Exploits ruin the game, they need to go

[chemie]

8 minutes ago, trukogre said:

or, float it on a diamond raft drifting through a sea of liquid oxygen.  As the white flakes drift from the press in the lazy winds of crystal oxygen, floating to and fro, your dupes will frolic in the pale sunlight, until they are snorted up into the tube system, a prehensile nostril hungering for the precious white snow

Well I was going to say that you are hardly contributing constructively but again, I did learn a new word today....prehensile...although I am not sure you are using it correctly as an adjective to a nostril...but that's ok.

[trukogre]

14 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

 

These design shortcuts for player use aren't an exploit, they're part of the game design.  Let's have that design conversation, and let's ignore 'complexity'.  "Hey, that's a really cool neat trick" happens once, and then it's part of EVERY base from then on.  There's no complexity to that, it's script kiddie stuff.  I don't need to know how it works to make it happen.

Let's have a discussion as to what should *happen* in the design, overall, and not why one method should be cool and another should be shot apart on entry.

A+ post overall.  I don't think ignoring complexity completely is the way.  Complexity is great.  First off, remember there are multiple kinds of complexity.  There's complexity like the complexity of the strategy of a good game of Go.  This is deep stuff, inter-related systems.  It's simply not susceptible to copying.  Then there's the shallower complexity of gadgetry, like a piece of IKEA furniture with a lot of pieces and a lot of steps.  We want to remove the temptation to copy too much in this domain, while retaining the complexity where people can tinker and experiment with the pieces.  With that said, I think you've hit the nail on the head.  The 'that's a really cool neat trick' happens once per trick is exactly the issue, people want the tinkering gameplay to include really cool neat tricks, but they only happen once and then are copied ad infinitum, which is a problem we solve by not ignoring complexity, but by keeping the limitations of complexity firmly in mind.  People just can't have everything they want.

4 minutes ago, chemie said:

Well I was going to say that you are hardly contributing constructively but again, I did learn a new word today....prehensile...although I am not sure you are using it correctly as an adjective to a nostril...but that's ok.

If I build the polymer press laden diamond raft on a sea of LOX ingame and include a screenshot would that make it constructive?--because i'm pretty sure it would actually work.

[chemie]

2 minutes ago, trukogre said:

 

If I build the diamond raft on a sea of LOX ingame and include a screenshot would that make it constructive?--because i'm pretty sure it would actually work.

I would love to see a raft design...exploit free of course

[Yunru]

1 hour ago, TehPlayer14 said:

It wasn't intended clickbait (I wanted an accurate title)

Also this should be in general why because (it's not a suggestion duh)

How odd, I could of swore the other sbuforum's called "suggestions and feedback"...

[trukogre]

14 minutes ago, chemie said:

I would love to see a raft design...exploit free of course

What I had in mind was a platform of diamond tiles in a LOX tank, and then I'd photoshop in a picture of my friend who's a competitive sailor/racer.  Is that an exploit?  It would be propelled by hydrofans, of course.  They wouldn't move it at all, but we're used to hydrofans not accomplishing anything so that's ok. --When I said work I meant keep the press cool, not make it to the next asteroid over 

21 minutes ago, Sevio said:

 

I also keep seeing remarks like this: "If you think deleting heat with water sieves is an exploit, don't use it!".

The problem with that argument is that whenever dealing with heat comes up, everything will be compared to the path of least resistance/most reward. It removes the necessity to address and discuss the proper cooling solutions that we should use instead, or that we would like to see from the devs. Because the same people who tell you not to use it, then turn around and say there is no heat problem since you can simply delete it in a water sieve.

It's easier to build Jonny's petrol genny cooler though, so that's actually the path of least resistance/most reward, since 'delete it in a water sieve' often actually means build and power 2 aquatuners plus get 5 kg/s of p water from somewhere, and at that point you'd be better off just using Jonny's design. The heyday of the water sieve was a few months ago, when powering a bunch of aquatuners was easy peasy.  Now the water sieve is OP, once you are cracking crude oil into natgas for the power and pwater, but it just doesn't seem like most players are doing that cracking yet.

