Next Quick feedback

This is some quick general feedback. These aren't big enough things to spawn new threads for all of them. Some of it is just a thumbs up and a jolly good show. Others is critiques that should be addressed in some way shape or form. I realize the game is in Alpha but if we tweak these things now, it can bake it in for later additions. Also Arron and Xocliw have solicited feedback in the 12/8 stream namely (and elsewhere). Happy to help this game however I can.

Quick General feedback.

1) I like that I can access the inventory from a Conveyor node. WONDERFUL Quality of Life improvement.

2) I'm happy to see that Stone is gone. I disliked needing to outfit all my mining rigs with stone ejectors so I didn't have cargo containers full of worthless gravel or metric tons of Nickel and Silicon that I never used all of. I like that, in SE2, I need to find Nickel and Silicon and mine it. I have around 2k hours in SE1 and can easily count on 1 hand how many times I've needed to mine Silicon or Nickel. Stone was far too prolific and sort of was a detriment. I know there are people asking to bring it back. SE2 feels so much more streamlined that I just don't want it back. I am good with how ores work in SE2 at current. No issues. Love the new textures! Love the setup. I'll have to find new ways of organizing... Should be awesome! Elements of realism. One can't simply smash a Rock, heat it, weld it and make a steel plate. I know this is a video game. but it makes more sense that I could smash some Iron, Heat it and form it into a steel plate. 100x more believable. Makes resources more scarce and requires you to do some game playing to go find it rather than building a huge plunge drill right next to anywhere your pod lands and just making a big hole in the ground and having 75% of what you need. Stone was an oversimplification,

3) I'm very happy with the removal of ingots. They were an intermediate step that was neat and fluffy but then I had containers for ore. Containers for Ingots. Then containers for all the assembled parts waiting to be withdrawn and welded up. I'm stoked for the simplification so that we can add other things in other areas without making it too overwhelming. At this point I just need 1 for Ore and 1 for Processed materials ready for use. I like it.

4) I like ore hunting. I would say that making Iron deposits just a little larger would be nice since Iron gets used so much, but honestly I'm nitpicking. There have been some criticisms of it, especially in the realm of "bring back stone". I always sought out Iron, Gold, silver, etc instead of mined stone. Stone mining was so inefficient. :)

5) Backpack building is excellent. I think that it does great things for getting into this game. In SE1 I had to have help to tell me how to get the survival kit to give me what I need to get steel plate so I can actually build anything. It's NOT very straight forward as I wouldn't have guessed that a "Survival Kit" would be a refinery; but it is and now I know. In SE2, this is greatly simplified. I could do with a contract or 2 dealing with building a smelter and using it to get something your backpack can't do and pointing out that a smelter will operate far more efficiently than your backpack will. Backpack is good in a pinch, but the production blocks are a huge step forward in efficiency.

On the 12/8 SE2 cast, Xocliw, was talking about something along the lines of, "I think you'll really need a production system for this game outside the backpack.". The allusion is that people may be saying, "It's too good." or "I find no need for a smelter now." or things along those lines for feedback. And I say, wait until you build a base or a Frigate size ship with mostly 2.5m blocks... Yeah. Backpack building is horrible for this. It's inefficient and horribly slow. It's faster to weld up steel plates from inventory than to make ore into steel plates to weld it in your backpack (as it should be). I would even be fine with adding a 10%-15% longer time for welding up a block from ore in the backpack over welding from pre-made plate.

6) I NEED NEED NEED a way to queue 1000 or more Steel Plate at a time. I can queue 100, then queue 100, then queue 100, ad nauseum but that is horribly inefficient. Maybe the slider idea for Production specifically isn't the greatest idea (simply use the SE1 way of build where one can click or shift click or ctrl click to build stacks). If this game is being played the way it can be played with flying cities obliterating each other on the battlefield, having to build stacks 100 at a time for anything is horribly inefficient.

7) Making components is horribly inefficient at this point. I was going to wait for VS 2.2 to weigh in, but in the 12/8 stream, Arron asked for feedback on this.

Not an issue/good: different things for different builds. Needing a Refinery, Smelter, Assembler for 1 build and a Fab, smelter for another. Cool.

Issue: having to remember what production block builds what thing so I can queue it to be built. Then it builds and sometimes will deposit it out of the "Output" container and it disappears. Then I have to go search for it (I always find it, but it gets pushed somewhere). Looking at this like a new player, this could be sort of confusing. Hey it could be a thing at first that you have to manually go to each production block. If that's the way you want to go: I'd be down for "Resource Nodes" or "Build Manager" blocks (name is subject to any changes, it's just what I came up with; looks like the SE1 Cargo Terminal). The build manager would allow me to go to it and say build me what I need for a Reactor which draws in the Smelter, Fabricator, and Refinery (iirc). It pushes a request out to all those production blocks and they all start simultaneously. It's a later stage block (a tier 3 or 4). It then streamlines your building but would be a huge boon to build asap. Then that Build Manager would act as a small repository where all the things you just requested built would be deposited there. I don't know if that last bit is good or if we can do the same thing with just setting up sorters... Any way you cut it, Needing to run around to 4 different production blocks and remember "22 of these 8 of these 3 of these...was it 3 of these or 8 of these and 3 of those..." is cumbersome. Definitely needs some streamlining. This above, or the next item...

8) I really am missing my Right Click to add to build queue, 3rd mouse button click to withdraw, ...Gosh what are they all in SE1. All the mouse click hotkeys that I just use without even thinking that make building 1000 times easier and faster. The Add to build queue (R-Click with welder), add to production (produce these things that I don't have; at a conveyor/cargo access), Withdraw everything I need, and deposit everything in my inventory except the tools and bottles. I miss those so much in SE2. I need those back. Those are a huge boon to players as they get better and better at this game. But needing to click and search for everything every time is an impedance to efficient building. It would preclude the block I talked about in the previous section being able to queue everything I need from an Shift+R.Click (iirc). Its so automatic for me that not having it in SE2 feels like I'm so inefficient. lol.

9) Would be nice to search by cargo names too. I name my cargo after the grid its on "Cargo1-Hunchback" so I can search and find exactly "Cargo1-H" and get what I need in SE1. Having this in SE2 would be efficient and well received.

Thanks and let me know if you have any clarifying questions on this. I'd be happy to answer (if I see the responses).