Well I guess I'm done for the meantime.

[ValhallasAshes]

Just wanted to say I had fun and I think the game has a lot of potential, but I've hit a brick wall. I bought a plot and wanted to dig down to build a huge mining operation. But without the excavator or something that can move/remove the amount of material I need to remove to get deep enough at a reasonable pace, it's just going to take way too long get anywhere. even the common pickaxe is way too underpowered for that kind of task. Especially since I'm not allowed to hold the left down to keep striking. I already did that at the starting area, I'm not doing that in an area that is several orders of magnitude larger. I just don't have that kind of time for that level of tedium.

So I have to call it for the meantime. I'd love to keep playing, but I've hit a brick wall to progression until the excavator gets re-added to the game. I really wish you had just left the old one in the game until the new one was ready.

[Darth Zed]

use explosives.

[ValhallasAshes]

Tried that. Even tried nukes. But really REALLY expensive and takes forever to set. Leaves scrap behind. I might try again, but that's definitely going to cost me an arm and leg. Really need the excavator.

[InertFurry]

Honestly do not know how you manage to play a game as slow to start as Hydroneer and get caught up on the digging speed with a pickaxe.
Just buy a bunch of stairs and dig out space for them, go back to pick up another stair, dig out the next space, repeat. It gets you a mostly grid-aligned path. Enhancing that methodology can include a rake. You only need one tap with a pickaxe to get to lowering which is both grid-aligned and faster.
For nukes? If the scrap is a problem, bring a magnet and a crucible. Scrap ingots is a thing and a heated crucible smelts that down instantly. The ~1800hc one works better, it feels.

Honestly surprised you haven't stopped playing because of the crashing.

[Hexenhammer]

A workaround option till a better one is given

Go into creative and uses the wand and explosive etc, clear the area out then go back to regular mode.

[ValhallasAshes]

Originally posted by InertFurry:

Honestly do not know how you manage to play a game as slow to start as Hydroneer and get caught up on the digging speed with a pickaxe.
Just buy a bunch of stairs and dig out space for them, go back to pick up another stair, dig out the next space, repeat. It gets you a mostly grid-aligned path. Enhancing that methodology can include a rake. You only need one tap with a pickaxe to get to lowering which is both grid-aligned and faster.
For nukes? If the scrap is a problem, bring a magnet and a crucible. Scrap ingots is a thing and a heated crucible smelts that down instantly. The ~1800hc one works better, it feels.

Honestly surprised you haven't stopped playing because of the crashing.

I haven't had any issues with crashing. Haven't had a single crash yet in days of playing. As for the pickaxe, thats the problem. It's too big of an area to dig out with a pickaxe. It took me hours with a common pickaxe just to clear half the starting area (a quarter if you count the other side of the river). I'm now at the ocean plot and when I say that plot is several orders of magnitude bigger than the starting area, that can NOT be understated. As for the Nukes method. Was trying to do that just now. Measured everything out, placed the bombs in thier ideal positions to not use more than need for layer and as soon as I started placing the long lines of logic cable, the game now slows to less than 1 frame per second. If I reload, it works great for a few minutes, but quickly slows and slows and slows until it basically freezes. So if the grind wasn't a figurative brick wall with the pickaxe, I've instead hit a literal brick wall with the bombs. Sooo, I'm screwed now.

EDIT: Nvm on the freeze. Turned out something bugged out at my other base. Came back to find a mountain of resources piled everywhere for some unknown reason. Works perfectly when I'm there, but if I leave it running while away, it bugs out. Guess I can't let it run while I'm off doing other things.

Originally posted by Hexenhammer:

A workaround option till a better one is given

Go into creative and uses the wand and explosive etc, clear the area out then go back to regular mode.

What wand? I did try creative, but didn't see any "wand". And the "chat box" described in the Dev Diary, doesn't exist. So other than free stuff at the store, I don't know how to use creative mode. So if there's a wand I can use to dig the quickly until the excavator gets re-added, I'd love to hear it.

[lPaladinl]

About where I'm at too. Nukes are not that effective for how much they cost and the work required to use them to their fullest potential.

I'm trying to setup in Icehelm but it's taking forever to clear out the space to setup a small rig even after using a few nukes.

[InertFurry]

I don't get why people feel like they need to make an entire plot empty before they start to build anything....

[ValhallasAshes]

Originally posted by Kitsune Dawn:

Originally posted by InertFurry:

I don't get why people feel like they need to make an entire plot empty before they start to build anything....

It's not empty, so much as people have gotten into the habit, based on how the resources work in the game, of removing the top few layers of soil to get down to more profitable soil. However, without a machine like the mining truck, that's near on impossible.

^This

The quantity/value of the resources are astronomically more valuable the deeper you dig and the deeper you install your drills. So when that's the case, it's a waste of time to build a "factory"on a plot, only to have to tear it apart again to dig deeper and then rebuild it again. Better to leave a working plot running somewhere else, then dig out the new plot to the desired depth before building anything. This is not a difficult concept. Yet you (Inertfury) have made two very judgemental posts back to back not understanding why we would literally play to the game's core mechanics. THAT, I am struggling to understand.

[ValhallasAshes]

Originally posted by Hexenhammer:

A workaround option till a better one is given

Go into creative and uses the wand and explosive etc, clear the area out then go back to regular mode.

Thanks for the hint man, I found the wands. Going to go give it a try. In case anyone else doesn't know where to find the wands, if you reload your existing save in creator mode then go to the starting area store, there will be a new table with creative tools on it. Wish there was a better digger in there, but I guess the duplication wand will have to do.

[ValhallasAshes]

I agree. They really should've left the excavator in until they were ready to replace it. At least then, we'd have something to use for the meantime.

[roboticaust]

Well if I had to guess, it was yoinked out not because of its glaring physics problems, but because of the tier layers added to dirt. However, if this is the case, explosives were clearly an oversight as they can get you into tier 3 dirt despite machines refusing to work in it until we get tier 3s.

Honestly, love the update but I would've rather waited an extra year onto the extra year of dev time to get it in full. For now I'm just not even bothering to dig and placing everything on the surface in some sort of defiance to the games core mechanics until 2.2 comes out. And yes, that means I am utterly avoiding tier 2 machines in the process. Is what it is for now.

[Giliador]

Rake is way better than pickaxe, once you know how to use it, dig down make flat wall, then you hit middle of 1m block with an pickaxe and using rake it will remove 1m full block, im sure there is a video on it.

[Hybridsteel1]

use mods. dev pickaxe is awesome

[Nightwolf]

it should have been released onto an experimental branch. at least players going in would have known the possibility of it being a bug riddled mess. the stable branch would have still been there for the rest who did not want to mess with it. I mean it still is, you can revert back but its the point of the matter is all.

as far as releasing it in this state i kinda get it. he had to recode almost the entire system from the ground up and it is massively better, just bug riddled. its 2000% better over the previous system in place. but now he has 10,000 bug testers as opposed to what 3? running down whats causing this that or the other is not always easy. as far as indie devs go this one is by far one of the better ones. communicative, not offensive, supportive. this is the first real blunder ive seen from him so im willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

but yeah as the op said, digging is a massively unfun experience. not because of the truck that was removed, i never used that thing anyway, but because there are no real viable options, outside of the creative mode, to do it effectively. the pickaxe is a joke, the rake is busted, the shovels are laughable and the tnt is like a tiny firecracker.