[chemie]

Just now, trukogre said:

What I had in mind was a platform of diamond tiles in a LOX tank, and then I'd photoshop in a picture of my friend who's a competitive sailor/racer.  Is that an exploit?

Platform does not count.  I wanted a raft.

[trukogre]

2 minutes ago, chemie said:

Platform does not count.  I wanted a raft.

Now I'm waiting for boats in this game, and I already was waiting for boats in Life is Feudal my other game, every game is just sit around waiting for my boat to come.  Thanks for that.  At least we can agree that boats should be propelled by hydrofans?

[Andz]

Does it feel intuitive that a filtering machine changes temperature? No.

Does it make early bases harder? Yeah a lot. It punishes you actually for building an early shower. Something no sane person would anticipate.

Is it fun to filter a geyser output just for change of temperature? No.

Does it increase the atmosphere in the game? No.

Would the change be easy to balance out? Yes, just add a Cold Slushy instead of a Cold Steamy at the start of each map. Done.

Does it feel like an exploit or a lame ass shortcut? Yes.

So why not change it?  ....

 

 

I play my maps only with the Mod that changes the output to the input temperature and I love it. It made me stop playing the game before that it deletes heat because it takes away all the fun, now I am playing again.

[JonnyMonroe]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Drip cooling is an example of an actual exploit.  There was an unintended effect from water falling into a pool that caused a rapid loss of heat.  The fixed-output buildings are part of the design, and therefore not an exploit.  If you do not like how they work, that's fine.  Write up a document detailing why you think they're broken and offer suggestions about how to fix them.    The post that started this thread won't change anything -- it will be ignored by the developers.  

I'm not going to argue over the semantics of the term 'exploit' as it can be used in a wide variety of ways but I largely agree with this. I think the thread overall has had some good discussions despite the occasionally heated post.

 

What concerns me is whether or not a given thing improves the game and that is, as I said before, wholly subjective. I don't think sieve output temps improve the game but I don't think they strictly make it worse either. I won't lose any sleep over them removing it and if they don't remove it I won't bother taking advantage of it because it doesn't strike me as an interesting solution to thermal management. The discussion is more relevant when you approach it with the mentality of 'is it good design?' rather than 'is it an exploit?' and if you're going to get into that discussion you need to start first and foremost by stating why you even play the game and what you find fun in it so people can then interpret your feedback in the proper context. For me? I like building rube-goldberg contraptions and I like making machines that can operate at the extremes of the simulation. So obviously I wouldn't like sieves for heat management because they are very simple. I'll give you a preview of what I'm doing in my current build to show the kind of build I find fun:

 

Depending on how you define 'exploit' it can absolutely be called an exploit. I'm taking advantage of phase change energies to multiply the effective thermal output of the volcano then using that heat to both cook oil and run a turbine. That's a minor volcano and it should put out 8600kg per eruption but it actually gives well over 20,000kg. Is it simple? No. Did it take a long time to design and build? yep. Is it messy? Very. Has it broken and been rebuilt at times? Absolutely. Is it hypnotic to just sit and watch it run? Very.

[TehPlayer14]

23 minutes ago, Andz said:

Does it feel intuitive that a filtering machine changes temperature? No.

Does it make early bases harder? Yeah a lot. It punishes you actually for building an early shower. Something no sane person would anticipate.

Is it fun to filter a geyser output just for change of temperature? No.

Does it increase the atmosphere in the game? No.

Would the change be easy to balance out? Yes, just add a Cold Slushy instead of a Cold Steamy at the start of each map. Done.

Does it feel like an exploit or a lame ass shortcut? Yes.

So why not change it?  ....

 

 

I play my maps only with the Mod that changes the output to the input temperature and I love it. It made me stop playing the game before that it deletes heat because it takes away all the fun, now I am playing again.

Is that mod real? or this is just a troll?

Because I would really want to play with it

[Andz]

Oh god this picture copy&paste ended up really big. Can I make it smaller?

