Radio stockpiles are too OP

[MAKAIROSI]

Imho, the new Radio Stockpiles are too OP.

Just build radio stockpiles on your main island, especially the desert island, and you only need to transfer larvae, nothing else. You can even directly build radio stockpiles on a newly purchased island to transfer resources.

Don't get me wrong, I love them, but I think they should come at a much later stage (tier 2 gyne) and the tech needs to be more expensive because it's so OP. It completely negates bridges and catapults at that stage, and all the logistics that come with those.

They also cost too little to build one of them, I dunno if that will be changed in the future, but I think their price for what they do is amazingly low.

[Rogarth]

Agreed. To be fair I haven't played the update yet (downloading it now), but just from the description I kind of cringed. I was hoping it was very late in the tech tree.

[MAKAIROSI]

Originally posted by Rogarth:

Agreed. To be fair I haven't played the update yet (downloading it now), but just from the description I kind of cringed. I was hoping it was very late in the tech tree.

I don't understand why they put them so low. They cost iirc 100 tier 2 inventor points and 1 tier 1 gyne point. You get medium bridges much later on than radio stockpiles (as it is now) and you don't need *any* connection to the other islands if you're using radio stockpiles. Just fly in larvae and use green orbs. And how will you get green orbs to that far away island? Yes. A radio stockpile xD

They're pretty much end-game tech. Yet you get it at gyne tier 1. What xD

[EmberStar]

How are you using it to send green orbs? I thought it only sent things if you were building. Do Smart Dispensers link to them from across islands?

[EmberStar]

Also... if you don't think they're fair at that stage, then don't use them? I just got access to the toxic island after a *mere* 200 hours. I can only even build some right now because I set up the lightbulb factory to basically turn off if there's less than 100 glass in the stockpile. I already know how to spend another couple of hours to set up drones to (slowly) carry construction supplies to each new island. It is not improving my gaming experience to have to do that for basically *every* island.

[Raketenfahrer]

Perhaps the devs looked at the Steam achievements and thought about reasons why so few players have reached the jungle island (23.5%), toxid island (4.8%) or concrete island (0.7%). All this shuffling around of materials in several steps from island to island seems like a lot of busy work and apparently not many players were willing to execute this for all 10 potential islands. So the devs came up with this new tech and put it exactly where it is now. I will make use of it for my new playthrough and happily concentrate on other aspects of the game. And if somebody thinks that it is endgame tech , then nobody will stop them from ignoring it and using the old fashioned way.

[HeltRoy豆豆]

Also, this radio stockpile can store liquid. There is no need to build fluid container anymore.

[EmberStar]

I just tested it with resisters and T4 energy orbs. Smart Dispensers do NOT pull from them across islands. You would have to find a building with the resource you want to move, start building it, then cancel it once the resources arrive so that the placed resources will get sent to an available local stockpile. The Radio Stockpile only holds 80 resources, less than half of the most basic starting Stockpile.

The normal dry good stockpiles are all free to construct, and the Radio Stockpile costs glass. Which is a little hard to come by until you make it to the toxic island. Yes, someone probably *could* place a bunch of buildings and then do a whole bunch of stuff manually to move resources around. But it's not a free Star Trek cargo transporter for energy orbs. The one part that might be a little "exploitive" is that it can hold fluids. I assume this is because some building actually needs acid or something to construct? That could be fixed by removing the ability to assign or deploy a Dispenser from the Radio Stockpile, if it's actually an issue.

This is a single player game. There are already mods that make the ants immortal, and I assume ones that massively increase the amounts of resources you can get. If you think that the Radio Stockpile is "cheaty," then don't use it. But if you think that *other people* shouldn't be able to use it, or that it should be so far up the tech tree that by the time you can build it you won't need it anymore... Then please remember that this is a single player game. Not a competitive RTS.

Personally, I'm glad it's there. This saves me hours of pausing the game and tediously setting up stockpile gates for my drones. And then another twenty minutes of frantic troubleshooting because one of them is set to "enter if > than" instead of "enter if < than" or because my clever idea to set up "enter if carrying" gates to shortcut past the rest once a drone picks something up broke instantly when a drone reached it and had nothing in its mouth and nearly a hundred of them stood there and died of old age waiting for me to notice and fix it.

