suggestion Integrity of the in-game physics

[Master Miner]

A general suggestion: level-up the integrity of the in-game physics

When you list properties like thermal conductivity and capacity, Watts, Kelvins, Joules, you make players put that into relation with what they know from RL / school, so they will expect to use their knowledge and this will be a great source of fun.

If this part of physics is a key aspect in the game, then I suggest to add integrity to it.
It is only frustrating for players to find out that their understanding of Joules, Watts and Kelvins is of little use and is made ridiculous.
It's not good to make players look dumb.

If it is not a key aspect of the game, then I'd suggest to hide and/or rename the details that are misleading.
There is really no need to pretend and then fail.
Watts and Joules per kilogram Kelvin, and then - hidden factor?
Why would somebody need that?

I suggest sound, high integrity in-game physics.
Make it possible for kids to learn something / solidify their knowledge while playing.
If you have any doubts on how to do that - just ask.

AETN is cool, wheezwort is cool (convert heat into mass), but hidden factor and stuuf like liquid tepidizer are not cool.
BTW, fix that cooling bug.

[Kasuha]

ONI physics is so beyond repair that I'm not even sure what you're referring to most of the time. I think there's no way it could be bent back towards realistic physics, it would be a very different game.

Fixing the drip cooling/borg cube exploit would be great, though. I'd be fine with just that.

[Master Miner]

2 hours ago, Kasuha said:

ONI physics is so beyond repair that I'm not even sure what you're referring to most of the time

My impression is that it can be improved ... like 80% improvement with 20% effort. It does not have to try that hard to copy RL physic. It is good if it does, but what is more important is to have consistent in-game physics that does not contradict itself. It does not have to be perfect, but it should try not to be ridiculous.

Many aspects can be used to balance the game-play and provide challenges just in time, but one should not bend the physics, because it is like changing the rules during the game, it makes the player look dumb.

If the player is expected to use the grams, Kelvins, Joules, Watts etc, then they should have a meaning. This means no hidden factors and no out-of-concept miracles. Improvement should be towards preservation of energy and matter (while allowing for conversion between the two).

If the energy / physical details are not meant to have a meaning, then it's better if they are hidden. For example by omitting "Watts" as power unit. A generator would have power "600" or "800" of "power", a pump would use 120 of "power".

[Kasuha]

17 minutes ago, Master Miner said:

what is more important is to have consistent in-game physics that does not contradict itself.

Well if all you have on mind is the "hidden factor" of 5 when it comes up to heat mass of buildings or their heat generation, then I agree with you that it would be better if the building advertised its real heat mass and heat production. I kinda doubt it but maybe we'll get it eventually.

Fixing other disconnects is out of question in my opinion. For instance the disconnect that tepidizer using 1.2 kW of power generates 4 MW of heat is not going away, regardless of the fact that in real world these are the very same Watts. Similarly the fact that burning anything does not require oxygen, or that electrolysis of water costs less energy than what can be gained using aforementioned oxygen-less burning of resulting hydrogen.

It's game physics. It does not have to be realistic. 

[Tobruk]

5 hours ago, Master Miner said:

My impression is that it can be improved ... like 80% improvement with 20% effort. It does not have to try that hard to copy RL physic.

 

You make these claims yet do not provide any examples of how such improvement could be achieved. Physics simulation is a big strain on computer resources and a middle ground had to be found, frankly.

[ImpalerWrG]

We should focus on specific instances of non-conservation of mass, energy and heat or else we will just talk in circles.

[Master Miner]

This is just a general suggestion - and a question: is understanding of and playing with distinct areas in physics a key aspect of ONI or not?

Because, if it is not, then I argue that it is better not to pretend - not to have Joules and Watts, not to mislead players, not to create the expectation that there is solid in-game physics behind that numbers and units.

My impression is that it was meant to be a key aspect originally, but then it somehow derailed.

IMO, without solid in-game physics, ONI is a nice game overall, but not more than that.
The "something special" that would make it stand out among other games is missing.

How to improve: bend parameters of buildings and materials, but unbend the physics, make the numbers and units mean what they should mean.

Example: increase power coming out of generators to match the needed power and heat dissipation. If the tepidizer needs few kW, why not let it get them. Tweak consumption rates to balance the game and provide for challenge.

Example: the fridge draws 120W and has heat production of 2.5W. But, there's the hidden factor making it effectively produce 500W. Why?
Why not make it draw 240W and dissipate 240W + heat removed from the contents?

People ask me frequently about computer games, especially about how to educate their kids and manage kids time around Internet and games. With solid in-game physics, ONI will be be a strong recommendation. Without it, it will still enter the list, but under "meh".

