New player - Is this a fundamental issue?

[Express]

Abstract: For new players, such as myself, who haven't reached the rocketry parts of the game, the limited resources discourage acquiring additional duplicants. Additional duplicants only serve to make the game more difficult to new players. I feel this is counter intuitive as most base building games encouraging one to increase the population so more can get done. I am not sure what the solution to this is. I believe there should be a reason to acquire more duplicants that adds benefits above the costs, otherwise what is the point? Currently, I feel additional duplicants incur costs higher than the benefits one receives from them.

 

If it isn't apparent why, let me explain. Maybe I'm wrong, and if so please correct me. Please remember that this applies to the new player experience. A seasoned veteran of this game can easily survival with continual duplicant production, but this is an extra challenge to them. They do it not because the game is "simpler" by undertaking this route but rather because they "can". Easy evidence of this in experienced players is how one could build a mega base with a single duplicant and last for thousands of cycles but one cannot survival long with 100 duplicants.

 

I've played over 10 bases thus far and have found a pattern common to all of them. It is that the more duplicants I acquire, from a sense of "more is better", the more difficult and pressing the game becomes. The time factor in achieving goals shortens the more duplicants one has. For example, you just started a base and rely on algae to produce oxygen. There is a finite supply of algae in the starting zone. Each duplicant consumes a fixed amount of oxygen and thus the more duplicants one has the quicker the oxygen is consumed and the quicker the algae is consumed. This results in having a shorter time span to achieve the next goals necessary to continue surviving. To make the point using an example in the other direction, if one does not acquire additional duplicants at the beginning of the game, as I've also done, and sticks with the first three, then you will have plenty of time to plan and organize yourself as to what you should do next because the fixed supply of algae will last you much longer.

 

This is just a singular example but can be likewise applied to the limited supply of cool water. The more duplicants you have, the more food you must produce and hence the more water you must consume. Before you are able to figure out how to cool steam vent water or polluted water you may run out of cool water if you chose to continually produce duplicants. Again, the easier route would be to stick with the minimal number of duplicants so your limited cool water source lasts as long as possible while you plan how to tackle the hotter regions.

 

Yet another example is the use of coal early on. Again, a limited supply which is utilized in greater quantities the more duplicants one has - more oxygen generation, and so on. Hence, before one could find and plan the use of natural gas or other means one might find themselves without any coal left if one chose to pursue many duplicants.

 

I compare this experience to other survival base building games such as banished. It is easy to identify why banished can support a gigantic population and in a sense "more is better" in that game. It is simply because food and most natural resources are renewable. And hence, if you scale the production up to support a larger population, you do not run out of the resources quicker. Thus the game promotes you increasing the population.

 

Another survival base building game is rimworld. Again, that game promotes you utilizing more people since you can always scale production up. Food is renewable as are all natural resources. The game is better and more enjoyable the more people you have.

 

Last example is dwarf fortress, which I have played for many years. Quite a difficult game for new players, but all will realize that you can easily scale production up for countless dwarves. Food, alcohol, and clothing is renewable which is the only requirements to keep your fort alive. And dwarf fortress benefits greatly from a higher population, as you can mine greater quantities of ore, create a larger military, and so on.

 

I think I've made my point. ONI does not currently promote players to increase their duplicant count because the benefit-cost ratio is less than 1. Each additional duplicant will incur costs greater than what they give you. Hence you are only handicapping yourself by producing more duplicants. I see this as a fundamental issue because logically, given that duplicants are in a sense "you", a base building survival game should promote the increase of the population, not stagnation or even decline (1 duplicant in a sense is the most "efficient" you can be in ONI). Let me know your thoughts

[Iriswaters]

More duplicants do indeed incur costs that the limited resources do not tend to easily allow for.   More duplicants is harder, and leaves you more vulnerable to collapse, but also progresses faster.  It is a mark of skill to be able to allow a very large number of dupes into the base, and making room for more is one goal many players have.

The reason this is not as broken as it may seem is that more population doesn't have any inherent cost.  For many games that reward high population, one must achieve certain milestones to get a higher population.   It is itself a reward.   This game simply offers you more constantly.  If it were simply -better- to have more, more would always be the go-to choice, until you added enough to lag out the game and be impossible to keep track of.   Instead, it is a trade off.   More dupes means more can get done more quickly, digging, building, researching, and construction of the various wild machines.   But first you have to figure out how you are going to feed them in the limited space on this tiny little asteroid you call home.

