#32833 introduced “alien resin pods” that can be stolen from Mi-go towers and used for construction. I have tried to get these for my faction camp (you need 8 to get started), but the process of acquiring them is prohibitively tedious and time-consuming due to the tower’s temperature mechanics.
- It takes 10 minutes to deconstruct a single resin pod, and I propose shortening this to 2 minutes at the MOST, I assume this would require an “examine” menu implementation (as is described in the PR) rather than through the construction menu. Perhaps it should require a certain cutting/butcher quality, skills, whatever seems appropriate. I’ll now explain why 10 minutes is much too long, in my opinion.
After asking around and testing temperature mitigation methods, I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t any way to make the mi-go tower comfortable, outside of speculative vehicle cheese (not that they need to be comfy). Even theoretical vehicles that might work will likely require more time & effort than what it would take to deconstruct the pods one at a time.
-
Vehicle construction within the tower is impractical, since it takes longer than getting the pods and the resin floors obstruct vehicle movement. (So you’d have to do it multiple times to reach the pods scattered about). If coolers even work (and I don’t know that they do), they require an offset muffler to dump heat. This rules out a “folding” vehicular solution, I personally tried this one.
-
The scarred lumps have str_min 250, so unless there’s a way to precisely destroy them (without damaging the pods, which are delicate in comparison) that doesn’t require standing in the heat for a while, dealing with them is also impractical. And you’d have a LOT of vents to smash. I don’t think the towers were designed with the idea that these can be neutralized.
-
The 200+ heat characters accumulate (on the @ screen) within minutes isn’t surmountable by any means available to the player, or at least none that I’m aware of. Even if Thermal dissipation worked, maintaining that upkeep for 10 mins is not really viable.
I’d love to be proven wrong, believe you me. I’m exploring the options in this topic, but I haven’t seen a practical solution yet.
- The issue is that no matter what, after several minutes in the tower you’ll end up scorched all over. This severely lowers your speed (thus getting pods takes much longer than 10 min) and damages you. While it’s not impossible (using climate control cbm, rm13 armor, deadened & regeneration) my only option is to remove a pod, wait a while to recover, and repeat. This eats a lot of time both in-game and irl. It’s not an issue of risk vs. reward, but rather mechanics demanding that you waste an excessive amount of time with an un-engaging, tiresome task.
I’m not saying alien resin pods should be easy, I think even if it takes a few minutes per pod it’s still rather dangerous. Moreover, getting them isn’t any more challenging than clearing the tower, just prohibitively tedious. Make the guards tougher, or decrease the amount of pods that spawn in a tower, etc. All I’d want to see is a major reduction in harvest time so that this isn’t a completely dead feature, because in asking around I get the impression nobody really bothers with these, which is a shame.
I love the concept of these resin pods, they’re a unique, compelling reason to seek out Mi-go fortifications. I really think that making it take just a minute to cut a pod loose changes very little and transforms them into a usable feature. Their ability to form solid structures very quickly is attractive enough in and of itself, and I personally wouldn’t mind if player-built resin structures were much weaker than their mi-go counterparts for balance purposes.