Frozen Factory/T4/Expansions/DLC/The Future

[DjArcas]

Please feel free to contribute.

The Frozen Factory expansion pack, AKA 'Tier 4' for short.

I'm not reading all this! Sum it up!

Ok, T4 is a paid-for expansion pack that will cost $??? (Pending approval from Valve), for a breakdown of a whopping $BUGGER_ALL per machine. It consists of more than 30 machines!

Wait. I think I need more detail. That sounds awfully cheap!

So, work has been progressing on Tier 4 over the last 4 months, and it's beginning to take shape a little bit. I want to talk about where I am with this right now, where the progression is going to go, a rough stab in the dark of how much work it'll take, and, yes, how much it's gonna cost.

So, what is Tier 4?

Tier 4 is the next tier of machines, constructable using elements of the two Tier 4 metals, which are (probably) Chromium and Molybdenum. Say that when you're drunk. These two were chosen because of their very very high melting point. They are already spawned into your world, they're just cunningly hidden - no new worlds required! You'll find them at -700 and -750.

At a bare minimum, T4 will consist of an ore extractor, a smelter, a turret, a power generator, and the machine to allow you to progress into T5, so it's a completely new infrastructure for this tier of progression.

Current end-game changes

So! Changes will initially be performed to the OET; the main change being that you will want to charge it 4 times. Each time you put 100m power into it, it will DIScharge to an orbital satellite, which will then discharge into one of the 4 surface attack vectors. Wiping that out will entirely stop surface attacks altogether. You aren't forced into doing this; I suspect that there will be an achievement to hit T5 without having charged one at all! But if you're sick of the surface attacks, this the method you take.

Wiping out the first surface attack vector allows you to rip up an entire QUARTER of your defences and focus them on the other 3 directions, and is quite likely to drop some sort of really awesome T3-centric upgrade.

Before building/charging the OET, the player will be presented with a research option for a 'Cold Cavern Climate Control Centre' (C5 for short). This essentially is the gateway into Tier 4, and must be constructed in the Cold Cavern.

Ore Extraction

You'll get access to the Thresher Drill Head and the Thresher Drill Motor. These are 3x3x3 machines, capable of about 800 ore a minute, and have enough hardness to get at all existing ores, and also the T4 ores. There's a single upgrade planned, tho the likelihood is 4 total upgradeable drill heads. The combination of a multi-block, multi-machine generating a LOT of resources should lead to a fairly different transport mechanic and setup from the current logistics system.

Smelting

You'll get access to the Blast Furnace. This will take in large amounts of ore and it will pump that molten ore via player-built piping up to 15m, into a Continuous Casting Basin (CCB). You can have up to 4 Blast Furnaces connected to a each CCB, via pipes. The CCB needs to be built in the Cold Caverns.

I can give you a handy in-game justification for this, but, basically, I need to force the player not to build any more stuff on the surface. The framerate's getting a little low up there! This should be a fairly different mechanic and setup from the current smelting system.

Power!

To run all this new tier of machinery, we have a brand new power system; the GeoThermal Energy Plant. This starts of generating almost no power; you feed it thermally-conductive pipes, and they build automatically downwards. As soon as the Geothermal breaks out of the Cold Cavern, you'll get an increase in power; the deeper the Geothermal lays its pipes, the greater the heat differential, and the more power you'll make. Your goal will be around 800 metres of pipes (there-and-back-again making a total of 1800 pipes!), and to break into the Magma Caverns. Try and avoid digging into your existing machines, eh?

There's also a pair of support machines to go with it, to make the pipes, as well as a powered heat-sink to increase the efficiency further, once you've hit the Magma layers.

GeoThermals are pretty good, but will require a full Freezon particulate collection system to run at full speed.

Power storage and transmission

MK4 and MK5 batteries will remain as they are, and won't suddenly become uncraftable. You'll be able to connect up the MK4 batteries with deadly 3x3 lasers, allowing auto-balancing of batteries at 10,000 PPS; these are known as Conduits. You'll also get access to a new tier of Lens.

Secondary end-game

The combination of the GeoThermal and the Conduits will make charging the current OET much easier. But along with the new era of gameplay also comes a new challenge; the Magma Drill. (Or Magma Bore, which I think sounds way cooler)

I've referred to this as 'The OET MK2'. The gameplay is broadly similar; you spend loads of resources making a HUGE machine and then it requires TONS of power to charge whilst generating LOADS of threat.

Threat? But didn't we wipe out the surface bases?

