A zillion different geysers seems kind of boring?

[Supraluminal]

I haven't even tried the new update yet, this is totally off the cuff, but my snap first impression is that adding a bunch of different geysers is kind of boring and low-effort. They're almost literally resource spigots. I know we have to deal with temp/pressure factors to use some of them effectively but... eh.

I don't mind a few of them as one type of material source but I would have liked to see more creativity and variety. Large, inexhaustible deep-core mine POIs  that require dupes to operate. Plants that break minerals down into dirt, or take in hydrogen and breathe out chlorine. Sprawling ruins that can be salvaged for refined metals and plastic. Germs that live in polluted water and respire natural gas. Just seems like there are lots of avenues that are mechanically and thematically more interesting (or at least different) to explore.

I do like some attention being given to animals, since so far I've found them to be purely annoyances not worth bothering with. Hopefully this update makes them more appealing as part of a production system (and pets, why not).

I'm sure development resources are a consideration here, I know it's cheaper and easier to make minor variations of a thing you already have than to create something significantly different. I just hope we see a wider range of material sources in the future.

[Mariilyn]

While I agree with the message (the more variety of material sources, the better), I do not think at all that the new geyser are boring. First we only get a couple of them in each map and have to adapt to what we find. They seems to be also, in their current form, massively nerfed and irregular in their production.

For instance I updated my base today and my natgas geyser suddenly went from emitting a reliable ~96 kg / cycle to about half of this (If my calculation are correct?). And this is during its active period. It's in a dormant state for the next 50 cycles! And it seems to be the same for my steam geysers.

I personally like very much the variable output, dormancy cycle length & geyser selection because it adds diversity and uncertainty to each gameplay.(and also remove the "spigot effect"). I guess some adjustments are in order though, because 50 cycles without producing anything seems a lot to me, especially since they produce a lot less.

[BlueLance]

Also, when they said new types it didn't mean there would be more geysers, they changed how the current geysers worked, and it looks like chlorine geyser was removed entirely. I spawned a few worlds in debug and it seems that geysers work and if you have a tenured scientist they do something else? I am unsure.

Ignore that, all other types of geysers are buried behind the map, like the Anti Entropy thingy ma bob

[Kasuha]

9 minutes ago, Mariilyn said:

I guess some adjustments are in order though, because 50 cycles without producing anything seems a lot to me, especially since they produce a lot less.

This mechanic makes a good cause for gas/liquid storage requests. This particular geyser will produce almost 3 tons of gas over 50 cycles, then nothing over another 50 cycles which means we have legitimate need to store about half of the production for the following 'dry' period. What would fit easily six times in a compactor if it was solid requires 8x8 room at 20 kg/tile when it is gas.

[BlueLance]

I also dont mind the decreased outputs, I use too little Natural gas that my old geysers sat at 5kg for about 20 or so cycles before I could even start pumping it into my storage room for it. 

Having all these different choices to me will hopefully bring back some creativity

[Supraluminal]

7 hours ago, Mariilyn said:

While I agree with the message (the more variety of material sources, the better), I do not think at all that the new geyser are boring. First we only get a couple of them in each map and have to adapt to what we find. They seems to be also, in their current form, massively nerfed and irregular in their production.

For instance I updated my base today and my natgas geyser suddenly went from emitting a reliable ~96 kg / cycle to about half of this (If my calculation are correct?). And this is during its active period. It's in a dormant state for the next 50 cycles! And it seems to be the same for my steam geysers.

I personally like very much the variable output, dormancy cycle length & geyser selection because it adds diversity and uncertainty to each gameplay.(and also remove the "spigot effect"). I guess some adjustments are in order though, because 50 cycles without producing anything seems a lot to me, especially since they produce a lot less.

To be clear, I like some of the changes they've made, as long as they dial in the balance. Making the geysers more varied to interact with is good as far as it goes.

I want to emphasize, too, that this is as much a thematic/aesthetic complaint as mechanical. "Here's a hole that shoots out a stream of resources" rapidly becomes a bland and uninteresting concept when repeated for a zillion resources. Two or three geyser types is kind of fun, twenty is not. Imagine if instead of a ranching system we got a meat geyser. Add a plastic geyser. Strip out farming and put in a geyser of meal lice. (OK, meal lice geyser sounds kind of intriguingly disgusting.)

Pondering on it a bit, I think I'd prefer a design with a very limited set of base materials that are truly created from nothing, with the player being given the tools to combine or transform them to produce everything else. Every time another resource type is dumped into the world directly feels like a missed opportunity to set up new tools for players to get creative with.

You can still have a lot of content variety with that approach, too. It doesn't have to mean that there's a single geyser type and then machines to make everything else. We already have some examples in game, and like I said in my original post it can include other elements like plants, animals, and other wilder stuff: germs/microorganisms, access to space, ruins/POIs with different capabilities....

