Are all colonies doomed?

[Aurelienag]

So, this is not possible to create a self sustainable environment, because you will run out at some point of resources.

 

A great update, would be (like don't starve) to find items around the map which would allow you to create a portal. This portal would generate a new world and you will keep your actual crew. 

This tiny touch will make the game even more challenging and endless.

[Mcleane]

The Great thing about this game IMO is that resources are finite which causes players to come up with ingenious ways to prolong the inevitable death and decay of their dupes and bases. I really do hope the unsustainnability carries on through to full release but gets balanced and more complex.

[Coldin228]

3 hours ago, Ressayez said:

Don't Starve is eventually sustainable,

"Kind of" There are some resources that aren't renewable (mandrake) and others you really have to have special knowledge to manage from the get-go.

It's obvious it was intended to NOT be completely sustainable, forcing the end-goal of finding the things to create a new world.

I would love to see something similar to DS Adventure Mode in ONI.

You would start in an asteroid base similar to the current build, except it would be easier (more water and algae). Each time you reached some "goal cycle" ,or built some contraption using a rare component in the world; you would go to a new, less hospitable world (less water and algae, more gas and monsters). You'd start a new base, but keep your dupes (and maybe a limited amount of resources). So as you progress you would be forced to become more efficient and utilize more techs and differing strategies as the composition of resources in the world changed. It would also add to the importance of leveling up your dupes and (especially) keeping them alive, cause you're gonna need skilled dupes to deal with the challenges of later worlds.

I'm sure the devs have some driving goal planned already. But it seems like this would fit the bill nicely, draw out progression, and add new layers of strategy.

[Ressayez]

5 minutes ago, Coldin228 said:

"Kind of" There are some resources that aren't renewable (mandrake) and others you really have to have special knowledge to manage from the get-go.

It's obvious it was intended to NOT be completely sustainable, forcing the end-goal of finding the things to create a new world.

I would love to see something similar to DS Adventure Mode in ONI.

You would start in an asteroid base similar to the current build, except it would be easier (more water and algae). Each time you reached some "goal cycle" ,or built some contraption using a rare component in the world; you would go to a new, less hospitable world (less water and algae, more gas and monsters). You'd start a new base, but keep your dupes (and maybe a limited amount of resources). So as you progress you would be forced to become more efficient and utilize more techs and differing strategies as the composition of resources in the world changed.

I'm sure the devs have some driving goal planned already. But it seems like this would fit the bill nicely, draw out progression, and add new layers of strategy.

Guess you don't utilize world hopping or the deconstruction staff, or the wiki 24/7, like I did, and still do.

I hated Adventure Mode in Don't Starve. I like to have a place to come back to after a journey across the world for the resource of the week.

Can't really comment on what you're talking about there, though. I'm still on the fence about buying the game, I loved Don't Starve, but I don't love simulation games, especially those that are grid-based, they drive me up the wall because my brain demands symmetry, patterns, and essentially perfection. 

[TurielD]

Are you not also using sand to turn waste water in to regular water? For me sand runs out before water does...

[Saturnus]

To everyone here who says they already got a sustainable base set up... yeah... try running it 2-3000 cycles into future and see if it still hasn't suffered from heat death. Eventually it will. The only thing that really sets in is boredom because the game is in an early alpha stage it's really not fleshed out yet for longer term play. It's quite obvious that there will be several more research stages added later. The developers just wanted our help to test out the underlying nuts and bolts in the game, find the bugs, and naturally not to forget... actually having us handing them cash for the privilege of doing their bug testing.

[Blas88]

Cooling down things only require energy which is infinite, also heating things require only energy. Why would you die from heat?

[Im_ookii]

9 hours ago, TurielD said:

Are you not also using sand to turn waste water in to regular water? For me sand runs out before water does...

Yes, sand is the most rare and important resource in the game, but before u run out of sand you need to learn how to boil the waste water and filter the clean water, and the only thing you need is research some techs, build a proper enviroment and energy, and energy is technically an infinite resource.

