First impressions (detailed)

[ghengismark]

So, long time (30 year) gamer. Just started ONI 2 weeks ago (Cosmic update). Wanted to give some feedback, since this is a first impression of a new player.

Disclaimer #1: I know this is very early access and not finished. I am not complaining, but giving guidance.

Disclaimer #2: I know that much of my feedback has likely already been given, buried elsewhere in the forum. That is ok. I don't need to read all posts in the whole forum before posting my thoughts.

- Love the overall concept. Great blend of Rimworld and Factorio, and lightening the mood of both with the playful theme.

- Good survival balance. First heat is gonna kill me. Then I am running out of power (quick! where is COAL?). Then I am running out of oxygen (ALGAE?!?!), then everyone is sick so no one can get coal and algae... It really keeps you hopping. Combined with Factorio-style pipes and input/outputs, it is great.

- Tech tree is broken. It makes sense for the first 2-3 tiers, in that I really need to strategically go for things to get what I need. However, after that, none of it matters too much, and I find myself just clicking on the last item of the tree just so I am not bothered with it on my march to finish it. Most of the later techs are not usable without refined metals or plastics, and in the game those are hard to get, due to the heat issues. Those are the REAL achievements. You have to freeze your people to death to build pipes in a cold biome so you can run your smelters, so you can get refined metal (and make the middle tech tree useful), so you can get exo suits, so you can build pumps in crude oil so you can build refineries so you make plastic (and make the rest of the tech tree useful). So because of the cumbersomeness of dealing with refined metals/plastics, the tech tree is pointless after the first 2-3 tiers. I know I can use the ore crusher to get refined sooner, but that is inefficient and only partially fixes it.

- Need a way to kill off dupes that were mistakes

- Gas storage tanks would be great. Cisterns work great for water, but gasses are more difficult. I might be able to build cisterns for gasses if we had better airlocks.

- Better airlocks. Maybe a later tech after Mech Doors that guarantees no air escapes The whole |=| setup is a hack and wasteful.

- Need more of a point end-game. All tech is researched by cycle 50, and the base is in very solid shape by 150. Not much more to do beyond dig for MOAR stuff. By 300 you have reach the maps borders in all directions and it is just a sludge to see how long you can last. Not fun so much anymore. Maybe more late-game challenges, more interesting late techs that change things up, attacks of giant bosses or crisis (earthquake? epidemic?). What would be really cool would be to have a final, very hard to get tech that creates a portal to a 2nd world of some sort that is much harder, but has cool perks or something.

- Polymer press causes just too much heat. It is an challenge to overcome, but it feels out of place and extreme.

- It feels lame that the secret to most problems is to plant the blue cactus everywhere.

- Automation is cool, but it is not THAT useful. I am hard pressed what to use it for. (but I am sure there are more creative people). Best usages are usually energy conservation. Like only pumping water or gas when you get a certain pressure, etc.

- Beyond the coal-pooper hatches, the animals often don't feel worth it. The fish don't do much. The slicks are kinda cool. The sheep slugs give hair, but the reed lilys are easy to get early, and you only need a limited amount of reeds to make your suits and clothes.

- Some machine to do something with seeds and reeds and stuff that are extra. You can crack eggs, why not other stuff? I had a modest farm, and by cycle 150 I had like 140 lice plant seeds.

- Dupes should change clothes as needed (warm/cold/snazzy) instead of manually. That would make people much more likely to use them. As it is, I always just skip clothing and get suits, and tediously put everyone in snazzy and then ignore clothing.

- There should be a setting on the range of storage bins. If I set up a coal mining operation far from my base, with a conveyor home to my power plant, I need to make sure that, far away, the conveyer bin has priority, and in the base, the power plant bin has priority.

- Some dupe abilities/skills are overpowered, and some are lame. Anemic is so rough. Compared to some disadvantage that just prevents a single skill, which is easy.  Should there be a Doctor job?  Should pets get sick?

- It annoys me how some late-game buildings, like smelters, need to be manually operated. I understand it, and it works, but it makes me feel like I need an Operate dupe for each such building, 1-to-1.  I can have an array of 10 algae distillers, 10 coal plants, 10 electrolyzers, etc. Go industrials. EXCEPT the smelter and oil refinery. Someone has to sit there and turn the wheel. I know you need to make an Engineer important somehow, but it feels forced, not fun.

- A tech that lets dupes dig/build/gather 3 or 4 squares away instead of 2. Or maybe have it as a senior job perk.

- Have gradational techs that go on infinitely at the end of the tree. So for elect, each tech you learn raises the wattage of wires by 10%. Another that raises storage limits of containers by 20% each tech. Etc. Then research stays part of the game.