[KittenIsAGeek]

One of the things I learned very quickly early on was that taking a dupe every time the Printing Pod was ready made it very difficult to manage my base.  Currently I run with around six to ten dupes until several hundred cycles in.  By the mid-game, when I've gotten food, air, and water taken care of, I increase my dupe population and try to find an equilibrium where I'm not waiting for tasks, but I also don't have many idle dupes.

Unlike most base-building simulators, this one starts you off with the premise that "oxygen is not included."  You have a very limited resource and your primary consumers of said resource are your dupes.  This will limit both your rate of expansion and your total colony size -- most seeds have enough resources to provide food and oxygen for about 30 dupes.  Depending on how you engineer your systems, what your geysers produce, and which traits your dupes have, you could support far more or far fewer dupes.

However, I do agree with you: As a new player, your first instinct is to build more dupes because more = better.  But not with ONI. =^.^=

Additionally, you are not the dupes: You're the printing pod.  If you read the messages in the database as you progress, you see that you are the base itself, not the dupes running around inside.

[Xuhybrid]

As long as you locate a steam vent and acquire sources of cooling (wheezeworts) then it really doesn't matter how many dupes you take.

[KittenIsAGeek]

9 minutes ago, Xuhybrid said:

As long as you locate a steam vent and acquire sources of cooling (wheezeworts) then it really doesn't matter how many dupes you take.

Not true.  Your steam vent has a limited production rate that will ultimately limit the number of dupes you can support.

[Xuhybrid]

Yeah but unless you're just eating raw crops and taking 100 dupes, it's not really a problem. Certainly not a doom clock like the OP is claiming. Finding these two resources, water and cold, is all you are pressured to find at the start.

Also worth noting that i don't use coal for power. Manual generators are free and if you're taking a bunch of dupes, get them running!

[babba]

If the game had some form of resource trade system right from the beginning, it would be helpful for new players and a bucket of joy for me.

[Lilalaunekuh]

40 minutes ago, babba said:

If the game had some form of resource trade system right from the beginning, it would be helpful for new players and a bucket of joy for me.

Just an idea (maybe leave a reaction to this post to show your standpoint):

Give the printing pod the ability to create/trade "some" resources instead of printing a new duplicant. This would make the start more forgiving to (newer) players and would reduce the urge to recrute every duplicant available.)

[impyre]

More duplicants adds more challenge on several levels, some of which have already been mentioned:

1. more duplicants means more micromanaging... there's always *something* you have to pay attention to... someone dug in the wrong order and got stuck and is suffocating... someone ate the wrong food and is upset... someone needs a job change... etc.
2. more duplicants means resources get used quicker. This is less of a disadvantage than it appears, since you can also build and research faster too... but basically the rule is: more duplicants = faster paced game. A faster paced game can stress you out and hit you with more than you can handle, even though you technically have the resources to handle it. Also, too many players insist on playing at max speed. With 12 or 16 dupes, every second can count.
3. infrastructure can be more challenging. You need more space for them to live in. Twice as many dupes? your o2 farm has to be twice as big (assuming you're using the same design), twice as much bedroom space, more kitchen space, more power, more wires, more pipes... etc. The infrastructure tasks in this game are already rich and challenging, limited more by your imagination than the game itself... figuring out some of these problems can be especially daunting. In my current survival game I'm having to reorganize the pipes for my water treatment system so that I can expand it, and it is proving to be a pain.

Lastly, there's no great benefit inherent with having more dupes since they can work all jobs with no morale penalty. Have your rancher also be your cook and miner... works just fine. In fact, my current game has 4 dupes. I have 4 seasoned miners, 3 seasoned architects, 3 chefs, 4 farmers, etc, etc. The only thing that is helped by having more dupes is that larger projects can be split more ways, and get done faster with less impact on other daily tasks, I personally feel like this is offset by point 3 above.

EDIT: If dupes were restricted to a single career tree, this would definitely change... although that would mean the space cadet implementation would also have to change.

 

[Sasza22]

More dupes increase the speed of the game. Stuff gets build faster but resources get used up fster as well. You need to stabilize first before you can increase the size of the colony. With new dupes available ever few cycles you can`t afford to accept all of them most of the time. (maybe each next dupe should take more time to "produce")

Another thing is progressing outside the the starting zone. It requires you to be ready for the heat outside and diseases in the slime biomes. With more dupes you need to tame those biomes faster. Rushing it might be risky.

