Abyssalite Nerf

[Sasza22]

There are basic tips you get at the start. They don`t cover much but it`s enough to grasp the basics and survive 50+ cycles before the losing the colony. Some relatively new concepts like the morale system might not be fully explained in the tips. Other like heat exchange are too complex to show in a short tooltip. Recently the abyssalite change made most people switch to doing double insualted walls so the old tutorials got aoutdated.

Now we are going into the polishing phase. A lot of balance might happen and stuff that used to work won`t. Imagine if they add tiers to statues and lock the masterpiece tier to the tier 2 artist. This would mean you can`t have a great hall before having one. Currently tutorials will tell you to rush for great hall. A small change would make it impossible.

Not everything is in place yet. Pieces move around. Once all are in place then we can do a complex tutorial. For now it`s best to ask around. Veteran players have most of the stuff figured out by now.

[greggbert]

Seriously I put some very hot stuff above sandstone insulation and am having no detectable heat bleed through, same with pipes.  Got like 95 degree water going through sandstone insulated pipes right through one side of of my base and that side of the base is just as cool as the other.  My only issue is that it takes a bit longer to build but on the plus side it shows up as a nice dark yellow on my UI.  Those abysylite pipes showing up as white always annoyed me.

[Nitroturtle]

I've noticed that pipes, both gas and liquid, are fine as long as they keep flowing.  Any time I have a hot or cold fluid or gas in an insulated pipe and the flow stops, I start having heat transfer issues.  Specifically trying to move very cold slush geyser pwater, if it sits for any length of time, it will start to heat up.

With this in mind, I've started to build automation into my supply lines and then running them into a reservior.  I setup the automation with an element sensor on a pipe running from a looped overflow line on the output of the reservior.  This is then tied into a memory sensor and filter gate, with a not gate directly on the element sensor.  So when there is not fluid in the overflow, it knows the system is nearly empty and it's time to refill.  I tweak the filter to give how ever much more I want, and then hook the output of the memory gate into a shut-off at the source.  The result is that my systems will request a certain amount of liquid, which is able to sit in the reservior and it keeps my pipes empty while still being able to continuously supply whatever system I'm running.

[WanderingKid]

While I'm in the camp of 'Abyssalite bad, no abyssalite, good!' there are a few tweaks that would help newer players in the early game.

First, move the Insulated Tile (not the pipes/vents, just the giant blocks) down lower in the tech tree so around the time they're expanding their new garden they can make sure that evil Jungle biome doesn't send out the heat brigade.

Next, make state change breaks in pipes/vents more obvious as to why they broke.  Nothing confuses someone more then "Sure, but why did it break!?" before they've learned Thermal Conductivity values and how insulated vs. non-insulated will behave after digging through a few dozen forum posts.  Am I crazy?  No, not really, but I have tried to pipe the steam from a cool steam out of insulated ceramic.  It behaves exactly like you'd expect, if you're used to the game.  "Pre Heat the pipes" was not something I'd expect to have to do until I played this game, nevermind 'log average' vs. 'minimum' values for insulation conductivity that is *only* described in forum posts and nowhere in the game in the depth it needs to be.

Finally, it would be just lovely if the rules for thermal conductivity would be better explained in game.  I'm a veteran player, and I just learned after these changes (and a crapload of experimentation and some conversation on the Discord) that insulated igneous beneath hydroponics tiles don't play nice together, and you're better off sticking a layer of granite (or any normal tile) between the two because the hydroponics tile is considered a building with debris and that affects the ground tile it sits on, and then the normal tile and the insulated one can use the minimal conductivity in a cell to cell transfer.

Right, and a casual is going to figure THAT $h!T out how?!  I've dug through the forum posts on this site and there's some of that I'm still trying to learn with a few hundred hours+ in the game.

Abyssalite was bad for the game balance, I agree, but it was also a stopgap for players who don't have a chance to learn all these intricacies without some major digging to be able to enjoy the game.  You would typically assume these game mechanics based on real world thermodynamics, airflow mixtures, fluid dynamics, etc... and you can't here, because the game is very stylized and is certainly not a direct simulator.  This is fine, but the game needs to have more in-game information for a player to be able to puzzle out why something that seems like a perfectly reasonable idea suddenly won't work because of heat transfer mechanics... and then you break their toy and still don't explain why.

So, yeah, I can understand the frustration for the average player.

[Angpaur]

@WanderingKid all you wrote is an excellent feedback - but for a finished game.

In my understanding early access games are not aimed for casual or avarage players. I think developers decide to share with gamers theirs unfinished work in order to get feedback and test various solutions, so game can evolve and be polished. This means it will keep changing during developement process. To help understand if changes are good for the game, a feedback from dedicated players is needed. Such players must be aware that they need to learn the game and be more proactive in solving problems, they can encounter. Casual or avarage players just want to play a game. So basically developer of early access game has no gain in focusing on avarage players. Spending resources to make unfinished game more accessible to such players will be just a waste of money at this stage of game developement.

It is just not the time yet to add all the things you mentioned. But of course all of it needs to be added before releasing full game version. It is just not the right moment now.

[Jadelink]

It really isn't hard to do without abysilite tiles, unless you're addicted to opening volcanos near your base, or racing for oil super early.  For something like a cool steam vent storage room, insulated tile walls are fine.  It does incentivize not recklessly pumping hot gasses, and especially liquids, through farming/living space.  Also somewhat of an incentive to isolate smelters and the like a bit more, but none of this is particularly difficult.

 

The default early game solution is to put the hot stuff in an ice boime till it melts (by which time you want super materials if you need that much heat around).

 

If you ARE utterly obsessive about opening a volcano right on top of your base, then just make a 2 tile tunnel between insulated igneous rock and pump it to vacuum for perfect insulation.

As it stood, abysilite was an instant and easy solution to any and all heat bleed problems, meaning even basic good design was never needed.

I really think some of the 'hidden' head deletion should be removed though, the game shouldnt be about trying to find out weird and counterintuitive things, like water filters outputting 40 degree water regardless of input temperature.  (I really think that one should go).