Occupational Upgrade is a Giant Nerf?

[GrindThisGame]

First off, I'm not complaining, just observing. I like the new update quiet a bit. 

So you used to be able to level up dupe attributes. After a few 100 cycles most dupes would have athletics at 26 and many other attributes would be leveled up. Now it seems impossible to level these up. The only way to unlock bonus attributes is through leveling of jobs. Does this mean most dupes will be much slower in mid and late game? Are the days of super dupes basically gone? It seems like starting attributes are much more important now since the bonuses are fixed and smaller than the old 26 cap.

The game was too easy before so maybe this is a necessary weakening of dupes. Or maybe I'm missing something.

It looks like you get the job bonus even before you get the experience for that job. Eg creativity gets a +6 if you assign a dupe to the "artist" role even if they have 0 xp in that role. So what does getting all the xp in that role provide (besides unlocking the next tier if one exists) ?

Some jobs unlock things eg: research assistant can "use supercomputers" but if unassigned from this job they can still use the supercomputer. This might just be a bug though.

Would love to hear what other people are thinking about these changes.

 

[Ventus976]

It's felt like a nerf to me as well. I do like that this actually makes starting stats important but a lot of the game does feel much slower now that leveling is removed. It'll probably just take some getting used to.

[GrindThisGame]

Maybe once all 7 tiers of skills are added we can specialize some dupes in +25 athletics

[Saturnus]

Or we'll have to play the game on ultraspeed from now on, and just accept there will be accidental casualties involved

[Coolthulhu]

It's a massive nerf, but mostly a needed one.

Though it doesn't seem well balanced. Dupes spend so much time wheezing, hauling, wasting time, not being able to dig granite. Wounded dupes crawl at unbearable pace. Any dupe with "anemic" trait is a candidate for euthanasia, while high athletics are pretty much a must for anyone except cooks.

Seems like the game was balanced with dupes having at least 5 athletics in mind. It's just the athletics, other skills (slow building) are fine.

[midjones]

I believe this update encourages us to rely more on technology to help the dupes.  Instead of having every dupe be super fast, you need to adopt a strategy such as:

- (early game) use fire poles to increase dupe speed when descending, metal tiles for faster walk speed

- (early-mid game) use automation to reduce dupe workloads where possible

- (midgame) use exosuits for fast travelling outside of base

- (mid-late game) set up ore transport belts/systems for moving stuff around en mass (rather than every dupe being super fast)

- (late game) add tubular systems for moving dupes faster to distant places

 

I like the new challenge. Though I do feel like it takes too long to level up a dupe to the Mechatronics Engineering role, roughly 150 cycles, which is needed to meet the job requirements for building the ore transport system.  It also seems like there's of course some bugs with job prioritization which I expect will be fixed during preview.

[goboking]

2 hours ago, GrindThisGame said:

Maybe once all 7 tiers of skills are added we can specialize some dupes in +25 athletics

Switching from miner to athlete to run from the base to a dig site before switching back so I can dig up some abyssalite before switching again to get back to the base in a timely manner doesn't strike me as compelling game play. 

[midjones]

1 hour ago, midjones said:

Though I do feel like it takes too long to level up a dupe to the Mechatronics Engineering role, roughly 150 cycles, which is needed to meet the job requirements for building the ore transport system.  It also seems like there's of course some bugs with job prioritization which I expect will be fixed during preview.

After cycle 200 of not using debug mode at all, got bored of waiting for dupes to level up enough for me to build ore transports. It sucks having the ore to build it but taking forever for dupes to meet the job requirements.

"We're giving you amazing new content that you won't be able to use until 12 hours of playthrough on 3x speed! Unless you just cheat with debug mode"

[donutman07]

1 hour ago, midjones said:

"We're giving you amazing new content that you won't be able to use until 12 hours of playthrough on 3x speed! Unless you just cheat with debug mode"

On the flip side, people are often asking for "end game" content. It's still not an end game, but it increases the length of the game by adding content that's difficult to get going.

 

I haven't really done much this patch, but so far besides some bugs, it seems like a pretty good patch from what I'm reading.

 

As far as the dupe job switching I think they should limit that to some degree, like no more than 1 job switch every 3 cycles or something. And then make it work

[Kabrute]

I feel like forcing them to hold a job for any length of time would finish breaking the early game.

[Zarquan]

Does this mean the food progression is liceloaf in to berry sludge?  Or do I actually have to deal with slime and grow mushrooms?  I usually try to ignore slime as much as possible because I don't like slimelung.

With berry sludge, it takes 220 kg/cycle of water to grow 6 bristle blossoms and 5 sleetwheat, which produced enough to produce an average of 5 berry sludges per cycle, which gives food for 20 dupes, assuming none of them have a bottomless stomach.  This means that with the two steam geysers, each of which produce an average of 2500 kg of water per cycle, you could run a base with 454 dupes (if you use morbs to get oxygen) with the geysers alone.  Is there currently a more efficient food than this?

