About automation stuff

[KZtyler]

First i wanna say sorry to all of you if something written here is bad, im not a native english speaker.

I wanted to complain to the community, im a software engineer and developer from argentina and im 27 years old, as a passionate of my job i was so excited when klei announced the automation update from ONI, for me it was a huge thing. My complain is about a lot of streamers i've listened saying that automation is not very good because everything you can do with automation, can be done without it, and of course they ARE RIGHT.

they are right because thats the whole concept of automation, things you could do MANUALLY can be done AUTOMATICALLY wihout human intervention, i know we can all flip levers, but how used are we to automation in our lives? We are VERY used to it.

In the ONI world there is a lot of cool stuff we can do with automation, from very simple things like turning off machines on certain scenarios to avoid wasting power, to really really complex and cool things like T-Latches to control the environment in our bases, music mixers, and quality of life improvements for our beloved duplicants like this oxygen compressor to get insane oxygen pressure 

 

I really encourage all people to try automation, it can be very fun to mess around, and we can also help the developers to improve it by making suggestions and catch some bugs, and i ask all the streamers to PLEASE stop saying automation is not NEEDED, if fun is the goal then automation is really god for it

I want to share a simple design i made for my dups to make them able to have a nice light when they enter their rooms, wich turns off when they get out using a simple SR latch, and a clock (WARNING AUWFULL DESIGN, im working on using a T-Latch instead of a SR)

 

 

[GreatGameDota]

What streamers are talking about is the fact that Automation hasn't added anything new. Everything you gave as an example of an automation system is either worthless (in a survival sense) or could already be done.

1 hour ago, KZtyler said:

from very simple things like turning off machines on certain scenarios to avoid wasting power,

There's a non automation system from months ago that can do that. (I can provide a link to the forum post if asked).

1 hour ago, KZtyler said:

to really really complex and cool things like T-Latches to control the environment in our bases, music mixers, and quality of life improvements for our beloved duplicants

Not needed in any sense except a fun thing to do during the end game.

1 hour ago, KZtyler said:

like this oxygen compressor to get insane oxygen pressure 

You can simply just use high-pressure vents which they just added or if you don't have plastic left just drop a few grams of liquid over a vent to overpressuize it. So automation isn't needed in that sense. (Also 23kg of oxygen is nothing, try 10kg+ through a entire base).

1 hour ago, KZtyler said:

I really encourage all people to try automation, it can be very fun to mess around

It's not a thing to be used with every system, like you stated, it's just something to mess around with.

1 hour ago, KZtyler said:

I want to share a simple design i made for my dups to make them able to have a nice light when they enter their rooms, wich turns off when they get out using a simple SR latch, and a clock (WARNING AUWFULL DESIGN, im working on using a T-Latch instead of a SR)

I believe just having two pressure plates, one under the stress table and another under the bed, would make this design much simpler.

[clickrush]

The things I'am mostly using in my current base are OR and AND gates, both of which we could do before the update. You were able to do an AND with a series of sensors on a wire and an OR in parallel.

The most useful addition are in my opinion shutoff valves because they allow you to do logic on a local level. For example in my current base I have a polluted water tank, a hot water tank and a cold water tank. Some of the polluted water gets pumped next to the hot water and turned into steam via an aquatuner which cools the cold tank. Now with shutoff valves it is convenient to control the different tank levels and the temperature locally without having to wire up everything over large areas.

Another example in my current base is the oxygen production. I have a small living area with clean oxygen that is sealed off from the rest. It only has the beds, medbay, messhall etc plus a small farm and most of the crafting devices. Now these devices and the cooking station, the refrigerators etc. produce heat now and then. I can control the input of cold liquid oxygen into this area with a shutoff valve. A few drops will suffice to cool it over many cycles.

Another thing I'am using is a series of automated doors hooked up to some buffer and filter gates to destroy gases, but that is more of a short term solution that I needed at the time.

Currently I can't think of any other automated things that are actually practical and solve problems. Sure, playing with light and door access etc. is fun.

[KZtyler]

4 minutes ago, GreatGameDota said:

There's a non automation system from months ago that can do that. (I can provide a link to the forum post if asked).

maybe i wasnt clear, i am talking about pressure and temperature sensors

5 minutes ago, GreatGameDota said:

I believe just having two pressure plates, one under the stress table and another under the bed, would make this design much simpler.

except in real life you dont turn the lights on once you are on bed but as soon as you enter the room

also, like in real life, everything you can achieve with sensors and logic gates (aka computers) can be done manually, but do you imagine that world? it doesnt feel like one i would like to live in

If you ever played minecraft, poeple created really awesome stuff with aka redstone circuits, i think if ONI achieves that level of creativity with the automation and logic stuff we will start to see some awesome automation based stuff. In fact not everything is about survival, once you played 3 or 4 times you pretty much end up being able to survive almost eternally around cycle 100 or even less. Food wise for example, you can survive with only mealwood, but makes that the other meals useless?

[Saturnus]

4 minutes ago, GreatGameDota said:

What streamers are talking about is the fact that Automation hasn't added anything new.

An obvious self-contradiction right there. If Automation made it possible to do something you already could do in a different way, it has by definition added something new.

Practically everything that can be done with Automation could be done before. But often in such a clumsy round-about way that nobody bothered. For example, when agriculture upgrade came out I made temperature control latches using pumps and valves for my bristle blossom growth rooms. Then very shortly after bristle blossom was both nerfed and made much easier to grow so there was no point in setting a complex system like that up  anymore. However, now you can just throw down a few gates and you have the same automation as took up a 12x12 tile place of valves, sensors, and pumps before. Not to mention the pain in priming such a system.

[clickrush]

12 minutes ago, GreatGameDota said:

(...)

I believe just having two pressure plates, one under the stress table and another under the bed, would make this design much simpler.