[JonnyMonroe]

44 minutes ago, trukogre said:

It's easier to build Jonny's petrol genny cooler though

I didn't find it easy at the time. There's a lot of little issues that pile up when making it if you don't anticipate them beforehand. The NGG Ice array was a whole other level of complicated. It had 2 collection zones for the outputs running on clock sensors 300seconds apart so I could gather the ice in 1 stage then let the frozen CO2 fall into a 2nd area that was meticulously maintained in the very thin temperature range needed to keep CO2 liquid so I could pump it out without it going gas state and contaminating the cold hydrogen containment above. Multiple layers of triple doors were used with automation timing so they could close in succession and thus not delete gas, but still vacuum seal after closing to keep the -55 CO2 room separated from the -200 hydrogen room. The output rails needed item dropper buffers as they could not be allowed to back up - if they did ice would fall to the CO2 room and throw off the temperature management and break the whole thing.

[WanderingKid]

12 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

The discussion is more relevant when you approach it with the mentality of 'is it good design?' rather than 'is it an exploit?' and if you're going to get into that discussion you need to start first and foremost by stating why you even play the game and what you find fun in it so people can then interpret your feedback in the proper context.

A certainly reasonable request, but if we all have a single post for the answer, it'll be a very long thread. XD

This game to me is a cross between a Zachtronics game(SpaceChem or Opus Magnum) or a factory builder (Factorio), a base builder along the lines of SimCity or Rimworld/DwarfFortress, and an exploration/survival game that's I most easily associate these days with Don't Starve.

I'm more into the efficiency of playstyle and what you can get done with the most effect for the least work in game.  I think ranching is fun, but it's certainly not usually efficient... until you consider that only certain critters shoul… and there I go off on a tangent again.  I find games like SpaceChem to be thoroughly enjoyable, because the pieces are just pieces.  The question is how efficiently can you make any particular set of pieces better.  Do you go for cycle time, or for least number of components... things like that.  That question is interesting to me.

I beat Dwarf Fortress to death for a few years running.  I enjoy the game, but the update speed became too slow and I simply got sick of the interface.  That'll happen, but I hope the best for Toady and his project, but I moved on and have been poking around for a game to sate that particular taste for a while.  Oxygen Not Included so far has at least the same meats I liked, just different seasoning, you might say.

Finally I loved Don't Starve, but it eventually becomes 'Much of a Muchness'.  The honeymoon eventually is over and you have to determine if the mechanics alone are not just enough for you to play, but beat out something that gives you more interest.  DST had that taste for a while because it was fun doing it with my friends and THEY were more interesting, the mechanics were just something we did.

Don't know if that answered helps your question, but that's what I've got an answer.

[catsRjerks]

what about the fact that plants in ONI don't give oxygen and remove co2 for free? shouldn't that be fixed as well?

[Dirmagnos]

52 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

The word 'exploit' annoys the heck out of me in this case.  An exploit is something that's clearly NOT part of the game's design, such as glitching a map wall past a Zelda boss or how the 'drip cooling bug' (note, drip cooling is a usable thing, they're different) would create frozen lakes because of the mass switches, but it took a while to figure out how that bug was generating.  In this case, it's just too easy?  Alright, that's fair, but let's call it what it is: "My stuff doesn't look cool enough because there's methods that most players can figure out that don't make my thing look so damned cool."

No, that's not polite, but that's what it is.  Does using an aquatuner/sieve setup hurt you at all?  No.  Most newer players would have enough of a problem even getting it to have enough power.  It's a shortcut that I would like to see more obvious in the tooltips for the tool so that other players can learn what we already know without having to come to the forums to find out what we consider 'basic knowledge'. 

These design shortcuts for player use aren't an exploit, they're part of the game design.  Let's have that design conversation, and let's ignore 'complexity'.  "Hey, that's a really cool neat trick" happens once, and then it's part of EVERY base from then on.  There's no complexity to that, it's script kiddie stuff.  I don't need to know how it works to make it happen.

Ohh God, fine, lets play a bit of semantics game.

First, who and how decides what is "clearly NOT part of the games design" ? How, for example, reporting bugs fit into this description ? If something is in the game, but is seemingly broke, is it ok to report it ? If developers are not aware of it ?

Its not even question of complexity, as some seem to think, but mostly question of internal consistency. If developers start to screw around with basic rules of physical world, then balancing game would become considerably harder. If we were to presume that water evaporating temperature is now 300 °C, it would require a lot of adjusting for balancing reasons. But most important question, is why to do in the first place ?

