What is the point of going to other planets ?

[MattThor]

Other that to gather gas that is. I feel like after i got the trade platform and the scrapper going to other planets seems kinda pointless. Am i missing something ?

[Tex]

You're supposed to activate all planets to finish the game. To activate a planet: Activate at least one gateway chamber on the surface and then go to the core and place 2 of the supplied resources to get two special things. That's all I can say without spoiling the game.

[LuckyDog]

+1

'Friendly Neighbourhood Crabsquid' has it quite right ! Gateway Chambers on the surfaces & Gateway Engines at the planet cores yield items that will be required for endgame. In addition, there will be a probe scanner to help look for key lost items per planet (that are historically signifcant IRL) to unlock Astroneer story lore. Personally, I nearly always go for 100% Achieves in a game, and enjoy the journey - Cheers

And YES OP, there can be a lather, rinse, repeat feeling to some extent, and you are right - it really does come down to the only thing you cannot produce independently is the gas, But the wind / sunlight amounts present different challenges, as well as wildly varying topography. Personally, my absolute Fav from earlier playthroughs will always be Glacio, with the constant icy howl of the wind, and the sound of ice sheets cracking constantly, giving it a very real atmosphere of frozen desolation - nice. On the other hand, I loathe & despise Vesania for those big, pink balloon things that make Rover navigation a joke - oh well). Hope you are enjoying it

Originally posted by Friendly Neighbourhood Crabsquid:

You're supposed to activate all planets to finish the game. To activate a planet: Activate at least one gateway chamber on the surface and then go to the core and place 2 of the supplied resources to get two special things. That's all I can say without spoiling the game.

[barbrady123]

Also, if you ever want to get a massive base...trying to get enough items like titanium is going to be a pain if you're getting it exclusively through the scrap/trade route.

[King Dub Dub]

Originally posted by ToxicFruit:

I feel like after i got the trade platform and the scrapper going to other planets seems kinda pointless.

You need tungsten for that, so you have to at least go to Desolo, but even then, just going to other planets is fun! Gases are important too, but there's also the problem of research. More difficult planets have better researchables, so instead of getting 500 bytes for a rock on Sylva in a cave, you can get 3,000 for weird gold-popcorn things on the surface of Atrox. You also want to get all the gateways unlocked, those are the purple trippy-space-boxes with a blue beacon. Some cool stuff happens when you unlock all the planet cores. Don't google it, it's really neat!

Also, once you unlock all the planets, you can teleport between them and you don't need to use a rocket unless you want to move something that won't fit in your inventory.

[Zarinthal]

this is not the 100% fastest most effective method, but it is going to take the charm out of the exploration and learning and cut straight to a goal based challenge. i suggest not reading it for anyone who still enjoys running around and getting lost while figuring things our

when i first leave starter lanet, i hit glacio for iron because its easy to find in large quantity. while there, i drop a beacon and run around and open as many of the research exo pods as i can find, and grab all the wind generators around, big and small. there are usually a lot of pods and turbines near the landing site. then i make enough research platofrms as i found exo pod research objects and set them all up to run and leave with my iron ore. alternatively, you can repack them if you want, but i prefer to leave them on glacio and save inventory space for iron ore to avoid needing to waste scrap on more iron after i get home. then i go to desolo and do the same thing, but with solar panels of course, and leave it all running while i gather wolframite, tungsten ore. sometimes i do one planet at a time and sometimes i do bth in one trip, not realy a logistical decision, just a matter of mood. easily land over 100,000 research bytes to get a full scrap operation going, including large rovers, silos, trade platform and shredders. once i need gasses, back to the same glacio spot to put those research turbines to new use, and a silo full of wind generators and solar panels for a multi-gas operation on atrox.