All around feedback after playing through VS2

Hello folks, I wanted to give some feedback regarding the latest VS.

So far I have ~60 hours into SE2, I did a more or less full playthrough of it, completing all available contracts, visited all planets built a base, built a brand new ship etc. so I think I'm quite OK to put some thoughts to a post.

As a foreword, I'd like to say that this will probably sound rather on the negative side, we all know why this game is good, I'm not here to praise, but to point out issues and items I think could be better. In case it's about something that's confirmed to be coming in the future, you can treat it as a "prioritization request".

First off, the planets are nice, I really like the variety of biomes and the density of fauna. I'm still trying to advocate though for larger planets. 150km looks tiny when you are above it a bit further away. I can imagine this change as a ballance thing - if you only have 1-2 planets later on, you can set the size to 300km, if you plan to have more, then the 150km limit would kick in. My main reson for this is to consider future "no jetpack" or "salvage planet" playthroughs, where you mostly be on 1 planet.

The game started with the intro video that was sufficiently long and well acted, but I'd say it's distinctly eastern european, which you probably won't recognize anymore. The brother who was left on the colony ship acted like a total duchebag. His dialogue was not really quippy or, I suspect what you aimed for annoyed for being left behind, but he sounded like a proper asshole. Not someone who knows the weight of such a colonization mission but his role in it also, but rather someone who is just being a dick to his brother constantly. I think a better approach would have been to set them as a mentor in some cases. Not as a tutorial, just more of a "big brother" vibe.

After the start I first heard the suit lady voice, which I must say probably the absolute uncontested worse thing in VS2. It sounds depressed, low-energy, and I'm waiting for a gunshot at the end of each line, and puts me in a mood to shoot meself as well after that. It's such a drag, slow, unenthusiastic voice acting that it pulls my exciting mood down to the mud immediately every time I hear it. It's the worst think so far in the game and it absolutely needs to change and re-recorded with someone more enthusiastic, or if this remains in the game I'll probably drive my spacehips into the ground, on purpose, in later releases.. If you take anything from this feedback please be that the suit lady needs to be changed. Thanks.

Main missions bugging out are my pet peeves in all games, I must say in VS2, they didn't get the care they needed - mostly just buggy. Overall I like the structure of the tutorial which doesn't feel like a tutorial at all, the way to unlock new blocks is really cool, it makes me want to actually do contract missions, they make sense, and they are designed in a way that everything you need to complete them is there - this might make things easier than intended.. Having said that, I bugged out my first mission - the grasshopper I supposed to fix up ended up smashing into the mountain, and the mission was not handling that at all. even after 50 hrs in I saw the "fix the ship" message on the screen. I eventually managed to progress by triggering the next mission, the hydrogen ship, which I tried to drag home, but it rolled off the hillside and completely desintegrated - the mission was not handling that either which was disappointing.. Eventually I made my own hydro ship and went up to the station triggering the contracts - but the 2 main mission was stuck at "fix the ship" state. I'm not sure if there are any more parts of them later on but the missions should definitely deal with this outcome and not just stuck there. I don't mean a fail state, but perhaps generating a wreck in 3-4 kilometers if the main grid is disabled, once. You can say that hey nice job you fucked up the first ship, but good news in the logs I see another one not far, that was abandoned, but repairable, noting that this is a rare opportunity, and the player should know there won't be another. IF that grid is destroyed as well, then the mission should just close, and get the next waypoint with the adjustment that would say not "fly there" but to "walk there" or something.

Backpack building is good, It took a while to get the logic of what is buildable and what not, but it was good as it is, in terms of usability. I'd love to see more explanation on what is getting used first when I have both ore and parts. It was nice to have all the options. I mostly used ores. A thought while I was playing was that it would be nice to have an option (Smelter functionality later on maybe?) to revert parts to bars - I know this kind of bones the whole system but not able to convert useless parts back and re-use them in another parts was a having a feeling that I'm wasting parts or ore - or more precisely it felt like I have the materials needed but they are tied up in a part that I won't use. Additionally to backpack building: I had an issue that welding didn't work, the blocks I pointed to were not beging weld up even though I was directly looking at them at close range. At one point I could only weld up conveyors from the top. Same with grinding - especially the gatling guns found in POIs - the grinder was just not grinding them until I removed all the walls around it and went from the bottom.

