Backpack building should be less efficient
Under Consideration
I put this comment in another thread and figured it should reside in feedback of its own.
Simply put, if backpack building remains a thing, then it should be less efficient than building in base machinery. For example, building via backpack should take something akin to 1.25-1.5 more raw materials than creating them first in a base machine.
Backpack building is space magic already, there should be some incentive for users to use a gearforge, for example. As it stands now they're equivalent so making anything via gearforge first is kind of pointless.
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I think backpack building (BB) itself does not need to be nerfed. This might sounds like the opposite of what we have discussed in this topic, but bear with me for a moment :)
We often mix together several different concepts and features when discussing BB feature.
"Start With Nothing" (SWN) and BB are two separate things. SWN, on the other hand, can be achieved in countless other ways without having a mini factory in your backpack.
The same goes for beginner friendliness, often portrayed as what BB is meant to improve. The game being easy to understand for a new player does not necessarily mean that mining and production systems should be designed around the first five minutes of gameplay. Those systems should ultimately be designed for the people who will play the game for hundreds of hours. Beginners can be introduced to them through tutorials and campaigns. They will still not buy the game if the people who actually play it for hundreds of hours end up hating those systems and writing bad reviews about them.
There are also several other things currently making the early game much easier than it probably should be.
The jetpack is ridiculously overpowered, especially on planets. You basically have a battery-powered ion jetpack that lets you fly around in gravity with the precision of a small drone.
Inventory space is also way too generous. I understand that some level of "compression" is necessary for gameplay. We can build a spaceship in a few minutes, so it makes sense to have a much larger carrying capacity than would be realistic, otherwise we would spend half the game walking back and forth to retrieve components. But there is a limit. The current capacity is simply too generous from the very beginning.
Clearly, many survival aspects are simply not done yet. What we have now feels more like a quick setup that allows us to test other game systems without wasting too much time on basic survival tasks. That makes sense in the current state of the game.
I think the developers should communicate this more clearly, though. Otherwise, we end up with a situation where players look at the current mechanics and assume this is what the final game is supposed to look like.
Then you get the usual back-and-forth arguments between people who are frustrated with the current systems and people defending the current meta.
The second camp is made up of the annoying "white knights": people who will defend the developers' decisions no matter how bad they are, and people who simply remember many poorly implemented mechanics from the original game and would rather accept the new approach than see those old annoyances blindly ported over.
Think about things like stone cluttering inventories, excessive waiting times for refining, or poor performance caused by that. None of those things were inherently bad because of the underlying game mechanics. They could have been fixed, improved, or changed in many different ways instead of simply removing the mechanics themselves.
Now back to the topic.
First, the suit as a whole should be modular.
The 3D printer for BB as well as backpack, jetpack, helmet, armor, parachute, boots, exoskeleton and so on should all be separate modules. I don't think we should debate whether you spawn with a suit or without one. The more interesting question is which modules you actually have equipped when you respawn.
Once you separate these things, it becomes even more obvious that backpack building should not be tied to SWN. If you can start without the backpack or 3D printer, you are immediately soft-locked if backpack building is the only way to handle SWN. Having a 3D printer in your "pocket" is basically equivalent to spawning with a starter base every time. The argument Deon have. And I am 100% agree with him. At this point, why not starting with a small base or components to build one? It is the same in principle as having the free magic box in your pocket but at least less fantasy-like.
Why would an engineer spawn with an advanced technological suit containing with all modules, together with tools of the same tier they had when they died, out of Survival Kit block you can build with basic components?
I see all of this as temporary convenience rather than something that necessarily belongs in the final survival loop.
The same applies to the value of the engineer's life.
In SE1, nobody really cared about dying until relatively recently with the food and environmental hazards. Even then, death still has very few consequences, especially in the beginning when you don't have any buffs and more likely to die due to starvation or other hazards. Moreover. you will intentionally kill yourself to scout asteroids, save GPS points in your "soul" and return to your ship without making the trip back. Or infamous suicide as a teleportation technique.
Something needs to make the engineer's life more valuable, starting from the very beginning.
Starting on Verdure in a temperate biome is quite safe. You can survive without a suit or some if its moduels. Compare that to starting in outer space, where you immediately need a suit, power and tools. These two environments are fundamentally different.
You simply cannot make it possible to SWN in space with radiation, lack of oxygen and constant need for heating, without inevitably making Verdure start trivial and boring.
SWN needs an environment that actually supports it.
You could deviate slightly from the safe temperate start. For example, starting in a desert would already create much more extreme initial survival conditions. In that context, a 3D printer and backpack building would be something you earn rather than something you are given for free together with infinite respawns.
If you die, you could respawn somewhere far away from where you were. That's punishing, but it makes your life matter. Suddenly having a proper shelter, a power source, and progress to use drones, craft additional suit modules becomes much more valuable and meaningful.
And what exactly is the Survival Kit anyway? I understand the healing and gas/energy refueling functions, although I would personally separate those into different blocks. But why should it be responsible for respawning you?
If we want respawning to make sense in the world, we need some kind of facility capable of producing a new engineer body and supplying it with the necessary resources. It could be expensive to build and operate.
When you respawn, you could automatically equip the suit modules, tools and consumables you were using when you died, provided those items are available in the inventory connected to the respawn facility.
Yes, that's more punishing. But it also gives you a reason to progress. Making your life easier and safer becomes actual progression instead of something you simply get for free.
So how do you actually start "naked" on Verdure?
First of all, I don't think this should necessarily be the default game mode for beginners. Even with the current overpowered systems, SWN is probably not for everyone.
Some players will absolutely love discovering the game this way because they enjoy survival games. For many, there is the campaign/tutorial that gradually introduces the mechanics before they jump into a free sandbox survival game.
Before we discuss SWN it is worth mentioning that it is also not necessarily the only option for free sandbox survival.
Verdure is not an empty planet, just like Almagest is not an empty star system.
You could start at an NPC station with a small amount of money and buy your first ship. From there you can progress however you want. And ofc you don't necessarily have to follow the traditional mining and production path.
But let's say you really want the full SWN experience. You don't want to interact with NPCs and want to survive completely on your own.
I don't think SE needs a complicated "collect sticks and stones" or "punch a tree" type of start, nor does it need an overpowered factory in your backpack.
You are alone, but the planet can still have old abandoned outposts.
Spawn a few damaged grids around the starting area. Not too close, not too far. No GPS markers. You have to actually explore, look around and walk from one hill to another. You should be able to spot one roughly within five minutes of the gameplay.
You can still have some basic hazards even on a relatively safe planet. Cold nights, lack of food and so on.
Inside any of those abandoned outposts you can always find a basic grinder and welder. Now you can start salvaging.
Your first goals are simple: find some food and create a shelter.
A shelter doesn't have to be complicated. Close the doors, regulate the temperature and survive the night.
You might not find everything you need at the first site. The outposts can be damaged, without power or missing important components. So you collect what you can, grind down whatever is useful and move on.
You should probably be able to survive the first night without a shelter, but take significant damage from the cold. Eventually you collect enough components to seal a small room, provide power and install the necessary ventilation. Maybe you repair an existing outpost, maybe you build your own.
Once you have shelter, you can start working on sustainable power, adding wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.
Food packs found as loot should be enough to keep you going initially. You don't want to spend a lot of time searching for food., this is rather annoying. Looted food packs should last long enough for you to eventually establish some way of producing your own.
If you don't have enough components for additional power, you have a couple of options. Build a smelter if you have enough power to operate it and recycle some materials, or keep exploring until you find what you need.
Once you have enough power and basic production, you can build a Gear Forge and make your first drill, assuming you didn't find one as loot.
Only now can you properly mine raw resources and refine them using a real production setup.
And only now can you start crafting additional suit modules, including the 3D printer.
This is where I think backpack building actually shines.
