Some thoughts after 150 hours in survival:

[JUST TABLES!]

So I've done 3 playthroughs on survival now.

The first was exciting, new, difficult at times. Quite enjoyable, got very easy after a 20 or so hours, coasted to near the center.

The second was "iron-man" meaning if I died I had to start over. I died once about 5 hours in, started over, didn't die again and made it to center. It was...fun...ish

The third one was "iron-man" and I maxed everything out and was like...meh.

Once you get the hang of it, there is no difficulty to survival, but there are some differences, some not so great.

What I like about survival:

1) Environmental hazards are actually dangerous (at least at first). Though this is solved with theta protection and buying as much Zinc and Ti from vendors as you want, it is still a constant thing you need to manage. Need more of this. More difficult environmental hazards should have more meaningful rewards, but otherwise, I like that you actually have to manage something during a storm on an extreme planet with hostile sentries and mean dinos, and if you don't, you could easily die.

2) Life support is meaningful (at least at first). This is also eventually solved with LS mods, would like to see more variation in LS drain on different planets, or at different times in the day/night cycles. It eventually becomes trivial which is a shame (so much th9 on barren worlds and a power cell is just a click away on the galactic term.)

3) You have to choose the right course of action to be efficient and survive, BUT, that leads to one of my bigest gripes about survival as well. It favors efficiency over exploration--needs to balanced better. How? I have no idea. Exploration should be rewarded somehow, but as it stands, you punish yourself by exploring.

My three biggest gripes with survival:

1) It ruins "perfect" planets by making 99.9% of them have hostile sentries--some say they have found lush planets without hostile sentries in survival--I haven't, and have been to at least 500, and have actively looked. The only planets I have found without hostile sentries in survival have some sort of environmental hazard, which is too bad.

In my opinion, hostile sentries don't make the game more difficult; they make it more aggrevating. That's not difficulty; that's like getting bit by mosquitos...constantly...

2) It exchanges exploration for efficiency. You simply can't/don't spend as much time exploring because it is so inefficient. Is this a good trade-off? Probably not. 200 Pu per launch is easy enoguh to gather and even make warp cells with the balance you'll find if you know where to look, but you will more than likely only be landing at places where you can take-off again for free, so you spend most of your time at trading platforms, towers, outposts, barren planets/moons (for large quants of Pu/Th9).

Now, of course, you CAN just land anywhere you want, but when one launch costs you two times the cost of an electron vapor, it's hard to justify a reason to land anywhere except at launch pads/beacons. You can explore 2 more systems for the same cost.

3) Getting less resources from nodes, but same frequency. This is...not well done imo. I mean, take Rigogen. Sure, it's possible to farm lots on survival, and is actually one of the more "difficult" things to do (you actually need membranes, Zi/Ti, life support, etc. to be remotely efficient vs. on normal you can basically just swim around and get it with no upgrades in suit).

Now obviously the reason they lessen the node production is because it is the same planet from survival to normal, and the only way to make it more "difficult" is to give you less, but boy is this unsatisfying. It would be SO much better if the nodes themselves were rarer but had the same output--it would make finding them rewarding in survival. As it stands, it feels like you do the same work but get much less for no reason except...difficulty. I'd argue that's not difficult, but annoying.

TL;DR So all in all, I guess I'd say I like survival more than normal, but it could be a lot better if it actually made for difficult encounters instead of focusing so much on efficiency, giving you less for the same amount of time, etc. That feels less difficult, more annoying.

[bcatrek]

Interesting read. Question: how did you make it to the centre three times on 150hours of gameplay? Did it take you 50hrs per game on average? I'm nowhere near those numbers, not by a long shot :-D

[JUST TABLES!]

Originally posted by bcatrek:

Interesting read. Question: how did you make it to the centre three times on 150hours of gameplay? Did it take you 50hrs per game on average? I'm nowhere near those numbers, not by a long shot :-D

Seems too short or too long to get to center? I honestly have no idea myself. First trip I meandered quite a bit, 2nd trip was mostly a beeline through black-holes.

3rd run, I'm not at the center, I went to https://www.reddit.com/r/NMSGalacticHub/, though it took about half as long to get to center I'd guess anyway since you can't use black holes.

Fwiw, black holes are by far the fastest way to center. If you've noticed that when you fly 1500 LY to the next system, you really only get about 300-400 LY closer, right? Black holes actually put you 1k-1500 LY closer (albeit along a random circle around the center) and you can essentially do two jumps per warp cell.

I'm back on normal now to head to the Galactic Hub because exploring is just too much of a pain in survival (the goal of the Hub is to catalog and identify everything in one area of the galaxy, not so much fun in survival with 200 pu per launch etc.)

[bcatrek]

There's some good advice there, and I think tips from more seasoned players is always very good in a game that comes literally without instruction and that is so so big...

But yea, I've been playing for 200 hours and still 140 000 LY from the centre!!!

I've been focusing a lot on atlas path, polo/nada path, getting all the milestones and all the lore from the alien plaques, and building a large base with two landing platforms and two trading terminals, a large mordite farm among other things... and just now I found a dream-planet that I'm planning to move my base to, so I'm not going anywhere near the centre just yet!

Just like you, I also found the black holes much more beneficial for when I was covering the distance from my starting system to where I currently am though, and the extra time needed to repair tech gives me opportunity to explore local planets, flora/fauna and above all monoliths and plaques... I love the mystique surrounding those things!

PS. I'd be super-stoked to head over to the Hub as well, and this might just as well be my next mission haha!!

[JUST TABLES!]

Cool, see you there! We need more people from PC to explore the area (unfortunately it's a much bigger community for ps4 and the naming/prices don't xfer cross-platform). The planets, what's on them, and structure of the stars is the same however. It's quite nice because you'll find stars that tell you what selling double at the station or have zoology finished etc., and even find a few comm. stations--again, not as much as on ps4, but still quite active.

[pmcollectorboy]

I plan on getting the suit shielding upgrades and the multitool tech that let's you shred sentinels in seconds. Then I won't be so afraid of landing on frenzied sentinel planets.
They COULD probably tone it done so that they're not in your face every five seconds.

[JUST TABLES!]

Originally posted by pmcollectorboy:

I plan on getting the suit shielding upgrades and the multitool tech that let's you shred sentinels in seconds. Then I won't be so afraid of landing on frenzied sentinel planets.
They COULD probably tone it done so that they're not in your face every five seconds.

As I said, it's not because they are difficult in the slightest--they die quite literally instantly with railshot and all the mining tool upgrades. It's just that they make otherwise very pleasant planets basically abuzz with mosquitos.

[bcatrek]

I removed boltcaster entirely from my multi-tool, so that I could max out on laser+grenade. Sentinels schmentinels, they're history even on extreme planets. Not saying that's the best way to do it, but it works well for me.

[JUST TABLES!]

Yes, typically just using combat mining with railshot basically vaporizes them before they even do anything. When I max out mining tool I use just 2 scan upgrades, 1 grenade theta, and then eveyrthing else you could put on mining beam (so sigma tau theta omega combat) and they lierally die before "hostiles" is finished.

I guess I just would rather they were not always on the pretty planets. Every lush world I have been to (meaning didn't have a environ. hazard or resource) has had these annoying little mosquitos.

Or actually make them difficult. I'd be all for having the dog robots come after you if you are on a hostile planet, even starting out--that would be like a planet with extreme environment when you are just starting out, sometimes you just have to turn around and go to another one. Would love more difficult encounters, less annoying encounters (as sentinals are now).

[Bad Hair Day]

Why don't you suspend the sentinels by going to wanted level 5? I always do that when they're bugging me.