Fertilizer synthesizers and natural gas

[The Plum Gate]

4 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

I bet Klei has something in mind, with that fertilizer. Perhaps mix it with petroleum for special machine fuel, or similar..

Explosives.

[Oozinator]

Just now, The Plum Gate said:

Explosives.

Would be nice

 

[Reaniel]

31 minutes ago, Byste said:

Looks like there's some pretty hard feelings in this thread, so I just wanted to preface my comment with that I don't have much of a horse in this race.

 

I don't either.  Like I said in my first reply, I used my PH2O mainly for oxygen generation (PH2O -> PO2 -> Liquid O2).  I'm simply saying that it's not overpowered in normal use, and using it A LOT is either going to be unsustainable or a matter of skimping on other parts of the game that uses water.

As for farming revamp, I've made a suggestion the first week of OU:

 

[Michi01]

The reason why I didn't properly research the numbers for this is that my main point was not supposed to be whether they're overpowered or not. I admit that I didn't properly word what I meant with "power my entire base off of my bathroom". What I meant was that I can power my entire base by processing the polluted water from my bathroom. I didn't mean that doing so is too easy, I just don't think it's how large scale power production should be implemented. This whole mechanic of starting out with a bit of polluted water and investing water to process it and then ending up with a power plant just seems weird and unintended. The impression that I'm getting from fertilizer synthesizers, based on how they used to work and with the huge amounts of unneeded fertilizer that power plants produce is that their niche is supposed to be disposing of bathroom water and being rewarded with some fertilizer. I could very well be wrong with this though, as it is questionable why the devs would give fertilizer synthesizers such a large natural gas output if that was the case.
The devs do definitely seem to intend to make water recycling viable at some point, since from what they said on a stream, they added the aquatuner to add a proper way to cool down water after heating it up to kill germs and they definitely haven't forgotten about existing ways to purify water, as they for example made the water purifier only filter out some of the germs. However, as long as polluted water is valuable because is can be turned into power (some changes need to be made as well though, such as adding a proper way to renew filtration medium) players don't really have a reason to do any of that (although if geysers get nerfed by making the water temperature matter more, maybe that'll also solve that).
Basically what I'm trying to say is, expensive or not, processing a relatively small amount of polluted water to end up with a power plant is a weird mechanic that I dislike and I would much prefer if the processing of duplicant bathroom waste stayed simple and would just yield fertilizer for plants, while access to large scale power production would instead depend on finding natural gas geysers and oil reservoirs and more power sources that will hopefully be added in the future (I don't want it to be dumbed down in the sense of "just find this and pump it into a generator, done" though, I want it to stay a bit more complex like setting up a fertilizer power plant is, I just don't want it to be implemented via fertilizer power plants).

[trukogre]

2 hours ago, Reaniel said:

 

And coming back to water.  It is something pretty abundant, sure, but in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty limited with steam geyser being capped at 2.  You don't "need to" cap a well the same way you don't "need to" grow wheat or berries, but claiming that this somehow justifies your logic of 

 

How limited is water, though, really?  People played this game for months before geysers were even implemented.  Last time I played a game where I didn't use geysers at all, I made it until cycle 600 just off deoxydizers alone, then I quit that game with plenty of water reserves, because a new update came out and I wanted to try it again when the PO2 bug was fixed.  I think I"ll try it again now, it's quite illustrative, I think I'm going to allow chlorine geyser and oil wells, but disallow steam and natgas geysers, for this particular 'challenge runthrough'. You should try it too, if you haven't already, it's quite fun. The situation now, regarding water, is that if you play without geysers, you can last for more cycles than most people play their bases.  So, water's not that limited, in that strict sense.  If you do use geysers, and play as if water is scarce (i.e., don't use it if you don't have to, and stay with a dupe count under 15), you'll end up with absolutely massive tanks of spare water by cycle 200, just ocean sized tanks of clean water everywhere.   If you play with 60 dupes, or grow bristles and sleets and pinchas, then you'll quickly run up against the hard water cap of 2 geysers plus a bit of pwater surplus generations.  This shows that the crops/food system is quite unbalanced.  Choice, when you have real choice based on a complex system of tradeoffs, feels good.  Choice, when your choice is dominated by artificial scarcity of only one input caused by very high usage of that one input across half of the options, is crappy choice, it feels fake and forced.  I kinda just pretend that sleetwheat, pinchas and bristles don't exist, because I prefer the real but limited choice between meal lice and mushrooms to the pseudo -choice between all the food options.