Once you have a 3D printer, it becomes much more convenient to quickly build simple structures, interiors, small vehicles, drones and similar things without micromanaging dozens of individual components.
I would actually argue that we should add back more recipes to backpack building we used to have before, but have it work with filaments (if you dislike term "ingots") rather than "dirt".
Now it is no longer an overpowered replacement for the entire production chain. It has a proper purpose.
It is a convenient small-scale construction tool.
This is already how I use backpack building most of the time and I believe you all do. Don't tell me you build even steel plates in your smelter. You continue using BB for all sorts of small things with iron without bothering to come back and mess with the smelter. I use it for structures, interiors, decorations, small armor sections with the area welder and beyond. And it's OK. Don't lie you don't like it.
It is convenient and it makes sense, as long as we have proper refining and actual raw ores in the game. I can interpret it as another gameplay "compression": although the 3D printer is slow irl, we don't want to WAIT in video game. So no, making BB less efficient might be actually bad.
The problem starts when we try to use backpack building as the foundation of SWN.
That is what creates most of the problems we have been discussing in this topic and many related ones. You can make the BB less efficient, increase its power consumption or remove more recipes, but those changes don't address the fundamental issue. We have a simplistic system to solve SWN while the much more important systems, that you will engage with through the entire game, lose credibility, oversimplified and boring, while at the same time are even more confusing.
I also never liked the idea that you can start with nothing and build a helicopter out of dirt within five minutes. Maybe someone likes this, but I really don't feel like it has something to do with engineering and what this game is about. You have to have more reasons to design and build grids, such as proper production setups, in order to progress, not less. Like, why do you even want to build a gearforge if you have tools for free, even if you die? To upgrade a drill to tier 2? Who cares? You want a drill block asap anyway. Marginally better tier2 2 drill won't do much for you.
Finding an almost finished helicopter during a tutorial mission is perfectly fine tho. It can teach you how the game works and give you something almost finished to work with.
But in a free sandbox SWN scenario, I think you should actually have to play the game before you can manufacture turbine blades, motors and electronics.
And you might not even need that helicopter or drone yet if you can simply fly around with an overpowered jetpack while carrying eight tons of cargo.
That's why I think a proper SWN scenario should start without a jetpack module. You craft your first jetpack later and it feels like an achievement.
The backpack could also provide less storage than it does now. If you are carrying too much weight, you shouldn't be able to fly normally. You could still use the jetpack to dampen your fall and avoid fall damage, or escape from a hole, but if you're carrying a huge load you would first have to dump most of it.
A more powerful jetpack can exist, but you have to progress to get it.
Exoskeletons could improve movement and carrying capacity, eventually bringing you closer to the eight-ton capacity we have today.
Again, earn it rather than getting it for free in the very early game.
SWN is absolutely possible in this game, and I think it can actually be more interesting for beginners as well, without giving the player a ridiculously overpowered suit full of advanced technology from the first second.
And this is why I don't think backpack building needs to be nerfed.
It needs to be earned and given a proper role throughout the game instead of being used as the solution for SWN.
For the initial tutorial, you don't even need mining to teach the player how to build things. Give them two damaged helicopters and ask them to finish one using parts from the other. This teaches grinding, salvaging and construction while also fitting naturally into the SWN concept.
You could find components inside abandoned grids and cargo containers instead of immediately mining "ore" and turning it into everything you need.
Mining and proper refining can then become an important part of the mid and late game.
Of course, we shouldn't simply copy all the problems from SE1. There were plenty of issues with its mining and production systems.
Fix those systems instead of removing and oversimplifying the gameplay where it actually matters most.
The backpack building system doesn't need to be made less efficient.
It needs to stop being the thing that carries the entire SWN experience.
I think backpack building (BB) itself does not need to be nerfed. This might sounds like the opposite of what we have discussed in this topic, but bear with me for a moment :)
We often mix together several different concepts and features when discussing BB feature.
"Start With Nothing" (SWN) and BB are two separate things. SWN, on the other hand, can be achieved in countless other ways without having a mini factory in your backpack.
The same goes for beginner friendliness, often portrayed as what BB is meant to improve. The game being easy to understand for a new player does not necessarily mean that mining and production systems should be designed around the first five minutes of gameplay. Those systems should ultimately be designed for the people who will play the game for hundreds of hours. Beginners can be introduced to them through tutorials and campaigns. They will still not buy the game if the people who actually play it for hundreds of hours end up hating those systems and writing bad reviews about them.
There are also several other things currently making the early game much easier than it probably should be.
The jetpack is ridiculously overpowered, especially on planets. You basically have a battery-powered ion jetpack that lets you fly around in gravity with the precision of a small drone.
Inventory space is also way too generous. I understand that some level of "compression" is necessary for gameplay. We can build a spaceship in a few minutes, so it makes sense to have a much larger carrying capacity than would be realistic, otherwise we would spend half the game walking back and forth to retrieve components. But there is a limit. The current capacity is simply too generous from the very beginning.
Clearly, many survival aspects are simply not done yet. What we have now feels more like a quick setup that allows us to test other game systems without wasting too much time on basic survival tasks. That makes sense in the current state of the game.
I think the developers should communicate this more clearly, though. Otherwise, we end up with a situation where players look at the current mechanics and assume this is what the final game is supposed to look like.
Then you get the usual back-and-forth arguments between people who are frustrated with the current systems and people defending the current meta.
The second camp is made up of the annoying "white knights": people who will defend the developers' decisions no matter how bad they are, and people who simply remember many poorly implemented mechanics from the original game and would rather accept the new approach than see those old annoyances blindly ported over.
Think about things like stone cluttering inventories, excessive waiting times for refining, or poor performance caused by that. None of those things were inherently bad because of the underlying game mechanics. They could have been fixed, improved, or changed in many different ways instead of simply removing the mechanics themselves.
Now back to the topic.
First, the suit as a whole should be modular.
The 3D printer for BB as well as backpack, jetpack, helmet, armor, parachute, boots, exoskeleton and so on should all be separate modules. I don't think we should debate whether you spawn with a suit or without one. The more interesting question is which modules you actually have equipped when you respawn.
Once you separate these things, it becomes even more obvious that backpack building should not be tied to SWN. If you can start without the backpack or 3D printer, you are immediately soft-locked if backpack building is the only way to handle SWN. Having a 3D printer in your "pocket" is basically equivalent to spawning with a starter base every time. The argument Deon have. And I am 100% agree with him. At this point, why not starting with a small base or components to build one? It is the same in principle as having the free magic box in your pocket but at least less fantasy-like.
Why would an engineer spawn with an advanced technological suit containing with all modules, together with tools of the same tier they had when they died, out of Survival Kit block you can build with basic components?
I see all of this as temporary convenience rather than something that necessarily belongs in the final survival loop.
The same applies to the value of the engineer's life.
In SE1, nobody really cared about dying until relatively recently with the food and environmental hazards. Even then, death still has very few consequences, especially in the beginning when you don't have any buffs and more likely to die due to starvation or other hazards. Moreover. you will intentionally kill yourself to scout asteroids, save GPS points in your "soul" and return to your ship without making the trip back. Or infamous suicide as a teleportation technique.
Something needs to make the engineer's life more valuable, starting from the very beginning.
Starting on Verdure in a temperate biome is quite safe. You can survive without a suit or some if its moduels. Compare that to starting in outer space, where you immediately need a suit, power and tools. These two environments are fundamentally different.
You simply cannot make it possible to SWN in space with radiation, lack of oxygen and constant need for heating, without inevitably making Verdure start trivial and boring.
SWN needs an environment that actually supports it.
You could deviate slightly from the safe temperate start. For example, starting in a desert would already create much more extreme initial survival conditions. In that context, a 3D printer and backpack building would be something you earn rather than something you are given for free together with infinite respawns.
