution would be to have different traps for things that fly, and things that follow a ground path. Metal or ore for the ground traps, and plastic for the flying things. The same delivery point could be used for both. This is more in line with the the first and last encounters paradigm. It's especially obvious that they want us to encounter hatches since they include one in the template for the starting base.

[Lumina]

I agree that we don't know the final late game. But at the moment, producing plastic will require some time and is more the actual end game than the beginning.

15 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

I think having them where they are in the tree is nicely done. The materials, not so much.

Yes. I don't have problem with the tree. I just feel like plastic isn't the best choice, at least plastic for all trap. Because there is no reason at the moment to choose to do this research before having plastic, which is a little sad. I would prefer choice like "if i do this research now, i can trap this mob here now, i will have to wait for plastic for others mobs, is it useful ?" and in some games the answer will be yes (because it's more convenient), in some games the answer will be no (because others choices are better).

[thewreckedangle]

16 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

The better solution would be to have different traps for things that fly, and things that follow a ground path. Metal or ore for the ground traps, and plastic for the flying things

this

[brummbar7]

5 hours ago, Lumina said:

Yes. I don't have problem with the tree. I just feel like plastic isn't the best choice, at least plastic for all trap. Because there is no reason at the moment to choose to do this research before having plastic, which is a little sad. I would prefer choice like "if i do this research now, i can trap this mob here now, i will have to wait for plastic for others mobs, is it useful ?" and in some games the answer will be yes (because it's more convenient), in some games the answer will be no (because others choices are better).

I think/hope that right now the research tree is allowed to be very compressed in time - still only takes a little over 20 turns with research-skilled dupe to do the entire thing.   I would imagine that upon full release the tree will take more time to complete, possibly leading to these scenarios you desire. If the tree does end up being so quick in the final game, that will indeed be disappointing.  For the very reasons you stated.

[Lumina]

At the moment, a longer tree will solve nothing without changes on the material on the trap/trap release point or more trap options. There is no point (for me) in a longer tree if there is no reason anyway to choose one option before another because anyway you'll need the second first.

 

Also, the tree could of course take more time to complete, but it's something that must be done with caution, not only when taking in account the "using a 10 learning research dupe and focusing on research", because at the moment, not everyone is completing research in 20 turns. I'm beyond cycle 100 and i still have research to do. I'm sure i'm not alone.

Too many research would lead people to feel forced to have a very good research dupe, when at the moment, you can play with ok dupes and still have fun and progress.

 

So yes, more option so choices will matter and be more present, sure. Just not too much, if someone choose to have a very efficient learning dupe and focusing on learning, it's normal that he gains benefit for it.

[Botaxalim]

maybe should check this, the true intention of using animal traps for end game
 

yeah the starting box after pick 3 start dupe, should included some plastic, since we need catch the hatch

[Byste]

I've got a cycle 40 base with 6 dupes now, 6th was very recent addition.

It's not technologically sophisticated at all. The most sophisticated stuff is having plumbing for lavatories and showers, which only recently went up, as you can see from the small quantity of polluted water. You don't need much research at all to get to a base like this.

My resource reserves are quite fine. I have plenty of starting water, and I've wasted quite a bit of it making liceloaf for no particular reason (a lot of it rotted). I've got something like 7 tonnes of algae banked up.

I completed all of my research by like cycle 30ish. I didn't have fancy starting research dupes with 10 learning or whatever... I just used 2 dupes with ~4 learning or something like that.

My point in saying all of this is, I think we're a loooong way away from:

3 hours ago, Lumina said:

Too many research would lead people to feel forced to have a very good research dupe, when at the moment, you can play with ok dupes and still have fun and progress.

The early game is so incredibly gentle that you can always complete all the research you need long before it's necessary. I see no problem with making research more extensive, other than that it's boring after a while. Getting to a point like this with mostly 4 dupes makes cycle 10-30 look almost exactly like this the entire time: 0-1 dupe runs on gerbil wheel, 1-2 dupes do research, 1 dupe is running around doing deliveries, and 1 dupe is cooking or digging or constructing or painting.

There's no need for me to "rush" down all that research either, because as I said, I still have tons of resources, I'm not constrained in any way. So it's very easy to also sit on that research til cycle 100 or whatever, too. We're not havin' a research crisis here.

[Saturnus]

I've always been in favour of making research exploration and progression based instead of just arbitrary and pointless like it is now. I'd like to see that you'd need to find and destruct an abyssalite tile before you can research insulation to make insulated tiles, or you have to have had an air vent overpressure before you can make high pressure air vents. Stuff like that actually makes the research seem worthwhile and credible as opposed to how it is now. 

[Michi01]

On 28.9.2017 at 2:16 PM, brummbar7 said:

Animal traps should *not* be early game.  At least, not any version that moves pufts and morbs and slicksters.  Some low tier version for just hatches and shine bugs - fine.

How about this: The animal relocator requires raw mineral instead of plastic and is moved to Basic Farming (or something branching off of it, perhaps that new branch could lead to animal control instead of it being after Agriculture). Additionally, a new basic trap is added to the same research branch that can only catch hatches and shine bugs and also just requires raw mineral (or a different basic resource).
The current trap remains in the Animal Control tab and still works the same. The basic trap could look similar to the traps in Don't Starve:

[Byste]

7 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

How about this: The animal relocator requires raw mineral instead of plastic and is moved to Basic Farming (or something branching off of it, perhaps that new branch could lead to animal control instead of it being after Agriculture). Additionally, a new basic trap is added to the same research branch that can only catch hatches and shine bugs and also just requires raw mineral (or a different basic resource).
The current trap remains in the Animal Control tab and still works the same. The basic trap could look similar to the traps in Don't Starve:

I very much would like a simple trap for early game creatures that doesn't require plastic. It makes sense to me to be a 2nd tier research branching from basic farming. IDK about catching the pairing of hatches + shinebugs, it makes more sense to me if a trap only works on certain types of creatures -- shinebugs and hatches move quite differently. I could see hatches + morbs being one kind of trap, and then shinebugs + pufts being another type.

[goodtams]

How about having an relatively easy way of making the trap, but feeding the trap bait would be a requirement for catching animals. So catching hatches would require some easy to find/make type of bait, and bait for slicksters would be something more tricky to make (maybe bottled liquid CO2). 

[Cilya]

On 30/09/2017 at 4:42 PM, goodtams said:

something more tricky to make (maybe bottled liquid CO2). 

Liquid C02 is perhaps a bit too hard to make !

[WanderingKid]

I'd just like to chime in with early traps for hatches would make my life a lot easier.  I don't enjoy micro'ing a hatch to a certain place, though I learned how to do it.  Simply snagging them overnight and dropping them where I'd like them would improve my experience.