Post by Vivian Mochi in Outer Belt Industries comments

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Thanks so much for the feedback! I love your idea of having a place to see what's planned, I'll try to get a roadmap up! At the very least, if it exists in another factory-building game, I'd like it to exist here too. That goes for filtered tubes, I just haven't finished them yet :P

Tubes are also very bare-bones at the moment. In your pictures, the Port and Pump are taking from each other endlessly. For now, you can fix this by making the Port into a Pump, but expect a massive tube rework soon! Also, your idea for a Router is actually exactly what I'm working on, I'm just trying to get the resource selection UI to make sense.

I also like your idea of a mining drone. I agree that I'd like to flesh out the expansion process overall to make it less convoluted.

There is a way to deal with the enemies on other asteroids, but it's in Tech 4. For now, just don't research Tech 3 Labs until you're ready to defend; the enemy doesn't spread until then :)

Thanks for bearing with these early versions and getting me some great feedback! <3

Taklu3 years ago (2 edits)

maybe it's just based on the amount of research done though xD

Once you get familiar with what you need to do it's kind of easier to prep for the second asteroid though. It really should be tailored so that first-time playing can get to and make it feel fluid though.

I think the crystals should be kind of a later-game nemesis. You already have normal asteroids kind of saying hey you're going to need a defense to keep your base sustainable, but it's forgiving as you can just rebuild it. Maybe push the longer scan range to T3 Tech and have a near hit kind of warning of newer asteroid types to kind of prep the player. Maybe make it so they can only spread to new asteroids after they fully infest an asteroid.

I'm kind of thinking of it as a progression mechanic. T1 you're first setting up and learning the mechanics. T2 Discover your surroundings, allow interaction with other asteroids without being able to settle on them. T3 can be for settling and handling the development on other asteroids. You can set up a timer or something for the Crystals at T3. T4 is for dealing with how to purify the other asteroids. It does feel like they are rushed because you aren't prepared in any way for them.

I dunno just my opinion around toning it down in a thematic phase. It might be easier to think of what would be in each Tier of the tech tree this way also. Give something new to do in each step, but don't put too much new stuff all at once. People that want a challenge can speed run it all and people that like a relaxing game won't feel as pressured going at the pace they feel comfortable going.

You likely have much more planned out for the game than I'm probably capable of seeing. I'm only commenting on what I've been able to see of the game and the way it feels for me. Stuff like Lore or how it's packaged is kind of tough to see from the outside. Lore and thematics in my opinion is a great way to space interaction and events for the player to grasp what's going on step by step.

Vivian Mochi3 years ago (1 edit)

OH! You're still on version 0.1.0, you should download the most recent update!

I really like your idea of thinking of the Tech levels in terms of stages. The crystals are DEFINITELY meant to be a late game thing, with the meteors being the earlier game equivalent, so I'll rebalance around those concepts!

Taklu3 years ago (4 edits) (+1)

that was my bad, thought I did update it. I did think it was odd that build was still shown as 0.1 in game. It was giving me a file is still in use when I tried to delete the folder. Not sure what was hanging though. 0.1.1 might of fixed that though.

Game feels so much better.

Taklu3 years ago (9 edits)

wanting to update some things I found while playing

T2 Tech randomly hangs while there is sufficient power for it saying Duration to be 000.0

Certain cases where you get a trade set up going requiring 100-200 O2 for each trade is kind of a monster amount, 60 felt like a comfortable amount. I get the premise, but this slows down the game and creates an unnecessary amount of silver in the process.

I started with 4 Rock/Gold asteroids near me while I was exploring out. Kind of bad RNG probably, but this kind of comes to question how your map generation is. Evenly distributing the Resource types is kind of important. You have 4 asteroid types, I believe, viable 8 though. Which is perfect to utilize the Four colors theorem in map region marking. Ice... Ice.. where is the Ice?

I have accidentally turned my starting Hub into a Relay multiple times now. This kind of brings the interesting point of safety measures to prevent such accidents. Configuring should do a check to make sure you have at least 1 other Hub/HQ before allowing you to change it to a relay.

Also would like to see a snap camera to the sun's axis. So that it be easy to see the best spots for solar panels early on. Maybe this would prove moot if you plan to implement rotation around the sun or stats to see the efficiency of solar panels.

I had Muted the game and put the computer to sleep and I am not getting sound after trying to unmute the game.

I plan to update you as I spend the next couple of days colonizing the system.

Vivian Mochi3 years ago

Glad that the game is starting to feel better! :D

Some of these things that you've found aren't actually bugs, but rather poorly explained mechanics (the lab duration and oxygen costs). I agree that the oxygen costs are getting WAY big, but it depends on the gravity of the asteroid you're launching from. You can always hover over a cost/stat to see the formula used to calculate it! Try that with the Tech 2 duration and see if you can figure it out :P

Asteroid gen is still very unbalanced, so I apologize for the bad RNG. Also, ice can be found in asteroids far from the sun. You might need to get some scan and launch range upgrades!

I'll fix the hub->relay issue in the next patch, sorry about that! There are some other things that I'll put safeguards on in the future too.

I have an idea for your solar efficiency problem, stay tuned :P

The mute issue I'll look into, but if it's an issue of the game running >24 hours, it won't be an issue when saving/loading is done.

Thanks for keeping me updated with stuff you find!

Taklu3 years ago (3 edits)

I just kind of completely forgot and for whatever reason didn't take the aspect of the description "Utilize Light to further science" literally Facepalm. So basically the 000.0 is when it's not getting hit by the sun.

As for the O2 cost. I think the number should be tweaked, I would point to thinking of real-world example, comparing the escape velocity of Ceres and how Ceres would be classified in the game if there was an asteroid of it's scale. I was gonna do a whole speel on Tsiolkovsky's Rocket Equation too for the usage of fuel, but it would take some time for me to get the math right. Real-World examples are pretty useful and I'm not really questioning the math you put in already. I was just saying it takes quite a bit of time to generate that O2 needed and it creates a side product that isn't consumed at the same rate as O2. I also don't think Gravity should be solely dependent on what's in the ground, but the accumulative of the Ground+Storage; 1 Glass=10 Rocks Etc.

I also derped thinking Rocket Range was referring to the Lasers.

Chalk it up to me not putting 2 and 2 together though.

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