If you die, you could respawn somewhere far away from where you were. That's punishing, but it makes your life matter. Suddenly having a proper shelter, a power source, and progress to use drones, craft additional suit modules becomes much more valuable and meaningful.
And what exactly is the Survival Kit anyway? I understand the healing and gas/energy refueling functions, although I would personally separate those into different blocks. But why should it be responsible for respawning you?
If we want respawning to make sense in the world, we need some kind of facility capable of producing a new engineer body and supplying it with the necessary resources. It could be expensive to build and operate.
When you respawn, you could automatically equip the suit modules, tools and consumables you were using when you died, provided those items are available in the inventory connected to the respawn facility.
Yes, that's more punishing. But it also gives you a reason to progress. Making your life easier and safer becomes actual progression instead of something you simply get for free.
So how do you actually start "naked" on Verdure?
First of all, I don't think this should necessarily be the default game mode for beginners. Even with the current overpowered systems, SWN is probably not for everyone.
Some players will absolutely love discovering the game this way because they enjoy survival games. For many, there is the campaign/tutorial that gradually introduces the mechanics before they jump into a free sandbox survival game.
Before we discuss SWN it is worth mentioning that it is also not necessarily the only option for free sandbox survival.
Verdure is not an empty planet, just like Almagest is not an empty star system.
You could start at an NPC station with a small amount of money and buy your first ship. From there you can progress however you want. And ofc you don't necessarily have to follow the traditional mining and production path.
But let's say you really want the full SWN experience. You don't want to interact with NPCs and want to survive completely on your own.
I don't think SE needs a complicated "collect sticks and stones" or "punch a tree" type of start, nor does it need an overpowered factory in your backpack.
You are alone, but the planet can still have old abandoned outposts.
Spawn a few damaged grids around the starting area. Not too close, not too far. No GPS markers. You have to actually explore, look around and walk from one hill to another. You should be able to spot one roughly within five minutes of the gameplay.
You can still have some basic hazards even on a relatively safe planet. Cold nights, lack of food and so on.
Inside any of those abandoned outposts you can always find a basic grinder and welder. Now you can start salvaging.
Your first goals are simple: find some food and create a shelter.
A shelter doesn't have to be complicated. Close the doors, regulate the temperature and survive the night.
You might not find everything you need at the first site. The outposts can be damaged, without power or missing important components. So you collect what you can, grind down whatever is useful and move on.
You should probably be able to survive the first night without a shelter, but take significant damage from the cold. Eventually you collect enough components to seal a small room, provide power and install the necessary ventilation. Maybe you repair an existing outpost, maybe you build your own.
Once you have shelter, you can start working on sustainable power, adding wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.
Food packs found as loot should be enough to keep you going initially. You don't want to spend a lot of time searching for food., this is rather annoying. Looted food packs should last long enough for you to eventually establish some way of producing your own.
If you don't have enough components for additional power, you have a couple of options. Build a smelter if you have enough power to operate it and recycle some materials, or keep exploring until you find what you need.
Once you have enough power and basic production, you can build a Gear Forge and make your first drill, assuming you didn't find one as loot.
Only now can you properly mine raw resources and refine them using a real production setup.
And only now can you start crafting additional suit modules, including the 3D printer.
This is where I think backpack building actually shines.
Once you have a 3D printer, it becomes much more convenient to quickly build simple structures, interiors, small vehicles, drones and similar things without micromanaging dozens of individual components.
I would actually argue that we should add back more recipes to backpack building we used to have before, but have it work with filaments (if you dislike term "ingots") rather than "dirt".
Now it is no longer an overpowered replacement for the entire production chain. It has a proper purpose.
It is a convenient small-scale construction tool.
This is already how I use backpack building most of the time and I believe you all do. Don't tell me you build even steel plates in your smelter. You continue using BB for all sorts of small things with iron without bothering to come back and mess with the smelter. I use it for structures, interiors, decorations, small armor sections with the area welder and beyond. And it's OK. Don't lie you don't like it.
It is convenient and it makes sense, as long as we have proper refining and actual raw ores in the game. I can interpret it as another gameplay "compression": although the 3D printer is slow irl, we don't want to WAIT in video game. So no, making BB less efficient might be actually bad.
The problem starts when we try to use backpack building as the foundation of SWN.
That is what creates most of the problems we have been discussing in this topic and many related ones. You can make the BB less efficient, increase its power consumption or remove more recipes, but those changes don't address the fundamental issue. We have a simplistic system to solve SWN while the much more important systems, that you will engage with through the entire game, lose credibility, oversimplified and boring, while at the same time are even more confusing.
I also never liked the idea that you can start with nothing and build a helicopter out of dirt within five minutes. Maybe someone likes this, but I really don't feel like it has something to do with engineering and what this game is about. You have to have more reasons to design and build grids, such as proper production setups, in order to progress, not less. Like, why do you even want to build a gearforge if you have tools for free, even if you die? To upgrade a drill to tier 2? Who cares? You want a drill block asap anyway. Marginally better tier2 2 drill won't do much for you.
Finding an almost finished helicopter during a tutorial mission is perfectly fine tho. It can teach you how the game works and give you something almost finished to work with.
But in a free sandbox SWN scenario, I think you should actually have to play the game before you can manufacture turbine blades, motors and electronics.
And you might not even need that helicopter or drone yet if you can simply fly around with an overpowered jetpack while carrying eight tons of cargo.
That's why I think a proper SWN scenario should start without a jetpack module. You craft your first jetpack later and it feels like an achievement.
The backpack could also provide less storage than it does now. If you are carrying too much weight, you shouldn't be able to fly normally. You could still use the jetpack to dampen your fall and avoid fall damage, or escape from a hole, but if you're carrying a huge load you would first have to dump most of it.
A more powerful jetpack can exist, but you have to progress to get it.
Exoskeletons could improve movement and carrying capacity, eventually bringing you closer to the eight-ton capacity we have today.
Again, earn it rather than getting it for free in the very early game.
SWN is absolutely possible in this game, and I think it can actually be more interesting for beginners as well, without giving the player a ridiculously overpowered suit full of advanced technology from the first second.
And this is why I don't think backpack building needs to be nerfed.
It needs to be earned and given a proper role throughout the game instead of being used as the solution for SWN.
For the initial tutorial, you don't even need mining to teach the player how to build things. Give them two damaged helicopters and ask them to finish one using parts from the other. This teaches grinding, salvaging and construction while also fitting naturally into the SWN concept.
You could find components inside abandoned grids and cargo containers instead of immediately mining "ore" and turning it into everything you need.
Mining and proper refining can then become an important part of the mid and late game.
Of course, we shouldn't simply copy all the problems from SE1. There were plenty of issues with its mining and production systems.
Fix those systems instead of removing and oversimplifying the gameplay where it actually matters most.
The backpack building system doesn't need to be made less efficient.
It needs to stop being the thing that carries the entire SWN experience.
The end goal here is to give Space Engineers a choice between convenience and efficiency. Backpack is handy for 'just gotta get it done', but should take a lot more resources to do things, i.e. good for small patch work and quick fixes. Building something larger should encourage more pre-manufactured goods to take better advantage of the materials you go out and mine.
The end goal here is to give Space Engineers a choice between convenience and efficiency. Backpack is handy for 'just gotta get it done', but should take a lot more resources to do things, i.e. good for small patch work and quick fixes. Building something larger should encourage more pre-manufactured goods to take better advantage of the materials you go out and mine.
In my opinion backpack building should not even exist in this game unless second game wants to be RTX makeup to a shallow game mechanics with worse exploration and colonization than No Man's Sky yet demanding more resource than that game for what... This much convenience in the game is already don't need creative mode so what happened to the Space and its Engineer? All the (empty hopes&)Space but the Engineering. No point in engineering a proper base for ingot conversion. I'll never support this shallow "backpack building" mechanics. Might as well call it "Lego Space Engineers" at this point.
