Suit Fabricator hotkey? UI downgrade with recent changes

[Lanthrudar]

Started a new run since the last major upgrade and I have to say that the suit printer is very poorly designed.

It's nice to have a portable one, but two things make it WORSE than the using the prevoous 'normal' fabricator..

1. Before we just needed ONE fabricator for basically everything that wasn't furniture or upgrade. It wasn't portable but it was consistent, EVERYTHING you needed was in one place.
Now we have to remember which device is printed where. This is a major step backward.

2. There doesn't seem to be a hotkey to open the suit printer, so instead of the former system where we walk up to one device, click ONCE and then select what we wanted to print now we have to open a menu, select a different menu (an additional click) and then select the item to print.

This may not sound like much, having a single extra click to open a menu but over the course of a game this would mean THOUSANDS of extra, unnecessary clicks just to open a menu that previously was accessible easier. A 'click' may not seem like much, a second or two maybe, but them multiple that by the number of times we will have to open the suit printer menu over the course of a game and that will be DOZENS, if not hundreds of wasted hours of game play time spent just opening a secondary menu.

Anyone with UI experience will tell you that the idea is to make LESS clicks for users to go through, not more.

So the suit printer needs a hotkey, or the "device fabricator" needs to have the functionality restored so it prints everything it used to, and have the suit printer as an additional printer for what it currently does. Splitting the suit printer and 'device printer' actually added more complexity to the UI and user experience and not less.

Add the ability for the device printer to do everything and you can even leave the extra-step sub-menu hunt for the suit printer alone, but would improve the user experience to add a hotkey without having to click-through another area.

I like the game, and enjoyed dozens of hours in it prior to the recent change. I was looking forward to playing again, but the down-grade to the UI by having to hunt around which print menu printed what, and the extra clicks, every-single-time to open the suit printer caused me to stop and I never made it past the first radio tower and not sure if I'll go back.

Wasting play time with extra, unnecessary UI elements to have to go through, is not an optimal choice.

[Phoenix Cat]

This has been requested. You can go to the suggestions page and upvote it. It is a highly requested item and I see them adding very soon.

[Lanthrudar]

Originally posted by Phoenix Cat:

This has been requested. You can go to the suggestions page and upvote it. It is a highly requested item and I see them adding very soon.

Great, thanks for the info.

[scorp_poison]

There's a Suit Fabricator? XD

[kane]

Yeah i agree it makes the early game more tedious the Suit Fabricator should be for an emergency like when you are under the dust or when the other Fabricator is doing something. The normal Fabricator should be able to do everything.

[Mohaje]

The best fix.... would be to allow the ship fabricator, to skip the need for exact required materials.... Like plastic os made from synthetics or machine parts are made from metal....

As long as we have the total required materials we shouldn't have to refine them down to their respective parts... The fabricator should just do this automatically, without any hazzle...!

(same as it does in empyrion galactic survival)

Since we can already craft from storage, the other should be standard also.... At least in in ship fabricator.... The suit crafter is understandably less powerfull, and shoulden't have this feature...

[Lanthrudar]

Originally posted by Mohaje:

The best fix.... would be to allow the ship fabricator, to skip the need for exact required materials.... Like plastic os made from synthetics or machine parts are made from metal....

As long as we have the total required materials we shouldn't have to refine them down to their respective parts... The fabricator should just do this automatically, without any hazzle...!

(same as it does in empyrion galactic survival)

Since we can already craft from storage, the other should be standard also.... At least in in ship fabricator.... The suit crafter is understandably less powerful, and shoulden't have this feature...

Eh, I would disagree with this actually. Yes it may be a hassle, but the current functionality is how pretty much all survival games work, where you do have to print sub-components if you don't have them and this one acts the same way which is fine. Some games don't even let you make intermediary components like this one does, and you have to find them, not be able to make them.

The best solution is simply to allow the ship fabricator to print everything again like it did, then it wouldn't really matter. You would only change which group of the item you want (ship, materials, etc) along the tab tops, quickly print the sub items needed and then the final item needed, all without having to change or even close the fabrication/printing menu at all.

The main issues are they split the printing when they didn't need to, the suit printer could just have been a secondary printing option like it is now, instead of now requiring players EVEN MORE running around between the two printers.

So they added a way to print on the go to supposedly help players, but in actuality the implementation requires MORE running around from players, which completely TRASHES any improvement that they thought they were adding to players for convenience.

[Mohaje]

I think it's really annoying having to change menu eighter in the ship fabricator or the suit fabricator, only to craft some more machine parts or plastics i, that i by the way already have the materials for, just to craft the item im after....

This extra step is only causing frustration, it dosn't add to the gameplay in any conceivable way possible, it only makes stuff take longer to build..... By all means add the time to craft theese materials on the end of the other buildcycle... Just let me go do other things while it crafting....

Otherwise we might as well go back to No "crafting from storage"

Another thing abouth "craft from storage"..... is causing me to stop organising my boxes, build materials just go where ever there is room.... since i don't need to sort them anymore, why bother....!

[teg]

I'd like to see the upgraded printer take over for the small printers. I don't much mind the suit printer but, having an upgraded printer that can't print what the base printer could is annoying. Particularly since the base printer is used to make the upgraded printer.

How many different kinds of printers will we end up with?

