Jace is usually very charismatic and engaging. In this video, he was deliberately flat and halting. The joke is pretty meta there, and yeah, doesn’t quite work, but I give him points for the attempt. Watch any of the other videos for something more characteristic.
I paid $30 and thought it was worth it, so yes.
I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent with it so far, but I’m easy prey for systems engineering games. It’s a nice little sandbox of building and expanding systems with some exploration on the side. Even without whatever story they will wrap around it building factories is fun. I like the mix of spending time setting up a production line for something and then while it’s cranking out hopping in a vehicle and exploring the area for new resources.
It’s a nice diversion while I try to avoid playing Oxygen Not Included until 1.0 is released. And by the time I finish putting another few hundred hours into ONI hopefully this will be out or close to release.
My sprawling mostly disorganized factory.
Over in the distance on the rise toward the left I’ve now got supercomputer production going so I’m at the limit of what’s available in the current version. Though there’s always tearing it all down and rebuilding it more efficiently now that I’m familiar with the production chains. Now that lifts are available I want to build more vertically.
One of the really great things about this game is how easy it is to do this. There’s no penalty for destroying a building; you get all the resources back.
Ahhh, okay - I haven’t followed any of their other videos, so I missed the in-joke there. My bad.
Picked this up in the sale and this was exactly my experience. Seems like such a weird design decision to have this be your introduction to the game. Maybe survival crafter types expect this sort of thing and would be disappointed if it wasn’t there? But for me it was just frustrating and confusing and meant I wasted half an hour and ending up restarting the game.
It’s probably an artifact of being in early access more than a conscious design decision. I was fortunate to not have a similar issue when I started. There weren’t a lot of the aardvark things that rush at you at my starting location. For the one I did encounter jumping out of the way and swinging wildly when it charged worked to defeat it.
So is this like Factorio in that can draw the attention of critters and have to defend yourself? Or is more just the occasional wildlife that might give you problems as you explore?
The latter. Resource nodes usually have a couple of critters guarding them. Once you eliminate them it’s free and clear forever AFAIK. Jungles and caves often have some wandering and patrolling critters; I don’t think there is any respawning at all.
But it’s clearly a design decision to have those critters there at all. And I don’t really understand why (at least for the entry level resources - I can understand using them to gate content). It’s not like it’s introducing you to the idea that the world is dangerous a la Factorio. I’ve played on for several hours since then and haven’t encountered another critter. It’s just an annoying difficulty spike right at the beginning for no good reason.
Basically I think they are mini gates to resources, i.e. you encounter one typically at each Iron hub and copper hub. Incidentally I defeat these easily by just hiding behind the Iron rock that protrudes. They run into it, and you run and whack em with your bug stick.
I am hoping the creatures actually get a bit of a rework but you do keep encountering tougher versions as you move up the resource chain. The ones guarding oil for instance can be formidable.
United States occupying military forces?
It’s the conundrum of having wide genres to describe games. It’s still a survival game, but on the edge of those that don’t (and shouldn’t) rely on being on the brink of death. I’m sure they’ll get around to it. Despite me sounding overly harsh a while ago about the game, it’s still fairly early. As long as they understand how big the task is to make the final version not annoying, it seems they’ll be able to make a great game out of this.
Fortunately you do get better weapons. I first went searching for oil when I just had the Xeno Basher. There was much dying. I returned with the Rebar Gun with made things a lot easier.
I don’t think there’s a timer on the stuff left behind when you die. Rather than run right to it you can grab enough resources to build a equipment bench and a weapon first. Though yeah, if you die even before you can clear an iron node might as well just restart.
Though I’m not sure I don’t think all the nodes in the starting area had monsters guarding them. I only recall running into one critter during the tutorial phase and that was after I had put my hub down and had a portable miner on a node already.
So, I finally got coal power up with automated coal transport. Is now a good time to tear everything down and rebuild it all efficient like?
yeah, steel is usually about when I get serious =)
I just kept laying new foundations and building new factory sections. I’ve done some editing here and there for when I needed more iron bars vs plates and things like that but I still haven’t done a full tear down of my original iron producing and processing area.
Joke confirmed. Coffee Stain published real sales numbers today: 507,374 at this point. That seems pretty good to me.
Damn. Good for them and good to see funding it through launch likely won’t be an issue.
