[Survival Beta-Feedback] Impressions

[Crimson-Artist]

After having finished all the objectives laid out in the original post I can say that this has been a very ROUGH start to survival mode. Many mechanics need flushing out or changed outright. I'll list some points of contention and some possible solutions.

• Ore is extremely heavy. If we are going to have a weight limit on how much we can carry then we either need to have a very high carrying capacity or reduce the weight of ores. Considering the sheer scale of operations we are going to need just to build ships we will need a ton of ore. In the early game this will be a slog as currently we will have to go back and forth only being able to carry a few ore chunks at a time.
• Having stone and wood block take the shade and hue of the original block that made it is a cool idea on paper. However in practice having 20+ different types of stone cluttering your inventory is sucks. If the proposed inventory slot limits are going to be implemented then this problem will only get worse. Just have 1 item type for both stone and wood planks to make it simple. Then give us the ability to color it with paint afterwards.
• On that note. Wood and Stone become nearly useless when we have the tech and resources to make metal blocks. Stone is more useful cuz we need it for silicon ingots however wood is only needed for wood blocks. Simply have the ability to refine the stone and wood into some other resource would help. For instance, in Empyrion wood can be turned into planet fibers and stone can be ground into stone dust. These items are used in multiple mid-late game crafting recipes.
• Coal exists solely to power the crucible. After you've upgraded to a arch furnace coal is completely useless. A potential solution could be that coal is needed for other crafting recipes. Perhaps an additional fuel source besides hydrogen?
• There is no warning when the player is suffocating. When I first entered water at about waist height I started taking damage. I had no idea what was happening since my head was not underwater I though water just hurts us now. Turns out I just needed to put my helmet on.
• The player cannot see their own health and oxygen levels when they pilot a ship. On my first venture to get asteroid crystals I did not place a life support on my ship. I was flying entirely on my internal O2 supply. The only way for me to see how much oxygen I had left was to leave my ship controls which was tedious to do since I knew I only had minutes to work with. Keeping the player health and O2 bar on screen will fix this.
• There is no way to recycle unwanted blocks. I had made some wood blocks that I no longer needed but couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. Being able to disassemble blocks would be useful. Perhaps add a "Disassembler" block that recycles everything placed in it. It should ideally only give you 1/3 to 1/2 of the resources it took to make that block to keep it from being overpowered.
• Cargo boxes need a filter option. Since the conveyor system is bidirectional it can make sorting items into specific boxes a pain in the ass. This will also prevent assemblers and furnaces from pulling from/placing in the wrong box.
• Assemblers need to have a auto build option. If we are going to set up advanced factories then we need the ability to set a recipe to auto build so long as we have the resources. Considering the amount of blocks we are going to need this process needs to be automated. This works with the cargo filter options so we can have a conveyor system set up to feed only iron ingots to a series of assemblers all making the various intermediate components for hull blocks at the same time which feed into a final assembler that builds that actual hull block.
• The Boost pack is very awkward to use. Boosting horizontally is strange and feels unnatural however its vertical boosting that is a nightmare. Sometimes I just need to fly up a little bit but because it only boosts it spurts I either need several bursts just get where I need to go or I end up over boosting and have to come down. Strangely its more effective to aim your shift boost skyward to gain altitude than to use the spacebar boost. The solution to this is probably some kind of movement synergy meta. The Boost pack should augment out sprint speed while draining the boost bar. If we hold the space bar it will act as a traditional jetpack and allow us to fly up as long as the boost bar has energy. The synergy comes into play when we combine boosted sprinting with a little bit of jetpack to gain some air. This should allow us to retain a lot of momentum. When we hit the ground could jump again to keep our momentum going effectively skipping. If this idea is not to your liking then maybe some inspiration can be had by looking at other games with good movement such as titanfall and the tribes series.

[tsunamayo]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, there is a mix of things I was aware, bugs and things I need to look at. Yes I am not satisfied with the jetpack too. For the color I can give a wider threshold or try to have only a single color per biome. I want to keep this so exploring other planets get rewarding. Yes coal wood and stone are low level for now, at least wood and stone can be decorative. We will see if we have other use for them later. For point 1) see my thread on inventory space.