remove underground creatures or fix them

[LogosPariah]

One of my favorite activities in this game is cataloging flora and fauna. It's relaxing and it plays into my love of nature in a really cool way. That being said, underground creatures are exclusively a hindrance to game flow. Either separate cave dwelling creatures, and creatures that spawn outside of caves, or simply increase the spawn rate of both types. Either way, everything about cave animals feels half-baked and lazy. Like they put literally no thought into the actual implementation, and instead just thoughtlessly added them because they thought they should be added.

[MoistGamer]

just like the nutrient processors and food. 10000 miles wide 1 inch deep. 10,000 recipes all that mean jack squat. "some of them heal you". I'll keep that in mind for the next time I',m near death in this game which, aside from expeditions, is exactly ZERO times since 2016.

[LogosPariah]

Originally posted by MoistGamer:

just like the nutrient processors and food. 10000 miles wide 1 inch deep. 10,000 recipes all that mean jack squat. "some of them heal you". I'll keep that in mind for the next time I',m near death in this game which, aside from expeditions, is exactly ZERO times since 2016.

yeah, I really do love this game, but it gets way too easy way too quick. and that's also true. I've gone the whole game without ever cooking anything and I've had zero problems. Hello Games needs to take a break from adding new stuff so they can flesh out what's already there. the game also needs more visual diversity when it comes to plants imo. same thing with animals honestly.

[Raemnant]

Originally posted by MoistGamer:

just like the nutrient processors and food. 10000 miles wide 1 inch deep. 10,000 recipes all that mean jack squat. "some of them heal you". I'll keep that in mind for the next time I',m near death in this game which, aside from expeditions, is exactly ZERO times since 2016.

Break it down, what makes the game too easy?

[LogosPariah]

Originally posted by Raemnant:

Originally posted by MoistGamer:

just like the nutrient processors and food. 10000 miles wide 1 inch deep. 10,000 recipes all that mean jack squat. "some of them heal you". I'll keep that in mind for the next time I',m near death in this game which, aside from expeditions, is exactly ZERO times since 2016.

Break it down, what makes the game too easy?

once you've got a decent multi tool with some high level upgrades along with some shield upgrades, it's just a cake walk. you just zig zag in the air with your jetpack and shoot. most of it comes down to how easy it is to get supreme upgrades. in my opinion it should be super rare to find them in shops, and instead you should get them from missions or from buildings and ♥♥♥♥. it should take more skill to get good stuff rather than exclusively luck. oh and also they should be rare drops from enemies, that way there's more of a reason to actually engage in combat.

[Raemnant]

Okay, now hows this: Dont use them. Upgrades too powerful? use lesser upgrades. Easy peasy

[MoistGamer]

If i wanted a boring challenge where I intentionally gimp myself, I'd tie a 30kg weight around my ankle and walk around all day. I count on the people who have job specific competencies that lend themselves to good story telling, gameplay hooks, and mechanics, to create the challenge and lust to play, for me. I'm sorry but launching NMS and going "today I'm gonna play Julia Childs but in space and bake tons of bread and go sell it to the robot-eye on the wall". Doesnt do it for me.

As to your question earlier, "what is so easy". The entire game essentially. Gravity is the biggest threat and that only comes into play when you run out of jetpack juice early in the game.

The tagline in the store calls it a... i forget someone look it up. A story of adventure and survival. You can probably scratch the survival part off of that entirely, and the adventure is fairly subjective. If getting 3 hyperdrive upgrades and warping 30x in a row to the center is an adventure, then fair enough.

[LogosPariah]

Originally posted by Raemnant:

Okay, now hows this: Dont use them. Upgrades too powerful? use lesser upgrades. Easy peasy

it's not exclusively about difficulty. if the changes i listed were made, it would give a lot of mechanics a lot more long term purpose. in my experience i end up ignoring most buildings pretty quickly, and i only fight sentinels if i absolutely have to. if these kinds of changes were present I would have actual motivation to do all this stuff. at the very least upgrades should be wayyyyyyy more expensive, especially supreme ones.

[RemingtonRyder]

The reason why above-ground creatures are easier to find is that there's usually wide open spaces relatively close to the player where they can spawn.

In contrast, underground creatures don't have lots of open space in which to spawn. You could patiently wait in a cave for hours and never see that rare underground creature.

And, this is wrong. If the above-ground part of the ecosystem can be teeming with life, there's no reason why the underground part can't also be populated.

[LogosPariah]

Originally posted by RemingtonRyder:

The reason why above-ground creatures are easier to find is that there's usually wide open spaces relatively close to the player where they can spawn.

