Regarding EXTREME Flat Deserts

[Squirting Elephant]

I'm running into some issues. Maybe it's me or maybe it needs some rebalancing/changes. This is for the EXTREME flat deserts (not the noob ones with 24 degrees) where normal temperatures went up to 99 degrees celcius during the night:
https://i.imgur.com/loqk5V1.jpg

- Cactuses don't grow because it is too hot (bug?). How can they even be there in the first place then?
- The rare Thrumbo's are a joke with these temperatures.
- There are about 1 to 3 starting Iguana's (which die from the heat shortly after it seems because they were gone) and then there is nothing more to hunt. No snakes nothing because nothing survives there and nothing spawns there, ever. Need criters or something for these biomes.
- The nights should be extremely cold. It should go REALLY low just like real deserts. Basically beyond the freezing point. Unless this is not implemented because it would be too hard?
- There is no way to grow trees indoor and outdoors it takes maybe a year to grow something and then pray a random event doesn't kill it within that year (pretty much guaranteed killed on higher difficulties).
- Raiders die from the sun, not from you. Don't bother using guns.
- Raiders could not even have survived the trip towards your base, the max distance they can cross without dying is about 0.5 to 1 tile. Looks glitchy. There should be no raiders or they should be better equipped vs the heat. I mean some of them come with ONLY pants and a stick to attack me while it's up to 99 degrees out there... How.... is this possible?
- Caravans don't come at all, and if they could, they would die anyway from the heat.
- I can't imagine how invading enemy settlements would be if you would die in no-time from heat even with max heat protection. I also assume that enemy settlements don't have 2-4 coolers per room and if they don't have a freezer, they can't even survive the heat. Enemy settlements have no right of existance.
- Heatwaves and 99Celcius temperatures mean that the only place you can survive, is the freezer (which goes up to 20-30C at that point)... The rest of your base kills you and being outside is suicide. It's many times worse than toxic fallout and it lasts really long and goes through walls. That's why I put some beds in the freezer.. About 1 cooler per 4 tiles and still far from enough to actually freeze.
- Need better coolers in the game for these deserts. You will end up with walls of coolers and everything else double walled and still...
- How is it possible that the water does not vaporize at 99 degrees? There should be no water on these maps/worlds at all.
- Need better gear. Cowboy hat + duster = crap. It allows you to mine your own map sure but you can't do much other than that, nevermind starting a caravan. We need better midgame and lategame gear for both the player and the enemies.
- Events where you can collect resources x or y are virtually IMPOSSIBLE. The only way to do them is to use pod launchers and build new launchers there to launch yourself back (super expensive and probably not worth it). Other than that, it's not even possible to do those events.
- Comms are only good for ships, not for caravans. But you can't depend on this. First you must pray a ship comes by, then you must pray it's the proper type and on top of that you must pray they sell what you need. So it's RNG stacked on top of RNG stacked on top of RNG...
- Best way to assault a settlement is probably to build a freezer during the attack and then wait there for about a minute until everybody dies from the heat... In fact, you may HAVE to do this because the settlement you are attacking does not have enough cooling for your own soldiers to survive. How those settlements survived for so long, no idea... Looks glitchy.
- How is it possible that I survive 99 degrees Celcius with a cowboy hat and a duster while also performing 'sweaty activities' like mining. Colonists should instantly burn up and their clothes lit ablaze.
- Solar flares can literally kill you early game since you are 95.0% hydro dependant and maybe 5.00% on canibalism including eating the ancient ones.
- You can lose the game on the first 3 minutes if the first power building you construct fails construction. You then do not have enough time to get cooling up before you die. I mean some RNG is okay but this is too much!
- The wiki is wrong (or at least not complete since you can use the sliders). Temperatures can go up to 99C and in some cases average 80 something, not up to 30ish like the wiki says. Along with a lot of other incompleteness from the wiki.

The only somewhat reliable way to win such extreme maps is probably to beeline the research tree and to get the deep mine drill OR beat the game before resources run dry. Because there is virtually no trading.

[sbmarauderman03]

So you set up parameters to make the game impossible to play, then complain that you are unable to play? Yeah, it's definitely you, not the game...

[Squirting Elephant]

It's a normal starting option. And I didn't expect the game to behave like this. If there is such a starting option in vanilla, wouldn't you expect the game to handle it properly and to at least make sense? And not send naked soldiers to kill you with 99C out there?