In my opinion backpack building should not even exist in this game unless second game wants to be RTX makeup to a shallow game mechanics with worse exploration and colonization than No Man's Sky yet demanding more resource than that game for what... This much convenience in the game is already don't need creative mode so what happened to the Space and its Engineer? All the (empty hopes&)Space but the Engineering. No point in engineering a proper base for ingot conversion. I'll never support this shallow "backpack building" mechanics. Might as well call it "Lego Space Engineers" at this point.
By backpack building, do you mean the ability to use raw ore, to make very advanced parts, which usally takes a machine to make? Because I do agree that mechanic is really OP.
My favorite thing in building games has to be the ability to use items and resources from storage while nearby or while its in the system of your base X-distance from player, or in the tubes made to feed resources to storage.
This should be used more in games where traveling from storage where you have the parts stored, then to the build over and over again to get it done. That kind of monotony I really find annoying, but I think we should have to build the parts from the forges or machinery instead of being able to build parts from raw unprocessed ore.
I do hope and feel like they are getting into the process of this ingame where it can be more of a reality in the game as it grows. Since SE2 is very early access, maybe they have the raw ore building as a system to help protect us as we play just in case we crash and have nothing around us to build with. But that might be wrong, idk. But this is a good topic to bring up!
By backpack building, do you mean the ability to use raw ore, to make very advanced parts, which usally takes a machine to make? Because I do agree that mechanic is really OP.
My favorite thing in building games has to be the ability to use items and resources from storage while nearby or while its in the system of your base X-distance from player, or in the tubes made to feed resources to storage.
This should be used more in games where traveling from storage where you have the parts stored, then to the build over and over again to get it done. That kind of monotony I really find annoying, but I think we should have to build the parts from the forges or machinery instead of being able to build parts from raw unprocessed ore.
I do hope and feel like they are getting into the process of this ingame where it can be more of a reality in the game as it grows. Since SE2 is very early access, maybe they have the raw ore building as a system to help protect us as we play just in case we crash and have nothing around us to build with. But that might be wrong, idk. But this is a good topic to bring up!
I agree.
I agree.
i agree. *edit* with the caveat that its not quite space magic... your inventory cant be FULL and still build items. i like that little nuance.* furthermore, i would like to see (when it gets added) the recycling of items suffer a similar penalty.
nothing is ever 100=100. so disassembly of blocks back into their component parts should suffer a loss of raw materials.
i agree. *edit* with the caveat that its not quite space magic... your inventory cant be FULL and still build items. i like that little nuance.* furthermore, i would like to see (when it gets added) the recycling of items suffer a similar penalty.
nothing is ever 100=100. so disassembly of blocks back into their component parts should suffer a loss of raw materials.
I agree, machines should be much better than backpack building, to encourage players to create machines, bases, or ships for manufacturing.
I agree, machines should be much better than backpack building, to encourage players to create machines, bases, or ships for manufacturing.
I have a very comprehensive suggestion regarding this topic.
The related topic:
https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/54718-proposal-backpack-levels-modules
I have a very comprehensive suggestion regarding this topic.
The related topic:
https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/54718-proposal-backpack-levels-modules
Maybe the backpack building should be tiered based on surroundings.
Like if you are in the middle of nowhere, and standing on top of just iron ore, the backpack building still costs the same amount of time and resources as though you put it through the entire production chain with only as though only the necessary machines exists. (Parallelism = 1)
If you build the necessary machines first but haven't built the items, the backpack defers to the machines, so they can be run in parallel. (Parallelism = number of nearby refiners + 1)
If you build the items in advance, but they are in storage or machines nearby they are used first. The game should support storing the larger parts, and removing them to storage (Eg installing something upside down should let you just pop it off, move and rotate it to where you want it and pop it back on), right now you are incurring a time penalty every time to deconstruct and reconstruct those parts.
Maybe the backpack building should be tiered based on surroundings.
Like if you are in the middle of nowhere, and standing on top of just iron ore, the backpack building still costs the same amount of time and resources as though you put it through the entire production chain with only as though only the necessary machines exists. (Parallelism = 1)
If you build the necessary machines first but haven't built the items, the backpack defers to the machines, so they can be run in parallel. (Parallelism = number of nearby refiners + 1)
If you build the items in advance, but they are in storage or machines nearby they are used first. The game should support storing the larger parts, and removing them to storage (Eg installing something upside down should let you just pop it off, move and rotate it to where you want it and pop it back on), right now you are incurring a time penalty every time to deconstruct and reconstruct those parts.
Honestly, I really like backpack building because of its convenience (and because I feel like crafting sub parts of sub parts of blocks is kind of just a waste of time, without much fun around it, especially when it's just automatically done by a smelter/assembler and has no routing/recipe interest to it, like in Satisfactory, Factorio or Minecraft), but I understand it is currently a little overpowered, and I honestly think your solution is genius. This is probably the best way, game design wise, of making the whole production line be relevant, while maintaining the convenience of backpack building.
Honestly, I really like backpack building because of its convenience (and because I feel like crafting sub parts of sub parts of blocks is kind of just a waste of time, without much fun around it, especially when it's just automatically done by a smelter/assembler and has no routing/recipe interest to it, like in Satisfactory, Factorio or Minecraft), but I understand it is currently a little overpowered, and I honestly think your solution is genius. This is probably the best way, game design wise, of making the whole production line be relevant, while maintaining the convenience of backpack building.
I totally see the vision of backpack building as an easy way to start.
While some penalty like less efficiency would make a lot of sense, I think it does not help the early game much.
Imo, the obvious choice would be to make components more "compact". Leave the ore cost the same regardless of refining method, but allow us to carry about twice the amount of components as compared to raw ores.
This would allow for more interesting engineering decisions, such as considering on-site refining for certain materials.
I totally see the vision of backpack building as an easy way to start.
While some penalty like less efficiency would make a lot of sense, I think it does not help the early game much.
Imo, the obvious choice would be to make components more "compact". Leave the ore cost the same regardless of refining method, but allow us to carry about twice the amount of components as compared to raw ores.
This would allow for more interesting engineering decisions, such as considering on-site refining for certain materials.
I like to use backpack building but not for what it is used today. I think welding simple structure blocks like armor, beams or interiors with your hand welder using a single simple resource like iron is a very good idea.
BUT
The way it is implemented in the game right now is far from ideal.
First, early game progression. I don't think it is a good idea to avoid soft locks at all costs. I can see how starting without a backpack building module can open up a lot of interesting scenarios for missions and early game, where you can't skip all the constraints by just building a fully-fledged factory nearby, starting from nothing. I also don't share the idea that backpack building is there to simplify the game for new players. Starting with building is not good for the new players at all. They are better at progressing through early tutorials and missions and craft their first backpack building module or smelter in progress. By dropping a new player in the middle of nowhere, asking them to build their way from the dirt into space is a very hard thing anyway, building is way harder than crafting components in one way or another.
Then, let's talk about backpack efficiency. As I have mentioned already, I like the convenience of backpack building when it comes to welding simple structures, interiors, lights or decorations. If you make it slightly less efficient (consume more resources), that would not change much IMO other than making it more tedious with more frequent restocking for materials. I think a better solution would be energy consumption increase significantly if you use raw ore. You should be able to use smelter and grid energy to smelt raw ore into pure iron and then be able to carry even more with you for prolonged welding sessions. That would be a real benefit of having an early base setup rather than using a smelter to produce a dozen of different components and then micromanage them. Even if we had some sort of build planner from SE1, I would still prefer restocking with just one iron item and then build whatever I like and in whatever order. Of course, it applies only to building basic stuff.
For anything advanced, like building a jump drive or nuclear reactor, I don't think we should be able to do it with a hand welder at all.
