Feedback after mostly finishing early access

[FlyingFish]

Firstly, awesome game. Great job. Core feedback loop is fun though it may require something else to spend cubes on when upgrades finally wear out.

Constructive feedback would be as follows:
- Processing of materials takes too long. If players are tempted to AFK the game to let a process finish, that's bad game design. Unfortunately with the materials filling up a cargo hold there is little choice. Perhaps a separate hold for processing goods that can't be refunded or something, but allows you to keep playing the game?
- The cracked sapphire object is terrible, as there's no reliable way to mine it (at least that I've found. MM2 planets don't have underground resources? And MM3's I've only found Amazonite. That makes completing this objective really grindy.
- A ship upgrade that allowed for mineral analysis of asteroids, for example what underground deposits existed, would be an awesome QoL feature.
- Again, an upgrade that told you what resource you were placing an extractor on would be a great upgrade.

Looking forward to the rest of the content but really enjoyed what I've played thus far :)

[musizlover2008]

I know how you feel about the cracked sapphire contract. It's such a pain to see my map showing no nearby asteroid with Sapphires that has plenty of time left. An upgrade to extend the time limit would be nice, and also some sort of ramp or bridge construct that is a better alternative to the crane.

[FlyingFish]

yeah bridges and ramps would be nice but they'd likely make cranes obsolete. One thing I've found RE timelimit, is you can sleep to reset the asteroids, as well as jump to empty space if there's some at the top of the screen you want to check out.

[Jako]

All of these a good, thought provoking suggestions. They need a lot more refinement but yea you’re not asking for much outside of QoL and better game design. +1

[Killebrewski]

Agree about the cracked sapphire. The most efficient way I could do it is build a surface crusher next to a pile and swing the flawless sapphires to the input, cracking them into four intentionally so they get sucked up immediately. Still, those cracked contracts were a grind.

[FlyingFish]

Originally posted by Killebrewski:

Agree about the cracked sapphire. The most efficient way I could do it is build a surface crusher next to a pile and swing the flawless sapphires to the input, cracking them into four intentionally so they get sucked up immediately. Still, those cracked contracts were a grind.

If you weren't aware, you can change the settings on the crusher to accept flawless gems. This does help speed up those "cracked gem" objectives because for all but the sapphire you can mine them straight into a crusher.

[Vlad, Doing Snek Things]

As I pointed out in my review earlier today: The game has a lot of potential. There's quiet a bit there that shows dedication to a style... But there are fundamental issues with the game play.
Things like the timers everywhere is poor game design. This isn't a mobile game. I shouldn't need to travel for 30 seconds between nodes, and then wait 10 seconds for each batch of 25 units to process, when there are literal thousands of items to process.
This isn't an "automation" game, it's a 20-minute node hopper, where you have to set up everything by hand ever 20 minutes, then spend the time putting it all away. There is NO automation aspects in the way Automation games are made.
Asteroid Inconsistency in Size and Quantity of items on them.
There's a few more little things here and there, but those core ones should be a priority to fix and redesign.

[hubecube_]

Thank you for the feedback!

Originally posted by FlyingFish:

- Processing of materials takes too long. If players are tempted to AFK the game to let a process finish, that's bad game design. Unfortunately with the materials filling up a cargo hold there is little choice. Perhaps a separate hold for processing goods that can't be refunded or something, but allows you to keep playing the game?

Working on a solution for that - should have something soon.

Originally posted by FlyingFish:

- The cracked sapphire object is terrible, as there's no reliable way to mine it (at least that I've found. MM2 planets don't have underground resources? And MM3's I've only found Amazonite. That makes completing this objective really grindy.

Will take a look.

Originally posted by FlyingFish:

- A ship upgrade that allowed for mineral analysis of asteroids, for example what underground deposits existed, would be an awesome QoL feature.

Noted

Originally posted by FlyingFish:

- Again, an upgrade that told you what resource you were placing an extractor on would be a great upgrade.

This is already funcional and needs better tutorialization but the "R" key shows you the info overlay which shows you how many kgs your drill is tapped into!

[hubecube_]

Originally posted by Vlad, Gremlin Snek:

As I pointed out in my review earlier today: The game has a lot of potential. There's quiet a bit there that shows dedication to a style... But there are fundamental issues with the game play.
Things like the timers everywhere is poor game design. This isn't a mobile game. I shouldn't need to travel for 30 seconds between nodes, and then wait 10 seconds for each batch of 25 units to process, when there are literal thousands of items to process.
This isn't an "automation" game, it's a 20-minute node hopper, where you have to set up everything by hand ever 20 minutes, then spend the time putting it all away. There is NO automation aspects in the way Automation games are made.
Asteroid Inconsistency in Size and Quantity of items on them.
There's a few more little things here and there, but those core ones should be a priority to fix and redesign.