I really liked caves, even with all the floating stalactites, I just hope the shapes will have a LOT of variations, I don't really want to see the same caves throughout a single playthrough. Maybe have a hybrid randomization feature for them so they never look the same. With POIs I already saw habitation modules re-used in most of them, I hope the final system is made with more randomization in mind. If I'd work on this at keen I'd give everyone at keen 2 hours every week dedicated to make new parts and PIOs. Corridors, entrances, hangars etc so you'd have hundreds of each part to randomly put together POIs from. My expectation is that there will be at least 3-500 variations for a single playthrough, maybe different ones for each factionEven if some parts are repeating if you don't see the same setup at least on the same planet, it will be good, but if I recognize the same patterns all over the place that would exponentially ruin my mood to check out POIs.

Regarding the UI - it needs a bit of getting used to, but the more I play the more I got used to it. There are parts I don't like, for example how the character inventory is devided to consumables which are limited. I can get used to it, but I honestly would love to see that part improved, if I want to take 6-10 h2 bottles I should be allowed to. What if I just want to transport them?

An additional big missing feature regarding the UI would the missing horizon level widget that, when I'm in gravity would point towards the level horizon. The starter ships are all shite, and extremely unballanced, any modifiction to them makes them unstable, especially considering that the new driving system makes the ship tilt and rotate in all the unintended direction. I can compensate for it, but damn, it would be nice to see when I'm level..

Big praise for the contract POIs. My favorits were the "sabotage" missions. I especially liked multi-stage missions - but you need to be careful of people completing stages before they'd trigger, like fixing up a battery that would required to be fixed in stage 2 etc. My only problem that I wanted to point out regaring these progression missions is that I'm not sure how interesting they will be at the 10th, 50th restart.. probably not, so for the team that handles the starting missions, I'd probably start working on at least 3-4 different starting and progression missions chains. The one you have is good, you can even use elements of it, but I'd like to have 3-4 different way to start a playthrough instread of just 1. I can imagine something like a "no jetpack start", or a "space start" or an abandoned settlement / station start. They don't need to be equally easy, you can make some harder so people who don't like tutorials would still enjoy starting a new save.

I know at this point it might be a miniscule thing but I'd still like to see an additional "high clould" layer and different clound distributions, like coulds that are higher than the current ones, or early morning fog that is on the plains as well. The current clounds look really good, but I would like to see some pattern variations.

Crafting: In general I had no issue with it, but near the end of my playthrough I thought it's a bit confusing to figure out what part you need what machine for. In SE1, the advanced versions could build the same things as the basic plus more, here it seems you need all 3 specific machines, and, at least for the moment it doesn't make much sense what part you build where. Since we are talking about production manchines: The gearforge - although cool name, not forging any gears as parts was a disappointment.

It's probably part of the 25cm grid system, but all machines and parts have their connection points at different heights and they are different sizes.. It was quite distressful tryng to fogure out how to connect everything. I also run into an issue that I haven't seen connected grids, and actions that I got used to were not working, including the build planner shortcuts. The tab where you see the parts of the grid you are looking at is a mess.. Cursor wasn't automatically in the search bar - that should be fixed. When I open that tab I like to immediately search and narrow the things I want to look at. The groupping tree was a nice steal from Empyrion, I have no problems with that.

