Is the game bad without mods?

[IndustryStandard]

I tried the game once a few years ago and it didn't really click for me, I wanted to give it another go but half the reviews are saying the game is garbage without mods and the other half give a sort of lukewarm reaction to it. And there seems to be a lot of fuss about performance going on too.

Is the game really that bland without mods? I generally prefer playing my games unmodded with exception to some QOL changes or UI improvements.

[Corbent]

In my opinion, the game is VERY lacking without mods. It really feels unfinished. But on the other hand, with the right mods it's one of my favorite games that I keep revisiting every now and then. And I bought it forever ago when it wasn't even the full release.

The first suggestion is Frackin Universe. As far as I'm concerned that should be the base game.

[NightStar]

The base game is alright. As you play the base game you'll notice that it is missing some QOL features that come standard in most other games of this type. Unfortunately, instead of adding these features or fixing the coding issues with this game, Chucklefish gave us the bounty hunter update instead.
My personal opinion is that Chucklefish needs to fix the coding problems first before it does anything else so that anything else like the QOL features can be added and work smoothly. After that, then and only then, should that look at adding more content to this game so that it reaches it's full potential. Though I think that was also screwed up when they changed things between the Beta version and the released versions that came after.
It's still a decent game without mods, Just don't be surprised when you discover it doesn't have all the features you would normally expect from a sandbox game.

[IndustryStandard]

Is there any heavily recommended QOL mods? I know a few years ago I found the inventory/crafting UI to be sluggish to navigate compared to Terraria or Minecrafts interface.

Are the performance improvement mods needed for high end rigs too?

[NightStar]

There are alot of QOL mods and I'll list many of the ones I use. Performance improvement mods are not NEEDED for high end rigs but they can still help. This is simply because of how chucklfish made the game and the mess they created by bring on and switching out who was working on the game constantly. It created several problems within the game that modders try to do their best to either fix or work around (mostly workaround because they can't change alot of the messed up coding).

Some of my QOL mods I use:
More Planet info
What Menu
Better (C) main menu
Quick bar mini
vehicle controller display
bk3k's inventory
crew customization
descriptive food
improved damage particles
enhanced storage
legendary tooltips
improved codex
recipe browser

There are plenty more just keep an eye out for compatibility issues. Some don't get along with each other as they try to change the same files. The ones I've listed do NOT have compatibility issues with each other.

I edited it because it didn't keep the spaces i used to seperate the mods i listed

[IndustryStandard]

Any mods to make the UI bigger ?

I have to squint to see these tiny ass icons.

[NightStar]

Extra zoom levels. That's as close as it get's to my knowledge.

I think there's one that changes the icons also but i'm not sure so you would have to search through the mod list unfortunately.

[IndustryStandard]

Unfortunately the game is basically unplayable. I have it on max zoom but the UI stays the same size and the text just isn't pleasant to read.

[NightStar]

Well it's not unplayable, just difficult to play since you have a hard time reading the UI. Unplayable would mean that there is a critical error making it impossible to get the game to run. You might try changing your screen resolution to a smaller size. Beyond that i'm afraid I don't know of any mods that adjust only the UI.

[Part-Time Jesus]

Frackin Universe makes this one of the best games I've ever played, hands down.

Just get Frackin Universe and the game is legendary.

[Part-Time Jesus]

Originally posted by Corbent:

In my opinion, the game is VERY lacking without mods. It really feels unfinished. But on the other hand, with the right mods it's one of my favorite games that I keep revisiting every now and then. And I bought it forever ago when it wasn't even the full release.

The first suggestion is Frackin Universe. As far as I'm concerned that should be the base game.

Its freaky how good Frackin Universe is. Join the Discord, great community.

I think there's a a total of 70,000 items that the Dev told me needs kept track of in FU.

Frackin Universe should absolutely be the base game, in my opinion as well, no question.

[NightStar]

I disagree with your opinion of FU. That aside, That has nothing to do with the question asked by OP. He was asking about QOL mods and if there was one that would make the UI bigger so he could see it. FU does NOT adjust the UI and it is far more than a QOL mod.

It adds alot of things, mostly content, that it has taken, at least to some extent, from other mods as well as it's own content. Still it doesn't solve OP's problem. OP is looking for a mod to make the UI bigger. OP won't even play the game without that which makes your suggestion to use FU pointless.

[IndustryStandard]

To clarify since I don't want arguments.

FU is on my list to try later, hard to appreciate the "essential" overhauls when I don't even understand what they are overhauling.

Unfortunately unless I can find a mod to increase the UI size I won't bother playing the game anyway, I fairly quickly start getting a headache and eye strain trying to look at the tiny text and weird fonts.

[Corbent]

Greetings. One clever trick I just found in the Chucklefish forums for this issue is to lower the game's resolution. Since the game's sprites are made in pixel art, the graphical quality doesn't really suffer much.

For the experiment I just ran, I lowered my resolution from the standard 1920x1080 to 1280x720, and the UI is substantially bigger. After that, since my character seemed too close, I lowered the zoom level from 3x to 2x (since the UI is unaffected by this setting), but that depends on taste.

You have to be careful when choosing a resolution though, they are all in one single slider and it doesn't tell you which is which. If your screen's aspect ratio is 16:9, you can refer to this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16:9_aspect_ratio

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Typos.

EDIT 2: You could also give this mod a shot: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=964450972&searchtext=ui
Not sure if it applies to your problem though since it specifies 2K and 4K but I assume that it increases the size regardless of resolution.