It is advised to keep your dupes around 10 for beginners. then add some more after you get food surplus and a robust oxygen system.

Also managing dupes is a lot of work. With 30+ dupes you will get job mastered notifications all the time. Food permission managing, assigning schedules, personal priorities and jobs on top of that get annoying to keep track of after a while. Sometimes i wish there were easier ways to manage all that.

[cpy]

Hmm if only we had some BFR and 10t cargo pods, then having lot of dupes wouldn't be such problem. Low on power? Haul 10t natgas! Low on food haul 2x10t of slime and you can be a mushroom farmer. Just imagine size of that engine and tanks, rock melting power!

[impyre]

You can kinda do that by scaling up the smaller systems, and using lots of rail.

The cargo pods are a neat idea, though 10t may be a bit overkill (and late game when your dupes build up strength it might become redundant.)

You could use something like wheel-barrels, or backpacks... something that acts like a strength multiplier.

[Lali-Lop]

5 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

Give the printing pod the ability to create/trade "some" resources instead of printing a new duplicant. This would make the start more forgiving to (newer) players and would reduce the urge to recrute every duplicant available.)

I have a very similar idea.  Instead of printing resources directly, maybe we could actually collect the ooze that rejected dupes are turned into and learn to convert it into other matter.  Or maybe only living matter like seeds or critters.  Would certainly be helpful if you accidentally compost all your seeds, or all of a certain critter dies, etc.  I know you can get a lot of these things from space, but at that point, it probably doesn't matter that much.

[LeifErikson]

I'm a veteran of this game, but only recently restarted to try out the new rocketry / space industry update. I rush to 16 dupes, stabilized my colony, then got 4 more, stabilized, and currently sit at 24. Some key things that are essential for newer players to understand include:

-Bathrooms are water positive. You can make an infinite cycle of water from your bathroom to a sieve and back, and you get extra water. Each time a lavatory is used, you get a net of +6.7kg of water , which can be sieved, recycled, and there's 6.7kg of water for electrolyzers, giving 5949g of Oxygen per dupe that uses the restroom. One electrolyzer provides 888g of oxygen, which is enough for 8.88 dupes (100g per dupe).

-Mushrooms are hands down the most reliable food source for the entire game. Sure they only give +1 morale, but that is fine for almost all of your dupes, save astronauts. Swamp biomes are dangerous, but they are very managable if you set up a single deodorizer at the entrance to them, and they become trivial if you dig through to an adjacent cold biome. The cold will radiate out, and kill the slimelung in the tiles over time. Mushrooms only require 4kg of slime per cycle. Slime in your base is bad, but if you just submerge a storage container in water, the slime will not off gas polluted oxygen with slimelung.

-Hamster wheels are your friend. Seriously. I used almost exclusively hamster wheels for power for 500+ cycles, with just a little extra runoff from my SPOMs to supplicate vital systems. Building a coal generator in your base is going to quickly lead to heat death if you don't use insulated tiles to protect the colony. And on the subject of insulation, use insulated tiles to surround your base and prevent as much heat transfer as possible. Insulated Igneous tiles work perfect for most applications, and ceramic is pretty much all you need unless you're going for something very specific to prevent all transfer.

In general, when I start out, I rush farming so I can build farm tiles, fill them with mealwood, survive off of lice loaf until I have a CO2 pit to build my mushroom farm in, and then get rid of the microbe musher forever. Grill uses no water, and mushrooms are an excellent food source. Don't dig up every plant you see in the wild, only the ones you need to move. You can use the naturally growing peppernuts and sleet wheat to make the fancier foods for your dupes that require higher morale.

[ruhrohraggy]

If you strip away all of the graphics, this is just a big numbers simulator.

You have inputs, you have outputs.

It is simply that seasoned players understand the inputs, our dupes in this case, much better than newer players. And that's what makes the learning process fun.

If your input's demands are not being met, then they cease to function. Once you understand the input's, you can then scale them up with your knowledge on how the limited resources in the world work.

I have also played Dwarf fortress (for a very long time) Rimworld and the like...but I like the dynamics of this survival game, and the same could be said for real life : If you have too many people, and not enough air, food (and in our case in real life) water with limited resources...they will die off and their numbers will shrink.

