The Molecular Forge Design and Space Industry

[clickrush]

The Molecular Forge (MF) is frankly a dumb building. Or in other words Space Industry as a whole has much more potential for challenging and interesting late game content, which could be unlocked by a redesign of the MF, possibly by splitting it up into smaller components.

Dumb vs. Fun Examples

To understand where I'am comming from I would like to give a couple of examples for what I find dumb vs. what I find interesting in ONI skip this part if you already get where I'am going with this.

The best example for a really fun mechanic is the Oil into Natural Gas conversion, especially with the new change that made it more complex since there are more steps. This allows for all kinds of interesting builds. Some of the players showcased really fun tricks, optimisations and so on and most importantly no Natural Gas boiler looks like the other. Some are optimized for throughput and really big, some are tight and heavily automated etc. Equipment like the Solar Panel or the Metal Refinery are also good examples because they pose interesting challenges and opportunities to the player.

The Electrolyzer is an average/ok example, because it can be used and built around in different ways but isn't quite *as* interesting. Ofc it can't be as challenging as other examples because it is an essential early game thing.

A dumb feature in comparison would be the Hydrogen Generator. There is little consideration of where to place it or how to use it, also it destroys a gas that we have too much of and on top of that it produces way too much power. Even if looked at as a part of a bigger system, it is in itself so dumb that it makes a system less interesting just by existing. The Natural Gas Generator is as powerful and also destroys a gas that we potentially have to get rid of (Oil Wells and Oil Refineries), but it produces waste that has to be dealt with and can be dealt with in different ways which makes the game more interesting as a whole.

My View on Rocketry and Space Industry

I was at first already slightly worried about rocketry itself because the whole concept seemed a bit too simple: "Now you can solve all your problems by shooting up rockets and have fun with micromanaging them." But I got positively surprised by the fact that rocket launches can be fully automated and the rocket building itself allthough still a bit simplistic, is actually quite fun and holds some potential as well.

The space industry upgrade further expanded on the rocketry theme in a good way. It made it a bit more complex and gave us the new toys that can be gathered using rockets. I like the fact that rocket building is based on a well balanced tradeoff so we are motivated to build multiple unique rockets, or at least in theory. Allthough I read that you cannot choose individual targets for your rockets which seems like an oversight (I've only built one rocket per base so far).

The new requirements for the most high tech rockets are a great addition and definitely go into the right direction, because they pose challenges that go beyound the usual and the progression is now to a degree coupled with the destinations you can choose.

The Molecular Forge

Now the reason I find the MF 'dumb' is because it literally dumbs down the game into a timesink mechanic, which reminds me of games I rather not think about (keyword: evil game-design). The materials we get from are extremely powerful and sometimes make interesting builds less interesting. It takes many cycles to get them. So many that a player who is motivated by the same things as me, will get bored before getting enough of them to build something with them.

The really problematic part here aren't even the resulting materials nor the slow gathering, but the processing itself. It is a simple choose and click mechanic that doesn't propose any challenges, when It could be so much more interesting. There are many ways to do this. For example each material could require intermediary conversion steps like the Oil to Natural Gas conversion, which would enforce a more complex processing chain. And/or there could be ridiculous requirements for the conversions to work, such as a huge power drain or something like that. It could produce a waste that is very hard to deal with, for example containing a sort of space germ that is extremely contagious, travels through almost unobstructed and has a massive negative impact (or even a positive one when contained correctly). There are many things possible here and alot of them require some splitting up of the individual conversion processes into multiple buildings.

[Sasza22]

I agree the molecular forge needs some sort of sideproduct that needs to be managed or maybe make the thing produce so much heat it overheats every time unless you provide really strong cooling. No it`s just a station like the rock crusher or electric grill.