[forgetfulness]

Oxygen Not Included is a ton of fun, the thing that makes me abandon my playthroughs is that, after learning so much of fake-plumbing, fake-hvac and fake-electrical installation mechanics, embarking on ever more ambitious projects that demand more planning and player-labor (harnessing that natural gas vent!) feels like a bit of a waste of time. It's so much of a job that I feel like I could be preparing to be an actual HVAC technician in real life with the amount of time and effort spent into keeping gases flowing through pipes at the right temperature in a simulation.

[pm90]

And debugging when something goes wrong can be really tedious if you're currently focused on another project.

That's what gets me ultimately. I get a good colony going, but end up trying to do something just a little bit ambitious, but there's something that starts breaking and requires so much effort to fix, after a while I just give up.

[forgetfulness]

Power management is a lot of work.

Adding one new station machine can result in you having to redesign the whole plan of your power distribution network.

Want to make those cool atmo suits? The noob trap is refining metal with the crusher and running out of easily accessible copper and iron.

The more long-term sustainable way is using the electric refinery.

It wasn't the only piece of infrastructure that led to it, but in my last base I had to redesign the whole power grid to have segregated electric networks of high-voltage wire leading to various power regulators that acted as substations delivering power to separate lower-voltage networks.

It was a cute puzzle but I didn't feel like I accomplished something from all that work, damn. I guess it's an analogue as to how it works in the real world, but I don't know enough about how it works in the real world as to tell how simplified and fake the game version is, what did I learn really?

And now you have to deal with all the heat dissipation from all this, time to learn the mock version of another infrastructure-related profession.

[theptip]

I’d agree with this one. On one hand, small tasks like wiring up a new volcano tamer can be a good bite-sized puzzle for a session. But last run I played I just ran out of steam at the prospect of building a petroleum boiler again. It's fiddly, error-prone, and to do it optimally you really need to prototype in debug mode. Sounds too much like a chore!

That said I got many, many hours of fun mastering the simulation up to that point, so it’s still a strong recommend for me.

[imtringued]

Do you really think a video game is comparable to a 40 hour work week?

[forgetfulness]

Do you really think that's what I think?

No, I said that ONI crosses a threshold for me where I feel like I'm investing too much time into learning a simulation of a real-world trade to be worth it, it feels a bit hollow after a while that I'm devoting so much time to it and not learning the real thing.

I guess that Guitar Hero and Farm Simulator wouldn't be games for me either, I feel some guilt of not learning the actual thing after a while.

Edit: But to the credit of ONI, that's after ten hours of fun, and I go back to it once a year or so. My bases won't extend to the hundreds of hours and explore all the game mechanics, but I've still gotten a lot of enjoyment from the game.

[slothtrop]

It doesn't need to be to feel like work, when it should be fun.