"Does using an aquatuner/sieve setup hurt you at all?" Really ? Its from same category of idiotic arguments as "its just a game" and "its a feature, not a bug"(they are both non sequitur, since they mean absolutely nothing), pardon my language. Simply logic dictates that putting time and effort into creating this topic and making that post implies that yes, he does have an issue with this feature. While degrees of "hurt" can be debated, simple fact remains that it caused sufficient irritation for him to act on it. And most definitely its not your place to define what does and does not hurt him. Such logical fallacies during argumentation make my head hurt.

Then it gets worse. "These design shortcuts for player use aren't an exploit, they're part of the game design". Now we got to prominent part of utter ignorance on the matter. Are you trying to say that exploits are not part of game design ? It may not have been intended this way, but it was direct result of game being designed in this manner. One simply cant use an exploit if it was not programmed in in the first place. And dont even get me started on whole shortcut notion, an utter nonsense.

Using hacks is a shortcut, as it allows player with little to no skill/knowledge, to achieve feats that are generally reserved to more experienced/knowledgeable people. Would you be ok with cheaters(and ppl ought to stop calling those idiots "hackers", its like calling cyclists F1 pilots - even monkey can run a hacking program, writing those hacks is a completely different matter) playing same game as you do ? Or, if we talk ONI, would you consider player creating new dupes with 20 in all stats to be completely legitimate gaming strategy ?

Also, only utterly ignorant person would call using exploits "script kiddie stuff". Are you even aware of what "script kiddie" term means ? Replacing it with "big blue whale" would make as much sense in this context.

Only thing i read out from this whole thing is some lame attempt on self-justification, aka "its ok when it benefits me" and throwing around terms that do not really fit into narrative, as they mean something else.

I find it peculiar how nowadays many gamers consider it to be indicator of a skill to find and exploit every bug they can find. Something to be proud of. Then telling others "dont like it, dont use it". And when bugs get fixed then cry about it(which is ironic considering how they shame others for reporting or complaining about those bugs).

[WanderingKid]

5 minutes ago, catsRjerks said:

what about the fact that plants in ONI don't give oxygen and remove co2 for free? shouldn't that be fixed as well?

Yeah, but there was apparently an actual discussion on that.  It's a balance issue for the terrarium and the fact that, well, we have 'space plants'.  Real farming takes a long time for multiple reasons.  Also, there's a lot of research about how the Carbon gets out of the plant, and apparently water is a lot more involved then CO2 is.  I have some references in a post around here somewhere, I'll dig it up if it's that important.

Short form is to make it a game instead of Farming Simulator 2018, they took a lot of leeways with CO2 and O2 management.  I wanted to build Babylon 5's gardens myself, but gave up that fantasy.

[watermelen671]

Sweet mother of Meep this is STILL going?!

[JonnyMonroe]

1 minute ago, WanderingKid said:

All of that

It answered the first part. I now hove context for your input on this thread. I couldn't get on with DF's interface myself and gave it up after only a week. I sank more time than I'm happy to admit to in factorio however (I actually found this game from the factorio subreddit). I played Magnum Opus on a friends computer and it certainly seems to scratch my itches but I'm just not looking for a new game yet.

So now I know where you're coming from in the discussion I'll throw mine in then we can get to the meat of it in a (hopefully) constructive manner;

I like complexity and interacting systems. I like when a simple interacting system propagates out into ever increasing complexity (Factorio fans holla). If I see an interesting or weird interaction between 2 things I'll build on that and start bolting more and more bits onto it until I have a very complex thing that I hope is eventually self contained. The example I posted in this very thread came from an idea that was born when Skunk and myself were discussing the new materials on cosmic preview and he noted the 0.2 thermal capacity and suggested it would be an effective heat breeder. The build I posted started out as a simple diagonal tail volcano with some storage compactors being manually loaded with regolith and dupes manually digging out the igneous rock as it froze. As I started dealing with various problems from that (save dupe time by using a conveyor. Remove the mass loss of digging by having it form debris instead of solid blocks, deal with output heat through recapture, cooking plates and a turbine, etc) it went through multiple redesigns and rebuilds. I'm not even done yet, there is still useful heat in the output and the cooking plate can easily handle double or triple throughput. It's not simple, but it's a pleasure to watch each component running and working and it represents the application of many lessons learned on how to build things that work in extreme conditions. Hell, one part of it even required me doing some research to figure out how a certain mechanic worked in order to take advantage of another of the game's edge cases.

