Biggest change on the coming update.

[Grimgaw]

 

[OmegaFunction]

54 minutes ago, avc15 said:

I still think they're just pushing us make efficient bases.

OR to use steam turbines. Which still nobody has shown a simple way of setting up in a survival game, OR an overall efficient setup that doesn't use doorpumps (that most players won't bother with)

It's out there, I swear. Just nobody has shown it. Except a couple guys doing really complicated wonky things like... using the infinite waterfall exploit as a free water pump.

 

If this was their goal, they could also set up some form of competition in the forums. I am sure people would be up for this. The prize could be some in-game item named after the winner.

6 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

 

Thank you! This clarifies their position somewhat. Although I think providing reason/intentions for the changes they actually make to the game is different from taking a position in a discussion about game balance.

[Grimgaw]

6 minutes ago, OmegaFunction said:

Although I think providing reasons for the changes they actually make to the game is different from taking a position in a discussion about game balance.

Agreed on that, however historically they've been silent on this front as well.

[Carnis]

53 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

 

 

[Sevio]

1 hour ago, avc15 said:

IDK now we're on topic of NG boiling but

I still think they're just pushing us make efficient bases.

OR to use steam turbines. Which still nobody has shown a simple way of setting up in a survival game, OR an overall efficient setup that doesn't use doorpumps (that most players won't bother with)

It's out there, I swear. Just nobody has shown it. Except a couple guys doing really complicated wonky things like... using the infinite waterfall exploit as a free water pump.

 

Simplest reheating steam turbine you can make. It uses a layer of oxygen to satisfy the steam turbine's pressure difference requirement which could be called an exploit but it still uses heat unlike the neutronium or chlorine based builds that are literally infinite free power.

If you use this, you may want to replace the metal tiles with doors on a switch so you can get the pocket of oxygen out between them once you pressurize the room.

[Grimgaw]

@Carnis Not sure what you're trying to say there. Space exploration is in their roadmap since September 2017. We knew this update is coming all along. That doesn't change the fact that Klei doesn't communicate. They listen, sure, but that's in no way communicating.

9 minutes ago, Sevio said:

Simplest reheating steam turbine you can make. It uses a layer of oxygen to satisfy the steam turbine's pressure difference requirement which could be called an exploit but it still uses heat unlike the neutronium or chlorine based builds that are literally infinite free power.

Have we just accepted that to use Steam Turbine we need to block 4/5 of it's input tiles?

[Sevio]

19 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Have we just accepted that to use Steam Turbine we need to block 4/5 of it's input tiles?

I have, it cools magma way too fast if you don't do it. Maybe if you have a strong magma volcano that you don't need to worry about it, but you'll be looking for new heat sources quite frequently if you run an unblocked steam turbine off of magma from the bottom of the map.

My survival map has no volcano, so I can only run my steam turbines off the heat from my regolith melter. Which admittedly is way more power positive than I imagined but that is due to the difference in heat capacity when converting regolith -> magma.

As I've mentioned before in various places, I'd be happy to see the turbine reworked to a condensing one with variable output based on the temperature and volume of steam that you feed it but until then this is imho the most practical application of it.

[greggbert]

At this point I'm afraid to ask but when we're talking about "boiling oil" are we talking about the natural gas that the petroleum refinery emits?  Or are you literally talking about turning oil into natural gas by increasing it's temperature until it reaches a gaseous state?

[OmegaFunction]

2 minutes ago, greggbert said:

 Or are you literally talking about turning oil into natural gas by increasing it's temperature until it reaches a gaseous state?

Exactly this. This way you get a 100% mass conversion from crude oil to natural gas, whereas you lose total mass by using the refinery.

[avc15]

5 hours ago, Sevio said:

Simplest reheating steam turbine you can make. It uses a layer of oxygen to satisfy the steam turbine's pressure difference requirement which could be called an exploit but it still uses heat unlike the neutronium or chlorine based builds that are literally infinite free power.

This goes low on the efficiency scale because of gas deletion. Comparatively easy to set up, yes.

