Fiber plants are too nerfed for Biofuel

Discussion in 'FAQ & Feedback' started by NimrodX, Jan 25, 2019.

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Are fiber plants too nerfed?

  1. Yes, they need to produce more plant fiber.

    4 vote(s)
    30.8%
  2. No.

    9 vote(s)
    69.2%
  1. NimrodX

    NimrodX Commander

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    I made this as a test to see if farming fiber plants is worthwhile:

    https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1634004405

    My conclusion is that fiber plants are too nerfed and need to be more in line with harvesting wood logs.

    144 fiber plants produces enough plant fibers in one harvest to make 56 biofuel which is almost but not quite enough to fill a small HV fuel tank. That's way too many fiber plants for that much fuel.

    But it will produce 2,880 Carbon Substrate (more than I know what to do with anyway)
    and 11,520 Nitrocellulose which is enough to make 201,600 30mm Ammo rounds.

    That is extremely out of wack. Conclusions:

    Plant fiber should produce from 2x to 4x as much biofuel.
    It should produce the same amount of Carbon Substrate.
    It should probably produce 5x less Nitrocellulose.

    Alternately, logs should probably produce less plant fibers per log and fiber plants should produce twice as much. I don't think it's unreasonable for one plant to be kept in line with one log worth of fiber.

    Filling a single HV fuel tank should only require 36 fiber plants if you ask me. That's still a lot of plant beds to dedicate to fuel.


    Unrelated comment: The fiber plant visuals aren't very convincing. The current model looks like a type of useless weed such as a tumbleweed. They really ought to look more like a cotton plant or something that is used for plant fiber.
     
    #1
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  2. SmaugBR

    SmaugBR Lieutenant

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    Hi!

    I'm repeating myself and a post from other player, but seizing this opportunity, I can say: PLEASE, BRING BACK BIOFUEL PRODUCTION FROM MOLD!!!

    In short, in needs just an adjustment to recipes. It would be like this:

    Logs > Plant Fiber > Mold > BioFuel

    Just insert the spoiled food/mold there. A simple math could keep things simple and preserve ingame rates. Two consequences: it makes more sense producing Biofuel from spoiled food than from Plant Fiber directly and it could give us some real usefulness to Spoiled Food rather than just Nutrient Solution (which, per se, becomes useless once you build all your Growing Plots).

    This recipe chain could be dealt by the same constructors it is today (just inserting the "spoiled food/mold" step).

    Thanks.
     
    #2
  3. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    I think that makes sense. I never grew fiber except for a single 3x3 area just for convenience. It just doesn't seem worth it when you can get a life time supply of fiber from 30 minutes in an hv.
     
    #3
  4. ThumpieBunnyEve

    ThumpieBunnyEve Ensign

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    there is no draw to planting fiber plants. no gain just wasted space.
    your basically penalized for growing fiber-plants.

    one way to fix this would be to increase the output. and or also decrease the regrow time.
    another would be to return a different item to the player. such as Green-Fiber.
    processing it returns 4 plant fiber each. perhaps.

    too tired to think further on it. ..zzZZ
     
    #4
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  5. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    Or let us grow trees! :D
     
    #5
  6. Sephrajin

    Sephrajin Rear Admiral

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    Bonsai-'Wool'-Trees :D

    Wasnt biofuel once based on only spoiled Food?
    Made much more sense to me than putting fibres only in the tank.

    Either way, yes, please balance the fibre/nitrocelluose/Carbon/Output.
     
    #6
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2019
  7. SGP Corp

    SGP Corp Captain

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    I always assumed that the plant fibre was some sort of rapeseed like plant...visually in-game it is certainly similar looking and rapeseed is used to produce biofuel in real life so its application in-game always made sense to me. But there are multiple ways in real life for producing substances that can be used as biofuels so just on a "logical" basis (which, admittedly, this game already plays loose with it in a wide range of things) there is no reason not to be able to reintroduce biofuel recipes using spoiled food in addition.
    If its a matter of game balance...adjusting required ingredient quantities could probably address that. In fact if you assume rapeseed is the RL model for plant fibre plants then in-game is already at over 2x better production rate over real world production on a per acre basis (1 Acre of Rapeseed produces about 150 gallons of biofuel on average whereas in EGS 1 Acre of Plant fibre plants if cultivated would produce about 400 gallons of biofuel). This difference , of course, is easy to account for by either assuming 1. the future has brought better efficiency in production or 2. While the plant is "like" rapeseed it is still alien and thus could be a more efficient source of alkyls.

    Balancing, though, is really another issue completely, on the other hand, and this game, arguably, needs to address that issue across the board in many other areas as well (thrusters, AI threats, volume and mass, constructors, etc.). This is also a touchy subject because one gamer's idea of balance is another gamer's disruption of their preferred play style and so don't want to see any significant changes in the game that impact that. Furthermore, in defense of the Devs, its difficult to do that while constantly adding new features that can potentially disrupt any previous attempts at balancing. The Devs probably should (and may already have) plan on at least one "deep dive" into game balance near the end of development before officially leaving Beta.
     
    #7
  8. IndigoWyrd

    IndigoWyrd Rear Admiral

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    Have you looked at the amount of plant fiber produced from a single wood log?

    The little fiber weeds are fine.
     
    #8
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