First Time User Experience and Early Survival Constructive Criticism

I am absolutely sure many of the ideas presented here are contained elsewhere in posts from other users. The point of this post is to codify my personal view of the First Time User Experience (FTUE) and Early Survival Game Play (ESGP) in one place for consideration. I do not claim that these ideas are unique, nor are they the only avenue forward for development; they are merely my opinions based on time played to date, my obscene number of hours in SE1, and conversations with the community and potential future players.

The FTUE advances the player too quickly and does not educate core game mechanics logically

• The What: The mission and story structure push the player into a ship and into resource abundance too fast. None of the concepts of setting up a base and developing an industry are presented in a way that is cohesive. The rush to the first ship disconnects the player from a majority of the long-term gameplay.
• Thoughts on Improvements: Don’t rush to the first ship being able to fly. Use the FTUE early phase to guide the player through developing a small base to satisfy the need to repair a damaged or incomplete ship found. The story mission queues should direct the player to mine resources, build up a small base with all the required functions (power, batteries, and basic industry) to allow the ship to be repaired.
• Thoughts for the Future: When wheels and rovers are introduced, use the FTUE to guide the player to build or repair a rover to help them travel greater distances to a facility with a ship that needs repair.
• The Why: As someone who has introduced SE to numerous new players and the father of an enthusiastic, but hard learning young boy, learning the basics of the core gameplay loop needs to be focused on engagingly and purposefully. The current FTUE glosses over too many critical gameplay elements and then attempts to introduce them in a fragmented and unintuitive order.

The ESGP contributes to the sense of disconnect from the core survival gameplay.

• The What: The sheer abundance of materials and ships, combined with the overpowered nature of current Backpack Building, makes the need for the classic survival gameplay loop pointless, and thus teaching it is difficult and pointless. You lose the prime opportunity to teach the player skills they will need later by oversimplifying things.
• Thoughts on Improvements: In my view, Backpack Building is an excellent feature and should be kept, but modified to make it a useful tool, one you want to avoid for anything beyond basic emergency repairs and initial construction. The Backpack should be a last resort that is powerful in niche situations, and only then. Two primary changes need to be made to make the Backpack a useful, limited, and compelling building tool
• i. Reduce the types of components available to be crafted. The components that can be crafted should be enough to build the most basic of production bases (Solar panel/wind turbine, Smelter, Small Cargo, Steel blocks, lights, etc.). A rover or ship should require additional industrial logistics (smelter, assembler, etc.) that become available as you build up your base.
• ii. Reduce efficiency in both speed and required materials. A basic emergency production kit in a backpack should not be able to create components quickly or efficiently. When converting ores to components to construction build time should be 2x to 3x the time when using the components in inventory. Concerning materials, the conversion of ores to components should be no more than 0.75x the efficiency of the Smelter.
• Thoughts for the Future: If ingots are restored (I am neither for nor against this specifically), the addition of an intermediate step in industrial logistics would help differentiate the backpack from normal construction even further. To make the backpack more useful in the future, to do basic repairs to advanced systems, perhaps upgrade modules could be purchased or built to allow repair only of thrusters and wheels, to allow limping back to base.
• The Why: The power and speed of backpack building in the ESGP loop make building a base and establishing yourself seem pointless. It doesn’t promote a player feeling compelled to invest time and effort into anything. It oversimplifies the concept of building up a presence to start your journey towards colonizing a new start system. You basically become a jack of all trades handyman, not an advanced engineer attempting to scrape together survival and advancement.

I have more ideas related to all of this, but I wanted to present these two main points in isolation, as just changing these would impact the current state of play, requiring a reassessment of everything else.