rocketry update Rocket Launch resource rewards are... underwhelming.

[Sevio]

So I spent an afternoon setting up a small mockup base for trying out aspects of the new Rocketry Upgrade, resources spawned in for convenience.

I also built myself a basic rocket consisting of a command module, cargo bay, liquid fuel tank and engine. I assigned an astronaut (using debug mode), launched the rocket into space to a carbon asteroid made of 30% refined carbon, 36% coal and 34% diamond.

I then had to wait 3 cycles for the rocket to return with:

• 70.1 kg refined carbon
• 82.2 kg coal
• 77.8 kg diamond

Total cargo returned: 230.1 kg

The cargo bay holds 20 tons so it was just over 1% full when my astronaut decided to return. Perhaps expecting it to return a full 20 tons of cargo was a bit much but if I'm going to lose a duplicant for 3 cycles and spend 900 kg of petroleum at a minimum to put a rocket in space, I expect something more than 230 kg of cargo.

With the refined carbon I could make 300 kg steel which is okay, but the coal would only last 82 seconds in a coal generator. Let's say that doesn't matter and the primary reason to go there is diamond, then it would still take over 10 of these trips just to make one diamond tempshift plate. Or at least a second trip just to make one diamond window tile.

I can understand setting up the rewards cautiously to allow for better balancing when everything is more fleshed out or if we get to actually send our dupes to another (temporary) map to run the mission ourselves, but would like to give a heads up anyway that I don't think such a small rate of return is worth all the effort.

[neoazureus]

I would like to do the missions by ourselves, have a time limit within the planet / asteroid according to the amount of oxygen and food that is sent inside the rocket (and a maximum time of 3 cycles), remember, dupes need to sleep due their stamina, and that they travel with an exosuit, thus the dupe will return to the command module to fill the tank and eat, to be able to choose more than one dupe, maybe 3 max, so I would choose those with a very high level of digging. Maybe you can take materials to build ladders or dig from top to bottom. But I would definitely like to play on those new planets. It would have to solve how to load the gas (build a bomb and a hamster wheel/carbon gen with material from the main asteroid?)

[Rogue Witch]

I love the idea of manually handling the rocket missions personally. 

+1 to the idea of carrying self determined materials to build whatever we desire on the "mini-map" of the distant planet the rocket goes to. Of course we would also need food stock and oxylite stock. And we do not even need to pause one planet when we are on another. There should be a tab to switch view to the other planet any time and manually intervene as required. Dupes should need exosuits or O2 atmosphere outside rockets on the mission planet. 

Keep it Up Klei. Kudos !!

[Coolthulhu]

I hate the idea of manual mission handling, sounds incredibly tedious for repeat missions.

Automatic missions just need good resource drops.

[yoakenashi]

5 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

I hate the idea of manual mission handling, sounds incredibly tedious for repeat missions.

Automatic missions just need good resource drops.

Blasphemy!! Okay, I can see this. What about the first  mission is manual, which then  unlocks the ability to run the mission automatically afterwards. You can run it again manually to increase the rewards or just to play that world again.

I would even be willing to say the first mission could be automatic, but you’ll get these low rewards. The duplicants won’t know what to do without your direction!

We on the other side of the fence just don’t want this to be a simple push-button-get-reward situation. I wouldn’t care if I got 20t of diamond per trip, just clicking “Launch Mission” isn’t my kind of fun.

 

 

[Sasza22]

6 hours ago, Sevio said:

The cargo bay holds 20 tons so it was just over 1% full when my astronaut decided to return.

Can you assign only one dupe per mission? I would imagine you`d need to send more dupes to mine more stuff.

 

5 hours ago, neoazureus said:

I would like to do the missions by ourselves,

It would be cool for a few reasons. The return you`d get would be based on how good your dupes are in mining stuff and how do you plan mining the asteroid. Getting moos would require you to have a rancher on board. The resource asteroids could be auto generated maps every time with the rocket in the middle (they would be pretty small). Dupes would sleep and eat on the rocket. You`d have to build ladders but you can plan what and how much of it you gather.

 

2 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

I hate the idea of manual mission handling, sounds incredibly tedious for repeat missions.

Not much different than digging around your base. But i guess doing it too many times is super boring so maybe just specify what you want your dupes to mine and they can do it automatically without you watching it.

[neoazureus]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

 The return you`d get would be based on how good your dupes are in mining stuff and how do you plan mining the asteroid.

I like this, but with the rocket on top the asteroid. and precious resources in the center / bottom. So, as you have a maximum time limit (no matter if you carry huge amounts of food / oxygen there must be a maximum time) the resources will depend on your plans, if you want to go directly through the diamond you should go to the bottom of the asteroid, if you want a moos you will have to go to capture it, you will be the one who prioritize the resource to obtain, added to a random generation of asteroids could be a way to eliminate the feeling of doing repetitive missions

[Coolthulhu]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

Not much different than digging around your base.

Yeah, except even more tedious because you'd have to repeat it on every mission. And even less interesting because no geysers.

The brainless task of designating mining in such a way that dupes don't hurt themselves is one of the shortcomings of the AI that isn't easily fixable, but is annoying.

