Just Finished the Game's Story Mode: Feedback and Thoughts

[Cereal]

So after finishing the game and spending around 25+ hours on it, I thoroughly enjoyed my time. Transporting goods was creative, the atmosphere was great, the humor was fun(2 and a half watermelons!) and the story was pretty decent. I do have some feedback regarding some stuff that I did have some issues with though:

-Transporting goods across long distances with just grav-belts is a bit messy. As much as I love making italian spaghetti in factory games, I kind of wished that starting in the iron stage there would be some way to transport goods from a fair distance away, without just spamming belts. A resource trebuchet/cannon in the future perhaps? Maybe even get a late game upgrade that improves fast travel points to fire you out of one so you get to keep your backpack.

-Speaking of the iron stage, I was hoping that I'd get a way to craft the iron versions of the chest and dispenser chest as they're so much more convenient to have around compared to the scrap versions. Especially since they match the max stack size of a fully researched player inventory stack. Sadly they never unlocked, and I can't say for certain if it was a bug or intentional design.

- This one is my biggest issue with the game. Power shortages are an incredible menace due to Pickerpal and field respawn RNG. It's pretty tough to properly gauge how many resources you need to maintain enough energy flow, without backing yourself into a corner. I initially had to scrap a save because of Electric Petal shortage, thankfully the devs adjusted the respawn for the Electric Flower field in the South West. In my successful save though, I had to ration my energy by the end since the Blood Flower respawn could not keep up with demand. I only caught on to the shortage once I noticed my long line of Blood Fuel was looking bare and I hadn't even started planning out my corrosive fuel line.

I'm not sure how balanced it would be to allow us to grow our own flowers, but it could help counteract the RNG aspect as you can make a stable source of fuel. You still need to invest in infrastructure, space and Toad catching too, so it's something that a player can work towards throughout the game. It also opens up the option of fully industrializing your island, as you can now build on top of flower fields without worrying that you're destroying your fuel source. The Pickerpal option is also still there, but now you have a way to actively "save" your Factory in case things look like its about to go south.

Not going to lie though, I enjoyed running across the area near station 5 to 4 with my lights slowly going out one by one. It made the game feel like a proper horror game for a bit, knowing those "things" were out there running around in that area.

And thats pretty much it from me. I've really enjoyed my time with the game's story mode despite these few issues and I'm glad I got the game when it first came out.

[rodrigocns]

-Transporting goods across long distances with just grav-belts is a bit messy:
Agree, but I found that the spring boards are better to avoid mess (just like underground belts/pipes in factorio).

-better storage in iron age:
Totally agree! And I am a bit sad to know that no better storage options are available (I am right now looking for the iron source in-game).

- shortage of flower/fuel:
I can garantee that the balance only exists because some sources are limited. If there is no limitation, it basically becomes an Idle game (yuck) where you just come back to make more stuff to make more stuff to make even more stuff. Almost no challenge, just patience.
What I tried to do with the first and second fuels until now is limiting exactly how much fuel will be consumed with the dispense chests. I got one at 31/min for the red and another one at 8/min for the purple one. Was at 12/min but the storage was slowly declining, so 8/min seems like a good number for now until I upgrade this production.

[Cereal]

Originally posted by rodrigocns:

-Transporting goods across long distances with just grav-belts is a bit messy:
Agree, but I found that the spring boards are better to avoid mess (just like underground belts/pipes in factorio).

-better storage in iron age:
Totally agree! And I am a bit sad to know that no better storage options are available (I am right now looking for the iron source in-game).

- shortage of flower/fuel:
I can garantee that the balance only exists because some sources are limited. If there is no limitation, it basically becomes an Idle game (yuck) where you just come back to make more stuff to make more stuff to make even more stuff. Almost no challenge, just patience.
What I tried to do with the first and second fuels until now is limiting exactly how much fuel will be consumed with the dispense chests. I got one at 31/min for the red and another one at 8/min for the purple one. Was at 12/min but the storage was slowly declining, so 8/min seems like a good number for now until I upgrade this production.

-Springboards aren't exactly ideal for long range transportation. They're much slower than belts and still require a light source train leading back to your main island. What the game needs is something similar to Factorio's trains where you could send a bulk of resources without having to create a new light line that could possibly be a drain on your power, or belts.

-My concern with the shortage of fuel isn't how limited the flowers are, but how inconsistent the fields are. Some fields respawn incredibly quickly where you could stick 6+ pickerpals on them and they wouldn't run out, while some fields wouldn't last nearly as long with half. This creates the issue that you might end up running out of flowers not through your own lack of expansion, but because the fields are so wildly inconsistent.

Also, from the sound of it, you're still in the mid game with mushroom fuel. The devs had to fix this section of the game because of the electric petals not respawning fast enough, so you're not going through the electric petal famine I and quite a few other players had to go through. It was enough of an issue that I had to restart my save. The blood flower section also falls into this because all the blood flower fields can't maintain full battery flow for an extended period. By the time you notice the lack of flow, you might have already spread your available lights so thin that you'd have to shut down large sections of your factory and wait for the respawn, or worse, it creates a domino effect and the lack of fuel shuts down essential production chains in your factory like it did in my initial save.

Sure, it does become a bit of an idle game if you have that option, but the same can be said of the other production lines before that point. I mean once you have glow bulbs going, do you even touch your pickerpals past that point? At least with this option, you can do something about the deficiency. You as a player now have a say in whether you run out of power or not and not have to be blindsided by the fields respawning far slower than expected. You can actively expand the factory not having to worry about the field RNG, plus it lets you design and automate another production line.