Thanks - taking in all the feedback and working to make things better.

[Marauder]

Originally posted by hubecube_:

Originally posted by Vlad, Gremlin Snek:

As I pointed out in my review earlier today: The game has a lot of potential. There's quiet a bit there that shows dedication to a style... But there are fundamental issues with the game play.
Things like the timers everywhere is poor game design. This isn't a mobile game. I shouldn't need to travel for 30 seconds between nodes, and then wait 10 seconds for each batch of 25 units to process, when there are literal thousands of items to process.
This isn't an "automation" game, it's a 20-minute node hopper, where you have to set up everything by hand ever 20 minutes, then spend the time putting it all away. There is NO automation aspects in the way Automation games are made.
Asteroid Inconsistency in Size and Quantity of items on them.
There's a few more little things here and there, but those core ones should be a priority to fix and redesign.

Thanks - taking in all the feedback and working to make things better.

Seriously, the game itself is good and fun. It's mostly some minor things and bugs that need to be ironed out. I'd love if we could get an auto refill toggle for fuel. It's kinda mandatory to do anyway.

[hubecube_]

Originally posted by Vlad, Gremlin Snek:

As I pointed out in my review earlier today: The game has a lot of potential. There's quiet a bit there that shows dedication to a style... But there are fundamental issues with the game play.
Things like the timers everywhere is poor game design. This isn't a mobile game. I shouldn't need to travel for 30 seconds between nodes, and then wait 10 seconds for each batch of 25 units to process, when there are literal thousands of items to process.
This isn't an "automation" game, it's a 20-minute node hopper, where you have to set up everything by hand ever 20 minutes, then spend the time putting it all away. There is NO automation aspects in the way Automation games are made.
Asteroid Inconsistency in Size and Quantity of items on them.
There's a few more little things here and there, but those core ones should be a priority to fix and redesign.

Popping in here to say that 0.73.8 has lowered jump back to station time to 5 seconds. Jump to asteroid remains 30 seconds as this is a loading screen - we are generating the asteroid randomly. You can exit the map screen and do things on the freighter while you are in transit.

[Mr. Fabio]

the r key only show what deposit is after you put the drill , can you make a way to know that deposit is without need to put the drill?

[chorchoun]

So... I am on the end of EA too. Except two cracked gem contracts, these are bit tedious. Overall a fine experience so far... yes, there are some bugs, but it is obvious the devs are working hard on smashing them. 🙂

I see a lot of suggestions here, but I think the problem is the devs keep most of the planned content secret. All we know is there would be 4 more stations, their names and what types of new resource (fluid, gas, data...) we will unlock there. And that there will be some endgame / endless region (horizons unlimited). And that we will posibly return home one day as a final victory. But almost nothing about new mechanics, upgrades, tools, blueprints, equipment... and that's why so many players let their fantasy go wild. I understand devs don't want to reveal too much, don't want to promise something, that eventually won't get in the game or will significantly change and somebody would be disappointed. But a bit more transparency wouldn't hurt. At least regarding the closest content update.

And then some unplanned changes come under the pressure of player feedback and suggestions, like custom asteroid time multiplier or disabling pirates. The first thing probably killed the Gravity well feature mentioned by the devs in another thread, which wouldn't make much sense now, when we can prolong the asteroid time to few hours just via settings menu. And that's a shame, the Gravity well sounds like interesting feature. I believe that if we knew that something like this is planned in next content update, there would be much less complaints about short timers. because we would know it will be solved just by progressing the game.

The same with the pirates. They are not as hard or annoying, the problem is you have to carry the blaster to deal with them (I hate fighting them with the laser), but then you can't have the laser, which limits you, or you have to run to the shuttle to switch tools everytime the pirate alert pops up. And that's annoying. But if we knew there would be a third tool slot unlock soon (or other viable solution for this), we wouldn't complain and just wait for it. But instead of that, we can now just switch the pirates of, whish agian is a shame.

The main problem with pirates is they are nothing else but a nuisance. I can imagine they could be useful too, like dropping something, that cannot be acquired elsewhere (not just few bits of iron), that unlock something new. Like some sort of pirate currency (fe. black market data) that can be used to buy some "pirate tech" or to mark a special spot on the asteroid where you can drill for treasure or to mark a cloaked asteroid on your map with bonus resources...

