Feedback Pyre's Thoughts on 1.0

Ho boy, that took much much longer than I expected it, mainly because of not devoting enough time to beating it in reasonable time. Edit this later.

The Protectorate
I guess it is reasonable and logical to start at the beginning. You no longer begin your adventure waking up in a trashed ship with a codex that can is essentially your journal to fill you in on why you are where you are now, instead you start out in the Protectorate Academy about to graduate. It gives you the opportunity to be taught about controls but doesn't push it on you, which I like, optional tutorials. There are also a few unique items around the Academy you can pick up which you can only find there, which is important if you want them as you can't go back. Its a good tutorial level, but the Devs even give you the option to skip it entirely, also a plus, good on them.

The Garden
When you are done at the Academy, you wake up floating above a garden world in a trashed ship because of your reckless jump, good to know that experience hasn't been lost. You have to go down to the world you are orbiting to try and find a way to repair your ship as it is just junk right now, but they changed it slightly as the Core Fragments are used to power an Ark Portal instead of fixing the ship, which will introduce the player to the latter story of the game. While searching for core fragments, the player learns to use the core survival mechanics of the game, like monsters nomming on your leg is bad, starving is bad, falling is bad, Poptops sing nicely but still want to nom you, which is bad, and stop eating the damn toxictops, bad bad bad bad LAUNA GET THAT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!

The Dreaded Hunger Mechanic
This is Chuckie-fisk first time playing with hunger sense they took it out a long long while ago. I can see where people are coming from when they complain about it, but I am not as bothered by it. The only issues I have with the Hunger System is that the player gets to hunger to fast. That is my only issue. Really. My only hope is that the Devs play with hunger to where its a little slower. I know that hunger is supposed to drain at a rate similar to real life with respect to the light cycle, but players experience the game at a much faster rate and hunger just occurs at a pace that it is just unpleasant. That is all I have to say.

Non Player Controlled [entities] (NPCs)
There was a time I was satisfied enough with the AI in this game, but sometime in development it just feels as though the AI of NPCs somehow got dumber. They don't react properly to danger and they don't avoid hazards like poison. They changed their fighting behavior to where they take a 5 second breather between attacks, not to mention they can't aim anymore. Its like they close their eyes when they jerk the trigger, reminds me of me when I was younger whenever my Dud dragged me out to hunt whitetail. Overall the new AI seems worse than in previous versions, but what I do support is them objecting to the player stealing their furniture. This is a good change as it was strange how they didn't care that you leveled their house, but they still don't seem to care that you rummage through their containers tho, but I'm not gonna ask for this to change. What I do think needs to change is that buildings made of wood not spawn on worlds with hazardous weather that cause environmental damage like firestorms.

The Outpost
Now the Outpost seems alot more intractable, and most importantly, not lagging like hell. I am rather mixed about where the Outpost's direction went, but my feelings are still mostly positive here. I'm going to put it out right now that I very much so disapprove of the joining of the Outpost and the Ark as now the Ark doesn't seem like a remote relic of ancient secrets, now it feels like a pile of bricks and bobs that serves as a tourist trap. I like more shops, and the ARK being right next door does assist with that. Only two old shops stayed the same and the others had their wares tinkered which I don't mind but am still having to get used to. The new shops work well and don't fall out of place which is not actually hard for a space colony with a little bit of everything, and the new downward expansion opens up a lot of possibilities for future shops. I like how random NPCs teleport in from the 2stopteleportshop and it adds a lot more random variety every time you come to the Outpost. My final point on this is that it upsets me a little that the export bin you buy from the Terramart only accepts produce, when it tempts me to dump all the weapons I collect and don't want to use in it.

Techs and Augments
I only have one good point here, they don't cost energy anymore, the rest is negative opinion. Overall the new Techs feel infinetely weaker. I miss being able to fly through the air spamming dash until I've burned all of my energy, I get this is a balance but the techs have only gone downhill from here. They took away Mechs and the Fall Bubble, but hopefully they will bring back Mechs as Vehicles, right? RIGHT?? I guess one other good thing is that they removed the rail rider and just added moving platforms that ride the sky rails, which for me is a plus as it was inconvenient to need to switch out before as rail rider was only useful when skyrails were present. Augments are a good add to the game because they add a lot more player customization to the game, but with the light augment, it kinda makes the light packs obsolete and they are still in the game. speaking of light sources, I do however like that they made hand lamps craftable and added mining helmets which include lights. Plus. What pains me is that Augments are not removable from your EPP and that they are eaten up when they are upgraded meaning you need new Augments when you Tier up. That's a no go.