[MAKAIROSI]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

But if you think that *other people* shouldn't be able to use it, or that it should be so far up the tech tree that by the time you can build it you won't need it anymore... Then please remember that this is a single player game. Not a competitive RTS.

I will never understand this logic. "Game gives you an item that bypasses most of the game's (not-that-complicated) mechanics, so skip that item if you wanna play the game". Then, in that logic, they should also give us the ability to create sentry ants in tier 0. Actually, why go through all the trouble of playing the game, we could just have a win button.

xD

EDIT: And I literally didn't even say they shouldn't exist. They should exist, as a mid-to-end game content. Imho, they should exist after medium bridges.

[MAKAIROSI]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

How are you using it to send green orbs? I thought it only sent things if you were building. Do Smart Dispensers link to them from across islands?

Btw, yeah, that was my mistake. I saw it can give to a smart dispenser, so I thought maybe smart dispensers from different islands took from it too. I didn't test that.

[EmberStar]

Originally posted by MAKAIROSI:

I will never understand this logic. "Game gives you an item that bypasses most of the game's (not-that-complicated) mechanics, so skip that item if you wanna play the game". Then, in that logic, they should also give us the ability to create sentry ants in tier 0. Actually, why go through all the trouble of playing the game, we could just have a win button.

xD

EDIT: And I literally didn't even say they shouldn't exist. They should exist, as a mid-to-end game content. Imho, they should exist after medium bridges.

And how many islands will you have *needed* to unlock and build on before you get Medium Bridges? If each of the scanner "monuments" only works once, it looks like we get a total of ten in an entire playthrough. And according to the Steam achievements, a TON of people are not getting many o the Achievements for much of anything past the Desert Island. The purpose of the Radio Stockpile is to make starting on a new island less tedious be letting them effectively share a global inventory for constructing new buildings. Putting it so high in the tech tree that you've already had to go to half the islands before you can even unlock it would make it kind of pointless.

And my point is that if someone wants to break their game by making it "too easy," there's already tools to do that. Building a ton of Pod Workers to strip all the loose resources would be one.

Personally I think the Radio Stockpile would flip from "kind of strong" to "pretty close to useless" if it was that much higher in the tech tree. Putting it so high in the tech tree that you've already expanded to most of the islands would negate the main reason for building them at all. "Hey, here's a thing. By the time you can build it, you won't actually need it anymore."

And that's not counting some of the unofficial mods that already exist, like ones that make all ants immortal. Not that those matter, because as I said - the Steam Achievements say that a huge number of players aren't getting must past the Desert Island. (Less than five percent have the one for revealing Toxic Island, which I only JUST managed to get in the last few days.) The only part of the tech tree they completely bypass is fluid storage. And that could be "fixed" by removing the ability to link them to any kind of Dispenser. IE, anything you add to one can ONLY be used for construction, or you have to manually transfer the resources to a valid storage.

[DaliLhama]

The game is complicated for the sake of being complicated. The different type of ants alone is a chore to deal with and to get up an running. But once you do , it makes the game hella easy. So this complaint of yours is pointless , the whole game is designed in this fashion.

Its just you find this addition to be a problem for your own reasons. But it is in line with how the game progresses and its overall design. Still fun , and having another option to remove the previous techs tedium is how these games work.

[MAKAIROSI]

1) I didn't suggest the radio stockpiles to be that high up tbh, I said they should be Tier 2 gyne. You can get to Tier 2 gyne by understanding the game. Once you've understood it, and you've had to think about how to solve certain problems, it could give you this to ease the pain, yes.

Otherwise, it could use tier 1 gynes, but not just 1 of them. Other researches require 100. If it's that OP, I would suggest it requires a similar amount, since *you can actually do it*.

2) People not reaching the achievements is sad, sure, but it's an automation game. If you don't wanna automate, then it's not for you. It's like complaining a bullethell game (which isn't for me) has too many bullets. I wouldn't buy it and expect there's an upgrade for enemies firing 10% bullets instead, and that upgrade being early on in the game, just to appeal to me specifically.

3) Any automation game is like this, requires more and more advanced resources to progress, to force you into a higher complexity. In Factorio, for example (dlc is canon),
you require stuff from other planets to progress in the tech. So you're required to come up with solutions to do that efficiently - it's the same in this.

