Tons of basic mechanics, and no explanations of them to the new player... Grr, Paradox!

[Kalemenos]

I’m generally enjoying this game as a delightful building game. However, there are SOOOOO many basic mechanics, but there’s NO INFORMATION FOR THE PLAYER. I’ll give a few examples. (If anyone wants to help answer any of the problems below, I’d be in your debt. But I’m writing them here less to get answers than to prove that there’s too little info for the player, and nowhere to turn to figure out what in the world.)

1. Can I get more drones to hurry things up? How?
2. What do the five sets of numbers in the upper right corner mean?
3. Here and there are little piles. If I click on them, I see a picture, but a less-than-highly experienced player has no idea what those pictures mean. Words, please.
4. I sent my transport truck on an “expedition,” now I can’t find it, where is it?
5. Do conveyor belts have an “off” switch? (Stop them from piling up on belts if a receiving building is powered down.)
6. One expedition is to “fix the cargo terminal.” Where do I get highly advanced items like “modular terminals” with which to fix them?
7. If I force a belt to drop materials like slag or regolith, do they stay there in piles forever, or will the drones eventually do something with/to them?
8. I built an ice melter. The conveyer belt moves ice into it. But nothing happens, it’s not doing anything. So I built a water tank. It’s just sitting there empty. Do they need to be connected or something? See how this makes no sense? Please provide information to the player.
9. I get the notification, “Wasting science points.” So I click on it, and go the research screen. I have five techs piled up in line. How is the player supposed to identify what is being wasted, and what to do about it?
10. How am I even getting research points? Where do they come from, how can I get more?
11. I built a new building. Notification pops up, “Not enough power to run the module.” But when I mouse over the lightening bolt at the top of the screen, I see two things: “maximum consumption 292” and “consumes 232.” The difference is 60, but when I click on the building it says it needs 10. This makes no sense, and the player has no information on what to do about it.
12. The drones spend all their time moving mined regolith from the drilled walls, when I put “high” priority on other jobs. Why, and what can the player do about it?
13. No one tells you conveyor belts go in the direction you lay them, even though you connected the input of one building to the output of another.
14. The electrolysis plant is built. It shows both a drop of water and a lightening bolt. The game doesn't let me connect wires, and I haven't the foggiest clue what the water drop means. How can the player know what to do next?

I could go on. But paradox games leave the player really scratching his head to figure out the basic mechanics, even though the game is otherwise good, leaving one very frustrated.

I can't figure out where some of you geniuses, who answer other player's conundrums, get your information. I have no doubt you're all brilliant - seriously.

[Razguul]

Completely agree, except the last sentence.

[MeyerX]

Are you playing sandbox?
Many of those questions were answered through the tutorial (campaign mode)

[Kalemenos]

Originally posted by Razguul:

Completely agree, except the last sentence.

Ha ha

Originally posted by MeyerX:

Are you playing sandbox?
Many of those questions were answered through the tutorial (campaign mode)

Sandbox is even more unintelligible, no not that. I did the tutorial but... did I miss EVERYTHING somehow? Maybe I'll run through it again, now that I have clearer questions. It's a fun game, don't get me wrong.

[MrSkinny]

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

1. Can I get more drones to hurry things up? How?

They get handed out a few at a time to you through the campaign. Part of the gameplay "puzzle" is getting as much automation done as possible, so you don't overload the drones.

According to their official suggestion site[idea.the-crust.com] it's also a planned feature to be able to build drones.

2. What do the five sets of numbers in the upper right corner mean?

It appears to be Sol time (HH:MM), date in Europe format (DD/MM) then year. Note that the moon's day/night cycle does not match this clock, because nighttime lasts several Earth weeks.

3. Here and there are little piles. If I click on them, I see a picture, but a less-than-highly experienced player has no idea what those pictures mean. Words, please.

Would be nice, but if you mouseover the same pics in the resource icons on the right-hand side, you do get an English tooltip. The icons are very distinguishable at least.

4. I sent my transport truck on an “expedition,” now I can’t find it, where is it?

If the truck goes on an Expedition to ONLY fetch items, then it's got to be on the map somewhere. If it's an Expedition that needs to bring resources to the site, then it will go into the Expedition Center. If you click on the Center, you should see the resources that have not yet loaded into the truck.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to cancel an Expedition. The best way to sort it out is buy the missing resources from the market and get them loaded. The truck will then exit and you can directly control it to dump everything on the ground, then give it new orders. (Or just do its current mission)

5. Do conveyor belts have an “off” switch? (Stop them from piling up on belts if a receiving building is powered down.)

No, but you can turn off the starting point of a conveyor. E.g. if it's coming from a storage crate, click on it and then the conveyor config button. You can then click the padlock to stop items exiting on the conveyor.

The suggestion site[idea.the-crust.com] shows they're currently developing a way to manage this better, i.e. set a "keep minimum amount" in storage to stop it auto releasing all the items.

6. One expedition is to “fix the cargo terminal.” Where do I get highly advanced items like “modular terminals” with which to fix them?

Early in the tech tree is access to the market. This lets you buy and sell resources. The campaign characters do introduce you to this, but you can research it before they talk about it.

7. If I force a belt to drop materials like slag or regolith, do they stay there in piles forever, or will the drones eventually do something with/to them?

