This game is an automation game like Satisfactory but without the automation, and it SUCKS.

[COWABUNGA]

Am I the only person that's realised this game is literally an automation game without the automation? You spends so much time just running around collecting crap, depositing it into storage shelves, running around your base to your X material closet to combine with your Z material, etc, etc. If the game had conveyor belts and grabbers at least then I wouldn't have to run 5 minutes to find more or some arbitrary made up crystal. God this game is beyond boring, but I kept at it for far longer than I should have. At no point does the game reward you with a vehicle, or automation. It's just run here, run here, now run here, run here, etc. Repeat a thousand times until you win. What the ♥♥♥♥.
Even with the jetpack and multiple "speed" upgrades, you're still slow as ♥♥♥♥, and it can easily take more than 5 real minutes just to cross the map, let alone find enough of the resource you're looking for. Even when you have the """automated""" miners, certain resources only show up in certain biomes, so you're still forced to run between your different miners to collect the resources that are piling up, and it's not like they can store a lot anyway. Eventually you get an auto-crafter, but it's so basic you can't hook anything up to it, it just grabs things from nearby storage shelves, which is better than nothing, but it means once again you need to run around to your autominers because you NEED your autocrafter next to them otherwise they'll just fill up with a resource you don't want and you'd just be checking it more often to free up space. It's cool that you can exponentially increase the rate in which you terraform the planet, but the goalposts are constantly being moved so it's an endless uphill battle and the only gameplay it involves is running around the map like a lost puppy fetching ♥♥♥♥♥ off the ground for your master. That's it. You can't plan out a mine that links into a carefully crafted factory, which then ships the final product to your massive home base / mega factory that you've been building up since the beginning. You are still just running around manually mining everything 100 hours into the game. Good god, you have to be either ignorant of the existence of games like Satisfactory or Foundry, and once you play one of those games your mind will be blown, or you just really love clicking rocks.

[ScorpioDog]

Have you reached the Automated factory and drone stages yet? No? Keep playing - or not.

[Awen]

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

If the game had conveyor belts and grabbers at least then I wouldn't have to run 5 minutes to find more or some arbitrary made up crystal. God this game is beyond boring, but I kept at it for far longer than I should have. At no point does the game reward you with a vehicle, or automation.

You must not have unlocked the technology yet, but yes, there is automation that will move inventory items between machines and storage boxes...even all the way across the map.

[Jacob]

Have you played the demo only or the full game?

If it is the full game, it sounds you missed at a few machines in the game, or you are playing this game really slow and have not yet unlocked those machines.

After 100 hours, I rarely visit a mining location, and if I have to, I barely cost me time to get there.
I also have a centralized factory, with an automated setup earning me 4000 TT about every 12 miniutes, combined with automated food production.

I have played this game 500+ hours up to now, restarted a few times at different levels and/or different starting locations. I also own Satisfactory (1000+ hours playtime), and I have seen playthroughs of Foundry.

All have their own merrits.

[COWABUNGA]

Originally posted by Awen:

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

If the game had conveyor belts and grabbers at least then I wouldn't have to run 5 minutes to find more or some arbitrary made up crystal. God this game is beyond boring, but I kept at it for far longer than I should have. At no point does the game reward you with a vehicle, or automation.

You must not have unlocked the technology yet, but yes, there is automation that will move inventory items between machines and storage boxes...even all the way across the map.

It comes far too late. I must've played the game for over 40 hours (SOLO) and it was a CHORE.

[Inari]

Hard disagree. I actually liked it took a while to get to automation. Kinda boring when it's literally like the first thing you do in the game.
This way you build up to it slowly. You get bigger storage. Then teleporters to get between places easier. And autocrafters as you said. And then later, drones!

I dunno, feels way more satisfying this way, than like with Factorio you basically start off with automation. To me anyway.

[COWABUNGA]

Originally posted by Inari:

Hard disagree. I actually liked it took a while to get to automation. Kinda boring when it's literally like the first thing you do in the game.
This way you build up to it slowly. You get bigger storage. Then teleporters to get between places easier. And autocrafters as you said. And then later, drones!

I dunno, feels way more satisfying this way, than like with Factorio you basically start off with automation. To me anyway.

Did you play solo or with other people?

[Inari]

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

Originally posted by Inari:

Hard disagree. I actually liked it took a while to get to automation. Kinda boring when it's literally like the first thing you do in the game.
This way you build up to it slowly. You get bigger storage. Then teleporters to get between places easier. And autocrafters as you said. And then later, drones!

I dunno, feels way more satisfying this way, than like with Factorio you basically start off with automation. To me anyway.

Did you play solo or with other people?