- Playing geyser roulette for sustainable energy is tough and feels unbalanced. Oh, then the gyser turns off for 60 days. I know it adds challenges to overcome, but somehow it feels.. annoying.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Very fun game. Good core idea. But the longer the game goes, the more the fun drops off. It needs a lot of balancing in the mid-end game. I think my biggest problem is that many of the obstacles that need to be overcome feel like annoying blockades, not challenges. Maybe I am just more of a Factorio guy that likes to build a big sandbox base with some challenges, and not so much a Rimworld guy that likes events and ups and downs. I dunno.

Great game. Eager to see how it turns out.

 

 

 

[he77789]

Auto wearing of clothing is ok.

Dreckos can morph into plastic dreckos, which gives free plastic so they are useful and the plastic problem is gone.

Water locks are the solution......

Use door compressors or watered vents in a closed box for infinite storage.

[Ambaire]

8 hours ago, ghengismark said:

It annoys me how some late-game buildings, like smelters, need to be manually operated.

Agreed. I want an advanced version of each building that can be fully automated...

[ghengismark]

Regarding water locks, I did know about it, but I don't see it as a solution. We can research star-trek-like mechanized doors, but to work even better we need to make a cave-man level forced-water hole? Lame. They just need an "airlock" in a tech after "mech door".  Also, waters and gasses are hard to move around.  Make filters use less watts, or make dupes carry more in bottles or something. When I think about setting up 3-4 water locks for different gas storage, I suddenly don't want to play anymore.

And regarding manually operating machines by engineers, I thought of an alternative. Beyond the hamster wheel, ALL buildings SHOULD be automated. But, I recommend adding a "performace" value to all machines.  It starts at 100% and lowers regularly. Maybe 30% per day of use, stopping at 20%.  An engineer needs to come by and "tune up" to get it back to 100%. A veteran engineer can tune up faster, or tune up to 125% or something. Keeps skilled engineers vital, but doesn't tie them to machines so you can truly enjoy automation.

[Alfons100]

I agree on some parts, but other stuff I just tell you 'Git gud', the Critters can dispose of stuff and also give food for it. You can breed a Chlorine puft to use Chlorine geyser, a Dense puft can compress tons and tons of Oxygen for later. Pacu and legless sheep are kind of useless in my opinion, Pacu produces a whole ton of eggs but it consumes an unholy amount of Algae. You can breed a rare Plastic sheep to simply skip having to get a cumbersome refinery. Shinebugs can be used to negate very heavy decor penalties

Automation is for creative people who want perfection, don't worry. Thats what it is meant to be, not like they add a 'Used automation -5% stress' which basically just forces people to be creative, which in the end doesn't help much.

There should be docks just like Exosuits but with clothing. If you dont want to cough up an exosuit entrance, you can just put a few Warm sweaters for a cold biome or whatever. 

I agree on events being a thing, but too much 'random' doesnt work since this game has so. many. things happening. One little 'temperature change' can unfairly end someones farm. I had an idea that wall-passing ''Diggers' pass around the map, ignoring walls and basically acts as in-background thing, causing effects around them, such as spawning disease, causing heat increase or decrease, things begin to break, there can be 'Ward stations' which duplicants can work on when the Event causer begins to get close to change its course away from valuable machinery that needs precise temperature for example. 

The polymer press can be adressed by dripping a bit of water in it and submering the room in Hydrogen. And no, placing Wheezeworts randomly is not the way to fix it. The thing to note is that 'Thermal capacity' is a feature you should exploit when interacting with heat producing structures. Hydrogen is harder to heat up as it needs more 'thermal energy' to cause temperature change. Same with water, if a Polymer press is in Co2 environments with bad Thermal Capacity and conductivity, all the heat will amass into the machine which causes it to overheat. With hydrogen, it will collect the heat in itself which makes the machine not overheat instantly, while Co2 just lets the machine heat up itself. Having the room be high pressured also helps since there's more 'matter' that can collect heat. 

 

[DyingCrow]

The only solution to water locks is a proper airlock.  |=| airlocks feel like an easy exploit. Automated |||| to |  | airlocks are still complex to build, but more viable now that they they dont need power to be in an open state anymore, and they delete small amounts of gas, but feel more legit. Deleting gas, either way, doesnt matter anymore, as we can dump stuff into space.

Try this. Doesnt matter which way the dupe goes, it will always activate.

Or, if you dont want to take chances with dupes losing their task and dropping stuff because their path got suddenly blocked, this

But yeh, why go though the trouble of building all this spaghetty when a water lock is so easy? It just needs to be addressed at the root by the dev team. Not because these sort of things are not interesting to build, but because they take up too much space, sometimes...