Meteorites = broken game for builders.

So I admit, I'm new to building. I've played for weeks just gathering things and exploring for a new world on which to build, one with attributes that I like (yellow sand desert, blue sky, oasis with real water). I finally found one that was acceptable (red sand, otherwise perfect) and set out to start building.

Of course you can see where this is going... about an hour into building, BAM. One meteorite, smack in the middle of my just-under-the-ground house. Everything gone. I had windows holding back the oasis water to make a nice underground/underwater viewing room and everything. Now the whole thing has drained into the caves below and I'm left with a charred circle of misery.

I cannot build anything in this game so long as I have a threat of meteorite strikes. As a builder gamer archetype, playing a game that is mainly explore/build, this is unacceptable.

I can't put time into it if I could lose it all to a random space rock *and* I cannot defend against it. If there were a way to put up a shield or shoot it down with an auto-cannon or something, great. But the way it sits now is totally unplayable.

 

I made it all the way to Delta sectory without having my base flattened once. I seem the be the only one for some odd reason and it's disappointing

 

Each planet has only one weather type. Find a planet that doesn't have the meteor shower weather type. Problem solved.

 

Relax, building is a rather worthless activity with all those wipes at the moment, although I myself hope devs will either limit it to just some planets and introduce an easy to identify meteor rain possibility on planet system, or allow to disable them on planets with a help of some deployable machine.

 

I know, right? I have to literally go out of my way to try and find a planet with meteor showers, because they're impossibly rare for me.

 

I've seen them sporadically. My start planet had them, I dug some coal and moved to one that didn't, best to case the planet out first before committing to any sort of large structure. Some worlds are just nightmarish to inhabit....and I don't think there's anything really wrong with that, would just be nice to get some quick indication of the climate, with the amount of blank space in the nav console I figure is likely a planned feature.

 

I've also had a hard time finding meteorite prone planets, I finally found my first one today and enjoyed spending a few hours testing how well different materials stand up against meteorite impact. It's a learning process, rather than throwing your hands in the air and saying the game is unplayable or that it's unacceptable, why not spend some time learning?

If you're wanting to settle down on a planet to build a fancy structure it's obviously best to scout it out properly. Either read all the threads about meteorite showers/impacts to learn what you can, look into the gamefiles, or simply learn by playing. It really is too early to say that it's unplayable.

Now that you know from firsthand experience what could happen, learn from it and adapt. Start small with a underground base/bunker/room, layer some harder materials above it, don't beam down and place all your belongings in chests, use easily replacable building materials to begin with, etc etc.

If you can't handle meteorite showers/impacts, simply move to another planet. I'm unsure how many weathertypes each planet/biome can have, I've had a maximum of two, but so far from personal experience and from reading various threads I have to say that it's very unlikely that you'll get meteorite showers/impacts everywhere. So next time, spend a bit longer scouting your preferred planet/locations.

 

From what I understand, planets have either metors or some other type of weather, but they can't have both. So if it rains, for example, you'll know that's a meteorite-free planet. If you're concerned, scout a planet for a little while and wait until it rains/snows/acid-rains. If any of those happens, you're safe from meteors. If they just added some kind of warning on the navigation screen it'd probably be fine.

Somebody on reddit suggested that you'd be able to create a shield generator, that would protect the area surrounding it from any type of environmental weather hazard, whether that's acid rain or a meteor shower. This could help alot. But I think an easier solution is just to indicate which planets are metoerite-prone so that you don't need to check yourself.

 

A shield would limit the range of builders so I doubt that would fly.

 

once barren planets work right, I don't see this being a problem for pure builders.

 

A possible solution is that they can have something like in the Minecraft mod called Hexxit, where there is a meteor shield. It's basically just a block that, when placed, makes an invisible shield with a certain radius that protects whatever is in the shield's radius to be protected from meteors.

 

As a builder myself, I can't say that I agree with you. Having a building destroyed just means you get to build something better. And if you hate meteors so much, just build a giant middle finger made out of meteorite or something. Build something crazy that would be protected by meteors, whether it be underground or in an asteroid field.

Otherwise, if you feel you can't handle losing a base, just wait for the next update. I can almost guarantee it's right around the corner. If that update doesn't have your meteor shield, wait for the update after that. It's all cool, there's plenty of people who will beta test in your place, and you'll be a lot happier with the game when you have an option to protect yourself.

Personally, I think this is just like the update where they nullified putting logs into your ship's fuel gauge. Everyone was pissed, but the very next update, they got a more realistic way of using wood as fuel, and everyone (more or less) was happy about that. There's still a lot of game to go, and a lot more stuff that we won't be happy about, but if we wait, we'll get something that's worth appreciating.

 

Don't get me wrong, I understand that it's a beta and things change. That is *precisely* why I'm posting in such strong wordage. I'm not saying I won't play anymore, and I understand that beta's are not worth putting a ton of time into if there are character wipes anyway...but that's not the point. The point is that during beta we are supposed to find bugs and balance issues, things we feel need improvement for overall game play.

Well, I found one. I reported it here.

Meteorites need a defense of some kind. Period. I'm not whining, I'm being constructive, even offering solutions in my OP.

 

This.

An epic base is going to be even more epic if you have to go to great lengths to strategically build / protect it.

 

You're not the only one. I'm in X sector, and have built 3 houses on different worlds since Angry Koala (I did a full game wipe). Still haven't seen a single meteorite. I think you gotta be careful about watching the weather before you build. That said, I DO like the idea of being able to build protective devices against them, though I think it might be more interesting if they had a failure chance. What's the point of building a house on a world that CAN get hit by meteorites and then have no risk at all of the event happening? I think it would cause some creative building strategies.

 

Nah. They'd just need to make a basic shield generator that protects a given radius, then make shield augments that can be wired up to the shield generator to add to that radius. It would be functionally unlimited building area as long as people wanted to keep adding on to their generator.

 

Funny, I started a new character, beamed down for the first time and became dust two seconds later. But ever since I haven't seen a single one.

 

Was thinking about the very same thing - you should make a post in the suggestion subforum. =)

 

Alpha Sigma CrB 420

x: -56290767
y: 56290767

A couple of the planets have meteor showers and a couple of others have giant meteors.

 

Since meteors are not in every planet, they are fun for. I like to have to adapt my building style to where I am. And it's not like I haven't suffered metor showers on me, even once I almost died out tof the blue from a gian meteor. I was in one of those small toweres guarded by robots with a chest on top, this was either in alpha or beta sector, and I was climbing for the chest when there was a sudden explosion and suddenly half the tower was gone, even the chest fell from its position and contents were scattered all around. Not counting the many times I was obliterated by a large meteor in alpha sector, at first I even thought it was some random enemy projectile I failed to see.