Are all colonies doomed?

[FlexibleGames]

I've played a couple games now to prep for a Youtube series and realized that no matter how well you manage your colony it will always be doomed.

You will run out of algae, sand, and water regardless. So, what's the main point? 

Will there be later techs that prevent this inevitable collapse? Will the dev finally change algae farms to produce algae instead of use it? Even so, water will run out and all my poor dupes I've come to love will die.

[Ned_Fland]

Have you not played don't starve?

[noodog]

if you run your starting 3 for awhile and be very selective about which new dupes you take, rejecting the rest, you can stretch your play time and reduce resource consumption. 3-5 dupes use alot less water than 15-20.

[Saturnus]

If the game has to have any sort of realistic feel then yes, all colonies should eventually run out of resources. Remember that it's a closed system, and the law of thermodynamics simple doesn't allow indefinite sustainability in a closed system. Even the Universe will eventually die the heat death. Fortunately there's still a good while until that happens.

[DockLazy]

I think there are easily enough resources to last several hundred cycles. Even with 20+ dupes.

While you will eventually run out of resources. I think you'll probably get bored before that happens.

[Ned_Fland]

I think that the issue is that FlexibleGames is looking at this like a game where there is a victory condition, rather than a game where, well for lack of a better explanation, it is just fun to play, even knowing that all the dups are doomed, even Eleanor, who you saved when she dug herself into an oxygen less vacuum whilst building a toilet on day one. God bless you Eleanor, you will be missed   

[Ecu]

Posted this elsewhere.  You can potentially do well indefinitely...

 

[Targa_X]

In my opinion, eventual doom is a good thing. If you could create sustainability, then what would you do? You'd be like, "I have a self-sustaining system now, so there's no reason to keep playing". The key to these types of games is to keep pushing yourself to survive longer next playthrough. If you're familiar with The Long Dark, similar thought processes apply.

[jigggy2000]

I'm the complete opposite. Yeah sure the game is fun with trying to survive as long as you can but knowing that no matter how well I do everything will just eventually die kinda makes me go what's the point. much in the same way you would go whats the point when you achieve sustainability. I might be the minority but I like the idea of having a base achieve sustainability. If you make it so that its not so easy to achieve, it would be the same as getting to the point of just dying off.

For example if dying = resources depleted. You can easily make it so resources depleted = sustainability. By this I mean the only way to achieve it is to go through all available resources to research everything to achieve sustainability. It's exactly the same end goal except one has them die while the other has them live happily ever after. Both end up with you starting a new world (or in case in the happy ending you can play for as long as you want). At least this way you have the option of getting that ending while still having access to the bad ending if you so choose. I'm one of those people who tends to get attached to characters in games like this. In the game Pikmin I hated losing any pikmin and always tried not losing a single one if I could help it.

Knowing that my dupes have a possible happy ending gives me willingness to play. Having them just die is like watching a really good movie and getting attached to the characters but just have the ending where they all die. I'd be like gees man. That ruined the movie for me!

[Octyabr]

I feel I'm in the middle, I'd like some sort of late-game fake sustainability, that can be achieved with several complicated processes. 

This fake sustainability should give you some liberty of action to test whatever you want, build whatever you want, do whatever you want. But still requiring you to attend it and manage it.

Very much like Don't Starve.

[jigggy2000]

4 minutes ago, Octyabr said:

Very much like Don't Starve.

Yeah, Id be okay with that. Fake sustainability is better than none. 

It would give me an illusion of a good ending which will have to be good enough.

[OneVoltTen]

I've lasted 300 cycles, and resources dissapear (expecially water), unbalanced resource usage really kills colonies atm. Otherwise there are interesting models to survive indefinitely currently albeit I'd overall say it's still in early alpha so I'd give it time to balance itself out.

[Travin]

As people are explaining in a roundabout way, it's an existential quest. Live as long as you can, the best you can but eventually no matter what you do you're going to die.

If it takes a game for you to finally accept these inevitable conditions of life then all is the better. Maybe you'll learn  to make better choices. But if you're looking for a gold star and boost to your ego with a fairy tale ending, ya might wanna find another game.

Or something

[Aru3]

You can probably survive to many thousands of cycles if you really want to last as long as you can. Use outhouses, hamster wheels, and pufts, and you might even be able to keep the air clean if you really want to, though there's not much point. At the end of all things, I imagine your base would be very small and the entirety of the rest of the map is reduced to one giant CO2 storage room. In the end there will be too much CO2, and it will pressurize the air so that you can't produce oxygen.

This would be a minimal end-game base at the present state of the game: slime -> algae converter, deoxylyzer, hamster wheel, outhouse, meal farm, a friendly puft, and maybe a battery. But it would not be very fun just letting the game run to advance to such a stage.

[Kiako]

Maybe you can do better with the bug.

• Dupes can breath contaminated oxygen produce bys Morp out of nothing.
• Dupes can die by straving : mealwood don't require anything, if you plant them in the rigth insulate area.
• Dupes can die by suffocation : Co2 may be destroyed easely with an air pump and 50+ gaz pipe bridge (due to a bug they make a little bit of gaz disapear.)