This is what I enjoy. Taking a simple interaction that propagates out into complexity. Not complexity for it's own sake but complexity to a given goal within the game.

For me the sieve doesn't offer this. You build a tuner and a sieve. Maybe throw in some automation circuit to make it more power efficient. Done.

I'm not against the sieve or how it works at all. I'm not being forced to take advantage of it's properties. But I don't consider that part of it's functionality to be interesting or well designed. I solved heating in my current base by venting steam into space. It's basically the same principal as the sieve but it took a bit more investment, costs me some resources and is slightly closer to an accurate simulation (I'm not married to the idea of a perfect simulation but I do appreciate it when it is there). Oh, and the solution also interacts with another unrelated system in my base in a positive way (cooling stuff on the surface that would otherwise slowly heat up in vacuum - More propagating interactions!)

 

Given that you like elegant, succinct solutions (that's what I got from your post at least) I can see your argument in favour of the sieve. It has no appeal to me and I think the devs could cater to that style of play in a more intuitive way. The sieve doesn't make sense out of the box and it takes a while for new players to work it out, if they ever do.

[chemie]

31 minutes ago, catsRjerks said:

what about the fact that plants in ONI don't give oxygen and remove co2 for free? shouldn't that be fixed as well?

Or coal and h2 burn without oxygen

[JonnyMonroe]

8 minutes ago, turbonl64 said:

The developers had intentions definitely to something when they set it at 40°C.

This is, of course, speculation. I assume they wanted the sieve to have a downside for what it provides (you aren't boiling at that stage in the game and it's by no means guaranteed that you found a geyser yet, let alone tapped it). It also serves to introduce new players to their first real heat management issue.- they started cleaning water from that slime biome or their new lavatories but OH NO now the plants are withering?!

For new players a 40c output is absolutely a downside and it's only through either creativity or research that you figure out that you can use it to your advantage. After which it becomes, for a lot of players, their go-to cooling solution and the whole aspect of heat management becomes trivial until you're working with volcanos, on the surface or in the magma biome.

[WanderingKid]

Pardon me while I cherry pick in the interest of brevity, I will do my best to not lose context.

1 hour ago, Dirmagnos said:

First, who and how decides what is "clearly NOT part of the games design" ? How, for example, reporting bugs fit into this description ? If something is in the game, but is seemingly broke, is it ok to report it ? If developers are not aware of it ?

Its not even question of complexity, as some seem to think, but mostly question of internal consistency. If developers start to screw around with basic rules of physical world, then balancing game would become considerably harder.

The obvious answer is the devs, which has not always been clear when asked for.  Admitted Klei is better than this.  I specifically said when things are clearly not, and then quoted two examples.  Heck you quoted me.  My point is we don't know if it is, or isn't, an exploit unless the devs say it is, or it's perfectly clear that it isn't.  How do you go from there to "Skipping Bug Reporting" for benefits?

The internal consistency would be much more clear if the devs had put a more obvious tooltip on the game for those tools that are a constant output temperature when used.  However, these components of the game have been in use for a while and ARE part of the internal consistency of the game.  They are directly changed for balance issues (such as the hot showers) when necessary.

1 hour ago, Dirmagnos said:

"Does using an aquatuner/sieve setup hurt you at all?" Really ? Its from same category of idiotic arguments as "its just a game" and "its a feature, not a bug"(they are both non sequitur, since they mean absolutely nothing), pardon my language. [Snip] And most definitely its not your place to define what does and does not hurt him. Such logical fallacies during argumentation make my head hurt.

"It's just a game" is the same argument as the MST3K's mantra “It's just a show; I should really just relax”.  It admits it does its best to make fun gameplay out of real world associations without trying to become a physics simulator wholesale.  "It's a feature, not a bug" is more appropriate to associate the argument, as it dismisses the way the game is using a piece of programming that would be more intuitive and/or accurate in it's usage than what the developers can either code for or some other design flaw that the developers haven't gotten around to fixing yet.  