 

13 hours ago, Tobruk said:

Physics simulation is a big strain on computer resources

This suggestion is about giving more integrity to what is already there, so no significant additional resources would be needed. Anyway, average "budget" contemporary CPU can make over 30 billions (> 30,000,000,000) of FP operations per second.

[Kasuha]

51 minutes ago, Master Miner said:

Example: the fridge draws 120W and has heat production of 2.5W. But, there's the hidden factor making it effectively produce 500W. Why?
Why not make it draw 240W and dissipate 240W + heat removed from the contents?

The simple answer is: game balance.

The complicated answer:

Buildings act as if they have 20% of the mass of ores they were built from. Why? Because game balance. Some buildings would simply have too much thermal inertia.

To cover for the fact that they have reduced mass, also their heat output is multiplied by five for display purposes (so the building's heating seems to match). And there's a bug that this heat output is advertised in Watts where it should be kilowatts. These two is where the hidden factor of 200 comes from.

And if the question is why is there disconnect between power used and heat generated, the answer is that it does not make sense in the few cases, when there are elephants in the room in the form of Tepidizer or Space Heater. These would need way too much power to provide the heating they're providing. There's no way you could give it 4 MW of power to slowly heat some water. If you give players that kind of power generation, then everything else falls out of balance. So the reason is: game balance.

[ImpalerWrG]

Note that any building which performs a transformation reaction on ingredients dose not logically need to emit all of it's electrical input out again as heat.  Much of the energy can be assumed to be embedded into the transformed materials.

Refrigerators might be modified to operate only when their internal contents are warm and to pump that heat out + waste heat.  That is how a real refrigerator works mind you, they cycle according to an internal thermometer.  The minimum power consumption is thus determined by the leakage of heat from the outside, so a refrigerator in the Ice Biome should consume way less energy.

Things that put out more heat then they consume in electricity are weird yes, but heat is generally a waste product the player wants to get rid of, if these devices produced less heat it might encourage the player to seek out and access the natural heat source on the map.

My largest complaints are around the fixed temperature outputs of various water using buildings, these allow heat to be created and or destroyed for free and in very none intuitive ways that no new player would expect.  If we feel that these facilities should have hot water outputs (like a shower perhaps) then they should have an internal tank that is heated electrically and they won't work until it has come up to temperature.  Alternatively they can be made less effective if their water is cold (cold shower debuff, -50% Libido).

Electrolizing water is in reality not a fixed electrical cost, but varies with the water temperature, hotter water requires less energy to split (and super critical steam even less), so again have the Electrolizer heat it's internal water store up to a critical temperature before it can electrolize and produce gasses at or above that temperature if we still want to give the player the challenge of cooling their oxygen.

[Zarquan]

23 hours ago, Master Miner said:

Anyway, average "budget" contemporary CPU can make over 30 billions (> 30,000,000,000) of FP operations per second.

By citing the FLOPS of the machines, you are assuming independent calculations, perfect parallelization utilizing every core, no transfers to memory, and no other processes running (including the OS).  I highly doubt any of these are true at this stage.  The game also has more things to do than the thermal calculations.  It has to do this and simultaneously calculate path finding (which includes calculating every possible location the dupes can go) for every dupe in your colony, assigning tasks based on travel distance, keeping track of plant's growth, rendering the world, keeping track of the time of day, equalizing gas mass, moving gas around, deciding animal behavior, calculating germ growth and equalization, calculating the mass movement and thermal calculations for every single gas pipe and liquid pipe on the map, and all of this having to act the same at 3x speed.  Many of these calculations happen more than once per second.

I do agree that their hidden factors should be explicit in game.  I certainly agree there should be multipliers for balance, but we should know what they are.  It would make designing machines easier. 

Ignoring the hidden factors, are there other times they misuse the terms joule, watt, and kelvin? 

[Master Miner]

On 6.3.2018 at 10:01 AM, Kasuha said:

The simple answer is: game balance.

My simple suggestion is to balance the game without bending the physics, without hidden factors. There are many parameters and ways that allow that.

Example:

On 6.3.2018 at 10:01 AM, Kasuha said:

Buildings act as if they have 20% of the mass of ores they were built from. Why? Because game balance. Some buildings would simply have too much thermal inertia.

So why not adjust the thermal capacity and conductivity? If something is built mainly of iron it does not have to have the same thermal capacity and conductivity as iron.

 

On 6.3.2018 at 10:01 AM, Kasuha said:

To cover for the fact that they have reduced mass, also their heat output is multiplied by five for display purposes

How is the heat output related to mass?

On 6.3.2018 at 10:01 AM, Kasuha said:

there's a bug that this heat output is advertised in Watts where it should be kilowatts

So a fridge effectively dissipates 500 W but the display should read 2.5 kW?
To match the (reduced) mass?
That's less than sane, it's not good. That's what I'm suggesting to get rid of in the first place.
 

