How is the survival supposed to work?

[Dr.Corpse]

Hello everyone. Is there a mod or a setup where the survival would resemble some kind of gameplay?

As-is there is literally no whatsoever actual description on any of the maps, and I really really dont feel like spending the first ten hours of my gameplay wondering if the map even has the resources to build basic spaceship within 20 km range of space. My 6-yo saw the space and fell in love, so I am trying to find a map that isnt already built stock full of stuff with pre-coded switches, but has all the refinable and accessible resources so that if we build small miner/welder/grinder crafts we can easily get materials to start building a base.

The game feels super obtuse to get into compared to what it was 12 years ago, with zero actual descriptors on the maps.

[Katitoff]

Vanila survival is just empty sandbox with some vanila space ships and pirates passing around every now and then in a straight line.

Every single start has all the resources to make basic hydrogen ships.

That being said, you probably are looking for Star System start, where you start in a small drop pod or lander or small ship, depending where you spawn and work your way up from there.

If you are looking for better experience in survival(star system), you go for PvE mods adding everything from bases to ships, enemies, friendlies, expanding economy or resources mods.

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, we can set the world advanced settings to our liking before playing in, I recommend to try all the available "Custom Worlds" in creative mode and try all the worlds advanced settings to find your Favorite setup.

That said, the "Goal" is to create ships and stations that will help you survive at the Easy, Medium and Hard Biomes.

+ The survival is about doing the needed Engineer testing to find the best working solutions but you will have to explore to find all the Rich ore spots of the game.

Rich ore spots = Where all ores can be found close to each other, some areas have all ores within 1 Km.

Easy Biome = Where the Ore Detector is not needed and no "Bad weather" so no lightning.

Medium Biome = Green grass Biomes because it is harder to see the ore spots on the soil and those have lightning that can damage your creations and you will have to build lightning Rods and Safe Zone.

Hard Biome = Where there are more lightnings with bad weather and where the ore Detector block is needed.

_____________


Here is a Veteran Tip to find the best areas faster :

-> Hit F5 while in the First respawn ship to respawn at another area, doing so will reload the world and you will land at a different area.

+

- If that F5 trick is not working, happens when playing with "Auto-respawn" enabled and/or "Auto-save" enabled :

1 - Turn OFF the Survival Kit on the Drop Pod (so you will not auto respawn there).
2 - Hit the backspace key to "kill" your character and open the Respawn screen.
3 - Select the same Drop Pod to land at another area.

4 - Redo the above till you land at a Easy Biome or Rich ore spot of the game.

[Dan2D3D]

I forgot to specify :

Easy Biome = Where the Ore Detector block is not needed because we can see the ore spots with the naked eye on the soil.

[Dr.Corpse]

Originally posted by Dan2D3D:

Hi, we can set the world advanced settings to our liking before playing in and I recommend to try all the available "Custom Worlds" in creative mode and try all the worlds advanced settings to find your Favorite setup.

That said, the "Goal" is to create ships and stations that will help you survive at the Easy, Medium and Hard Biomes.

+ The survival is about the same so to do the needed Engineer testing to find the best working solutions but you will have to explore to find all the Rich ore spots of the game.

Rich ore spots = Where all ores can be found close to each other, some areas have all ores within 1 Km.

Easy Biome = Where the Ore Detector is not needed and no "Bad weather" so no lightning.

Medium Biome = Green grass Biomes because it is harder to see the ore spots on the soil and those have lightning that can damage your creations and you will have to build lightning Rods and Safe Zone.

Hard Biome = Where there are more lightnings with bad weather and where the ore Detector block is needed.

_____________


Here is another Veteran Tip to find the best areas faster :

-> Hit F5 while in the First respawn ship to respawn at another area, doing so will reload the world and you will land at a different area.

+

- If that F5 trick is not working, happens when playing with "Auto-respawn" enabled and/or "Auto-save" enabled :

1 - Turn OFF the Survival Kit on the Drop Pod (so you will not auto respawn there).
2 - Hit the backspace key to "kill" your character and open the Respawn screen.
3 - Select the same Drop Pod to land at another area.

4 - Redo the above till you land at a Easy Biome or Rich ore spot of the game.

See this is exactly my issue: given my gameplay audience (playing with my son, who likes space and rockets as kids tend to do) I would like a game that I could play from the get-go rather than having to spend hours before even starting the game in creative mode building myself a game. As such, my question was "is there a map setup that is playable from the start without spending ridiculous amount of time in creative mode before starting the game?

hence the "The game feels super obtuse to get into compared to what it was 12 years ago" as stated in the OP.

so as far as I understand, the answer is "no, such a ready map does not exist or if it does it is a mod somewhere along the thousands of other mods"?

Thank you.

[Dan2D3D]

I understand so I recommend to use the custom world named "Star System" where you will disable all NPCs / Encounters, block progression and auto-respawn, for your first gameplay as to learn the basics and explore to find the best areas.

+

I can share what I did first that hepled me a lot :
-> I went creative mode in asteroid only world to learn how to make a space ship.

Example on "Nuclear Ion space ship"
You need :

1 - Cockpit.
2 - Gyroscope.
3 - Nuclear Reactor.
4 - ION Thrusters on all sides.

5 - Enter the cockpit, try the ship and add more of #2, #3 and #4 if needed to have a better maneuverability = it goes with the total mass of the ship so you will need more on bigger ships.

