I've been playing Empyrion exclusively since lock down and have been having a great time with some awesome gaming moments. I am on my second ever playthrough and am still based on the starter planet (medium difficulty). I have a well established base with decent defensive capability from drone attacks. I have 2 utlity HV's, 1 base defence/scout SV, a tier 2 attack SV and a tier 2 CV. I have unlocked every item from the tech tree, am level 25, I have visited 2 other planets and their moons and have lots of the rare materials and can build every component, block and device. https://imgur.com/ocwWekp Drone attacks on my base are easily dealt with so that they are not really much of a challenge. As I can build everything there is by gathering more resources, I don't see the point of attacking POI's. I could get better weapons and armour from them but I only really need those for attacking more POI's right? I've completed the solo missions. I am honoured with the Talon and Polaris so don't need to do their missions for reputation. I don't have any use for their credits as I can build everything. So I can tick the box that says survive and I can tick the box that says thrive. I am now at the point where I am wondering what to do next:- Do I annihilate the Zirax from the sector? If so what's the incentive for doing that other than stopping the easily repulsed base attacks? Do I befriend the Zirax? If so whats in it for me? Do I experiment in creative to build better vessels/bases? Again, why if I can already get all the resources I need? Do I explore the system? What's left to see and do if I can already build everything? I don't mean this post to come across as belligerent, I am really enjoy the game. I just don't have enough playtime to know if I've hit the wall or not.
There really isn't an end game yet, either via missions or collecting better tech to allow you to explore more. There are other planets to explore and POIs to fight in but you'll do those more just so you can see them than because you have to. Alpha 12 is adding a lot of back end tech to allow stories and missions.
From someone who's nowhere near having "done it all", have you done all that with CPU and weight/volume turned on? I've only started tinkering with it in a 'parallel' game to the Co-op with the wife, but it looks like it adds some challenges.
@russak yes I have block limit, mass and CPU all set to true. Even with these on it doesn't make the game particularly difficult (again I was on medium settings). The only times I died were attacking POI's (Abandoned Mine killed me 2 times, and once in a Zirax base where some raptors had also got in). I've never once been killed by starvation, hypoxia, disease or a drone attack. In fact I've watched many YT vids of people shooting down dozens and dozens of drones without taking any hits at all. The initial survival phase has up until now been the most enjoyable challenge for me but even that needs to be harder. Once I got the CV and could extend my warp range I can now just warp to any system, shoot some Zirax on the ground who mostly don't even shoot back, pick up the resources, warp back and build whatever I want... and I'm a beginner! There are some fantastic concepts in this game, it's the overall structure and how those mechanisms come together which I think needs work. I think the rare resources should be very heavily defended with multiple POI's providing overlapping fields of fire so that you have to max out your ingenuity with what resources you do have to get the rares. Drones need to have the ability to fire upwards, move faster and not spin around every time they take a hit, they're just no challenge at all once you have a SV with some steel and some gats. I see that in the new update that they have more hit points but that won't increase the challenge. Deciding to attack drones should make your palms sweaty with anticipation with you continuously assessing the risk versus reward and retreating if necessary. The stat management is far too simple. Food, health and stamina should integrate with each other more. Max stamina should reduce over time and be impacted by low food & low health level to a greater extent than it is now. Conditions such as heatstroke and hypothermia should be much harder to recover from having longer lasting implications to max health and stamina so that they are given more incentive to avoid them. The levelling system needs work. I think some kind of system where templates were unlocked by looting or purchasing their 'design manual' would be more fitting, or by reverse engineering them through scavenging as suggested in another thread. Picking fruit and killing spiders should not suddenly give me the ability to build a small constructor! One issue I think is that the devs have backed themselves into a corner with having certain key mechanics as 'optional'. This means any update either directly or indirectly affecting those mechanics will have a widely varying effect ranging from dreadful to amazing to no effect at all depending on how people choose to play. It would have been better to have those mechanics as compulsory but have 'in game' ways of getting around them. It gives another goal to aim for and I think that is my main issue with my 2nd playthrough... I reached all the goals without ever really setting them. I have just started a new play through with the Shadows of Starlight scenario with everything set to hard and all the limitations set to true. So far I'm loving the bleakness and lack of resources (I'm a big fan of The Long Dark) and this certainly seems more challenging from the offset even though you start with a defended base and advanced constructor.
I get what you're saying about the interlocking nature of challenges, and that difficulty could be increased. For my part, I'd prefer the difficulty to vary in *type* as much as absolute level, so the game asks different things of you at different stages. At the moment, there's the forage -> build -> fight progression; maybe they could move to a "lead" one after that, or *require* some diplomacy other than that which issues from the barrel of a gun... Though if you can always make a bigger gun, the "walk softly" part of Roosevelt's diplomatic policy less necessary. Guess that's what W/V and CPU are for
