Markiplier played.

[Will]

I'm hoping this will have a positive affect to the community.

[[F-B] HOTWHEELS25372]

I like making (ugly but good working) as well as using my own boats but rarely like to convert simple to advance if I want to with simple or new advance engines

[Ahroovi]

I wish they would dumb some things down a bit, quite a lot actually. I have built engines in real life, and done new wiring harnesses on engines. I cannot get my crafts to work in this game. I'm at 10 hours now and almost all of that is building. Too late for a refund too, immediately denied at 6 hours. 10 hours of absolutely no progress or fun. Even using other people's microcontrollers isn't helping.

[pontfogel]

Originally posted by Ahroovi:

I wish they would dumb some things down a bit, quite a lot actually. I have built engines in real life, and done new wiring harnesses on engines. I cannot get my crafts to work in this game. I'm at 10 hours now and almost all of that is building. Too late for a refund too, immediately denied at 6 hours. 10 hours of absolutely no progress or fun. Even using other people's microcontrollers isn't helping.

Rather than dumbing it down they need to add proper tutorials.

[Aven]

Originally posted by Ahroovi:

I wish they would dumb some things down a bit, quite a lot actually. I have built engines in real life, and done new wiring harnesses on engines. I cannot get my crafts to work in this game. I'm at 10 hours now and almost all of that is building. Too late for a refund too, immediately denied at 6 hours. 10 hours of absolutely no progress or fun. Even using other people's microcontrollers isn't helping.

10 hours of experience is absolutely progress, but you are really underestimating the time it takes to develop a decent craft in Stormworks. My last 150 hours in Stormworks have all been dedicated to building a single craft: an early game tri/quadcopter. Granted, that single craft is the product of a dozen test builds of varying completion as well as developing and refining all of the microcontrollers, and I am still not at a point I would consider finished. And it's just a small craft.

The key to truly enjoying the game is the microcontroller. It is the biggest factor in a craft being usable. It keeps a hydrofoil stable, allows a quad copter to be flyable, consolidates data into a usable form, and manages the inner workings of your craft. But, and it's a big but: you have to take the time to learn how to build them, and 10 hours is just a drop in the bucket.

Set a goal for yourself: build a starter boat with a stable driving speed of 25+ m/s on flat water and 15+ m/s in moderate waves, the ability to idle/reverse/cruise, a range of 50+ km on 1000 liters of fuel, room for 6 passengers, a bed, and a stock of medical and firefighting equipment. That simple sounding goal will take you 50-100 hours of looping through learning, building, and testing.

Yes, I realize your whole argument is that these times sound unreasonable, but that is honestly why most of us love this game: it rewards the time and effort you put into learning the game and developing your creations.

[Ahroovi]

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[Ahroovi]

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[DCBenton]

10 hours in this game is just a teardrop in an entire ocean. Took me a couple hundred hours to start wrapping my head around being able to make working micro controllers. I downloaded other people MC's at first, and looking at what was going on was completely unfathomable. I only really started understanding it after some time making my own after reading this guide.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2087537058

[Sienihemmo]

Originally posted by Ahroovi:

I wish they would dumb some things down a bit, quite a lot actually. I have built engines in real life, and done new wiring harnesses on engines. I cannot get my crafts to work in this game. I'm at 10 hours now and almost all of that is building. Too late for a refund too, immediately denied at 6 hours. 10 hours of absolutely no progress or fun. Even using other people's microcontrollers isn't helping.

Getting a refund even past 6 hours is possible if you make your point. The 2 hour soft limit is only there as an indicator that under 2 hours Steam wont question it, but even after that you can get a refund if you explain why you want it. I've succesfully gotten a refund on a game after like 8 hours of gameplay when I explained that the game was really slow to start with, and I found that it wasn't what I was looking for.

So you could explain that after spending 10 hours trying to learn the game, you're not making progress and it's just causing frustration so you'd like a refund because its obviously not what you bought it for.

Alternatively, if you want to keep at it I'd recommend binging on MrNJersey's tutorial videos on Youtube. I almost quit playing because I was insanely frustrated and overwhelmed at how many different systems are at play even on a simple boat, but then I found his channel and started building along while watching which helped understand the mechanics a lot.

[Ahroovi]

That is exactly the point I made, and they denied me immediately. Valve has the worst refund policies in the market. Origin's is way better, just a shame they don't have as many (good) games. Same thing happened with Doom Eternal, which I hate. I played for like 4 hours, only got to level two. People kept saying it was better when you get upgrades, so I went over and over in the level to find secrets on my own, finally got them and upgraded, still hated it. 60 bucks wasted.

