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it's not even a loot goblin thing. it's a "we need resources for XYZ kinda thing. we also think we glitched the game on our way to the third station as it took 3 hours to get to it at min speed
It absolutely is a loot goblin thing if you are wasting time slowly reversing to pick up every *single* item along the way. You don't have to pick up everything and you certainly dont have to loop back (that's a horrible idea).
Don't get me wrong, i did the same thing on my first loop. It's hard, but you need to train yourself to "let it go" when it comes to missing a bit of wood or scrap metal in the void. It's like someone frantically dropping anchor in Raft to make sure they pick up every single bit of flotsam.
You'll find the game a lot more enjoyable if you just keep the train rolling and focus on grabbing the important stuff like coal chunks etc as you'll also get the random encounters a lot more frequently.
Doing more loops inbetween tech tier upgrades also helps ensure you get a smoother story/progression as you're not advancing tech at a much faster pace than the story.
Voidtrain definatly has an identity crisis, because it doesnt communicate properly if it wants the train to actually move or barely crawl forward.
It is not. It's a game design problem. The game teaches the player to fish every bit of debris out of the Void very early on. We start with a slow-moving train and a massive glut for resources just researching basic tech. Tech progression is not gated by Depots or stops almost at all, meaning the player is encouraged to move slowly and do as much research as possible before the next stop. More than that, resource gain within depots is heavily limited, encouraging the player to stockpile resources before arriving at one, or miss on depot-only upgrades.
Players are not "playing the game wrong" when slow-crawling and stockpiling resources. They're playing the game the exact way that the game has taught, encouraged and incentivised them to play it. If the goal is to keep moving forward quickly and only focus on individual stops, then core design should accommodate this. Resources would be primarily gained from points of interest to give those increased value, while the Void itself would offer little if any resources to devalue it. This would encourage players to move past the void as quickly as possible, as travel would be a cost instead of a benefit.
Game design informs player behaviour. If players are consistently behaving opposite of how the game is intended to be player - which is the case with Voidtrain - then the fault lies with the game's own design. Not with the individual player. People ignore design which ignores people.
The problem is that it... really isn't. Just keeping the train rolling means I miss fuel for said train, run out and have to slow-crawl anyway. Keeping the train rolling also means I'm not engaging with any other systems. I'm needed at the front of the engine scanning for mines, chunks and witch islands, all but ignoring crafting and progression.
It's also objectively not fun to reach a new research tier and find that I singularly lack the resources to advance in it... because I sped past them all. I then have to waste additional time re-gathering those resources while the crafting stations idle.
Not to mention - the faster the train moves, the harder it is to fish for resources. The grapple gun's physics physics mean I need to lead target by a lot. Many objects are too far to grapple, but leaving the train causes me to be left behind at high speed. In the end, I still end up stopping a lot because I keep missing valuable items without which the train couldn't run.
The only compelling gameplay loop that Voidtrain even has is research. Pretty much every other system is unpleasant. Combat is bad, foraging is clumsy, weapon modding is incredibly awkward. The only thing that speeding gets me is another combat encounter that I'd rather not have.
If there were anything compelling to speed TO, the game might get more fun. As it stands, moving fast is just speeding past pretty much all the content.
That's exactly what I'm referring to. You're not missing out on fuel, as fuel in the void is infinite. That's your inner loot goblin telling you that you must collect everything, which you really don't need to do. (you can, if that's what you enjoy doing, but if you don't enjoy that type of gameplay, change).
Same applies for other systems. You feel like you're missing resources if you don't stop the train every time you go crafting. This is false, and this mindset needs to be discarded.
Granted, you probably don't want to spend an entire void run crafting down the back of your train incase there's mines up ahead, but it takes a few minutes to travel the rendered distance in front of the train so that's plenty of time for minor crafting. Just remember to take a peak upfront whenever you step away from a crafting station and you're fine.