[Hudston]

I think we're missing the main problem: both options are basically the same and they're both terrible. Right now you play until you "finish" the map and no longer have anything to do, but with an infinitely sustainable colony you play until you "finish" the colony and no longer have anything to do. In a genre known for it's emergent story telling potential, the last thing you want is for your endings to be boring.

The solution, I feel, is making sustainability the mid game. Let the player establish a comfort zone and then force them out of it in the end game. Random events to push their carefully balanced ecosystem to it's limit, external threats to crack it open to the elements or the promise of riches and rare materials to tempt the player into making mistakes.

All colonies should fail eventually, but when that do they should fail catastrophically. Better to burn out than fade away and so on.

As we're in Alpha I suspect a lot of this will be fleshed out eventually anyway but it's just food for thought.

[darkrage000]

Im not as curious as whether we are doomed to die, i am m ore curious about how we got there... where did this portal come from, and who made it...

A storyline will be a great addition if one comes.

[Ecu]

10 hours ago, Saturnus said:

To everyone here who says they already got a sustainable base set up... yeah... try running it 2-3000 cycles into future and see if it still hasn't suffered from heat death. Eventually it will. The only thing that really sets in is boredom because the game is in an early alpha stage it's really not fleshed out yet for longer term play. It's quite obvious that there will be several more research stages added later. The developers just wanted our help to test out the underlying nuts and bolts in the game, find the bugs, and naturally not to forget... actually having us handing them cash for the privilege of doing their bug testing.

Granted, I haven't actually set this up myself...however, I'm rather certain it would work.  You can indeed set up a sustainable base with the current mechanics.  You can clean contaminated oxygen via cooling it to liquid and heat back into oxygen.  You can clean contaminated water via heating to steam and cooling back into water.  You can use the cleaned water to pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

In all honestly, the very idea of heat death doesn't exist in the game as you can generate various resources essentially from nothing.  Heat specifically being one of them.

[Doctursea]

On 2/25/2017 at 11:13 PM, Targa_X said:

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.

You're seeing things too small. If you create sustainability than the next goal would be expansion and exploration. If the world would infinitely generate or there was some way to bring in more resources it would make it better than just the same start over and over again. 

[Targa_X]

I suppose in my earlier response I was assuming this was a survival game based on "how long can you survive", and excluding the possibility of the game being a kind of "colony management" sim. I suppose it all depends on what direction the developers intend to take the game. Is it supposed to be like Don't Starve? The Long Dark? Dig or Die? Do you eventually escape on a rocket? Or maybe like Banished, where your colony survives forever (or until you get bored)?

[Ecu]

20 minutes ago, Targa_X said:

I suppose in my earlier response I was assuming this was a survival game based on "how long can you survive", and excluding the possibility of the game being a kind of "colony management" sim. I suppose it all depends on what direction the developers intend to take the game. Is it supposed to be like Don't Starve? The Long Dark? Dig or Die? Do you eventually escape on a rocket? Or maybe like Banished, where your colony survives forever (or until you get bored)?

I don't really see why you would "escape", when the people here are all duplicants, not seemingly crashed people.  Doesn't really seem like escape would really be the purpose here.  From watching the streams and playing around 30 hours myself already, I'd imagine the purpose of the game is to be a colony simulator and physics toy.  They said in early streams that they wanted to have tons of chemical interactions and it seems like even creatures will eventually have life cycles as well.

That's my thoughts based on what we know, anyways.

[ThiagoFontes]

Don't know if anyone noticed, but you can vomit contaminated water and then heat it up on some very hot mineral, take the steam to a place with cold mineral and produce water... pufts can make oxygen out of contaminated oxygen.. so you can use them (maybe)...

I think you can live for an undefined time...

[ThiagoFontes]

Also I my colony is living well enough and I got a little bored, so I'm waiting for a new update to play again. (Also had some crashs)

[Saturnus]

Your dupes can breathe contaminated oxygen, just kill them off when they get offered every 3rd cycle instead of rejecting them, and let morbs feed on them. Morbs emit contaminated oxygen. Using mealwood and vacuum generation air locks to vent out your base of CO2, your base will never need electricity nor water for anything.