Anyhoo, you can attack OP's poor wording all day long, but if we're trying to objectively assess the game, at some point that becomes a straw man fallacy, partners style.  He had a good idea but got a little excited and exaggerated his presentation.  That hyperbole doesn't change the essential issue.  Does it make sense that fertilizer makers operate at a net power surplus?  That's the real question here, and the imbalance of crops that people keep bringing up is irrelevant.  Two wrongs don't make a right, neither in logic nor in game design.  Fix one problem, then fix the other problem. Now, if you're saying don't rebalance FMs until crops are rebalanced, that's a fair position, I don't agree, but it's certainly a reasonable position.  Also, if you think it's reasonable that fertilizer makers operate at a net power surplus, that's a reasonable position as well, which I also disagree with; but it's more interesting to find out why we disagree on that than to argue about wording.  As far as that goes, there are basically two ways to look at it, realism or gameplay.  As far as realism goes, we generate methane from water waste and from landfills as well, so there's realism here, but it still costs money to get this stuff hauled away, no one's going around buying either type of waste.  This is why, based on realism, some energy recovery makes sense, but not net positive amounts.  For gameplay reasons, the argument is similar.  Your choices with pwater are three, basically.  1 into FM for power/fertilizer  2 convert to clean water via two different possible methods 3  let it convert into po2 over time.  To understand the balance between 1,2,3, we kinda do have to consider the opportunity costs, which means we have to understand all the possible alternatives for obtaining power, clean water, and po2, and then consider the game balance.  Really what it comes down to there is that NGG's are amazing.  They generate a ton of coldness(but only if desired, so even better), they generate 800 watts from only 60 g/s of input, which beats hydrogen and destroys petroleum, plus hydrogen is awkward to gather.  Coal is hard limited by hatches, whereas people can build and support 30 or 40 NGGs if they want.If we could ever heat up crude oil to the point where it evaporates into natrual gas, that would give us practically unlimited power, since on a gram per gram basis, natgas is totally dominant in this game.  so, from a gameplay perspective, since natgas is already so amazing, comes plentifully from geysers and is generated as a byproduct from 3 other machines, we should be careful not to let any of those 3 machines, which generate natgas not as their 'named' purpose but totally as a byproduct, generate so much natgas that it completely justifies that building existence, even if their 'named' purpose is worthless or unneeded.

[Whispershade]

2 hours ago, trukogre said:

If you play with 60 dupes, or grow bristles and sleets and pinchas, then you'll quickly run up against the hard water cap of 2 geysers plus a bit of pwater surplus generations.  This shows that the crops/food system is quite unbalanced.  Choice, when you have real choice based on a complex system of tradeoffs, feels good.  Choice, when your choice is dominated by artificial scarcity of only one input caused by very high usage of that one input across half of the options, is crappy choice, it feels fake and forced.  I kinda just pretend that sleetwheat, pinchas and bristles don't exist, because I prefer the real but limited choice between meal lice and mushrooms to the pseudo -choice between all the food options.

If water was truly abundant as suggested by your question, "How limited is water, really?" then none of the problems with irrigating sleet wheat and bristle blossom would be problems and fertilizer as a resource would have a valued use in and of itself. Choosing between meal lice and mushrooms wouldn't be a pseudo choice, but a play style option.

At any rate, if a rebalance were in the cards for fertilizer makers. Byste's approach is similar to my own thinking on the matter.

[trukogre]

54 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

If water was truly abundant as suggested by your question, "How limited is water, really?" then none of the problems with irrigating sleet wheat and bristle blossom would be problems and fertilizer as a resource would have a valued use in and of itself. Choosing between meal lice and mushrooms wouldn't be a pseudo choice, but a play style option.

At any rate, if a rebalance were in the cards for fertilizer makers. Byste's approach is similar to my own thinking on the matter.

