Yeah I think that’s it. They are cheesing the day night cycles somehow. Was good enough for me but of course true rotation would have been cool. As would have been gravity differences
It’s not so chill when you are constantly dying unless you refuel your gadgets.
Idk, but that cycle stresses me out quite a bit. Puts me far away from the “explore for the heck of it” mentality
I honestly think playing on PC makes a world of difference. It takes like 10 seconds to recharge everything with a mouse, but with a controller it takes much longer. I wish there was an option to turn all that shit off because it really bugged me for the first hour, but I got pretty used to it.
The only important resources are Plutonium, Titanium and a teensy weensy bit of Iron for bypass chips, all of which are very common (kill sentinels for titanium). It’s also good to keep some Heridium for making warp cells, and some carbon for the same reason, but not entirely necessary since both are pretty common. Thamium can be grabbed at any time you actually need it, no need to keep a stockpile. Everything else you get when you need a specific upgrade.
I keep 750 Plutonium and titanium split between my Exosuit and my ship. 500 Heridium and Carbon in my ship. Some iron on my person, sometimes. Basically everythign else I sell. Following these rules has kept me chill and sane.
Yeah, I think the survival loop never really stressed me because it is really easy to just keep some of what you need on hand or find it pretty quickly. And also build the upgrades when you can so shit depletes less.
Even playing on PS4, this doesn’t take too long for me to do.
I actually like some of the survival elements, specifically the extreme conditions on some planets. It makes getting into the ship feel like diving into a warm blanket, or a tent with a cozy sleeping bag
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Given the relatively minimal death penalty, I just don’t get too stressed about it, but yeah, getting back to the ship in escape form something harsh is pretty lovely.
They aren’t exactly cheesing them but their solar systems don’t work like real solar systems: the planets are fixed and the universe, including the local sun, is revolving around them (or the sun and stars are fixed and the planetary system is at a fixed point at some distance and spinning as a whole, depending on how you look at it. Doesn’t make a real difference). Really, that’s the only way to have the planets so close together and not have a minuscule sun in the middle of it all that’d break the illusion.
They’ve mentioned they did use to have each planet spinning independently on its own axis but testers and early buyers kept getting confused because that means the relative position of the space station would change and also with short day/night cycle you’d really notice that flying out of the atmosphere along the spin direction made your ship slower relative to the planetary surface, even going backwards if the player was slow enough. You could see that in action in some of the videos from players who bought the game before the day one patch. That’s normal for actual spaceflight but confusing to normal people, like many things about real spaceflight physics, as anyone who has learned to fly in Kerbal can attest.
I’ll come back to it tomorrow but I’m 66 hours in and still loving it. I don’t give a damn about the whole online component and naming thing, mind you, or whatever they said about the game because I only ever watched wordless videos and technical talks about it. I’m just having fun adventuring in space. I found a planet with copper pillars the size of skyscrapers! Another planet with jumping slugs! I bought a random gun just to have more slots and was delightfully surprised the first time I fired it because it tore through an entire depot in one shot. I found a random Gek that looked like a Gek but was something else entirely! I learned the three histories of the world and was delighted to find out they don’t quite fit together. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
66 hours in and the only reason I put it down is I need to be awake for work.
I can see tons of flaws, mind you, bad usability and gameplay things. But I’m really having tons of fun.
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Has anyone come across a system or crature discovered by another player?
I came across one system discovered by another player, but they didn’t even name it or visit any of the planets. So that’s disappointing.
so are all the animals just dogs or what
I’ve had dogs, cats, cows (which had tentacles for heads), antelopes, upright ewok-like things, insects, crabs, fishes of various shapes, birds with or without feathers, sky serpents, the aforementioned jumping slugs and even an underwater-only goat species. Like most features people find samey, you’ve gotta travel to see real differences. I got the slugs around the 65th hour!
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i watched my brother play and saw Four Legged Dog Sized Bipeds as far as the eye can see
Systems seem to have their own brands of life. I’ll be in one system going like “ugh so sick of deer-like animals” and then I travel to the next system and see a weird two-legged dinosaur with a tiny head that I’ve never seen anything like before. It’s all about travel.
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Yeah, I’m not sure it’s per system, but at least per planet it chooses a few dominant shapes or types for each creature category (land, cave, water, sky) if it exists for that planet. And it doesn’t choose from all shapes right off the bat, you’ve gotta advance to see the more unusual ones.
For example here’s one I met on my most recent planet, exclusively populated by jumping things:
I’m gonna call it El Shaddai-kun, I think. Other creatures I saw included jumping blobs with mouths on top of their heads (but not like the rare element blobs, which don’t count as fauna) and medusas walking on their tendrils.
Whether it’s a good design choice could be discussed but don’t judge the game based on what you meet on early systems, it gets weirder as you progress. I’m also getting biomechanical multi-tools now.
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That sounds so cool. I’ll be on the lookout for that sort of thing the further I get to the center of the galaxy.
It’s hilarious how just days after this came out people were acting like those who had played it had already seen everything the game had to offer. Meanwhile I had no idea biomechanical anything was even an option until just now.
The basic gameplay loop may be incredibly shallow at this point but literally every planet has something on it that no one’s ever seen before. It’s surprising that that apparently doesn’t count for as much as you’d think it would.
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On the one hand, modern gamers are conditioned to be utterly immune to the charms of exploration. They don’t have the patience or the desire for it. On the other hand,
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I encountered balls of dirt that had small plants growing from their top as the most unusual species. They hopped around and lacked any kind of animalian appearance.
They should’ve just scrapped most of the so called gameplay and simply focus on improving the environments, animal behaviour and so on.
This is the biggest fault of the game. it tries to do so many things, but underbakes the elements and dumbs down all the shit so it is accesible tto every peasant.
You don’t like peasants having access to things?
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