Just a few suggestions!

[adecrepitcabbage]

Hey, there!

I don't use discord, and never will. That said, I really love this game, and wanted to give a little feedback! I wouldn't be surprised if you'd already incorporated some of these suggestions, nor are they do-or-die suggestions - just some thoughts from a player.

• A way to gauge average worthwhile treasure/mineral deposit size on caverns would be great. Difficulty and chest+ chances help a bit, but I frankly found myself constantly struggling to gauge whether I needed to be spending time only in 19-20-floor-plus caverns for most of the game.

• At the moment, mines are too weak and a hassle to collect, and juggling atoms/particles/etc feels like such a hassle that I never bothered with it. That meant the bulk of my metals were collected via rover, which always felt like it outperformed atoms/particles by a ridiculous multipler, 50x or so - and far so more when compared to the hassle of mines.

• Perhaps a context-tool tip you can get when facing a blockage of a material could be useful; 'if you're finding yourself lacking x, here are some suggestions' with the suggestions based on what you have unlocked. E.G, 'try going into a cavern' at the very beginning of a run, followed by an unlocked 'try using your terraformed mines' followed by a 'try using your particles.' When all of these have unlocked, perhaps with the suggestion highlighting an option with high returns.

• Speaking of materials, and the rover... Rover upgrades could definitely have more features to them. Since the maps have damage tiles that are more dangerous then any enemy, I think some kind of damage proofing - either as an upgrade or an item - would be ideal. I would've gladly sacrificed 5+ upgrades for a lava immunity! Similarly, 'utility' upgrades - more light, resilient minimap, treasure detectors - could be cool.

• I think the vehicle strength+ is lopsided, too. It grows too quickly, whereas I never, never had enough cargo space. I wouldn't even mind tradeoffs that gave you some ridiculous multiplier to cargo space while weakening you concurrently. But honestly, I just think cargo space should increase dramatically; revisiting a cleared zone 50 times isn't particularly engaging or challenging.

• Also, maybe consider an 'autodestroy ship items' vehicle toggle; they become useless so rapidly, and make it hard to chart which chests have already been looted.

• A lot of costs still might need some tweaking; Matryoshka Brains seemed entirely worthless, for example, though I imagine they might matter to new universe creators. Similarly, I think an 'automation' factor for constructing in galaxies could be helpful in the mid-game to make it feel a bit less 'slog-like', though I want to be careful with sounding harsh - I really liked it, even with these suggestions. I just think it can be even better!

• Like protons/particles, I never used gardening. It seems awful, you never get good returns on it by the time you unlock garden worlds, it's difficult to collect, the materiel selection is limited, and it requires a material which you are no guaranteed to have in a renewable supply; no matter how much I have of it, committing to a constant drain with no idea of what your 'income' is like is a huge turn-off for a lot of players who enjoy these games.

• What else... Ship 4 has the most beautiful graphic, and I'm begging you to let us continue to use the might of the lil' red space sailboat into the future.

An amazing game, with a great atmosphere and so many cool factors. Again, none of this is big issue stuff; I could probably go on about UI suggestions, but my suggestions are my suggestions. They may not match your vision, or the vision of the rest of the playerbase. (Ah, that's also why I can't discord; I think in general, a dev insulating themselves from their playerbase is a good idea, even though I'm here leaving feedback, bahahaha...)

If nothing else, just know I'll be wishlisting the paid version, and recommending it to my friends. It's really something good, and having not played the prior entries, it still felt like coming home. c:

[Apple0726]

Hey, thanks for your suggestions! I've felt most of the same things as you when playtesting the game myself too:

• I also never use atoms and particles apart from speeding up ships and making some of the higher tier metals. I'm still experimenting with this, as it was one of those ideas that sounded cool, but in practice... not so much it seems!

• The rover's cargo capacity is indeed too small, except maybe in early-game. I'll need to find the right formula to give it enough capacity while also not making them too OP in early-game.

• As for the lava tiles in caves, one of the recent updates a few days ago introduced rover enhancements that gives progressive resistance (up to immunity) to lava, and another one to negate all movement penalties from terrain.