I never said that "water was truly abundant", and asking a rhetorical question does not mean you get to pick any random statement and claim that I implied it.  I actually discussed the situation with the scarcity/abundance of water directly, which you refrained from quoting.  To recap, if you don't grow certain crops, then water is quite abundant.  If you do grow those crops in significant quantity, then you run out of water very quickly.  This is, combined with the fact that there's not much gameplay benefit to growing those crops, just as I already said in the part you did quote, a situation which feels like artificial scarcity, and artificial choice.  So, if water was truly abundant, which is NOT SUGGESTED by my question, then none of the problems with irrigating sleet wheat and bristle would be problems, except that's not true, the fact that there's not enough gameplay benefit to using a variety of food, or any specific food over another food, would still remain. and fertilizer would still be used for only one crop, so it wouldn't be very valued, and choosing between mushrooms and meal lice would still be a pseudochoice--and water being truly abundant would be bad for the game overall, so why are we even discussing that?  

"At any rate, if a rebalance were in the cards for fertilizer makers. Byste's approach is similar to my own thinking on the matter."

If you do the math, Byste's approach is completely compatible with everything I originally said, you can't disagree with me and agree with Byste--well, unless you're disagreeing with something I never actually said, which is exactly what you're doing here.  Why not simply ask me, instead of assuming my gender: "When you say 'How limited is water, really?', do you mean that water is truly abundant?", and then I could reply, "no, that's a rhetorical question, if you look at the sentences immediately following it I go on to outline a number of different situations in which water is more or less abundant." and then you could reply "Oh, I guess I misunderstood that question, I like Byste's solution better than yours though", and then I could have replied "Byste's solution also fixes the broader conditions I outline as being a problem, they're quite similar although there are minor differences as a result of the different details, they both have the exact same effect on the net power ratio per input watt for using FMs to generate nat gas power, which is the key ratio I was focusing on."  Wouldn't that have been a more productive exchange?

[Reaniel]

3 hours ago, trukogre said:

How limited is water, though, really?  

Like I said in my post (if you bothered reading it), it depends on your play style.  You can "choose" to feed nothing but meal lice for your dupes, which would save you a lot of water.  You can "choose" to feed them mushrooms, which would also save you a lot of water.  Finally, you can "choose" to dabble in every type of food, including ones that require water irrigation to grow, and water would be very limited.

Here's something from @Lifegrow at the beginning of OU:

No, you are not required to grow those stuff, but aren't you supposed to grow and cook high quality food for high level dupes?  If that's the case, then this way of playing the game uses A LOT of water, and water is extremely scarce in the long run.  This is not even talking about capping a well.

And no, I was not attacking OP's poor wording, but refuting his main thesis/reason for the proposed nerf.  I was also pointing out his inconsistent back-and-forth on what exactly is a "waste" and what exactly constitutes "actively producing".  Finally, I was directing attention towards the Dev's Road map, where it is clearly the intention of the Devs to expand the use of various outputs and incorporating them into various systems.  The Nerf that was being proposed runs in counter to that idea, and limits player's choice, which is what I'm ultimately against.

As for your argument of "why is Fertilizer Synthesizer producing extra power?" , I would ask "why not?"

Electrolyzer system is producing net power, are you calling for a nerf that'd make it power neutral or costs power?

See the flaw of the whole logic?

And let's do a bit more number crunching. 

Let's say a player, @Reaniel, wants to use part of his polluted water for oxygen production and a small part of leftovers for power generation.

And let's assume he uses 888/1000 of his polluted water for oxygen production, and 112/1000 of his polluted water for power.

That means for every 1kg/s of PH2O, he'd be getting 888g/s of oxygen, and 183.68W of power, discounting the aquatuners and some of the pumps that's needed for his complicated setup.

And then we have another player, JohnDoe, who wants to produce oxygen the old fashion electrolyzer way.

That means for every 1kg/s of H2O, he'd be getting 888g/s of oxygen, and 710W of power, discounting the single water pump that's running some of the time to send water to the electrolyzers.

Should I go ahead and start screaming how overpowered H2O and hydrogen is that we should give it the nerf stick?

Sorry, not doing that.

