Hello. I would like to present some thoughts. I'm interested in playing with maximum difficulty, because it's very difficult for me to come up with difficulties for myself and I would like to note that in this game the "survival" mode is some kind of disappointment. almost immediately everything you need is available in order to leave the planet and generally feel more than confident. And I don’t understand this a little, because the game has everything in order to complicate the life of the player a little. Nothing changes with the change of the planet. The game doesn't give me a solution to a hard problem, it just starts to give me a solution to a time challenge, where most of the solution depends on luck. So here's what I suggest: 1) Develop the game into stages of development 2) Rebalance ingredients to create items. I don't like solving problems against the clock, so I always start the game with an oxygen planet. After a couple of tens of minutes, I can build a hovering ship, a small ship, a full-fledged base and go to get trophies at the Zirax base. Why such a meta game?! I think the game should be divided into stages and each stage should answer its own questions. I landed in an escape pod. Of the tool kit, I should only have the emergency kits that are in the escape capsule. This is the start and the question arises, what should I do? What is the end goal? Fly off the planet? Visit another planet? Solve some mystery? What is the global goal? Or just play in the sandbox? Why then survival mode? So, the question is what is the global goal? Suppose we visit another planet, since I simply physically could not stand the longer monotony of the game. And they started. First stage of the game Do I need shelter? Yes need. Why do I need asylum? And here there is no answer to the question in the game, so I'll come up with it. So that you can sleep, while not getting sick, while not being eaten by predators. What shelter do I need? One that I can build a few minutes before sunset. What can I quickly build a shelter out of? Obviously the most accessible material is wood. What will I sleep on? Wooden bed with leaf mattress. How can I not get sick? I need to create a heater in the room, for example, make a fire. How can I not be eaten by predators? The room must be closed so that predators cannot get into it. This is the end of the first stage of the game, which can be tied to the day - the creation of a shelter. In general, the first thing to do is to look for food, but suppose that we already have food from the emergency supply of the capsule. So the second stage of the game is the search for food. Do I need to eat? Yes need. Why should I eat? To not die of hunger How should I eat? Find ready-made food or cook it Where can I find food? Collect it from plants or slaughtered animals What should I cook food with? With a heat treatment device such as a bonfire What happens if I eat food? The feeling of hunger will disappear, you can get poisoned, you can get parasites. The end of the second stage is the preparation of food or the development of a methodology for its production. This is the basis of the foundations of survival, around which our whole life is built. Everything else was created only to make our life easier and mainly by increasing labor productivity. Since in the game the character does not care about entertainment and convenience, he is a robot, then all further development should be built around increasing labor productivity. Should food be stored? Yes need. Why store it? To avoid looking for food every day Where to store it? Need a refrigerator. Where can you find a refrigerator? Collect or buy How to assemble a refrigerator? You need to get metal. Do you understand? Here it is building a consistent development of the player. For the refrigerator you need electricity, so you also need to make a generator. It must be placed somewhere, which means you need to expand your shelter. It takes a long time to run to the metal deposits, so you need transport. The shelter is constantly attacked, so it is necessary to strengthen and protect it. Now, instead of building a hovering ship, a small ship, a full-fledged base in a couple of tens of minutes and going to extract trophies at the Zirax base, I gradually approach only the very first hovercraft. Do you know where I found out about the hovercraft? From the encyclopedia! After 100 hours of play! So, hovercraft. I won't fly off the planet on it, so I need to move on. I got an incentive to expand my base, build a garage for the ship, because it can also be attacked, right? What's next? I still can't leave the planet. A hovercraft is a good thing, but it’s not convenient for me to travel on it for long distances, because something constantly interferes, it doesn’t fly on water (hmm?!) So I need atmospheric transport, which is NOT! And the most interesting, I do not understand why it is not. The flight formula is extremely simple - wing lift thrust = air density * speed. And here you have an airplane, which, depending on the height, changes the density of the air. But even with existing engines, we just make a height limit and voila you have an atmospheric hovercraft... But okay, let's assume that the plane is difficult to make and limit ourselves to a hovercraft. And here we come to the second point - to rebalance the ingredients. Now there are no problems with mining. Come and get it. But why not put some mining sites in the territory of Zirax, under their protection? The most valuable. This is both logical and obvious. Here it is, the task. Then I will either have to start a war with Zirax, or buy what I need from others. Suppose I started a war with Zirax. So I need to build an assault ship, well armored, well armed. Increase the defense of the base, make one more place for a new ship. By this point, I can develop to drilling modules, which means I need space for three ships already. The territory of the base is growing, the perimeter for protection too. Preparing for war will force me to reorganize my base, it appears to have real meaning as a stronghold. By the way, I can place an outpost directly at the Zirax base to reduce travel time. It would be good with the start of hostilities to increase the intensity of Zirax's attacks on my base. Also, whichever path I take, I need a lot of resources, either to provide myself with ammo and repair my vehicles and base, or to start an efficient trade. So I need a lot of storage, as well as constructors. For this, even more energy is needed, and now, I should already have a full-fledged large base that is of key importance in my existence, and not what it is. As a result, I will have the resources to build engines for the spacecraft, stock up on resources and successfully fly to another planet. At the same time, space engines must consume a LOT of fuel so that I cannot fly with them in the atmosphere, as is happening now. Everything described above, except for atmospheric aircraft, does not require any intervention in the code, but only a rebalancing of what already exists in the game. But yes, a global reconfiguration and the creation of a quality design document. Separately, it should be noted the dungeons and settlements of Zirax, it is really scary and difficult.
