Spaced Out Feedback [Post 2, Early to Mid Game]

[Beowulfe]

Alright, feedback part 2 time! I'm taking the early/mid game pretty slow, as I figured everyone else would be rushing rockets and not putting as much focus into early play, so this post is still mostly focused on things I've caught early on. Going to start pushing forward from mid to late game now!

Some of this feedback isn't Spaced Out specific, though a lot of the feedback that's from the base game is because Spaced Out made it more noticeable/prevalent.

 

Duplicants

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• With the "woken up" debuff caused by nearby loud snorers and sneezing now being more prevalent (in my Swamp experience, at least, hypothermia, and consequently sneezing, is common early on due to water), I've noticed that the debuff lasts pretty much just as long no matter whether they're woken up 10 times throughout the night due to a nearby snorer, or once by a single sneezing dupe passing by. It might be worth separating these two cases duration-wise, or making it a cumulative effect (every wake up adds time to the debuff), as it hurts when another dupe going to bed (before setting up separate bedrooms) happens to sneeze once near a couple of others and dramatically reduces their ability to work for a full cycle.
• When selecting new duplicants to print (or embark with), I feel the free skills is something that should stand out a little more than other traits - it might be worth giving these a different colour than the positive/negative traits so that it's immediately noticeable. It can be much more noteworthy than other traits, and is worth having your eye drawn to it first.
• "(Duplicant) earned a skill point" messages are not staying up very long right now, I've found I've missed them a number of times. It might be worth adding a single line alert when you have unspent skill points, or adding a numerical indicator on the "Skills" button at the top indicating the number of colony-wide skill points you have unspent.

 

Alerts/Diagnostics

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• Not directly related to Spaced Out, but it would be nice if we got an alert if a duplicant falls asleep somewhere on the ground when they currently have a bed assigned (as in, they couldn't get to their bed)
• Adding Polluted Oxygen to the Colony Report (as generated oxygen) has been great to have, but it's interaction with Deodorizers in the Report needs to be adjusted, as it's not showing polluted oxygen being consumed by the deodorizers, throwing the numbers pretty far out of whack (I've submitted a bug report for this already, just mentioning here too, as not 100% certain it'd be considered a "bug" per se)
• A diagnostic or entry in the resource display section for "accessible liquids" (through a liquid pump, for instance) would be great to have, being able to more directly monitor colony-wide water levels early on would make water management a little easier
• Left or right clicking (interacting with in general) "NEW" entries in the Resource section should make them disappear off the tracker unless explicitly tracked by the player in settings (as sometimes you want to clear one or two but not all new entries)

 

Game Systems

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• In the Swamp biome, being surrounded by polluted oxygen and polluted water carries a pretty heavy disease spread vector if you manage to introduce any germs into it at all - food poisoning in polluted water is a very easy one to get here, for instance. It would be a nice addition to have a small way to deal with filtering polluted water early on, without access to chlorine (as the swamp biome has very little) and advanced automation tools/heating sources. Otherwise, once the crops start properly transmitting germs to their harvests (I'm assuming this is a bug, I'm reporting it right after this post), getting anything in a primary polluted water source means the entire colony is going to be irrevocably sick until much later in the game (or you need to stop using Bog Jelly). Perhaps a duplicant operated machine that filters germs out of polluted water in exchange for something like curative tablets, vitamin chews, or coal?
• Plug Slugs have been a great addition so far, but do feel like they need a tweak to fit in better with other power sources. I saw the patch today had some changes for them, I'm likely going to check them out and start a full thread for Plug Slug discussion (if there isn't one ongoing then), but wanted to throw my thoughts from a couple days ago here anyways. Wild Plug Slugs feel like they are a little difficult to balance in a reasonable way because of the lack of food requirements, but since they have a metallic diet, what if wild ones "munched" on your power cables while providing power? In other words, caused small wire damage over time, forcing the player to occasionally use duplicant time and some small amount of resources to maintain it. This could add a nice little balance knob to tune without having to make them feel too far useless or too difficult to use.
• Targeting mid game for space exploration is great, but breaching the surface and preparing for mid game in early game still feels pretty daunting. Telescopes in particular are difficult to make use of anywhere early, and they need to be setup and used for some time before you can even consider exploring beyond your asteroid. It might be nice to rework telescopes to better facilitate safe, easy early space scanning, which would give newer players an obvious goal to work towards (see an asteroid/planet that has a resource you want, work towards the surface and get to it!). Perhaps some sort of "periscope" design that doesn't actually require the player to breach the surface, allowing them to build it fairly far underground and have it shoot up to the surface, would fit in with the thematic side of the game and allow for earlier/safer space scanning?
• Expansion on the "Sweepy" side of companions would be great, and help a lot in building out new colonies on new asteroids. Perhaps Sweepy, or a new, similar robotic companion, could be setup to activate/use "duplicant-operated tasks" in place of an actual duplicant? Sending a duplicant and a couple of robots to a new asteroid to assist with early building feels like it would make the initial setup much easier and gives some new routes to success/management. Plus, I really, really like the idea of Sweepy and building out that side of the game, but Sweepy feels more like you have to invent/build a reason to use them right now, rather than being able to slot them in to solve a problem. Allowing them (or, again, another new companion robot) to activate manual duplicant tasks would make their use a lot more viable (even if it requires an actual duplicant to initially "program" them to do a task, or something similar). I don't know the content of the radioactive side of the DLC yet, but if it makes it difficult for duplicants to access certain areas, having robots that can do this might also provide a unique opportunity in that case.

That's all for now, but I suspect I'll have a lot more in the coming days as I start pushing through mid -> late game! If anyone has any thoughts or wants to build off feedback here, happy to discuss. 

[Slvrsrfr]

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great idea

That one could save lives. A narco alert is welcome(i never take them)

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Agreed the alert needs a few seconds more, and it also doesn't show for internal attributes. If they receive a point for a personal attribute, there is no alert, way to know it happened. Like agriculture, or tinkering.

Some sort of simple text log of dupe 'alterations' would be nice, a chronological log of attribute changes of dupes.