Yeeeah, see when you built the Cold Cavern Climate Control Centre you'll have started to generate threat via a new set of calculations that only take into account Cold Cavern infrastructure. This comes in the form of an oozing, freezing mass that freezes batteries solid and requires a number of specialised weapons to deal with.

The Magma Drill is a massive drilling machine (think the World Engine from Superman, or the big-♥♥♥ drills from the Matrix), and is capable of boring a huge (32m? 64m?) hole a nearly unlimited distance. (It could also potentially have an ore collection upgrade, turning it into a super-quarry).

Mobs will attack the Magma Drill, and fill up the shaft with their corpses. That's the plan, in a nutshell. There's some technical hurdles, but you'll not 'fail instantly' like you do with the OET - you simply need to out-power and therefore out-run the mobs filling the hole back in. There's also potential for intra-shaft attacks, mobs that explode, dropping 'organic sand' - lots of fun, and should be a very different mechanic.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN I WILL JUST GIVE UP ON ADDING CONTENT TO THE FIRST 100 HOURS OF THE GAME.

Things totally planned regardless of ownership of the Frozen Factory Expansion

Updated to include things that have been added already

• Casual Difficulty mode added. Super-fast and easy, designed for streamers and those with small children to look after.[Available now!]
  
• Cargo Lifts. Two small words making an insane difference to the progression curve.[Available now!]
  
• Ore Thieves! Garbage Thiefs! BarKeepers! [Available now!]
  
• 7 Mass Storage types![Available now!]
  
• Brand new mission system![Available now!]
  
• Slime Attractors. Takes the random out of farming![Available now!]
  
• Consumable Power Cores. With a little planning, spelunking can be extended.[Available now!]
  
• WorkFloor Excavators. Makes clearing your main work area automated and fast.[Available now!]
  
• Continually-upgradeable master machines (earn a special item and all your ore extractors are 1% better - repeat an infinite amount of times)
  
• Server vs Server (2x dedicated servers linked together - your threat appears on their server, and theirs on yours. First one to lose the CPH loses!)
  
• automated collection of surface drops via FALCORs Available now!]
  
• Complete SpiderBot upgrade and progression path [Available now!]
  
• suit upgrade interface
  
• Coloured Glowsticks!
  
• inviting steam friends
  
• zipper merge [Available now!]
  
• editable signs [Available now!]
  
• conveyor monitor
  
• t2 mass storage, upgraded mass storage systems, vertical mass storage and faster access.
  
• faster robot arms
  
• minecart improvements, including brakers, boosters, points, switches and intelligent track decisions. Also visuals. [Partially available now!]
  
• Suit Cooler
  
• Upgrade to an instanced renderer with Unity 5.4
  
• Virtual Reality support re-introduced (once VR itself settles down a bit!) [Partially available now!]
  
• Community Creative Server.
  
• MK2 multiblock macerator
  
• Orbital Strike Controllers [Available now!]
  
• Hive Brains and other legendary drops [Partially available now!]
  
• Brand new fluid and split rendering system [Available now!]
  
• Worm Bosses! [Available now!]
  
• Bug fixes!
  
• Optimisations!
  
• Conversion to Unity 5! [Available now!]
  
• GPU-instanced rendering!
  
• Complete new resource system and tree : Hard Resin Liquifiers and Abalators and Refineries! [Available now!]
  
• Hardened resin detector!
  
• New organic ranks of machines [Available now!]
  
• New difficulties! [Available now!]
  
• New ranks of Matter Mover! [Available now!]
  
• Enriched and Infused Coal for longer-term use of PTGs![Available now!]
  
• Automatic Ore Removers means the player can keep ore out of his inventory without having to mess around[Available now!]
  
• Inventory sorting![Available now!]
  
• 5x5 Induction Charger, making crafting setups easy to power.[Available now!]
  
• Improved setups for farming CamoBots and Slimes.[Available now!]

The idea of separated work and access to T4 is NOT a statement that "The first 100 hours of the game are complete" - not by a very, very long shot, and I absolutely will be continuing to work on that first 100 hours of the game, accessible to absolutely everyone, for the foreseeable future.

However, charging for the Frozen Factory Expansion?

Right now, I'm not doing so well.

You should get some youtubers to play the game!

Direwolf and TangoTek (et al) have given a wonderful, wonderful December, but those numbers are dropping, and no-one else is picking up the gauntlet.

Direwolf did all his videos for free, and I absolutely owe him for this. We've looked at some other YouTubers, but the quote we've received was $3000. Per 30 minute video. That's 2 months rent for me. I've tried contacting hundreds of content creators over the last 2 years, and had virtually zero result.

You should charge for cosmetic things instead of Survival stuff!

