Balance Issues: Geyser Types

[clickrush]

I just wanted to share my opinion about the geyser feature balance because I think there is room for improvement.

I really like the new geysers because they add depth to the game and reward exploration. But I feel like some of the geysers are straight up too underwhelming, while others might be too powerful, and some are akward.

I don't mind at all that the geysers have different power levels and outputs etc. This is actually a great change. What I mind is that each geyser type should feel useful to some degree. Digging up a geyser/vent should make me think "Oh nice, what can I do with this?" and never "Oh **** not one of these..."

The Good Ones

Obviously any geyser that outputs water or polluted water, especially at a low temp is great. The cool slush geyser might be the most powerful of them all. These types might be powerful and easy to use, but they are needed to make for a neat gaming experience.

All the volcano types are incredibly powerful. Not only do they make materials sustainable that would otherwise not be, they also produce enough heat to boil crude oil into natural gas. I really like these types the most because they are challenging to use and set up correctly but the payoff is huge.

The Mediocre Ones

Some of the non-steam gas vents are at least useful but they are almost all at least slightly underwhelming. Their output just isn't there to be impactful enough to make me go "Nice I found one of these!". They aren't awful but really, really meh. I feel like Klei could change the numbers on those to make them more interesting. I'am including natural gas, CO2, hydrogen here.

The Bad Ones

First of all the chlorine vents are straight up useless, not because of their properties but because chlorine is useless as a sustainable ressource in the current version. This has more to do with adding stuff to do with chlorine than with the geyser itself.

The really dissapointing ones are the polluted oxygen types. Their output is so incredibly low, that I always feel like they waste space and time when I find one. One of these has usually only an output of about 100g/s, which is barely the consumption of 1 duplicant. Yes, it is very cumbersome to spawn morbs, but at least I can scale that. These vents aren't even powerful enough for me to go: "Oh nice, if I want polluted oxygen I don't have to create as many morbs now!" because their effect is almost negligible. I suggest you remove those or heavily tweak their numbers to have at least some impact.

[Greep]

I personally, like the idea of having bad or mediocre geysers, as long as the distribution of good ones is somewhat normal.. E.g.  Either a gaurantee of a cool slush and metal volcano, which seem to be the two absolute strongest ones atm, or group all the good ones into a bucket (metal V, V, anything water related, nat gas, cooling like liquid C02) and have exactly say 5 of those in that bucket, with multiples allowed.

The reason I like lots of bad and mediocre ones is just because someone might find creative or silly uses for them, or they may be more useful in a future update.  Like maybe someone wants to make a squeeky puft meat farm or something like that.  It also makes the "treasure hunt" a bit more fun.  You know just from map creation that you will not have a "bad map" but is that hunk of neutronium you found something useful?  Who knows!

[TheExceed]

19 hours ago, clickrush said:

I just wanted to share my opinion about the geyser feature balance because I think there is room for improvement.

I really like the new geysers because they add depth to the game and reward exploration. But I feel like some of the geysers are straight up too underwhelming, while others might be too powerful, and some are akward.

I don't mind at all that the geysers have different power levels and outputs etc. This is actually a great change. What I mind is that each geyser type should feel useful to some degree. Digging up a geyser/vent should make me think "Oh nice, what can I do with this?" and never "Oh **** not one of these..."

The Good Ones

Obviously any geyser that outputs water or polluted water, especially at a low temp is great. The cool slush geyser might be the most powerful of them all. These types might be powerful and easy to use, but they are needed to make for a neat gaming experience.

All the volcano types are incredibly powerful. Not only do they make materials sustainable that would otherwise not be, they also produce enough heat to boil crude oil into natural gas. I really like these types the most because they are challenging to use and set up correctly but the payoff is huge.

The Mediocre Ones

Some of the non-steam gas vents are at least useful but they are almost all at least slightly underwhelming. Their output just isn't there to be impactful enough to make me go "Nice I found one of these!". They aren't awful but really, really meh. I feel like Klei could change the numbers on those to make them more interesting. I'am including natural gas, CO2, hydrogen here.

The Bad Ones

First of all the chlorine vents are straight up useless, not because of their properties but because chlorine is useless as a sustainable ressource in the current version. This has more to do with adding stuff to do with chlorine than with the geyser itself.

The really dissapointing ones are the polluted oxygen types. Their output is so incredibly low, that I always feel like they waste space and time when I find one. One of these has usually only an output of about 100g/s, which is barely the consumption of 1 duplicant. Yes, it is very cumbersome to spawn morbs, but at least I can scale that. These vents aren't even powerful enough for me to go: "Oh nice, if I want polluted oxygen I don't have to create as many morbs now!" because their effect is almost negligible. I suggest you remove those or heavily tweak their numbers to have at least some impact.

I do agree, however with the Geyser editor out. I just edit mine if theyre completely useless. Like my most recent map had 4 llarge volcanos....

[BlueLance]

Geez my polluted oxygen geysers give tonnes, or is yours a hot one?

[Ambaire]

7 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Geez my polluted oxygen geysers give tonnes, or is yours a hot one?

The problem is that they're extremely random. You can get a god geyser, or one that makes you go 'why does that garbage even exist?'

[BlueLance]

I know you get some that are trash (Looking at a CO2 Vent with something like 50g/s but I still make it work for me) I mean its a resource in the end might as well make the most of it, except chlorine, recently I started using it to pre cool some hot stuff and then I freeze it, takes a while though.

[FullMetalArthur]

I absolutely Agree. In my current map I got:

Good ones:
2 steam vents (But I must say one of those was submerged in crude oil, really close to the neutronioum limit below and the second one near the neutronium above) Took me 200 cycles just to find them)
1 Gold Volcano In a cold biome
1 Natural gas vent.

Meh ones.
2 hot steam vents (producing between 60 and 120 g/s)
2 Chlorine geysers
1 Magma Volcano right in the middle of a cold biome.

This was a hard seed for me, always struggling for water. Way too random. It's not just the geyser/volcano type, but it's location too. So completely agree it needs some serious twiking, it's currenlty unbalanced and luck plays a way too important factor on difficulty.