Rant - Is there ANY way to put a beacon on the portal?

[Robirda]

I am SO fed up with these 'crashed maze' spaceship biomes. Sentinal Corp must have had a Ringworld of maze ships to train rats in or something, for so many of them to have crashed on our planet.

The mazes themselves are annoying but workable -- but what really gets me is why so many of the biomes are so DARK!!! There is SO much black, SO much ultra-bright, and hardly anything inbetween.

Then when you throw in all the cliffs and pillars - how in heck are we supposed to navigate when you can't see anything and you can't place anything either? I Finally find something I'd like to keep, and do you think I can find my way back to the portal? Of course not - I die and lose it all 'cause I can't find the blinking way home, and any 'breadcrumbs' just disappear into the ground. AARRGGHH!!!

I have navigated entire mountain ranges in real life on foot with no roads, with far less trouble!! On top of it all the game seems to be stuck on throwing out lava biomes over and over and over again, the blackest of them all. Guys, please, if you are going to throw this stuff at us so that we can't SEE anything, can you please give us an alternative way to find our way back?

Apparently it is a lot of fun building these things, since you have made so many of them - but they are NOT FUN TO PLAY IN!!! I have been so very much enjoying the game up til now - well over 1000 hours worth - but this is straining my eyes like nobody's business, none of the monitor settings help at all, and overall it is destroying all the fun in the gameplay and causing FAR too much frustration.

Please, please, PLEASE, if you have to make things so dark and hide everything behind pillars and cliffs can somebody at least find a way to put a beacon on the doggone portal?!?!?

Thanks wouldn't half cover it if you can, but just in case - THANK YOU!!!!!

[archmag]

How do you even die in portals? Do you not bring food and water with you? I had 3 food and 3 water and rarely managed to use 1 of each before completing two ships and finding a way back. Even if you are unlucky and get lost, I can't believe that you can't find a way back in twice that time. If you are trying to run portals without extra food and water it's only your fault for dying there.

[EleventhStar]

does a player build beacon not work? they are trivial in cost at that point in the game.

(but yeah you'd think the GPS satellite could actually provide you with GPS :D)

[Pesky]

You can't build anything the other side of a portal. And the coordinate display which is normally in the lower left of your display isn't shown. It's really annoying.

I also had trouble finding the exit in some realms. Fortunately, once I realised it was a problem I did what I'd do in real life. Immediately you're in the portal realm, look around for noticeable items, angles, height, and anything else that makes your position memorable. Then go a few steps each way and retrace your steps. It takes up a little food and water but it makes a lot of difference.

On the game's Discord, I've suggested that the devs make the portal automatically act like a beacon, because I don't think this problem is fair.

[Robirda]

Of course I bring food and water, lots. Always. Due to all the time I have spent hiking in trackless mountainsides and valleys in real life (I live in the heart of some of the biggest and wildest mountains on the planet) I am also quite good at marking and spotting landmarks, which I do as a matter of course. But when everything looks the same and there is no sun, moon, or stars, it can be quite, quite difficult to navigate correctly using ONLY this method. Especially if it is tough to see where you are going!

As Perky says, nothing is placeable on the other side of the portal. And hey, Archmag - try my eyes on for size and you might start believing - they are not the best, but I have to work with what I have. Too much black or white and it swamps everything else. If you are not affected by this sort of thing, you are one of the lucky ones - a lot of us have to work with the same sort of eyes I have, and I can guarantee you that it rarely gets any better as the years roll by! Enjoy them while you can.

[Coops]

Also, you have a compass. If you search for the wreck(s) in a methodical way you should be able to retrace.
ie go North until you hit the edge, go back to the portal and go West, etc. If you don't find it start going NW, SW and so on.
Or leave flare breadcrumbs.

[Robirda]

I have tried leaving flares for breadcrumbs, as my first post mentioned they tend to disappear into the ground. They stay while I'm there, but once I've passed by they seem to just go away - when I come back past again they'll be gone.

