1.0.0.00 Feedback Thread + new mechanics overview

[Conquintor]

There’s three new mechanics that we introduce that will change the way your ship will need to be designed from now on. The goal of these mechanics is to make ships dynamic environments where things can go wrong.

The first is temperature.

To create a livable environment on your ships the temperature needs to be kept at a reasonable level. On small ships (sub 50k mass), this is done automatically and unless a fire breaks out your ship will manage to maintain a temperature suited for humans.

On larger ships you will need a new device called the Thermal Extractor. This device will take in hot air via vents in the rooms and then cools it with the use of coolant and heatsinks. It has a limited capacity and depending on the size of your ship you might need a couple extra to fully satisfy the need for cooling. When your ship is too cold on the other hand, it can also warm your ship up by providing it with heated coolant. Both coolant and heated coolant can be made in the refinery.

The temperature on your ship works as follows. Depending on the distance to the star in a system your hull will either get hot or cold. This temperature is slowly passed on to the interior of the ship, where it will heat or cool rooms. Your ships’ engines will also heat up the hull. The temperature in the rooms changes depending on the temperature of the hull. On small ships this difference is managed automatically, on larger ships you need the Thermal Extractor to maintain a suitable temperature level.

Devices and fire can heat up a room in addition to the hull temperature. Fires will quickly raise the temperature in a room, for devices it depends on the type. Teleporters emit a large amount of heat in one go as they discharge their internal power buffer, while devices like refineries and extractors will heat up a room continuously.

When the temperature drops below -20 celsius, or above 50, your suit’s internal temperature buffer will begin to drain. Once it is depleted you will start to slowly take damage.

Secondly there is fire.

Fire can break out when a device is being damaged. Depending on the flammability of a device there is a greater or smaller chance of a fire starting. Fire will spread through the room as long as there is oxygen available, damaging any devices it comes into contact with in the process and raising the room temperature to unsustainable levels. To put out a fire you can either use a fire extinguisher (which can be bought at any starter station), use sprinklers, or either disable the air vents or wait for all the oxygen to be depleted. Fires will damage air vents, and will eventually go out on their own.

To use sprinklers you can install them via the ship editor, and you need to insert water into a fuel tank. Sprinklers will automatically take any available water from the tanks once a fire is detected.

Fires will also increase the amount of carbon in the air by a lot, and will fill up the carbon filters pretty quickly, be sure to check your life support systems after putting out a fire.

The third is radiation.

Certain resources, (such as Uranium Ore, Uranium Bars, all the nuclear fuels), will emit radiation when placed on a cargo pad or in a cargo container. Little amount of ore won’t do much but a large amount of depleted cells will become deadly very quickly. Radiation will not spread from vaults or the nuclear reactor. And you can safely carry it around in digitized form in your inventory. Once a room is contaminated the radiation will slowly decay once the source is removed. This means that for high amounts of nuclear material you might want to consider building special rooms which are either accessed via an intermediary corridor or not at all. ACTRs can be of great help to safely transport the nuclear material.

You can craft a new hazard suit that protects against radiation to a degree, and you can use RadEx in a fire extinguisher to speed up the decay by washing away some of the radioactive material. RadEx can be bought at all starter stations.

Because we’re only introducing this mechanic now, all resources already on your ships will not emit radiation when you load up a save. They will only start to emit the effect when picked up and placed down again.

Besides these new mechanics there is also a lot of other new stuff. Please see the patch notes for 1.0 for the full list of changes. We’ll go over some new things here.

The Skrill Queen.

The Skrill Queen is the next big bad in Interstellar Rift. At 2.5 kilometers in size she’s the biggest enemy in the game, and defeating her will give you access to Vortium, a new resource that can be used to craft upgraded Rift fuel. Taking down the Queen is not an easy task, and you will need to come prepared. Queens will spawn in Tier 3 systems only after a couple of hours, and you will need to track them down via the signature scanners. Once found you can awaken them from their slumber by dropping a Queen Lure from the disposer in close vicinity of a Queen.

The Skrill Queen will go through different phases during the fight, spawning more deadly nodes that protect her and attack any nearby ships. Once killed, her smoldering remains can be mined with a stripminer.

Ship selling.

The Vend-O-Tron is a new device that can be found on all starter stations. You will be purchasing your first ship here, and it can be used to sell ships to other players. Besides using the Vend-O-Tron you can also sell your ship via the GRIP. Once put up for sale, other players need to be on board to complete the transaction.

Upgrade Cartridges rework.

Upgrade cartridges have been changed, and can no longer be crafted. They now drop as a reward for missions and you can get them from looting derelict stations and ships. They are levelled with the system tier they are found in, and will no longer expire. Instead, your ship now has 6 permanent upgrade slots that they can be placed in. After researching them for a while you will be able to apply the upgrade to your ship, and it will be kept forever, even when selling the ship. You can replace upgrades with new ones, but the old ones will be lost.

Traps and onboard defenses.

