You nailed it. The arid planet start takes a good step up in difficulty without requiring intimate knowledge of game mechanics or a huge dose of luck. A very demanding snow planet would make a cool finale to the starter planets.
Yes, but there is still the issue with fuel for the O2 generator (unless it changed since I posted): you get the O2 generator right at the start, but have no way to make fuel for it until level 3. And the +1 planet issue. I believe the little bottles you can make from the water bottles fixed most of the O2 issues I had.
After getting the HV I found oasis's and alien biomes and POI's and ores and golems, so resources no longer a big issue for expansion. Half of the planet mapped, found 2 Abandoned Mines too. Right, maybe the options lacks some starter planet (and overall system) settings for difficulty. Or have several planet types to choose from, with description of main differences to understand the type of difficulty. Oxygen, food, health, resources, hostiles, POIs and such are factors that can be the main difference. But little point in having a so difficult start that using deaths or console to be able to progress. Robinson Protocol only for a few starter planets. Or able to select if to be one BEFORE starting a new game (on any planet type). Of course able to skip it as other missions. Maybe also split it in 2, where second part pops up when find the Radio Tower. Like Sienna (a7.6) I died a lot to cold, until found a strategy. That was to find hot springs ASAP and be patient collecting resources. But sadly that planet were in MP mode, so could not take over POIs due to regeneration (without "cheating" or changing .YAMLs). Another setting that is missing from difficulty options, SP/MP mode.
Anyone else think there is way too much seaweed? I've been on an arid starter planet for maybe 10-12 in game days now and have only gathered seaweed twice for my food needs. Granted these are just energy bars, but there is just so much seaweed I never had any fears of running out of food in the early game. On temperate planets I was often down to anywhere between 1-3 food rations until I got a garden and fridge up and running. This is only my third game start (2 temperate, 1 arid), so maybe it's just RNG being nice to me seed wise, dunno.
Considering this is pretty much the ONLY reliable food source? I had plenty of food in starter area on AS, but once you leave it, food gets scarce fast. Getting 2 PP per hot dog makes it easier to survive on TS, but on AS outside the "starter area", there isn't much food until you get to water with seaweed. I actually think for how big they are, you should get more plant protein from all seaweed (and then I could see reducing the number). For comparison: On TS, I pick a little itty bitty hot dog plants, and voila! I have enough protein for a granola bar. On AS, I have to pick two of the (much bigger?) seaweed plants (or one of the bigger ones) for enough protein to make one granola bar. This makes no sense to me. The seaweed is much bigger... why isn't it MORE than the little hot dogs? And you get the same XPs for it, which makes me scratch my head. While the reduction of xps for plants in a crop plot is a huge, needed fix, we still have disproportionate xps for wild plants. I get the same xps picking a 2 PP seaweed as I do picking a 1 PP seaweed? The XPs probably need to be set on a per-item basis, based on how much you get back vs. how rare it is. Picking a rare shroom on AS should be far more xps than picking the same shroom that is common on TS! Temperate planets, I had plenty of food. Honey and spice everywhere. You can eat the honey raw (cures the burning effect from the spitty bugs, too) for a good food boost, then eat some spice if it causes indigestion. I actually STOP collecting food on temperate planets at some point, because I have so much. Hot dogs were everywhere!
On some starts the food is enough to sustain you but, not enough to build up a surplus so that you can spend time doing other things - unless you pick the seaweed. On other starts there's enough available food that I can stay alive with an occasional harvesting spree and I ignore the lakes except for medicinal herbs.