Shouldn't they change the settlement algorithms and raiding parties and caravans and even the map itself to handle this? I mean the Iguana's and the cactuses are clearly a bug. And the rest is erm... Yeah... borderline at best? Let's not even go into questions like "how can there even be fertile soil when it's so hot".

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

I'm running into some issues. Maybe it's me or maybe it needs some rebalancing/changes., This is for the EXTREME flat deserts where normal temperatures went up to 99 degrees celcius during the night:

And this is why I've always believed that extreme flat desert is just a tad more difficult than extreme flat ice... fun isn't it ;)
Everything you observed is correct except for:

- Heatwaves and 99Celcius temperatures mean that the only place you can survive, is the freezer (which goes up to 20-30C at that point)... The rest of your base kills you and being outside is suicide. It's many times worse than toxic fallout and it lasts really long and goes through walls. That's why I put some beds in the freezer.. About 1 cooler per 4 tiles and still far from enough to actually freeze.

Not true.
At least double thick stone walls will help to insulate the base buildings and as long as you ventilate between rooms you can be much more economical with coolers. Be sure to create airlock chambers at every entrance and exit to ensure a hermetically sealed base. Food is never an issue, since that'swhat hydroponics are for.

- Comms are only good for ships, not for caravans. But you can't depend on this. First you must pray a ship comes by, then you must pray it's the proper type and on top of that you must pray they sell what you need. So it's RNG stacked on top of RNG stacked on top of RNG...

The only somewhat reliable way to win such extreme maps is probably to beeline the research tree and to get the deep mine drill OR beat the game before resources run dry. Because there is virtually no trading.

Use the comms whether or not the trade caravan can survive long enough to trade. More often than not, if they can enter your base safely, then they'll survive, trade and who cares what happens when they leave. Build more than one orbital beacon too to promote more instances of a tradeship visit.
I enjoy this challenge and all you have to do to 'win' is to build the spaceship and leave, but then again, this game isn't about winning ;)

[sbmarauderman03]

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

It's a normal starting option. And I didn't expect the game to behave like this. If there is such a starting option in vanilla, wouldn't you expect the game to handle it properly and to at least make sense? And not send naked soldiers to kill you with 99C out there?

Shouldn't they change the settlement algorithms and raiding parties and caravans and even the map itself to handle this? I mean the Iguana's and the cactuses are clearly a bug. And the rest is erm... Yeah... borderline at best? Let's not even go into questions like "how can there even be fertile soil when it's so hot".

Normal starting option? I've never encountered deserts with temps that high unless I manually changed some settings before starting a new colony...

[Squirting Elephant]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

Not true.
At least double thick stone walls will help to insulate the base buildings and as long as you ventilate between rooms you can be much more economical with coolers. Be sure to create airlock chambers at every entrance and exit to ensure a hermetically sealed base. Food is never an issue, since that'swhat hydroponics are for.

This is what I had for my (old) freezer: https://i.imgur.com/8yB7KBE.jpg
The new one had 6 coolers I believe (about 1 cooler per 4 tiles) and still couldn't freeze during heatwaves. As you can see, except for the coolers everything is connected to other (cooled) rooms OR is double walled + airlock.
Maybe I would need to see a screenshot of a freezer or a base that can remain cool during these insane heatwaves. I mean you are probably right, I just do not know how.

Oh food is definately an issue. EDIT: I made a big mistake, you do not need hydro therefor food is not an issue. You'll were right!

Use the comms whether or not the trade caravan can survive long enough to trade. More often than not, if they can enter your base safely, then they'll survive

They don't even come. You can't even summon them with the comms: https://i.imgur.com/Ww4261z.jpg and this is always the case. ALWAYS.
But IF the game would allow it, they would die before arriving at your base unless they have a VERY lucky spawn they may JUST make it.

I think I rather start in a normal biome. Because a 20ish degrees biome desert = joke and the really hot ones break the game.

[Jamaican Castle]

Well I would expect that a "desert" where the temperature reaches the boiling point of water at night (!) would not be very hospitable towards life.

[Deatheagle]

I dont see any problems with the coolers if you build accordingly. With a double wall to the outside and double door airlocks you can have the first "layer" of your base easily 50 °C cooler than the outside. With another double wall inside that you have almost normal temperature and there should be no problem putting a freezer in the inner structure. Its the same principle on Ice maps. The more layers you have the better the insulation.