I like to use backpack building but not for what it is used today. I think welding simple structure blocks like armor, beams or interiors with your hand welder using a single simple resource like iron is a very good idea.
BUT
The way it is implemented in the game right now is far from ideal.
First, early game progression. I don't think it is a good idea to avoid soft locks at all costs. I can see how starting without a backpack building module can open up a lot of interesting scenarios for missions and early game, where you can't skip all the constraints by just building a fully-fledged factory nearby, starting from nothing. I also don't share the idea that backpack building is there to simplify the game for new players. Starting with building is not good for the new players at all. They are better at progressing through early tutorials and missions and craft their first backpack building module or smelter in progress. By dropping a new player in the middle of nowhere, asking them to build their way from the dirt into space is a very hard thing anyway, building is way harder than crafting components in one way or another.
Then, let's talk about backpack efficiency. As I have mentioned already, I like the convenience of backpack building when it comes to welding simple structures, interiors, lights or decorations. If you make it slightly less efficient (consume more resources), that would not change much IMO other than making it more tedious with more frequent restocking for materials. I think a better solution would be energy consumption increase significantly if you use raw ore. You should be able to use smelter and grid energy to smelt raw ore into pure iron and then be able to carry even more with you for prolonged welding sessions. That would be a real benefit of having an early base setup rather than using a smelter to produce a dozen of different components and then micromanage them. Even if we had some sort of build planner from SE1, I would still prefer restocking with just one iron item and then build whatever I like and in whatever order. Of course, it applies only to building basic stuff.
For anything advanced, like building a jump drive or nuclear reactor, I don't think we should be able to do it with a hand welder at all.
I would still argue that the resource costs are the same, and the time costs are what should discourage using the backpack to build everything from raw materials. Like it is kinda weird that my ship is 5 meters away and I have 200 steel plates in it, but because I have 1000kg of iron in my inventory, it makes it from the iron rather than using the existing plates. If you start making the resource use less efficient, then you have a problem of backpack building, but you need to move something so you take it apart, and now you're short that material.
IMO, it should always be 1:1 except when damaged. However the only material that should be "backpack" built from raw materials are steel plates, and steel tubes, because the logic flows that these are just "one material". "Construction Component" on the other hand, implies it's something else. (For all intents let's just assume this is like, rivets or flanges, basically things that are still just iron parts) As long as it only required iron to make it, then the backpack can "make it". We can just imagine it being "Cut into place", like there ARE real laser steel cutters out there. Just they're 20000w and the size of a bus.
I would still argue that the resource costs are the same, and the time costs are what should discourage using the backpack to build everything from raw materials. Like it is kinda weird that my ship is 5 meters away and I have 200 steel plates in it, but because I have 1000kg of iron in my inventory, it makes it from the iron rather than using the existing plates. If you start making the resource use less efficient, then you have a problem of backpack building, but you need to move something so you take it apart, and now you're short that material.
IMO, it should always be 1:1 except when damaged. However the only material that should be "backpack" built from raw materials are steel plates, and steel tubes, because the logic flows that these are just "one material". "Construction Component" on the other hand, implies it's something else. (For all intents let's just assume this is like, rivets or flanges, basically things that are still just iron parts) As long as it only required iron to make it, then the backpack can "make it". We can just imagine it being "Cut into place", like there ARE real laser steel cutters out there. Just they're 20000w and the size of a bus.
I doubt there are many that want a realistic take on the backpack building, and I do agree with Keen in being a nice method to start building right away. But it feels weird having components like motors poof out of raw materials. Motors are a little to complex for a on your back 3d printer. Also there's still the lack of an incentive for making the components before hand. If you can make them at the same cost and the same time, why bother stocking up.
I kind of fancy a drone like system, but can't decide on a balanced implementation. On one hand it offers a progression having to upgrade your drone bay in order to have a better throughput for bigger builds, but on the other hand how would you start the base blocks needed to get everything started.
I doubt there are many that want a realistic take on the backpack building, and I do agree with Keen in being a nice method to start building right away. But it feels weird having components like motors poof out of raw materials. Motors are a little to complex for a on your back 3d printer. Also there's still the lack of an incentive for making the components before hand. If you can make them at the same cost and the same time, why bother stocking up.
I kind of fancy a drone like system, but can't decide on a balanced implementation. On one hand it offers a progression having to upgrade your drone bay in order to have a better throughput for bigger builds, but on the other hand how would you start the base blocks needed to get everything started.
After rethinking it a bit, I find a possible compromise approach could be limited backpack building, where ore needs to be refined at a separate smelter, but the player can still build from refined materials instead of components. A limited version of the smelter could go into the survival kit, bringing us closer to SE1. For instance, a version that would be only able to make filament for a 3D printer in the backpack. More advanced smelters would have the ability to make not only filament, but more complex parts and from a larger variety of materials.
The player would then have the option to either use pre-made components from an advanced smelter or print them in place from filament. As someone else has suggested, using the printer could come with a penalty in form of higher energy use and be slower. Overall, that would reintroduce the need for refining your materials at a base, but allow more flexibility in the field. In SE1, I had situations where I needed certain parts for repairs and had all sorts of parts on me, just not the needed ones. In those cases, a supply of filament could save the day without allowing the backpack to do it all.
After rethinking it a bit, I find a possible compromise approach could be limited backpack building, where ore needs to be refined at a separate smelter, but the player can still build from refined materials instead of components. A limited version of the smelter could go into the survival kit, bringing us closer to SE1. For instance, a version that would be only able to make filament for a 3D printer in the backpack. More advanced smelters would have the ability to make not only filament, but more complex parts and from a larger variety of materials.
The player would then have the option to either use pre-made components from an advanced smelter or print them in place from filament. As someone else has suggested, using the printer could come with a penalty in form of higher energy use and be slower. Overall, that would reintroduce the need for refining your materials at a base, but allow more flexibility in the field. In SE1, I had situations where I needed certain parts for repairs and had all sorts of parts on me, just not the needed ones. In those cases, a supply of filament could save the day without allowing the backpack to do it all.
It is currently less efficient to build with a backpack. The amount of ore you can store doesn't equal the same "resource" amount of steel plate.
It is currently less efficient to build with a backpack. The amount of ore you can store doesn't equal the same "resource" amount of steel plate.
When I play SE, I do not want it to feel like NMS. NMS has it's positives, but it is a a strong fantasy game, that panders to a simplistic form of game play. NMS is OK but it lacks a brain challenge.
Encouraging NMS players to migrate over to SE would have happened with SE1, if it was going to happen at all, the backpack will not do it for SE2. It is a deeper space game experience that SE offers the player.
The SE2 backpack attempts to address a steep learning curve for new players that was commented upon as problematic in SE1. From my own experience, SE1's learning curve was the result of gaps in pointing the player in the right direction. Learning tutorials require great care to get right and SE1 was a miss for many players, The bigger miss was, where does the vanilla game go after a few achievements. I believe that this factor(mid game) should not be brought low by the attempts ease players into the early game, this is where the backpack and the resource build chain in SE2 is failing for me.
The spawning start problem must be viewed from the perspective of players trying many different start options, each offering some uniqueness in challenge. From my own perspective, the re-spawn system itself is a compromise that I would like more game features from, but that subject is too contentious for many players.
I have started to get used to mining and welding directly from the backpack, it feels like cheating, a short cut that is removing game play experience as much as it is a convenience. When I am welding directly from mined material, I get the impression that I am using a garden hose to fill up a box that becomes a block thing, some cue is missing from the construction to make it feel like the physical component elements are being placed down, the build states and sounds help, and yet I still experience disbelief.
How is my backpack more efficient in flight than my ship engines ?
Can I not strap backpacks all over my ship to get it off the ground ?
When I play SE, I do not want it to feel like NMS. NMS has it's positives, but it is a a strong fantasy game, that panders to a simplistic form of game play. NMS is OK but it lacks a brain challenge.