The amount of fuel in the void isn't the issue. Technically, all resources are infinite. The important metric is the ratio of fuel gained to fuel used - taking into account that crafting tables also use fuel. I need to secure at least as much fuel as I burn, which in my case is literally every bit of it that I run across. If I miss any, I run out of fuel. Means the train slows to a crawl and I can't craft. And that's WITH a co-op partner bringing additional fuel from their own game multiple times.
Either I do fishing as I go, or I can't go. It really is that simple.
"This mindset" is entirely created by the game itself - specifically, its resource foraging and gathering systems. This behaviour is not present in other superficially similar games. I cited the "Far" series before. Both Lone Sails and especially Distant Shores do a marvellous job convincing the player to drive forward at full speed by simply not littering fuel potentially every 10 meters along the drive. Instead, fuel comes in large, discrete batches.
Far: Lone Sails (the one with the ground vehicle) has a scoop which picks up objects off the ground automatically, as long as it has sufficient room. Far: Changing Tide lacks this feature but has a sonar which alerts the player to the presence of fuel - meaning there's no reason to stop at any other point. By giving the player no practical reason to move slowly, both games do a great job of encouraging the player to move quickly.
Voidtrain, on the other hand, concentrates the majority of its fuel and crafting resources as floating debris around the Void and never offers a reasonable alternative. This gives me a no-win scenario. Either move slowly and fish thus having a boring game, or move quickly and lack resources... thus having a boring game. I'm AWARE that I don't need to collect every bit of debris off the side of my train. I trust you're aware, however, that there exists no other reasonable alternative to this. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to fish. What benefit to I have in doing it "later"?
Again - people ignore design which ignores people. You can only blame the player so far before blame has to shift to the game's own design, and the kind of behaviour it encourages. This is a bit like blaming Warframe players for speed-running missions and only ever using the same set of equipment. When the game is grindy to that extent, one can't blame players for ruining their own experience when the game's core design is what breeds that behaviour in the first place.
In short: if Voidtrain didn't want players slow-walking and collecting the entire time, it shouldn't have put the majority of its loot spread thin across the no-man's-land of the void. This game has been out for two years. Discouraging this behaviour is neither difficult nor complex. At this point, I have to assume that the developers would have done something to discourage it if they in fact did not intend for players to play this way.
If you're trying to keep all the crafting benches going while keeping the train going above minimum speed while also trying to loot everything, jeez. That playstyle is not for me.
You should try the faster playstyle, get the train moving to reduce gaps between points of interest and just focus on rare resources like coal. Seriously, give it a go. only collect Coal (or higher tier rare resources if there are any) and ignore everything else. A set of chests from Arena gives ~two full inventories of resources.
They gave us a sandbox, its up to you how you play in it.
I agree. Late-game, chests offer DRASTICALLY more resources than fishing in the Void. Unfortunately, chests come very late in the game. By that point, the player has been conditioned to see fishing as the primary source of resources. Not to mention - chests offer predominantly "base" resources - scrap, wood and chemicals. If they offer high-level fuel items (coal or diesel), I've not seen much of it. Obviously, Coal can be replaced with Charcoal, but no such alternative for Gasoline exists.
I personally believe that "loot caches" need to appear much earlier in the game. Before the first depot, ideally. The game has a few "points of interest" for the player to stop and explore, but the vast majority of those only pop up late in the game. Imagine if we had earlier points of interest - just simple islands to explore, no soldiers or anything. Just island, explore, find a few chests. These can be lower-level chests which don't hold mushrooms or high-grade weapon parts. Just a large cache of resources AND FUEL.
Giving the player one of these islands early (either before or immediately after the first depot) and then consistently giving us several of them per depot. The player would still start out fishing in the void. However, they will quickly discover that chests are a much better source of resources. Which means they'll need to find room on the train to carry the chests themselves AND storage on the train to store their contents. If that mechanic shows up early enough, it might do a good job of teaching players that fishing is a FALLBACK, and not the main way of attaining resources.