Agree on your assessment. I think the starting world should influence only environmental challenges. Temperature, weather, food, danger of fauna. Some world types might indeed be harder, e.g. desert because it is more extreme. But I don't think the snow world should be really harder than arid. It still has life on it. (Side note: please consider adding a "frozen", world different than the cold taiga/tundra planets we have now, being colder with much less life, sort of like Antarctica or planet Hoth. This is analogous to arid vs. desert and also just adds variety, whereas right now cold worlds are always the same. ) I'd rather see overall difficulty handled in a different way. There's already settings for rate of oxygen and food depletion, also for stuff like the challenges posed by drones. I think those same type of settings should be used to determine whether there's a PV on the starting world, or whether there's foot patrols, etc. I like to adjust them for different challenges, for example I really like maxing out the drone difficulty (and wish it could be even worse) because I like the feeling of being hunted, and the challenge of building defenses - yet I really dislike the PV, because it is too tough to defend against in the early game, so it basically just means "you must build underground" and I've gotten tired of doing that, I like to SEE my bases and make them look cool, which is tougher in a cave. The "difficulty setting" approach is a good solution for single-player; in multiplayer I'd look at just making some tougher starting worlds, so you have both an easier and tougher temperate world, for example, and the difference is the tougher one has more defenses (drones/patrols), has a PV, and so on - however, the benefit to starting there would be not just more challenge but potentially more access to less contested resources than a noob world. On this note, I'm really interested in seeing more threats in between drones (which are weak and easy to shoot down) and a PV (which is a big tough CV that is quite a challenge). Perhaps we can get some drones that are more like automated SV's, that could be designed by the community, and obviously they could really vary in difficulty from "a bit tougher than a drone" to the PV's we have now. I think you should be able to shoot them down and instead of just turning into loot crates like the PV does, it would be great if it just crashed and was now wreckage you could salvage.
@Ian Einman It might help if there were some hostile NPCs that become more dangerous as the game goes on. It could be accomplished by increasing the HP and/or attack as you level up. It could also be accomplished by adding HP and/or stronger attack each time you killed one of the leveling types. For example, the third Cannon Drone you killed would be a lot tougher than the first two Cannon Drones you killed. That mechanic just may not be possible at this time though it would alleviate some late game boredom.
You referring to a common System which is used in so many games. A system where you actually level up to a certain degree while the next Planet is some levels up the ladder and so on. With stronger and stronger Enemies. With , lets say, the Zirax "home" Planet is Hardcore only.
Correct. It's widely used because it's flexible and it's a useful method of ensuring that things remain challenging in the late game. It would have to be adjusted to the open-ended nature of EGS lest you find yourself one-shotted by a slime with 10,000 HP and the attack rating of a couple of CVs.
Yes, you are right. But that is the "human" nature to go to places where they not belong too early in the game. Learning by doing, so to speak. If you are too courious about "whats on the next Planet" you may have to pay the price if you are not very cautious in what you are doing.
I like to see a mix of both - some places that are easy or hard no matter what, but also some challenges that scale with the player. Challenges that 100% scale with the player level can be frustrating, or boring, depending on your skill/experience level and your luck in finding useful items/resources. However, it does keep the game interesting if there's at least some challenges that are level dependent, for example maybe it influences drone waves, or patrols start looking for you when you hit level 10, etc. I do like the idea of going to a tough world as soon as I have a ship, and I may discover that it is too tough and need to run away.
Reminds me of my Days(actuall 7Years) of WoW, stepping outside of your Starting area into the next country, turning north instead of south and facing down enemies that have been 3 times your level! That was some experience to say the least. But you tried it anyway
Most AI enemies and defenses you can outsmart. If want it really hard, then you go PvP or start fiddling with .YAML files and such. And/or giving yourself some rules to make it harder, like not take over POIs or not use Blueprints (in the beginning), and 1 life. Abandoned mine is a bit difficult on the inside, but could be much worse. Multiple POIs close together makes it harder to take them out, but not too difficult. (EDIT: I try to take over POIs without taking out turrets, except the small ones for inside use, preferably go straight for the core, sometimes by getting close and dig). BTW my Arid attempt: Did not take long before reached level 25, golems and troops. Found an easy way to the Radio Tower and Mainframe, no HV damage from the 3 defense towers (with homing missiles). Also found a village (maybe put the farm for those in an airtight building.), just did some seed harvesting. No need to dive into water for seaweed and such. More than enough loot food (meat and such) and from oasis's. Also can farm Zirax' by keep some spawners (and the core) in a POI.
Survival mode, arid, no RP. With HARD I find it tough to survive the first day due to lack of oxygen. On temperate planet this was no issue. I'll didn't try multiple O2 gen's yet, but finding enough ores (initially copper and then silicon) is tough with the limited range by lack of O2. It may help a lot if digging random ground would yield some more crushed stone for conversion. If conversion is limited to the survival constructor, this should not have too much impact on the later game.
