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Big feedback note[BUGS + suggestion + reply]


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So, I played this game 60+ hours in a couple of days and finally reached...maximum potential?

At least my colony survived. I felt like my game is ended and that I have to tell what I think about this project.

Just before that I want to tell that this is just my personal opinion. I played tons of games in developement, including 2010 minecraft.

 

So, first of all I think that developers have made a huge systematic progress in this game, yet it has a number of flaws that should be fixed even before beta stage.

  1. 50+ cycles in a row break the game especially when you have some of your duplicants dead. Rebooting the map fixes the problems.
  2. Liquifiable objects do not melt unless placed in 100+ degrees surrounding.
  3. Gas/liquid algorithm is not optimised. For example big lumps of gas/liquid could just split in 2 directions instead of the "switching" method.
  4. Duplicants cant choose showers/ladders to use. This make them switch them constantly.

Those were almost non-gameplay issues that may make the game better.

  1. Duplicants could use crouching for moving in narrow places. It is a shame for a duplicant to suffocate with a half-sized hole for him to pass through. Why not to let them to move in a crouched state? Crouched duplicant could use 2 horizontal tiles, move slower and get stress damage from claustrophobia.
  2. Panic actions could save lives. If duplicant is close to death he could panic and assign himself some random tasks that he could reach. Something like "if you suffocate in a "tomb" or cannot reach food rememebr where you saw your help last time and dig a couple of holes in that direction leeting fresh air in or reaching food". This should be not stress-induced thing, but triggered in cases of extreme health damage. More examples: late slimelung - ignoring basic needs in cost of stress to let doctors heal patient, straving - attacking any living being nearby for food(mostly animals. Duplicants are fine too in case of high stress), entombed on a piece of rock while making water basin - try to jump down if stayed long enough.
  3. Doors are too power hungry - better decrease their power consumption twice to make them more valuable.
  4. Pitcher pumps look...to old-fashioned? I mean you may have a VERY complex water dispention system midgame, but still need to use ONLY pitcher pumps for water bottling? Sinks? Shower? Toilet water storage at least? As I know in previous version duplicants could "dig" water like ores, whicn is also not so good. What about a compromise? Pitcher pumps can be connected to water pipes and provide HIGH SPEED bottling while any other regular water source(showers, basins, open water) provide 0.25-0.5 of pump's refill speed. Also pumps may be replaced/added with water valves midgame - work alike pitcher pumps and water exit points if set up manually.
  5. Bigger decor radius range - it is just ridiculous that you have to make an art gallery everywhere you can to keep you duplicants happy. This could be fixed by an increased range of decor buffs so we could use 1-2 paintings per room instead of 6-8. Optionally furniture could have a condition of decor increasing. Like, if it is lightened it gets +5 decor. If placed near plants gets +10 decor etc.
  6. Fast material replacement - if you duplicants build something important and suddenly have no "gold amalgam" to finish the complex filtration facility you have to remake it setting another metal to finish it. Pretty annoying to my mind. Way to fix this - make a default "any metal" button that is used when player doesn't want to mess with metal choice. Like, "I dont care what metal you will use for this coal generator - just make it!" If duplicants used mostly one metal for this the building may have properties of that single material(80% copper means it will work like 100% copper). If it uses a mix of items - the building gets "scrap" efficiency - something just below average of used materials. Scrap later could be re-smelted or re-refined into different metals.
  7. Auto-sweep - what about keeping some rooms just always clean? Set a clean zone that must be cleared and thats it!
  8. making default job priority 3 because who uses 1-4 priorities while not trying to block something from being done?
  9. Late items/building are not worth it. You waste 90% of gameplay to get the atmo suits that were be needed earlier and find them useless because you already have slimelung immunity/a large medbay to treat the things you passed through. This could be solved by harder environment or lowering the needs for the high-tier tech. 

So those were more in-game suggestions. Now time for totally new things that I hope to see:

  1. Priority tabs - assign job priority for any task in a special menu and use it anytime. You can make multiple tabs and switch between them. For example you set up the "support" tab - give top priority for energy replenishing, food cooking and mopping. If you set up and use the "expand" tab you automatically re-prioritise all tasks to have lower priority than digging, sweeping and building. You do not have to reassign priority every time you need something to be done. This could fix hitting the top priority for all tasks at the colony.
  2. More animal usage - yes, you can feed hatches till they refill your coal generators or store puffts in contaminated areas, but still it feels just not enough. Also it would be awesome to give them needs too - feeding/water drinking as a basis.
  3. More hazards - At some part of the game it  feels...really empty. You have only a couple of almost not agressive fauna and picky flora. The biggest danger is the germ army, that is more annoying than dangerous. What about hidden carnivores or hydrogen becoming explosive? Maybe chain lighting passing through the asteroid?
  4. Social interaction research - duplicants may find out that they can talk or spend their idle time together(playing cards or something). They also could stop each other from acting out while at 100% stress(PULL YOUR SLIME TOGETHER, HATCHIT!!). 
  5. Better description/in-game encyclopedia. An in-game wiki could describe the needs for each building and what the building may produce. Same for suplicants and animals.

 

So, I played about 6 colonies and the last one survived to get to the top tier tech and it feels...disrewarding. You play by simple rules and try to avoid some simple situations and...success! But what it gives you? A problem solver for your colony?  Not interesting due to adaptation to the conditions seen before. Yes, at first it is fun to avoid slime and find a way to get water for food. But when you get to top tier you dont need atmo-suits because your duplicants can still move around having some air-fillled rooms to rest in. You almost don't need automation because you can manually switch 80% of the production/refinement complex and everything will be just fine. Transportation tubes yet are good, though they could use some remake. Also many buildings are made/deconstructed ridiculously slow for the game's scale. So, I hope that devs will ready this and get some useful info from this wall of text. Have a good day everyone.

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