Proposal: Enhanced Underground Gameplay in Earlier Game Phases

[House_Elioz]

This is part of a short series of posts which begins with the following: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...b-b-content-into-earlier-game-stages.1493370/

Updated to reflect changes in game content due to updates. (11/19/2021)

Objectives for "Strive" and "Survive" Phases:

1. It should be possible to explore a large portion of the underground fairly early, extract some resources from it and colonize it.

2. Colonizing underground gives the advantage of many fewer disasters while also making it significantly harder to build up survival-critical resource surpluses and population (by contrast, metals/rare metals should be relatively easy to get, to incentivize the player to invest underground early, even though both are less critical for actual underground construction). The player should have flexibility to choose the balance of surface vs subsurface infrastructure. More equipment underground means more austerity and/or more dependency on a tenuous lifeline to the surface.

3. The underground's disasters (cave-ins) should tie closely into the core challenge of the underground - acquiring life-sustaining resources in the first place, navigating a tunnel environment, and maintaining critical resource lines. A great "disaster" experience should include situations like "all our water comes from this one cave we just got cut off from" and "we can't get machine parts from the surface because of a cave in and/or something bad happened on the surface."

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Specific suggestions ("Strive"/General exploration):

1. The basic design of the underground should include more directly accessible "primary paths" which do not require any clearing and which are wider than present. The basic progression of gameplay should allow the player to find at least one underground wonder (probably, the Jumbo cave, if it is not already mandatory on all maps) and several areas of potential colonial/resource extraction interest) without clearing. More interesting areas (more resources, etc.) should require clearing/tunneling, and there should be a few areas which will start fully blocked (cave-ins requiring tech to clear block those areas from the start). Essentially included as of Nov Content Update.
   
   
2. At least two map types should be possible - "lava tubes" and "underground water caves" which have different art styles and different patterns of tunnel formation. Lava tubes tend to be larger/wider primary tunnels with fewer natural caves. Water caverns include more large caves and narrower connections between them.
   
   
3. At all times, the player should have the option to drop any RC vehicle into the underground through any un-elevatored portal. The availability of RC commanders, dozers, transports, etc allows the player to clear some obstructions earlier in the underground and make more progress mapping it out (and making discoveries) before investing in serious infrastructure. Obviously, this change includes its own tradeoffs by making those RC vehicles unavailable on the surface. Seems like obvious low hanging fruit.
   
   
4. More "surface" resources should be discoverable underground, including metal/rare metal AND a small amount of exotic minerals. On the order of 30-50 exotic minerals should also be discoverable by a sufficiently aggressive player. This incentives early construction, incentivizes the player to build a relatively early elevator to use the underground resources for early exports to Earth, and slightly reduces early game dependency on getting a "good" asteroid to be able to start building. Essentially included as of Nov Content Update.
   
   
5. The elevator should start with a small capacity/slow speed but be upgradeable. These upgrades should not be lost if the elevator is "destroyed" (heavily damaged) by a meteor strike, or at least should rebuild without several upgrade rounds being required (the shaft is bigger and most of the machinery is in place). Elevator updates limit importance, but a field-expedient elevator might aid in game progression.

Waste Rock/Cave-Ins/Clearing/Excavating:

1. Unlike on the surface, Waste Rock should be a major constraint on the player in the underground. Excavating one area necessarily reduces available volume in other areas of the underground. Waste Rock must be cleared from areas to allow construction and lack of areas to put waste rock should be a constraint on construction and to some extent, mobility (tiles with waste rock slow drones). Partially addressed in that excavation is no longer possible and waste rock is therefore harder to store.
   
   
2. While there is always cave-in risk everywhere in the underground, the player's choices should drive more and less cave-in behavior. Cave-ins should include a mix of minor cave ins (normal rubble requiring no special tech to clear), and the current "cave ins" which require "Low-G Excavation Permits" to address.
   
   
3. Underground, "clear" should involve cleaning up/flatting a space without touching structural elements. You should be able to clear space without regard to any infrastructure which is built (no more having to draw around light pillars), and the use of "clear" will always stop working as it reaches the actual cave/tunnel perimeter. "Clear" generates a relatively small amount of waste rock and produces no (additional) negative effects for structural/cave-in reasons. Essentially included as of Nov Content Update.
   
   
4. The player can *also* "excavate" new tunnels and spaces to build out the underground, but excavated areas should be more vulnerable to cave-ins/collapses and should increase the risk of such cave-ins in "natural" tunnels/voids/openings which are near to the excavated areas. Excavation should also produce a large amount of waste rock which needs to be moved to use the excavated areas effectively.
   
   
5. The goal of these modifications is to make the "structural supports" structure far more valuable by increasing the probability of cave ins in areas important to the player while also ensuring the player is able to build buildings/infrastructure/pipes/cables in the first place, such that it *can* then be vulnerable to cave ins.

Underground Resource Management:

1. In addition to Stirling Generators, the player should have the ability to produce electricity via the burning of fuel. The fueled generator creates an additional demand on available water OR invites the player to import fuel from the surface to support the colony. It also bridges the gap between Stirling Generators and fusion power, which are currently the only options underground. Partially addressed by alternate solution of connecting elevator to grid.
   
   
2. As a midgame building, it should be possible to build a factory to convert waste rock into water at a slow rate. This compensates for the lack of moisture vaporators underground. Partially addressed by alternate solution of connecting elevator to grid.
   