Someone needs to show an approach that's simple to set up *in survival games* and also highly efficient. Nobody has shown that build yet. There have been a few that were close.

[Sevio]

4 hours ago, avc15 said:

This goes low on the efficiency scale because of gas deletion. Comparatively easy to set up, yes.

No gas deletion! I've ran these in various heat generating builds with no additional water needed after pressurizing them. The key is to make sure to only have oxygen and steam in there, not a third gas. That's why you build it with an open floor and only close it up once you're sure all CO2 has gone out. Try it out some time.

[avc15]

4 minutes ago, Sevio said:

No gas deletion! I've ran these in various heat generating builds with no additional water needed after pressurizing them. The key is to make sure to only have oxygen and steam in there, not a third gas. That's why you build it with an open floor and only close it up once you're sure all CO2 has gone out. Try it out some time.

I see. Quite interesting. Have you benchmarked it over a large number of cycles to make sure? Not even 20% of the steam gets deleted? 5%?

Because, like the electrolyzer sitting at its o2/h2 boundary deletes some H2, I would have expected this to delete some steam (some builds resembling yours are designed specifically to delete the exhaust but I realize yours is not)

[Sevio]

Just now, avc15 said:

I see. Quite interesting. Have you benchmarked it over a large number of cycles to make sure?

Because, like the electrolyzer sitting at its o2/h2 boundary deletes some H2, I would have expected this to delete some steam (some builds resembling yours are designed specifically to delete the exhaust but I realize yours is not)

I've benchmarked it for a dozen cycles and monitored the pressure, I also use this design in two of my signature builds, the Glass Refinery Turbine and the Meteor Magmaficator. Here's two of them that I'm using in my 900+ cycle survival save where I built the Meteor Magmaficator. I may play around a lot with stuff on debug but when I do it's also to figure out the best way to build it in survival.

Apologies for the odd look of diamond tiles, I'm on Rocketry Update and this build was made in the Expressive Update. There's also a mysterious lava tile in the heat exchanger on the left, wonder how that got there...

[avc15]

are you willing to share your debug savefile?

 

[SharraShimada]

I´m sorry, but if you not happy with changes, you should stay as far away from any early access games as you can, and only buy realeased games. 

Everything in this game can be subject of change tomorrow, and everything clever minds had found out in the past is waste. 

Thats the downside of early access, but we all knew this before spending a dime on it. If you were not aware of this prior to buying, you may rest playing, and wait until its done. So no more surprises. 

Yeah its a hard story, but that is how the system works. Crying wont help, i´m sorry.

[Grimgaw]

4 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

I´m sorry, but if you not happy with changes, you should stay as far away from any early access games as you can, and only buy realeased games. 

Everything in this game can be subject of change tomorrow, and everything clever minds had found out in the past is waste. 

Thats the downside of early access, but we all knew this before spending a dime on it. If you were not aware of this prior to buying, you may rest playing, and wait until its done. So no more surprises. 

Yeah its a hard story, but that is how the system works. Crying wont help, i´m sorry.

Allow me to link you something:

On 8/23/2018 at 6:41 PM, JarrettM said:

(snip)

If you're interested, you can help us test this new content on the Rocketry Upgrade testing branch. These features are still being developed so please expect bugs, interface issues, and imperfect balance. We do, however, encourage you to comment on the game as you're currently experiencing it, as we'll be considering your feedback while we further develop the update.

(snip)

From RU upgrade notes.

[Sevio]

1 hour ago, avc15 said:

are you willing to share your debug savefile?

 

Try this one, it's my demo save for the Glass Refinery turbine. It has a running steam turbine maintained by dupes repeatedly making glass and refining iron.

Glass Refinery Turbine.sav

[OmegaFunction]

4 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

I´m sorry, but if you not happy with changes, you should stay as far away from any early access games as you can, and only buy realeased games. 

Everything in this game can be subject of change tomorrow, and everything clever minds had found out in the past is waste. 

