Just want to get a general feel for the game and where it’s at in development from any 'dopers playing the thing. I thought I might give it a shot this weekend, since I’m on the road again and am a bit bored. Is it worth getting? What’s the game play like? How does the multiplayer part work? What’s entailed in survival mode?
Need answer fast. Naw, just kidding. I’ll be trapped here all weekend, so plenty of time to download it if it’s good. Or, I’ll just stick with Kerbal and Company of Heroes 2 if nothing else.
I ended up buying the game, but am playing it on one of the easy ‘worlds’, so I have unlimited resources and such. It seems cool, so far, but I’m having some trouble figuring a few things out. I need to watch some YouTube videos on how to build stuff as it doesn’t seem very intuitive thus far. I will say that it’s cool that I can build my evil lair (well, the start of one with no roof, since I can’t figure out how to put a roof on it) in a hollowed out asteroid. THAT is pretty cool, and makes up for the lack of volcanoes and sharks with frickin laser beams on their frickin heads.
I guess the multi-player is where the weapons come in, since I haven’t seen any in game threats (or is that in survival mode?). That might be fun to build bases and star ships and then fight it out (I assume that you can just let whoever you want into your multi-player world, since I see a ‘publish’ button).
Well, I’ve been playing it for a couple of weeks now. Still don’t know what to think of it, to be honest. The graphics are cool, and I love the open world sandbox aspects of the game. I never played minecraft, but I’ve seen enough videos to know this is like minecraft in space. But with space ships. And a less blocky and more pretty world. Oh, and space ships. That you can fly around. And crash into stuff.
Basically the game is all about resource gathering and then building or repairing stuff. In survival mode you start off with a partially broken down space craft and like 15 minutes of fuel. Enough to get to an asteroid and set up. I figured out that the ship itself can generate gravity, and that this gravity field can be narrowed or widened, and that doing this burns more or less fuel. But turning on the gravity is also essential in mining, since without gravity not only you but the ore just sort of flies off in all directions (the physics is actually pretty good in the game). Also, you have to find the right kinds of ore…there are different types and finding exactly what you need and processing it is pretty key to your initial survival. I lucked onto some uranium pretty quickly, and was able to mine and process enough to keep myself alive (oh, you also need to watch your personal energy requirements for your space suit…run out of energy and you are dead meat) and the ship running.
Having passed the hurdle of immediate death, I’ve managed to mine a bunch of different types of ores that allow me to build lots of different things. I’ve figured out ways to mine, and even managed to hollow out the asteroid and begin building my evil lair (still no frickin sharks with frickin lasers on their heads though). I have even managed to build a reactor in my base, and through trial and error how to actually make it work and put a gravity generator in the mix too.
Since there are various weapons in the game, including some sort of space rifle, I assume that PvP will be a feature at some point…or maybe PvE against aliens or something. That would really add another dimension to all of this, though if it took me literally weeks to build a big ass space dreadnaught and then it got wrecked I’m thinking that would be a bummer…or if someone nuked my evil lair. Still, this game has potential I think.
Wish there were more 'dopers that played, as I have tons of questions, but that’s my take on it so far, FWIW.
I’ve been toying around with it a bit. I’ve seen some people build some pretty cool shit like a full-size Sulaco from Aliens. Mostly I just built a simple small gunship.
Not sure about the actual gameplay though or how multiplayer works. Like it’s great that you can build a cool ship, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much to explore or do with it besides crash it into something.
Well, there are guns and missiles, so I assume you could build ships then do some sort of space battles with them. But yeah, there isn’t much to explore that I’ve seen. The survival games I’ve started have only a few asteroids (they are very large and have natural caves…plus you can excavate out large spaces, so that’s sort of exploration I guess), but no planets or other star systems as far as I can tell. This COULD potentially be a really cool game if they add that sort of thing in later. I’ve now built a mining ship (can’t figure out how to get the drilling thingy to put the ore in the storage boxes, nor how to dump the ore into my processor in my evil lair…I think you can do those things but damned if I can figure out how so far), a fighter and a medium sized star ship complete with lots of weapons, and I can see where you COULD really do a lot with this. But so far it’s pretty sparse, just mine ore, refine ore, build parts then figure out how to put those parts together to create ships and bases and such.
Yeah, it’s sort of like playing with a virtual Lego set.
It’s surprisingly addicting though. I’ve built two pretty large ships so far:
A sort of space container freighter that’s like a thousand feet long, designed to carry these massive removable standard container boxes (which I then started customizing to do things like mine asteroids or grind ships into component parts…plus a built-in conveyer system, etc)
A military destroyer ship complete with manned turrets and a giant “rail gun” that hurls big armored bolts at other ships using dozens of gravity generators.
Plus I have to built a small fleet of support ships for each - shuttles, scouts, tugs for moving objects around, tenders for carrying supplies for Survival mode, built in escape pods.
And then I keep finding new ideas online like working elevators and hanger doors.
But really to have an actual space battle or even sustained mining operations, I think you’d need like a dozen guys all working together to crew the ship and their complement of support craft.
There are some pretty cool YouTube videos on stuff folks have built. Everything from a gravity shield/cannon to large movable turrets on huge capital ships (I built one myself but it doesn’t work as well as in the videos)…really the sky is the limit. I experimented with building some weapons and blowing up some of the pre-built ships in the quick start, and the results are pretty cool. Derelict ships with massive damage floating about are pretty cool to look at. If they add reactor overload explosions or something like that, you could really go all Honor Harrington in space with this game, if you could get some other people to join in and shoot it out.
Thought it might be worth bumping since the game has come a long way in the two years (wow) since this thread was opened.
They actually have planets now with their own gravity, atmosphere and whatnot and they look pretty cool. Not full-size obviously, but big enough to not see the curvature of the Earth when you land on them. You can pressurize your ships, which is a neat feature.
The solar system is pretty abstract. Planets are fixed and the sun rotates around them as part of the skybox. And the speed limit is set like 104m/s so you don’t really have Kerbal-esq orbital mechanics.
There are mods to remove the speed limit and add some simulated reentry effects. Just in case you want to turn your giant space behemoth into a shooting star.
Still a very addicting game. I kind of liken it to movies like Moon or Oblivion.
Also, the development team is great about providing some update every Thursday. Sometimes it’s weeks of mundane “big fixing”. Sometimes it’s a major overhall.
Naw, just kidding. I’ll be trapped here all weekend, so plenty of time to download it if it’s good. Or, I’ll just stick with Kerbal and Company of Heroes 2 if nothing else.