[Sevio]

8 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Can you assign only one dupe per mission? I would imagine you`d need to send more dupes to mine more stuff.

You don't assign a dupe, they assign themselves to a rocket as an astronaut when you select a destination. The rocket statistic screen has an info section for passengers, but there are no passenger modules and no other way I could find of adding passengers to the rocket.

[Sevio]

I thought I would try sending rockets to the further off asteroids to see if those rewards are any better, but now the game keeps crashing when the astronaut enters the rocket. Anyone figured out a workaround for that?

[Yoma_Nosme]

How about making outposts on other asteroids? Maybe leaving a team behind to dig and build. This would mean immense stress on the astronauts. You would have to supply food at least in the beginning or forever if the asteroid doesn't support plant live. Water, etc. Maybe hostile creatures. You would have to develop a space programme. I would find that very cool

[AndreyKl]

On 24.08.2018 at 6:53 PM, Sevio said:

The cargo bay holds 20 tons so it was just over 1% full when my astronaut decided to return. Perhaps expecting it to return a full 20 tons of cargo was a bit much but if I'm going to lose a duplicant for 3 cycles and spend 900 kg of petroleum at a minimum to put a rocket in space, I expect something more than 230 kg of cargo.

And what if you take more cargo bays? Will it be same amount spread among the bays or will it be same amount per cargo bay? Single fuel tank can allow half a dozen cargo containers for 10Mm distance, so if it spreads, getting 1 ton of resources sounds like a fair exchange. 

Unfortunately my game crashes as soon as astronaut reaches cabin, so I can't test it(((

On 24.08.2018 at 6:53 PM, Sevio said:

spend 900 kg of petroleum

Is it really 900? It looked to me like only part was spent (makes sense, if you travel to 10Mm asteroid on 18Mm rated rocket, there is no reason to spend all of that fuel)

Additionally some of that petroleum is converted to ~2000C carbon dioxide on launch.

Unfortunately I have no idea how much CO2 is generated, is it related to distance or mass. Still it is lava-less heat source that can be used (for example in petroleum production or to heat steam for turbine) and CO2 can be cooled (or used to heat all that solid methane and other gooddies from 30Mm asteroid)

P.S. It looks like pethroleum is a 'tier I' fuel and methane will be more efficient

[NGMZero]

42 minutes ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

How about making outposts on other asteroids? Maybe leaving a team behind to dig and build. This would mean immense stress on the astronauts. You would have to supply food at least in the beginning or forever if the asteroid doesn't support plant live. Water, etc. Maybe hostile creatures. You would have to develop a space programme. I would find that very cool

here is my watered down idea of the mobile-version rocket missions.

1- Tracking an asteroid: build an observatory and assign a scientist to it for them to find a usable asteroid after some time and RNG they will find something we will know it general biome and size (type of resources and expected amount). at that point we can keep tracking that planet which will add it to the space map, or we stop tracking it, which will forever delete it from the space map. each observatory could have 1 planet to track. 

2- Quick Mission: they will function similar to the testing branch 

• Analyzing: the duplicant will spend 1 cycle on the destination to give us a permanent accurate information about it.
  - Scientist or Builder: build-able structures.  
  - Miner: solid, gas and liquid  resources type and amount.
  - Farmer or Rancher: plants and animals wild life and type. 
• Mining (require available storage): duplicant will collect random resources. get bonus from miner, dexterity, strength, and digging.
• Harvesting and Taming (require available storage): duplicant will collect random seeds and animals, get bonus from farming, ranching, farmer, rancher dexterity, and dexterity.
• Development / Building Facility (require materials): duplicant will spend 1 to 3 cycle on the destination to construct a building that will give permanent bonuses for other missions.

3- Long Term Missions: in long term mission duplicant will spend time doing an action until they run out of a critical resources, then they will return back with what every they loaded in the rocket storage critical resources can be:

• Power: can be provided with battery rocket module, or solar panels module, or developing the destination asteroid.
• Food: store in special refrigerated storage rocket module, consume power. or developing the destination asteroid.
• Oxygen: provided on gas storage, and oxylite ore. or developing the destination asteroid.

Basically asteroids can allow a set number of structure to be built on them to permanently neglecting one or more resource. like building food farms, oxygen generators, power generators and so on, planets can completely denies building one or more structure.  and the duplicant in the mission will keep filling storage until they run out of critical resource, storage are full, player recall the mission. 

in long term missions a duplicant can be supplied with non-critical mission resources that will let the duplicant perform even better, similar to moral.

• water and vitamines: to stay clean and healthy
• entertainment rocket module: consume more power
• etc

of course there is no real structures and what ever, this is all a UI stuff and number calculating similar to an idle game, or may be klie will just blow our minds and go the cave route of don't starve. I am sure asking for too much here 

[Sevio]

2 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

Unfortunately my game crashes as soon as astronaut reaches cabin, so I can't test it(((

I have the same problem now so I gave up after 3 crashes.

