Request: Sandbox mode as "free play with occasional attacks"

[Ludewich]

Summary of what I elaborate below: I would really like to have a game mode which is in the middle of survival, campaign, and sandbox mode - some sort of "Free play"! Thus, it would have the end goal as the campaign (including the waves at HQ update and rift startup) _and_ occasional attackes. But it would not have the timer of survival mode and it would not force you to pursue missions.

About the campaign:
I have finished the campaign on normal - and I loved it!

The campaign is done very well, I think: it introduces gaming mechanics while giving me freedom to pursue the goals as I see want to. There is freedom to roam around the base, it is ok to defend small ore places from time to time and it feels quite cool to conque the map piece by piece.

Some gaming mechanics are introduces insufficiently: it took me some time to work out how to bring the heavy artillery or that I have to click on the rift portal to build its components. But eventually it was very satisfying, well done, few bugs, stable, excellent graphics... very well done!

About survival:
Now that I have finished the campagin, I started a survival on "Normal". I have to say that I did not enjoy it. I managed to survive, but thats all to it. What I disliked is the permanent spam "there is a nest - go there", "base is attacked", "there is a huge create". It is a
stressful bombardment. And the attacks every 7 minutes require me to always rebuild the ore mines farther from the base which is rather tedious. In the end, I did not even manage to build a laboratory (but researched a good number of important items in the com hub). Everything felt so .. unfinished. Map not fully explored, base hardly able to defend itself.

I would rather have the feeling to actually... well, conquer the map, to have a good part of the research tree available etc ... even if it becomes close at the end. And that combined with the freedom to do what I want. I would like to have the satisfying pacing of the campaign combined with the freedom of the survival mode (i.e. not being forced to collect X resources manually as in the campaign).

Maybe I should either stretch the times between attacks to, say, 20 minutes, or replay the campaign (and pay for it by doing the rather lengthy scouting missions).

About sandbox:
Well, sandbox mode gives me the freedom to conquer the map at my own pace, explore, scout, research, has no time limit, without being forced to follow campaign missions... that's great. But let's face it: this is a game about base _defense_ not just base building. What is the point of defending the base if nobody will attack you? And manually triggering attacks sounds like cheating.

So far, I was not really encouraged to play sandbox mode in the state it is documented. I will give it a try, though.

My request:
what if sandbox mode would include occasional attacks such that defenses have a point? It could be done as in the campaign mode: attacks there are quite entertaining.

Ideas:
* sandbox would include occasional attacks as in campaign
* maps would be similar to that of the campaign, i.e. with the portal and the need to fetch rare resources in different biomes
* sandbox would also end (optionally) after building the rift portal, with the same aggro horde
* but it has no time restriction as survival, and it offers more freedom and a slower pacing.

[Invictus]

The lore of the game is to "prepare the planet for colonization".

They could work on that to generate more victory conditions.

For example, control X% percentage of the map, having X resource generation of all types, X excess energy and maybe additional buildings, once you have opened a Rift.

And the bigger you are, the hardest the waves are, but with additional missions other than plain waves every X minutes.

[KunJo]

+1
I don't think the sandbox mode should be tweaked though, since it's mostly meant to discover the buildings and tech tree without limitations.
Instead they could tweak the survial mode or, as you said, make a new "free play" mode.
Personally, I'd like to play without end-goal nor timer, like the survival mode with waves proportional to the base level and random events but with the possibility of traveling between biomes to find ressources like in the campain.

[Ludewich]

@KunJo: Agreed that the current sandbox mode should not vanish. Maybe the request should be "implement a free-to-play mode".

@Invictus Re "more victory conditions": that might be interesting. For me, it would probably be sufficient to keep the current victory condition in a free-to-play mode. People who want to continue afterards should be able to do so (or simply never finish it).

[Dahak]

I gotta +1 this!

[Grizzt]

I’ve had good luck building my own Survival mode with the Custom Survival options in the Suvival mode setup screen.

You can set the delay between waves (I set mine to 15 mins), and how long the match should last (I set mine to infinite to just play around, but that might make ‘winning’ impossible. I’m still playing it after 2 days lol).

Among other settings like research speed, node depletion rate, weapon drop on death and so on.

And there is the Console Mode you can activate for even more granular control of the Mode while playing.

It’s not perfect yet. I’d like a ‘Campaign Light’ mode, exactly like you described. With outposts and so on. Probably something they’ll need to add anyway to scale up the matches for multiplayer.

But for my first go with custom settings it seems pretty flexible.

[Invictus]

Originally posted by Ludewich:

@KunJo: Agreed that the current sandbox mode should not vanish. Maybe the request should be "implement a free-to-play mode".

@Invictus Re "more victory conditions": that might be interesting. For me, it would probably be sufficient to keep the current victory condition in a free-to-play mode. People who want to continue afterards should be able to do so (or simply never finish it).

Well, while at it, why not get more things. But yes, getting the Rift as end objective and outposts would be great for free play.

[FireFox]

There is a Custom Difficulty setting where you can turn off waves and also turn off the End game timer and you can just build stuff to your hearts content. And there is even a Sandbox setting in there.


I forgot to mention the console command cheat_enable_debug_menu lets you access the Sandbox controls.

[Zarious101]

Yeah so fat the only thing we can do is custom with the timer set to infinite and tweak what settings you wanna change like waves. I'd love for them to make a free play version of the campaign where you still have to travel between various environments of differing threat levels to establish your economy for rare resources but also have bigger maps.

[info]

+1

supported. I hate stressful scenarios as well. difficult, yes. make it really really hard strategically, sure. but not click heavy or stressful

[Ludewich]

@Invictus I understand your request and would second it. However, I think of it as second milestone of the feature request. A first milestone would be to have a free-play-mode with one victory condition; a second milestone could bring additional (perhaps customizable) victory conditions.

@FireFox thanks for your recommendations! I will look into it, although I still hope that EXOR will consider the request here for their roadmap. Or perhaps some modder.

[Ill Behaviour]

The game is easily modable, so even if you don't get your ideas into the base game chances are high that someone will make a mod that douse what you want.

[KunJo]

Originally posted by Zarious101:

Yeah so fat the only thing we can do is custom with the timer set to infinite and tweak what settings you wanna change like waves. I'd love for them to make a free play version of the campaign where you still have to travel between various environments of differing threat levels to establish your economy for rare resources but also have bigger maps.

Yes, that's it but personally, with the setting tweaks already possible in survival mode, I would just need a functional orbital scanner and an option to start on a random biome.