We’ve added a set of traps and defenses to the editor, which can be used to combat any boarding enemies. They can also be encountered on derelict ships. The Tesla coils will fire at hostile entities in range, while the Laser arch will zap anyone unauthorized to go through it.

Those were some of the bigger changes that we’ve made, but we’ve also made a lot of smaller changes and bug fixes. Station shields, for example, no longer need to be near a star and can now be activated anywhere, except in no fire zones and near the Skrill Queen.

Once again, for all other changes, please see the patch notes:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/363360/announcements/detail/2804011123158167938

Please leave any feedback in the comments below, thanks!

[Pallihiki]

Very interesting. Good work!

[Zothen]

Server desyncs, client lock ups, terrible server performance, 7 years in development.
Still not ready for release!

[smartbadger]

Is that it?
I've been watching this game for years - it seems to me that it's still a mostly pointless, mostly empty, shipbuilder with a basic simulator. Am I wrong? Is there a story, quests, engaging PvE content? Or is it still a big empty 'sandbox' with some lego?

[Big Buff Cheeto Puff]

There aren't any NPCs except the Skrill and terminals. It is a sandbox but it requires a group of friends and a player count to make it fun or exciting the last time I checked, which was 6 months or so ago.

[Johnno]

24 players max on official servers. Could well have reduced the galaxy size and rebalanced what systems spawn. Awful lot of space and systems for that few players.

Having issues with invisible players, random spawning (someone spawned onto my unstored ship as they logged on, someone who couldn't ever have been on that ship before), crates in the air and so on, all the old usual issues, with only ~10 players online.

If server performance can't be improved, and player count is to stay maxed around 24, serious consideration has to be made about redesigning the galaxy. There can't be any genuine need for this many star systems with that few players.

Colonisation could get another pass, so could trade, if this is to be the new norm. Neither will work well with this few players. You can forget about large scale wars or conflicts (not that there's any effort being put into making that happen).

[Godis]

For me it works now pretty good! No lag and lockups, good performance, even in combat! The only issue I have: The messages list is empty, even though there are messages. You can open and read them, but all messages in the overview list are invisible.

[Dook]

You are adding One more npc? Thats it? What the heck are you doing? You kept teasing that more content will be coming at release, I know I dont have to go copy paste it for you. and this is it? When specifically asked about more things to do you said wait for release, and you add temp
failures, and a queen for the mobs were all dead sick of already. Your a joke. I really hope im missing the content.

[Ploutonas777]

"Hi, if you feel like the game has too little content for long term play at the moment may I suggest checking back once we have our 1.0 release, which is (relative to our total dev cycle) not that far off.

Also, we're always happy to hear what kind of features you'd like to see implemented in Interstellar Rift."

Please add PVE content or change the description, making it clear to your potential customers that this game is not and will not be a PVE experience. Some transparency on your end will actually help your sales and the way this community looks at your company.

Right now, you offer minimal PVE content, no actual NPCs, no ship to ship combat, boarding etc. The game is a multiplayer only experience with PVE traces. Make that clear please or don't...and just watch your customers press the refund button, then come here to complain and further ruin your image. Folks read these forums because years of bad faith practices with EA games have taught us all a lesson: read what others say before you buy- because EA is a bait and switch tactic most of the time.

My 2 cents? Add PVE or update the store listing to be accurate. You will get the remainder of the asking price when you start acting in good faith towards your customers. I already purchased this once and refunded it for that same reason.

[NathanTheZealot]

As someone who has 2500+ hours in game, and has only engaged in PvP a handful of times outside of per-arranged combat events, I don't understand why people keep insisting on more PvE content. Sure there are things that you can do in PvP that you can't do in PvE, but the work required to create AI that could do that would be monstrous. AI that can navigate custom player ships would be a huge amount of work for not a lot of gameplay. There are plenty of things PvE players can do, they can trade, fight drones, fight skrill swarms, track down and fight the Skrill Queen, board and fight off the defenses on derelict ships, plus all the other content available. There's a lot to do, and people keep getting upset that a small handful of difficult to implement content types aren't available in PvE.

[Dook]

Originally posted by NathanIsOnline:

As someone who has 2500+ hours in game, and has only engaged in PvP a handful of times outside of per-arranged combat events, I don't understand why people keep insisting on more PvE content. Sure there are things that you can do in PvP that you can't do in PvE, but the work required to create AI that could do that would be monstrous. AI that can navigate custom player ships would be a huge amount of work for not a lot of gameplay. There are plenty of things PvE players can do, they can trade, fight drones, fight skrill swarms, track down and fight the Skrill Queen, board and fight off the defenses on derelict ships, plus all the other content available. There's a lot to do, and people keep getting upset that a small handful of difficult to implement content types aren't available in PvE.

you missed to point as you have since the begining, you have drivin off most of the players who would have made no pve viable. You are one of the 3 or 4 people who kept attacking people whenever they asked questions. you are an expert on missing the point and have always been "that guy", the point is still this ,,

The dev said "Hi, if you feel like the game has too little content for long term play at the moment may I suggest checking back once we have our 1.0 release, which is (relative to our total dev cycle) not that far off."