I finally managed to make my boat work, by throwing more power and parts everywhere. Now it drains really fast, so I can't idle with the engines and lights on to see what I'm doing. And I have reloaded my vehicle so much that I don't have money for equipment to do anything in the campaign now. guess I'll start over.

Those tutorials didn't really help me either. I just experimented until it finally worked, and used some other's microcontrollers. So now that the boat works, at least I haven't wasted my money now. I could actually play the game.

[Philonious Rex]

Originally posted by Ahroovi:

I finally managed to make my boat work, by throwing more power and parts everywhere. Now it drains really fast, so I can't idle with the engines and lights on to see what I'm doing. And I have reloaded my vehicle so much that I don't have money for equipment to do anything in the campaign now. guess I'll start over.

Those tutorials didn't really help me either. I just experimented until it finally worked, and used some other's microcontrollers. So now that the boat works, at least I haven't wasted my money now. I could actually play the game.

Yeah just keep going with it, it's going to take more hours to figure things out but it's pretty worth it when you do.

Use creative mode (custom mode) until you know what you are doing a bit more. That way you won't have to worry about money etc and you can view in 3rd person and other things that are useful for creation.

The community is very helpful if you post questions in the boards so, sorry that you couldn't get your refund but maybe you'll have fun if you do decide to stick with it.

[[F-B] HOTWHEELS25372]

stormworks follows its own rules of what does and does not work blame the devs

[HardlyLivin]

I have to agree with my fellow 2nd friend on this one. I do think this game should be a little easier to get into, weather that be through tutorial or simplification. I have friends who would enjoy a game like this but just don't have the time or energy to get into it due to the shear amount of time required to learn it. As a result I can only imagine that it's limiting this games player base.

As for me, I've basically lost all but two of my vehicles due to the massive amounts of rebalances done over the past year and a half. That was almost 500hrs worth of work gone.
I want to get back into this game, but I want to make sure that if I start any new projects that I can count on them (and the ideas I've put into them) to still work after some time has passed. I find it hard to catalog a system that works if I know that it quite possibly won't work in the future.

[Ahroovi]

I haven't even taken any balancing or updates into account... Great...
What is the point of making things so convoluted from the get-go though? Why does the 4 dial instrument panel require some weird electronic magicry to work? The helm has 6 hotkey things floating off it to connect to but you can't just simple connect straight to the instrument cluster. Just, why? It should be as simple as connect x output to only 1 of 4 inputs on the panel. KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid.
That would also help when things break from updates. If it's already simple, it may not break, or will be easy to fix.

[HardlyLivin]

Originally posted by Ahroovi:

I haven't even taken any balancing or updates into account... Great...
What is the point of making things so convoluted from the get-go though? Why does the 4 dial instrument panel require some weird electronic magicry to work? The helm has 6 hotkey things floating off it to connect to but you can't just simple connect straight to the instrument cluster. Just, why? It should be as simple as connect x output to only 1 of 4 inputs on the panel. KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid.
That would also help when things break from updates. If it's already simple, it may not break, or will be easy to fix.

I'm still learning the logic as it is right now, and am able to do more moderate levels of logic. For example I made a couple of very simple switchgate style micro controllers to open and close custom doors and lock them, and switch between LIDAR and RADAR. With both LIDAR and RADAR logic modules being downloaded from the workshop because they're both beyond me.

But it took me almost 500hours to get to where I'm at now, and even then I still have to make the vast majority of my creations features manually controlled as all that automatic stuff (auto throttle, auto doors, autopilot..etc) is still completely beyond me. I have not figured out the composite logic at all though, and at the rate I'm at I probably won't.

Don't get me wrong though. The advanced logic system allows for some incredible creations......I'm not able to make them, but they're still cool. But watching people explain it makes me feel like I damn near need a college degree to use any of it.

[Aven]

@HardlyLivin: Composite signals are simple enough, they just need perspective. I look at them like this: where a green input is a single wire, a composite input is a bundle of wires that you build to avoid repetition. This cuts down on blocks, weight, and rewiring clicks.

For example, say you have a few microcontrollers on the same craft that all use GPS X, GPS Y, linear speed, altitude, and compass heading. That's 5 inputs per microcontroller. If you have three microcontrollers all using this data, that's 15 blocks and 15 weight just for those inputs. But, if you feed those 5 inputs into a 5 channel composite signal, you can now feed those into a microcontroller through a single input. That cuts your space and weight needs by 40% in the example, and if you move a sensor, you need only reconnect one line instead of three.