[Lanthrudar]

Originally posted by Mohaje:

I think it's really annoying having to change menu eighter in the ship fabricator or the suit fabricator, only to craft some more machine parts or plastics i, that i by the way already have the materials for, just to craft the item im after....

This extra step is only causing frustration, it dosn't add to the gameplay in any conceivable way possible, it only makes stuff take longer to build..... By all means add the time to craft theese materials on the end of the other buildcycle... Just let me go do other things while it crafting....

Otherwise we might as well go back to No "crafting from storage"

Another thing abouth "craft from storage"..... is causing me to stop organising my boxes, build materials just go where ever there is room.... since i don't need to sort them anymore, why bother....!

Eh, quite the logic jump you make from "why can't this printer do everything with one button mash, argghhhhh!!!!!111!!" to "well if it doesn't do EVERYTHING with one button smash then let's just scrap it all and have to run around grabbing stuff from boxes!!!111!!! Grawww..."

Seriously though, the game has always had you craft base components from raw materials, again just like almost every other game in the survival genre. It's a nice QOL feature, and something that not all games DO have when you craft from storage.

You undermine the idea of having a single printer (the one on the ship) go back to doing what is now split among the ship and suit printers, which is the topic of this particular thread.

By all means, if you want to suggest a "let me just mash one button and print anything I need" then go to the game dev forums and suggest it. I doubt you'd have many up-votes but I could be wrong. I think you'll find that the mentality of "one button to print it all" many survival game enthusiasts (those who actually like the exploring, gathering and crafting aspects) will link to the "give me a win button!!!11!!" mentality, which sorta defeats the time spent in these games.

[U_Mad_Bro?]

I like the way it is. :)

[Lanthrudar]

Originally posted by U_Mad_Bro?:

I like the way it is. :)

Congratulations then? If you like it then no reason to post in the thread. ;)

[J[Y]anin]

I hadn't played since a few versions ago and saw a release update and figured I'd jump back in...
...then found I could craft from my inventory, great! Useful for a few bits here and then when away form the ship.
Then I built the Device Fabricator only to find it can't make the basics and I have to switch back and forth.
Nope, that's a little silly :p

[DeLindsay]

Originally posted by Phoenix Cat:

This has been requested. You can go to the suggestions page and upvote it. It is a highly requested item and I see them adding very soon.

The point is it shouldn't have needed to be requested as it was a terribly thought out change. FFH even stated they knew players wouldn't like some of the changes and yet still pushed forward with MORE building restrictions, this mess with the two different fabricators, the change to the Scanner (that they were warned about repeatedly during the testing of Co-Op, but didn't take the testers seriously until after Co-Op went live then all the sudden thousands of pissed off people made them realize the testers were correct), removing nearly ALL building pcs we used to have by default so we'd have to go find them (while also having a game breaking bug that the Datapads aren't spawning correctly), changing how much you get per extracted resource to make the game even grindier, etc.

[kane]

Originally posted by DeLindsay:

Originally posted by Phoenix Cat:

This has been requested. You can go to the suggestions page and upvote it. It is a highly requested item and I see them adding very soon.

The point is it shouldn't have needed to be requested as it was a terribly thought out change. FFH even stated they knew players wouldn't like some of the changes and yet still pushed forward with MORE building restrictions, this mess with the two different fabricators, the change to the Scanner (that they were warned about repeatedly during the testing of Co-Op, but didn't take the testers seriously until after Co-Op went live then all the sudden thousands of pissed off people made them realize the testers were correct), removing nearly ALL building pcs we used to have by default so we'd have to go find them (while also having a game breaking bug that the Datapads aren't spawning correctly), changing how much you get per extracted resource to make the game even grindier, etc.

What was the change to the scanner its been a while since i last played and yeah i agree messing with the Fabricator and how much you get per extracted resource is just dumb.

If you are going to add coop don't mess with the SP too much. Planet Crafter did coop a lot better.

[DeLindsay]

Originally posted by kane:

Originally posted by DeLindsay:

The point is it shouldn't have needed to be requested as it was a terribly thought out change. FFH even stated they knew players wouldn't like some of the changes and yet still pushed forward with MORE building restrictions, this mess with the two different fabricators, the change to the Scanner (that they were warned about repeatedly during the testing of Co-Op, but didn't take the testers seriously until after Co-Op went live then all the sudden thousands of pissed off people made them realize the testers were correct), removing nearly ALL building pcs we used to have by default so we'd have to go find them (while also having a game breaking bug that the Datapads aren't spawning correctly), changing how much you get per extracted resource to make the game even grindier, etc.

What was the change to the scanner its been a while since i last played and yeah i agree messing with the Fabricator and how much you get per extracted resource is just dumb.

If you are going to add coop don't mess with the SP too much. Planet Crafter did coop a lot better.

The Scanner change made it run out of charge extremely fast during Beta testing of Co-Op and no way to get the Battery Charger early on. FFH I guess didn't see it as a priority to fix until AFTER Co-Op went live and then MANY people complained about it so it was changed in the Hotfix afterwords.

Adding Co-Op is actually the one thing about this update people are happy with, even with all it's bugs. Changing the gameplay loop to increase how grindy FS is (likely due to FFH surmising with 4 Players gathering simultaneously it'd suck up resources too fast) screws over anyone wishing to play solo, in the beginning. And by beginning I mean tens of hours of gameplay before you get to a point where you have a comfortable amount of resources now solo.