Still playing this obsessively. Love the game, but my biggest issue is having to spoil myself on a lot of the mechanics because they don’t make sense or take advantage of not physically possible edge cases I never would have figured out myself. Power free gas valve filters, water air locks, heat dissipation, etc.
Yeah, it’s a Klei game. Please see my “you shouldn’t need a Wiki (or in this case, spoilers) to play the game well” thread. :)
I just want to point out that a water airlock is a real thing. You undoubtedly have multiple small water airlocks in your house.
I sure don’t have any that can ignore gas pressure differentials.
Well, true ;) It works in places where it shouldn’t like when the other side is a vacuum. Though they do make perfect sense for separating, for example, your living area from the polluted oxygen in a swamp biome.
For complete violation of physical laws In prior betas there was a bit of an exploit where you could stack liquids to make an airlock from a vertical column of liquid. They fixed that for most liquids, but added late game visco-gel material so you can still do so but at least with an in-story explanation.
It’s not a giant problem, just not intuitive. Hence the need for wikis and youtube videos to get the most of out the game.
Also I am tired of building water locks. A simple airlock door that worked to keep gases separated would be nice, the ones that are in the game require complicated setups with gas pumps and automation to work which is just crazy tedious.
Yeah, but I am definitely not trying to walk through any of them on a regular basis!
While I did spend hours obsessing and experimenting to create a perfect airlock, in the end it wasn’t that necessary. Even to space unless the door gets held open a lot the gas loss isn’t significant (compared to the O2 you are likely making at that point), especially if you have a pair of doors with some space between them.
A lot of the videos and things out there probably give a false impression that these perfect efficient mechanisms are necessary. Tricks like splitting H2 and O2 naturally by density, or the sensor+shutoff filter trick, really only save a little power. They are nice but not necessary.
Not that I’m arguing that this game isn’t a perfect example of one where outside resources are needed. To give an example, the rocket calculator webpage. Something like that needs to be in game.
I am a lot more cavalier about this now that I am on cycle 300+ but it’s still necessary for those vacuums and spaces were it has to stay a single gas exclusively.
I added in some mods that helped a lot, like zoom out, 5+ rows for the build menus, and gas overlay. No gameplay changes, but some nice UI fixes.
I wanted to remap the ‘select to build the currently highlighted item’ to the middle mouse button but that doesn’t work, even while editing the json, so I remapped it to B.
Just saw an excellent recommendation to remap priority to G, will be doing that next.
This thread made me curious about how much water you’d need to keep back one atmosphere of air pressure. This game really does make one consult wikis.
So each tile is, say, 3m. Four tiles should do it. It would be interesting if the game had pressure in its physics. It would add a new layer of disaster possibilities.
I haven’t had to worry about perfect airlock since I have gotten to the point where I’ve visited space biomes. But a double airlock with a few spaces works well enough it seems. Even when the other room is Natural Gas Geyser with pressure of 5KG/tile.
Any recommendations for survival vs no sweat for my first real game? Does no sweat make ti too easy to choices don’t have many consequences?
I gotta go with survival. The challenge level isn’t real high to begin with, and the game keeps a long autosave history should you discover something you did earlier has had unfortunate consequences.
I’m slowly making progress - cycle 15 or so. It took me awhile to figure out how to deal with the CO2 problem.
Definitely survival for me - I feel aimless if just tinkering in sandbox without the pressure of the systems.
I’ve been playing my survival game, up to cycle 27. I’m definitely feeling like I’m progressing more slowly than intended, but I’ve had a bunch of fun getting to the point I am now.I am starting to feel a bit lost because I don’t have any obvious thing to try for. I guess I’m supposed to escape this place, so going up is probably a good idea.
The first things I did was to get a water supply (pitcher pump), an outhouse and wash basin. After a rough night of sleep, I figured I should get them some cots. They lived off of their rations until they started making their mushbars.
Then I started researching so I needed some power. Manual generator and a couple small batteries sufficed.I’m having a hard time getting them off the mush. I have 6 seeds of the rice things growing that I can use, but they are more of a treat than a staple. Got a compost pile going for my polluted dirt.
The oxygen ore stuff lasted a while, but eventually I added some oxygen diffusers. Kept hitting max pressure. After mucking around a while I got my carbon scrubbers working. For the longest time I didn’t realize I needed a pump for the water intake and the special pipe end to be able to drain the polluted water.
Then I cleared a nice place for them to eat and gave them tables, decorated their bedroom with crown molding. Added a super computer.
I needed some more power so the coal generator was added and upgraded to jumbo batteries. With the extra power I added some lighting, electric grill (although I still don’t have a lot of options for better food). Outhouses changed over to lavatories and washbasins to sinks. Oh, and added some refrigeration for food.
But, without some focus I’m losing steam - not sure how much longer it will hold my attention, but like I said a lot of fun up to this point.
You have no idea what problems you created yet. That used to be what got you.
What you are using is consuming water and dirt at a fast clip. Dirt is finite (so far) and water too (until you find / make a replacement loop). So, you’re gonna die if you don’t know more, you just don’t know it yet.
And a carbon scrubber inside the starting dome? As well as the research stations. At least the batteries are small. So, you are in a race you don’t realize. Do they get more food/options before the heat gets too hot for those options to be viable? Do they run out of water before they finish researching those options? Do they starve?
You are also probably making oxygen using algae. Also finite (for now). So you are also going to suffocate unless you find more algae or replacement oxygen source soon. One of your best replacement options takes … water … which you still haven’t found out how to replace yet. So …
You have started the race conditions of no oxygen, no water, no dirt, no algae, no food … all related. You just don’t realize you’re dead yet unless you progress. Which makes heat, which will also kill you (but your food first). Or you can stop now and bask in the glow of having survived the crash landing. :)
Oh I make no pretenses that I’m playing well or know what I’m doing :-)
Oh sorry, nothing to do with your competence (or lack)! That is sort of how the game progression is through middle.
Do obvious/only solution, which creates problems that reveal themselves. Fix problems with new items/new systems. Which in turn create even more new problems … fix … repeat.