Again - the "shotgun against breakable rock" showed as much. The game is more fun when you get resources in bulk, rather than having to fish for them.
Well, it kinda' sorta' works :) MK2 crafting tables are pretty slow, so queuing up a large batch of items can wake something like 2 minutes. Initially, I sat on my hands watching the pot boil. Eventually, I realised that it's a waste of my time. So instead, I'd queue up all my crafts, then move the train for a bit at whatever speed I could move.
Eventually, I'd have to stop for something - a chunk I failed to catch, a breakable rock, mines, etc. Then I'd go check on my crafting, pull items, set the next batch cooking (usually the next step) and move the train some more. Realistically speaking, crafting times aren't that long even at their longest so there's not TOO much reason to do this.
Despite myself, I'd argue that making crafting times LONGER might help set the game's pace better, in convincing players to not wait for the craft to be done. This is precisely what Factorio does. You CAN, if you really wanted to, craft late-game items by hand. It'll just take you 20 minutes per item. Instead, you're encouraged to automate the process and let the items build on their own while you do other things. Then you can pull items from a chest as they build up over time.
Voidtrain isn't as automated as Factorio, but longer crafting times could incentivise the player to move the train more, rather than sit parked for an hour burning through the research tree.
I don't really mind it because the gameplay challenge is then to build an efficient train in terms of crafting bench proximity, but i can certainly see that being offputting to a lot of people without any automation.
Even just a simple "craft from nearby chests" which the game does do when you're using the station train editor. Even if it's just limited to the chests on that wagon, that'd be a huge step to streamlining the very micro heavy crafting.
Is there much optimisation to do there, though? You can fit almost all the game's crafting benches in 1.5 train car platforms. Despite nothing snapping to a grid, everything is still built to a grid. Platforms are 5x5, most crafting benches are either 1x1 or 1x2, with a few exceptions. It's pretty easy to make cubicles out of that.
Bundle the 1x1 crafting tables together into a 1x1 set, and you have 9 crafting tables + the Crusher + the Armour MK2. My approach was thus: Research table + Foundry 1 on Row 1, near gains the front wall of the second car. Row 2, walking space wall-to-wall. Row 3, Lab 1, Crafting Table 1, Crafting Table 2, facing the front. Row 4 Lab 2, Planter, Grill, facing the back, up against the back of Row 3. Row 5, walking space wall-to-wall. Row 6 Foundry 2 and Grill 2, facing the front. Row 7, back portion of Foundry 2, Armoury 1, facing the back, up against the back of Row7.
That's the majority of the game's industry in a 5x7 cubicle farm. That's a platform and a bit. It doesn't account for the Crusher and Armour 3, but those I stuck on on the back of first car, just behind the engine. The Crusher is 2x3 and the Armoury 2 is 1x3. There's a full 5x5 plaform behind the engine, so placing these lengthwise against the side walls leaves both plenty of room to walk between them and plenty of room to access the side doors to the engine platform.
Obviously, that doesn't account for storage, but storage can be done the same way - rows of 4 racks, one on each side of the centre, with 2 crates per rack. You can then do row/row/gap/row/row/gap, etc.,
If optimisation for proximity and space is a concern, I don't really see the point of doing it any other way. You can't condense the stations any farther without making some of them inaccessible or wasting space in the corners. The reason that "Factory Games" don't devolve to just the best packing algorithm is that you need to consider conveyor connections between structures. Voidtrain doesn't have that, so the most optimal arrangement is just jamming the crafting stations as close together and as close to the front as possible, and cubicles seems like the best way to do that.
The game doesn't have Tier 3 items in the current implementation. Maybe it will at some point, I don't know.
And yeah, I see what you mean :) My design is pretty cramped, because I was expecting to have to optimise for space. I didn't expect to have over half my train doing nothing. I'm not sure you can pull off your desired setup since there are too many machines, but lining them up against the wall might help make the setup feel less cluttered. Still won't take you much more than 2 or 3 platforms.