I came back, and already I'm ready to step away

[TheRTist]

Wow I don't know what happened.

I haven't played in almost two years exactly. Back then I felt the game was already pretty good, and would build on its foundations. Oh good heavens, I feel silly. I feel like the game has taken certain central ideas and intentionally stretched them very long. Making it seem worse. I remember my previous save file was done with terraforming on day 300. I'm at day 250 and I unlocked another tech which I can't use because of one thing:

Bloat

I'm going to explain a string of events and include thoughts along the way.

A lot of recipes feel bloated. Causing an increase in hauling jobs. Many buildings/ objects cost 5-6 pieces each. Since you can't carry multiple objects of varying types, you just carry a wire, then plastic, then transistor etc.

>It's been two years, so you see the new research system needs hard disk only, not computing, which causes you to be skeptical of the new system.

>The new system is instant but the trade off being much more about hauling.

>Think about getting carrier drones to help with the hauling.

>Realize you need a lot more research to get there.

There's a ton of research which is perfectly fine, but the racks and racks of storage. It was a thing in the past, because that was the "resource cost" involved with research, now its that + Datoids.

>You want to hookup lights because people keep getting sad.
>Uh oh sport, you can't because you don't have enough computing.
>Build a 1Thz tower or two
>Realize the CPU now is responsible for each device, and you get 20 per THz

When every single piece of tech needs it, I feel like it's such a chore to build. Did I probably build the same before? Maybe. Maybe more? But does it feel worse?
Oh yeah.

>You're constantly trying to scrape by for resources. Plastics being rough, as you need a lot for power and electronics.
>You dump the resources and whatnot to get a radar up and going to scan for them (A.1)
>Find nothing over and over.

Now your more complicated recipes need scarce material. You can't find them so you travel over and over. Hopefully you found some rock in your travels.

>You go try to use ML booth to help with all the mining you've been doing.
>ML booth is powered on Silver ♥♥♥♥♥♥' Bars.
>Somehow get the bars, or get lucky on a deposit.
>Realize the new way of doing a ML booth is:
1.Remove core
2.Haul Core
3.Preform ML Booth
4.Haul Core
5.Install core
>Hopefully you unlocked Carrier drones, Advanced research, Advanced Bot parts, and Advanced Assembly.
>Not having those techs, give up on the Drones for now because you have no cores.
>Check the ML powered by precious metals now. Costs 100s of kw
>Give up

That's so many steps to do something so simple. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. What was wrong about just having a bot "jack in" to the ML Booth? This adds like 4 extra steps just to do an expensive thing. The expense before was time.

I mentioned the precious metals and materials causing either task bloat or needs bloat. The Brain thing and handguns needing PLATINUM made me scratch my head in disbelief.

This last thing is what made me give up. This was the straw that broke the camels back.

>Try to get gold and plat, traders rarely have it.
>Realize a grinder is going to be the most straightforward way to get any gold or platinum.
>Needs a lot of power. Your resource gain rate isn't enough of anything for a fuel source
>Unlock Tier 2 Solar panels, Tier 1s sucked because of CPU use.
>Each needs 4 Gold Wire (2 from adv microchip)
>Throw up your hands and go for a walk.

I already struggled with the cost of regular solar panels, mainly from the plastic and constant need of CPU. But gold, I just can't be asked. I don't know if a particle accelerator would help, but its super late game, and the one on the ship died either before game start or almost immediately, so I don't know any of its energy costs. I'm aware they aren't cheap.

Mr. Dev (I apologize for not knowing your name)
I hope you don't take this post as me trying to be toxic or anything, I just wanted to illustrate my experience and why I'm going to step away.

For anyone else. I hope you understand my woes.

[spajus]

Thank you for your feedback! I appreciate it, and I will use it to make some adjustments (like making handguns shouldn't require platinum ingots).

The game did go a really long way in last two years, and there are a lot of new mechanics and content additions, which did "bloat" the game as you put it, though I never thought more content would make it worse.

But it's still Early Access, and there are still some balance issues to be solved. You can try the "v0_12_pre" beta branch, that has several extra months worth of development in it, it does address some balance issues (small solar panels won't require plastic anymore, for example).

Every time I make a change to the game, there are people who like it and people who don't. Like with the research system you mentioned, many people hated the old system, and the new one was received in much better way, however some, like you, prefer the old system. Unfortunately, I can't please everyone all the time, so I'm trying to do what most people want or ask for.

Let me address a couple of your remarks:

>Think about getting carrier drones to help with the hauling.
>Realize you need a lot more research to get there.

Main way to get new workers now is to convert defeated raiders to your own bots, by overwriting their cores with brains of your dead friendly colonists. Building bots on your own assembly line is a mid-late game thing now.

There's a ton of research which is perfectly fine, but the racks and racks of storage. It was a thing in the past, because that was the "resource cost" involved with research, now its that + Datoids.

If you'd load an old build (still available in betas), you'll find that you needed way more storage then than you do now. Additionally you needed to build memory modules for research, now you don't.

>Realize the CPU now is responsible for each device, and you get 20 per THz

You get 8THz (160 devices) right from the start, and with one CPU module you get 20 more. If you're running into the initial limit too soon and don't have resources for building more CPU modules, you may be trying to expand your ship too quickly.

Now your more complicated recipes need scarce material. You can't find them so you travel over and over. Hopefully you found some rock in your travels.

You can unlock resource scanning once you get the radar, then you can find the resources and know where to go. In v0.12 beta rock is so abundant you'll find it everywhere easily.

Again, thank you for your feedback, and I hope you'll change your mind with future updates!