World Generation
1.0 added a lot of new Generation changes which most over all I approve of, but do note not all. Having a lot of variety in world generation can help break the monotony of exploring the same kinds of worlds, and I have a love-hate relationship with adjacent biome generation as it can lead to some very strange combinations and biomes that should not belong on certain worlds. Another issue is that when I was progressing through the game I saw far, far too many garden biomes and I had no issue getting Poptop figurines and the likeness. I like how some old structures have been recycled to have new purpose, such as the Kluex towers have been converted into friendly villages, and new additions like the floran hut villages add a tiny bit of variety, but I believe there is still room for more. It saddens me that the Human Bunker did not make it into these renovations and have disappeared entirely making it very hard to obtain bunker furniture items. I would have liked to see these bunkers reworked into Human Shelters for housing refugees, but for now the Camping Sites will have to suffice for now to satisfy my human recruitment. There are two biomes I think are missing a lot of opportunity right now, oceans could have a little more on the surface, like more island or port themed structures spawning on the islands or spawning their own islands, and Glacier biomes are completely devoid of anything, I have checked and Glaciers are nothing but white and emptiness both above and below the waves, this needs to be changed. I have also noticed that there are still no Novakid structures that generate in the world, which deeply saddens me.

Quest System and Ship Crew
Quests are nice and all, but they are still rather jankie for me, for example, if the npc that gave you a quest is killed in a tragic accident involving fauna then the quest will just stop giving you the compass arrow to help you find the npc to turn in the quest. Quests are a good way to get crew members for your ship, which can join you and help you along your journey. To be honest I changed the crew mechanics the first chance I got with the Earth's Finest mod which makes them much more useful. In Vanilla, Engineers are way too powerful as having them for long enough makes it to where you can go anywhere with pocket change, but mechanics don't really help you anything near as much as the other classes because all they do is expand your tank. The other reason I picked up Earth's Finest is to fix the actual most useless class, the Janitor, which changes them into quartermasters that act as shop keepers for your ship. What I do want to see in the future are Chef or Cook classes you can recruit that sell you food because if you are like me at that time you are rolling in pixels just from exploring with nothing to spend those pixels on.

Crafting
I like where crafting is going but still think it needs improving upon. Now many more items you pick up along your journey have more purpose... Damn I am running out of steam... Give me a second to rest my brain... I did this last...

Main Storyline

: WARNING : THE FOLLOWING SPOILER CONTAINS SPOILERS, SO DON'T OPEN IT IF YOU DON'T WANT THE PLOT TO THE MAIN STORYLINE EXPOSED :

Main Storyline
I am going to go with everyone else here, I appreciate that a main storyline was implemented, and I avoided learning anything about it before playing it as I didn't want it to be spoiled, but the main storyline feels rather light. When you meet Esther at the Ark-post you are dragged into this mission chain that most of the time spent trying to complete is trying to find enough scan points required to unlock the next story mission. In each story mission you defeat some baddies and find some cosmetic loot that is unique to that level (cough except Avian and Glitch mission cough). With every mission level you beat the first time you bring back an ally to the Ark-post that will start camping out by Esther. Some of them open worth while shops, some offer quest chains, others do nothing at all and their existence is forgotten. The Missions for a veteran player such as myself are relatively easy enough to be enjoyable to go through and you can explore the levels for as long as you like looking for cosmetics without needing to worry about your food as hunger is disabled in all but one mission. The Penguin missions also got turned into side quests that you can take to help the questions in the underground part of the outpost in exchange for access to mercenaries and unique weapon upgrades.

Apex Mission
There are only two missions in the main storyline that rubbed me the wrong way, and that would be the Apex mission and the Glitch mission. The Apex mission starts off WAY to easy just by throwing a very disappointing amount of guards at you, all at once, separated, ready to be pounced upon by the player with their wall-hacking cheats. This is all a very despicable trick to make the player lower their guard as the boss fight makes the entire mission to a complete 180 by introducing the one (and thankfully only) bullet hell in the entire game. The player will have to either tank by spamming med items or attempt to dodge the monotonous amount of fire the boss dumps on you. It is comparable to the Stockhopper from the 2nd Penguin mission, except with 10x more health, all of which in moving targets, and 10x more projectile spam. This was the only mission so far to actually kill me, but thanks to the handy-dandy check points I was able to skip the cannon fodder and get back to the boss fight immediately. When I warped in, however, I noticed something very off, Lana came up to greet me, but instead of greeting me with the post checkpoint dialogue, she was using the introduction dialogue like as if I had started the mission from the beginning and she was speaking to me from the top of the watch tower. Odd.