And I should urge you to stop asking for nerfing someone else's chosen play style just because your own opinion on what something should be, when the math just doesn't support your view point.

P.S. This is to refute Michi, that CO2 was still a useless waste product until OI.  If I want to convert water into polluted water, I can just have the dupes shower, and I don't even need power for that.  Carbon skimmer was a tool for destroying CO2, and you use power to achieve that goal.  The fact that Shower uses no CO2, no power, and still achieves 1:1 conversion means CO2 is not necessary, and was an almost 100% useless waste product.  Until OI.

[Whispershade]

24 minutes ago, trukogre said:

So, if water was truly abundant, which is NOT SUGGESTED by my question, then none of the problems with irrigating sleet wheat and bristle would be problems, except that's not true, the fact that there's not enough gameplay benefit to using a variety of food, or any specific food over another food, would still remain. and fertilizer would still be used for only one crop, so it wouldn't be very valued, and choosing between mushrooms and meal lice would still be a pseudochoice--and water being truly abundant would be bad for the game overall, so why are we even discussing that?

Because if there was enough water to furnish a significant number of dupes with bristle blossom as well as meet other water needs, then there would definitely be advantages to going that route over Mushrooms. Perhaps ones you might not consider worth pursuing, but it would be a viable and legitimate route. Now, I agree with you that part of the problem food balance, but it touches on resource scarcity and energy production balance as well. There are multiple ways to perceive the problem.

To be clear, I think power production general needs to be fleshed out and balanced along side dealing with fertilizer makers, if that's the direction Klei intends to go. I believe Klei as mentioned they're looking at possibly including steam generators and some have observed potential for atom power generation of some sort. In these environments if the natural gas loop remains a dominant means of power generation in terms of longevity and water expense then there's clearly a problem that needs addressing. And maybe we're there with oil/petroleum, but I don't know yet.

 

34 minutes ago, trukogre said:

Why not simply ask me "When you say 'How limited is water, really?', do you mean that water is truly abundant?"

Because it seemed a waste of time when you followed your rhetorical question with a number of examples clearly appearing to stake the position that water is not particularly scarce. Do you really expect people to spend their posts trying to verify every thing you imply is something you actually meant with a five post back and forth? I apologize if I misunderstood your position but I hardly feel the need to apologize for my response.

[Reaniel]

14 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

To be clear, I think power production general needs to be fleshed out and balanced along side dealing with fertilizer makers, if that's the direction Klei intends to go. I believe Klei as mentioned they're looking at possibly including steam generators and some have observed potential for atom power generation of some sort. In these environments if the natural gas loop remains a dominant means of power generation in terms of longevity and water expense then there's clearly a problem that needs addressing. And maybe we're there with oil/petroleum, but I don't know yet.
 

I would be completely for some sort of power production overhaul, but as I've stated before, I really don't see any problem with the current fertilizer maker situation in terms of net power gain.  If we want to nerf every net power gain systems in the game, there would be no game.  And if fertilizer maker is somehow not-okay for net power gain, why should electrolyzers be okay for net power gain then?

The only issue the fertilizer synthesizer - natural gas generator complex has is the potential to tilt heavily towards power generation if all you see PH2O is as power generation.

However, that's, again, a player's choice.  Otherwise, if you split PH2O's use as part oxygen source and part power source, you'd see that H2O - Hydrogen is actually superior.  The limiting factor is that you can't tilt H2O for full power generation, but it's still much more superior than PH2O in terms of overall output effectiveness.

[trukogre]

50 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

 

Because it seemed a waste of time when you followed your rhetorical question with a number of examples clearly appearing to stake the position that water is not particularly scarce. Do you really expect people to spend their posts trying to verify every thing you imply is something you actually meant with a five post back and forth? I apologize if I misunderstood your position but I hardly feel the need to apologize for my response.

"Not particularly scarce", given a particular and specifically defined playstyle. Sigh. What I expect clearly doesn't matter.  All I can do is ask that you stop assuming I'm saying things, if I'm not actually saying them, and if you're not willing to do that, I can then ask that you not respond to me at all.

[trukogre]

"Like I said in my post (if you bothered reading it), it depends on your play style."

 

That's what I said too in MY post (if you bothered reading it)...you're answering a rhetorical question here, but I'm glad we agree.