If you create storage for them (either single resource crates or those palettes that collect a bunch of resources), the drones WILL eventually clean them up as a low priority. You can also click the "Priority" button in bottom left (it looks like two chevrons pointing up), then click on piles on the ground to prioritize them higher.

8. I built an ice melter. The conveyer belt moves ice into it. But nothing happens, it’s not doing anything. So I built a water tank. It’s just sitting there empty. Do they need to be connected or something? See how this makes no sense? Please provide information to the player.

The characters walk you through a quest line where you should have provided power to the room through the electricity board.

9. I get the notification, “Wasting science points.” So I click on it, and go the research screen. I have five techs piled up in line. How is the player supposed to identify what is being wasted, and what to do about it?

If you look at the items you're researching, you can see the three science colors pulsing to show what is actively being researched. The icons fill up with each color as the research is complete. It should be obvious which color(s) is not pulsing, and that's what you're wasting. (You can see your research income in top-right as well and how it has nothing being deducted). You can't "store" research points, but things already partially researched keep the accumulation, so just switch out items to make sure you're always using your income.

10. How am I even getting research points? Where do they come from, how can I get more?

Mouseover the research points in the top right. It breaks down exactly where every point is coming from and where it's being spent.

11. I built a new building. Notification pops up, “Not enough power to run the module.” But when I mouse over the lightening bolt at the top of the screen, I see two things: “maximum consumption 292” and “consumes 232.” The difference is 60, but when I click on the building it says it needs 10. This makes no sense, and the player has no information on what to do about it.

During the nighttime, you have no power coming in, so you're relying on what's charged in your batteries. But batteries have a maximum output. Mouseover the "battery" icon in the top bar and it will tell you, for example, maximum output 200. If your max consumption is above 200 and all your machines are turned on, then you are exceeding what you can simultaneously power. Turn some machines off during the night or build more batteries and enough solar to charge them fully during the day.

12. The drones spend all their time moving mined regolith from the drilled walls, when I put “high” priority on other jobs. Why, and what can the player do about it?

Drone priority is definitely not 100% working well. I've observed:

#1 drones with a job will finish it even if you change priorities of things. So don't expect instant results. Running the game at top speed, it can still take a full minute or more for drones to finish up whatever they were committed to doing.

#2 Best way to stop drones from doing pickup work is set your regolith storage collector to not allow drone dropoff. In normal operations you should only have two storage bins set to allow dropoff: regolith and rare minerals (the two things you can mine from walls). Everything else should not let drones drop off because they should be connected by conveyors. For floor cleanup, I like to have a palette near the elevator that collects random loose stuff on ground, which you can also disallow dropoff when you have a priority build project.

13. No one tells you conveyor belts go in the direction you lay them, even though you connected the input of one building to the output of another.

Conveyors from a DEDICATED entry or exit port WILL default to correct direction (note storage, for example, all ports can be input or output, so the conveyor can't guess which one you want it to be). The problem is when you're then laying continued belts, usually adding intersections, it no longer has the original port as a reference and defaults to the direction you're laying it down. You can change the direction manually while laying (with V key), but not once it's built unfortunately.

At least you can delete and rebuild any section of conveyor with full refund.

I can't figure out where some of you geniuses, who answer other player's conundrums, get your information. I have no doubt you're all brilliant - seriously.

90% of the above I figured out from trial and error. Other stuff by reading forums and Discord. My take is that the game is not in the best "newbie friendly" condition of EA games I've played, but it is miles and miles from the worst experience as well.

[Kalemenos]

Wow, Mr Skinny, that was an awesome reply! Thanks for the big write up, and you gave me a ton of new ideas. Thanks! I didn't mean to take so much time out of your life, I was just making the point that it's really hard to figure things out when the designers could make it a little clearer for the player.

[Almasty]

#1. Drones

Can buy drones from market once you have researched markets-buy/sell. They can be very expensive.

[Lëgënd]

Originally posted by Almasty:

#1. Drones

Can buy drones from market once you have researched markets-buy/sell. They can be very expensive.

Pretty sure you need other research done as well in order to buy them, probably exped station or the factories to make vehicles. I'm assuming this as I can't buy them off the market yet and vehicles is greyed out, and I'm missing the things I mentioned above.

[Tekcruzer]

Originally posted by Lëgënd:

Originally posted by Almasty:

#1. Drones

Can buy drones from market once you have researched markets-buy/sell. They can be very expensive.

Pretty sure you need other research done as well in order to buy them, probably exped station or the factories to make vehicles. I'm assuming this as I can't buy them off the market yet and vehicles is greyed out, and I'm missing the things I mentioned above.

+1 Same thoughts..although I don't have the answer

[Almasty]

is 2nd green row research under the market screen thingy.

[GaMaiMo]

1. Can I get more drones to hurry things up? How?
=> You can buy drone in Market => Robot. Around 30K-50K for a drone. I bought over 200

[mortis7]

Things are being explained more or less, but throughout a veery long period of gameplay.
I have almost 10h on the clock and they are explaining more and more things as I go further in the campaign.
I too had similar questions as you, but I was able to figure them all before they were mentioned during the campaign.

And honestly? I prefer it that way. I like to figure things out, not being given them on a platter. But to each their own :)