Map erosion is currently insanely high

[zerat]

My playthrough started in the usual easy-mode way of keeping few duplicants, in my case 6 all with diver's lung, to ensure getting through the tech tree while consuming minimal resources.  I wanted to have the best chance to play around with the new content without dying to something before then, but this of course means that with a small labor force, expansion is going to go pretty slowly.  With the tech tree complete and with 1/3rd of my workforce no longer tied down to research I dug up to the surface, around cycle 200.  What I found when I got there really surprised me.

Attached are some screenshots of a pretty wide area to give the overall feel.  One is of cycle 206, right around when I first arrived at the surface, the other is from cycle 165, my previous hard save.

As you can clearly see, the surface biome is effectively gone.  It's already mostly gone by 165, and only tiny bits of it remain at 206.  I know I was intentionally playing a little slowly, but I also know that many people have taken colonies out into the thousands of cycles.  In the little area I exposed is nearly 800 metric tons of sweepable regolith, which is a huge number, and only accounts for the tiny little cavern my dupes can reach, so there's probably ten times as much actually up there, not including the full diggable blocks.  I had been hoping for a better source of renewable sand for a couple patches now but this is just ridiculous.

In short, it is my judgement that the balance of this mechanic is totally out of whack.  I'm not the sort of person who begs for buffs or nerfs, and I don't really care how this gets resolved, but to my mind there's absolutely no way this is working as intended.  To say the top of my map is Swiss cheese is being generous--in most places it's completely deleted.  Something needs a tweak, weather it's the damage these things do, the frequency with which they appear, something--this much I am sure of.

I would guess that part of the issue is just how soft all of the materials in the slime biome are.  The cold biome isn't much better, but it at least has some granite in it.  Abyssalite eventually gets eaten away but it's generally pretty tough, and so the joining sections between biomes are pretty much intact.

If you were have to asked me what I guessed this level of erosion would correspond to, I genuinely would have said something like cycle 5000 or later.

[BlueLance]

Yeah someone else reported it as a possible bug, I personally welcome challenge, but considering it takes me about 200 cycles before I go down never mind going up, it would be insane! Sure, protect your colony I understand, but the entire asteroid is pretty mammoth a task

[BlueLance]

They are also able to destroy neutronium, so careful for the side of the world. 

[yoakenashi]

This should not be an issue if you reveal the surface normally through exploration. Revealing it early through debug mode activates that and all other sections of the map.

[BlueLance]

1 minute ago, yoakenashi said:

This should not be an issue if you reveal the surface normally through exploration. Revealing it early through debug mode activates that and all other sections of the map.

I did reveal it normally, believe me it isn't good. It has actually destoyed the neutronium on the right side of my map entiely

[BlueLance]

Low and behold the left side of my map, which is a lot taller than the vanilla map, and the meteor has carved the left side haha

[Ambaire]

I think perhaps change it so meteors don't destroy naturally spawning blocks and/or leave as many blocks as they destroy, eventually converting the surface to meteor blocks.

[Fenixix]

1 hour ago, Ambaire said:

I think perhaps change it so meteors don't destroy naturally spawning blocks and/or leave as many blocks as they destroy, eventually converting the surface to meteor blocks.

Or they can just reduce damage done so it takes more meteors to destroy a tile. There can be many solutions. I think destroying neutronium is a bug, probaly will be fixed.
 

[Ambaire]

Just now, Fenixix said:

Or they can just reduce damage done so it takes more meteors to destroy a tile. There can be many solutions. I think destroying neutronium is a bug, probaly will be fixed.
 

The way the meteors are working right now, it is implied that the asteroid would be completely destroyed in x cycles. Is that what the devs intend by it?

[zerat]

5 hours ago, yoakenashi said:

This should not be an issue if you reveal the surface normally through exploration. Revealing it early through debug mode activates that and all other sections of the map.

My exploration was completely organic. I only came back with debug mode after deciding things had gotten unplayable to gather some screenshots.

[BlueLance]

59 minutes ago, Ambaire said:

The way the meteors are working right now, it is implied that the asteroid would be completely destroyed in x cycles. Is that what the devs intend by it?

If that were the case then yikes XD

[Ambaire]

Question to @zerat: It was my understanding that areas outside of the currently explored areas were not simulated until explored. Is the surface biome different, and are you sure you did not reveal it early?