I am TERRIBLE at navigating by compass, so much better navigating by nose! (In real life I often use maps with terrain markers) But I do use the compass in PC, fairly often too. Either way though - doesn't do me much good if I can't see where I'm going... :-(

[prtmh]

I've noticed that the flares are harder to see at a distance if you're set to lower resolutions. Also for what its worth, the name signs made from magnesium can be made on the other side. In fact , after a while some of the ones I've made outside of ships are still there somehere even when its a different portal address later.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Pesky:

On the game's Discord, I've suggested that the devs make the portal automatically act like a beacon, because I don't think this problem is fair.

the regular map doesn't even show the player position. wouldn't hold my breath :D

as for op, turning around on your way to the wreck and taking a few screenshots of the return path might be your best bet.

[madsgrandad]

For inside wrecks, I drop a flare near the entry point so I know when I'm back there.
Put it at the first intersection of hallways.
Then I follow the entire wreck, even other levels, by staying to the right shoulder wall.
Just follow the wall on your right and you will pass thru the entire maze of halls and rooms
until you return to your starting point (and flare).
I was originally using multiple flares, but now I just drop the one.

Yes, its annoying that you can't build, because I wanted to make a storage at the portal for food and water, and to store all my finds.
Easiest thing to do is to return thru the portal, dump your load, and jump in again.

Only one biome so far, where I lost the portal, because it was a larger map and the portal was somewhere in the middle. Every other one, I have landed near an edge, so I use my stay to the right rule to circumnavigate the maps.

Just found a gold effigy on a portal biome! woohoo

[archmag]

Originally posted by madsgrandad:

For inside wrecks, I drop a flare near the entry point so I know when I'm back there.
Put it at the first intersection of hallways.
Then I follow the entire wreck, even other levels, by staying to the right shoulder wall

Why do you need a flare if when you follow the rule that you use you will exit the wreck anyway? It doesn't add anything other than signaling that you are close to the exit a little earlier. Just enter the wreck and use either left or right hand rule until the exit and there will be no need for any markers.

[Nefai]

The portal is always near the center of the map, if not directly in the center. Find any edge of the map and then run the other way.

e.g. Find the far North edge of the map, then run South.

[remid0d0s0]

Originally posted by archmag:

Originally posted by madsgrandad:

For inside wrecks, I drop a flare near the entry point so I know when I'm back there.
Put it at the first intersection of hallways.
Then I follow the entire wreck, even other levels, by staying to the right shoulder wall

Why do you need a flare if when you follow the rule that you use you will exit the wreck anyway? It doesn't add anything other than signaling that you are close to the exit a little earlier. Just enter the wreck and use either left or right hand rule until the exit and there will be no need for any markers.

There are cycles in some wreck mazes, in which case following a wall will still get you out, but will not visit the entire maze. I don't think cycles in these mazes tend to have much of anything inside them, so this may not be important.

[archmag]

Originally posted by remid0d0s0:

Originally posted by archmag:

Why do you need a flare if when you follow the rule that you use you will exit the wreck anyway? It doesn't add anything other than signaling that you are close to the exit a little earlier. Just enter the wreck and use either left or right hand rule until the exit and there will be no need for any markers.

There are cycles in some wreck mazes, in which case following a wall will still get you out, but will not visit the entire maze. I don't think cycles in these mazes tend to have much of anything inside them, so this may not be important.

But flare near the entrance won't help in this case. So I don't see how it is useful other than being able to see that you are close to the exit few seconds earlier and this doesn't give any bonus.

Cycles or more exactly skips which make you skip a part of the wreck if you use one-hand rule can happen, I agree. I had a maze one time out of about 20 runs with several floors two of which were connected by ladders. So you follow this one-hand rule, go down the ladder, walk a little and there is a ladder back to the previous floor. So as a result you skip small distance on the top floor between these two ladders and skip all unexplored part on the bottom floor because you leave early. Luckily I still found the vault even after skipping this part so it didn't affect my run, but it is totally possible even though it is rare. Using flares on such cases would be helpful if you temporarily switch from using one-hand rule, but using flares near the entrance just doesn't help. That is certainly if you are using this rule, if you use some other rule to explore the wreck then flares may help, but the author of that post specifically said that he uses the rules so I wondered about the use of flares.