 

"but aren't you supposed to grow and cook high quality food for high level dupes? "

 

That depends on who is doing the supposing.

 

"

As for your argument of "why is Fertilizer Synthesizer producing extra power?" , I would ask "why not?"

Electrolyzer system is producing net power, are you calling for a nerf that'd make it power neutral or costs power?

See the flaw of the whole logic?"

well it looks like the flaw in your logic is the fallacy tu quoque, but I'm not sure exactly what you're saying,  as answering a question with more questions often leads to vagueness.  so maybe it would be better just to say that the flaw in your logic is that you've answered one question with three more questions, and that's not how deductive logic works. Anyways, I'll continue with answers instead of questions in hopes of reaching clarity: yes, I dislike that electrolyzer systems can produce net power, I would support a nerf there as well.  As I said before, NGG are superior to other generators, and also people tend to build more NGG than hydrogen generators, which means that they are a larger problem with current balance, but if we were to fix those and continue balancing, hydrogen generators would be next on the nerf block.  Another thing that makes NGG better than electrolyzer/hydrogen generators, when it comes to the prospect of  building a large complex of them, is that if you build excess oxygen capacity, the electrolyzers tend to choke themselves into nonoperation due to overpressure, unless you're storing the oxygen somewhere, which costs power that you didn't account for and requires either an exploit or a very large area for storage, or liquifaction, which is hard to do at scale, whereas NGG exhaust is easily turned into more power with slicksters and more FMs.  Also, electrolyzer/hydrogen setups generate heat, and proper NGG setups eliminate heat, huge amounts of it in fact.

 

"And I should urge you to stop asking for nerfing someone else's chosen play style just because your own opinion on what something should be, when the math just doesn't support your view point."

I disagree, I think the math does support my viewpoint   I don't want to nerf anyone's chosen playstyle, I want to nerf fertilizer makers (and thus indirectly NGGs), and something about the electrolyzer/hydrogen generator loop, I'm not sure how to nerf that one yet though, but as you have repeatedly pointed out, that's overpowered as well.  Actually I want to make clear, I'm not "asking" for nerfs, I'm merely stating my opinion.  All I would ask of  Klei is that they make the best game they can, and if they happen to read my opinion and think about it , great.  I think the kind of thing I would ask for directly would be like some UI thing that I would really want and want to push for my priority for, when it comes to game balance I hate the idea of balancing via popular vote or what have you(which is good for me here, since I'm on the wrong side of the popular vote--and I'm used to being in the minority when it comes to game development polls, I'm used to having a contrarian playstyle).  Honestly I don't know what it would mean to nerf a chosen playstyle, my chosen playstyle is sprawling, smaller dupe numbers, I like to choose a different challenge to limit what I let myself use in each base, often I'll stop at 500 cycles because I see the base is infinitely sustainable at that point and I lose the sense of challenge.  How do I nerf that playstyle? What does it mean to nerf that playstyle?

 

"And let's assume he uses 888/1000 of his polluted water for oxygen production, and 112/1000 of his polluted water for power."

so what he's mostly doing here is letting ph2o decompose into po2.  Ok cool, so you've convinced me that ph2o decomposition isn't overpowered.  Irrelevant to my arguments, but well done, you've proved that point.  The scenario I'm interested in is where he has 2 kg/s of pwater which he turns into power through natgas, plus the natgas from 2 geysers, and also has  2kg/s of water which he turns into oxygen and power with electrolyzers, because that's the situation which I see happening in bases that people share.

[Whispershade]

27 minutes ago, trukogre said:

"Not particularly scarce", given a particular and specifically defined playstyle. Sigh. What I expect clearly doesn't matter.  All I can do is ask that you stop assuming I'm saying things, if I'm not actually saying them, and if you're not willing to do that, I can then ask that you not respond to me at all.

No.

If you're having a problem with multiple people understanding your position or that they knowing that they are in agreement with some or all of your position, perhaps reflect that the problem might not be in the reader regarding the communication in question.

It is possible that I agree with some of the things you are saying and not other portions. If something I say is in agreement with you, then I may have stated it to demonstrate that agreement not to make the claim that you don't agree with it and you are wrong.