In this case I don't think it is either of those associations, as there are other machines in the game that do not depend on constant temperature and the design seems intentional. 

I'll admit the comment of 'hurting you at all' was ill composed.  I wasn't looking to get into a full on debate at the time, and chose my phrasing poorly.

1 hour ago, Dirmagnos said:

Then it gets worse. "These design shortcuts for player use aren't an exploit, they're part of the game design". Now we got to prominent part of utter ignorance on the matter. Are you trying to say that exploits are not part of game design ? It may not have been intended this way, but it was direct result of game being designed in this manner. One simply cant use an exploit if it was not programmed in in the first place. And dont even get me started on whole shortcut notion, an utter nonsense.

Exploits are non-intentional game design, and you obviously know that well enough.  I didn't feel the need to write a footnoted essay on the subject, but apparently that was a foolish choice. 

Let's change the context of the question: Is it an exploit when a player figures out that sniper units in Halo can't hear you when you crouch around them, so you crouch your way to behind them and unload with an autorifle?  Is it intentional game design that they can't be heard in an obvious sniper position that you can time their vision just so to avoid, or is it an exploit because the designer missed a combination of events that led to a unit having an incorrect detection value?  The exploit part is when you skip half the map entirely.  Using the tools the developer game you to play the game the best way you can is a tool, and if it is suddenly noticed, and as mentioned, properly bug reported, you can determine by the dev intereactions (or silence) if it IS an exploit and needs to be patched, or was part of the intent.

I'm glad you think that the concept of designed shortcuts for player use is utter nonsense.  Using that same context for a completely different set of mechanics, sleeping grunts are designed that they can't hear you until you, or someone else, shoots.  This is a designed shortcut to allow you to use the game mechanics to improve your position.  So, yes, there are designed shortcuts. 

This is nearly no different than a shortcut used to give you a way to keep your heat results at an uncomfortable but not impossible temperature when you're nearly out fresh water.  That it's also used to cool down ridiculous amounts of hot water could be considered an exploit if it was a brand new, unexpected application of existing mechanics.  That it's been here for a long time implies that it's part of the design, not an exploit working around intended design.

1 hour ago, Dirmagnos said:

Using hacks is a shortcut, as it allows player with little to no skill/knowledge, to achieve feats that are generally reserved to more experienced/knowledgeable people.Or, if we talk ONI, would you consider player creating new dupes with 20 in all stats to be completely legitimate gaming strategy ?

Also, only utterly ignorant person would call using exploits "script kiddie stuff". Are you even aware of what "script kiddie" term means ?

As to creating the dupes with 20 value stats, there's a mod for that.  It's a single player game.  I've played many of them.  Typically if you're going to invest the time sharing with the community your games with those values you would use a tag between [Stock] and [Mod], like most people around here do.  The mod scene is only really starting up here so far, but I like what I've seen up till now.  I hope it becomes as robust as the KSP one did.

It has exactly zero influence on my enjoyment of the stock game that's been developed or the conversations I'm having with others that are doing the same.  It has some influence on what mods I may, or may not, include.  Other than that, why would I care.

The script kiddy comment is an interesting choice to grief me about.  First you say to stop calling them hackers, then grief me for using the term 'script kiddies'.  Yes, I'm aware of what the term means.  It's a reference point that easily illustrates the concept of copy/paste and slightly modify, and most people have been familiar with the term at least in passing. 

1 hour ago, Dirmagnos said:

Only thing i read out from this whole thing is some lame attempt on self-justification, aka "its ok when it benefits me" and throwing around terms that do not really fit into narrative, as they mean something else.

I find it peculiar how nowadays many gamers consider it to be indicator of a skill to find and exploit every bug they can find. Something to be proud of. Then telling others "dont like it, dont use it". And when bugs get fixed then cry about it(which is ironic considering how they shame others for reporting or complaining about those bugs).

Now that's just insulting for no reason.  I never said that I found the sieve constant heat design to be difficult or skillful, I said it was easy to use and allows me to shortcut other components of the game, in particular deletion of heat.  There are plenty of other places to find heat deletion, that one just happens to be one of the handiest.  Perhaps this conclusion statement isn't directly aimed at me, but since the rest of the post was, and then you switch to a massive broad stroke statements like this, it's hard to tell. 