Anyway, that's my two cents as a player. It's fun to ask for stuff when you aren't managing a project's development budget!

[goboking]

I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment behind TC's OP.  We need renewable resources for things that can't be sustained in a closed loop, but we don't need them to all spew forth from a geyser. 

Take hydrogen, for example.  We now have a hydrogen geyser that can provides us with a free supply of hydrogen.  That's certainly useful, but it's not very exciting.  There's a tree in the game's files that grows in chlorine and produces inedible buds that off-gas hydrogen.  In my humble opinion far more interesting to design and build greenhouse with climate control to keep the atmosphere and temperatures tolerable, a production system to produce any required fertilizer, and piping in whatever irrigation may be required than it is to just slap a gas pump by yet another geyser as we're already doing with natural gas and chlorine geysers.

There's also the worry that all these geysers are going to add a LOT of heat to the asteroid, but I don't know if the math shows this to be a legitimate concern or not.

I will say that I like the idea of scientists acting as geologists who need to study these things.  Even if no tangible benefit stems from this mechanic it's thematic, and I've always been a sucker for thematic gameplay. 

[Elendiar]

This 

4 hours ago, Supraluminal said:

access to space

This.

This game need access to space. It must be.

[Supraluminal]

40 minutes ago, goboking said:

I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment behind TC's OP.  We need renewable resources for things that can't be sustained in a closed loop, but we don't need them to all spew forth from a geyser. 

Take hydrogen, for example.  We now have a hydrogen geyser that can provides us with a free supply of hydrogen.  That's certainly useful, but it's not very exciting.  There's a tree in the game's files that grows in chlorine and produces inedible buds that off-gas hydrogen.  In my humble opinion far more interesting to design and build greenhouse with climate control to keep the atmosphere and temperatures tolerable, a production system to produce any required fertilizer, and piping in whatever irrigation may be required than it is to just slap a gas pump by yet another geyser as we're already doing with natural gas and chlorine geysers.

There's also the worry that all these geysers are going to add a LOT of heat to the asteroid, but I don't know if the math shows this to be a legitimate concern or not.

I will say that I like the idea of scientists acting as geologists who need to study these things.  Even if no tangible benefit stems from this mechanic it's thematic, and I've always been a sucker for thematic gameplay. 

The hydrogen tree is a terrific example! If it was balanced as a net positive output of resources, it would serve the same purpose as a gas geyser (sustainably add material to the game) while being more interesting to play with. It tells so much more of a fun story than just building a box around yet another hole in the ground.

[Mariilyn]

5 hours ago, Supraluminal said:

want to emphasize, too, that this is as much a thematic/aesthetic complaint as mechanical. "Here's a hole that shoots out a stream of resources" rapidly becomes a bland and uninteresting concept when repeated for a zillion resources. Two or three geyser types is kind of fun, twenty is not. Imagine if instead of a ranching system we got a meat geyser. Add a plastic geyser. Strip out farming and put in a geyser of meal lice. (OK, meal lice geyser sounds kind of intriguingly disgusting.)

Yeah but its just that I feel that the geysers additions were actually a step in the right direction and not the other way around.

Like were not getting all the 20 zillion geysers all at once at the same time. I think the benefit of having so many different types of geysers is not to have an easy access to every material sources, it is not knowing exactly what each new game has in reserve for us. Whereas before we would know almost exactly what kind of geyser we would get each time.

And many geysers will be hidden, buried away at the edge of the map or in dangerous biomes and with their production decreased, randomized and inconsistant, it will force us to seek a variety of other solutions anyway. That free supply of hydrogen is actually not guaranteed, possibly not very much and not very stable. Also we can’t just slap a gas pump (yet) on a 2500K volcano.

To me at least it seems so, in the base that I plan to continue, the new update is a disruption that is forcing me to find alternatives sources of energy. I was relying on that nat gas geyser to sustain some of my generators, and i was already barely producing enough energy to maintain my base (cause I like the fancy tube systems).

Everything cannot be added at the same time. This update we got new geysers - and Im very happy about it. Maybe some would have preferred to get palmera trees before new geysers - that's fine! I want them also. But I just don't agree that it was a low-effort addition overall.

2 hours ago, goboking said:

There's also the worry that all these geysers are going to add a LOT of heat to the asteroid, but I don't know if the math shows this to be a legitimate concern or not.

I dont understand why all these worries. The geysers will be dormant most of the time. And there was all this fuss about the steam turbine « eating too much heat. »

[goboking]

6 hours ago, Mariilyn said:

I dont understand why all these worries. The geysers will be dormant most of the time. And there was all this fuss about the steam turbine « eating too much heat. »

Heat is the single biggest obstacle to the long term viability of a colony.  They just added a lot of heat to the asteroid.  The worries are not unfounded.