It forces you to think, and design systems, optimize your layout, and try to squeek as much out of your processes as you can, given the in game rules. The other games don't inspire quite as much thought.

I'm sure there are other reasons the amount of dupes are limited, like lag etc..., but I like the fact that you must learn how to sustain larger populations, and that it is a challenge to do so.

If you want to run a larger population without the challenge, you can go into the custom game settings and tone back all of the dupe's needs. They provided the tools to do exactly what you want to be done.

Granted, if they made it where the system could handle hundreds of dupes, I wouldn't object to that, and that would be pretty cool...but, they are bound by their software, our hardware and the underlying programming as developers, and they are doing the best they can to carry out their vision for this game within that framework.

And I think they're doing a fine job.

 

[Iriswaters]

As a note, when I played DF, I always turned the pop limit for migration way, way down.  This allowed my fortress to still grow over time due to reproduction, but made it so I didn't immediately get huge swarms of dwarves.

 

I did this for several reasons.  The first being simply that more dwarves is always better in every way, in terms of effectiveness/survival, than fewer.  I find such non-choices uninteresting, so removing them doesn't feel like I've lost anything.  

But more importantly, playing with more dwarves is less fun.  You lose track of the individual dwarves and their stories, all the mountains of detail about their ridiculously over-engineered lives(DF really has an absurd amount of detail).  Everything just becomes about groups, x many guards, y many craftsdwarves.  And very few enemies are a challenge at all apart from HFS/the circus.    Everything is just so abstracted that it loses some of the charm.  Plus there is the lag.

It is possible for game systems to accidentally encourage players to play the game in a less fun way.  Where the optimal play style in terms of 'winning' is also a lot less fun to do.  I feel like this ends up being true in a lot of survival games, where turtling down, relying on infinite resources and only very slowly expanding into new things once it is safe, or taking on 1-200 colonists when doing so requires frustrating micro management, or the like are unquestionably the 'better idea' and actively encouraged, but are also boring.

[asveron]

To be fair this is true in all simulation games. You can find a profitable point early on in all Anno Series or Sim City series. I think that even applies to games like zoo tycoon or roller coaster tycoon.

[ruhrohraggy]

57 minutes ago, Iriswaters said:

The first being simply that more dwarves is always better in every way, in terms of effectiveness/survival, than fewer.  I find such non-choices uninteresting, so removing them doesn't feel like I've lost anything.  

But more importantly, playing with more dwarves is less fun.  You lose track of the individual dwarves and their stories, all the mountains of detail about their ridiculously over-engineered lives(DF really has an absurd amount of detail). 

It is possible for game systems to accidentally encourage players to play the game in a less fun way.  Where the optimal play style in terms of 'winning' is also a lot less fun to do.  I feel like this ends up being true in a lot of survival games, where turtling down, relying on infinite resources and only very slowly expanding into new things once it is safe, or taking on 1-200 colonists when doing so requires frustrating micro management, or the like are unquestionably the 'better idea' and actively encouraged, but are also boring.

Quoted for truth.

Though, I like ONI in that allows you to set your own challenges. There are advantages and disadvantages to having more dupes. There are advantages and disadvantages to having less dupes. You can do both. There are youtube videos of people accepting each and every dupe that comes through the Printer, and surviving a long time.

In dwarf fortress, the biggest challenge I had was just learning the UI, interactions and task management. (And how to interpret the darn ASCII until they came out with skinpacks for it)...Big thanks to captnduck and his 8 hour long tutorial series xD.

Another honorable mention is factorio...<3 that game.

With games like this you set your own challenges, your own goals, and you play the way you like to play. The devs gave us indirect goals to follow, and is a means of keeping us busy...but this isn't really a game with an end-game that says "Congratulations, you win!"

If the game, or your skill is being a hindrance to your fun in that respect, you can always do a custom game and tweak the settings to best suit your play-style.

Usually the progression for people into this sorta genre isn't "How long can I surive"...because that answer is always "Forever" once you're good enough. You start asking questions like : "Can I print every dupe that comes through the printer and make it?" "Can I do it with just 1 dupe?" "HOW FAST can I launch a rocket, or wall off space"...etc...etc...

If you are trying to do something that everyone else is doing, and are not enjoying it, do something else. If there is no enjoyment to be had from ONI, play something else....Or go outside and enjoy some sunshine...or something.

