There are a whole lot of changes that happened around the handheld and vessel drills - do you like them? Anything we could improve? Check the full changelog: PS: There is no need to discuss the following here again (all the arguments are known and will be reviewed in the future): - Survival Tool does not need power/ammo > know and might be topic of a future "suit energy rework" (but for now, the changes will not be dialed back or postponed until then) - Removal of the T1 Drill (Mechanical) > The progression aims for a "energy based tool" progression and, more important, after the removal of the split "rock/deposit" drill modes the mechanical drill does no longer server a purpose in this progression (as there are no two drill modes anymore that could server as a progression reason)
I do not like the combined drilling mode. I am constantly scaring the land with either the survival tool or drill. There is no way to repair the land. Using the drills on an HV is even worse Large areas of land are disturbed when trying to harvest surface rocks. There is no way to repair the land. This leaves ugly scars anywhere I try mining surface rocks with HV drills. Please find a way to harvest surface rocks without leaving scars on the land.
I don't have a problem with the new drilling mode, everything seems to work fine. What I do not like though is the huge nerf to the laser drills range and mining capability. I used to be able to mine out an entire medium voxel deposit without even going down into the hole. Now the range on the laser drill is just slightly longer than the range on the mechanical drill which is just pitiful. I mean its a laser drill it should be able to mine a good distance. Also it seems to mine slower now as well, not taking as much rock as it used to and just barely mining to the sides at all, which sucks because its super easy to get stuck in a hole now if you are not careful. This also applies to the laser hand drill, the range is a lot shorter and it appears to mine slightly slower. I can go into sp and get out the debug hand drill and the range on it is like it used to be on the regular t2 drill. Please at least change the range on the laser drills back to what they were. Mining with the laser drills was the best thing about this game and now it seems like a huge chore, like mining with the mechanical drills.
Why the hell is it now impossible to fill a hole beneath you or use the tool to get yourself out of the big holes that are left after you dismantle alien bases. The new drilling modes are bad enough but this is just so pointless. This is really a improvement for the worst.
In regards to filling holes, neither the T1 Drill or the Survival Tool could do that and the T2 drill is still in the game, which can. So nothing changed there. The survival tool can now dig through solid rock so you're fully capable of digging out any hole left from dismantling an alien base. There are no new drilling modes. In fact, Rock Drilling and Terrain Drilling were merged into a single mode that does both. Everything you said is false.
It definetely changed since you can not fill anything that is remotely near you. You maybe can dig yourself out of stuff but you can not fill the ground up till you can get out, nor can you fill small vertical tunnel without making a big ass tunnel out of it first since it won't fill up if either you or someone else stands in or near it. Yesterday it took my two extra hours to fill up a one block wide tunnel just because of this. So don't tell me this change does not exist.
Actually what @Aleanera is saying, though not explained well, is true. You can no longer fill next to yourself or another player within a certain range of targeted area; hence the old elevator technique of getting out of deep places is gone. Also because of this new restriction it makes working in tight places impossible or at the least to be avoided. I'm also disappointed in this change. The old fill and leveling was always a little wonky (highly technical term) but could be worked around, now leveling your filled in areas, when it works at all, and does not follow the level/elevation you pick/stand on but seems less controllable and looks like a five year old with a sand shovel has been at work. (turning filled holes into donuts isn't my idea of patching up the terrain) The system doesn't put back the same type of terrain that was there or nearby but instead uses blue rock, (filling with rock was incorporated awhile back and I was never a fan). The fine drilling mode just seems to be wasted space on the selection wheel, maybe others have but I've yet to find a use for it.* I have spent a lot of time trying to work with this new fill and level system and can say I'm very disappointed so far and hope there is more adjustments to be made, and would love getting rid of this dead fill space around the player. Edit: * Lol...my turn to be unclear; to clarify, the fine mode while boring tunnels without collecting resources has been a good idea but, since one rarely acquires a lot of resources without targeting particular ore deposits now, the not collecting recourses point is kind of moot, and not seeming any faster than normal drill mode (It could be me but it actually seems slower), and making a smaller tunnel diameter seems to put the fine mode into the "why bother" state for myself.