(Google translator) And I also want to pay attention to the balance of income and expenditure of resources. It so happened that the only faction with which it makes sense to fight is Zirax. Even if they were not initially hostile, it would still make sense to start a war with them. So I'll take their base on the starting planet as an example. So, even at the maximum difficulty settings, I literally immediately get the fifth level and build myself good aircraft. I take the base from the Steam workshop, as they are aesthetically attractive and without even opening the corresponding skills I build it in a place convenient for me. I choose a place based on aesthetic considerations, since even on the largest planet, on a good aircraft, I do not need to think about the strategic aspects of construction, since they simply do not exist. Zirak quietly flies through the territories of other factions, there are no trade routes, the radius of destruction of tower weapons is so small that open areas are simply not needed. I just choose a hill and a more or less flat surface, as it is convenient. That's all. All my survival on the maximum difficulty level. Further, and this is a definite plus for the developers, I am faced with a lack of resources, since for some time now everything in the world cannot be obtained on the starting planet. And this is where we have to start a war with Zirax, because trade ... It's kind of strange. The limits for buying and selling resources are very small and not able to cover my building needs. Resources are very cheap, even those that simply do not exist on the planet. Although according to all the law of trade, their margin should reach at least 300% or more. At the same time, products from the resources of the planet are very expensive. All this smooths out their small amount from merchants a little, although I can buy a lot of cobalt ore from the Talon faction, which is not on the planet, and the faction itself does not fly into space. This is weird. Why am I focusing on this? Because the current state of affairs does not give me a task to solve. It only gives me a time limit for which I will accumulate the amount of resources I need. It is not right. If I decide to go into business, then I have three ways of development: 1) Service provision 2) Extraction of resources 3) Production of products The first point is not implemented, so it remains either the extraction of resources or the production of products. Since the resources of the planet are limited, it is reasonable to choose the extraction of unlimited resources - the extraction of wood, the extraction of food. Since these are the most accessible resources, they are also the cheapest, let's take the minimum price of 1 per unit of goods. I need to buy an ore that is not on the planet and let's say it costs 1000 per item. Those. I need to sell 1000 vegetables to buy 1 unit of cobalt ore. I can either harvest vegetables, which I will spend my whole life on, or increase my productivity by 1000 times and equalize vegetables and cobalt ore. Those. there is a task in creating an optimal base for growing vegetables. Do you understand? That's the time limit control. Now with a limit on the sale of resources, I'm just pointlessly stretching my game time. But if you correctly adjust the balance of income and expense, then the time limit creates a task for me that I need to solve. Now the second way is war with the faction. The faction also has the resources I need. But at the moment, in the war there is also no balance of income and expenditure. What am I doing now? Yes, now that the Zirax bases are concentrated in one place, this requires preparation. I very quickly developed my character to be able to create a fast and maneuverable flying machine, which I put together just as quickly. I put six machine guns on it and produced about 10,000 ammunition for them. Another 1000 for hand weapons. And flew to open the enemy defenses. The first thing I see is a defensive tower. After destroying all the drones, and there are a lot of them, which is wonderful, I begin to annoy the landing craft, which is simply excellent. I fly up to the restricted area of the turret turret and calmly walk towards the core. I shoot the core and ... I completely dismantle the tower. The first stage of the assault is beautiful. The only thing that annoys me a little is that I cannot make a mobile defensive platform that will independently protect me from constantly arriving drones and troops when I already destroy the tower core. I have to constantly be distracted, and sometimes even defend myself while in the tower. It's great! But! The defensive tower itself... With one turret... Which is twice the size of my ship and can't do anything to it... I.e. I want you to understand. The whole attack on the DEFENSE tower is that I just fly up to its door, ENTER it and destroy the core. Almost ignoring the turret turret. I don't know who came up with this, but it's time to change it. It's a DEFENSIVE tower! Where is the perimeter crossfire? Why does the turret have blind spots that are not covered by other turrets? Why do I calmly open the door as if I'm not an enemy? Why is there no protection inside? Okay, I hope this is just the first planet and things are much better on the others. It's not about that. The point is that since the tower is made of durable blocks of steel, I completely dismantle it in order to extract titanium, which is not on the planet. Along the way, I mine steel and EVERYTHING the tower is made of. And the game doesn't punish me for that. I understand that this is the future, I understand that the reverse of resources is simple. But even if we ignore the moment that recycling garbage is not an easy task in itself and it is simply physically impossible to get 100% back, then why is there no other mechanism for taking away the received resources from me? I actually just completely dismantled the tower, I now have 100% of its resources. The first thing Zirax should do is try to take them away from me, or destroy my property by the same or more. Those. bring the balance of income and expenditure of my resources to 0 (and all my property at the moment is active resources). Thus, I accumulate some unimaginable amount of resources, which, because of this, lose all their value.
