First impression - disappointingly not enough sci-fi

I know there's a pretty nice matter manipulator upgrade mod if you loathe pickaxes. There's also ones that adds fuel variants to use as well as all other sorts of things, so you can access the more technologically advanced stuff earlier in the game than normal.

 

You have to break the bad news to the oil companies that terraria has copyright over drills.

 

Are you expecting lasers to come out of your tools made of wood and iron? Some plasma rifle made of copper? The thing is, you start out on a ship with with supplies i would think to have on a ships emergency kit thing. you have you emergency seeds, your Matter Manipulator (I think of the Matter Manipulator as a maintenance tool designed to fix leeky pipes, not a high powered mining tool.), some torches (this i can agree is kind of ridiculous to be on a ship, at least give us some fancy sci-fi lights.), a sword (kind of dumb too, especially because its broken.), and a flashlight (but no laser pistol for some reason.). That's all you have, nowhere near enough to start making photon drills and ion chainsaws right away. You have to make some basic tools first before making some crazy lightning gun, you have to build from the ground up. I like that, the game doesn't hand out free cool stuff, you have to earn it. And if you had all the cool stuff right away what would encourage you to progress? Bragging rights? Higher numbers on your stats that don't even make you feel more powerful because the enemies higher stats too. it would take out a lot of variety due to no new mechanics or features, it would make the game severely boring.

 

While I do agree that there should be more access to "high tech" stuff earlier on, I also don't see a logical reason why we should have it...

I mean we did just flee our planet, the only tech we grabbed was that matter manipulator. Honestly, I get that tiers one and two should probably be pretty low tech. But at tier 3, I would like more technology to be available on hand. I get that we have some machines at that point, but we are getting pretty far into space at this point. Granted, only tiers 1-4 have been created, and they aren't even done, so maybe we get a mining laser around tier 5-ish in the final game, but then were do we go?

Part of the problem with getting more high tech things early on is it is hard to come up with something better than what we often view as super high tech stuff. What's better than a mining laser? A bigger mining laser? Then it just feels kind of bland to just have better and better models of the same exact thing. That is the hard thing with sandbox games, maintaining a feeling of progression well after you "beat the game". Minecraft got it right, although I'm not entirely sure how. Prototype didn't in my opinion, but once again, how?

Chucklefish doesn't want people to get bored with this game, and part of that is the excitement of discovery. Part of that is finding out you can craft a shiny new toy, and another is that feeling of "What comes next?" It is this feeling of discovery that will keep people playing, keep them searching and scouring the galaxy in search of the next big thing, keep them building to the heavens, keep them fighting the oppression of BIg Ape. And yeah, I know I'm saying the half of the community is, but we need to work to help the good guys at Chucklefish give us the game we want!

I know this post got kinda long, but basically what I'm saying (aka TL;DR) is that I have faith that Chucklefish will give us what we want, and that is all part of game design. The thing isn't even half finished, and with a game like this, there may not be an end to new discoveries and addition for a long time. It takes a lot of creativity to come up with that what next, so maybe they aren't sure were to go! Don't just want new things. Help out, and post in suggestions with ideas! If you can, make a mod to demonstrate your ideas!

See you star-side!

 

I agree that you shouldn't be able to get lasers and plasma rifles right off the bat and that you should start off with basic tools. I just don't think the basic tools in a sci-fi setting should be a stone pickaxe and a broken sword.

Just because we're using wood and iron doesn't mean what we make has to be from the iron age. Wood is mostly carbon so it wouldn't be a huge leap to maybe use wood to make carbon fiber composites. Iron, copper, silver, gold, and platinum in different ratios could be used to make some hi-tech alloys.

 

I can see how that can be a problem, but all I'd really like is for the pickaxe tier to be changed into something more plausible. They'd just need to come up with a single tier that's not so stone age. I don't think it can be that hard. Off the top of my head:

Emergency Mining Tool, Ceramic Hand Excavator, Composite Chisel, Light Alloy Trencher, Harmonic Pickaxe, Resonating Digger ...

These could all replace the pickaxe while not superseding drills and not being out of place in the sci-fi setting.

 

After the drills, it would b e nice to have some kind of mining laser. with similar effect to the matter manipulator, as in the 2x2 thing at a longer distance than the drills/pickaxes. It should be super fast though, but not have durability and instead use up energy

 

I have a feeling tech progression will look like this.

Teir 1-3 (or 4)-> Old medieval stuff. Mining pickaxes, swords, shields, regular armor.

Teir 4-7 -> Drills, guns, tech like this.

Teir 8-10 -> Mining lasers, laser rifles, personal shields. Tech like this!

This is early beta. They are just putting the game together for play. Its not been balanced and a lot is subject to change. The above is what I get the feeling of. As someone stated earlier, the matter manipulator feels like something used to fix leaky pipes and wiring. Though I do think we should have some flares or light sticks with it... and probably a hunting pistol for personal defence (instead of a sword). But thats my 2 cents there.

 

Here's how things should be.

Pickaxes/drills/lasers:
Pickaxes should be the recipe-less choice for each tier. It's fairly easy to figure out how to make a pickaxe, maybe make pickaxes become 2*2 instead of 3*3.
Drills are a bit more complicated, and should require a recipe in order to build. Perhaps this recipe should drop from the penguin boss, if not bought from npcs or such these should be the 3*3 digging implement.
Mining lasers should, as stated a little above, use energy and be able to switch between 1x1, 2x2, and 3*3 digging sizes, keeping the same speed/block (meaning you dig out single blocks faster than a 3*3 section, but digging the 3*3 with the 1x1 mode should take the same amount of time). Mining lasers should have the same range as a matter manipulator, but should only be able to affect surface blocks like the pick lasers in Edge of Space.

Guns should start showing up in late tier 1 to mid tier 2.

I was thinking of more stuff to throw on here, but I gotta go for now. Might edit/post some more stuff later.