Solo

[COWABUNGA]

Originally posted by Inari:

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

Did you play solo or with other people?

Solo

So you didn't find it annoying at all that you need to manually pick up literally thousands of rocks and ferry them between different locations in order to make meaningful progress? You're not bothered that the core gameplay loop for at least 40 straight hours is just running around literally clicking on rocks?

[Inari]

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

Originally posted by Inari:

Solo

So you didn't find it annoying at all that you need to manually pick up literally thousands of rocks and ferry them between different locations in order to make meaningful progress? You're not bothered that the core gameplay loop for at least 40 straight hours is just running around literally clicking on rocks?

I mean, change it up?

Gather materials around base. Upgrade base. Get bored of that. Go explore some biomes, or wrecks. Ferry materials from that back home. Upgrade base. Get bored of that, go explore.

Idk, not every game has to be more complex than that. And I mean, if I get too bored of it all I can go do something else for a bit and come back

[COWABUNGA]

Originally posted by Inari:

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

So you didn't find it annoying at all that you need to manually pick up literally thousands of rocks and ferry them between different locations in order to make meaningful progress? You're not bothered that the core gameplay loop for at least 40 straight hours is just running around literally clicking on rocks?

I mean, change it up?

Gather materials around base. Upgrade base. Get bored of that. Go explore some biomes, or wrecks. Ferry materials from that back home. Upgrade base. Get bored of that, go explore.

Idk, not every game has to be more complex than that. And I mean, if I get too bored of it all I can go do something else for a bit and come back

I've done all that. The entire game still falls down to you clicking on rocks. Even when you "explore" a wreck or whatever, it's the same thing, you're going in there to collect more rocks.

[Inari]

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

Originally posted by Inari:

I mean, change it up?

Gather materials around base. Upgrade base. Get bored of that. Go explore some biomes, or wrecks. Ferry materials from that back home. Upgrade base. Get bored of that, go explore.

Idk, not every game has to be more complex than that. And I mean, if I get too bored of it all I can go do something else for a bit and come back

I've done all that. The entire game still falls down to you clicking on rocks. Even when you "explore" a wreck or whatever, it's the same thing, you're going in there to collect more rocks.

Eh, FPS games fall down to clicking on enemies until they're dead

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

So you didn't find it annoying at all that you need to manually pick up literally thousands of rocks and ferry them between different locations in order to make meaningful progress? You're not bothered that the core gameplay loop for at least 40 straight hours is just running around literally clicking on rocks?

That's not the core gameplay for 40 hours straight. The fact that you think that or that you could play for 40 hours without getting to the TI to unlock the drones means that you missed a core mechanic of the game. From your post, apparently you didn't even know you could check unlocks, otherwise you wouldn't have said there was no automation. Clearly there was a disconnect somewhere between you and the game as the game isn't long enough to require 40 hours to beat on default settings.

[EleventhStar]

it's more of lite version of a clicker game like cookie clicker with some exploration/extras sprinkled on if you ask me, and the grind is the entire point of such games.

[COWABUNGA]

Originally posted by Inari:

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

I've done all that. The entire game still falls down to you clicking on rocks. Even when you "explore" a wreck or whatever, it's the same thing, you're going in there to collect more rocks.

Eh, FPS games fall down to clicking on enemies until they're dead

Sure, which is why many FPS games have innovated the genre with different abilities and high skill cap movement / reaction speed.
This game you click rocks.

Originally posted by Pandorian:

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

So you didn't find it annoying at all that you need to manually pick up literally thousands of rocks and ferry them between different locations in order to make meaningful progress? You're not bothered that the core gameplay loop for at least 40 straight hours is just running around literally clicking on rocks?

That's not the core gameplay for 40 hours straight. The fact that you think that or that you could play for 40 hours without getting to the TI to unlock the drones means that you missed a core mechanic of the game. From your post, apparently you didn't even know you could check unlocks, otherwise you wouldn't have said there was no automation. Clearly there was a disconnect somewhere between you and the game as the game isn't long enough to require 40 hours to beat on default settings.