I am! The Dapper DLC has a LUDICROUSLY high attach rate! I've never seen DLC with such a high purchase rate! It's usually around 10%!

Yeeeah... that ain't gonna cover the electricity to run the computers I dev the game on. Sorry. Skin pack is coming, but I can't imagine the attach rate there is gonna be more than 2 or 3 percent.

I bought the game because it was under heavy development and I should get all content for free!

I'm currently putting in 70-100 hours a week into the game, and have done so for the last 4 months. This has included the dedicated server, dozens of new machines, bug fixes, new avatars, mobs, progression improvements

At which point do I go "purchasing the game for $15 has paid for X months of development" and I'm allowed to move on? I hope no-one is labouring under the impression that $15 means I can afford to eat and pay rent and heat my house FOREVER!

Also, see above. There's no plans to stop improving the T1-T3 progression.

Space Engineers has done major patches for free and no DLC!

I went off and did the maths on this. Space Engineers has made 45 million dollars in revenue. I, on the other hand, have perhaps 6 months' worth of money in the bank right now - I need to make decisions NOW to avoid applying for jobs in 3 months' time.

Doesn't this mean I have to pay to progress in the game? Isn't this just Pay-2-win?

Well, yes, sort of... it's just like Warcraft, ok? If you don't buy any expansions, then you get to level 60, and your end-game is Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Naxxramas. If you buy the expansion, you get to level up to 70, and you get a new end-game (Gruul's Lair, Hyjal Black Temple). But you don't need to. You can stay at 60 and enjoy the current end-game.

This is the same; if you dont have T4, you'll still find charging the OET once (or 4 times) a wonderful challenge. If you have T4, it'll be pretty easy (well, faster!), but you'll have the Magma Drill as your end-game.

To be clear here - completing the current end-game is a challenge that will take you at least 100 hours of gameplay

Won't you be putting all the cool stuff into T4 in order to force people to give you more money?

There's a fine line between persuading people and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ them off. Welcome to my world. A good example here is the cargo lift; I could make this T4, as it's super-awesome and lets you carry TONS of materiel vertically. However, it firmly can be thought of as helpful for the T1-T3 game, so it'll be available to everyone.

So what exactly will be in the Frozen Factory expansion?

This is the minimum list. More will be added as the new end-game is fleshed out more

• "Barracuda" continual discharge multiblock turret. [TBI]
  
• Thresher Drill motor
  
• Thresher Drill Head x2 [TBI]
  
• Blast Furnace
  
• Continuous Casting Basin (and pipe work)
  
• Geothermal plant
  
• Mesh Weaver and Conductive Pipe folder (for the Geothermal)
  
• MK4 Conduits
  
• Magma Bore
  
• Magma Storage unit + pipe work
  
• Cold Cavern Climate Control System
  
• T4 Minecart
  
• T4 Laser Lenses
  
• T4 build gun, care package, suit upgrades, and an all-in-one suit upgrade pack
  
• Ore Washer (requires acid to be pumped in to improve ore yield)
  
• Anti CryoPlasm weaponry; Lancers, Burners, FALCOR Bombers, CryoMines and Mortars.
  
• Gas handling systems; filters, compressors, pipes and bottling.
  
• New tiers of missile defense weaponry and MatterMovers.
  
• Upon completion of this mode, you'll unlock the Flat Land option (akin to the Rush Mode unlock for the OET)

I'm aiming at a minimum of 40 hours of gameplay here, from your Cold Cavern Climate Control Centre to having successfully completed the Magma Bore and wiped out the Cold Cavern attacks.

I'll TL;DR. Loads and loads of people have said "The game is too cheap". Whilst I agree, lowering the barrier to entry is good business acumen. You can think of this as a $15 game with an $8 expansion, or you can think of it as retroactively raising the price to $23. The net result is the same, only in one of the circumstances, you have to click 'Buy' twice. Sorry about that. I'm sure your mouse can take it.

Your thoughts are welcome, but please understand I am doing this from a position of necessity. I'm not Space Engineers or Minecraft. I'm not working out ways to squeeze more money out of you guys for my 4th Ferrari.

I want to continue working on this game, and not have to abandon it and move on to my next one

*mutters darkly about spending the morning explaining his position instead of fixing the minecart code*

[Cellfire]

Can I get it now/pre-order?

[Demerzel]

So if you release this: Things totally planned regardless of ownership of the Frozen Factory Expansion
at the same time with the T4 dlc. you will be fine.
Those who don't want to buy dlc will get new toys too.
It's would be essentialy the same as I said in the other topic. The arma3 route.
It just not essential and non essential instead. New tier and upgrades to existing tiers.