All they added was fires and a queen for the mobs no one wants to be bothered with because they are boring. this is not content added for long term play. As another said, the wording on the description should point out limited pve and that there are only 12 people playing the game regularly , in another week or so , it will be back to those numbers. People will come back ,, jump in ,, still having to sit in a station running in circles for tens of hours just to make a small ship thats worth anything. with nothing to do with said ship once it is done other than defend it from cockroaches. and run in the same circles just in your own ship. its very dissapointing , i loved this game, till the community became super toxic and the devs kept saying they were going to add more pve so it was semi worth the time but to know that this is it is kind makin me feel like ive been scammed. i dono anyone who like to feel that way. so make your excuses nathan, they still lied.

[NathanTheZealot]

As someone who has written multiple guides, made multiple tutorial videos, is in the process of uploading a video on the ship editor for new players, and spends an unhealthy amount of my personal time camping out on Discord answering questions, not sure why you think I attack people who ask questions. (Unless answering them counts as attacking?)

As for adding more PvE content, the devs did add more to do, the queen is actually a pretty interesting fight that I've attempted a few times, and only succeeded once, just due to the challenge she is. The devs also upgraded the challenge that derelict ships posed by adding anti-boarding weapons that all derelict ships spawn with now. They're not just treasure boxes anymore.
Personally I think more PvE content is a waste of developer time due to how difficult it is to create PvE content that can be reused, most PvE content is a "do once and forget" type deal. If you think the PvE content the devs added for 1.0 wasn't enough, maybe you're just proving my point. That said, the developers are working on adding yet more PvE content, including NPC ships, so I wouldn't sail on IsR yet.

[LCCX]

Originally posted by TheDook:

mobs no one wants to be bothered with because they are boring

@TheDook can you explain why the Skrill feel boring?

[Dook]

the only challenge they pose is , did you design your ship right so you can clean up. they only pose a threat to a solo player who is not paying attention. And then just barely. Only other challenge they pose is when there are more than a few around the server takes a crap and you have to try to hit targets that warp around but thats not intentional to the programming i hope. Thy were designed as a pest ,, it was described as a pest not the main foil. mostly handwavy "for now" comments every time someone asked if that was it. And they have been it for years and years. to jump to new systems and its nothing but skrill or more skrill is boring. whats the point of exploration , you know what your going to find. More skrill. how can they not be boring? is this pacman? all we get are the ghosts or versions of them.

[LCCX]

Having gotten to play 1.0, I'll start leaving feedback. Also, if it's going to be "1.0", not-early-access, not alpha, not beta ... I'm going to throw in quality-of-life notes which I wouldn't otherwise.

*** Ship Editor:
BUG - Power group edit mode > pick a system type which has multiple instances > click the "Move all devices to.." button > Esc > load the same or a similar (e.g. previous or subsequent save) blueprint > the "Pick a group" dialog is still present on the screen and remains over the powergroup editor even if you click away to "Prop edit mode" and return to "Powergroup edit mode".


- The ship stat line weight, armor, shields, and energy-drain-per-tick don't have mouseover tooltips.
- The ship stat line armor and shields count the full number of shield and armor generators onboard no matter how many and how little CPU. Since defensive generators from inactive weapons groups do nothing whatsoever, surely counting all of them is borderline useless. Displaying the maximum from any particular weapons group might be better.
- There is no ship stat line does not include CPU.
- The ship stat line has no mention of heat.
- There is no indication of how many crew or ship voxel cubes or fans or whatever a single Life Support System supports.
- There is no indication of how many ceiling fans/air vents a room needs for oxygen.
- There is no indication of how many ceiling fans/air vents a room or ship needs for thermal management.
- There is no powergroup tab with information about thermal management.

- The sprinklers information box does not indicate that it needs water to function.
- There is no indication that a player will need at least 2 tanks onboard if the ship has both sprinklers and hydrogen power generators.


- RE: https://steamcommunity.com/app/363360/discussions/0/1629665087676438719/#c3166519278512629583
I'd have thought this kind of journaling/logging/saving would make it downright trivial to create an undo function. Throw in a timestamp each time a key is pressed and results in at least one savefile change, and reverse all operations since the last keypress timestamp? "Load" the current savefile with the last atomic change truncated? I'm sorry I've missed whatever explanation was already made as I'm sure it must be interesting. Assuming undo really is off the table, "remember to save every time you've made a correct change to your ship which worked out the way you intended" should be a crystal clear message from whatever ship editor tutorial and wiki text come out to improve the new player experience. A quick reload current blueprint button wouldn't hurt, and eventually a savefile compressor/cleaner for folks with repeatedly redesigned large ship lagtastic blueprints could be relevant.

- It would be nice to have some kind of useful breakdown of mass.

[LCCX]

*** Player Options
- The character piece selection truncates the name and does not show the full name on mouseover.
- There is no indication of how many character suit piece options there are, nor how to get more.
- The color palette buttons "Confirm" and "Return" do exactly the same thing. Either only have one button or let one button actually cancel/discard the changes.