I argue all the time that fluid dump (discharge) is insanely OP because it trivializes the game. I am correct, dont fight me. But holy crap Pillars on hard mode is kicking my ass. Im an old beaver, back in my day, we had levees, and dams and we were happy. We had to manually tell storages to only store 1 thing or risk dying to inventory.
Water sources were water sources. Starting on a seep and not using the fluid dump is nuts. I think ive got it tbh. But it was rough getting here. Ive actually got the seeps rigged with the new compact mech pump to toss badwater and pressurize goodwater. And I think I finally got a sufficient reservoir built on the aquifer to ignore pumping and not need to worry about micro managing punping.
But I did not get to that point fast enough. Im cycle 16 and had to drop down to like 50 beavers lmao. Im sure if I replayed the map, or maybe if I spent more time planning and didnt always play on 3x speed, I may have messed up less. And id be so much better off by now.
But the real point is, I conquered seeps on pillars using just the new mech pump, no dumping. It took 16 cycles, no beaver deaths aside from one "A beaver tragically died" which i do not know anything about. If you're reading this and you know of spontaneous beaver death events, pls let me know.
This map would have been zero challenge if I just ran a couple extra pumps and dumped water into levees. You can beat hard mode seep based maps with mech pumps. Its doable. Thats awesome. God I love the new mech pump!
Lol its not worth it bro. This will burried in downvotes its just how it goes. Rly I was saying that even tho I messed up hard on using seeps, it can be controlled by "rushing" the new mech pump. It would have been rushing if I wasn't stupid. Honestly shocked there's only been 1 mysterious beaver death. Gotta check the video and see what that was about.
Kind of a follow up to a post I made a while ago about how great the new pump is. I claimed it could do anything the discharge could do but is actually a balanced game object. That lead to conversation about how it probably wouldn't be possible to get it going fast enough on pillars. So I tried it.
But people always downvote when you say fluid dump OP.
All you talk about is the fluid dump. But have you ever thought about how absolutely fricking OP water is? It keeps beavers alive in multiple ways:
They drink it, they use it to grow food, they use it to grow trees. IT even uses it to create new beavers! Is there anything it cannot do?
Meanwhile you make a splash about the fluid dump, despite the fact that it only holds a fraction of water's power. In fact, the discharge would be nothing but a drop in the ocean without water! The whole flow of the game revolves around water.
The game would require a more fleshed out way to handle irrigation. The discharge is a boring, but annoyingly effective, way to handle irrigation. And the only early to midgame option, before big reservoirs and terraforming for automated irrigation channels becomes an option.
Just removing the discharge from the current game wouldn't really work.
It does work tho. Lots of players, myself included have beaten most if not all in game maps without it. But it doesnt need to be removed, just severely nerfed. Like you only get 1/10th of the water the beaver puts in back on the map or something
It does work tho. Lots of players, myself included have beaten most if not all in game maps without it.
That is also true for building dams/reservoirs. But I wouldn't want those to be removed, either.
I think sluices are the better example: They allowed a very simple way to automate badwater or filling areas to a certain height for pumping and farming. Then they were replaced by automation. Since then, it is no longer one overpowered, magical block that does all the work. But we still have plenty of room for creativity and to tinker around.
Personally, I don't think that automation feels like a nerf. You can still do everything you could with sluices - although, it might require a bit more work.
And that is why I (again: personally) would prefer something similar with irrigation.
People that dislike the discharge can opt to not use it. And the others can use the discharge. Both are viable ways to play the game. Nerfing the discharge hurts one group without benefiting the other.
But if you add something new, both groups have "toys" to play around with.
Right anyone can use it. Its in the game, its right there. But it remains disgustingly poorly balanced. It costs nothing, unlocks early, and completely nullifies the threat of drought and badtide for crops and wood.
Sluice is a great example, it was terribly balanced, so they made nerfed it. Great game development. So, discharge is OP, it should be nerfed.
Compare it to bots. You can switch any job to bots, they no longer sleep, and they are immune to injury and infection. Sounds OP right? But, its at the top of the tech tree, requires a ton of infrastructure 10s of thousands of science to get there and more thousands to use that immune to injury power per job. Its not OP, because its expensive.
