Sid Meier's Style difficulty settings

[Greep]

Currently the gap between newbie and experienced player widens with every single update.  Even though it's quite easy for me on even fatilistic/miserable settings, I remember this game being quite difficult and complex when I first got it, and there's been quite a few nerfs to basic things since then (food, power, etc). Furthermore, some people want to just play around somewhat sandbox style with dozens of dupes, but without necessarily having to turn on god mode.

Not having comprehensive difficulties would cause increase in dev time anyways, as features that are meant to be challenging may end up getting ripped out if new players find it too difficult.

 

In a game that is crazy complicated, the best way to go forward is to have a wide range of difficulty settings akin to the civilization series.  Example difficulties:

Dirt Difficulty (relax mode):

• x500% algae tile mass
• x500% algae distiller processing speed
• x300% coal tile mass
• x500% hydrofan heat dissipation
• +30 immunity/cycle
• -30 stress/cycle
• X10,000% wire/heavi capacity (no need for Heavi-Watt)
• x200% Skill/profession skill gain
• x500% Duplicant lung capacity
• No geysers of temp greater than nat gas

Copper difficulty (No need to fill here, but would be in between dirt and iron)

Iron Difficulty (close to current, made a little easier.  Intended as standard difficulty):

• x200% algae tile mass
• x150% coal tile mass
• +12 immunity/cycle
• Guaranteed one metal Volcano, one slush geyser, one steam geyser

Neutronium Difficulty (basically a survival difficulty, with no guarantees of anything.  Meant to be played off and on rather than something you graduate into)

• x20% skill gain, no retention of learned hat abilities.
• Half radius dirt biome
• No guarentee of any geysers.
• 0% immunity gain (as current miserable)
• +25 stress/cycle (+5 from fatalistic)
• Gauranteed to be completely missing 1 or 2 basic resources (e.g. copper, algae, coal, etc), 1 or 2 plants, as well as one advanced resource (oil, magma, etc) 
• Increased duplicant tmp sensitivty (dies instantly in 100C+, slowly in 50C+, instantly in -100C, slowly in -50C, atmo suits add +50)
• Rare stress outbreaks on any mood level

[blash365]

You forgot the part about the AI having to cheat to do anything and still being dull as a donkey.

[thewreckedangle]

also the critters will become Gandhi the destroyer

[blash365]

4 hours ago, thewreckedangle said:

also the critters will become Gandhi the destroyer

Yeah, shinebugs will be prone to build nuclear bombs.

[Greep]

I don't think ONI is quite ready for medieval jewish nazi pufts.  So I was more thinking about just the player here

[Ambaire]

Interesting OP followed by 4 irrelevant off-topic derail posts. Sadly, one can't expect any better of these forums...

[blash365]

56 minutes ago, Ambaire said:

Interesting OP followed by 4 irrelevant off-topic derail posts. Sadly, one can't expect any better of these forums...

Didnt see any derailing posts in any other threads so far, but i am sure you have your reasons to post your witty remark. And you sure have not played civilization.

To me the OP is good enough on its own. Not much to add to it.

My point was merely that creating options to scale the game might be a nice thing to have. But since he quoted civilization, you took the liberty to point out that the essential parts of the game should go first (in civs case that would be the ai). Otherwise you lose the immersion of the game (e.g. nuke building gandhi in civilization).