[Aru3]

14 hours ago, Im_ookii said:

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.

You don't need fresh water to sustain a base, which is good because it will run out faster than you think. Sand on the other hand, it will take a lot longer to run out of, but once you do you can't clean the contaminated water. You can also create contaminated water by processing Puft slime, but probably not nearly as much.

[Targa_X]

14 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Your dupes can breathe contaminated oxygen, just kill them off when they get offered every 3rd cycle instead of rejecting them, and let morbs feed on them. Morbs emit contaminated oxygen. Using mealwood and vacuum generation air locks to vent out your base of CO2, your base will never need electricity nor water for anything.

Can you provide an example of a vacuum generation air lock system that reliably vents CO2?

[Saturnus]

Mine's not working perfectly but I unplug a tile in the bottom of my base and have a dupe run 3-4 cycles through 8 back to back airlocks, and the base is mostly empty of CO2. Well, that's how it used to be. Now I'm experimenting with just having airlocks in front of outhouses placed at the bottom of the base. The destroyed air which will almost always be CO2 would then just automatically disappear. Maybe tomorrow I have it tweaked to a working order I can show off?

[FlexibleGames]

Is there a use for chlorine yet in the game?

[NoSmoking]

I just got to cycle 150 before I ran out of dirt for food. took 11 cycles after that before everyone died. I never got around to setting up a lice farm. 

I like the idea of hitting the right conditions/balance for a sustainable base. Then risk losing that balance when you try to expand. I'm not sure I like the idea, that when you run out of dirt/algae its game over. Something should be able to replace it, even if it's harder to get.

[Saturnus]

2 hours ago, NoSmoking said:

I just got to cycle 150 before I ran out of dirt for food. took 11 cycles after that before everyone died. I never got around to setting up a lice farm. 

I like the idea of hitting the right conditions/balance for a sustainable base. Then risk losing that balance when you try to expand. I'm not sure I like the idea, that when you run out of dirt/algae its game over. Something should be able to replace it, even if it's harder to get.

Well, there is replacement already in the game. You made it to cycle 150 without setting up a meal lice farm? I'm impressed you didn't run out sooner... and honestly what were you doing in those 150 rounds? You need between 2.5 and 3.5 meal lice per dupe in your farms. 2.5 if you harvest aggressively and 3.5 if you really can't be bothered to do any kind of farming at all and still have some security buffer against stifling.

Pretty much the first thing I do in a new game is get the farm tech and start setting up the lice farm. When you do it really early materials you build from are very low temperatures which they will keep, and this will help you keep temperatures in the farm in check, so start as early as you can.

[Aru3]

10 hours ago, Ecu said:

Granted, I haven't actually set this up myself...however, I'm rather certain it would work.  You can indeed set up a sustainable base with the current mechanics.  You can clean contaminated oxygen via cooling it to liquid and heat back into oxygen.  You can clean contaminated water via heating to steam and cooling back into water.  You can use the cleaned water to pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

In all honestly, the very idea of heat death doesn't exist in the game as you can generate various resources essentially from nothing.  Heat specifically being one of them.

Is this seriously a thing in the game? I had no idea! This doesn't let the bases last forever however, because CO2 buildup is still the limiting factor and you still need sand (or bug exploit) to remove it. But, I did not know you could distill and freeze contamination out of fluids.

[Aru3]

4 hours ago, NoSmoking said:

I just got to cycle 150 before I ran out of dirt for food. took 11 cycles after that before everyone died. I never got around to setting up a lice farm. 

I like the idea of hitting the right conditions/balance for a sustainable base. Then risk losing that balance when you try to expand. I'm not sure I like the idea, that when you run out of dirt/algae its game over. Something should be able to replace it, even if it's harder to get.

I'm quite certain they always intended for the game to be quite different by the time it releases. Also, if you didn't know, the meal plants sometimes give seeds when you harvest, so the sooner you can efficiently harvest all the ones you've found... there's an exponential ramp-up to the number of plants that you need.