Thought stranded players needed love after watching "The Martian"

InsanityPie

Member
Jun 18, 2014
132
25
28
Im nowhere but also everywhere
As the thread title says, just got back from watching "The Martian" and thought I would point out a few things I noticed that might work as mod features. and how they might if added.

Hab. Modules: Habitation modules can be created by building the habitation areas rooms and then 'sealing' the module into a block for transport. When activating the block it spawns the 'sealed' structure in that spot. They would basically be multiblock structures tat gain or lose certain features based on what component blocks players add/remove. A completed one with a oxygen supply/rebreather, water supply, bed, and some kind of storage containers inside will be complete and be habitable inside with survival essentials. If a player crashes a ship for some reason while this item is stored in the ship it will instead of being destroyed in the explosion, it will deploy a wrecked habitation area near the crash zone to simulate it accidently deploying due to the impact and keeping at least part of it for stranded players to scavenge if needed.


Stranded Survival: We all have had the one moment when we crash landed cause we were looking away from the screen or some other reason... at that point theres no hope for getting offworld unless you had another rocket and keep inventory in SP.

So players have 2 choices at that point and one doesn't work in SP: Either make camp and hope you can survive with what you brought(something thats impossible sometimes for obvious reasons...) or hope another player can bring a rocket to you, bet the one that isn't SP friendly is obvious :p

The better/more realistic mars terrain I mentioned in the past would help a bit on the SP side since not having brought dirt wouldn't be a big issue due to dirt being present already and mars cobblestone can be added the to ore dictionary so it can be used to make the standard stone stuff. Mars already has ice added so players have access to water should they get stranded and oxygen can be created by players making a rudimentary rebreather or oxygen system from scrap that drops after the ship crashes or various ores/materials present like iron, copper, and desh. The rudimentary oxygen system would be VERY inefficent until players can upgrade them after collecting enough supplies from scavenging around the planet over time.

Players can then eventually collect enough materials if they survive long enough to craft a "Emergency Rocket" from pieces of wreckage the crashed rocket spawned and ores. This rocket is only good for one trip to the overworld and will be destroyed on landing safetly.


Local chats for planets: If a players on another planet, how will they hear the players on the overworld?...

To communicate between worlds players should need to setup a communication system either using rovers or some other way, don't really care how but seems like a fitting idea for the mod.


Tools: Not sure if it's been changed or not, but needing diamond or steel and above to mine stone on other planets without good reason for doing so is one heck of an immersion breaker.
If the planets had higher pressure then the overworld then it would make sense.

Having a lower mining level more similar to the overworld would allow us stranded players to make stone picks from the local stone and progress from there to create shelter, supplies, and materials to survive until we can make an Escape Rocket.


Rudimentary essentials: Players can make rudimentary gear such as wooden air tanks, wooden pipes, air bags and other such things incase they lost them in the crash... sure they aren't anywhere NEAR efficent or satifactory but what can you do? You gotta do whatever you can to survive, if it mean using a jenky oxygen gear they barely fits usable standards then so be it.

Wooden tanks would hold a little less then lime tanks and use up the oxygen a small bit faster to simulate small air leaks unless players can patch up the tank, weather with duct tape or some other way. Stone tanks may even be possible if players make a chisel from iron and a stick, they hold between lime and wood tanks but have less 'leakage' then wood.

Copper tanks, iron gear stuff, and so one can be added as well for a sort of gear progression for stranded players... after all, getting off a planet isn't easy so if you blow up the rocket on landing that's on you. It would be possible to get off world in SP given time and effort though.


Rudimentary rocket fuel: Creating a atmosphere valve and players can collect methane, fill the escape rocket with it and you can get back to the overworld!

Anyways, theres some ideas "The Martian" gave me... seems fitting a movie about being stranded on Mars gives feature ideas for stranded players xD
 
  • Like
Reactions: cricket354

pra

Member
Mar 7, 2015
328
120
43
36
Overworld
I wouldn't even make the hab.modules as multi block structures, it should be even easier if they just automatically build stuff. Aka, place tin deco blocks, oxygen sealers, sealed cables etc so that it makes a room. I'd say, 2x2 or even 1x2 corridors, with everything integrated in the walls in order to minimize the area for the oxygen sealers. I'm not sure about the "VERY inefficientent" rudimentary oxygen system, though, mostly because the actual oxygen system is quite inefficient already.

