Jump to content

Space too hot for Shove Vole


Recommended Posts

I just broke through to the surface and had two of the new Shove Voles in sight. Unfortunately they both died within a few cycles. It seems that even base Mafiac Rock is sometimes too hot for them and Regolith fresh from a comet certainly is. 

So I have to wonder now what the point of these critters is. If you have to cool Regolith to 200C in order to feed them, that does kind of invalidate their existence. They also seem to be the only critter that cannot survive longer than a few cycles in its natural habitat, which does not make any sense at all.

The surface of the asteroid starts at around -40oC, which seems normal, space is cold. By the time the player has reached the surface, typically between cycle 200-400, the entire surface has massive amounts of regolith, multiple punctures in the upper biomes, and everything has been heated above 200oC.

How the devs expect any critter to survive on the surface in the current build is beyond me. Giving us the shove vole is putting a band-aid on a gaping wound, it's not sufficient. The amount of regolith spawned is disgustingly unbalanced. I did a couple tests in debug, and even with the entire surface coated in shove voles, it wasn't enough to clear away all the regolith spawned.

The entire problem could be fixed in a single patch by simply reducing the quantity of regolith per asteroid to a fraction of the current amount. The incredibly high temperature of the comets, the iron, and the abyssalite punctures could all be manageable if this one variable was changed.

Guess this is something they should adress rather soon. If shove voles chan`t survive in their natural habitat they shouldn`t exist. Some balancing to the amount of regolith wouldn`t hurt either. I`m still wondering what purpose mid or lategame could use up that amount of mass.

I'm beginning to think that none of the developers actually have experience playing the game outside of debug mode.  The amount of regolith isn't just 'a little bit high'.  They could reduce it to 10% of what it is currently and it could still be argued that it's too much to deal with.  It's completely absurd.  Even their band-aid critter that eats regolith doesn't seem like it will make a dent in the amount of regolith.  I really hope they realize this at some point and either reduce the amount of regolith significantly, or drastically increase the consumption rate of the Shove Voles.

23 minutes ago, Nitroturtle said:

I'm beginning to think that none of the developers actually have experience playing the game outside of debug mode.  The amount of regolith isn't just 'a little bit high'.  They could reduce it to 10% of what it is currently and it could still be argued that it's too much to deal with.  It's completely absurd.  Even their band-aid critter that eats regolith doesn't seem like it will make a dent in the amount of regolith.  I really hope they realize this at some point and either reduce the amount of regolith significantly, or drastically increase the consumption rate of the Shove Voles.

Quite possibly. Sure, they will have done more initially, but the last few months they seem to be misjudging rather badly on a number of things and not realize how very much they are off. I do understand that, this game takes a lot of time, which is good for players, but bad for esters. 

16 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Seems more like they rushed the content a bit knowing that the next months they will spend on balancing it anyway. Still the vole not surviving temperatures occuring in space is a rather large oversight. I hope they fix it quickly.

Also possible. And that is fine. We just need to give them feedback about the problems in a rational, non-complainy way ;)

9 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Seems more like they rushed the content a bit knowing that the next months they will spend on balancing it anyway. Still the vole not surviving temperatures occuring in space is a rather large oversight. I hope they fix it quickly.

My thoughts exactly.

Perhaps the shove vole could have a new set of criteria that accentuates it's space habitat. I am thinking about making it intolerant to gasses,  (like some critters now will drown in liquids) forcing you to keep it in a vacuum while making it survive in a very broad range of temperatures. That way it can't just thrive anywhere but can be domesticated with some effort building on the surface.

Better increasing the quantity of resources eaten to mach the input of regolith dropped. Per example. If the world spawn 10 shove vole, they should eat all the regolith dropped in the meteor season until the next meteor season in this way you protect your surface from destruction and manage to keep the regolith at reasonable quantities. Also make them invulnerable to meteor damage or heat. And to keep population constant some multiplication like hatch or drekos. 

15 hours ago, Nitroturtle said:

Even their band-aid critter that eats regolith doesn't seem like it will make a dent in the amount of regolith.  I really hope they realize this at some point and either reduce the amount of regolith significantly, or drastically increase the consumption rate of the Shove Voles.

It looks like critter's purpose is not to eat regolith, but to restore surface tiles.

I'd rather they went with the extreme cold asteroid surface and not the hellish hot one...

Temps on the surface should drop towards absolute zero in a matter of minutes...

Let's assume there are no stars shining over it, we've got enough heat already.

29 minutes ago, Nitroturtle said:

Do they still poop out tiles now that they fixed the 500% -> 50% output?  My guess is no.

So they are just going to eat loose regolith and reduce its mass by half?  I've been trying to figure out how to encourage more solid tiles of regolith to form on that surface to provide shielding for more meteor strikes.  It seems like it only forms when the large rock meteors hit.  The small ones and metal ones break it up.  What's the life cycle of these things?  Are they a good way to turn regolith into meat and lime?

4 minutes ago, psusi said:

So they are just going to eat loose regolith and reduce its mass by half?  I've been trying to figure out how to encourage more solid tiles of regolith to form on that surface to provide shielding for more meteor strikes.  It seems like it only forms when the large rock meteors hit.  The small ones and metal ones break it up.  What's the life cycle of these things?  Are they a good way to turn regolith into meat and lime?

Before the patch, they used to put out 500% of the consumed mass, which would instantly turn the pooped out material into a tile. I did some testing in debug and they still poop out undug tiles, so it appears they attempt to keep the asteroid alive, but die due to heat.

Since shove voles suffer extinction within a few cycles due to the heat, it's pointless to try to farm them since there is no way to reach the surface before they all die without using debug. I picked a seed with incredibly easy access to refined metal, water, and cool slush and have a fully tricked out power, oxygen, and exosuit system before cycle 100 and still wasn't fast enough to reach them in time to save even one specimen.

1 hour ago, crypticorb said:

Before the patch, they used to put out 500% of the consumed mass, which would instantly turn the pooped out material into a tile. I did some testing in debug and they still poop out undug tiles, so it appears they attempt to keep the asteroid alive, but die due to heat.

Since shove voles suffer extinction within a few cycles due to the heat, it's pointless to try to farm them since there is no way to reach the surface before they all die without using debug. I picked a seed with incredibly easy access to refined metal, water, and cool slush and have a fully tricked out power, oxygen, and exosuit system before cycle 100 and still wasn't fast enough to reach them in time to save even one specimen.

Interesting.  Do they tend to poop full tiles of very low mass, or do they eat a few smaller balls of regolith first then poop a larger tile?  Or do you have to collect the regolith into compactors then drop out a full 20t ball for them to eat and turn into one massive tile?

Another issue with voles is that wild critters only lay 1 egg per life cycle, and on the surface the eggs can potentially get thrown off the map by meteor strikes. It's less of a concern than the heat issue but still something that could potentially cause extinction before the player reaches them.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...