Much like you would dictate to me that I should respond with queries to verify you are taking a position your statements seem to imply. You could easily respond with simply addressing the misunderstanding like the following. "No, I did not mean to imply that I thought water was abundant by that statement. What I meant was X." Or even add, "Though I could understand why you would have that misunderstanding."

While I am an imperfect human, I do try to take responsibility my message conveys. Even if some of that message is unintentional on my part. I can ask that you do the same. You are of course under no obligation. If you choose not to do so, however, then I suppose we may have a turbulent time communicating. But I am not going to choose to simply be silent if I have an opinion to share.

[trukogre]

7 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

No.

If you're having a problem with multiple people understanding your position or that they knowing that they are in agreement with some or all of your position, perhaps reflect that the problem might not be in the reader regarding the communication in question.

It is possible that I agree with some of the things you are saying and not other portions. If something I say is in agreement with you, then I may have stated it to demonstrate that agreement not to make the claim that you don't agree with it and you are wrong.

Much like you would dictate to me that I should respond with queries to verify you are taking a position your statements seem to imply. You could easily respond with simply addressing the misunderstanding like the following. "No, I did not mean to imply that I thought water was abundant by that statement. What I meant was X." Or even add, "Though I could understand why you would have that misunderstanding."

While I am an imperfect human, I do try to take responsibility my message conveys. Even if some of that message is unintentional on my part. I can ask that you do the same. You are of course under no obligation. If you choose not to do so, however, then I suppose we may have a turbulent time communicating. But I am not going to choose to simply be silent if I have an opinion to share.

 Very well, I'll just respond in the future as you suggest "No, that wasn't my implication", without elaborating.

[Whispershade]

25 minutes ago, trukogre said:

 Very well, I'll just respond in the future as you suggest "No, that wasn't my implication", without elaborating.

Well...

30 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

You could easily respond with simply addressing the misunderstanding like the following. "No, I did not mean to imply that I thought water was abundant by that statement. What I meant was X."

It would appear that your interpretation wasn't what I was suggesting.

[trukogre]

13 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

Well...

It would appear that your interpretation wasn't what I was suggesting.

No, that wasn't my implication.

[Whispershade]

1 minute ago, trukogre said:

No, that wasn't my implication.

non sequitur.

[Executive_Lurker]

nerf net power gains and make lower quality food, especially meal lice, more susceptible to disease* and I'd be a happy camper.

I would like to see a lot of power rebalancing but if the nixxing of net power kills the structure of the game, I could live with the net power.

*completely unrelated but I love the idea of a parasite that has been mentioned somewhere

[Reaniel]

3 hours ago, trukogre said:

"Like I said in my post (if you bothered reading it), it depends on your play style."

 

That's what I said too in MY post (if you bothered reading it)...you're answering a rhetorical question here, but I'm glad we agree.

 

Not really.  You implied that you believe it's plentiful because you can skimp on things you deemed unnecessary, and that I should try that myself.  If I'm not mistaken, @Whispershade had read your replies as such as well.  But I guess this isn't really what you meant, and we're both just putting words in your mouth.

And I'm not doing any supposing, but rather the way the game is currently designed.  They have a system in place for food quality.  It's not currently implemented with large enough penalty to matter, but there's a penalty, therefore shows clear intention as how the Devs see the game should be.  It's not a matter of supposition.

And do we need to go back arguing if water is abundant or not?

As I've said over and over again, water is limited, renewable only to the extent of the two steam geysers, and "choosing" to use it one way will cut off the possibility for others in the long run.  It's just the way it is.

You can "choose" to turn all of your water into polluted water, and use said polluted water to generate a lot of power.  However, you are then cutting off the possibility of generating oxygen from your water, use it to grow the various plants we have in game, etc.  It's a gameplay choice a player's making, but that doesn't mean everyone's making the same gameplay choice, and claiming that this particular gameplay choice alone should be ground for a nerf is absurd.  If we're playing the "hey, guess who can generate the most electricity" game, then sure, it's GG for the person capable of building the biggest natural gas complex, but we're not.

