SPACED OTU TESTING - wall of text here-

so right away i was disappointed by the size of the asteroid, i have debug mode enabled so i hit backspace and saw that their wasnt even enough metals to make the dirt rocket. im usually playing the new eden asteroid mod, and it has 3-4 times the size of the default, and before your updates BROKE the lua mod, i was doing 3000x 4000 world sizes with zero lag, the only thing that caused performance issues during those days was the multiplication rates of the shine bugs. i can understand having a "low system specs mode" for low end pcs, but for people like me expecting to play on infinite world sizes, we probably wouldnt play this game if we had another game option with no limits, such as satisfactory or factorio..
 

also still nota fan of the mental image of the dupes ALWAYS having a sad face from dawn till dusk even if the global stress level is absolutely zero. sparkle streaker is fun for 30 seconds... then right back to sad face - its literally depressing.
 

also as ive mentioned once or twice in the steam community comments (which you guys have completely not responded to and or ignored) that i would love to pay for your dlc so you can put even more content into each update, or make them modular so that users can choose what kind of environment they get.
 

unfortunately asa developer you hear troll comments cause there so visceral and think that we all stereotypically agree that things need to be masochistically hard, or theres not enough sickness, or theres too much ore.. etc.
::exactly like factorio, they used to have just 2 'research potions" for the entire tech tree, and they were getting 1000's if not more so of purchases a day, then they complicated it to hell, and made the end game virtually unreachable, and the negative  comments from game purchasers started rolling in, and shoed new players, and parents of new players away.
 

also even before this update, the game bogs down to a neer halt late game, instead of going faster.
for example this game vs binding of isaac.

this game fast start, then emmediately slowed down by needing to que 1/3 of the research tree

binding of isaac, super slow start finding pennies but then POWER ITEM suddenly gets a high tier item that accelerates the game

this game enemies technically dont exist , unless you count crabs attacking other critters. so makes fora long boring mid session- not much replay value in doing the same things without plot twists

binding of isaac, new enemies problems or mind puzzles at least every 20 seconds. highly stimulating, but doesnt push you to hard based on your estimated skill level room to room.

this game PLENTY of decorational objects mechanical doodads and active pipes, which is excellent, still cant color items without a mod tho.

binding of isaac has lots of "decorational items" and intricate wall art and ambience, curses (darkness vision fog etc), but obviously lacks hands on world generation and object placement.

this game has quality dirt, metal, plant, and water effects, but severely lacks on variety, colorization of special effects, and unique or variation of those patterns.

binding of isaac has absolute heaps of special effects which stimulate adrenaline and dopamine receptors without overloading them, sort of like a controlled constant fight or flight response, which is rather entertaining. similar 2 spelunky 2 but without ruining the game by making it unwinnable without mods or cheats.

-speaking of which, several issues in playability,
::ever since your third update i found the game unwinnable because the space craft got overly complex, mainly in areas concerning the availability of lime and the literal game years required to produce them - cant make 1000 eggshells per game month to make iron ore to iron ingot and finally  iron to steel, which costs time and repetitive duplicant tasks. which is further aggrevated by having the inforced day night cycle, which is also stressfull on the eyes after only 200 cycles of 5 minute real world cycles, and also that we cant simply use processed petroleum anymore at early tier, somehow steam (which is only viable at low tier without thermium by cracking open the mantle of the asteroid), is more viable then oil products. which usually killsa colony ofa new player within 20 days tops.
 

which leads to the fact that you dont include peltier plate technology, a very real concept of converting ambient heat above 50 degrees farenheit into electricity directly, and yet it exists in 3 different mods. And also space heat radiation... really? space is super cold, anda very thin layer of asteroids are hot, irrelevant of their distance from the sun- theres several mods that also got broken mainly "radiator" and "radiates heat in space" which solved that fail logic. mostly your game is being SAVED by the modding community.
 

the game engine has definitely been improving, faster frames, units per second produced per clock cycle of cpu, animation handling and synchronicity. all very good. you still need to createa wrapper or handler for the "spazzing" gas packets exchanging back and fourth visible in the materials view with gasses after around mid game gameplay, some solutions might be

::eliminating very small gas packets by letting them be absorbed and ;sublimated' into certain types of rocks, adding micrograms or partial grams to that rocks mass ata time, your already deleting around 50% ofa rocks ore anyways so why not add some to it?