Thats the downside of early access, but we all knew this before spending a dime on it. If you were not aware of this prior to buying, you may rest playing, and wait until its done. So no more surprises. 

Yeah its a hard story, but that is how the system works. Crying wont help, i´m sorry.

I agree in so far, that some initial posts gave me the impression, that their authors were appalled by the changes. And I agree, that this indicates that some people may be overly emotionally invested. However, if all players were not emotionally invested at all, it would not make any sense to have EA. I kindly suggest to not scold people for their emotions, and restrict your criticism to bad behavior like personal attacks.

And I can assure you that I am not unhappy. I am astonished by the changes as I cannot make sense of them. They seem to be a bad design decision. Every reason/intention I could think of could also be achieved by more promising and less drastic means. That is why, I said that I'd appreciate more communication regarding the changes they make. They may well have a very good reason for this change, and I would want to know it then.

I also did not pick up any slight hint that @Grimgaw or @Sevio may be on the verge of crying. The opposite is the case. They both expressed their hope for this to be in preparation of more interesting chemistry, which in my estimation would constitute such a very good reason that has not been communicated. And I agree, that would be quite exciting!

Considering that we are the active participants in this thread and others seem to have retired from it, I struggle to see what you hope to accomplish. Nevertheless, I could see a place for a less patronizing, more constructive version of your post on the first page.

Your post gives me the (hopefully correct) impression, that you are disillusioned by the seeming indifference of game developers towards player input during EA. I am sure there are games where this verdict may be correct, but most developers take player input into careful consideration. Even smart ideas by clever minds can be:

• mutually exclusive
• make the game impenetrable for new players
• take too much cpu time
• have too high development costs
• have other consequences that ruin the fun
• conflict with the vision the game designers have in mind

I understand, that if a developer does not communicate the reason why a certain idea was rejected, the idea's supporters are left in an unfortunate situation where they cannot fathom the reason for this. However, developers have a limited amount of time. They can either spend it on implementing and testing new features and fixing bugs, or on posting elaborate, well-articulated explanations. I fear that, if you want an actual game in the end, you have to pick the first over the latter. I would however be delighted, if a game developer someday proves me wrong on this.

[avc15]

Every time klei removes something exploity or unintuitive from the game they get criticized pretty dramatically. But it's good for new players if game mechanics are intuitive, so just don't get too attached to any exploity builds.

 

Very simple situation  And also probably why klei never joins these kinds of conversations.

[brockmasters]

what seems really silly to me is that we keep revisiting reliable power in mid game to late game.

I honestly LOVE the rocket idea! and the gassy moo for further late game goals. but it just is frustrating that for me, im not going to really see the rocket content probably until they are two or three patches down the road from now in survival mode*

whats the point in making content that no one sees? 

[OmegaFunction]

9 hours ago, avc15 said:

Every time klei removes something exploity or unintuitive from the game they get criticized pretty dramatically. But it's good for new players if game mechanics are intuitive, so just don't get too attached to any exploity builds.

I agree, that making the mechanics more intuitive is a good thing. I really don't care whether I can boil oil to NG or not. I care, about the balance of volcanos/vents/geysers, because it ruins my fun, when I get a lot of useless or almost useless vents/geysers/volcanos. I can help that with debug mode and checking seeds upfront, but I'd rather not spoil myself. I would also be fine if I could specify the maximum amount of a certain geyser type in game setup. However, disabling useless geysers seems more like an intermediate solution. I think it would be preferable to make them all somewhat useful. 

I think you can argue about the usefulness of certain geyser types (chlorine seems to be quite polarizing), but there are huge differences in their usefulness.

[greggbert]

I don't find the new changes to be perplexing or "bad design" and can easily make sense of them.   I think they look great.  They took away exploits that were not fun to use and they added some great tools I've been hoping for like the overflow tanks.  And the addition of rockets increases the immersion factor immeasurably.  I know for a fact that Klei is a top notch software development team using agile in a highly disciplined manner EXACTLY the way it was intended.  I would love to see their slack boards when this is all done or at least read a detailed lessons learned article by their development lead about how the process went.