suggestion Dust update suggestion

[ThoroughbredFun]

This would make Duplicants, creatures, digging, and certain machines emit dust. Dust would float around in the air and stick to things. It would also make it harder to breathe and at a certain point duplicants would be hospitalized.

Dust would slowly accumulate on all floors and if it were to come in contact with water is would make sludge which (with the same physics as water, idk if you cam make it move slower) would sink to the bottom and acumulate on the bottom of your water tanks. 
This would mean that when your duplicants make a mess that it would eventualy turn to sludge making it slower to walk on and occassionally duplicangs can slip on it and get injured.
Sludge would also damage liquid pumps and occassionally clog a liquid pipe.

How to deal with dust. 
First is something like the deoderizer which would use water to remove dust from the air producing bottled sludge in return.

Next we have an addition to ventilation systems with a feew new machines.
First there will be a filter pipe that can be placed anywhere on the air pipes and would remove a percentage of the dust from whatever passes through it eventually needing the filter to be replaced.
You would need to craft filters in a special machine which would use reed fiber. The dirty filters that come from the filter pipes can be cleaned in another machine which as with the first suggested machine would create bottles of sludge.

Steam would remove all dust from the air producing sludge in the world.

How to deal with sludge.
There would be a specialized sludge pump which would not get damaged when pumping sludge, it would also pump more than a normal pump but will produce a fair amount of heat.

A machine that takes in pumped sludge and heats it up to make poluted water and clay, also has an imput for bottled sludge.
WILL EDIT AS I THINK OF MORE THINGS!

[ImpalerWrG]

Interesting environmental hazard, it would need to be tabulated as a type of germ '5,698 dust motes' due to the way gasses can't mix but can host germs.  That would allow for the dust to be breathed in and for Dups to be harmed by it.  I like dust filters made from reed, but I'd say the filter is emptied and a solid bit of clay results (clay particles being the smallest minerals are the best equivalent).

The transition to a liquid (I'd call it mud as that implies just minerals, while sludge generally means biological materials) would be tricky, can dust and polluted water mix, or just dust and fresh water?  Some folks have already talked about Mud as something that should exist on the map and I would make Mud a mixture of clay and water with dust as a essentially a 3rd state that clay can be in when dry and pulverized.

[vovik]

9 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

 I like dust filters made from reed, but I'd say the filter is emptied and a solid bit of clay results (clay particles being the smallest minerals are the best equivalent).

hmm, sand maybe? (instead of clay)

[vovik]

Also, how would you program interaction between "dust" germs and other germ types? Currently germs battle each other.

[BlueLance]

Hmmm to be honest I think this is a pretty decent suggestion, It can force players to think ahead in many ways, but where would dust come from in the event a player no longer digs etc? Would it generate from something?

[ThoroughbredFun]

44 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Hmmm to be honest I think this is a pretty decent suggestion, It can force players to think ahead in many ways, but where would dust come from in the event a player no longer digs etc? Would it generate from something?

I think it would generate from dupes and wildlife as it would irl with skin cells. also certain machines would as well.

1 hour ago, vovik said:

Also, how would you program interaction between "dust" germs and other germ types? Currently germs battle each other.

perhaps it could be programmed separately than germs, or perhaps like a different layer like in photoshop.

[vovik]

8 minutes ago, ThoroughbredFun said:

perhaps it could be programmed separately than germs, or perhaps like a different layer like in photoshop.

another layer? Perhaps no, because developers will not add totally another system for people to deal with - people will not like another game hardener in light of recent updates + its another load of work and design. Only option is implementing through germ overlay. Unless dust particles can transform into germs they touch with, effectively increasing danger ^^, ever thought of such interaction?

[ThoroughbredFun]

16 minutes ago, vovik said:

another layer? Perhaps no, unless dust particles transform into germs they touch with, effectively increasing danger.

I don't know why everyone is thinking of this like germs, the original idea was to have it travel like heat.

[BlueLance]

20 minutes ago, ThoroughbredFun said:

I don't know why everyone is thinking of this like germs, the original idea was to have it travel like heat.

Heat is tied to a specific tile etc, if dust is constantly forming having it work and spread similar to germs is the easiest solution. Germs and Heat don't travel all that differently.