And now I am letting my fantasy go wild too... 😅 So, devs, would you mind to tell as a bit more about your plans with pirates? Will they stay just a nuisance or there will be something more, something worth keeping them enabled? 😇

[Homoki Vince]

Here's all the feedback I have so far:
- I would love to see how many resources are in an underground deposit. Don't want to build more drills because time is running low only to find that it ran out the moment i built those drills and also don't want to be just guessing how much is in there and if i should just wait or put more drills. Maybe as an upgrade to the resource scanner?

- It certainly is annoying to have to take multiple trips with the shuttle back to the freighter, especially if there are pirates and have no idea if they'll wreck my entire army of workerbots and stuff while im away for that minute ish it takes to go to the freighter and back. I just have to do it right after pirates come.

- I would also like the ability to store items without taking up space in the freighter which i want to put resources in instead, like some station storage or something to leave stuff in while you go to an asteroid and fill up on resources.

- I find myself wanting the command bot to move faster but everything either doesnt affect movement speed or lowers it, like an additional equipment slot would be awesome but i want more movement speed instead so that i could move stuff around and get set up faster..

- I don't know if this has been fixed or not, but sometimes when workerbots were carrying items and wanted to move them myself with the gravity tether they would glitch out and just disappear. Lost quite a few workerbots to that. One time i just wanted to pick up a workerbot and some copper chunks were nearby, and it seemed to act weird and a copper chunk went up in the air for a split second and then the copper node and workerbot disppeared.
Another time a crane was connecting two terrain sections with the ends tapering off (don't know how to describe it, it is where it gets thinner and thinner until it stops), and the crane got stuck/broke probably waiting for a workerbot to go to the transit point but otehrs were blocking it and in all that pushing around a workerbot must have clipped through the floor or a wall or something because i had one less than i came with, i also saw that that same crane also picked up a workerbot but didnt quite attach itslef correctly and was still affected by gravity or the crane picked it up without the workerbot actually being fully under the arm or whatever so it moved it weirdly and it ended up putting it into an out of bounds area or however you call it and i needed to move it back myself..

Might add more stuff because im incredibly forgetful and i actually had to start typing somehing here and only then did i remember what i actually wanted to write..

edit 1: just sent this and another thing came to mind. currently if you go much past the last station the asteroids just disappear. i think it would be better if there was maybe just a mix of all of hte asteroids so far, so that there was actually a reason to explore there and find everything you might be looking for all in one place so you don't have to go back to other stations..
also, speaking of the map, why cant you go to the left of the first station? and maybe i could also just look everywhere even outside of hte scaner/navigation ranges and the mining claim to see how much time stuff has left or someting. and why can asteroids currently only go down or down right diagonally? like why can't they come from all directions and speeds?

i also want to be able to see the recipes of manufacturign items without needing to stop manufacturing what im already doing..

theres so much to say..

edit 2: another thing: if i have an asteroid tagged as say MM1 and them it moves out of scanner range and i mouse over it again then it gets tagged as ??? even though i already know what it is

edit 3: why does MM4 have no pirates even though all the otehr MMs do? was that just a mistake? im not complaining though

edit 4: ok im stopping for now, why do rocks not melt faster if there are multiple mining lasers pointed at it?

edit 5: ok nvm this one is important. when the asteroid leaves the mining claim, you can'T load anything anymore, right? well if you have resources on your command bot and go into the shuttle, it doesn't load it onto the shuttle. okay? well if you take off, it DOES get loaded onto the shuttle. and because i think you can access storage cubes after it left the mining claim and you can use a crusher to turn stuff into storage cubes, i think you can keep loading stuff onto the shuttle after the asteroid has left the mining lcaim. that reminds me that the command bot ejects the inventory when the last inventory space gets used (has a single thing in it), not when it tries to load an item and it doesnt fit in the inventory.

[El Rhino]

The timer is killing me now. I get everything set up and running and crap there's the 5 minute mark, ok I can manage that----Pirates? Timers or pirates, not both.

[Brisingr]

Originally posted by El Rhino:

The timer is killing me now. I get everything set up and running and crap there's the 5 minute mark, ok I can manage that----Pirates? Timers or pirates, not both.

If you don't like them, you can disable pirates and increase the timer by x10 for any rock you land on in gameplay settings.