::preforminga "room sort" of the gasses in a single area to shift certain gasses to the upper left or bottom right etc ofa definable room area every rl hour or game load,you name it.. so that gasses will not jitter and spaz. this will definitely help when you have a rainbow layer of clean air and polluted air in a very large area. as well as similar scenarios

::gas movements by temperature, which is also a real life factor, expanding hot gasses rise up and cold gasses draw to the floor as they contract and slip by other more active atoms, so for each tile or array of gasses if the temperature is down by 10 degrees off meridian farienhight, have the gas of that type travel down, while pushing only the heated gasses above 10 meridian F up, leaving neutral temp gasses completely alone, and process that before your current methods about every game 20 seconds. the gasses should seperate and quell quite nicely.


as fora unrelated fix to duplicants getting trapped, i find most times if they dig franticly down or around themselves ina circular counterclockwise pattern, they could escape their death from water or lack of oxygen, by creating a pathway of steps or reach a higher area were oxygen resides.


as mentioned above the game gets slow around lategame processing ores and glass repetitively, there should be addons to machine that are permanent and do not break, so they can run faster, or be more entertaining when multiplexed. perhaps changing their colors or applying comical pulsing movements effects or rainbow wash overlays to the machines, maybe perhaps making them run hotter or colder so the players have to focus on them rather then simply cycling the air around them using conveyors or air pipes :).. thus pushing the player to use ALL the available technologies to make that machine run at premium speeds. theres plenty examples of these 'upgraded machines' in factorio mods several going up to twenty or more upgrades for each individual machine, honestly i wish the cap was 100 instead of twenty


ok so back to focusing on this specific update.the power slugs are nice but unpredictable, and in this update as well as past updates critters consume WAY too much and produce way too little output and not often enough to be feasable when machine alternatives are present. so the power slugs should have something that attracts them, lieka floor charge pad for 'trained' power slugs, not just taming them. and their consuming metal ore is highly undesirable, so i suggest very small portions unless its a specific type of ore, which i can also foresee beinga huge problem if they decide to eat thermium late game. players throwing laptops, cussing at their screen - parents are already going insane from pressure so, flying laptops wont help.

the falling mud doesnt make much sense since stabilized mud doesnt have hardly any kinetic energy, and its being blasted by tesla laser so the resource should be getting 'consumed' by the duplicants mining the resource as they mine, sand on the other hand stores much kinetic energy so that makes sense.

like the new textures for the rock and ore etc, but they really could be more variated naturally so that users can clearly see the dark and light hues. regular rock should be lack luster which will increase contrast with ores, thus making them easier to spot and more eyecandy for the eyes.


speaking of which, i am multi-colorblind, and the alternate color arrays you provide are effective for contrast, but the contrasting colors are unfun to look at, is should be more green vs black, red vs blue etc, the greater the contrast the easier it is for the eyes to see and discern, and ergo enjoy, the first pattern, the orange, red,.. orange?? is very aggravating for the eyes. for any late night gamer experience will tell you that staring at red will make you GO red, as well as irritate the eyes, color therapy should be looked at, theres many websites with examples. may also help your artists with their creativity for new and old content.

on that note giving players direct control of the color pallete,eventually for all layers and components of layers, would be a excellent choice, and probably give modders a tool to make thier own presets or whatnot.