And then you start claiming that the math supports your viewpoint as well, and yet, I don't see a single reply of yours giving ANY example of math supporting your viewpoint.  All you do is ramble, and claim that others have misinterpreted what you're saying, and ramble more.

The reason I raised said scenario is to do a direct, apple to apple, orange to orange comparison of the water vs polluted water comparison.  Unfortunately, you seem to be running out of ways to actually make a valid counterargument, and had to resort to snarks and more rambling.

So sure, have it your way, and ramble away.  You've won the snarking rambler of the day.  Good Job.

[trukogre]

"But I guess this isn't really what you meant, and we're both just putting words in your mouth."

Yes, you are,and it's lame.  The way to avoid it, is instead of continually saying 'you're implying such and such', is to quote direct sentences and reply.  Quite simple, really. Hey, I just did it!

 

"They have a system in place for food quality.  It's not currently implemented with large enough penalty to matter, but there's a penalty, therefore shows clear intention as how the Devs see the game should be.  It's not a matter of supposition."

Yes it is.  I can suppose that the small penalty is intentionally small, you can suppose they made a mistake.  Sorry, you're not the God of ONI, you don't get to send down rulings from on high.  What I actually suppose is that people should play the game as it is in it's current version, not as you want it to be, because even if it later becomes what you want it to be, it's not that yet.

"As I've said over and over again, water is limited, renewable only to the extent of the two steam geysers, and "choosing" to use it one way will cut off the possibility for others in the long run.  It's just the way it is."

Yes, just like I said   I knew we agreed!

 

"It's a gameplay choice a player's making, but that doesn't mean everyone's making the same gameplay choice, and claiming that this particular gameplay choice alone should be ground for a nerf is absurd"

 

Good thing I'm not doing that then.

 

"And then you start claiming that the math supports your viewpoint as well, and yet, I don't see a single reply of yours giving ANY example of math supporting your viewpoint."

I said that I thought the math supported my viewpoint, which is different than claiming that it supports my viewpoint.  I've posted tons of math in this forum, and I'm sure I"ll do so again, when appropriate

" All you do is ramble, and claim that others have misinterpreted what you're saying, and ramble more"  

I made solid points, which you ignored in favor of insults like this.  Why bother cut-and-pasting math I've posted in other threads, which I'm sure you've already read, when you ignore the solid points I make in favor of insults and false accusations?  

 

"The reason I raised said scenario is to do a direct, apple to apple, orange to orange comparison of the water vs polluted water comparison"  

It's a bogus argument.  No one claimed pwater was overpowered at making oxygen, and you came up with a scenario where 88.8% of the pwater went towards making oxygen.  Hence, you were comparing apples to oranges.  Sorry.

"

Unfortunately, you seem to be running out of ways to actually make a valid counterargument, and had to resort to snarks and more rambling.

So sure, have it your way, and ramble away.  You've won the snarking rambler of the day.  Good Job."

 

Actually, I find that insults like these are signs of inability to make a valid counterargument.  You've conveniently skipped over every real point I made actually talking about generator mechanics.  Thanks for the laughs.

 

If by some chance you want to have a serious discussion, with math involved, try answering the points I raised about generators which you completely skipped over, post a real example, not one where the pwater goes to making oxygen, and I'll cut-and-paste all the math from my other recent posts about generators that's needed to respond to any valid math you happen to come up with.  So far, the only relevant math you posted was about hydrogen generators being overpowered, which I agreed with: what math do you want me to post when I agree with you?? Quote your own math back at you in italics?  Do you want me to take a random math book off my shelf and pose a question at random from it?  Let's be real.  The first relevant thing if we want to compare generators is to say "how many dupes in this base, how many showers are installed".  That affects oxygen usage, ph20 generation, how much extra water you have to allocate between growing plants or spending on power.  How many bases do you see with 8 dupes running 4 hydrogen generators at 100% usage, honestly?  have you ever made such a base? When you're doing the math it's good to account for every possibility, but it's also good to acknowledge when things are largely theoretical and unseen in practice.

[Reaniel]

56 minutes ago, Executive_Lurker said:

nerf net power gains and make lower quality food, especially meal lice, more susceptible to disease* and I'd be a happy camper.

I would like to see a lot of power rebalancing but if the nixxing of net power kills the structure of the game, I could live with the net power.