If so, then I think the meteors should not begin until (1) you have discovered the surface via getting a dupe within x blocks of it, and (2) only start a few cycles later, just for gameplay reasons.

[mr peeps]

I think the topmost layer should be super hard, like real life (b/c the sun bakes it like crazy)

[zerat]

@Ambaire While I do have debug_enable.txt in my install, I absolutely did not use it during my playthrough.  I suppose it may be worth testing to see if merely having the option to use debug mode causes this early erosion?  An interesting thought.  In any case, though, my first view of the surface was a ladder built up to it, where I discovered massive amounts of steam from the polluted water being heated by the ongoing meteor shower.  I was surprised to see that because it meant that there was sky exposure.  A few cycles later the ladder reached high enough to give vision of the whole top part of the slime biome, where I discovered it was not a small hole, but that the entire top of the map was simply missing.  At this point I stopped playing because my solar panel build was going to be annoying to get done since it was getting bombarded a bit from the sides where I didn't expect to be vulnerable while construction took place, I then turned on debug mode and grabbbed a screenshot of the whole situation, loaded a previous save and did the same, before starting a new colony.  I can upload all of my hard saves if there's interest or that's relevant, but I assume not, most of them are boring earlygame checkpoints.

[BlueLance]

9 hours ago, Ambaire said:

Question to @zerat: It was my understanding that areas outside of the currently explored areas were not simulated until explored. Is the surface biome different, and are you sure you did not reveal it early?

If so, then I think the meteors should not begin until (1) you have discovered the surface via getting a dupe within x blocks of it, and (2) only start a few cycles later, just for gameplay reasons.

I raised this point, but the surface is active and not in stasis unfortunately, If you look at my picture as well you can see the streak on the left from a meteor, I have only went left and right from my base, I have not even begun digging up. 

Also neutronium might be super hard in terms of mining but meteors seem to carve their way through it like a hot knife through butter which makes me think its "Soft" but just unmineable

[Dukeofdummies]

19 hours ago, Ambaire said:

I think perhaps change it so meteors don't destroy naturally spawning blocks and/or leave as many blocks as they destroy, eventually converting the surface to meteor blocks.

Both are good options, otherwise I think just make abysallite and netronium immune and add an abysallite layer at the top.

[ArunPrasath]

18 hours ago, Ambaire said:

Question to @zerat: It was my understanding that areas outside of the currently explored areas were not simulated until explored. Is the surface biome different, and are you sure you did not reveal it early?

If so, then I think the meteors should not begin until (1) you have discovered the surface via getting a dupe within x blocks of it, and (2) only start a few cycles later, just for gameplay reasons.

This isnt the case. All Biomes are always simulated. While exploring (non debug) I've seen sides of the map destroyed. I've not yet explored the top of the map. If the biomes were not simulated, this wouldnt have happened

[Iwakura]

So, is this a bug or is it a game mechanic that the meteor shower destroys the asteroid?

[Oozinator]

I like the damage, adds some variation into game, where dangers are rare..

[Sasza22]

3 hours ago, Iwakura said:

So, is this a bug or is it a game mechanic that the meteor shower destroys the asteroid?

It`s a bit of both. Asteroid damage is supposed to be a thing, especially if you dig up to the surface and build stuff there. But as for now the asteroids hitting regolith should create more regolith causing a balance and not drilling through the map. Unless some rare cases the asteroids shouldn`t break into the lower biomes on their own.

In the cosmic preview and early release they could destroy one third of the map by cycle 200 but it`s fixed now. I mean it should be.

[Iwakura]

Then this is a problem, when I get to cycle 400 and stabilized my colony I saw to my self "Ok the next thing is build my oil cooker for NG ..." BUT just for curiosity I activate the debug mode just for peek a litle to the space boiome ... for my surprice ... 1/4 of the map (top side) is gone in the asteroid shower ... this is not fair ... then I supose to rush to the space biome (and not enjoy the rest of the map) to prevent my asteroid gone?

[Oozinator]

5 hours ago, Iwakura said:

... then I supose to rush to the space biome (and not enjoy the rest of the map) to prevent my asteroid gone?

You can do that, or forget about top layer.
Not really a problem, that biome ressources get "erased/deleted".
There is no real reson to go into surface biome. For solar, not worth the work.
Building so much bunker doors lime/carbon/steel, only to protect the useless layer..
 

[he77789]

Use: Free iron that only needs to cooled from 300C instead 1500-3000C. And storage filler.