Encouraging NMS players to migrate over to SE would have happened with SE1, if it was going to happen at all, the backpack will not do it for SE2. It is a deeper space game experience that SE offers the player.
The SE2 backpack attempts to address a steep learning curve for new players that was commented upon as problematic in SE1. From my own experience, SE1's learning curve was the result of gaps in pointing the player in the right direction. Learning tutorials require great care to get right and SE1 was a miss for many players, The bigger miss was, where does the vanilla game go after a few achievements. I believe that this factor(mid game) should not be brought low by the attempts ease players into the early game, this is where the backpack and the resource build chain in SE2 is failing for me.
The spawning start problem must be viewed from the perspective of players trying many different start options, each offering some uniqueness in challenge. From my own perspective, the re-spawn system itself is a compromise that I would like more game features from, but that subject is too contentious for many players.
I have started to get used to mining and welding directly from the backpack, it feels like cheating, a short cut that is removing game play experience as much as it is a convenience. When I am welding directly from mined material, I get the impression that I am using a garden hose to fill up a box that becomes a block thing, some cue is missing from the construction to make it feel like the physical component elements are being placed down, the build states and sounds help, and yet I still experience disbelief.
How is my backpack more efficient in flight than my ship engines ?
Can I not strap backpacks all over my ship to get it off the ground ?
I think backpack building (BB) itself does not need to be nerfed. This might sounds like the opposite of what we have discussed in this topic, but bear with me for a moment :)
We often mix together several different concepts and features when discussing BB feature.
"Start With Nothing" (SWN) and BB are two separate things. SWN, on the other hand, can be achieved in countless other ways without having a mini factory in your backpack.
The same goes for beginner friendliness, often portrayed as what BB is meant to improve. The game being easy to understand for a new player does not necessarily mean that mining and production systems should be designed around the first five minutes of gameplay. Those systems should ultimately be designed for the people who will play the game for hundreds of hours. Beginners can be introduced to them through tutorials and campaigns. They will still not buy the game if the people who actually play it for hundreds of hours end up hating those systems and writing bad reviews about them.
There are also several other things currently making the early game much easier than it probably should be.
The jetpack is ridiculously overpowered, especially on planets. You basically have a battery-powered ion jetpack that lets you fly around in gravity with the precision of a small drone.
Inventory space is also way too generous. I understand that some level of "compression" is necessary for gameplay. We can build a spaceship in a few minutes, so it makes sense to have a much larger carrying capacity than would be realistic, otherwise we would spend half the game walking back and forth to retrieve components. But there is a limit. The current capacity is simply too generous from the very beginning.
Clearly, many survival aspects are simply not done yet. What we have now feels more like a quick setup that allows us to test other game systems without wasting too much time on basic survival tasks. That makes sense in the current state of the game.
I think the developers should communicate this more clearly, though. Otherwise, we end up with a situation where players look at the current mechanics and assume this is what the final game is supposed to look like.
Then you get the usual back-and-forth arguments between people who are frustrated with the current systems and people defending the current meta.
The second camp is made up of the annoying "white knights": people who will defend the developers' decisions no matter how bad they are, and people who simply remember many poorly implemented mechanics from the original game and would rather accept the new approach than see those old annoyances blindly ported over.
Think about things like stone cluttering inventories, excessive waiting times for refining, or poor performance caused by that. None of those things were inherently bad because of the underlying game mechanics. They could have been fixed, improved, or changed in many different ways instead of simply removing the mechanics themselves.
Now back to the topic.
First, the suit as a whole should be modular.
The 3D printer for BB as well as backpack, jetpack, helmet, armor, parachute, boots, exoskeleton and so on should all be separate modules. I don't think we should debate whether you spawn with a suit or without one. The more interesting question is which modules you actually have equipped when you respawn.
Once you separate these things, it becomes even more obvious that backpack building should not be tied to SWN. If you can start without the backpack or 3D printer, you are immediately soft-locked if backpack building is the only way to handle SWN. Having a 3D printer in your "pocket" is basically equivalent to spawning with a starter base every time. The argument Deon have. And I am 100% agree with him. At this point, why not starting with a small base or components to build one? It is the same in principle as having the free magic box in your pocket but at least less fantasy-like.
Why would an engineer spawn with an advanced technological suit containing with all modules, together with tools of the same tier they had when they died, out of Survival Kit block you can build with basic components?
I see all of this as temporary convenience rather than something that necessarily belongs in the final survival loop.
The same applies to the value of the engineer's life.
In SE1, nobody really cared about dying until relatively recently with the food and environmental hazards. Even then, death still has very few consequences, especially in the beginning when you don't have any buffs and more likely to die due to starvation or other hazards. Moreover. you will intentionally kill yourself to scout asteroids, save GPS points in your "soul" and return to your ship without making the trip back. Or infamous suicide as a teleportation technique.
Something needs to make the engineer's life more valuable, starting from the very beginning.
Starting on Verdure in a temperate biome is quite safe. You can survive without a suit or some if its moduels. Compare that to starting in outer space, where you immediately need a suit, power and tools. These two environments are fundamentally different.
You simply cannot make it possible to SWN in space with radiation, lack of oxygen and constant need for heating, without inevitably making Verdure start trivial and boring.
SWN needs an environment that actually supports it.
You could deviate slightly from the safe temperate start. For example, starting in a desert would already create much more extreme initial survival conditions. In that context, a 3D printer and backpack building would be something you earn rather than something you are given for free together with infinite respawns.
If you die, you could respawn somewhere far away from where you were. That's punishing, but it makes your life matter. Suddenly having a proper shelter, a power source, and progress to use drones, craft additional suit modules becomes much more valuable and meaningful.
And what exactly is the Survival Kit anyway? I understand the healing and gas/energy refueling functions, although I would personally separate those into different blocks. But why should it be responsible for respawning you?
If we want respawning to make sense in the world, we need some kind of facility capable of producing a new engineer body and supplying it with the necessary resources. It could be expensive to build and operate.
When you respawn, you could automatically equip the suit modules, tools and consumables you were using when you died, provided those items are available in the inventory connected to the respawn facility.
Yes, that's more punishing. But it also gives you a reason to progress. Making your life easier and safer becomes actual progression instead of something you simply get for free.
So how do you actually start "naked" on Verdure?
First of all, I don't think this should necessarily be the default game mode for beginners. Even with the current overpowered systems, SWN is probably not for everyone.
Some players will absolutely love discovering the game this way because they enjoy survival games. For many, there is the campaign/tutorial that gradually introduces the mechanics before they jump into a free sandbox survival game.
Before we discuss SWN it is worth mentioning that it is also not necessarily the only option for free sandbox survival.
Verdure is not an empty planet, just like Almagest is not an empty star system.
You could start at an NPC station with a small amount of money and buy your first ship. From there you can progress however you want. And ofc you don't necessarily have to follow the traditional mining and production path.
But let's say you really want the full SWN experience. You don't want to interact with NPCs and want to survive completely on your own.
I don't think SE needs a complicated "collect sticks and stones" or "punch a tree" type of start, nor does it need an overpowered factory in your backpack.
You are alone, but the planet can still have old abandoned outposts.
Spawn a few damaged grids around the starting area. Not too close, not too far. No GPS markers. You have to actually explore, look around and walk from one hill to another. You should be able to spot one roughly within five minutes of the gameplay.
You can still have some basic hazards even on a relatively safe planet. Cold nights, lack of food and so on.
Inside any of those abandoned outposts you can always find a basic grinder and welder. Now you can start salvaging.
Your first goals are simple: find some food and create a shelter.
A shelter doesn't have to be complicated. Close the doors, regulate the temperature and survive the night.
You might not find everything you need at the first site. The outposts can be damaged, without power or missing important components. So you collect what you can, grind down whatever is useful and move on.