[flintfakeer]

Double walls effectively link you to the outside. Double walls are only for the most external layer. Triple thick walls are equal to double thick. Corners don't matter. You can check this out yourself by going into debug mode. Vents are useful for passive temp control (like in hallways) but for active temp control (connected to a room with heater/cooler) they are garbage. You want big structures for most areas because the square cube law is a thing. Though a small freezer hut would be useful for heatwaves. Use passive coolers as they are Really good.

[bigsengineer]

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

Not true.
At least double thick stone walls will help to insulate the base buildings and as long as you ventilate between rooms you can be much more economical with coolers. Be sure to create airlock chambers at every entrance and exit to ensure a hermetically sealed base. Food is never an issue, since that'swhat hydroponics are for.

This is what I had for my (old) freezer: https://i.imgur.com/8yB7KBE.jpg
The new one had 6 coolers I believe (about 1 cooler per 4 tiles) and still couldn't freeze during heatwaves. As you can see, except for the coolers everything is connected to other (cooled) rooms OR is double walled + airlock.
Maybe I would need to see a screenshot of a freezer or a base that can remain cool during these insane heatwaves. I mean you are probably right, I just do not know how.

Oh food is definately an issue. Why? Because solar eclipse = byebye hydro and if this happens during your first growth period, you will starve and be lucky to survive it. I believe there's nothing you can do against this if this happens.
After that you will have enough food yes. That is, until you run into non-stop component problems and hydro's and coolers breaking down everywhere (since you got so many coolers and power generating buildings, you get tons of breakdowns and no way to trade for those until comms + random trade ships (which I never saw) or unless you setup base next to a village and pray they sell enough).

Use the comms whether or not the trade caravan can survive long enough to trade. More often than not, if they can enter your base safely, then they'll survive

They don't even come. You can't even summon them with the comms: https://i.imgur.com/Ww4261z.jpg and this is always the case. ALWAYS.
But IF the game would allow it, they would die before arriving at your base unless they have a VERY lucky spawn they may JUST make it.

I think I rather start in a normal biome. Because a 20ish degrees biome desert = joke and the really hot ones break the game.

ur pic shows almost nothing for all i know ur freezers vent ports lead inside

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by flintfakeer:

Vents are useful for passive temp control (like in hallways) but for active temp control (connected to a room with heater/cooler) they are garbage.

My bedrooms are just 2x4's and rather than place a cooler in each one, I link them all with vents in the connecting wall. A row of 6 or 7 bedrooms would only need 2 coolers at most and the vents will equalise the temp throughout all of them. That's hardly garbage.

[Squirting Elephant]

So I see. For these extreme maps, you do more than just double walls. So you do something like:

wall - wall - indoor air gap / hallway - wall - ROOM - wall - indoor air gap / hallway - wall - wall

And possibly with even more "indoor air gap / hallway" as required? Still weird that this works because technically the air-gaps in between must also be cooled so in the end you just need more cooling and the area becomes bigger (because of the airgaps/hallways). This would not work in real life (would only slow it down but would require more cooling overall) but perhaps it works ingame.

But how to funnel the hot air out of the room (and not into the hallways) then?

[flintfakeer]

Why not just make a house with rooms inside and then you don't need vents? I tend to make 7x7 rooms for everyone seperated by a 2 wide hallway and I can keep it cool during a 50C heat wave with 2-4 passive coolers in the hallway without vents. Worst comes to worst I force the doors open. I must admit though it looks like a military instillation.

[flintfakeer]

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

Still weird that this works because technically the air-gaps in between must also be cooled so in the end you just need more cooling and the area becomes bigger (because of the airgaps/hallways). This would not work in real life (would only slow it down but would require more cooling overall) but perhaps it works ingame.

This is the basis behind insulation. The whole point of insulating pathways and airlocks in this context is to slow down heat gain not to speed up heat loss.

Also of note larger structures have smaller relative surface areas compared to smaller structures and so can retain heat better meaning once they have been cooled/heated they remain so for longer. An example would be the difference between a chicken and a turkey. The turkey takes longer to cook and longer to thaw and longer to freeze because of its porportionaly smaller surface area.

That being said double thick walls are weird in this game and while you do have the concept down you should look up some youtube vids on it as it basically always acts as an external connecting wall but has less heat loss. So double thick pillars and walls in well insulated bases act as leaks.