[AndreyKl]

Ok, good news:

1. Game no longer crashes!
2. I sent a rocket with 3 containers and got ~70-90Kg of each resource per container! (over 600Kg from first asteroid and over 800Kg from 20Mm one with three containers)
3. Rocket does generate CO2 in relatively large quantities (at least over 100Kg, haven't looked 'deeper' yet)

Bad news:

1. Both fuel tanks were empty after each trip.
2. I failed to get my astronaut out of the cabin (Upd: fixed, astronaut falls out now, zeroed to basic stats)
3. Even sweepers could not empty the cargo (had to deconstruct).
4. It appears that penalty growth is non linear, single container barely affects penalty, 3 substracts 5Mm from distance, 4 is equivalent of 10+Mm penalty, so single tank rocket is limited by 3 containers, 30Mm rocket - same, 20Mm rocket cam fit at least 4, may be 5. (Updated)

Of note: trip took 3 cycles to 'coal' asteroid and 6 to 20Mm 'raw' metallic asteroid.

Conclusions:

Since rewards are per container, it is possible to somewhat compensate for spent fuel. Already planning a bigger rocket) Fuel usage means that we will have to finetune rockets depending on target to not waste fuel.

Opinion:

Either way mechanic is flawed. I think amount of resources mined should depend onto:

1. Cargo capacity - as long as other factors permit, astronaut should attempt to fill the rocket to the brim
2. Asteroid size - as long as there are resources in asteroid... 'empty' asteroids should be destroyed (with a need for RND asteroids)
3. Fuel limit - if rocket only has fuel to lift 5t, it shouldn't fit more even if there is more space
4. Potentially supplies and work time (as long as astronaut has supplies he/she should be able to work), the more he mines the longer it takes and more supplies is required (oxygen, food and water)

Additionally fuel and time consumption should be different:

1. Total time = travel to target time + work time + travel back with heavy cargo time
2. Travel time depends onto distance, weight/engine power and 'operation' skill of a pilot (and perhaps a way to get to target faster but for expense of fuel?)
3. Work time depends onto 'miner'/'rancher'/'farmer' skill (depending on task), amount of supplies and amount of cargo that needs to be processed
4. Fuel consumption should depend onto weight and distance
5. Potentially we should be able to recall astronaut at any given time for reduced gain and fuel/supply consumption (or no gain if target wasn't reached)

 

[ImpalerWrG]

On 8/24/2018 at 4:02 PM, Coolthulhu said:

I hate the idea of manual mission handling, sounds incredibly tedious for repeat missions.

Automatic missions just need good resource drops.

Coolthulhu is correct, the player can not be expected to handle both the mission and their main base simultaneously.  At best some kind of progress meter showing materials collected and some buttons for us to change the priorities would be as details as I would want to go.

To keep the away missions from getting stale I would make ALL target asteroids drift away gradually over 20-40 cycles and their crews automatically return.  New asteroids then float into range, essentially a continuous stream of stuff that the player can grab stuff from.  This also allows for challenges, threats and story elements to appear over time.

[AndreyKl]

2 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

Coolthulhu is correct, the player can not be expected to handle both the mission and their main base simultaneously.

1. It doesn't have to be simultaneous. Main base can be just perma-paused while player is dealing with a mission and a 'return delay' initiated after completing the mission for a time equivalent to one spent working. ('Craft the world' does it this way, but return is immediate)

2. Since we have 'pause' it actually possible to manage both places simultaneously (like in Rim world)

I think we should have an ability to do both manual and automated (like now with some changes) missions. Doing missions manually/personally all the time is going to be too tedious, automated missions alone sound too boring, but ability to mix those will sutisfy desire to actually visit asteroids and give a way to get more content and possibilities (be that visiting some abandoned stations or simply controling what resources your dupes mine, more flexibility, like leaving duped at asteroid while rocket ships resources and retrieves supplies)

P.S. Updated previous comment.

[_midnightrain_]

On 29.8.2018 at 12:56 AM, AndreyKl said:

Conclusions:

Since rewards are per container, it is possible to gain far more mass then spent fuel. Already planning a bigger rocket) Fuel usage means that we will have to finetune rockets depending on target to not waste fuel.

I guess that's a way to work around the reward limitations but I think its crazy to have 2 (or more) x 20 tons space for cargo and bring back 2 (or more) x ~200kg cargo... that just doesn't feel right. And it was really disappointing after setting up a dupe-space-program in survival to just get back (on first run) 1 smooth hatch, ~70kg iron, ~50kg copper and ~60kg obsidian...

 

Edit: After a little more testing I can certainly say: going into space for cargo (ore etc.) is just frustrating, it doesen't feels rewarding enough for end game content. But atm I'm flying into space with 2 bio containers to get some weezies*, so I "pay" 900kg of pertroleom per weezwort seed and I'm completly fine with that ratio. But the amount of ore, coal or whatever material needs some serious adjustment in my opinion.

*Don't judge me, I know there are more effective ways to cool your base, but I like them.

[thewreckedangle]

On 8/24/2018 at 5:26 PM, neoazureus said:

I would like to do the missions by ourselves

i had hoped for this too, à la sims3 world adventures