The fast travel: Currently it's a bit lame-ish, no animation (I know it's coming) and no proper wind-up, the rules are not clear when you can and cannot "fast travel" to a new sector. I think it needs to be heavily restricted or even tied to a specific block like a station slingshot "portal" so you know you can only fast-travel from protected stations. I'd take another look at it. First fast travel should be a mission, with consequences that random parts of your ship fall off or something. If you are allowed to hop thousands of kms, it needs to have a proper backside that only can be compensated for in the very late engame. I personally think that fast travel is lame, you need to have a better system for it. SE1's technological, buildable solutions for travel were better. Having just a button to insta-load to 4000km away was a peckless, thoughtless fortnight reject gamedesign. This is a game with engineering, make me ENGINEEER a solution for fast travel. I personally found the FSD concept interesting (SE1 mod or Elite Dangerous steal) that you can "overdrive" your engines to fly much faster than the normal 1000 limit, that way a 3000km distance wouldn't be 4 hours but let's say 20 minutes. I like the distances, you can even increase them if you want. If I'd have an engineered solution I'd be happy to whizz around.

Map and GPS system - I like the map, even though it kind of limits the "limitelss space" feeling of SE1. I'd make sure that there will be encounters OUTSIDE of the map as well, just so it won't feel limited. GPS system currently is pretty poop. Discovered stations should automatically add GPS even if it's inactive. Several times I found myself lost and no idea where the station was because the weak antennas that won't broadcast past the tip of my shlong. On the map there should be a quick buttion to add GPS of my current location or highlight previously discovered major places.

And additional idea for stations, some could be orbiting stations, not stationary.

Other tidbits: Thruster flames were disappearing after random times, but all the time I was playing. Not good. Also I'd like to see colorable thrusters - maybe to have a "combustion component" that if it's made of different materials, it would alter the flame color. I'd like to say a big thank you for the working "P" park and auto-park. It's great. The power cells in the battery concept is a bit bad, I like the idea but the current implementation is poop since you don't know what percentage the cell is, and if I want to change it to a better battery cell, I can't select which cell from my inventory I want to be added. When you click on the battery cell it should give you a pop-up showing only the batteries in your inventory and you could select the one you want to replace the exsinting with. Also if there's a way to use old cells that would be useful. The cells currently are easy to grab, but not easy to dispose of. Since the battery comes with one, if you loot POIs and take the batteries you just gain a ton of cells with no use. I'd solve this with something along the lines of medium batteries having 2 slots, and come with 1 battery at 30% charge. You ccould slot in another cell to get a full charge or 75% charge even. Large batteries could come with 2 cells and 2 empty slots, or 1 filled 3 empty maybe.

Regarding day/night cycle: I want it to be consistent, but in server settings later on I'd like to have the options for making days and night separately longer or shorter. I've seen other games have the option (I think it was Conan Exiles) where you could set day / might length and sunset / sunrise length separately. With such a beautiful game I might want to have longer sunset and sunrises, but that would be quite a problem to work out in multiplayer. Conan had a fix map so it was easier to engineer it there.

Ores and resources: I thought the density and sparesness of ore nodes were good, sometimes more conveninent, but with not everything being always nearby I did have to go around - mostly for iron. I liked that you marked on the map sector what ores it has and NOTHING MORE. Players need to know they are in the right neighborhood, but don't give them any more hint, let them explore.

Default blue: I know it's tradition, but I want to mention how ugly I find the default SE blue color on POIs so I hope you'll switch it up for other colors for POIs and random encounters.. In the upcoming days I'll do another playthroug just to see if I find any other missions if I don't bork up the main missions and they won't bug out.

Another note on contracts and missions: I'd like to see them picked up on random POIs as well, not just at the contract block at a station. Like trigger a mission on a random unidentified signal to go to another place. I'd also like to see more multi-stage missions, and not just as the main mission but multi-stage side missions and multi-stage random encounters, like after we'll have NPCs, a repair would trigger residents coming in or attackers coming etc.

That's all I have at the moment. Thanks for the team for VS1, I hope this detalied feedback would give you some notes on what to improve upon.

As a reference here are the links to my publick live streams where I was playing through the VS2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EGxLBcPuVM&list=PLhmkxP-4o9O9wxRgnU3qj4H6ESp76Npxq