[DrummerJacob]

Originally posted by Robirda:

I am SO fed up with these 'crashed maze' spaceship biomes. Sentinal Corp must have had a Ringworld of maze ships to train rats in or something, for so many of them to have crashed on our planet.

The mazes themselves are annoying but workable -- but what really gets me is why so many of the biomes are so DARK!!! There is SO much black, SO much ultra-bright, and hardly anything inbetween.

Then when you throw in all the cliffs and pillars - how in heck are we supposed to navigate when you can't see anything and you can't place anything either? I Finally find something I'd like to keep, and do you think I can find my way back to the portal? Of course not - I die and lose it all 'cause I can't find the blinking way home, and any 'breadcrumbs' just disappear into the ground. AARRGGHH!!!

I have navigated entire mountain ranges in real life on foot with no roads, with far less trouble!! On top of it all the game seems to be stuck on throwing out lava biomes over and over and over again, the blackest of them all. Guys, please, if you are going to throw this stuff at us so that we can't SEE anything, can you please give us an alternative way to find our way back?

Apparently it is a lot of fun building these things, since you have made so many of them - but they are NOT FUN TO PLAY IN!!! I have been so very much enjoying the game up til now - well over 1000 hours worth - but this is straining my eyes like nobody's business, none of the monitor settings help at all, and overall it is destroying all the fun in the gameplay and causing FAR too much frustration.

Please, please, PLEASE, if you have to make things so dark and hide everything behind pillars and cliffs can somebody at least find a way to put a beacon on the doggone portal?!?!?

Thanks wouldn't half cover it if you can, but just in case - THANK YOU!!!!!

Those mazes are almost the only challenge in this game other than putting in time and collecting/assembling things. Your complaint is a bit weird, like what do you want, just the game to play itself? There has to be some challenge, of course those are mazes, why should loot that progresses you into the future be just sitting there with a big giant beacon saying FREE LOOT?

Youve navigated entire mountain ranges in real life but cant navigate this map? Thats interesting. I have no issues navigating it even before I got the compass or map and the only shipwreck that ever gets me is the most expensive one on the portal machine that has more of a 3d maze with lots of climb ups/downs.

I play Rust, a game where you have a map this size that wipes every week and you have to memorize the terrain just the same every single week, seems natural to me. Maybe youre just new to the skills required here.

I dont think its that dramatic really. You should be keeping mental notes in your head when you go east what did you find? When you went west, what was there? North? South? Now go around and note what you find...I dont know. It seems like navigating is most of the challenge in this game and once you go to a place a few times you should memorize it, even if youre not the smartest guy in the world.

If you remove navigation and those mazes, what is the challenge of this game beyond oxygen in the early game? Theres not much. It would completely destroy the game to remove the challenges involved in memorizing the terrain, and even the oxygen bit ties in with the mazes and world traveling so nerfing that would make it too easy.

And I have no idea why youre saying the game throws lava biomes at you constantly. That quite literally makes no sense so Im not even sure how to address it. Just, no. If you look at the map of the world, theres one lava biome in the whole place and then one when you get the portal in the end game. How is that something to complain about? Youre on a planet in space. What do you expect?

And for your complaints about darkness/brightness, again, I cant say I have the same issues at all. Not even close. Theres obviously some lighting effects to make it a challenge and immerse you in the supernatural world youre creating, but if its that dramatic like you say, you might need glasses or a better monitor because just like everything else youve said here, thats just ridiculous.

What a silly post dude, honestly. I feel like I just wasted 15 minutes of my life reading through this and being bored enough to respond.