I don't know if you've actually played the game solo or not. But yes, it takes more than 40 hours to get drones on your own, unless maybe you've played the game a few times before and know what you're doing? I don't see how you can think it takes an acceptable amount of time to unlock what little automation is in this game. Even if they just gave you a vehicle of some kind to let you get around faster it would've been fine, but then again the map is pretty small so it'd break the illusion of terraforming an entire planet if they did that. And no, the jetpack is not a vehicle, it's barely faster than the upgraded speed boots, which are still slow as all hell. I can not tell you how many time's I've had to run to grab more Aluminium or Osmium, they are required non-stop later on and you cannot reliably farm them close to the centre of the map, besides maybe Aluminium but unless you've got the (3rd?) tier miners that let you choose a specific resource, you will have to monitor the mines you have setup to prevent them from clogging, which means more running back and forth. I had 3 mines setup only 15 seconds away from my base, but the sheer amount of Aluminium the game forced me to acquire resulted in me spending an unjustifiable amount of time having to farm it myself as the dog ass mines will only generate 1 or 2 out of every full load. The T2 ore extractor mines ONE ore every 65 seconds. It would take 27 minutes to fill the ore extractor's inventory, and you still cannot select which ore you want with T2s so even with optimal placement you will still have 40% of the mined ore be the wrong type. Not to mention the fact that you still need to run to all of your mines to collect the resources they drop, as there's no way to have them deposit themselves or transport the mined ore to your main base.
Anyone who says they unlocked drones solo in less than 40 hours of just grinding is either lying about playing solo, or they've played the game enough to just know exactly what needs to be done and they're focused on getting drones as fast as possible. I don't know if there's some hecking epic elite strat that let's you rush drones in a couple hours, but eitherway you would need prior knowledge of it and anyone playing solo with their first experience with the game should genuinely hate the fact that you spend 90% of your time running around clicking on rocks.

[COWABUNGA]

Originally posted by COWABUNGA:

Originally posted by Inari:

Eh, FPS games fall down to clicking on enemies until they're dead

Sure, which is why many FPS games have innovated the genre with different abilities and high skill cap movement / reaction speed.
This game you click rocks.

Originally posted by Pandorian:

That's not the core gameplay for 40 hours straight. The fact that you think that or that you could play for 40 hours without getting to the TI to unlock the drones means that you missed a core mechanic of the game. From your post, apparently you didn't even know you could check unlocks, otherwise you wouldn't have said there was no automation. Clearly there was a disconnect somewhere between you and the game as the game isn't long enough to require 40 hours to beat on default settings.

I don't know if you've actually played the game solo or not. But yes, it takes more than 40 hours to get drones on your own, unless maybe you've played the game a few times before and know what you're doing? I don't see how you can think it takes an acceptable amount of time to unlock what little automation is in this game. Even if they just gave you a vehicle of some kind to let you get around faster it would've been fine, but then again the map is pretty small so it'd break the illusion of terraforming an entire planet if they did that. And no, the jetpack is not a vehicle, it's barely faster than the upgraded speed boots, which are still slow as all hell. I can not tell you how many time's I've had to run to grab more Aluminium or Osmium, they are required non-stop later on and you cannot reliably farm them close to the centre of the map, besides maybe Aluminium but unless you've got the (3rd?) tier miners that let you choose a specific resource, you will have to monitor the mines you have setup to prevent them from clogging, which means more running back and forth. I had 3 mines setup only 15 seconds away from my base, but the sheer amount of Aluminium the game forced me to acquire resulted in me spending an unjustifiable amount of time having to farm it myself as the dog ass mines will only generate 1 or 2 out of every full load. The T2 ore extractor mines ONE ore every 65 seconds. It would take 27 minutes to fill the ore extractor's inventory, and you still cannot select which ore you want with T2s so even with optimal placement you will still have 40% of the mined ore be the wrong type. Not to mention the fact that you still need to run to all of your mines to collect the resources they drop, as there's no way to have them deposit themselves or transport the mined ore to your main base.
Anyone who says they unlocked drones solo in less than 40 hours of just grinding is either lying about playing solo, or they've played the game enough to just know exactly what needs to be done and they're focused on getting drones as fast as possible. I don't know if there's some hecking epic elite strat that let's you rush drones in a couple hours, but eitherway you would need prior knowledge of it and anyone playing solo with their first experience with the game should genuinely hate the fact that you spend 90% of your time running around clicking on rocks.

I forgot to mention the fact that inventory space is so limited in this game that two floors of my base was entirely dedicated to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ locker rooms filled with ore that I either didn't need at the time, or when I did need it, I would run out of it incredibly fast and would have to go out and farm more of it. You can craft Super Alloy with 5 different ores, meaning if you want a lot of super alloy, you need to just dump your stockpile of ores and go out grinding for more of them again. I eventually had so many lockers and mines that I mostly only needed to check them instead of ((clicking rocks)) but it was still just pointless busy work. Run for 15 seconds east, then 30 seconds north, then run 40 seconds back to base.. GOOD JOB NOW YOU GET TO PLACE A NEW BUILDING WOWEEE, now do this 15 times over so that you have enough of said building to progress terraforming at an acceptable pace.