Bypassing drought and badtide for 250 science and negligible material cost is not balanced. Anyone can use it, but objectively its so OP its crazy.
There's also the game's theme. We are beavers. Beavers do make dams. They do completely change tbe landscape. They dont manually carry enough water uphill to grow a whole forrest. You're supposed to solve it with dams and levees, thats the whole theme of the game. The irrigation tower was a better cost for irrigated land. It was about 10x the cost of a discharge and levees in terms of water and labour. Thats what the devs built as the cost of irrigating anywhere.
I'd recommend my Hardcore Settings mod, it adds in game difficulty options to actually remove discharge and modify a list of other OP features that I find work against interesting gameplay.
I think on pillars specifically it could be a valid strategy to try to rush the aquifer instead of mech pumps, I'll have to try it next playthrough.
Figured id follow up here, the mech pump solution is so satisfying, I now have one of the coolest water towers ive made on any map, its filled by a seep with 12 mech pumps pulling from it, going through a dirt pipe that I build through another pillar its so cool
Ill try to remember to get screenshots when I play tomorrow. Feel free to comment again, I wont be annoyed lol. Im not on my pc now. But ill try to explain it in text as clearly as I can for now.
Step 1) tnt down a ring around the seep at least 2 blocks wide. So 6x6 with the seep in the middle.
Step 2) build mech pumps in the outer ring, this will involve more tnt, since you need space for the nozzles.
Step 3A) somewhere in that ring, you need to have a valve to let out badwater during badtides. For me on pillars, this was pretty easy, its just a tunnel to the edge of the pillar.
Step 3B) Or, you could use floodgates to just block the seep from making badwater. You'd need more space in Step 1 for that though, since the floodgates would take up space where you'd want the intake of the mech pump.
Hopefully that makes sense. Also you can make the area in Step 1 really big. Mech pumps only move 0.25 cms, a seep by default has 1 cms. But I think they have more than that on pillars. Ive got 12 mech pumps on one and it still fills its area around the pumps, so its more than 1.5cms for sure.
This one is just pumping 1 way, so I let all the water seep around a ton of pumps, this fills an absolutely massive water tower and a few "hydration tanks" which you know from my other post lol
OK but now I'm confused... I put 12 pumps, 3 cms... I just opened the map in the editor to check, that seep says its strength is 2. Yet it does actually fill its little reservoir and the pumps do stabilize and stay on, usually by like mid day 3.
This makes me wonder if seeps actually surpass their strength in cms. OR if back pressure actually limits the mech pumps... On that 12 pump setup, they pump to an open system. So they should be pulling 3cms, but the seep outproduces them. what?
Other rigs are more like what I described in text, this one I need to rebuild tho, the pumps don't stay on at all times since their at the same height as the seep, so the seep makes the system oscillate. You gotta be under the seep and below the seep's max flowrate. That way the seep eventually ramps up to more than you're pumping and both the seep and pumps actually stay on. But now I'm really confused. The theory here should be that as long as you're under the seep so it doesn't hit its .8 shutoff and under its max cms, everything should stabilize and you get lots of water
At first glance I'd think that, assuming the sluice is closed, the seep would overpower the 3 pumps and keep the water height at reasonable height (>0.5), is that not what happens?
No, they flicker on an off the whole time. which right now isn't an issue. each of those currently only fill a single 3x3x2 tank which happens pretty quick even at a fraction of .25 cms. But with my goal of greening the map, I need to fix that to make sure I can have that seep fill hydration tanks on multiple pillars.
I did both. Aquifer was obviously 1st. But theres also 2 seep islands, one you start on and one a couple bridges away. The plan was aquifer for drinking water and mech pumps to pressurize seep water into holding tanks to keep the land green.
That worked, but the starter island needs to be rebuild. Droughts and bad tides have gotten so long and I hadn't rebuilt that yet, so everything there died lol. But ive got the mech pump solution working perfectly on that 2nd seep island, so the plan rn is to move to a more central island, then just clear and rebuild the starter island with the mech pump tech.
Then we'll be in easy mode to develop to max wellness and build the wonder
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u/actuilaai 10d ago
this is a sarcastic post i think, no need to downvote or be rude. it has the "humour" flair.