Deconstruction refund variable with difficulty

32 votes

Deconstruction of buildings currently yields a flat 75% refund. While I appreciate that this is provides challenge and incentive to plan ahead for players on the second or subsequent playthroughs, it's unnecessarily punishing to new players on their first go at the game. Especially so very early game when Construction Parts are limited to the starting amount plus what you can craft out of materials recovered from the abandoned tower. Given the option, I'd probably turn this to 95% or full refund in my playthroughs as I really love to iterate on my designs and feel disincentivized from doing so.

Alternatively, if there was a mechanic that allowed for the relocation of a building (a "move" function, so to speak) where the old one is first deconstructed fully, that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.

Done Suggested by: Thadius Wynter (30 Jan, '22) • Upvoted: 01 Sep, '23 • Comments: 8

Comments: 8

30 Jan, '22
LodeRunner
If the refund value or possible relocation cost were configurable, like other modifiers, instead of hard coded to a particular difficulty, that would be the best, in my opinion.
31 Jan, '22
pttg
I tend to agree. Is it realistic that an entire factory gets turn down and rearranged? Well, probably not. But conversely, is it realistic that an entire factory might be constructed before anytime realizes that two critical ports can't be connected?

Moving buildings is an option, but it's got a lot of edge cases. Probably better to go with full refunds.
16 Feb, '22
Yandersen
Must add that either 75% or 100% refund make no difference in practice. It simply harasses OCD-players and shy ones that see unavoidable losses as a wall on a path of rebuilding. I don't think this is a good mechanic in general being hard-coded. Setting is needed, indeed.
05 Jun, '22
Michal Řeháček
I tend to experiment and play with factory layouts a lot, which is difficult with less than 100% refund. Configurable option would make us able to choose if want to go for more freedom in experiments, or more challenge. And I think this is especially important for new players, before they learn to find out how much space you need between buildings to be able to fit conveyors later, etc.
08 Jun, '22
Sephy
While it's certainly a challenge when it only refund 75% of the cost, I'd experiment a lot more if the refund is 100%
08 Jun, '22
Darkaiser
I'm in favor of a 100% refund on anything that does not require power. This covers the entire early game and into the mid-game as well. New players won't be punished for not realizing that their pipes don't line up or whatever but the higher-tier buildings still require thought and planning.

Alternately, I can also see smaller buildings like Storages being movable. If you doubt the validity of this, watch the video following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL7TqSeDus
10 Jun, '22
Dyanosis
This doesn't really make any sense as destroying something will always give you the same output, with the output never being equal to the input. I can see why other games would do that, but in a game simulating real life, this idea makes no sense.

So you destroy your rain water collectors on the hardest difficulty and get nothing back, for example? Where does that make sense?
17 Jun, '22
Jamie
On starting a new game a Custom Setting to set this to 100 percent.