• I also never use gardening, at least not before unlocking automated greenhouses. I knew an overhaul was needed. Recently I got the idea of maybe giving automated greenhouses right at the start, and instead of the type of lake being a requirement for specific seeds, it gives different bonuses (for example H2O accelerating growth, helium doubling metal production, methane using less cellulose etc., and the state of the element amplifying the effects). This means you will be able to plant anything around any lake (it will still need to be adjacent). I'm not sure if that addresses your specific concerns, but I'll see how it turns out!

• Ship items do become useless too quickly, I think there's a fundamental problem to how the item is designed, so your suggestion to add an auto-destroy toggle seems to be just a band-aid solution to a bad game design. I'll need to think more about this!

And stuff I would like more explanation on:

• I thought you could already get a rough idea of the amount of treasure/minerals in caves by looking at the number of floors and the star system difficulty. I'm not sure if adding more information and calculations is necessary. The player should understand that deeper caves give more stuff, and that 3-floor caves only make sense in a very high difficulty star system and/or buffed by auroras/volcanoes. Or maybe I'm missing the point lol.

• I thought Mat. brains were necessary to get the remaining research. What better alternatives do you use?

[adecrepitcabbage]

Wow, hello! Thanks for your VERY thorough reply, I'll add some context:

• For treasure, I could eyeball it somewhat, but had trouble telling whether high difficulty made low floors valuable, how low I needed to go per cavern - early on, I rapidly ended up needing to do floor 19-20+ to make caverns worthwhile, but as difficulty increased, I could go as high as floor ten before getting very tasty treasure chests. It made me feel like I was passing over good caverns, and that I didn't have a clear picture of what or why! To that point, maybe an analyser that adds a 'chest estimate' to the mouseover tooltip, or an 'expected increase per floor'. Both of those might give TOO MUCH info to the player though; I trust your best judgment, for sure.

• For research, don't laugh... So, my bottleneck was ALWAYS materiel. I never had enough metal, myth, nanos, etc. Late research labs require only cash and energy to upgrade, so... I simply powered through by upgrading countless research lab terraformations, then leapt straight to research galaxy structures. It actually wasn't that bad. This might actually be an issue of the Central Business District being too good, come to think of it; no one research planet provided as much as a single Mat. Brain, but with one-or-two high density planets per system, I could often get a better return on investment by spamming terraformed research planets. Since I wasn't trying to speedrun my first universe, I left them on a night after going ham, and et voila. Keep in mind, I'm a pretty patient player, so that might be very WAD!

Also, a few other thoughts:

• Maybe having an on-use item that teleports all carried cargo out could be useful? Similarly, perhaps a placeable exit point? And potentially being able to choose which floor to start from, after you've reached it... Or cleared it of hostiles?

• As a use for particles, what about aesthetic terraforming? Something like - being able to choose the colour of soil, auroras, etc. It feels like the kind of silly thing that we all enjoy, maybe with 'prestige' terraformations or premium content in the release version. You probably won't do it outside of your first world, but - could be fun!

[Apple0726]

• Yeah, maybe it isn't clear enough that all caves on a given star system, on a given floor, without auroras/volcanoes, have roughly the same amount of treasure contents, and the fact that the amount of treasure contents doubles with each floor. I'll try adding more tooltips to make it more clear.

• Ah okay, that makes much more sense, I'll surely have to add a way to produce some of those higher-tier metals

• Teleporting only cargo out of a cave sounds like a good idea. I'll have to think whether it makes more sense to do that with consumable items, with a rover part or with another type of wormhole in caves.

• Aesthetic terraforming sounds interesting, I'll keep it in mind!

[subchannel13]

Gardening and greenhouses have some use. Selling metals gives a lot of cash and by the time you can terraform a planet into a green house it will produce more cash in metal than mines in minerals. Eventually minerals catch up.

Atom and particle manipulators are good for getting materials for gigastructures. Specifically mythril. I think building triangulum probes requires a large amount of nano crystals that are faster to craft than to mine.

Anyway, both of those features are only relevant when you want to speed up progress. Eventually you'll get all of the materials by either mining or exploding planets. Matrioshka brains on the other hand make noticeable jump in research point generation, especially in the starting universe. You just have to make it around the right star. I think star brightness is what gives it more research while star size increases cost.