Source
r/Oxygennotincluded•
FallenJoe

Is there any incentive to leave starting biome until late game?

Typically in this style of game, you build A, which helps you acquire B and makes life easier, which enables you build C, which helps you acquire D which makes life easier, so on and so forth. Make stone pick, mine bronze, smelt bronze, make bronze pick, mine iron ->etc. You all know the drill.

The progression on this game seems really odd in comparison. You’re starting environment is incredibly easy going, supplying you with free food, water, oxygen, meat on legs, flying light bulbs, crop seeds, and everything else required to build a totally self-contained colony. And it's not like anyone's complaining about the food either, as you can make +1 grilled berries in the starting biome.

By comparison, the surrounding biomes are so relentlessly hostile that there is an immense pressure to turtle until you’re securely established before setting one foot into areas with slime or chlorine. Without a stable food supply, showers, sinks, carbon scrubbers, and a working ventilation, hydration, and purification system established before I send out the miners, everyone dies to Slimelung. And by the time I’m ready to do that, I’m 70% of the way through the tech tree, and have no need to actually go anywhere before I run out of algae and water by cycle 70 or so.

In Don’t Starve, survival was possible with just twigs, grass, logs, and a lot of rabbits. The barest level of monotonous survival was possible in one location, but everything else required exploration, travel, and exploitation of far off resources.

But with ONI, the only things that incentivize me to leave the starting biome seems to be access to wheezeworts for advanced cooling techniques, and access to a continuing source of energy or water in the form of geysers or oil. And maybe some thimble reed seeds so you can turtle until you can build exosuits.

Build self-contained base in starting biome with 85% of the in game content, stick head into slime long enough to get thimble reed seeds – farm thimble reeds – build exosuits, access the other 90% of the map and the last 15% of endgame content.

Does this seem really odd to anyone else? I’d chalk it up to early access, but I’m having a hard time imagining how they could change the game to encourage mid game exploitation of other biomes without a major game overhaul. Or am I doing it all wrong and could be moving outside my starting biome earlier if I knew what I was doing?

Posted Mar 30, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

10
jimraynor0•

The way the tech works is not as simple as you described. You can get most of the tech in a few tens of cycles yes, but to setup them properly, you need a lot of resources, space and you’ll need to deal with the waste and the heat. You can’t possibly do that within the staring biome. In other words, the new structures the tech tree unlocks are not simply better version of the same production structure. They are also harder to handle. They are usually only better when you can do them in a large scale production chain.

TL;DR: completing the tech tree doesn’t mean you’ve reached late game. Putting them into practical use is the real challenge here.

10
Cabra_da_Peste•

You can move out quite early, as long as you know how to keep unwanted things off your main base.

4
eightvo•

What do you do with all the gas pockets? I have never gotten to be able to build an over pressure fan (because I haven't ever found oil yet)... but it seems pretty late game to have the ability to move gas around like that.. otherwise if I want to move n blocks of chlorine/hydrogen I have to have a container n blocks in size right?

1
justsomevisitor•

Either you can dig a large whole above/below your base for hydrogen/chlorine or you can get a gas pump and pump it out.

2
Cabra_da_Peste•

Water locks to separate gases, diagonal building and oxygen pockets (a closed off algae distiller in the middle of long paths without oxygen) are your best friends. If you are still confused I can give you some pictures.

2
FallenJoeOP•

If you would, it would be appreciated.

1
Cabra_da_Peste•

https://imgur.com/a/RxSKg

Hope it helps.

2
eightvo•

The only one I think I don't understand without pictures in the diagonal building... (but pics of water locks would be nice also).

Thanks :)

1
UnGauchoCualquiera•

Hydrogen you can burn it for free energy, chlorine should be avoided as much as possible and if not just dig down so that it acumulates somewhere it doesn't bother you.

1
Ambaire•

The caustic biome can be explored with little if any risk. Your dupes won't attempt to breath chlorine, so it has no ill effect. I often am traversing that biome to find the ice biome within a few dozen cycles of game start.

I understand that sometimes worldgen RNG will result in a starter biome completely surrounded by toxic jungle.. haven't encountered that yet but I've seen screenshots.

If you're lucky, you can sometimes chart a slimelung-free digging path through parts of the jungle. True, the loose slime will leak polluted oxygen like crazy, so just be careful not to excavate any slimelung-ridden slime (edit: or slimelung-filled areas) and it shouldn't enter the atmosphere. You can store slime underwater to prevent offgassing. You can also cover the polluted water with a thin layer of regular water to prevent it from offgassing, as well.

No, polluted water and regular water do not mix, to my knowledge. It's a bit silly but it would also be an easy way to farm perpetual polluted water since the game makes no distinction between co2-contaminated water and industrial pollutant-contaminated water. Yet.

3
akpak•

RNG will result in a starter biome completely surrounded by toxic jungle

This happens to me almost every time.

1
Ishea•

For a small colony, this works ok-ish, however, 'real' late game is when you start bringing in more dupes, and set up larger scale systems to keep them supplied with everything they need, as well as manage the heat. Heat really is the slow killer in this game, as you don't see it coming at you directly, until your crops start failing, and you find out that you don't have enough cooled water to keep your berry farm running.

3
Dubanx•

Wheezeworts are pretty important if you don't want your colony to fry.

3
NoQ27794•

This game's progression is not limited by the tech tree. Finishing the tech tree is just the beginning. You'll be facing sustainability challenges for much longer than that, until you set up a very large amount of machinery that isn't merely simple machines you unlock at the bench but large well-programmed complexes that keep all unsustainable side effects under control.

2
rootnegative•

I know this may be controversial, but this is why I turn off stress and immune systems in my colonies. I feel like these aspects of the game (whilst brilliant in terms of pure concept) are not yet balanced and add nothing to the game as it stands as a result.

I know the Klei will eventually balance them and they will be an integral part of the full release game, but for now, I take them out :)

2
Steelflame•

You can go out and about fairly early into the caustic biome with little to no risk. The main problem is the heat, but you can build a basic double layer thermal shell on the side of the base you do so from, or otherwise penetrate into it via the abyssalite layer with a pair of manual airlocks, and for the most part negate that.

1
kingjames488•

so what compelled you to explore in don't starve? it reminds me of don't starve exactly. you can just sit in one place for a long time, but it's pretty boring and eventually you're going to run out of something. all the fun is in branching out more and more and figuring out different stuff to do.

1
FallenJoeOP•

The resources in Don't starve were far far more spread out.

If you were lucky, you might find sticks, grass, rabbits, and trees for logs all clustered together, but you if you wanted even the basics like fllint, gold and nitre from rocks, spidersilk from spiders, charcoal from trees you had to be willing to travel. And the higher tier items took a hell of a lot of work and access to many different areas to get.

Also, every biome had reasons you might want to settle or at least spend a significant amount of time there. Savanna had access to grass and Beefalo, swamp had access to fish and tentacles, chestnut had chestnuts and pig king, so on and so forth.

Not just a mad dash through to grab a wheezewort seed and get back before you freeze to death, or as little time spent as possible in slime so you don't die.

2
hyprformnce•

once you research and build the atmos suits, you'll find yourself more likely to spend prolonged periods in other biomes and build extensions to your base (towards magma, the geysers, and various locations/buildings of interest)

1
eberkain•

Heat is probably the biggest thing, You can stay in the starting biome a long time and build a nice secure home for a few dupes, but everything will slowly heat up because all the surrounding biomes are hotter than the staring area and the machines in the base are outputting heat, eventually it will get too hot for your crops to grow and everyone will starve. Going out and finding a cold biome and exploiting it is a requirement.

1