It's like saying, ok, let's remove the acid handlers and make any ant immune to acid, because players don't like the idea of going into higher complexity to progress.

Is it more stuff to do? Sure. But the point is to come up with ideas and solutions for it.

4) Yeah the pod workers are kinda OP too, but not as much as a Radio Stockpile. They are, in essence, immortal ants. However, they last so little before having to be re-built that it kinda balances them out. And higher pod levels are more difficult to make.

I don't get why people are defending an OP building that renders so many practices null. All I'm saying is that the building should exist, yes, but higher up the tech tree, or be as expensive as what it gives you (= allows you to build literally anywhere, globally).

In the same way, there could be a Radio Dispenser, but it should also be extremely high in the tech tree / expensive. It's almost a milestone to get such buildings.

That's all I'm saying.

[EmberStar]

The apparent purpose of the Radio Stockpile is to make moving to new islands less tedious. Most people DO NOT UNLOCK the third island. And we only unlock ten islands total. You are still suggesting that it be placed high enough in the tech tree to partially negate the MAIN REASON it apparently exists. Your premise is flawed, because from the Steam Achievements, most players are bailing out way before they would ever get to T2 Gyne Points.

I don't know about players in general beyond what the Steam Achievements show. But there is a content creator I watch sometimes on Youtube. He LIKES automation games, has many thousands of hours in Factorio and Statisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program. And at least for his Youtube content seems to mostly play without mods. The main exception being "utility and readability" ones such as a mod that organizes all the electrical wires in Factorio. In any case, he played this game, got as far as unlocking the Jungle Island and decided he found it too tedious to be worth making more content for. Again, this is a person who makes a LIVING playing automation games. And he bailed out without a second look. I would say that indicates *there is a problem.*

The Radio Stockpile is an attempt to solve that problem in a way that still requires *some* effort, and gives you something else to automate if you wish. The problem the devs seem to be trying to solve is that expanding to new islands is a massive pain and extremely tedious.

The Steam Achievements are very public, and it's very obvious that a vast majority of players are just giving up at the *second island expansion.* You know what the devs could have done to solve the same problem in a way that would be even simpler? Making the building resources global - you place a building, it just automatically pulls resources from any stockpile on any island.

I think the devs put the Radio Stockpile exactly where they wanted it. They might adjust the resource cost to build it, but I doubt it. It is not game breakingly powerful. It allows you to place new buildings without spending an hour running drones and catapults to move resources you will otherwise NEVER NEED on that island again. And every island you've had to expand to before you even get the Radio Stockpile makes it *less useful.*

Throwing "at least ten" of every possible building resource onto every new island with drones and then catapults is NOT an interesting problem to solve. It's just frustrating and time consuming, and adding either complexity or micromanagement for no other real purpose than to be obstructive and obfuscating.

[EmberStar]

The Radio Stockpile doesn't negate the need for drones, bridges and catapults. It just means that I can focus on moving resources I *actually* need to keep progressing (Fiber and Resin and Glass from the Jungle, Glass and Acid from the Desert, and sending larva to each expansion island.) It's a tiny amount of storage, and it makes construction less tedious.

You seem to be arguing, mostly, that YOU don't like it but think that EVERYONE ELSE should be forced to play the way YOU want to play. And you can't do that. Because you can't force people to keep playing a game that they find too frustrating and tedious - they always have the option to quit, uninstall, and leave a negative review.

[MAKAIROSI]

If someone has an idea of how to make it more balanced, then sure, I'd agree with them. But so far everything I'm reading is about making it easier, which is my main point in this post, that it's too OP. You wanna play games with overpowered stuff, be my guest, I prefer balance.

And sure, many people could bail because something is difficult. Maybe it was indeed too difficult. But the solution isn't "ok, let's put this overpowered cheap upgrade there in early game", that's my point.

It's a bit about how I'd wanna play it, in that sense, that I'd wanna play a balanced game, yes.

But chill, I'm not gonna take away the radio stockpile xD I'm just saying it's unbalanced.

You think that now it's balanced, cool. Am I still allowed to think it's unbalanced now? xD

PS: It did need some upgrades to make it more balanced btw, I just think this is too much too early - that's all. But it's ok, I get it that you disagree xD