I like the idea regarding auto-deployment on crash and the emergency rocket, but the most important issue is IMHO that rockets just disappear when they fly off alone (when you accidentally dismount). That needs to be fixed first. If the rocket ends up alone, it's thrusters should shut down and it should crash, with the crash event as you described.

Local chats for planets: If a players on another planet, how will they hear the players on the overworld?...

To communicate between worlds players should need to setup a communication system either using rovers or some other way, don't really care how but seems like a fitting idea for the mod.
You can talk to people while being in Hell, too, so...
I also think that most people would object to that.


Rudimentary essentials: Players can make rudimentary gear such as wooden air tanks, wooden pipes, air bags and other such things incase they lost them in the crash... sure they aren't anywhere NEAR efficent or satifactory but what can you do? You gotta do whatever you can to survive, if it mean using a jenky oxygen gear they barely fits usable standards then so be it.

Wooden tanks would hold a little less then lime tanks and use up the oxygen a small bit faster to simulate small air leaks unless players can patch up the tank, weather with duct tape or some other way. Stone tanks may even be possible if players make a chisel from iron and a stick, they hold between lime and wood tanks but have less 'leakage' then wood.

Copper tanks, iron gear stuff, and so one can be added as well for a sort of gear progression for stranded players... after all, getting off a planet isn't easy so if you blow up the rocket on landing that's on you. It would be possible to get off world in SP given time and effort though.
Wood is kinda hard to obtain on Mars. Copper or tin or alu would be the more obvious choices imho.

General stuff regarding survivalist's gear:
- manual generator. You stand next to it and rightclick like crazy. generates at least some energy
- scavenger's worktable: allows some form of uncrafting. Works only on certain things like machines or tin deco blocks. (bonus: works on rockets, too, for recycling). Not sure how to balance it. Idea: the table has an extra slot for a tool. Depending on which tool you put in there, you regain other items, plus the tool loses durability. Maybe some kind of a crowbar to pry the plates of compressed metal apart. Regains the metal components, but destroys most of the other stuff. Or a soldering iron/welding torch to carefully weld them apart, that gives you back all the finer components, but destroys some of the metal parts.
- A way to obtain silicon. Maybe first a pulverizer equivalent to turn stone to sand, an then something like EnderIO's SAG mill to get some silicone from a lot of sand

Rudimentary rocket fuel: Creating a atmosphere valve and players can collect methane, fill the escape rocket with it and you can get back to the overworld!
There is no methane on mars, or even if, not even close to being enough. I think a better way would be to generate it from biomatter. You will have to grow it for food and oxygen anyway.
 
  • Like
Reactions: cricket354

InsanityPie

Member
Jun 18, 2014
132
25
28
Im nowhere but also everywhere
For the wood stuff, I was refering to players that have saplings since woods easy to obtain with at least one sapling... then again, who goes to mars without any saplings or dirt? I mean, Mars would be better is we didn't need to carry like 4 stacks of dirt due to dirt being present like real life but then again might be a while before the team looks at better terrain gen since they got other stuff to sort out currently.

I was going for hab. modules having certain life support or tech functions intergrated for room, you wouldn't need to worry about the sealers space since it's intergrated into the modules components. The modules would give life support with the right stuff supplied without players needing to constantly move sealers and other stuff and have move space inside. It would only be a multi-block structure in the similarity to some AE2 machines, theres no set structure since the structure only needs certain core components to be operational like AE2 auto-crafting multi-block systems.

The 'salvage table' idea is a good one and IMHO it doesn't really need much balancing since uncrafting items or blocks into the core materials would be a fair trade in most cases. Players can start with a Salvage Table to get scrap materials from various stuff they have no use for in order to build the basic rudimentary survival stuff and over time the Salvage Table can be upgrade with certain materials to be more efficent until you have an Atomic Deconstructor which gives all the materials that make up an uncrafted item.