[ThoroughbredFun]

30 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Heat is tied to a specific tile etc, if dust is constantly forming having it work and spread similar to germs is the easiest solution. Germs and Heat don't travel all that differently.

I'm not going to pretend to know too much about this, the devs can do it whatever way they want

 

[BlueLance]

9 minutes ago, ThoroughbredFun said:

I'm not going to pretend to know too much about this, the devs can do it whatever way they want

 

That is indeed the correct answer! Because goodness knows what they will decide! Fire was meant to be part of the game as gasses are marker flammable but at the moment they obviously dont light up. Unsure how they will do that either. But I think dust would be interesting!

[Master Miner]

This is an interesting suggestion, this could be made to increase challenge and fun in the late game.

It is not hard to add one parameter for the amount of dust to gases and spread / move the dust along with germs, heat etc. If / when the game engine gets optimized and multi-threaded there will be enough free room to add features and increase map size.

Just how would it play at the start of the game?
Wouldn't digging out sandstone produce excessive amount of dust?

[ThoroughbredFun]

38 minutes ago, Master Miner said:

This is an interesting suggestion, this could be made to increase challenge and fun in the late game.

It is not hard to add one parameter for the amount of dust to gases and spread / move the dust along with germs, heat etc. If / when the game engine gets optimized and multi-threaded there will be enough free room to add features and increase map size.

Just how would it play at the start of the game?
Wouldn't digging out sandstone produce excessive amount of dust?

I have no idea, I didn't think of this problem, the best thing I can think of would be a boosted immune system when starting out.

[BlueLance]

Starting biome could be labelled "Damp" and stops dust spreading/forming. but everything else is not damp

[vovik]

id say that making sandstone producing dust + germs spread on dust faster will become a punch in the stomach for beginners
Just imagine that snowball of germs in colony when its too dusty.

[ScottFree]

maybe if there were specific machines that traded one problem with generating dust, id be more for it. Otherwise, its just seems like complexity for complexity sake. 

 

[Master Miner]

1 hour ago, ScottFree said:

complexity for complexity sake.

Complexity -> fun. If it's not too much, if it is not frustrating.

Perhaps there could be dust from the beginning, along with a warning that too long exposure to dust is unhealthy.
Masks can be made out of reed fiber and need to be replaced depending on dust exposure.
The player reads, but soon forgets the warning. 100 cycles later the dupes develop asthma and can barely work. *jk*

Perhaps there could be a supply of the masks at the beginning of the game, like with nutrient bars.

[ImpalerWrG]

9 hours ago, Master Miner said:

Complexity -> fun. If it's not too much, if it is not frustrating.

I completely disagree, complexity is not fun, DEPTH is fun, complexity is the foundation mass upon which depth is built but it is not the same thing.  The art of game design is to maximize the ratio between depth and complexity. 

It is much like building a building you want it as tall as possible with the smallest footprint and mass, a heap of stone like the pyramids is inferior to a slender steel skyscraper because the ratio of footprint to height is so much worse.

[Master Miner]

14 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

complexity is not fun, DEPTH is fun, complexity is the foundation mass upon which depth is built

While "depth" - like the spectrum of ways in which you can solve a problem - is very important, the complexity is also an important source of fun within the chosen aspects of the game that the player can put into relation to RL, i.e. where the player does not have to learn a lot.

Managing the environment and the health is on of such aspects in ONI, so adding to it increases the fun.
Because the players do not need to learn that a lot of dust is unhealthy, that complexity just adds fun without being tedious.

Same with physics - adding (wisely) to the in-game physics will increase the complexity and fun.

 

 

[ImpalerWrG]

Your describing the leveraging of player knowledge to make a system more intuitive, not the same thing.  In any case were getting off topic.

I support the dust concept, its a good early game challenge for the player largely because they have control of the rate of mining.  Dust doesn't multiply like a true germ so it can serve as a kind of a introduction to management of environmental hazards and quarantining parts of the base, keeping them clean etc.  For Dubs I think dust inhalation should just cause direct damage, that's simple and visible and makes more sense then being 'infected' with dust.  It also gives us more reason to use medical facilities early in the game to heal our dubs.