Gameplay refining required

[Neosage]

After some 174 hours of playing ONI non-stop with no other game attended too in between, I finally put down this game for other more temperate common re-playable returns (HotS, SC2, DotA 2, Fortnite, etc). After about a month or so, I decided to load it up again.

There I was at the page with the three new dupes set on an adventure of some kickass tinkering and molding a colony. I jump in and then with the usual oxygen pressure retuning load screen, Im back in a fresh new asteroid. It starts hitting me...a weird feeling of something massive and heavy a weight but I ignored it.

I pressed the 'G' button and started laying out The Plans. got some iron ore to my right, and we'll dig those. The weight of feeling comes at me again...this time with memories of fun and indie and chill of other games. I press on.

Now what did I need after placing the usual three bed and a lavatory room equipped with sink? Oh right, I will have to face oxygen production and then hydrogen generators. Oh but when I have those, I doesnt even cover what I would need after, which is liquid water supply.  To even start touching liquid piping, I am gonna need a steady electrical generation. AND THAT DOESNT EVEN COVER automation of said things nor the input and output needed to manage the previous two problems of electrolyzers, water supply, temp...How am I even gonna manage exosuit refuelling?

I will be blessed by RNGesus himself to find even 1 geyser at start vision radius....This time the weight hits me hard. I dropped the game and played Darkest Dungeon instead....can you believe it? I find Darkest Dungeon, less stressful than ONI....

Suggestions:

- ONI is suppose to be this indie colony sim with a temperate intermittent planning and colony observing game with a clean exciting adventure laced mechanic for the mid to late game especially with latest upgrade, to the surface. If I'm stumped or too overburdened or demotivated by the time i even get to exosuits and tube transports to even allow surface usage, I miss alot of what the game has to offer because I fail to even be motivated to contemplate ways to get there. I do like the ample amount of things to manage but I feel I run out of basic resource too heavily and too fast before I even get to the renewable phase and allowing the prolonging of colony maturation.

This in turn gives a time running out impression on a game thats suppose to be indie. I can pause, but i need time to observe and learn. If my observation time is hampered, how am I even going to learn when I cant observe its short to long term effects? On top of that Im forced to explore but not to explore because i need a whole array of resources I cant get to, to do said stuff. Its all pretty hurried, stressful, pressured and too burdenful of a responsibility I believe I cant be able to manage that starts right at the very beginning. I wish I felt more confident or relaxed at the start to be motivated to continue managing said colony from early to mid game at least. Once you placed reservoirs down, its damned hard to shift it or make configurations to your base is one such issue. The first germ killer, the sink, will demand polluted water reservoirs about 5 to 10 cycles in. We havent even touched Electrolyzer heat productions yet.

- Larger clean starting base radius with more water

- Reduction in all early to mid game power consuming mechanisms

- Make high leveled operations such as automations and temperature stabilizers an efficiency scale that reduces resource load but exponentially maximizes resource acquisition. Do not make high level operations a necessity to survive and take a toll on dupes instead.

- Try to shorten the early game phase to achieving exploration quicker because to even achieve mid-game at this point, which is exploration with exosuits, will require hefty amount of power, oxygen, refined metals, external biome minerals, bleach stone and chlorine for returning to base, dealing with speed reduction, weird dupe pathing where they keep returning to base just to go back out again, etc etc etc.

Currently I feel like the current game provisions does not satisfy the confidence in the possibility of running even a run down base for a longer duration. I am not satisfied with just 100 cycles of passive management and chill sim and then turn to horror fest with a mix of darkwood and the forest! I wish to at least have 200 cycles of passive chill sim, then it would be my fault that I didnt prepare because I had ample time and resource. There must be more provisions made or mechanics to balance the early to mid game transition more. Somehow i feel its lacking at the moment.

[Ambaire]

It would be nice if there were starting base options. As it is, I typically spend the first day setting up toilets and wash basins and getting a pitcher pump on water and then the dupes spend the night sleeping on the ground. Second day is getting research set up so I can get my job board going. Third day is getting jobs going, and then setting up farms asap. 

Gameplay is quite rushed, I will admit. So many things to do, so little time, and the dupe AI is stupid beyond belief and they will take 3 times as long as is absolutely necessary to do the most basic tasks unless you micro manage them. Case in point: attempting to mine falling sand, mining the middle of a block of sand and wasting more time waiting for every bit of sand to fall before continuing mining... argh.

 

ONI badly needs a 'select dupe, r-click pending job to do that task NOW' feature, like RimWorld has.

Also, the Jobs board should be unlocked from the start.

e. I say this as someone with a bit over 300 hours in this game.

[Yunru]

I see a lot of false assumptions there that are making things harder for you.

You don't need geysers, you don't need Hydrogen Generators, you don't even need PWater reservoirs.

Progression is simple and easy, you may just need to unlearn what you knew from before.

[Ambaire]

20 minutes ago, Yunru said:

I see a lot of false assumptions there that are making things harder for you.

You don't need geysers, you don't need Hydrogen Generators, you don't even need PWater reservoirs.

Progression is simple and easy, you may just need to unlearn what you knew from before.

I'm very curious to see a completely self-sufficient base design that doesn't incorporate geysers.