[Isto-Stephen]

Hi Sairiel,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of this feedback. This is admittedly our first major game, and so we're still learning. HOWEVER, we want to make it the best we can, and your criticisms is very much warranted.

We're going to start implementing some of your ideas as soon as we fix some existing bugs:
1. Transporting goods - I agree, but this is low on our priority list compared to some of our other issues youve mentioned. If we have time, we'll definitely tackle it

2. Iron Chests -> We thought it'd be interesting to have some op items that can only be found by exploring, but it seems that isn't fun. Will speak to the team about this

3. Pickerpal RNG -> without a doubt, this is an absolute must fix. This is our top priority and we will be address this asap.

[Cereal]

Originally posted by Isto-Stephen:

Hi Sairiel,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of this feedback. This is admittedly our first major game, and so we're still learning. HOWEVER, we want to make it the best we can, and your criticisms is very much warranted.

We're going to start implementing some of your ideas as soon as we fix some existing bugs:
1. Transporting goods - I agree, but this is low on our priority list compared to some of our other issues youve mentioned. If we have time, we'll definitely tackle it

2. Iron Chests -> We thought it'd be interesting to have some op items that can only be found by exploring, but it seems that isn't fun. Will speak to the team about this

3. Pickerpal RNG -> without a doubt, this is an absolute must fix. This is our top priority and we will be address this asap.

Awesome, thanks Stephen!

Regarding the Iron Chests, I do like the idea of having some rare items from exploration, but the Iron Chests feels like they're better off as a QoL item that you get around the Iron tier. They are such a great fix to the tediousness of inventory management in the mid-late game. Picking up a full stack from your storage, and then having to put the excess back, or in situations where you want to neatly leave your backpack at one location before fast travelling to another are all cumbersome and annoying when you have to manage 2-3 scrap chests just to contain all of your random stuff. Alternatively, it could also be an unlock once you've completed the story so the balancing isn't thrown out of whack before you get to that point.

A good idea to replace the Iron Chests as rare items would probably be rare animals you'd have to track down. Theres an opportunity here to turn these rare animals into incredible boss fights too. The Rare Tornatoad can spit objects at you from a distance or even swallow you and spit you out, the Rare Pusher can be a great way to reintroduce the stampede mechanic in a more opt-in manner where the Pusher uses it as an attack, the Rare Bee/Queen Bee could summon bees to swarm you while charging you herself. The Rare Deer could... uh... I'm not entirely sure what to do with a Rare Deer tbh other than throw poo on the ground that'd act like landmines lol.

Winning these fights give you a Tornatoad with additional range/width, and/or comes with a built in Spring Board(Swallows stuff up and sling shots it to a specified location) or even sling shot you across gaps without killing you. It can even be used as a potential fix to the transportation issue I mentioned where it spits resources a long distance to a certain destination point. The Pusher could push stuff out of a chest or improve all the other pushers near it to be able to push even if their grav belt line has stopped. The Queen Bee could help fix some of the flower respawn issues, by having the bees it spawns/bee boxes near it accelerate flower growth around it by having bees plant/replant the flowers, or create it's own quickly respawning flower field. The Rare Deer could become an awesome mount you could ride around on, letting you get around your ever expanding factory in style.

Also, for your first major game, I honestly think this was an excellent first go. It's not perfect, but it really comes close to it and I can't wait to see what you guys have in store for the future.

[SutiituS]

I'll drop another criticism for the game: The fast travel system dropping your items just makes it an unnecessary feature. I'm not sure if there's any upgrade to it, but having it move your backpack to the quick travel location would easily fix this.

So here's some additions I think may help some of the tedious/RNG elements.

Bridge after gaining Iron tech.

An upgrade/merge of the planter and picker when you reach Iron. Basically allows you to put any plant in it, fuel it with water, and boom you have more stable production.

[IceKing]

For the fast travel thing i think a solution can be a limited shared storage between fast travel points, it will need you to put what you want to retrieve from fast travel points. In that way it will not break the immersion of the droid dying in each travel. It can need to be unlocked, or blocked depending on the story stage.

[rodrigocns]

I must disagree about fast travel. You could just fill your bag with materials a couple of times (like a super efficient train) and all that logistic challenge is gone. I believe that games dealing with logistics have this limitation with fast travel. Even Albion Online don't let you travel with resources.
Also, it makes sense to not be able to fast-travel with your bag in atrio because you basicaly die and respawn there. There is no "unique" item here, so just leave some copies of your items (batteries, conveyors,factories, lamps,etc) in each base you fast travel to a lot. Their production must be automated sooner or later, as this is also a factory/automation game (just like the mall things in factorio/satisfactory).

About the iron chests: the exploration part can be there, hinting about what is to come, but if Atrio is also a game about automation, then all(or most) things should be craftable and able to automate. Things like the pillars for building the research booster is not needed. But things directly related to the automation part (like chests, specially the dispense ones) must have some kind of recipe behind it.

[rodrigocns]

Oh, and I just did the tests: spring board at max length (10) is slower than grav-pipe, but grav-pipe is slower than spring board at low lengths (3 has the best result. With 4 or more they throw much higher in the air {YEET} taking more time to launch again).
Of course, grav-pipe is cheaper but spring board takes less inventory space to cover the same distance. It's like the train/bot/belt dilemma in factorio, each one with their own strengths and weaknesses.

[SutiituS]

Its more of a personal gripe and, thinking on it, I feel I have some ways I could negate most of my problems.

[Isto-Stephen]

Thanks for the great discussion. I'm definitely taking notes and pondering on your comments :)