Glitch Mission
Next on mention is the Glitch mission, which it did not rub me the wrong way the Apex one did, but the Glitch mission just needs tweaking in a few places before I am satisfied with it. This mission is rather the opposite of the Apex one, in which focused on its boss fight. The Glitch mission however is a wave defense level that has you fending off hoards of enemies which I actually rather enjoyed. This level is actually where I got the most use of my meatbags as they provided enough damage and distraction to clear away the minions, although most enemies always agro me, and it was also neat that Allies picked up from previous missions came down and started helping slap around the minions. Not having their existence forgotten is a Plus. This is where my complaining starts for this mission, if you are destroying the ballistas like a good hero you are prolly at the front of the gate, unfortunately the Devs wanted to speed up the minion arrival time so they spawn minions at the front gate, which is basically right on top of me, I mean us, you. All I want is for the creep spawning to be tweaked in position. Speaking of, when thinking about this mission, it made me want a minigun in SB so I can have my own bullet hell to mow down Cultist spam, pretty please? I promise I've been good. My other issue with this mission is the lack of a check point before the boss. I get that the player is in the exact same location as when you started and its hard to trigger a checkpoint at that time, but that boss wave isn't anything to sneeze at. It will burst you down with napalm and leave you little to no time to react. You can't exactly be cheeky or strategic dealing with it as it just comes at you and it obliterates everything as enviro protection is off and before you know it the towers are gone, the floors are gone, everything gets blowed up in this boss fight. All I'm asking for is tweaked minion spawning and checkpoint. Oh, and a minigun.

Final Mission
There was disappointment, but it not from the final mission itself. It was from the complete lack of something else between the Glitch mission and the final one. A complete and utter lack of a Human mission. When I went up to Esther for my next mission, one artifact remaining, I had this wild fantasy about getting it. Earth had already been blowed up, but I bet the Cultists must have it, and I'm going to go into a Cultist Base and rip it from their cold, lifeless fingers, it was going to be so awesome, then Esther just hands it to me. What a letdown. The Final Mission is not like any of the other missions before it, when the portal opened my game started lagging really bad standing next to the now giant GIF that the ARK was replaced with, but only when it was visible did it lag. I grab a 20 oz Pepsi I saved ready to camp out and finish this and take a sip waiting for it to load, but good on Chuckie-fisk the loading didn't take long at all. When I warp in I am not greeted with a standard mission, instead I am beamed to an alien world like nothing I've seen for a very very long time. Tentacle Porn, I-I-I mean tentacles, everywhere, just tentacles, and lots and lots of little eye monsters just being cranked out of the woodworks. I learned quickly that everything is just cannon fodder as everything just about died in 1-2 shots of my assault rifle depending on the enemy, very weak but definitely dependent on numbers. After doing a complete lap on the artificial world's surface, stopping every once in a while to heal my meatbags because they won't stop walking into poison puddles, do I realize I need to go downward, so I poke a hole in the Beast's surprisingly tough flesh and start my way down. After fighting my way downward past more and more eyeball monsters, I get a warning from SAIL that there is a huge cavity beneath me, after trying to figure out a way to safely descend I get knocked down by flier spam and become a pancake on the cavern floor. Second time I am back in little to no time extra and use a rope this time dodging much to many flier attacks to mention when I realize I'm out of rope now, so I just released and stepped my way down by Multi-jumping to break my inertia.