You should probably be able to survive the first night without a shelter, but take significant damage from the cold. Eventually you collect enough components to seal a small room, provide power and install the necessary ventilation. Maybe you repair an existing outpost, maybe you build your own.
Once you have shelter, you can start working on sustainable power, adding wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.
Food packs found as loot should be enough to keep you going initially. You don't want to spend a lot of time searching for food., this is rather annoying. Looted food packs should last long enough for you to eventually establish some way of producing your own.
If you don't have enough components for additional power, you have a couple of options. Build a smelter if you have enough power to operate it and recycle some materials, or keep exploring until you find what you need.
Once you have enough power and basic production, you can build a Gear Forge and make your first drill, assuming you didn't find one as loot.
Only now can you properly mine raw resources and refine them using a real production setup.
And only now can you start crafting additional suit modules, including the 3D printer.
This is where I think backpack building actually shines.
Once you have a 3D printer, it becomes much more convenient to quickly build simple structures, interiors, small vehicles, drones and similar things without micromanaging dozens of individual components.
I would actually argue that we should add back more recipes to backpack building we used to have before, but have it work with filaments (if you dislike term "ingots") rather than "dirt".
Now it is no longer an overpowered replacement for the entire production chain. It has a proper purpose.
It is a convenient small-scale construction tool.
This is already how I use backpack building most of the time and I believe you all do. Don't tell me you build even steel plates in your smelter. You continue using BB for all sorts of small things with iron without bothering to come back and mess with the smelter. I use it for structures, interiors, decorations, small armor sections with the area welder and beyond. And it's OK. Don't lie you don't like it.
It is convenient and it makes sense, as long as we have proper refining and actual raw ores in the game. I can interpret it as another gameplay "compression": although the 3D printer is slow irl, we don't want to WAIT in video game. So no, making BB less efficient might be actually bad.
The problem starts when we try to use backpack building as the foundation of SWN.
That is what creates most of the problems we have been discussing in this topic and many related ones. You can make the BB less efficient, increase its power consumption or remove more recipes, but those changes don't address the fundamental issue. We have a simplistic system to solve SWN while the much more important systems, that you will engage with through the entire game, lose credibility, oversimplified and boring, while at the same time are even more confusing.
I also never liked the idea that you can start with nothing and build a helicopter out of dirt within five minutes. Maybe someone likes this, but I really don't feel like it has something to do with engineering and what this game is about. You have to have more reasons to design and build grids, such as proper production setups, in order to progress, not less. Like, why do you even want to build a gearforge if you have tools for free, even if you die? To upgrade a drill to tier 2? Who cares? You want a drill block asap anyway. Marginally better tier2 2 drill won't do much for you.
Finding an almost finished helicopter during a tutorial mission is perfectly fine tho. It can teach you how the game works and give you something almost finished to work with.
But in a free sandbox SWN scenario, I think you should actually have to play the game before you can manufacture turbine blades, motors and electronics.
And you might not even need that helicopter or drone yet if you can simply fly around with an overpowered jetpack while carrying eight tons of cargo.
That's why I think a proper SWN scenario should start without a jetpack module. You craft your first jetpack later and it feels like an achievement.
The backpack could also provide less storage than it does now. If you are carrying too much weight, you shouldn't be able to fly normally. You could still use the jetpack to dampen your fall and avoid fall damage, or escape from a hole, but if you're carrying a huge load you would first have to dump most of it.
A more powerful jetpack can exist, but you have to progress to get it.
Exoskeletons could improve movement and carrying capacity, eventually bringing you closer to the eight-ton capacity we have today.
Again, earn it rather than getting it for free in the very early game.
SWN is absolutely possible in this game, and I think it can actually be more interesting for beginners as well, without giving the player a ridiculously overpowered suit full of advanced technology from the first second.
And this is why I don't think backpack building needs to be nerfed.
It needs to be earned and given a proper role throughout the game instead of being used as the solution for SWN.
For the initial tutorial, you don't even need mining to teach the player how to build things. Give them two damaged helicopters and ask them to finish one using parts from the other. This teaches grinding, salvaging and construction while also fitting naturally into the SWN concept.
You could find components inside abandoned grids and cargo containers instead of immediately mining "ore" and turning it into everything you need.
Mining and proper refining can then become an important part of the mid and late game.
Of course, we shouldn't simply copy all the problems from SE1. There were plenty of issues with its mining and production systems.
Fix those systems instead of removing and oversimplifying the gameplay where it actually matters most.
The backpack building system doesn't need to be made less efficient.
It needs to stop being the thing that carries the entire SWN experience.
I think backpack building (BB) itself does not need to be nerfed. This might sounds like the opposite of what we have discussed in this topic, but bear with me for a moment :)
We often mix together several different concepts and features when discussing BB feature.
"Start With Nothing" (SWN) and BB are two separate things. SWN, on the other hand, can be achieved in countless other ways without having a mini factory in your backpack.
The same goes for beginner friendliness, often portrayed as what BB is meant to improve. The game being easy to understand for a new player does not necessarily mean that mining and production systems should be designed around the first five minutes of gameplay. Those systems should ultimately be designed for the people who will play the game for hundreds of hours. Beginners can be introduced to them through tutorials and campaigns. They will still not buy the game if the people who actually play it for hundreds of hours end up hating those systems and writing bad reviews about them.
There are also several other things currently making the early game much easier than it probably should be.
The jetpack is ridiculously overpowered, especially on planets. You basically have a battery-powered ion jetpack that lets you fly around in gravity with the precision of a small drone.
Inventory space is also way too generous. I understand that some level of "compression" is necessary for gameplay. We can build a spaceship in a few minutes, so it makes sense to have a much larger carrying capacity than would be realistic, otherwise we would spend half the game walking back and forth to retrieve components. But there is a limit. The current capacity is simply too generous from the very beginning.
Clearly, many survival aspects are simply not done yet. What we have now feels more like a quick setup that allows us to test other game systems without wasting too much time on basic survival tasks. That makes sense in the current state of the game.
I think the developers should communicate this more clearly, though. Otherwise, we end up with a situation where players look at the current mechanics and assume this is what the final game is supposed to look like.
Then you get the usual back-and-forth arguments between people who are frustrated with the current systems and people defending the current meta.
The second camp is made up of the annoying "white knights": people who will defend the developers' decisions no matter how bad they are, and people who simply remember many poorly implemented mechanics from the original game and would rather accept the new approach than see those old annoyances blindly ported over.
Think about things like stone cluttering inventories, excessive waiting times for refining, or poor performance caused by that. None of those things were inherently bad because of the underlying game mechanics. They could have been fixed, improved, or changed in many different ways instead of simply removing the mechanics themselves.
Now back to the topic.
First, the suit as a whole should be modular.
The 3D printer for BB as well as backpack, jetpack, helmet, armor, parachute, boots, exoskeleton and so on should all be separate modules. I don't think we should debate whether you spawn with a suit or without one. The more interesting question is which modules you actually have equipped when you respawn.
Once you separate these things, it becomes even more obvious that backpack building should not be tied to SWN. If you can start without the backpack or 3D printer, you are immediately soft-locked if backpack building is the only way to handle SWN. Having a 3D printer in your "pocket" is basically equivalent to spawning with a starter base every time. The argument Deon have. And I am 100% agree with him. At this point, why not starting with a small base or components to build one? It is the same in principle as having the free magic box in your pocket but at least less fantasy-like.
Why would an engineer spawn with an advanced technological suit containing with all modules, together with tools of the same tier they had when they died, out of Survival Kit block you can build with basic components?
I see all of this as temporary convenience rather than something that necessarily belongs in the final survival loop.
The same applies to the value of the engineer's life.
