Temperature issues and dupe priority changes

[lacool]

This game is great, I have dumped about 100 hours in so far. From what I've played, two things really stick out at me.

1: Individual dupe task priority/logic

I know the EU update is partially trying to address this, but duplicants desperately need some kind of change to the way they prioritize subsequent tasks together. As soon as a base of any reasonable size is established dupes will start doing things like running across the entire base, mining a single tile, then leaving to pick up some item on the opposite side of the map. The problem is so extreme that it almost always leaves my base in a state of chaotic stagnation. Heavily prioritizing or assigning dupe tasks only seems to partially fix this.

Various players have designed systems to lock dupes out and away from the base to keep them on task, like in the below video. While this seems to work, there should be better ways to stop your workers from repeatedly interrupting their most important tasks for trivial activities, especially ones that are very far away. There should probably be some kind of increased bias in the worker logic to keep them sticking to clustered, prioritized tasks. In particular I have noticed that orders far from the center of the base no matter the priority will take ages to get done, while tasks closer inside get done immediately.

 

2: Temperature challenges, questions

It has been repeatedly noticed that the Water Sieve (and other equipment?) heats all liquids exiting it to a consistent 104F degrees no matter the temperature of liquid going in. In addition to being near crippling in the early game (and an exploit in the late) this seems to go against the entire system and philosophy of the game, where every single resource and change is tracked and must be dealt with. It's been posted several times but never addressed, with some players insisting this is an intentional gameplay element.

Controversy around this stems from the seemingly overwhelming if not impossible challenge of temperature management in the mid to late game. Presently only the wheezewort and special AETN building are able to effectively remove heat at all, and seem to be insufficient, even when all are used simultaneously, given the massive heat production of a flourishing base. Trying to move the heat, or carefully plan around it, is not only very difficult but also only delays the problem slightly.

 

While I'm sure there are hundreds of changes that the game still needs, I have noticed these two in particular make a large, long-term base almost impossible to achieve without special gimmick strategies of dubious intentionality or fairness. I'm interested in what other people's experiences are with these and related aspects.

 

[martosss]

And the problem with beginners is that they don't have any way of knowing the sieve output temperature, since it is not mentioned at all. So as a beginner I imagine I died at least 2-3 times because I didn't know this and I was happily purifying the water and sending it around the base, not knowing that it's so hot => base heats => game over.

Expected behavior - sieve produces a fixed amount of heat(20W as mentioned in the tool tip window) and heats itself, possibly heating also the output water, but not heating the output water to an arbitrary temperature.

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, lacool said:

It has been repeatedly noticed that the Water Sieve (and other equipment?) heats all liquids exiting it to a consistent 104F degrees no matter the temperature of liquid going in

It`s a very weird machine. On one side it works like a water distiller, so it seems to be boiling water and cooling it down to a certain tempearture. If that was the case the fixed output temp would make sense. But if the water was changed to steam inside the machine it should remove all germs from it which it doesn`t. Should definetly have tooltip mentioning the fixed output temperature.

[he77789]

On 2018/7/24 at 9:44 AM, lacool said:

with some players insisting this is an intentional gameplay element.

That is CONFIRMED BY DEVELOPERS.

[MatthewCline]

On 7/23/2018 at 6:44 PM, lacool said:

There should probably be some kind of increased bias in the worker logic to keep them sticking to clustered, prioritized tasks.

Maybe it could be a user tunable per-dupe setting.  For instance, make it so that tasks closer than X squares distant are viewed as at increased priority and tasks further than Y squares away are viewed at decreased priority.  The player could set the default values for newly printed dupes and change them individually for each existing dupe.