As for the oxygen system, all I really feels needed is the ability to use it under water... other then that its pretty good for what it's got since it's probably not easy to get the small setup there is playing nicely at times. Sure it can be better, but so can alot of other parts of the mod that I personally think need a critical bit more attention at the moment like martian terrain, gravity, terraforming, and the ability for players to get off planets they are stranded on... but when they inevitably get to rehauling it, they can make inprovements like gas tanks that can hold the other gases, the air we breath isn't pure oxygen anymore, oxygen gear can work underwater, and stuff like that.

As for everything else, local planet chat is easily rectified with a config option for those of us who like the sound(I meant to do that I think?) of a most realistic chat system in regards to space travel but it should be default to disabled for the others who like it the way it is and I agree with all your other suggestions to be honest... I was only going for methane since I forgot biofuel was a thing xD
 
  • Like
Reactions: cricket354

C.L.

Member
Jul 4, 2016
55
17
8
Stranded Survival: We all have had the one moment when we crash landed cause we were looking away from the screen or some other reason... at that point theres no hope for getting offworld unless you had another rocket and keep inventory in SP.
Does "SP" stand for "survival play"?
 

radfast

Member
Staff member
Apr 27, 2014
1,118
339
83
There are some good thoughts in this thread. The developers also like the movie The Martian (and if you read sci-fi books, try Artemis by the same author, it's also fun!)

General plans include:-
  • (implemented) emergency kit to help people who die on Moon / Mars - either they prepared one in advance, or a server command can give them one of these to help out without them feeling like a total cheat
  • (implemented) /gchouston command to abort a mission and return to the Overworld (keeping any items currently in the player inventory)
  • some way to manufacture Dirt on Mars - we can't make it exactly like the Martian because there are no bathrooms/toilets or any concept of excrement in the game, and that's not a planned feature for Galacticraft (!). Maybe we should use bonemeal - this is also consistent with the Terraformer machine which can transform Mars regolith to dirt using bonemeal
  • better/more realistic mars terrain - at some point we want to re-work Mars with more varied terrain and more different features, so there can maybe be some useful blocks here.
  • some form of cheap / easy pre-fab shelter - probably based off the Oxygen Bubble Distributor concept
But we do not plan any general solution to the problem of being stranded on a planet without some needed resource - needed either to eat, or to breath, or to progress, or to return home. This problem is an intended and important part of Galacticraft. Players will have problems in the game if they don't plan in advance and take everything needed to other planets with them + some extra equipment to cover losses and other contingencies. As in real life, some equipment cannot be repaired or replaced on Mars, at least not until you have a fully functioning base with all resources (and even then you will likely be lacking some ores).

We make life on the Moon easier because we don't want newer or younger players to have a miserable time in the game, so there are Moon Villages which can help you in many ways (shelter / food / water / glowstone torches / villagers will trade items in Galacticraft 4).

But on Mars ... you really are on your own.
 

radfast

Member
Staff member
Apr 27, 2014
1,118
339
83
Wow very high amounts of magnesium and aluminium oxides in Mars regolith, I had no idea. As well as iron oxides of course.

Among other projects I am thinking about doing something with wind and sand storms on Mars (easier to implement now that we have acid rain working on Venus). I really think we need to re-do Mars terrain, with sandy, rocky, and boulder-strewn regions and some open canyons.

Moon regolith is nasty stuff, according to the novel Artemis which I mentioned already. Like ground up broken glass. Interesting to read that it has damaged the seals of the vacuum bottles it was stored in. I guess it could be smeltable into something - a dirty form of glass? I don't think the oxygen is easily chemically available, I think it's probably mostly Silicon Dioxide. I read this on Quora:
"The enthalpy of formation of silicon is -911 kJ/mol. This means that converting the elements Si and O2 to SiO2 gives out a LOT of energy. To reverse this, we have to put that energy back (and some more, courtesy of thermodynamics) which really means electricity or very high temperature. However at high temperature you have a gas containing Si, SiO, SiO2 and O2. Separating out the oxygen would be a substantial chemical engineering challenge."
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ezer'Arch

Share this page