6 - Full all its containers + connectors + O2/H2 Gens to know if it can fly Full Load, so you may have to add more thrusters and gyroscopes once Full, engineer testing needed.

If you do the above = The rest will become easier.


Making Nuclear ships is the "Main" Goal, because using Reactor + Uranium as power give the best ship concepts of the game.

[Dan2D3D]

+

You may load some of my Premade worlds from -> New -> Workshop content, you have to sub to those first to be able to load.

This one starts at the Earth Easiest Biome :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2447619845

This one stats on the Moon with a station set to you so a easy start :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1882483291

[Dan2D3D]

You may also use this scenario I have shared that is very immersive and will show you a lot of what can be done.

You must read the item description to get started :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1923245080

[Dan2D3D]

Originally posted by Dr.Corpse:

so as far as I understand, the answer is "no, such a ready map does not exist

They exist, it's all the custom worlds, they are set ready to start playing in, well they use default advanced world settings that you may change to set to your liking.


Like I said earlier -> Try all the custom worlds not just to see what they have in but also to play right away without changing any of the settings that are set on Default with all the important in.

[Dan2D3D]

Info +

About using Mods = I recommend to use only if you need.

For example :
-> You started playing, made a lot of cool Warships and noticed you would like to have more enemies in your world

=
Go use the Workshop search tool or create a new forum discussion here on Steam where you will ask the community to share a Mod you need.

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by Dr.Corpse:

my question was "is there a map setup that is playable from the start without spending ridiculous amount of time in creative mode before starting the game?

hence the "The game feels super obtuse to get into compared to what it was 12 years ago" as stated in the OP.

so as far as I understand, the answer is "no, such a ready map does not exist or if it does it is a mod somewhere along the thousands of other mods"?

Thank you.

The answer is YES. There are Easy-Start worlds, they're called. When we click New Game there's a list of them in the furthest tab left Edit: Right (Custom Game). Moon Base Start , Earth Planet, etc. All the ones that have a planet or ship in their name have a Station ("base") or large ship already built that we spawn in to when we start the game.

They have a Station or a ship. They don't have everything you might want. if you want more than what's there right away you'll have to use items from the workshop. Ships from the workshop can be spawned in immediately without having to do anything to them if you ALT+F10 and enable Creative Mode Tools.

[glabifrons]

Dr.Corpse, your op and your second post in the thread seem to contradict each-other, but I'm likely just misunderstanding what you're asking.
I'm wondering what you mean by "play from the get-go". When I play the game, I just launch it and play. I don't create worlds and personally have a strong dislike for creative mode (I always jump straight into survival).
In your first post, it sounds like you don't want a world with premade buildings and vehicles (i'm guessing here, as I have no idea what you mean by "pre-coded switches"), but in your second post (if I understand your "play" comment) you seem to want a rocket waiting to take off or something.

The game is a lot like Minecraft (if you've ever played that) in the sense that you start out with very little and have to find ores then refine them to build what you want/need to improve your situation and tools.

If you're not sure where to start to even find the ores and how to refine them, then that makes sense for just starting out as some parts may not be obvious (and some parts seem downright weird at first).

I echo the recommendation for the Star System map. It has all of the planets and everything.
To load the Star System map, go to the third tab when you're starting a new game (I forgot what it's called) then scroll all the way to the bottom (no idea why it's there, it should be at the top!).
If you want the occasional (fairly simple) battle, go into Advanced configuration for the game and enable Cargo Ships, drones, and Random Encounters. Note that they won't look for you, but if you get too close, they will shoot. Drones will come after you if you come too close to something they're protecting (only if enabled).
If you want the game totally peaceful, leave those off.
After you've created the map, the next time you launch the game, you can just click the Continue button at the top. If you'd like, you can create as many different games and worlds as you like and the old ones don't go away ("Continue" continues the most recent one). To load any of the ones you've created, click the "Load" button instead. From the screen that comes up, you can then click on one and click "Start", or click "Backups" if you want to roll back time a bit (I think it keeps 5 backups by default, autosaved at 5 minute increments, or something like that). The automatic backups are great if something goes completely sideways in the game and you'd rather lose that 5 minutes than try and rebuild/recover.

I'd recommend watching a couple videos (not mine) that total less than 1/2 hour. Their primary topic is about getting started on a server, but they show a lot of how the game works and how to progress in the game packed into very short videos. I always play solo, so ignored the videos for the first few hundred hours I played. I was surprised how much I still learned from these videos when I finally decided to watch them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3fuKGrdTm8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa9wzTuqGx8

Note that he's starting with the space pod, but the lander (if you want a planet start) also has a survival kit (it's kind-of hidden in the back-right corner) and isn't flyable by default.
If you choose earth, "J" toggles your helmet open/closed. You'll want to open it so you can breath the air rather than having to refill oxygen bottles (there's a helmet icon in the bottom left corner).

If you want more tutorial videos, Splitsie is the youtuber you want to look for. He's got a lot of great ones for the game.

[Valderci]

I used Tallman Brads Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sf4k-dp4WQ&list=PLCtRdkhOGQE2987UYiZFWjIvkosFICLd5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbmDKvy3lg&list=PLCtRdkhOGQE0pzI1NO8s2_t_-dueGdPiN&index=1

and Splitsie's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GypMw7ZdLIo&list=PLfMGCUepUcNz9QgAIKLH2VztRUET-VKT-