I'm sure you'll let me know if I was a particular target for this comment, because I'd like to see anywhere I've complained at fixes to bugs.  I will agree there are balance issues I post about that I dislike, but they're most involved in playtime for the game based on my experiences.

Sorry @JonnyMonroe, these got stuck in the same post, you're down here.

58 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

So now I know where you're coming from in the discussion I'll throw mine in then we can get to the meat of it in a (hopefully) constructive manner;

I like complexity and interacting systems. I like when a simple interacting system propagates out into ever increasing complexity (Factorio fans holla). If I see an interesting or weird interaction between 2 things I'll build on that and start bolting more and more bits onto it until I have a very complex thing that I hope is eventually self contained. [snip] It's not simple, but it's a pleasure to watch each component running and working and it represents the application of many lessons learned on how to build things that work in extreme conditions.

[snip]

This is what I enjoy. Taking a simple interaction that propagates out into complexity. Not complexity for it's own sake but complexity to a given goal within the game.

I can understand that, and it's not that far from my own preferences.  I enjoy simple mechanics systems morphing into complex combinations myself, be it video, card, or other types of games.  MtG used to be like that, then it became Pokémon lite.  On a side note, I might recommend you try some of the European style board games that have come out in the last few years.  They're of the same vein, but back to the topic...

58 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

For me the sieve doesn't offer this. You build a tuner and a sieve. Maybe throw in some automation circuit to make it more power efficient. Done.

I'm not against the sieve or how it works at all. I'm not being forced to take advantage of it's properties. But I don't consider that part of it's functionality to be interesting or well designed. [snip]

Given that you like elegant, succinct solutions (that's what I got from your post at least) I can see your argument in favour of the sieve. It has no appeal to me and I think the devs could cater to that style of play in a more intuitive way. The sieve doesn't make sense out of the box and it takes a while for new players to work it out, if they ever do.

I guess for me the Sieve / aquatuner is just a combined component of the larger system.  I need to cool off the heat, yes.  But where is that water now going to go?  The sieve fits only part of my larger cooling plan.  I use water based heat sinks, wheezeworts, whatever works.  The Sieve is a simple way to get my water to cool down a bunch at the cost of 1.2kw.  I honestly usually avoid it because I'm usually tight on power, but my usage of it isn't really the concern.  I will admit I like having that particular tool in my toolbox for when I need it.

I certainly agree that it's unintuitive.  All of the constant temperature output machines are unintuitive to me, except maybe the glass forge, I haven't played with that much yet.  They desperately need some better tooltips and flavor text so that the unintuitive nature of them is both obvious and specific.  Like other things, though, it's been brought up repeatedly with no changes, so either it's 'in the mix' on the dev side somewhere without comments to us, or it's just going to stay that way.

If we're talking about the balancing of a specific item, or event chain for items, then the answer of '70C or higher' is certainly a viable one, and I wouldn't be against the change.  As long as I know how the tool works, I can make my own decisions about when or if I want to use it.

[Oozinator]

1 hour ago, WanderingKid said:

A certainly reasonable request, but if we all have a single post for the answer, it'll be a very long thread. XD

This game to me is a cross between a Zachtronics game(SpaceChem or Opus Magnum) or a factory builder (Factorio), a base builder along the lines of SimCity or Rimworld/DwarfFortress, and an exploration/survival game that's I most easily associate these days with Don't Starve.

I'm more into the efficiency of playstyle and what you can get done with the most effect for the least work in game.  I think ranching is fun, but it's certainly not usually efficient... until you consider that only certain critters shoul… and there I go off on a tangent again.  I find games like SpaceChem to be thoroughly enjoyable, because the pieces are just pieces.  The question is how efficiently can you make any particular set of pieces better.  Do you go for cycle time, or for least number of components... things like that.  That question is interesting to me.

I beat Dwarf Fortress to death for a few years running.  I enjoy the game, but the update speed became too slow and I simply got sick of the interface.  That'll happen, but I hope the best for Toady and his project, but I moved on and have been poking around for a game to sate that particular taste for a while.  Oxygen Not Included so far has at least the same meats I liked, just different seasoning, you might say.

