add Difficulty modes and nerf some "cheats" that everybody uses

[OverCraft]

Hello, let me introduce first. Im new into the game, i'm on the day 300 and still going on very stable. I found some problems with temperature or power or air preasure that kills some of my dupes, but I found the way to fix it on time, because the game is not very aggresive with that problems. So i made a list of changes that should be done to make a proper "hard" mode.

First one is to let the people choose the dificulty mode at start. I know you can change the stress and diseasse at map creation, but that is not a difficulty mode, and you cannot compare with other people because it never matchs. It should say EASY, MEDIUM, HARD or something like that and tune the following options for a hard mode:

- Dupes comes to your base at 10 cycles, not 3. I never died on this game just because its very easy to get new members. After 100 cycles, dupes could come even at 20 cycles. On my base I died too many times becaues i could produce food for temperature problems, power problems to get air preasure, but it doesnt matter, after a few cycles you can get them back quite easy right now. Maybe could be a mode that you cannot reject or ignore new dupes, you are force to roll them in, because some people dont get new dupes when they are "food and oxygen stable".

-Dupes cannot hold breath for more than 10 squares without exo suite. This is one of the main problems. I scout even 5 biomes long under carbon dioxide, clorhine, vacumm, whatever. Just because they performe a task and run back looking for oxygen. When you started a game you were scared to get into new bad zones, but after some experience you find it doesnt matter because they hold the breath. You should pump oxygen to explore or get a exo suite or get in problems quite fast.

-Polluted oxygen does not generate new oxygen at all, only convert current oxygen into polluted. If there is no oxygen, they dont produce anything. Its a cheat that people get slimes and drop them at base to convert polluted oxygen into oxygen like a oxygen generator. But this is not only the problem, you base is in the middle of long slime biomes. On my first run I put deodorizer on them, when my base is out of oxygen, that oxygen get on my base, or my dupes goes there to breath because the can hold the breath for too long. At the day 300 all the map is under oxygen because of the slime biome. This is not acceptable on a hard mode.

-Dupes jumping into water, move water. I found a easy bug to avoid gasses to move into doors:

The dupes that jump into that water, should spash that watter off. That is a bug. And it is made because airlock door doesnt lock the air, in the time it is open you get mix air, after some openings you get all the air inside. So you should fix the cheat first, then discuss about if airlock doors should leave the air come in, or create a new 2 doors systems with a vaccumm in the middle that activates everytime a dupes cross. Otherwise, actual system is useless.

-Germs kills dupes very fast and they reproduce with polluted oxygen faster, but also they reproduce on oxygen with more than 0 degrees. I didnt care about germs in all my cycles at all. I dont even know what they do. I was scared at the beginin with smilelung and yellow germs, but they are pacifist. Germs died with the deodorizers and temp, and should be opposite, they should grow more with temp and oxygen. Using yellow germ in machines should have air contamination on electrolizer, bathroom, jumps 2 or 3 tiles when it get over 100.000 germs, and they kill you quite fast too.

-You cannot use massage table to stress out more than 10% per cycle. Stress is another thing useless in the game. Because if you dont mope the base, you dont cook food, dont sweepit, dont have pictures or art,  it doesnt matter because of the massage table. You should learn how to make the base otherwise you should be death. Stress should be a real thing.

-Dupes get tired of digging, they cannot dig more than 100 tiles per week depending on stats, and also they have stress for diggin some rocks, also some rocks have to be impossible to dig. Most of the people dont play the game trying to mine specific tiles, make rooms, or play with the enviroment. They only dig everything in squares of 100x100, and you see bases on the air all the time, with most of the map empty. At begining i understand you can leave them to dig more, bug after time you shoulld play with the enviroment, not remove everything.

-Store containers have x10 the actual size. Right now you need more space for storage than for the material on the ground itself, its a uselees piece. It should have more space, but much more. Maybe a new item?

-Exo suite doesnt burn oxygen under a oxygen zone, but it leaves you 50 squares to move into a non oxygen space. Right now you can stay on a exosuite to cross all the map and build something in the other part of the map with no problem. You should make something like stations in the midlle to reath further areas.

-Using warm watter or liquid on machines destroy the machines, and you cannot cook with it. I have very warm water on my base and they do nothing bad at all.

-cold make people move slower for quite long even when you leave the area, and kills you if you dont use cloths, you hp goes down with no cloths. Cloths are useless on this game, and the cold biomes too. You can move into them with no problem at all. Warm biomes should damage you faster too.

-Natural geiser stop pumping natural gas some cycles. on my base, when i founded that geiser, i place 2 gas generators and I forget about power at all. You can get 1600w free continuous on time, that is more than you need with some batteries forever.

-Maybe some earthquakes or monster can attack your base at some cycles, and you have to fight with them. I dont see what is the fight for.

