i guess i'm probably late to the party given the dev replies all dried up within the first page or 2 of the comments lol, but i love 0.7! i don't know specifically what build i had played before, but i believe it was when story events ended at like day 30-ish. regardless, i think everything new to 0.7 is great. in 0.7 i finished a story save and have played 25 days of infinite with a few light mods. i've tried to skim previous posts to make sure i'm not making repeat suggestions, and have highlighted the important parts because i got a little wordy lol.
- i'm aware that the following idea would add orders of magnitude of complexity to some game systems and a lot would probably have to be rebuilt from the ground up. the modular nature of the crypto rig is really interesting, and i think it could be cool if more relevant base upgrades operated modularly too. i imagine things like instead of just ticking up a value for "download speed" you would have to buy and hook up new servers, maybe the server room starts a lot more empty. maybe in lieu of transformer stability you could install alternative power sources (for all i know maybe this is something like what's imagined for the finished version of WIP generator by the hole). i think it could be a lot of fun to have to manage space and run cables between different machines and interfaces. additionally, i've personally never actually bothered messing with breakers to increase efficiency or reduce power consumption because i think it's too abstract of a benefit and too inconvenient to really bother managing in real time. i just tr.check regularly and tend to them while i'm doing hashcode runs or whatever. i think limited space and your willingness to stuff the base with loud, ugly machines or even just deciding how to use a limited number of electrical outlets would be a much more interesting resource to juggle for operating capacity/speed. deciding if i want to have lights off to make the signal processes run slightly faster is mostly just an inconvenience. i get that it contributes atmospherically, efficiency at the cost of comfort, but beyond that imo shutting down entire functions of the signal station just to make one run slightly faster, only to have to go turn the other one back one once you need it in like 2 minutes is not an interesting form of resource management, especially when you can just not. to be clear, i think maintaining transformers as a ticking clock to force you out of the base is good, but managing the breaker switches for energy efficiency or operating speed is a system i never engage with and don't find to be an interesting extension of power management. "i wish i had to maintain transformers less" is a problem i never really felt like i had and it's better solved by stability upgrades anyways. "i don't need X so i'll turn it off so Y runs faster" doesn't make sense to me because when i'm at the signal desk at all i usually have all the terminals doing something. maybe this is all a me thing though, maybe everyone else swears by breaker management and only ever needs one thing at a time idk.
- playing through 0.7 story, one thing i kept thinking was "wouldn't it be fucked up if i heard the drone pulling in and then it wasn't the drone?" especially with the new gifts kel can receive from their colleagues, i think a great scare would be to go "wait, i didn't order anything" and then be met with a surprise much less pleasant than fancy sushi. won't say anything more specific but i think it would be a good familiar cue to hijack.
- somewhat related to the previous idea, it would be cool if events could hijack or shutdown some of the custom things like the tvs and radio, or for that matter, if there was a specific event that overrode them with something spooky. when i'm playing votv i use the tv and radio to try and fill empty air. i tend to quite like a repetitive mundane task, games like papers please, or indeed catching, downloading and processing completely normal asteroid #476, but eventually i'm going to need something to put on in the background. i tried not to load up either with anything too ridiculously immersion breaking, though i've got my fair share of silly things on my tv and radio alike, i tried to keep them thematically relevant or at least plausibly a radio or television broadcast. all this to say that ultimately even if i'm just using it to fill air, filling air provides comfort. i'm aware that i'm in control of the buttons i press and deliberately putting silly things in a game with scary things might involve those things clashing, but votv is also a silly game and i like having both. i think letting you have fun silly things and then taking them away to instill fear is i think one of the things this game does best. a particular random event that got me REALLY bad when it happened to me was the game very literally spontaneously taking all of the comfort out of a familiar environment. even something as simple as just shutting them off or having them only pick up static while an event is happening would be cool, and again an event that specifically plays something spooky through them or otherwise renders them a threat without warning would create an air of distrust around something otherwise pleasant that i think would be neat too. tldr make feddy fazbear yell through the tv at 3 am (not clickbaait)