[Coolthulhu]

The biggest problem you actually have with ONI is that you didn't git gud yet.

The problems you describe are 90% solvable by gitting gud (weird pathing is the 10%). You need to learn how to sieve water instead of leaving it polluted, how to research instead of staying in stone age, how to not run out of necessary resources, how to avoid designating jobs in CO2 pits. Extra crutches like more water and cheaper machines wouldn't help you with that - acquiring skill would.

ONI does have a bunch of noob traps that make early game needlessly hard for new players. For example, algae terrariums (waste of labor), early bristle blossoms (eat water fast), hydrofans (useless). Those don't seem to be your problems, though.

tl;dr Git gud except for pathing, which is a legitimate issue

[yoakenashi]

1 hour ago, Yunru said:

just need to unlearn what you knew from before

You must unlearn what you have learned. Yes master Yoda please, teach me the ways of the force.

1 hour ago, Ambaire said:

I'm very curious to see a completely self-sufficient base design that doesn't incorporate geysers.

It's an ideal situation but I very much believe it is possible. I'm working to that in my current base, excluding the volcanoes - because volcanoes are awesome and MUST be used! Being independent of geysers is tough, it's late game, but I like that that possibility exists.

@Neosage Thanks for your feedback. I'm with @Coolthulhu though and probably most of the other experienced players in that I think the game "difficulty" is really good. But I say that in every topic that comes up regarding game difficulty and making things easier or more chill. I totally get your perspective and maybe they'll make things smoother as many other players agree with you, but I personally like the stresses and challenges.

[Yunru]

On 7/10/2018 at 9:20 PM, Ambaire said:

I'm very curious to see a completely self-sufficient base design that doesn't incorporate geysers.

Rule 1: Only use Hamster Wheels for power

[Ambaire]

3 hours ago, Yunru said:

Rule 1: Only use Hamster Wheels for power

How would you feed your dupes? Unless this hypothetical self sufficient base incorporates several dozen/hundred morbs and a ton of pufts and only farms mushrooms...

[Yunru]

4 hours ago, Ambaire said:

How would you feed your dupes? Unless this hypothetical self sufficient base incorporates several dozen/hundred morbs and a ton of pufts and only farms mushrooms...

Mealroot, fed by dirt from Water Sieves which are in turn fed using Regolith.

[vovik]

On 11.07.2018 at 12:31 AM, yoakenashi said:

I totally get your perspective and maybe they'll make things smoother as many other players agree with you, but I personally like the stresses and challenges.

Well, killing a base is quite hard if you do atleast ANYTHING fro getting food and oxygen, i literally seen newbies at point "well, now everything goes to hell" and tehy lasted like 50 more cycles. Its quite a slow game in terms of loss and progression/building.

[Capsup]

6 hours ago, Ambaire said:

How would you feed your dupes? Unless this hypothetical self sufficient base incorporates several dozen/hundred morbs and a ton of pufts and only farms mushrooms...

I consider myself a ONI noob but I do however have 169 hours in the game. I haven't even fiddled with oil, magma, space, geysers, volcanoes, any kind of ranching or even conveyor belts!

However, my most recent colony is up to cycle 400+, but I am only using 8 dupes though.

I feel like the early game of ONI is just so choke-full of interesting mechanics, ideas and goals that I find myself often restarting a perfectly healthy colony, to actually start over from a "better" base with all the new stuff I've learned from my latest colony. What I'm trying to say is that I've been through the early-game phase quite a lot of times by now.

However, at no point have I run into the issues that you're describing. The asteroid is absolutely stocked to the brim with all the resources that you need to get into the "true" late-game, where self-sufficiency actually comes into play. In my latest cycle 400+ colony, I've only recently had to start considering the use of 1 of many water geysers, because there's simply boatloads of polluted water and water reservoirs that can be used to kickstart your colony. I mean, there's entire biomes that can just be turned into free, cool water (ice sculptures melt into cold water you know. Add naturally condensed water in the ~80degree range from a cool steam vent and you've got quite the cold water reservoir)!

Turning my colony into a self-sustaining colony with the only external resources required being polluted water (pw because you can use the natural reservoirs temperature range of between ~30 and ~100c as free cooling before putting it into a sieve to get nice, "cool" 40 degree water, which you in turn can cool to 12 degrees for your gristles, using that same pw as coolant!) and coal (because there's just a **** ton of coal hidden around the asteroid. All you need to do is dig it out) is extremely simple. My own next step is coming up with some good solutions to solve my dependency on pw, but I just have way too many ideas for how to arrive at that solution (passive coolers, liquid coolers, gas coolers, geyser coolers, steam turbine coolers, etc) that I've had to limit myself and actually choose one and force myself to go with that. Next time, I can just try one of the many other solutions. Replayability anyone?

 

However, as others have mentioned, there are hurdles for newbies to overcome in the early-game. But as long as people go into it with the mind of "I will fail the first couple of times", it'll just be a fun learning experience for them. If the initial difficulty of the game scares them away, will the difficulties of the later game not do the same..?

[Yunru]

1 hour ago, Capsup said:

My own next step is coming up with some good solutions to solve my dependency on pw

Even this is optional too!