In contrast, underground creatures don't have lots of open space in which to spawn. You could patiently wait in a cave for hours and never see that rare underground creature.

And, this is wrong. If the above-ground part of the ecosystem can be teeming with life, there's no reason why the underground part can't also be populated.

yeah I figured it worked something like that. that's what I meant by fixing it. there's no reason at all for cave creatures to be so rare

[Colossal Sprout]

Originally posted by RemingtonRyder:

The reason why above-ground creatures are easier to find is that there's usually wide open spaces relatively close to the player where they can spawn.

In contrast, underground creatures don't have lots of open space in which to spawn. You could patiently wait in a cave for hours and never see that rare underground creature.

And, this is wrong. If the above-ground part of the ecosystem can be teeming with life, there's no reason why the underground part can't also be populated.

Just guess work on my part but this seems correct... and the spawn mechanics seem very similar to those in Minecraft, albeit with wildly contrasting conditions/environments. Effectively inverted due to the underground:overground ratios and the added condition requirements in MC.

Of course in MC you can manipulate the conditions in various informed ways and to great effect, while here in NMS there's little to nothing we can do about it other than blindly work with the pre-defined conditions.

Hence the usual suggestions:

• Find PoIs surrounded by 'exposed' underground terrain. I assume this increases the spawn chance because it reduces the 'ground fauna' spawn zones within range while increasing the viable underground zones (both by the PoI and lack of 'roof' eliminating some overground zones)
  
• Save and reload in/near caves or ideally areas described above. Basically 'accept whatever the probability and keep rolling the dice.'

Two ideas I'll add FWIW, but they're untested:

• Find a big cave or ideally underground terrain near water. Head underwater so UW fauna start spawning and ground creatures despawn, then head back to dry land. This might help to cycle spawns faster than save-scumming.
  
• If some of the ground and/or flying creatures on your planet have north/south conditions, go where they (or most of them if applicable) aren't. I doubt this will work as it probably just spawns the same frequency of ground/flying types from the eligible list, but it might work depending on the exact mechanics (please somebody correct this if they know otherwise.) Possibly worth a try if you're stuck.

I guess they could make it easier- easily- by giving them a higher probability or priority etc. Finding a balance between too hard and too easy would be difficult... but then every other fauna type is firmly in the 'too easy' camp. Currently all we can do is nudge the odds slightly in our favour.

[Senzoba]

Originally posted by Funee Gupee GAMING:

Originally posted by RemingtonRyder:

The reason why above-ground creatures are easier to find is that there's usually wide open spaces relatively close to the player where they can spawn.

In contrast, underground creatures don't have lots of open space in which to spawn. You could patiently wait in a cave for hours and never see that rare underground creature.

And, this is wrong. If the above-ground part of the ecosystem can be teeming with life, there's no reason why the underground part can't also be populated.

yeah I figured it worked something like that. that's what I meant by fixing it. there's no reason at all for cave creatures to be so rare

Actually there is a reason for cave creatures being rare everything is procedurally generated so its rng what animals you get

[Ailes]

Originally posted by Raemnant:

Originally posted by MoistGamer:

just like the nutrient processors and food. 10000 miles wide 1 inch deep. 10,000 recipes all that mean jack squat. "some of them heal you". I'll keep that in mind for the next time I',m near death in this game which, aside from expeditions, is exactly ZERO times since 2016.

Break it down, what makes the game too easy?

Literally everything in the game is too easy.

Space combat? Just buy sodium whenever you see a galactic terminal or install a basic phase beam to drain hostile ship's shields with. Ever since I acquired the phase beam and installed it on my ship I have been literally invincible. And it's not even upgraded or anything, just the lowest-tier basic version.

Don't like fighting sentinels or anything in space at all? Just fly in one direction and wait for your pulse engine to automatically get back online. Then activate it and bam, everything deaggros and you're all good again.

Running out of oxygen or hazard protection? No worries, every planet holds the bare minimum of minerals and flora to get you back in shape. And when in doubt just enter your spaceship and restore there or launch into space. Or spawn one of the many exocrafts, particularily the Minotaur, to protect you from outside hazards.

Running out of tritium for your pulse drive? Oh, no biggy, because you will literally fly into an asteroid field every two seconds and the photon cannon cannot be deconstructed but is a mandatory default weaponry on every ship to mine asteroids with whenever.

Health getting low during ground combat? Just dig into the ground and wait. Should also work to restore hazard protection while you're at it. Or flee into any planetary structure since sentinels will completely ignore you in them and disengage fully should you wish to have them deaggro.

