Foundations and soil thoughts

[Sawakaki]

Just thought I'd chime in here with my two cents worth of thoughts on the soil pile mechanic and foundations.

First off, I've been doing some digging in the forums here and have seen a number of people asking for a way to manufacture soil. I would have to agree with this idea with a couple twists of my own. I'd like the deep oceans to either be too deep to fill in or take stupendous amounts of soil to make them level as this would give some way to prevent or limit every planet from just being a solid foundation orb. The idea has also been thrown around here in the forums to use trees and foliage as part of the soil crafting recipe. I think this is a fantastic idea because it creates some uses for trees and foliage beyond extremely early game mecha fuel. (I have not progressed beyond late early game so if there already is a use for trees, please correct me)

Second, I would love to see some way to automatically place foundations as it can get somewhat tedious placing them yourself. If you're like me, even though you don't want to see every planet become a foundation orb, there is something supremely satisfying about leveling everything and turning the planet into a perfect sphere. I would envision this mechanic as some sort of structure you could place that would automatically place foundations as long as it had them in inventory. You could set the placement pattern as either a square or a circle, depending on your preference. Maybe even set the area as a rectangle with dimensions you could customize. I'd also like to see the mechanic by which it places the foundations be dedicated construction drones similar to the one's used by your mecha. This would provide a point of diminishing returns since as the area becomes larger, the drones would have to travel further, taking longer with each trip. This obviously creates a need to relocate the foundation automation infrastructure as the demand for foundations increase. I'd also like to see this structure have a high power demand, possibly based on the number of drones it is using at once. This would create a cost/benefit situation that each player would have to solve for themselves. This idea could even be branched off into it's own research path to allow for better power efficiency, more drones, faster drones, and anything else you'd like to add.

If anyone knows a place the devs check for suggestions other than here on the steam forums, let me know and I'd be happy to post this there also. Any thoughts or other suggestions along these lines would be great

[Ancient]

Originally posted by Sawakaki:

I think this is a fantastic idea because it creates some uses for trees and foliage beyond extremely early game mecha fuel. (I have not progressed beyond late early game so if there already is a use for trees, please correct me)

Trees, or rather, logs and plant fuel can be used in an alternative recipe for Organic Crystal: https://dsp-wiki.com/Organic_Crystal

Also, not sure if you've found it yet, but you can increase/decrease the brush size for the foundation tool with NumPad + and - . i think it goes up to 10x10, while the default is 2x2.

[Ohm is Futile]

Originally posted by Sawakaki:

I think this is a fantastic idea because it creates some uses for trees and foliage beyond extremely early game mecha fuel. (I have not progressed beyond late early game so if there already is a use for trees, please correct me)

It's a trap. It's a terrible mechanic too. There's no reason to add uses to logs and foliage unless the devs plan on adding a way to automate the collection of trees. The game tells you to use trees for fuel, but you should really just go straight for coal. The game is about automating things, not going around to collect resources that are worse and more useless than a resource you can automate.

Having a way to make soil might be interesting, but it's only really for the early game, and the problem of soil sort of fixes itself once you have the ability to sail. You can just move to a planet with more constructable area. Some planets also get you ridiculous amounts of soil.

But if I'm entirely honest, I think soil only exists to stop people from completely filling in the ocean on the starting planet before they realise they need some water. Otherwise I'd nuke soil entirely.

Originally posted by Sawakaki:

Second, I would love to see some way to automatically place foundations as it can get somewhat tedious placing them yourself.

Now we're talking. It could be interesting to have a "terraforming station" that uses drones to place foundations (if you supply the building), collect soil, stone, and trees from the planet. Not sure where you'd go to suggest that. I think I've seen Discord mentioned once or twice.

Originally posted by Ancient:

Trees, or rather, logs and plant fuel can be used in an alternative recipe for Organic

It's a horrible recipe in the current state of the game though. The time required to chop trees could be spent automating organic crystals the regular way. You'll need to anyway since it takes a while before you can go interstellar and mine the crystals directly.

It's a single player game, people do what they want, but it's not a good use of time.

If you don't believe me, look at speedruns. Trees cease to exist in the mind of speedrunners past the upgrade that requires 60 logs...