The Ruin
At last I am at the bottom of the chasm and notice that the background and blocks had changed to brains which I also recognized from the old Brain forest biomes, and this led me to believe I was at this heart of this monster. I wander to yonder for a bit with a hint of aimlessness trying to find something important and sure enough I find a door that leads to the Boss Room, checkpoint, only to be greated by delusional Nox which proceeds to attempt to fight me but is considerably easier than the first time I fought her, either because I have better gear now or she got downgraded. Either way, she begins monologuing and the entire time my meatshields are pounding on her invulnerable model while she goes on, which amused me. After she runs away is when the Ruin awakens and I will admit it was a difficult fight and I almost died on several occasions having to learn and dodge the center field clearing lazer beam, the side field clearing tentacles, and the variety minion spamming. Interestingly enough the Ruin opens up portals to different worlds and spawns in unique mobs like the Poptops which I appreciated and hated at the same time as most of these minions were tougher than the eyeball cannon fodder. In the middle of the arena my meatshields are taking their sweet time attacking the Big eyeball taking small breaks every now and then, or should I say attacking every now and then. Even though they were getting hit by most of everything I am grateful that they are really freaking tanky in place of their their stupidity. I tried my best to keep them healed but I was busy dealing with the minion spam. My meatshields eventually warped out and I was on my own to finish the Boss. I dumped all of my Energy Spears into the Big eyeball as each one did a considerable amount of damage to its health, but eventually I ran out and had to finish its last sliver of health with conventional weapons. I had somehow done it without dying, I made the Ruin blowed up. SAIL warns me that the world is destabilizing and I need to escape, so I'm just clawing at the door begging "Open the door, please!" except now I am the one to be blowed up now and I go with the ship. What remains of the Cultivator in a near force parallel appears and gives me a speech about what happened to him and saves me and brings me back to the ARK where I am presented with the credits. Overall, I enjoyed the last mission, I was not too fond of the spam but I got to see the old Alien biomes get recycled for the final world. The most challenging part about the boss fight was the unique mob spam as they didn't die in 1-2 hits like the natives. It was a Plus. Even tho Novakids weren't included in this party, I smuggled one in anyways and now I can prolly say they are my favorite race.

So that would be about it, my thoughts on 1.0 as best as I could put them. Unfortunately after all of this time and 500 hours I am feeling kinda burned on exploring in 2 directions and building personal base after base. I'm going to need some mods that can change how I feel about the game and help revive my enthusiasm. What mods do you guys recommend using in conjunction with what? I'm thinking something radical along the lines of Frankin' Universe along side some mechanical tweaks like ceiling sprinklers and quiet sewing machine. Leave down what mods you guys like to use below so I can get started faster and cleaner.

 

Frackin Races, Some character customization mods, portable outpost, Time control tech, Enhanced tech, and a really cool space station mod (well the only space station mod) Are all really good. All can be downloaded from steam workshop

 

that was a rather nice write up... enjoyable to read...

The Protectorate: The old text box intro was more of a forced who you are and where you came from, as you put it I believe. However with the way they did it, starting academy at graduation, it made it feel like you can decide what or who you were before the academy, as well determine for yourself why you went into the academy. example:

Spy that infiltrated the academy on the final year to see what the organization was up to. Which means you were accepted as a final year by the head in order to do your job; hence your graduation. Granted it feels like at least you were there for a short while in the very least before that dreadful day near the end of the level.

or like how it seems most interpret it

You joined up and have been there. There doesn't seem to be anything there that implies you were their since the beginning. Only that you knew the people there; hence the above in being there for a short while, which is like going to a year of schooling; as you tend to at least know a fair amount of names in your own class.

What I am getting at is that it is loosely defined, so we can make up the before and how of the academy. Then is like you are saying free roam... minus the first mission. After all the lil' lady is only assuming you are protectorate due to having the MM. If being skipped the intro, then one could simply come up with how they obtained such a device that is apparently a protectorate model MM. And from there can pretend to go along with the lil lady for at least the first mission. Well how I see that. A think to like over the old one, in which was just an intro that one was forced to ignore if they wanted to have a different background.

NPC AI: This I only partially agree on, as they were more dumb back then, and did not do a whole lot that they do now. Like I mean they interact with certain objects, and emote a conversation or emotion. They were even more clumsy with stairs back then than they are now. liquid avoidance is mute, as now they just avoid stepping in it; so I can sort of agree with you on that part. Aiming... their aim is actually pretty good, and about the same, however the current is more group focused than individual focused. As in they work together in order to kill you trying to gain what vantage point they can or already have; especially the shooters.

There is an interaction between guard and civilian unlike before where it was you even touch one guard and all would be after you. In this current it has a line of sight or in the vicinity type of thing going on. So agro of guard on this side of village will only enact, and the ones on the other side will not unless a civilian snitch or the guard them self gets close enough to see the act. I really like this new system, and do agree it still probably needs a few tweaks in pathing...

As to the wooden structure comment; I can only hope they make more content to have replacements for those specific planets they tend to burn those structures down. At least content is easy to make. So I agree with that quite a bit.