Should be common sense really.

[Mariilyn]

5 hours ago, Lali-Lop said:

I have a very similar idea.  Instead of printing resources directly, maybe we could actually collect the ooze that rejected dupes are turned into and learn to convert it into other matter.  Or maybe only living matter like seeds or critters.  Would certainly be helpful if you accidentally compost all your seeds, or all of a certain critter dies, etc.  I know you can get a lot of these things from space, but at that point, it probably doesn't matter that much.

Where does this ooze comes from though? Imagine we had to manufacture new genetic ooze everytime we want to print a new duplicant. 

[Lancar]

I think that, for new players, the confusion ultimately stems from the fact that the Printing pod pretty much pushes new duplicants on you. It's a fact that you don't have to accept the new dupe, and that you can disable the pod to keep it from disturbing you again, but for a new player this isn't as apparant as it should be.

So, to remedy this perception a simple fix would be to have the pod NOT produce new dupes automatically. Instead, it should be a factory queue just like the refinery. This would make producing new dupes an active decision on the players part. A normal tutorial pop-up would explain the implications of having more dupes making it clear for new players what they're getting into, while experienced players can just set it to continuous and leave it there until they're happy with their numbers.

[cpy]

11 hours ago, impyre said:

You can kinda do that by scaling up the smaller systems, and using lots of rail.

The cargo pods are a neat idea, though 10t may be a bit overkill (and late game when your dupes build up strength it might become redundant.)

You could use something like wheel-barrels, or backpacks... something that acts like a strength multiplier.

I meant 10t cargo rockets. Not dupe carry strenght. As in haul more stuff from space. There is no reliable automation in live version for space so always opening and closing gates is REALLY ANNOYING. What's the point of rocket detection when it fails to detect it in time? That timer is a lie, even if i had 78s detection before it hit me, it still didn't start to open gates in time.

[ruhrohraggy]

2 hours ago, cpy said:

I meant 10t cargo rockets. Not dupe carry strenght. As in haul more stuff from space. There is no reliable automation in live version for space so always opening and closing gates is REALLY ANNOYING. What's the point of rocket detection when it fails to detect it in time? That timer is a lie, even if i had 78s detection before it hit me, it still didn't start to open gates in time.

That sounds a bit odd to me. I've spent the last week or two really focused on building a stable silo-type automation, and I did it... It's still a little finicky, but it's minor compared to manually trying to launch the thing every time

But this was on live, and not beta. I haven't gotten to test out Scanner detection.

You should only need a minimum of 40 seconds of detection to make sure your powered bunker doors open.

I'm actually worried now and am gonna go test this...I'll get back to ya.

[avilmask]

3 hours ago, cpy said:

I meant 10t cargo rockets. Not dupe carry strenght. As in haul more stuff from space. There is no reliable automation in live version for space so always opening and closing gates is REALLY ANNOYING. What's the point of rocket detection when it fails to detect it in time? That timer is a lie, even if i had 78s detection before it hit me, it still didn't start to open gates in time.

I have tested alpha branch, and new rocket scanner works very well. I've managed to make so rocket silo opens when rocket is ready to launch, and when rocket is nearing our asteroid to land. Only issue left is astronaut doesn't get unassigned automatically (he leaves the rocket and enters it immediately), also astronaut keeps forgetting, what he was wearing (always leaves the rocket without his space suit on). But it's minor compared to manual opening of silo. When astronaut will start entering only a rocket, that have an assigned mission, it'll be completely hands free.

Maybe your scanners are on low efficiency? I have two scanners (one for meteors, and second for a rocket), and silo always have plenty of time to open. And it's at 33% efficiency.

[cpy]

I have 3x 66% eff. Maybe live version isn't the best one to test. Maybe it only detects rockets when it appears in level.

Rocket automation definitely needs lot of love in QOL2 hopefully.

[ruhrohraggy]

Live version, the rockets own automation is worthless for detecting the rocket's return trip. The QoL Beta patch is where they added scanner detection.

All they had to do...is make the rocket's return automation happen a little bit sooner...like 5-10 in game seconds. Enough time to open powered bunker doors...*sigh*

However, I went to go test this, and even with 6x scanners based on a previous build of mine, I'm only getting 47% quality, even though they're more than 15 tiles apart, and there's nothing above, or below them.

I'm quite mystified...