[Ancient]

Originally posted by Ohm is Futile:

It's a single player game, people do what they want, but it's not a good use of time.

If you don't believe me, look at speedruns. Trees cease to exist in the mind of speedrunners past the upgrade that requires 60 logs...

I definitely agree. It's not a good recipe beyond very new players that might have manually cleared their starter planet manually and stored all the "crap" and have it available to even feed into that pipeline.

I personally eat all the logs and plants I gather and those which I don't get erased when I pave the entire planet flat with foundations either way.

Bottom line here though: I think OP is far too focused on the starting planet. Most planets do not have vegetation and so the vegetation is simply there on the starter earth-like to get you going as a tutorial energy source that is readily abundant.

Eventually, you shouldn't give two turtle ♥♥♥♥♥ about a tree. Your goal in the mecha is above that. Black Hole, Neutron and O, B or A stars where the best luminosity for a sphere can be found don't (or or just likely won't) have trees or foliage as far as I've seen in my 4+ restarts of the game. The earth-like we get as a starter is the only earth-like we're even likely to encounter as far as I know. Which is pretty realistic according to real-world planet hunters. Earth is not just rare, but ultra rare.

I totally agree with your view of automation too. I think OP has lost sight of the bigger picture here: WE DON"T WANT TO MANUALLY COLLECT ANY RESOURCE. This isn't a survival game where we need food and water or want to have annoying limits like "whoops, RNG only gave you 3 earth-like planets out of 64 so good luck finding trees and plant fibers...."

Resources beyond that early game level should all be both large scale and potentially automated, as that is what we're supposed to be out hunting for and exploiting.

Trees are starter ♥♥♥♥. Plants are starter ♥♥♥♥. They are limited to the starter world because after 20+ hours, you should have well-progressed beyond starter ♥♥♥♥ and not need them anymore. Most of us, beyond the point of getting access to warpers, are not even building our dyson spheres close to the original starting earth-like planet.

[Sawakaki]

My original post was made with a small amount of hours in the game, less than 20, I believe. Since then I've played an embarrassingly high number of hours and would like to revise my earlier statements, haha.

Originally posted by author:

Bottom line here though: I think OP is far too focused on the starting planet. Most planets do not have vegetation and so the vegetation is simply there on the starter earth-like to get you going as a tutorial energy source that is readily abundant.

I was very much doing that, but I also very much tend to get lost in the minutia or small tasks or little things in games like this. It's part of their appeal for me.

Originally posted by author:

But if I'm entirely honest, I think soil only exists to stop people from completely filling in the ocean on the starting planet before they realise they need some water. Otherwise I'd nuke soil entirely.

Originally posted by Sawakaki:
Second, I would love to see some way to automatically place foundations as it can get somewhat tedious placing them yourself.
Now we're talking. It could be interesting to have a "terraforming station" that uses drones to place foundations (if you supply the building), collect soil, stone, and trees from the planet. Not sure where you'd go to suggest that. I think I've seen Discord mentioned once or twice.

Originally posted by Ancient:
Trees, or rather, logs and plant fuel can be used in an alternative recipe for Organic
It's a horrible recipe in the current state of the game though. The time required to chop trees could be spent automating organic crystals the regular way. You'll need to anyway since it takes a while before you can go interstellar and mine the crystals directly.

I stand by my idea of wanting a way to automatically place foundations and a way to manufacture soil so you don't have to go flatten things yourself. I think if there are drones that place foundations via this "terraforming station" there should be drones that go harvest the vegetation and loose rocks and such. It really irks me to walk by resources or just destroy them. I'm that guy in Skyrim or Minecraft that has multiple chests of useless loot because I had to bring it with me, haha.

Originally posted by author:

I'd like the deep oceans to either be too deep to fill in or take stupendous amounts of soil to make them level as this would give some way to prevent or limit every planet from just being a solid foundation orb.

I've since discovered, as @Ancient said, that there is really only the one earth-like planet. I have seen lava planets and the some others and if you look on the wiki there's a couple different variants with bodies of water. I think what would be interesting is having terrain features that are too extreme to flatten or build on, leading to asymmetrical layouts and such.