my thoughts so far

[N00bieMeap]

so when playing a base that almost self sustainable at cycle 280 here's some of my thoughts so far:

-The Divergents - Sweetle and Grubgrub although closely related to each other, they don't really make sense giving birth to each other (it feel like you're forcing it to be in the same species group) just can't stop myself from saying this.

-Space - with the new mid-game rockets system. please make some mid-game meteors protection too! it's just too easy to get free power without meteors rain, making the balance of gameplay, which we want to test out in alpha, is ded

-Space area too short

 -Rocket is hard to build inside

-Next thing of no space biome is no Shove vole (and the 3rd asteroid which we can teleport to don't spawn hatch) we still got a broken food chain Lily - Drecko

-If we play fast enough, we can just send polluted dirt to the 3rd asteroid and make oxygen from it. rust is ded

-No magma volcano found

-No pokeshell found on 3rd asteroid too and Drecko is rare though they are gold now

-Niobium asteroid feel like just pouring water into it, waste and time consuming

-Death of oxyfern (CO2 is now gold too)

-Dupe take exosuit from a dock to deliver to another

 

-Sulfur is useful and looking good

-Muds is good

-Successfully extended gameplay

-New critter look awesome

 

My idea:

-Option to play with space biome and meteor rain. About meteor rain, the map now is small so I think giving checkpoint where meteors begin to rain is ok ( I think Invention of Steel or Rocket launch is 2 good checkpoint)

-I think the reason behind easy self sustainable is to make multi colony gameplay easier but I would rather seing at least 2-colony-sustainable or 2 main colony, not 1 (maybe medium/hard mode)

[Steve8]

A lot of these things aren't balanced yet. Just because there are no meteors in the game doesn't mean they have been removed. It's probably a combination of the devs wanting people to easily test the new rockets and making the first forays into space a bit easier. Doesn't mean it won't be an issue later.

As for rust. In the base game it's only relevant on one or two asteroids. Right now we can only select the swamp asteroid as a starting biome. That won't be the case in the final product. I also just saw a stream where someone only had a dupe that couldn't dig abyssalite on the second asteroid. Rust was the only thing keeping him alive

[blash365]

34 minutes ago, N00bieMeap said:

making the balance of gameplay, which we want to test out in alpha

Not sure where you got that information, but the official post seems to aim more at *stability* than at balance. Would you like to share your source?

 

On 11/18/2020 at 7:01 PM, JoeW said:

Timelines and Early Access

 

As always, we're dedicated to making a great game and not rushing things out the door, and we want to make sure that you all have a chance to help with the development of this game. We're going to run this alpha for a few weeks until the DLC is stable enough for general play. At that point, we intend to release Spaced Out into Early Access, as we did with the Oxygen Not Included base game.

 

From there, we'll be adding additional content to the DLC and working towards its release, just like back in ye olden days of 2018.

[Steve8]

Would be nice if you quoted the rest of that sentence too: "and building out compelling gameplay around the features listed above"

Also: " We have plans for how we want to distribute geysers, resources, and other sustainable solutions in the late game, but are holding off on expanding on these ideas until we feel comfortable with the early and mid game content."

And: We're now at the point where the systems are ready to have content and refinement built on top of them

 

So while the Alpha is primarily about fixing bugs, game design and balance is certainly on their minds