Hey! I would like to add a few more thoughts. In the game, there is the possibility of a phased development of progress in survival mode, but it is not indicated in any way in the game itself. Increase the time spent at each stage to several hours, reducing the speed of obtaining levels by two to three times. Now I will describe the stages of vehicle progress based on the capabilities of the game and point out the existing inconsistencies. And so I start the game with only a flashlight and a survival tool. Numbering can be seen as levels of development. 1) I mine materials on my own until I save up for the construction of the first hover. Why do I need transport? This cuts down on the travel time when I had to run on foot from the place where I decided to establish my base to the resource deposit. The emotional charge from owning a transport will be the greater the longer I walked from the base to the resource deposit. From the above, it follows that at the moment the ore content in the resource deposit is extremely low, so I can deplete their reserves using the character’s inventory, even setting the maximum wealth of the deposit in one or two times. From which it follows that the deposits should be increased at least two or three times so that it would be necessary to make at least 4-6 trips from the base to the deposit, but reduce production from one block by one and a half times, so as not to devalue the resources of the planet. This is necessary from the psychological aspect - getting something that makes work easier brings more joy than getting something new. 2) Building a boat. I am building the simplest hover, which will be my vehicle and in which I will now store the extracted materials. And here comes the issue with the progress branch. Why do I need old storage boxes? Why not just take them to a separate branch if you really want to save them? A great solution with a container controller gives me the ability to create the basis of my transport in the very beginning of the game, which I will develop, but I will have to throw it away because the storage boxes have different concepts of use. If you remove storage boxes from the development branch, as a vestige of the old versions of the game, and allow the player to install container controllers and their extensions from the first level, then he will have the opportunity to cost and develop his vehicle along with his development progress, so the first hover becomes one from the key points in the player's existence with which he will overcome the first difficulties. Such a faithful warhorse. I have a basic transport, so let's consider upgrading it. The upgrade sequence may vary depending on current needs. Suppose that the developers corrected the logical contradictions and I immediately installed a container controller for myself. 1. I need to get promitium, but it is guarded by alien entities (great solution). So the first modernization of the hover is the installation of weapons. 2. Establish a wireless connection so that the ore is immediately sent to the storage box 3. I install a refrigerator, more for convenience. Since you can make a supply of food in it, and the products that I collect do not deteriorate. 4. Set up a radar to quickly find other places with resources 5. Drilling by hand is a long time, so I install mining drills. For some time now, mining on a hover has ceased to be torture. Kudos to the developers. 6. I install shunting engines, as I find that the hover does not have enough traction. Now I have a full-fledged transport for long-range raids. And the seventh level... Because at the seventh level the drills are opened. I think that the Boers should be moved to the fifth level and tie their discovery to the creation of the first flying ship. 3) Building a barge. Now resource extraction is very fast, so that nearby deposits are quickly depleted. It is very inconvenient to make long journeys on a hover because of the rough terrain, so I am building a small flying ship. It will serve: 1. Aircraft carrier for my mining hover 2. Warehouse So now I can fly to other fields and visit several fields at once. And this is where the question of the field arises. Drilling rigs mine ore very well, but this occupation is rather boring and monotonous. Was it possible to make ore veins, for example, in the likeness of the root system of trees? Let there be one or two of them on the entire planet, but the deposit will be large and interesting. This immediately defines the deposits as a point of interest for me and the factions. For example, if the deposit is on the territory of another faction, in order to mine, I first need to get the status of a friend, which gives additional meaning to tasks, and on the territory of Zirak I need to constantly defend it. The limited number of deposits, limited access to them, large reserves of ore opens up the extraction of materials in a new way. It makes sense for me to build an outpost near the mine, which will serve as protection and storage, but until I do this, the importance of extracting materials from debris and stones increases for me. Debris and rocks make sense, as it's an unfortunate misunderstanding for me now due to extra markers on the map and obstacles. 4) Building a corvette. I also build a fast and maneuverable ship - a corvette, to solve tactical problems. On it, I will fly on quests, make trades, do research, etc. 5) Construction of a small spacecraft. Everything that happened before this moment can be designated as the end of the first stage of survival on the starting planet. Now I need to go into space and I'm starting to prepare for this. No matter what I do - trade, wage war with Zirax or go through dungeons, all this is necessary for one thing - to build an interplanetary ship. So I am assembling a small spacecraft to deliver building materials into orbit, to build a shipyard (assuming that the game already has a division into atmospheric flying vehicles and space vehicles). 