The only rival is grilled mushrooms.  You can grow 59 mushrooms, using 236kg slime per cycle, to produce food for 22 dupes the same amount of food and doesn't consume water.  How much slime can a puft produce per cycle?  According to the wiki, they produce an average of 105 kg of slime per cycle, but that data is often inaccurate and I hate experimenting with pufts...   If it is accurate, then you can support around 9-10 dupes per puft captured.  Not to mention that it is easier to make mushrooms in the early game, as slime is abundant. 

I should note that I did not take in to account the effect of greenhouses or farmers, as I do not have any hard numbers on their effects on plants.  With farmers, you can support even more duplicants

I think we will probably mix the two foods for any sustainable base.  Keep in mind that phosphate is non-renewable, so you will eventually run out.  Anything that uses pincha pepper is inherently not sustainable unless the pincha pepper is grown in the wild, where it would be free. 

Is my analysis correct?  I am only theory-crafting, as I don't usually play the test branch.

P.S.

@Kabrute RIP mealwood rotting fields.  They were glorious and will be missed.

[PhailRaptor]

3 hours ago, donutman07 said:

On the flip side, people are often asking for "end game" content. It's still not an end game, but it increases the length of the game by adding content that's difficult to get going.

But that's not "adding end game content".  That's taking away mid game content and locking it behind an unlock system that actively makes it harder to do ANYTHING in the game.  It doesn't feel natural.

 

Simply put, it feels like the Agriculture Update all over again.  The system overall is good, but the numbers are horribly calibrated, which in turn makes using the system imbalanced and a struggle to work with.  Most people won't be able to deal with it, so the system will be removed, rather than rebalanced.

I've seen some good elements in some of the posts, that I think would make the new Job system a lot smoother.  First and foremost, unspecified Dupes should be able to perform any task, and slowly grow in the associated stats for that task, up to 5.  After that, no further growth can be achieved without being assigned to the associated Job.

[Oozinator]

Posted that in the job thread:
"After some testing i could say: "I don't like it". It's only macro for nothing. I like the hats, but that's all. Game takes forever now, to get it running. Expanding, research, all takes longer now. It's only an additional gameplay brake, if you ask me. "

[goboking]

5 hours ago, donutman07 said:

On the flip side, people are often asking for "end game" content. It's still not an end game, but it increases the length of the game by adding content that's difficult to get going.

It's an arbitrary restriction.  We already had these machines gated behind research, so what practical reason is there to also gate them behind specializations?

[Moggles]

Ah I remember the days when we could research the entire tech tree in 10 cycles.

[The Plum Gate]

I think some of the jobs aren't correctly adding to the abilities of the dupes once they've leveled up. Base skill progression is relatively slow.

[Kabrute]

Its there but only while the dupe is working that job.....

[The Plum Gate]

7 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

Its there but only while the dupe is working that job.....

Yes I know the buffs work, but the underlying skill for some things like learning never seem to change. Dead progression for learning. 

[Kabrute]

Yeah, you are correct, dupes don't seam to actually level skills just jobs now....

[chemie]

The most important attribute has been movement speed.  They did level up speed way too fast but now it does not level at all.  So "we are giving lots of bonus opportunities for very specialized jobs but you can never perform them because your dupe will never get there in time".

[The Plum Gate]

14 minutes ago, chemie said:

The most important attribute has been movement speed.  They did level up speed way too fast but now it does not level at all.  So "we are giving lots of bonus opportunities for very specialized jobs but you can never perform them because your dupe will never get there in time".

That pretty much sums it up - this might be workable of their athletics leveled up without conditional assingment to a job. 

[clickrush]

I personally love the update or at least the idea of it. The new restrictions and requirements make organising your dupes more meaningful. I always liked specialising my dupes, not because it is efficient, but because it just feels nice. But I can imagine that the numbers aren't tuned right yet.

[Meep the digger]

To this preview, the only thing I can say is : it been awhile for Meep, Travaldo, Turner die in my game.

[Mayveena]

We know that the game wasn't going to launch with meal lice the only food your dupes ever needed to eat. It was clear to me at least that a pass was coming on agriculture and food. 

I'm not sure about the jobs, seems like a ton of micro for not a lot of gameplay.

[Coolthulhu]

8 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

First and foremost, unspecified Dupes should be able to perform any task, and slowly grow in the associated stats for that task, up to 5.  After that, no further growth can be achieved without being assigned to the associated Job.

This would remove one of the best parts of the update: making starting traits actually matter.

The problem isn't lack of leveling, the problem is that 0 in a stat isn't "mediocre", it's "terrible". And -5 in athletics that anemics have is death sentence.