-Mealwood doesnt grow between 15 and 25 degrees and they rot in 2 cycles. Other plants are also more dificult to maintain. I planted 40 plants at begining, and I never died because they grow in all temperature and gass presasure. it should be much harder, it break the game. You dont cook this plant but it doesnt matter, 3 plants mantain a dupe forever. This should be much harder. Also dipping the food into carbon dioxide rot the food slower but too, you need the fridge.

Maybe i have more ideas, but post you own ideas for the hard mode. I think we need something more difficult. I still running on my first map after 300 days with no idea about it, temp stable, food stable, power stable.... there is no way this should happend.

[HitrPr]

Not agree with slime generation of oxygen. Just because slime is consumes in this process.

About massage table. At one side it looks like cheat. But at thre mid game it is not good: it consumes a lot of power and dup is not working, so it consumes time.

About  warm water. It is ok, when pump or cleaner can operate with hot water. Just because it have overheat temperature. Coocking with hot water is ok too (and may be should consume less energy). But when mu dupe got 75° shower it is a bit awkward…

Geisers… They are just closing imbalance and impossibility of colony with closed resource-cycles. I hope, they will be deleted after game rebalance.

[YoldaDup]

Indeed, The game is skewed towards early low tech stability. Going for higher tier buildings and production only destabilizes the colony. 

It needs REAL balancing.

Most of what you suggest might help with this.

[OverCraft]

On 19/11/2017 at 3:29 PM, YoldaDup said:

Indeed, The game is skewed towards early low tech stability. Going for higher tier buildings and production only destabilizes the colony. 

It needs REAL balancing.

Most of what you suggest might help with this.

I agree. You can rush the tech tree at begining in a few cycles. Maybe to make a few buildings like the natural gas generator, you need to find a blue print somewhere on the map first to build it.

[Dirty_sponnge]

I just created an account to create a post similar to this one, however, i think OverCraft has made a better job of it than i could as i'm still pretty new  

One thing though.

I think the dupe every 3 cycles in fine, what is not fine is how unless you use your water supply as a toilet, there's not much threat of death. I think dupes should be put in situations at most stages of the game where the threat of death is real. I think temperature/ pressure/ disease needs to actually be threatening. Basically, death should be a big part of the game.

 

Quote

create a new 2 doors systems with a vaccumm in the middle that activates everytime a dupes cross.

This can probably be done with the new update with sensors and vacuum pumps, yet to try however.

 

On a random note, i wish when you have 95% oxygen, it would just be classes as oxygen instead of that 5% messing with crops ect and creating that dead zone between gases. an overlay would probably be needed to show further air compositions. 

 

 

 

[Dirty_sponnge]

4 minutes ago, OverCraft said:

I agree. You can rush the tech tree at begining in a few cycles. Maybe to make a few buildings like the natural gas generator, you need to find a blue print somewhere on the map first to build it.

Or higher tech buildings needs different types of ores? if rushing out into slime lung actually means something, it will slow players being able to rush certain buildings, without consequence. 

 

However, slower exploration raises the issue of what content is there to do as you clean a path into the unknown? 

[OverCraft]

another "cheat" is the water geiser. I have 2 close to my base, and I only need 1 for infinite water. I never need to filter the polluted water, so I dont have to care about a system to kills germs on that water, also i never needed to pump water from natural map water pools.

Natural geiser on map need a very hard rebalance for the hard mode. Maybe place them at the edge of the map, and nerf the water produced.

[chemie]

Add food quality needs to matter.

[Jadelink]

Several points,

If you force dupes on people, its just a small morale penalty, as you can simple shove them out an airlock and not permit them back.

If we only got 1 every 10 cycles it might make a minor difference, and mean a base was tediously slow to get up to pace before we face the real challenges, as it is it lets those who can rollout food and oxy reasonably fast take on a decent population, most of us dont want many, as the game is still poorly optimized and lags like crazy with more than 20 dupes and a large base.

 

I agree, the current oxy system is in need of repair.   Conservation of mass would go a long way in this game, which is currently easy once you figure out which of the laws of chemistry and physics are going to shout you free lunches.

If mealwood had tighter temp restrictions there would be little point in it, it's horrid, ugly, and nasty to eat, but easy to grow, you want to replace it at some point, but at the moment we dont unless on high difficutly, as dupes don't care enough.

Overly hot water already destroys machines, this is why we build high temp stuff out of gold in preference to copper, for example, and still sometimes have to repair it.

The penalty for massage tables is reasonable, solid power consumption and you have the dupe not working all day, meaning you want to keep a higher population.  Yes, it's super easy on base level, try turning up dupe stress (which is how I play, and I've only got it 2 weeks ago), that means you NEED those massage tables AND decent decor in order not to have the dupes wreck your own base.  The problem is essentially that at base level dupes are very very easily satisfied, you can always turn of easy mode if you don't want this.

Yes, the water-airlock hack, half would be solved by stopping water being quite so adhesive, you could still do a water airlock (as you could in the real world), but it would take a fair bit more space and possibly more water, and be decidedly more inconvenient.  Yes, having the dupes trapse a bit of water around might not hurt though.