6) Building a cruiser. At the orbital shipyard, I'm building a large spaceship for space raids. There is no point in building something like a frigate or even a battleship. Therefore, an interplanetary ship must meet the requirements of a cruiser. And here is the problem again - how does a large ship fundamentally differ from a planetary base? Why should I build a planetary base at all if there is a large ship that completely duplicates it? There is no answer to this question. 7) The construction of the brig stands separately. It can be built for, for example, reconnaissance of the planet, but by opening the map I can already find out what is on a particular planet. Having built a large ship, I transfer my mining hover, corvette and aircraft carrier to it and make my first interplanetary trip. And so I reached another planet, what's next? Now I can easily use a large ship as my base, fighter, miner, warehouse. Now all ships duplicate their functionality to one degree or another. But if we slightly change the balance of the game and add some minor elements, then the situation will change radically. So, the installation - the ship has just completed an interplanetary journey. It sounds like a small feat, a good test of the ship's systems for reliability and, of course, something must fail. As a person who served on a warship, I can say that it has everything for a medium-sized repair. But on the ship there is no way to independently change components and assemblies - this is done at the repair docks. Why not transfer this practice into the game. Let's suppose that after a flight, on my large ship, several sustainer engines failed, as well as several minor systems, for example, one of the generators. This is quite a typical situation. In other words, upon reaching another planet, I need to: 1) Build a Repair Dock 2) Since I will need resources to build and repair it, I need to build a repair dock in the orbit of the planet 3) While the repair dock is being built, I'm using the large ship as an outpost to land on the planet. 4) On the planet, I will need to assemble a space port where I will concentrate the collected resources. 5) I am assembling a landing ship, in which I will have the resources to start building a spaceport, a mining ship and a scout. 6) I land on the planet 7) Establishing a base 8) Scouting the planet 9) I extract resources and concentrate them on my base. What, in my opinion, has no place in the game: Destroyer. There is no place for him in the game. It’s hard for me to imagine why making a small but well-armed support ship. Battleship. Huge, heavily armed. So far, fire is redundant even for a destroyer. Tanker. Since there are simply no liquids and gases. This is where the game ends. Appear on the planet, create a base, create several ships, go into space and fly to another planet. There is no economy and automation in the game. It makes no sense to build supply chains. There are no production chains. Since there is no automation, it is necessary to independently carry out all the logistics. The maximum that you can think of is different dimensions of ships and bases. There are planetary ships. These are small ships that can successfully stay in the atmosphere. Interplanetary ships are much larger than planetary ones, and interstellar ships are larger than planetary ones. To carry out the construction of such ships, it is necessary to have bases of different sizes. But the maximum size of the base and the ship is determined by its equipment, and the equipment in the game is such that the only thing that increases in size is the warehouse.
I suggest you make a custom scenario, and make all these adjustments to test your ideas. I can help you getting started and show you some tips, and other players will surely gladly give you some help too. It is not very complicated, and you can modify/ adjust lots of things, like progression, the Tech Tree, the blocks and items, the leveling and experience points, the weapons damage, the recipes (how much stuff the base material will give once transformed etc). And you can also make a story if you want, because the main game has the progression attached to the story, and that is why it goes too quickly from beginner to intermediate. There are many tools made by community members already available to make this work easier. Let me know if what I suggest here interests you and I will give you more information.
I expected something like this, but I already have several commercial game projects in development and unfortunately I just don't have time to develop a game within a game.
So, being "in the trade", I guess you realize that what you are asking up here in your 3 long posts is not "making a game" it's just a few tweaks in configs to get most of what you want, and can be done in less time than what it took you to write your 3 messages. Eleon gave us these modding options because players want everything and its contrary, and that is impossible to achieve. Even if they agreed to include the changes you asked for, you would quickly see tons of players flooding the forum to complain about the changes. They always do anyways, so... And about the "starting" difficulty : you can choose another starter planet for a change, but leave the difficulty level to "easy" so you have more time to search and go at your own pace, relatively speaking. I doubt Eleon will make the Temperate Starter harder because lots of beginners already struggle with the first few steps in the game.
