Meta_Boy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:51 pm
So, the team thinks the problem with Basic Oil Processing is that new players can't handle the 3 outputs?
I guess it is easy to see why. Constant posts by all kinds of players asking why their refineries stopped working, does give the impression that there is a problem.
There is a problem, but it's a little offensive to put that blame on players in general, especially new ones. "Those bleepin idiots can't even handle 3 liquids, ugh, fine, we'll reduce it to one, for the babies." is what I'm hearing from the dev team.
The problem isn't the players, the problem is the recipe. Players who post about their backed up refineries consistently display that they set up everything
correctly. Crude oil goes in, 3 other "oils" come out, and most of the time those are connected to chemical plants or at least fluid tanks. Because new players aren't braindead idiots, they can "read" the game systems, and they have reacted correctly to the new resource.
It's Basic Oil Processing that doesn't work properly. Never has, and even with the proposed change, never will.
Taking away 2 products does not fix what you think it will fix. Yes, it eliminates the 2 commonly backed-up resources, and thus reduces some of the pipe-spaghetti. But what does that do to the player? It sets up false expectations, and when fluid back-up hits them once they switch to Advanced Oil Processing, they
should be in a position where they can play around with all the cool things Blue Science unlocks, but instead they're
forced to suddenly juggle 3 oil products AND Cracking all at once!
The problem isn't that Heavy and Light Oil
exist in Basic Oil Processing, the problem is that they don't work properly. There is way too much of either, even when you're immediately making solid fuel out of both AND storing thousands of units of the stuff in tanks. It's almost like the New Player Experience, but also the 700th playthroughs of veterans, would be MUCH simpler and easier to manage if refineries had the Advanced Oil Processing ratios from the get-go. WAY less oil, probably just enough to help blue science tick over every now and again - which is exactly what this FFF wants. Blue Science. Nothing but Blue Science. ALL the useful things from now are behind Blue Science. Make Blue Science. Make Blue Science NOW!! And that's all the oils will be good for, until you get Cracking.
Then we get to Cracking, which at this point should be the only thing the "Advanced Oil Processing" tech unlocks. Oh boy. Cracking. New Players get stuck and give up because their refineries stop working, because Basic Oil Processing doesn't work correctly, because you 1000% want every player to suffer through Basic Oil Processing for 20 minutes to 20 hours (depending on the type of player), because neither of your oil processing recipes work right, because you want the players to be cracking. Because you need the players to be cracking. Because Cracking, not the oil processing recipe for the refinery, is your solution to the backed-up fluids.
And I admit, I don't understand cracking. It is the ONLY instance in the entire game where you put in 3 resources, and out come ... the exact same 3 resources, just in different numbers. Yes, they're staggered, you're not putting in coal and getting coal. But you're not actually making anything new. Every other process in the game makes something "new", even if it's only gear wheels. Even that weird-ass uranium conversion process squeezes more glowy bits out of the dull bits. That's a "new" thing that comes out of that machine.
And this process is so damn weird and out of place and a band-aid for a wound you deliberately gave us 2 in-game hours ago, that I cannot even begin to come up with a "fix". I mean, so far I have not proposed any fixes to anything (the Advanced Oil Processing recipe is already in the game and already works better, I didn't come up with anything). I'm not a game designer, I'm a dude who plays video games; I can only attempt to describe why playing with your oil products feels bad to me and other players.
I do get that there
probably needs to be a way to control the amounts of oils and gas in larger factories. Come to think of it, I don't even know if us minimal-effort losers can get away without cracking at all, if all we're making is plastic and solid fuel. Both are constantly being used until the end of time, by blue science. That change was one of the best thing the team ever put into this game. It is so goshdarn useful. Above all, it massively improved the early-oil situation for new and intermediate players. You guys
clearly know how to do this.
So really, I
almost agree with this proposal. You're right that Basic Oil Processing right now feels bad - but you're wrong why. You're right that Blue Science should probably be the key to all those other things we want - but you're wrong that locking EVERYTHING behind it makes anything easier. Both on current version and in the proposal, "Things unlocked by Blue Science" and "Mandatory Rework of my Entire Oil Setup"
happen at the same time. You need to seperate those. YOU, the devs, NOT the newbie player who can't get this fluid thing right, need to fix YOUR oil product ratios. They need to work just about well enough very early on (and current Blue Science already does most of the work); and they need to work well enough when we set up S.Acid, Explosives, and Batteries - without cracking. THEN you can task us with precise fluid manipulation via cracking, for specialized oil modules, for science-only production, for only making rocket fuel for the rocket(s), for the unquenchable thirst of a module3-only factory, etc.
... and then we can keep items researched by green science but built with advanced circuits. Everybody wins.