TL:DR: I never needed health or shield packs in the game. Yes, I did die once to sentinels - but that was early in the game and I was pushing my luck by refusing to dig underground. I realized that to be a viable strategy like the first time the sentinels had lowered my health chunks. All the other few times I died in the game I actually killed myself by improper handling of the geology cannon, plasma launcher and in one instance also the cannon on my Nautilus. I literally melted my face because I was too stupid to keep my distance to enemies, resources or the terrain. But all the inherently hostile stuff in the game never got even close to killing me after that one time the sentinels got me.

Oh, and I once died by jumping off into space from one of the frigates I was repairing. But that was fully intended. And I'm just now attempting to fly towards a star to see if that will kill me. But from my experience with this game I'm probably in for a disappointing revelation.

Originally posted by Raemnant:

Okay, now hows this: Dont use them. Upgrades too powerful? use lesser upgrades. Easy peasy

I could also blindfold myself and bind one arm of me behind my back - but that's just silly. Please don't make excuses for this game being either genuinely bad at lots of stuff or unable to provide noteworthy depth.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Ailes:

Ever since I acquired the phase beam and installed it on my ship I have been literally invincible. And it's not even upgraded or anything, just the lowest-tier basic version.

Not everyone is as good as you in the space battles.

I found that, until I highly upgraded my phase beam (qty=6 S-mods), I could not drain their shield fast enough before they'd get past me and get them recharged before I could line up again on them - only to rinse and repeat. I had to run from a lot of battles until I upgraded it (playing on Survival - if it makes a difference).

.. the photon cannon cannot be deconstructed but is a mandatory default weaponry on every ship to mine asteroids with whenever.

My spaceship does not have a photon cannon; only the phase beam and rockets. It isn't mandatory on every ship.


Sounds like you might consider a different game, more to your liking. There is no shame in liking some games and not others.

[Ailes]

Originally posted by Ailes:

And I'm just now attempting to fly towards a star to see if that will kill me. But from my experience with this game I'm probably in for a disappointing revelation.

So, yeah, don't bother to try this yourself, guys. The revelation came, and what a letdown it was and what a massive waste of time this endeavor was.

[Ailes]

Originally posted by Nostromo:

Not everyone is as good as you in the space battles.

I found that, until I highly upgraded my phase beam (qty=6 S-mods), I could not drain their shield fast enough before they'd get past me and get them recharged before I could line up again on them - only to rinse and repeat. I had to run from a lot of battles until I upgraded it (playing on Survival - if it makes a difference)

Maybe I'll give survival a shot. But in the default singleplayer mode I could always recharge my entire shield with the basic phase beam. But again, even if that doesn't work - you can still charge it with sodium, can't you? It's dirt cheap on all the galactic terminals. Then some enemies will also drop shield batteries. Unless survival also has adjustments to the pricing of stuff or unless you are permanently bankrupt (which I would find hard to believe since there really isn't much you can spend your money on in this game, if anything it's nanites that are much more valuable and hard to come by) you should still be effectively invincible even if you don't have a phase beam.

Originally posted by Nostromo:

My spaceship does not have a photon cannon; only the phase beam and rockets. It isn't mandatory on every ship.

I guess it's just the last weapon then that's being mandatory. Which kinda confirms that the game is too easy: you cannot deconstruct all your weapons, so it's impossible to run out of fuel for your pulse drive and get stranded in the void of space. You can mine asteroids with all your weapons from what I've seen. So even if your pulse engine is out, you will be forced to keep one weapon system at least and you will be able find another asteroid field just an arm's length away from your ship at any given time. You can't fail in this game, you really have to try hard to die.

Originally posted by Nostromo:

Sounds like you might consider a different game, more to your liking. There is no shame in liking some games and not others.

I have 200 hours or so in in NMS, I got my time's worth. As I've said I'll probably try the other modes soon, and go deeper into multiplayer. I think it's just so sad that a lot of the features in this game are so barebone and lacking much of depth. The game has a great foundation if you ask me, but it's barely making use of it. As I have stated elsewhere perhaps the deepest is the base-building. But even that I do mostly just for looks and immersion and not for any practical purposes. And yet the game seems to somehow fail there again in ways, because visting and remembering other bases or even commenting on them doesn't seem to be as easy as it could be, at least not in singleplayer when visiting them via the portals or via the space anomaly. But maybe the "true" multiplayer will change my mind a bit on that. I'm not very optimistic to be true, though.

Maybe I will try mods too. But I'll be honest here: if it needs mods to fix a game or flesh it out, that's nothing to write home about. I'm not against mods, they can be great. But I refuse to provide any credit there to Hello Games, it just doesn't feel right.