Dupes will be stressed because of lack of water / poor oxygene / raise in level.

If you kill them by starving once they become a problem you colony may last quite a long time.

[Aru3]

I'm okay with exploiting design and balance issues, because that's kind of how games are meant to be played, and it's what prompts improvements, but personally I probably won't be exploiting bugs. I'm sure eventually bases will be sustainable without bugs.

[Collic]

I think as the game matures it will be more and more possible to conserve and recycle your resources more efficiently, and for longer periods. I imagine that's going to be the core game play other than exploration. This game has a lot of promise!

[FlexibleGames]

My thoughts were more toward my dupes upgrading to the point of finding other asteroids to colonize/harvest. A sort of goal where you'd have to manage oxygen in space suits, dig into another asteroid and start to farm it.

Just trying to find the accomplishment in a system that will, inevitably, die. 

Or an even bigger goal of not being on an asteroid, but a planet, digging to the surface, terraforming, and finally having a sustainable colony.

[Ecu]

I've already posted exactly how you can establish a clean living colony that will last indefinitely, even given the current bugs.  So if you really work to establish yourself, your colony will not be doomed.  It is even easier if you don't care about having a clean living colony.

Granted, these mechanics may change in the future, however, currently they work well when setup correctly.

[Stack_of_Pancakes]

22 hours ago, jigggy2000 said:

I'm the complete opposite. Yeah sure the game is fun with trying to survive as long as you can but knowing that no matter how well I do everything will just eventually die kinda makes me go what's the point.

You must HATE sim games then.  There are plenty of games without a victory condition.  There are plenty of games without a "You win and beat the game" screen.  This is one of them, and it FINE.  If you don't like that about the game then that is also FINE.  Not every game has to be the same, not every game has to have an end goal or some long term carrot on a stick incentive.  Even Pacman had no ending.

 

That being said, ONI is one of those games where you either create a victory condition for yourself or just enjoy the sandbox.  There doesn't always have to be a point, sometimes you can do something for the sake of doing it.  Or in this case just play a game for the sake of playing it.

[CobraA1]

Okay, so we have this when it comes to sustainability:

• It sucks to be completely sustainable, because then there's nowhere else to go after a sustainable base. It's a boring perpetual motion machine. One that you could easily re-create after you know how to do it.
• It also sucks to be knowing that you're making something that is doomed from the start. Some people just don't like that, and feel as if there's no point if it will fail anyways.

The developers could create some ways to "get out" of having only these two possibilities.

• A giant map that is not feasible to explore completely. Something akin to Minecraft where it keeps generating new areas. You may run out of resources in the local area, but you can either keep expanding or pack up and move elsewhere. I like this option. They don't need to design the game to ensure self-sustainability, but the game can continue indefinitely if the player plans ahead carefully.
• An end goal, where the player can actually win the game. This might not sound in line with the sandboxy nature of this type of game, but many gamers like to have a goal to reach for, to be able to say they won it. This could perhaps be optional for players who just want the endless sandbox.

[Saturnus]

Here's two realistic and viable "win" conditions that can even be combined:

- Survive through to cycle 9999 (or some other very high number). At the start of cycle 10000 the asteroid crashes into a planet and is destroyed. 

- Make it to the surface and find a landing pod which open up new research so you can find and contact alien civilizations to be rescued. Just be careful, not all civilizations may actually want to rescue you but just use you for meat so you may have to negotiate with them, and it could take hundreds of cycles between sending a message and getting a reply, as well as at least a thousand cycles to actually be rescued by a benign civilization..

 

[Im_ookii]

22 hours ago, OneVoltTen said:

I've lasted 300 cycles, and resources dissapear (expecially water), unbalanced resource usage really kills colonies atm. Otherwise there are interesting models to survive indefinitely currently albeit I'd overall say it's still in early alpha so I'd give it time to balance itself out.

so does the game actually have a limit? Can you reach the surface of the asteroid?

[Ressayez]

On 2/25/2017 at 5:37 PM, Ned_Fland said:

Have you not played don't starve?

Don't Starve is eventually sustainable, it's not a fair comparison. Still, it takes a long time to get to the point where you've completely run out of things to do, and even when all the monsters are slain, there's still a base in need of remodeling, my favourite.

I'd like to know if the resources will or will not eventually cease to exist. Even if it means you need to work your ass off from beginning to end to have a colony that doesn't implode, I'd be willing to do just that.

[Im_ookii]

I have built a self  sustainability base, the only resource i use is water, my dupes eat mealwood, produce energy from the hamster wheel and Hydrogen Generator and remove the Co2 with the Air Scrubber. Some might say that I eventually run out of water but there are some ways to cheat the system and produce infinite water and is by trapping your dupes that vomit when get stressed, build permeable gas tiles on the floor to collect all their vomit and piss, build a single ceiling tile, build a Refrigerator on it, fill it with food, then deconstruct the refigerator, remove the ceiling tile and all the food will fall so your dupes wont die of starvation and finally purify that water. I don't have a screenshot of it but you will be surprise about how they can make a ridiculously big pool of vomit and mess out of nothing.