Well I agree the way of filling under you is now gone. But I also find it's real easy to point your drill upward towards the surface and just dig a tunnel out and walk out. As to the fine drilling mode I have used that around my base and works fine. The fill is so OVER the top it's just too fast and you have a small mountain to flatten back out. Which for me has been working for me, but I do find I have to go over some areas more.
Your right about tunneling out, I would hazard that my main complaint for losing the close to player fill is not being able to work in small areas; my work around is to just overkill my drilling area to be able to fill a mound to get to higher places, like holes in floors from under POIs I've sapped into. I agree a little slow down on speed and amount of filling would help alleviate some of the problems with the new setup, unless one is into building mountains quickly. I do like the speed and combo rock/soil of the drill; I'll have to look more at the fine drill mode, maybe I'm missing something. Lol...my starter planet is starting to look like it was razed by a real meteor shower. Update: After experimenting a lot more with the fine drill mode, I will stay with the opinion I stated above; the fine mode in quite a few areas, especially filled, uses up your drill charge with no apparent change to what you're trying to drill. When it did work, as when trying to cut down some of the fill mountains, the drill only worked away from where your aiming; aim here and if anything happens it starts cutting down elsewhere. Definitely need a little fine tuning to get the fill & level systems to work better (or at least as good as they did before this change) together.
T2 Drill Feedback: - I like the combined resource drill mode. Makes life much easier not having to switch back and forth. - Mining Resources in the ground goes a little bit to fast. - Mining Meteorites on the ground goes way to slow. - Mining Asteroids in space maybe goes slightly to fast, but it's not to bad. Mining asteroids in space seems close to the same speed as mining resources in the ground, which would make sense. Suggestion: - Slow the mining of ground resources and space asteroids by about 10% - Speed up the mining of meteorites by about 25% I see the meteorites as a way for there to still be resources for players to mine when all the deposits have been taken, so they shouldn't be penalized for having to mine those by it taking an hour to get 300 ore from one meteorite.
Going to jump on board with Kenny and say that meteor mining is terribly slow now, and the yields aren't great on top of that. I'd really like to see some improvements to make them viable again. A8 they were fine.
I actually miss the angle indicater and hope it comes back. and still think we need something to show or glide angle or angle of attack in SVs and CVs
Drill feedback after days of use: Drilling and mining on planets "ok", meteorites I agree with Kenny_66; too slow. Fine mode use combined with not having resulting rock/ground changes a lot of the time, just seems like a place holder on the dial since it has very limited use when it does work.(IMO) Filling and leveling seems completely broken compared to previous use e.g. : Filling creates instant mountains of ugly granite like rock, which when trying to level leads to more than one layer level and creating trenches at the edges far worse then the process used to. Trying to fill those trenches is frustrating. Because of the new distance from players limitations, trying to fill in the usual inverted pyramids left over from leveling have become a back and forth chore not even worth the frustration. As mentioned previously the fill is 'too much too fast', and the leveling has gotten too slow and inconsistent. And before someone says "it works fine for me", that's great, but this is my feedback relating to before and after changes experienced with the drill.
I spend a lot of the time using the drills, either in my caverns, or using refill, for floating platform, But I am worried about the intense blue beam, A family member who has been gaming for over 40 years, as been diagnosed with macular degeneration, which doctors believe was caused by years of gaming, blue screens, intense colours, When I now use the drill, I turn on my computers, eye saver mode, but it dulls everything, I was wondering if there was any way, to change the drill beam, to less damaging light, green or red spectrum? Thanks sunshaker. https://www.brightfocus.org/macular/article/are-bright-lights-damaging-eye