also the conversion process isnt quite full loop, meaning that certain elements cant be converted into other elements by heating and cooling or mixing with other gasses, we cant recycle hydrogen and oxygen back into h20 without mods, we cant split carbon monoxide or dioxide witha laser into oxygen and carbon, we cant filter and scrape carbon gas back into carbon solids, and we lost the ability to yield sand and glass from temperature exchange in favor of the rock crusher,

as for the rock crusher which makes arsetons of sand way too easily in 20 ingame days flat.- the yield should be drastically reduced, along with glass from sand, oxygen and hydrogen from electrolyzers, etc.
this is evident because im getting popped eardrums from the bases oxygen supply, once polluted oxygen starts to condense the clean oxygen, as well as the dense polluted oxygen, by cycle 200 with 21 divers lung dupes, im literally rushing to the surface to vent oxygen into space because the plants (for some garbage reason) cant process properly at 5 kg oxygen density. and completely die and remove themselves from the soil, which takes even longer to replant them while such an emergency is going on.

speaking of ladder work, it would be pretty kewl if dupes could pass resources from other dupes in transit and inherit that task if one is closer to the destination, that way a dupe could stay near the top or bottom ofa ladder and work it several times faster than going all the way up and down and around the base fora resource that another dupe is standing right next to. so passing hand to hand.

and about ladders it would be nice to have an 'upgrade in place' option so you didnt have to deconstruct an array and then come back and replace with plastic or steel or whatnot.

also for some reason ladders STILL block temperature transfer between sides, whether there laid out horizontally or vertically, they act like solid walls until they the reach the median ambient temperature of both sides, despite being obviously hollow

also relating to temperatures you still have that 'droplett' issue which is showing in one of my recently previous posts, and that isa single small droplet of 32 milligrams of hot liquid will spread across tiles and heat EACH of the small tiles equally by several degrees per droplett, i think that could be because when the liquid is rolling across the surface its not accounting for the miniscule mass of the liquid and or not depleting the temperature when the liquid shifts tiles, resulting in skyrocketing temperatures.

as it goes for all varieties of pipes, they should be much larger volumetricly considering your applying constant 250 watts of voltage per each pump, turbine etc. the cheapest box fan you find on the internet will pass gigatons of air per day at 25 watts per watthour, not per second. so since were burning 250k watts per hour, the should be able to handle far more kilograms pushed into confined spaces, and the space age pipes should be able to handle it as well without bursting, or causing chargeback effect. probably at least 5x for the max gas pressure ina room and 3x for the pipes volumetric size.

something similar should be for the 3 ton gas tanks and likewise water tanks,perhaps ,exuding heat as the gas compresses, and using peltier plates made of aluminum and carbon to very thuroughly convert that heat into even more electricity?

p.s. the status effects like sore back and grimy arent even worth paying attention to cause they can be ignored for the greater duration of the game, status effects should have long and meaningfull effects, or theyre just distracting you or removing "immersion" from main gameplay. also it feels liek there needs to be more status affects applied thuroughly threwout the day, like darkness, temperature, humidity, gas density of varied types etc, probably with comical verbs and adjectives like stinky dupes from being unshowered. - or stink-brain because of bad mood of nearby dupes. that pop in and out.


as for darkness of the asteroid it really is to bright to even consider needing a lightbulb so dupes can see, even if they are genetically engineered to be part mole, the player sees everything even well past dirt layers and the need for lighting is considered 'a heat risk' and is highly avoided.

which leads to something i forgot to mention above -the shine bugs pathing, as well as other airborn critters, is absolutely crash worthy for low end pcs, even my 12 core 4.3 ghtz cpu start chugging and heat-cycling rapidly when the airborn critters get into a extralarge open area, just look at the pathing when there actively moving and youll probably understand where im coming from emmediately/, logically thier pathing should be limited to a max radius of 9. in the latest update i watched a shinebug flutter a distance of 72 tiles around and between several stone tiles, i imagine from experience that if that had started during a gamesave it would have softlocked and also permanently ruined the that savefile instance.