Generation: I just think it needs more content in general, like the glacier you pointed out... So barren... At least it is not as barren as the barren planet. I don't mind the mixes, as it is quite interesting, just would be nice to see more higher tier of lower tier biomes, as fire planets are... too red and black for my taste. Even though I have come across a few with other biomes on them, it is just the planet itself... Is usually primarily a few mix. The ones that need most touches are the ocean worlds, specifically the glacier, but at least the toxic and normal ocean seem to have stuff going on. Don't know about lava ocean as I have yet to get something for lava resistance, even if it would be a consumable like the poison one. Well one could always use more biomes to have in addition to the ones we have.

Techs: This one I can't fully agree, as to what you mention; the balance thingy. which I think was the point. Made it to where you are actually exploring instead of planet running with techs. So in a way it made exploring for at least myself more interesting than swiss cheese on a ham sandwich. I do miss the bubble drop thingy, bouncy tech thing. That was fun to use. If they are to add more techs, hopefully they will make them like how you got the old techs, but will have to still have the others unlocked before using or something like that. In other words finding them in special chests. The blue print could be handed to the scientist to give a short run like the basic ones and after the challenge or well tutorial of it make it usable... Either way it would be welcome to have rare techs to be found.

Vehicles on the other hand I can see them probably coming back eventually, as the only ones we have now are well... the boat and hover thingy. Which have their own use. I would like to see them expand on those as well adding back the mechs... Like a specfic explorer mod.

Notes: There is a cook/chef NPC. I think you need specific things to get that one though. cooking counter or the like that is kitchen oriented. Something like that.

Mods: There are definitely quite a few mods thankfully.
Exlporer pod mod - Gives a submarine type vehicle you can buy for underwater navigation, as well one that is aerial I think.
mech mods - add the mechs back. Don't remember the actual name.
Pixel goods store - Only steam workshop at the moment. Adds lots of furniture and objects.
FU - you already know. Obviously this one is a ton of content, but best with a new character and universe.
FU Races - Racial abilities. Even has compatibility for a good amount of custom races.
Enhanced Storage - A storage tweak mod that relays storage in a sorting way. difficult to explain, but more like a chain of command; you will have to see the mod page to know what I mean by that. It I think involves wiring things up though.
Race mods - Any of them really... Felin, avali, inklings, etc... There are a lot of them, even a alternate glitch race mod.
Might look into some of the ones that are garden related, or is it farming related as they do add a few things. Seeder mod I think... being able to get the grass from block and putting it everywhere for a cost in materials.

All I can think of at the moment... There are just sooooo many mods to look through, and I for one plan on using a good chunk of them once I finish with my current character. Haven't finished the storyline due to my own ambition of empire building using colonies.

 

Gameplay
Frankin' Universe
Frankin' Races
Frankin' Music
Explorerpods
Avali (Triage) Race Mod
Soma Exploration Ship (Human)
Pixel Good Store
Earth's Finest
Day Night Sensor
Item Broadcaster and Hyper Storage
Ceiling Mounted Sprinkler
The Protectorate Flower: Potted and Farmable
Submarine

Mechanical
Extra Zoom Levels
Xbawks Character Extender
Pay Up - Rent
Perennial Crops
Searchable Tenant Tags
Slow Hunger

Aesthetics
Drumsticks and Tail Feathers (Vanilla Hands)
Container UI Tweak
Weapon Stats
Novakid Dialogue
Quiet Sewing Machine
Improved Containers

This is what I have so far, any issues? I would also like to change the Humans to look like the Ningen made by ODABUTSU but they doesn't seem very interested in making their mod a replacement mod. Also, last online 13 days ago. I guess I'm going to have to steal the secrets of Ningen from Pohany.

 

Portable outpost will make you live longer with all those mods installed.

 

From that list I would imagine not too many problems...

Doesn't look like they would in the very least... Looks like a interesting mix.

I would add the "ground seeder" mod to it. It has FU compatible things, or well makes for a good companion to it.

 

What, is this too many?

 

no, no... you misunderstood. I am referring to compatibility. As in I am unsure if any of those would conflict in some way. Mods being too many is not the case, unless you have a very low end computer that barely runs SB in the first place.

From knowing most of what those mods do, I don't see any conflicts and seems to be a decent selection you have there. I personally would have a good chunk of them in mind for myself when I get to that point in playing. I was just suggesting another to add to that list that would work with them; well one I know will work with the FU and not mess something up. Of course I have not heard of FU messing up due to other mods, more like the other way around; since the sheer amount of things FU changes. Anyways... Looks like a good list for a start.

 

Are there mini guns yet?