You will be fine!
Just make sure to make a nice store page to the V5. :D
If I know correctly you still have store page for V2. :(

Edit.: Also you forgot to promote unity5.
Don't get me wrong but it is a huge thing.
Some other developers can't make unity 4 to unity 5 in a year....

[Anu0]

Heck,
Ill pay an extra $8. This game is more enoyable than space engineers and worth $30 easy.

What you should do is raise the price to $20 for the regular game and have periodic sales at $15. People like sales on steam.

The biggest problem is how to promote it.
Ask ommunity here to help by mentioning the game on other game forums, youtube comments etc. So be nice and ask for help in promoting.

[Dainsleif]

I don't see why anyone would have the right to complain about having a paid DLC for the feature you mention. I totally support you on this, why would it be free to have all these new game mecanics? Look at AAA title, they sometime do much less in a DLC and people buy it nonetheless. FCE is my most played game in my library now, at 15$ it defenitly a steal.

However I do see it clasing a bit with the Patreon. But hey, millions of WoW users pay mandatory every month and then pay an other 40$ on useless-grind-extension... Value and price is soo messedup in the gaming scene...

[GTX2GvO]

Personally. I'm on the fence on the $8,- pricetag. (not on the fact there IS a pricetag though)
Then again. I've barely even progressed through T1~T3 and have many hours yet to play.

My view therefor will likely change over time.
Anyway. I do wish you good luck on getting that rent payed.

[Muffinman]

I'm persuaded. It is acceptable. It is good that you lay things out so time was not wasted.

[Muffinman]

Originally posted by Dainsleif:

I don't see why anyone would have the right to complain about having a paid DLC for the feature you mention. I totally support you on this, why would it be free to have all these new game mecanics? Look at AAA title, they sometime do much less in a DLC and people buy it nonetheless. FCE is my most played game in my library now, at 15$ it defenitly a steal.

However I do see it clasing a bit with the Patreon. But hey, millions of WoW users pay mandatory every month and then pay an other 40$ on useless-grind-extension... Value and price is soo messedup in the gaming scene...

He could very well give the Patreon supporters steam keys for the T4 as a thank you. at least, that is what I would do.

[elipod]

Not going to argue about the price, it's ok.
Main source of outrage, for me at least, is broken expectation, even if self induced.
I bought the early acces game, which in my imagination means: complete access to the game's content by the time it's out of early access. I don't remember seeing a fair warning that I'm buying x tiers out of y planned.
We need better communication on what to expect.

[Mazetar]

Originally posted by elipod:

complete access to the game's content by the time it's out of early access.

Mate, it's been out of early access for 4 months :)

[Dainsleif]

Originally posted by elipod:

Not going to argue about the price, it's ok.
Main source of outrage, for me at least, is broken expectation, even if self induced.
I bought the early acces game, which in my imagination means: complete access to the game's content by the time it's out of early access. I don't remember seeing a fair warning that I'm buying x tiers out of y planned.
We need better communication on what to expect.

To me this broken expectation may come from lack of in game "story". I think the "main game" should cleary indicate that the goal is to charge the OET so that you can charge the station power and send a distress signal. You then buy the expension which tells you that you return to the planet to do mineral survey of an unknow mineral never elsewhere in the galaxy. (You go back to your existing base, station is now equiped with bombard laser etc).

[Demerzel]

I don't think the oet was ever to leave the planet.
I think the oet is there to charge the space station remains.
And with the t4 dlc it looks like this. Since you charge the space station remains which turns out it is a big gun.
But yeah the story could be a little more story. :/
But oh well.

[elipod]

Originally posted by Mazetar:

Mate, it's been out of early access for 4 months :)

Say what? I feels so much early acces that I didn't even bother to check). And that was the feeling even before I opted in the bleeding edge.
So the point still stands: game, subjectively, fells incomplete, yet there'll be a paid DLC to fix these usuues (some of, waitnig for Mass storage DLC, cough, cough).

[Demerzel]

"So the point still stands: game, subjectively, fells incomplete, yet there'll be a paid DLC to fix these usuues (some of, waitnig for Mass storage DLC, cough, cough)."
This is the point where you are an idiot.
When he says that the massstorage mk2 will be free.

[Demerzel]

THIS DOES NOT MEAN I WILL JUST GIVE UP ON ADDING CONTENT TO THE FIRST 100 HOURS OF THE GAME.
t2 mass storage, upgraded mass storage systems, vertical mass storage and faster access.

[Flexible Games]

Insulting people is childish and has no place here. Please stop spamming threads Demerzel, if you have another thought to add, edit your post and add it.