Progression: Get what you need well after you need it.

[FuturistDreamer]

The first time I played through, it was definitely an experience full of wonder, but eventually the game started crashing over and over and it was definitely progressively slower and wasn't my system (i7, GeForce 980m, 64GB RAM, SSD), which wasn't really taxed by the game.

I didn't get the Prawn or even the Seamoth (and definitely not the Cyclops) the first time through, so I decided to checking out the Wiki.

I love a good story - I love a difficult suvrival game... but putting them both together - something has to bow to the other. The survival needs to be easier to keep the story moving forward or the story needs to be a minimal afterthought.

Too many resources are a literal chore to get and the fact that the recipes are a chore also.

I guess things like silver being a barrier, but not gold, which (from an electrical and longevity standpoint) is far superior... alumina (which makes sapphire) and not diamond... which again, is far superior in every way. I could explain why gold and diamond are superior, but there is a reason all connectors are coated with gold and not silver and why diamond is superior and where sapphire could be used, they frequently will use metals (chromium steel is as hard and not brittle).

I wouldn't mind seeing all of the recipes good to go from the start, but you don't know how to get the supplies - where it is on the world or what critters could be used to create substitutes.

Also - why no map again? This is a highly advanced technological society and you have to find a darned recipe for a *compass*?!?! It seems like they'd be able to make a darned good one about twelve seconds after you found any ferrous metal.

Some things just don't make sense, like that you can snap any piece of a base together easily... except the last one you get - the moonpool.... I wanted to scream after I build a pretty decent base, but could NOT put a moonbase on it... so I put it nearby... then it wasn't oriented the same, so I couldn't connect them together. Not as in "It's a little off, so you have to turn a piece - as in it was like angled 12 degrees off, so I couldn't connect the moonpool to my base. So basically I had the privilege of dismantling my entire base and connecting it to the moonpool, only to have the game start chain crashing again.... ugh...

These are small details, but they are all details that just don't make sense when you consider a highly advanced society... and they can't be *that* advanced, when they can't figure out water desalination, but I can do it with the sun, a bundt pan, a funnel, some celophane, and a bowl. Seriously - desalination is *that* easy, but I have to chase down some parts in far away places to figure that out in the game? The little details are the thing that take a game from good to great. This game has a lot of potential, the story is looking pretty good.... but it needs some of these details polished up.

[Levanator]

Couldn't you have just built a base next to the first one and had it exclusively for the moonpool, which for some reason I can't find.

[Lethann]

It's somewhat explained ingame that the PDA/Escape Pod was damaged in the crash and it doesn't have access to everything. Once you get certain materials for it to scan then it can go, "Hey we can make MORE THINGS with this stuff!" Not perfect reasoning but it is a reason. It's also not fully connected to their entire manufacturing database because it was an emergency PDA that only had the basics for survival.

Not sure what you mean about things not lining up. The biggest thing I've had that doesn't lineup is the spacing with the multipurpose rooms. It's not quite the same as doing MPR-Tube-MPR. Also stacking two MPR on top of each other is also not the same as doing a verticle tube. I'm sure there are reasons for this but it's still frustrating at times.However I got my Moonpool to fit nicely between two juts of rock over near lifepod 17. Took a bit of fiddling but it worked!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=832122507



That being said, there is STILL a long way for the game to go. It's not near finished. Quite a few more recipies need to be implmented. Heck right now there isn't even a single reason to harvest Mercury. Evenutally we'll be able to make nanowires but it's not implemented yet. There is still a lot of balancing issues too. Right now I'm flooded with gold and still have a hard time finding silver. I'm making signs and picture frames just to get rid of some copper. Already doing the whole "throw things in a locker then deconstruct the locker to erase them" trick. Thankfully though I was checking on the Dev's blog thingy and I think that the next update will have things like the trash cans, coffee maker, vending machine and luggage all be useable not just decorations.

As for the crashing issue you just need to clear your cache. Another bug they are working on.

[MindWerks]

Hey,
I had the crash over and over problem as well. I was able to fix it however.

First thing first, backup your save slot directory. Then after you have a restoration point (in case something goes wrong) go into your save slot folder. You should see 2 folders with cache in the name and one named tmp. I cleared the contents of all three of those folders, after which my game would be fine again. After playing for an extended period (like several hours) you may need to repeat the process.

My theory is that this program is 32 bits and writes so much in the cache directory that eventually gets a memory addressing error. So clearing the cache seems to resolve it until the cache grows out of control.

Although that's just my take on it, no idea if it's correct.

[Lethann]

Just be careful when you clear your cache. You'll want to save the files where your base is or risk getting rocks and plantlife suddenly appearing in your base. Hitting F1 while in your base you can find the "Batch" number and just don't delete any files with that number string.

[FuturistDreamer]

OK... cleaing the cache... I can handle that. That being said, it seems like they might want to automatically do that every time you start. I mean, worst case is when the game crashes, it clears it out and you hve (insert # of hours) before it does it again.

Not sure if this is good or bad, but I just restarted with the experimental public beta build and ALL resources (diamonds, gold, lithium.... even the blueprint items that were usually over there) are gone from the Northern island. I kinda groaned - to finish getting through the Aurora requires a welder, which now means that I get to run around searching for diamonds. Couldn't find silver any easier than before (found two in completely different places) either. If they're going to do this, they should just provide tweakable spawning for stuff by resource, so if you don't want to deal with "Must chase after silver for 2 days... at the very least...", then you can make it more abundant.

Inasfar as not lining up, what I'm saying is that, with every other building, I can build off that building from the inside. With the moonpool, you have to go from the outside to start and it wouldn't snap to any other buildings for me, making it incredibly difficult to extend my existing base like I wanted to.

I will say that I do build almost everything in (or near) the Safe Shallows, for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly because it's literally the most central location there is. I mean, what am I going to do - build 5 bases for one guy stranded on a planet?

I'm gonna start another game here shortly to see if the mountain island thing was an anomaly, but if not... ugh. "Make everything a pain in the ass (again, not difficult, just painfully time consuming and tedius)" isn't really a gameplay element so much... Some of us like having varying levels of difficulty so we can "dial it up" as we learn the game, or so we can customize the difficulty to include or exclude elements from play.