   
3. Concrete should continue to be relatively rare (early) and may require imports from the surface if the player has not chosen a faction which makes concrete production easier.
   
   
4. Abstraction should consider introducing a "Massive Aquifer/Ice Vein" underground wonder, which if discovered/exploitation machinery is built, essentially provides unlimited water.
   
   
5. Abstraction should consider introducing a geothermal resource and/or wonder, which produces electricity if built out.
   
   
6. Abstraction should consider updating the Mohole Mine wonder to additionally act as an elevator between which can be placed at a location of the player's choosing. The player can choose to split the mine's output between the two planetary levels or direct all resource output to one.

Domes and Population:

1. The most basic domes (micro and micro-barrel) should not require exotic minerals to construct (or far far less) and should instead require substantially more concrete (can be visualized with big concrete pillars at the intersections). Seems like obvious low hanging fruit.
   
   
2. In addition to the micro-dome (triangle), the player should have the option to build a micro-barrel dome, which is a linear shape with ~four (large building) triangles arranged in the narrowest/most linear fashion possible. This dome is also constructible with concrete, and is especially appropriate in the underground (think barrel vaults). I would recommend allowing this dome to be constructed directly into solid rock without prior clearing, if the game engine can be made to correctly excavate the appropriate hole. This style of construction could reduce the resource cost required to build the dome.
   
   
3. Both the basic and medium underground domes should allow spires and cost exotic minerals to construct. The core advantage is that the exotic minerals buy you spire space by opening up the middle of the dome without the need for more structural reinforcement. The basic dome should not require exotic mineral maintenance but the medium dome should, representing an increasing commitment to maintaining an asteroid mining enterprise to support a larger underground population. Seems like obvious low hanging fruit.
   
   
4. The RC Safari should have the capacity to carry non-tourist colonists, allowing the player to move colonists between domes, or between the elevator and a dome. This would load like a colony ship and only unload when specially commanded (same hour limit on colonist survival as ship in orbit). This will make it easier for the player to set up dome infrastructure at a place of their choosing in the underground without necessitating a clunky "reciever dome" near the elevator (at least, early on). Limitations of RC Safari design understood, but alternate approach needed.

 

[YertyL]

Well, this is quite a lot to read :-D
Just a small annotation to begin with: Developer is Abstraction now, not Haemimont.

 

[House_Elioz]

Fixed developer name (thanks).

I wanted to be precise enough to lay out changes which (taken together or separately) would systematically change the way the game played without requiring a full rebuild of the content. Would it be more readable as a larger number of smaller posts?

 

[YertyL]

Fixed developer name (thanks).

I wanted to be precise enough to lay out changes which (taken together or separately) would systematically change the way the game played without requiring a full rebuild of the content. Would it be more readable as a larger number of smaller posts?

I think readability is fine -- it is more that this is probably beyond what developers will realistically implement after release. But I like the enthusiasm

 

[House_Elioz]

I think readability is fine -- it is more that this is probably beyond what developers will realistically implement after release. But I like the enthusiasm

I hope they will at least consider the options which change the timing/research cost/access stuff even if they don't do bigger modifications to the actual map configurations. Right now the underground is just a project you do late game, not something that really helps you to use before sol 150 or so, and that's a shame.

 

[House_Elioz]

Having now played a substantial portion of a new run post-update, I've made some notes on where I see that improvements have taken effect. I observed in my latest game that I was able to explore a substantial part of the underground early, and discover, via exploration, a meaningful quantity of resources which I could use on the surface (and/or underground). I also was able to build an early elevator (~Sol 30) to extract extra water from underground to support my aboveground colony, so the below content actively aided my colonization effort. A few new notes/observations:

1. The changes to the uses of exotic minerals for buildings are generally good. I like the medical enhancement, and I can see niche use cases for the solar upgrade.

2. The mechanics for storing and flowing water between surface and underground are a bit janky. Water does not pull between levels to help fill storage tanks, which seems like a shame and leads to weird gimmicks like switching off the pipe to the elevator to force underground wells to pump more and fill underground tanks.

3. The elevator modifications are generally effective and greatly reduce the micromanagement factor. I also love that it acts as a drone hub for the immediate area.

4. More thought needs to be given to how underground access is accomplished at all phases of the game. Currently, meaningful underground access is only possible if the player's colony is built on top of the elevator. This is fine if the underground content is only intended to be accessed mid-to-late game (when more than one colony base exists on the surface), but the underground content cries out to be used more effectively before sol 100. Some specific thoughts:

• The inability to drop other RC vehicles into the underground (pre-elevator) is especially annoying in this context, both as a way to keep those vehicles useful and as a way of letting them drop into alternate entrances, etc.
  
  
• Now that lights cost polymers to build and that excavation is no longer possible underground, it is essentially mandatory to bring an RC transport, an RC commander and an RC explorer to maneuver and establish presence across the underground. There is no reason to prevent me from doing this while things aboveground are quiet as they occasionally are earlier in the game.
  
  
• At a minimum, excavation should be unlockable as a mid to late game tech. Very annoying that you can now not slightly modify cave sizes to accomodate equipment. I still think excavation should be more available with the tradeoff being that excavated areas cause more cave-ins as per post above.
  
  
• I still think it is too hard to get domes going underground, and this is exacerbated by the excavation limitation. There should be a basic dome using only concrete/no-exotic minerals (but no spire), and a better tool to move colonists from the elevator dome to inner domes before shuttles exist.