*completely unrelated but I love the idea of a parasite that has been mentioned somewhere

You'd have to define "power rebalancing" as what it pertains.  If it is simply getting rid of net power, then the 2 obvious choice for "balancing" would be the PH2O chain and Electrolyzer chain.  However, this runs counter to the Dev's roadmap, where the goal was to create a possibility of "use them to your advantage".  So I do think it's unlikely for them to get rid of net power altogether.

[Executive_Lurker]

yeah get rid of net power amd make nat gas gen less of a powerhouse. I'm sure the latter will happen and the former really isn't bad unless it has the possibility of being exploity. 

(ps y'alls way smarter than little ol' me but remember we all have something in common, we want this game to be the best it can be!)

[Reaniel]

One more number crunching:

We have roughly 8.4kg/s of renewable water.

Scenario #1: If we put everything into electrolyzers and hydrogen generator, we will get:

6066.82W Net Power

7459.2g/s Oxygen (Enough for 74 dupes)

And if we turn everything into polluted water and feed it into fertilizer synthesizer, natural gas generator, hatches, and coal generator:

13738.23W Net Power

0g/s Oxygen (Enough for 0 dupes)

Note: So, yeah, polluted water has the potential for more power generation... at a cost of no renewable source of oxygen.

Scenario #2: If we adjust the net power of polluted water side to also 6066.82W and the rest 1:1 to Oxygen:

PH2O Side:

Used 3709.45g/s PH2O for

6066.82W Net Power

4690.55g/s O2 (Enough for 46 dupes)

Note: When you are producing an equal amount of net power, you will get more oxygen from the H2O system.

Scenario #3: If we have a 20 dupe base, and convert all their pees back into H2O (with water distiller) for power production:

H2O Side:

7805.52W Net Power

6348.49g/s O2 (Enough for 63 dupes)

PH2O Side (With 2000g/s PH2O reserved for O2):

10832.59W Net Power

2000g/s O2

Scenario #3: If we have a 40 dupe base, and convert all their pees back into H2O for power production:

6630.16W Net Power

8151.84g/s O2

PH2O Side (With 4000g/s PH2O reserved for O2):

7926.96W Net Power

4000g/s O2

Scenario #4: If we have a 80 dupe base, and convert all their pees back into H2O for power production:

7193.51W Net Power

8844.48g/s O2

PH2O Side (With 8000g/s PH2O reserved for O2):

2115.69W Net Power

8000g/s O2

Conclusion:

Yes, the PH2O system can potentially produce a lot more power if you put all of your PH2O into power production.  However, you only have so much water, and from a sustainability point of view, it doesn't really produce THAT much more power than the H2O system.  As you increase the number of dupes, the two systems will match evenly at 48~49 dupes, with each subsequent dupe favoring the H2O system.  At 90 dupes, You'd get 7334.34W of net power for H2O system, and a puny 662.87W for PH2O system.

Yes, sand is limited, and I'm making the assumption of it being unlimited, but it's mainly for the simplicity of calculation, the same way I'm ignoring the power consumption of aquatuner/pumps for converting PO2 to O2.

As I've stated several times in this thread, the 2 systems are balanced in their own way.  If you think NatGas Complex is overpowered, then you'd have to say Hydrogen-H2O is overpowered as well, because guess what, they're pretty evenly matched!

 

[Oozinator]

Holy cow, some of you take it serious. Massive wall of text.

13 hours ago, Reaniel said:

Scenario #4: If we have a 80 dupe base, and convert all their pees back into H2O for power production:

80?
I play with an I2500k, above 70 it starts to lag..

[trukogre]

16 hours ago, Reaniel said:

 

As I've stated several times in this thread, the 2 systems are balanced in their own way.  If you think NatGas Complex is overpowered, then you'd have to say Hydrogen-H2O is overpowered as well, because guess what, they're pretty evenly matched!

 

Yes, in the hypothetical world where people are commonly playing with 50-90 dupe bases, I agree, Hydrogen Generators become very overpowered as well; and so I agree with you, nerfing Hydrogen/electrolyzer cycle is a top priority.  All that arguing and in the end we agree 100%