I don't think that changes the design at all. And you won't get around using latches for things like this because you need some way of storing a signal

[GreatGameDota]

3 minutes ago, KZtyler said:

except in real life you dont turn the lights on once you are on bed but as soon as you enter the room

Then have another pressure plate at the entrance set to about a five second buffer gate 

Just now, clickrush said:

I don't think that changes the design at all. And you won't get around using latches for things like this because you need some way of storing a signal

While the dupe is using a building they should still activate the pressure plate unless it doesn't work with those buildings.

[BlueLance]

15 minutes ago, GreatGameDota said:

I believe just having two pressure plates, one under the stress table and another under the bed, would make this design much simpler.

You can achieve this with 2 plates you are correct, more complex you can add a clock to stop dupes who idle in at the wrong time of day etc from wasting electricity.

Also as a non streamer The automatikn update has its uses, for me the best benefit was not having to run electrical cables through the sensors. But otherwise a large portion of the game can run the way it did before automation, airlocks proper airlocks are the boggest thing for me because you can now stop dupes moving. But for established bases i dont know what it can bring except for nice little quality of life things which in the current game are not needed at the moment.

The update will be more useful as the game goes on. No one can argue that since some things might be so hazardous that dupes cannot do it or older systems cannot do it.

[clickrush]

3 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

An obvious self-contradiction right there. If Automation made it possible to do something you already could do in a different way, it has by definition added something new.

Practically everything that can be done with Automation could be done before. But often in such a clumsy round-about way that nobody bothered. For example, when agriculture upgrade came out I made temperature control latches using pumps and valves for my bristle blossom growth rooms. Then very shortly after bristle blossom was both nerfed and made much easier to grow so there was no point in setting a complex system like that up  anymore. However, now you can just throw down a few gates and you have the same automation as took up a 12x12 tile place of valves, sensors, and pumps before. Not to mention the pain in priming such a system.

I fully agree. Doing logic before the update was painful. Not only did we have to do wiring over large areas to accomplish something simple, it also didn't convey the purpose of it. Now we can do everything locally in a neat seperate way that also conveys what it is doing.

[KZtyler]

1 minute ago, GreatGameDota said:

Then have another pressure plate at the entrance set to about a five second buffer gate 

i get your point, but its not how i want it to work, in real life, you dont turn your lights on and they turn down automatically in X seconds, you turn the lights on and off when you go in and when you go out, we could argue about that being a little detail, but technology is all about little details wich improve the quality of inventions and add new functionality, in fact like i said im not even happy about the result of my "invention" since i need 2 switches, and thats not how i want it to work, i want it to use the same switch for turning on and off, and that is called a T-Latch or a T-flip flop, i think that automation is really cool for making things once you can stop worrying (so much) about survival because you managed well the food, oxygen, temperature and germs.
 

[Saturnus]

@KZtyler T-latch (ignore the clock input)

[KZtyler]

1 minute ago, Saturnus said:

@KZtyler T-latch (ignore the clock input)

WOW that is a compact design, i will test it thank you very much

[Saturnus]

6 minutes ago, KZtyler said:

WOW that is a compact design, i will test it thank you very much

It works fine. I use it all the time. Either stand-alone as a T-latch or stringed together in a binary counter like this 4 bit one

[MidnightSteam]

I agree with many of the streamers. The automation upgrade didn't add much for me; I can already compress gas way over 150kg per tile if I wanted to.

It has, however, made me more creative as to how I make my systems since I can't use sensors until metals are refined or plastic is made. i.e. high pressure vents, exosuits

Woops, I mean the Automation System didn't add much for me. The Upgrade did add Thermal Shift Plates and Fire Pole which I really like.

[BlueLance]

6 minutes ago, MidnightSteam said:

me

This is the most important word along with the statements.

Each update will be different for everyone, For instance I have over 300 hours in game but I only started using Exo-suits recently, and exploring the Oil biome, and that is because I was content with what I had. So for me the Oil Upgrade provided me with nothing (Now I am exploring it for fun) but it did for others, and the same will be said for all updates. some people will explore it later, some may not need it at all, and others will welcome it. 

So in all honesty I think debating whether an update is good or not is pointless. Sure there will be really bad ones, but if someone walks away with something good from it then to them it was good. 

[Lifegrow]

This thread is a mish-mash of individual opinions - and as was always expected, this update would polarise between those who play casually (with no interest in binary logic..), and those who play to break the mould with compact/genius designs.

Personally I found this update to be out of place "utility-wise" currently, as it adds very few *new* possibilities to the current game. However, from a development standpoint - I can understand the devs reasons for implementing it now, so that people are comfortable with the systems/overlays before future content is added which will (hopefully) heavily rely on automation.

In short, I see this update as the "fire pole / refining / sexy wires" update - and will take a view on the automation tools when they have more applications other than mechanised airlock compression/locomotion

(Yes, i'm aware we can make compact little gates/circuitry, but personally I still maintain that for the mostpart it holds very little "useful" application).

I'd advise that players carry on regardless, learn how to use the new bits and bobs we've been given, then look to future updates for clarity on the game path.

[GrindThisGame]

I like how the automation is decoupled from power now. This makes using it much cleaner. I suspect many casual players will never use automation beyond the very basic designs. In fact I would guess most casual players are not well represented here in the forums.

Automation did open up a huge amount of possible things (music, 7-segment displays, adders, lightshows etc) that have no practical purpose and some with possible applications (conveyor belts, compressors etc). And I'm sure the inventions will continue to pop up. It's the fun and creativity of using these tools which is the point I think. You can still build a fully sustainable hands-off base without using any automation. I think that is a good thing so casual players can still have fun and not get stuck messing with Boolean logic.

And who doesn't like new "bits and bobs"