Finally I loved Don't Starve, but it eventually becomes 'Much of a Muchness'.  The honeymoon eventually is over and you have to determine if the mechanics alone are not just enough for you to play, but beat out something that gives you more interest.  DST had that taste for a while because it was fun doing it with my friends and THEY were more interesting, the mechanics were just something we did.

Don't know if that answered helps your question, but that's what I've got an answer.

 

1 hour ago, Dirmagnos said:

Ohh God, fine, lets play a bit of semantics game.

First, who and how decides what is "clearly NOT part of the games design" ? How, for example, reporting bugs fit into this description ? If something is in the game, but is seemingly broke, is it ok to report it ? If developers are not aware of it ?

Its not even question of complexity, as some seem to think, but mostly question of internal consistency. If developers start to screw around with basic rules of physical world, then balancing game would become considerably harder. If we were to presume that water evaporating temperature is now 300 °C, it would require a lot of adjusting for balancing reasons. But most important question, is why to do in the first place ?

"Does using an aquatuner/sieve setup hurt you at all?" Really ? Its from same category of idiotic arguments as "its just a game" and "its a feature, not a bug"(they are both non sequitur, since they mean absolutely nothing), pardon my language. Simply logic dictates that putting time and effort into creating this topic and making that post implies that yes, he does have an issue with this feature. While degrees of "hurt" can be debated, simple fact remains that it caused sufficient irritation for him to act on it. And most definitely its not your place to define what does and does not hurt him. Such logical fallacies during argumentation make my head hurt.

Then it gets worse. "These design shortcuts for player use aren't an exploit, they're part of the game design". Now we got to prominent part of utter ignorance on the matter. Are you trying to say that exploits are not part of game design ? It may not have been intended this way, but it was direct result of game being designed in this manner. One simply cant use an exploit if it was not programmed in in the first place. And dont even get me started on whole shortcut notion, an utter nonsense.

Using hacks is a shortcut, as it allows player with little to no skill/knowledge, to achieve feats that are generally reserved to more experienced/knowledgeable people. Would you be ok with cheaters(and ppl ought to stop calling those idiots "hackers", its like calling cyclists F1 pilots - even monkey can run a hacking program, writing those hacks is a completely different matter) playing same game as you do ? Or, if we talk ONI, would you consider player creating new dupes with 20 in all stats to be completely legitimate gaming strategy ?

Also, only utterly ignorant person would call using exploits "script kiddie stuff". Are you even aware of what "script kiddie" term means ? Replacing it with "big blue whale" would make as much sense in this context.

Only thing i read out from this whole thing is some lame attempt on self-justification, aka "its ok when it benefits me" and throwing around terms that do not really fit into narrative, as they mean something else.

I find it peculiar how nowadays many gamers consider it to be indicator of a skill to find and exploit every bug they can find. Something to be proud of. Then telling others "dont like it, dont use it". And when bugs get fixed then cry about it(which is ironic considering how they shame others for reporting or complaining about those bugs).

Good Points!

[0xFADE]

2 hours ago, JonnyMonroe said:

Depending on how you define 'exploit' it can absolutely be called an exploit. I'm taking advantage of phase change energies to multiply the effective thermal output of the volcano then using that heat to both cook oil and run a turbine. That's a minor volcano and it should put out 8600kg per eruption but it actually gives well over 20,000kg. Is it simple? No. Did it take a long time to design and build? yep. Is it messy? Very. Has it broken and been rebuilt at times? Absolutely. Is it hypnotic to just sit and watch it run? Very.

Nice sweeper designs.  Though I would guess they would eventually overheat over time unless you are cooling the liquid they are in.  Still nice stuff.

[Oni Noob]

Lolz rich kid problems. They complain because someone uses a loophole and this loophole doesn't affect them directly but they still complain about it. It's like all student has a student loan but this one special student complain and report that there is a student who found a loophole in the student loan, the student who reported are not directly affected by it but they still find time to complain about it.

You people are the reason I lost my borg cube 

[landromat]

And you'll lose much more in the future. Keep going. Show us all the exploits on the forums. devs are watching you