More nature power!

[Keymaster89]

Hi guys, what i'm suggesting is an improvement into variety of natural resouces and landscape features that the game can generate.

Volcano and lava:
Volcanos are like steam vents, but 2x2, they release a set amount of lava that hurt and set on fire everything it touch. It can be found into a cave. With the appropriate resarch, you could build on it some sort of conteinement for the lava, build a thermal power plant that with steam produce both elettricity and heat for your houses and it could also be used to produce chunks of rocks. In addition, rarely it becomes an active volcano, after a day long inactivity, it reproduce the solar eclipse event, spills a lot more lava then normally, and trow chunks in the air that land all around the map(we hope not on your head ^^). Obviously lava is an extremly good heat source used raw, useful if you are freezing in the cold nights and occasionally spawn rocks and few amount of metals around the lava border. Hanging around lava for too much is not advised due to extreme temperature. I hope i don't need to say everything that go into lava dies and get destroyed.

Rivers, lakes and water:
Rivers are flowing water that cross the land usually from a side to side in a plain, from a cave to another cave or a border of the map in mountains, and from a border to the sea in coasts, they are composed by an outer layer of calm water like we already have, and one inner layer of flowing water that push you around if you go into it(or really slow you down). They can be deep or shallow water where you can pass through and wade it. Seasonally fish flow into river and lakes that you can hunt (or fish), also some sort of reeds grow naturally around it like berry bushes do and the land are often fertile around it. With the appropriate resarch, you can build idroelettric generators that can be build only into flowing waters, bridges, that allow you to build a floor type that can go over water without interfering with it's flowing properties, and boats to navigate the water. Possible event with rivers are flood, that turn into flowing water all the water tile of the river and put some flowing water over the riverbank destroying everything on it, and shoal, that turn all flowing water of the river into normal water and normal water into river bad land, a big quantity of fish also die on the river bank if present, both event are a week long.

Crystal and mushrooms:
They both spawn under caves roof. There could be many type of crystals, for examples: glowing one that produce light for free, precious rare one excellent for artwork or for make easy cash, charged one, that with little efforts can be turned into mid sized batteries (maybe with a little resarch), focus crystal, that allow you to focus light in one point, necessary to build any sort of device with lasers in it and so on... Mushrooms grow and spread by their own, requiring good amount of time giving a little source of vegetarian food. They could also be intensively grown at super fast speed into idroponics. Some mushrooms can be fluorescent so they are tiny light source, and some are poisonous, paralizing or slowliy killing the colonist that eat it raw for a time or until you mix an antivenom from the mushrooms itself in a cooker with some medicine. Some mushrooms can also grow in the sunlight but only in forest and jungle biomes and only adiacent to a tree.

Fruit trees and Beehives:
Fruit trees are trees that spawn fruits regularly. They are planted like regular wood tree, and you can still chop them down for wood, but they also regularly spawn fruits ones fully grown like apples, oranges, pears, bananas that the colonist harvest like in a growing zone. Such plants are seasonal, and the fruits spoil in a week even if not harvested. Honey is found in a beehive that spawn on tree if you have flowers planted around. The hive should be destroyed from distance but the job could be done by hand (even if not adviced ^^). hitting the beehive free the bees that stay around the hive for around a day to defend it, the bee swarm is an aggressive entity that is immune to normal damage but attack only entity 3 tiles away from the hive, only fire and explosion damage can affect them. If at the end of the day the beehive is still intact, the bees return to it and despawn, otherwhise the swarm start wondering for another location for where to build a new hive (or go away of the map if no flower are present). The honey grow in the hive up to a cap (20-30?), ones the cap is reached, a new neutral bee swarm take half the honey an start migrate to another position to build another hive. Any hive need at least 5-6 tile of flower to exist, if there aren't enough flowers the bees will go out of the map edge and despawn. Honey is a really powerful ingredient, 1 unit of raw honey is enough to feed a colonist and give him the mood bonus of +5 ("Sweet happiness"). Also, honey have huge spoil duration, up to 6 month, but animals are attracted, so store them in your fridge or they will come to take your honey reserve first.

Wolfs, bears, tigers and alligators:
More animals! More predators! I don't see any carnivore predators out in the map... Any biomes should have at least one big one. If there aren't, they should appear as soon that there are a lot of entities to hunt. They could attack colonist if hungry, provocated or even if they get too close but they try to stay away to your colonist normally. Some melee weapon could really help you there if you get surprised. Wolfs stay in groups like deer and muffalos do, not too strong but fast, they count on numbers, but are a treat even if alone. Bears are sturdy, slow and powerful, they hang around alone, under a roof cave if there is some. Tigers are fast, really powerful and have average healt, if satiated they sleep a lot. Alligators stay around water pools, they are really slow and don't try to chase u, but their attack is lethal, will probably cost you an arm or a leg (not that is difficult to replace if you manage to save the colonist). More to add! even aliens creatures are good, but we need some predators!

[TheNewTeddy]

While I disagree with some of the specifics, I agree having more power sources is a good thing.

I'd actually like to see the addition of Oils or Coals. Mine out an area, get chunks of Coal, for example, that you can dump into a hopper beside a Coal Power Generator. It would poison the air, so no putting it inside, but it would generate a lot of power for a little coal.

Great in the early game, but your tech would/could make other power sources better.

Also Nuke power. Replace short circuit events with meltdown events.

[JimmyAgnt007]

I think the antimatter reactor from the ship should be build-able indoors by default and produce a lot more power.  That being said, coal and oil would be neat.  A power plant that works like the protein paste dispenser just with the burnable fuels instead of food.  Wood could be a backup fuel as well.  Farming would suffer based on the wind direction an the ground could turn toxic maybe?