abregado wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 11:15 pm
Avezo wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 10:03 am
Hiladdar wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 1:07 am
I started a game with a mod that includes the proposed science changes, and I am about 70% of the way to a rocket launch.
Here are my additional comments.
1. Chemical Science is now harder due to having two products that use crude oil as a raw resource. I'm not sure that was the desired effect.
(...)
That was expected. If blue science was supposed to be made easier, solid fuel should've REPLACED advanced circuits, not add yet another oil-related ingredient.
It's actually not even setting oil production for blue science that is problem, it's sudden jump into relatively complex advanced circuits production which makes getting into blue science such a big step from previous science packs.
There is an additional reason.
We see from observations of players reaching blue science for the first time that they have trouble figuring out why a subset of their factory stops running.
With Oil refining if one of the three refined products stops being consumed then the whole process stops and it is very hard for a player to diagnose the first time. In 0.16 we havent provided an obvious use for two of those refined products, and unlike in mods with waste products, we never promote storing large quantities of unneeded material in the vanilla game.
The most intuitive way to get a player to try something is to give them a recipe to follow.
So far, solid fuel is a great recipe for all of what you've mentioned. still I think introducing fluids as an ingredient in a science pack recipe would fix even more of the issues, but, anway;
It still is not a perfect solution as the player could simply try to create solid fuel from just a single refined liquid and the system will still stay locked due to unused output.
I don't like the idea myself, but the more I (and you) think about oil processing, the more it seems obvious that current oil processing recipes are the main problem. Look at mods - they just burn off excess refining products. Look at refinery animation - it just burns off
something. I don't like it, but refinery alone should be able to crack heavier oils on it's own. It just fits. Crap, entire oil processing needs rework, not just science packs...
In the Campaign we can break this down further via selectively making new technologies available and creating quests to consume excess materials. For example:
Be careful with campaign, I remember the first time I did campaign, I were confused why I can't make a plane in 'freeplay' game.
Find oil fields and get flamethrower turrets -> crude oil is consumed by turrets (and fluid storage is promoted as using the "ammo" lens/context)
get oil refining and accumulators -> make batteries and accumulators and feed heavy/light to flamethrowers (learn about sulfur and acid)
get electric engines (robots) -> make lubricant that consumes heavy oil, light still has a place to go
get advanced circuits, modular armor and energy shield -> two competing uses for petroleum, factory still runs while you figure that out
blue science -> uses some of everything but now you can experiment while everything still moves.
I get it that new players, for whom main focus of changes is at the moment might go for flamethrowers, but... Where the hell does that impression that any player, new or not, would rush for automating battery production? It's very complex recipe - from raw resources to final product, and, in practical uses it's merely couple items that actually need them.
But, I think this deserves a separate discussion - why developers think that batteries are easy to automate and/or how important batteries actually are in progression path.
In general I think that development proposals greatly underestimate difficulties that anything oil-related pose. Not just in this patch, but in previous ones too.
The nuclear solution is to make this part of the Freeplay tech tree very linear and force the player to get the techs in a given order. Of course, controlling the experience in this way during Freeplay is counter to what a sandbox game should be, so that nuclear solution will not be detonated.
As they are now, they will still result in linear progress path. It will change depending on scenario, i.e. peaceful mode and deathworld mode, but, no matter what you do, choice in such game will be illusionary - there will still be a 'average-optimal' research path to follow, making it linear. The only way to solve it is to introduce random research options and other random elements, which, I doubt any sane developer would want while preparing to release 1.0 version of the game. But still, the point stands.