It seems that the game designers wanted to approximately time when the player will run into problems with heat and to balance the difficulty of dealing with it. They wanted to make stuff heat faster and cool faster. With the "outbreak", they wanted to give players something to heat contaminated water. It seems that this needs some additional thought.

I argue that there are much better ways to provide challenge and balance, ways that will create fun instead of frustration: adjust parameters like conductivity, capacity, power generation and consumption, availability and cost of materials etc., but keep the physics sane.
 

On 6.3.2018 at 10:01 AM, Kasuha said:

when there are elephants in the room in the form of Tepidizer or Space Heater

They are actually not needed at all, they can be nerfed without causing any great pain, or even any at all.

One of the key strategies in the game is not to create heat, but to move it around instead. The player will want to heat (and cool) liquids and gases with heat pumps anyway, and will not want to waste energy nor to create additional heat.

Heating of 5 kg of Water from 35°C to 85°C per second (to match the throughput of water sieve) needs approximately 1 MW.
To allow to waste power to heat stuff that fast, I suggest to add NG burner with heat dissipation of some 2.5 MW and NG consumption of 45g of NG per second. That would match the combustion energy of methane.

Basic ideas of how to repair in-game physics in ONI:
- The power of generators and the consumption of devices should be greatly increased. Generators like 10x or more.
- Heat capacity and conductivity of buildings should be adjusted.
- Fridges are heat pumps and should behave as @ImpalerWrG wrote above.
- The tepidizer should draw some 3.6 kW and produce the same amount of heat. It can be used to heat small amounts of liquid or for fine adjustment of liquid temperature. It should heat up to 1200°C or more without any damage.
- The space heater should draw some 1.8 kW and produce the same amount of heat. Also up to 1200°C or more.
- Difficulty of getting coal and NG should be adjusted to keep the balance
- NG consumption (generator) and NG production (geyser) should be reduced to match properties of NG. Additionally, some new creature (some astro-cow) which can be farmed could produce NG
- Access to high power generators and devices should be mid-game and late game thing. E.g. nuclear reactor giving some 10 MW of heat and a steam turbine perhaps 200 kW of power
- Power rating of wires should be adjusted, perhaps by adding "high power" conductor. Rating of normal wire could be 2 kW, conductive 10 kW, heavy 50 kW and high power perhaps 1 MW. Wire junctions (new part) should allow to connect different wire types (normal, conductive and heavy, but not high power) and so separate load calculation in circuits. Perhaps every junction could do that without the need for a new junction part.
- Oxygen consumption for combustion should receive a careful thought.
- AETN could be beefed up a bit

Spoiler

Perhaps some "end game" device, something like teleporter or spaceship would need huge amount of power to be used. The dupes could take distinct amount of stuff and food (limited weight) and either travel to another asteroid (to get more of some precious stuff) or travel to a new world (when they have enough of everything). That new world would be a new game that would become available in some 5 years and would have a sane, high integrity and much richer in-game physics.

I suggest for the game to be (science) fiction in almost all aspects, but to have sound key aspects, sound inner logic and sound in-game physics.

[ImpalerWrG]

A natural gas Burner (would look just like a big burner from your stove top with blue flames and such) sounds like a very nice idea, a means of turning fuel directly into heat without going through electricity makes a lot of sense.  CO2 emission would be necessary and it would be ejected freely rather then piped so that would be something for the player to deal with.

Note that with more geysers we now have more potential heat sources on the map and as I said earlier their should be incentive to go out and use them, so electrical heat sources can likely be nerfed now with less risk.

[Dopey]

I wholeheartedly back the removing of hidden factors by general scaling up of all energy values and scaling the thermal conductivities and capacities to achieve some balance.

Pretty much everything Master Miner mention in the latest post... Do that.

On 3/6/2018 at 4:01 AM, Kasuha said:

Some buildings would simply have too much thermal inertia.

Why is this a problem?  It would only slow heating and cooling based on how hot the construction materials were.  If buildings producing things didn't output at fixed temperatures the large mass will equilibrate to the environment over time with the temperature of the inputs and outputs.

[Kasuha]

1 hour ago, Dopey said:

Why is this a problem? 

Feel free to try and figure things out yourself. The fact that you don't see (or don't want to see) the reason doesn't mean there is none.

I'm just an observer here. I'm not a developer of this game. As a sofrware developer, though, I have some understanding of why things that work decent usually don't get an overhaul.

[Dopey]

2 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Feel free to try and figure things out yourself. The fact that you don't see (or don't want to see) the reason doesn't mean there is none.

Yea I think I'd love to see the early days of this game when they may have tried to do everything with more "straightforward" physics.  To see what kind of wacky cases they ran into that evolved it to today's state.