In SE1, nobody really cared about dying until relatively recently with the food and environmental hazards. Even then, death still has very few consequences, especially in the beginning when you don't have any buffs and more likely to die due to starvation or other hazards. Moreover. you will intentionally kill yourself to scout asteroids, save GPS points in your "soul" and return to your ship without making the trip back. Or infamous suicide as a teleportation technique.
Something needs to make the engineer's life more valuable, starting from the very beginning.
Starting on Verdure in a temperate biome is quite safe. You can survive without a suit or some if its moduels. Compare that to starting in outer space, where you immediately need a suit, power and tools. These two environments are fundamentally different.
You simply cannot make it possible to SWN in space with radiation, lack of oxygen and constant need for heating, without inevitably making Verdure start trivial and boring.
SWN needs an environment that actually supports it.
You could deviate slightly from the safe temperate start. For example, starting in a desert would already create much more extreme initial survival conditions. In that context, a 3D printer and backpack building would be something you earn rather than something you are given for free together with infinite respawns.
If you die, you could respawn somewhere far away from where you were. That's punishing, but it makes your life matter. Suddenly having a proper shelter, a power source, and progress to use drones, craft additional suit modules becomes much more valuable and meaningful.
And what exactly is the Survival Kit anyway? I understand the healing and gas/energy refueling functions, although I would personally separate those into different blocks. But why should it be responsible for respawning you?
If we want respawning to make sense in the world, we need some kind of facility capable of producing a new engineer body and supplying it with the necessary resources. It could be expensive to build and operate.
When you respawn, you could automatically equip the suit modules, tools and consumables you were using when you died, provided those items are available in the inventory connected to the respawn facility.
Yes, that's more punishing. But it also gives you a reason to progress. Making your life easier and safer becomes actual progression instead of something you simply get for free.
So how do you actually start "naked" on Verdure?
First of all, I don't think this should necessarily be the default game mode for beginners. Even with the current overpowered systems, SWN is probably not for everyone.
Some players will absolutely love discovering the game this way because they enjoy survival games. For many, there is the campaign/tutorial that gradually introduces the mechanics before they jump into a free sandbox survival game.
Before we discuss SWN it is worth mentioning that it is also not necessarily the only option for free sandbox survival.
Verdure is not an empty planet, just like Almagest is not an empty star system.
You could start at an NPC station with a small amount of money and buy your first ship. From there you can progress however you want. And ofc you don't necessarily have to follow the traditional mining and production path.
But let's say you really want the full SWN experience. You don't want to interact with NPCs and want to survive completely on your own.
I don't think SE needs a complicated "collect sticks and stones" or "punch a tree" type of start, nor does it need an overpowered factory in your backpack.
You are alone, but the planet can still have old abandoned outposts.
Spawn a few damaged grids around the starting area. Not too close, not too far. No GPS markers. You have to actually explore, look around and walk from one hill to another. You should be able to spot one roughly within five minutes of the gameplay.
You can still have some basic hazards even on a relatively safe planet. Cold nights, lack of food and so on.
Inside any of those abandoned outposts you can always find a basic grinder and welder. Now you can start salvaging.
Your first goals are simple: find some food and create a shelter.
A shelter doesn't have to be complicated. Close the doors, regulate the temperature and survive the night.
You might not find everything you need at the first site. The outposts can be damaged, without power or missing important components. So you collect what you can, grind down whatever is useful and move on.
You should probably be able to survive the first night without a shelter, but take significant damage from the cold. Eventually you collect enough components to seal a small room, provide power and install the necessary ventilation. Maybe you repair an existing outpost, maybe you build your own.
Once you have shelter, you can start working on sustainable power, adding wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.
Food packs found as loot should be enough to keep you going initially. You don't want to spend a lot of time searching for food., this is rather annoying. Looted food packs should last long enough for you to eventually establish some way of producing your own.
If you don't have enough components for additional power, you have a couple of options. Build a smelter if you have enough power to operate it and recycle some materials, or keep exploring until you find what you need.
Once you have enough power and basic production, you can build a Gear Forge and make your first drill, assuming you didn't find one as loot.
Only now can you properly mine raw resources and refine them using a real production setup.
And only now can you start crafting additional suit modules, including the 3D printer.
This is where I think backpack building actually shines.
Once you have a 3D printer, it becomes much more convenient to quickly build simple structures, interiors, small vehicles, drones and similar things without micromanaging dozens of individual components.
I would actually argue that we should add back more recipes to backpack building we used to have before, but have it work with filaments (if you dislike term "ingots") rather than "dirt".
Now it is no longer an overpowered replacement for the entire production chain. It has a proper purpose.
It is a convenient small-scale construction tool.
This is already how I use backpack building most of the time and I believe you all do. Don't tell me you build even steel plates in your smelter. You continue using BB for all sorts of small things with iron without bothering to come back and mess with the smelter. I use it for structures, interiors, decorations, small armor sections with the area welder and beyond. And it's OK. Don't lie you don't like it.
It is convenient and it makes sense, as long as we have proper refining and actual raw ores in the game. I can interpret it as another gameplay "compression": although the 3D printer is slow irl, we don't want to WAIT in video game. So no, making BB less efficient might be actually bad.
The problem starts when we try to use backpack building as the foundation of SWN.
That is what creates most of the problems we have been discussing in this topic and many related ones. You can make the BB less efficient, increase its power consumption or remove more recipes, but those changes don't address the fundamental issue. We have a simplistic system to solve SWN while the much more important systems, that you will engage with through the entire game, lose credibility, oversimplified and boring, while at the same time are even more confusing.
I also never liked the idea that you can start with nothing and build a helicopter out of dirt within five minutes. Maybe someone likes this, but I really don't feel like it has something to do with engineering and what this game is about. You have to have more reasons to design and build grids, such as proper production setups, in order to progress, not less. Like, why do you even want to build a gearforge if you have tools for free, even if you die? To upgrade a drill to tier 2? Who cares? You want a drill block asap anyway. Marginally better tier2 2 drill won't do much for you.
Finding an almost finished helicopter during a tutorial mission is perfectly fine tho. It can teach you how the game works and give you something almost finished to work with.
But in a free sandbox SWN scenario, I think you should actually have to play the game before you can manufacture turbine blades, motors and electronics.
And you might not even need that helicopter or drone yet if you can simply fly around with an overpowered jetpack while carrying eight tons of cargo.
That's why I think a proper SWN scenario should start without a jetpack module. You craft your first jetpack later and it feels like an achievement.
The backpack could also provide less storage than it does now. If you are carrying too much weight, you shouldn't be able to fly normally. You could still use the jetpack to dampen your fall and avoid fall damage, or escape from a hole, but if you're carrying a huge load you would first have to dump most of it.
A more powerful jetpack can exist, but you have to progress to get it.
Exoskeletons could improve movement and carrying capacity, eventually bringing you closer to the eight-ton capacity we have today.
Again, earn it rather than getting it for free in the very early game.
SWN is absolutely possible in this game, and I think it can actually be more interesting for beginners as well, without giving the player a ridiculously overpowered suit full of advanced technology from the first second.
And this is why I don't think backpack building needs to be nerfed.
It needs to be earned and given a proper role throughout the game instead of being used as the solution for SWN.
For the initial tutorial, you don't even need mining to teach the player how to build things. Give them two damaged helicopters and ask them to finish one using parts from the other. This teaches grinding, salvaging and construction while also fitting naturally into the SWN concept.
You could find components inside abandoned grids and cargo containers instead of immediately mining "ore" and turning it into everything you need.
Mining and proper refining can then become an important part of the mid and late game.
Of course, we shouldn't simply copy all the problems from SE1. There were plenty of issues with its mining and production systems.
Fix those systems instead of removing and oversimplifying the gameplay where it actually matters most.
The backpack building system doesn't need to be made less efficient.
It needs to stop being the thing that carries the entire SWN experience.
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