Balancing iteration mod Feedback

Balancing Iteration feedback/livestream thoughts

Hey so watched the community feedback livestream, it helped clear up some stuff and y'all should definitely put into text/post some of that information that was given on the livestream. Like what is already being worked on, how best to give feedback, ect.

So let me preface this with space engineers 1 is one of my top played games with almost all the DLC and somewhere between 1000 ~ 2000 hours into it, so I definitely fall into the veteran player population. That said the tutorial/story mode is a great idea and I can't wait to play through it. If it's done right it solves a large majority of the new player and no goal issues of the original game. From what I've seen I don't think the developers even fully understand the potential of what they can do with the story mode to fix the issues of on boarding new players and inspiring tips and tricks to returning players. Even just with the opening cinematic there is tons of potential for realistic and in game instructions of how to get up to speed on how to "Space engineer" with the brother offering hands on instructions to the various systems of the game. The tutorial could easy take place before you even get to the Armagest System. Helping your brother on the ship maintaining it, repairing a damaged miner and taking out with him to mining resources to fuel the continued journey to Armagest just screams potential tutorial design space.

Anyways on to the balancing feedback, an AMAZING step back into the right direction! My desire to play is back, I have a choice again when I'm short on materials while toying around with a new ship. I can run to my local dig pit or I can fully dedicate to a full ore run. Having the choice completely changes the feel of the game early/mid game. The world feels worth terraforming, and what's a space game without some terraforming? Tho it feels odd that iron is the most used ore but nickel is what is most available, since it comes from the deep rock mining, there lots of soil but the planet's core is rock so there will always be more nickel? Feels like this will make nickel a waste material late game, at least with iron it would the most used for the endless amount of steel plates we will need. Anyways, I definitely am on 4peace's side about making it more of a mixed bag on what ores voxel mining gives. I would maybe go a hybrid with a standard ore that materials give plus a mix of trace ores in the area. Like a manual way to detect ores. I understand that the ore shape and depth and procedural gen is under construction but having planet/moon ore deposits be a core with veins that branch off would add a ton of depth to mining. you are mining and find a vein to can follow it back to a large payload/once you have cored an ore deposit you can branch out on the veins and leave a mine like shape when your done.

Additionally limiting the backpack building makes looting worth it again, makes me actually want a base of operations (while also wanting to have a bigger ship to shove all these production blocks on it) it gives a sense of progression and another reason to explore for those unknown signals. Ultimately it restores the a large part of the core gameplay loop of SE1. Don't get me wrong backpack building isn't some great evil. Just there needs to be some progression to it. Maybe make an upgrade system that you can unlock as you advance in the game to unlock more backpack features, the original just felt like an end game mechanic, not a quality of life feature. Look at No Man's Sky, they have backpack smelting and a backpack progression system where you go out and gather upgrade materials and credits to improve what your backpack/jetpack can do, it balances quality of life with progression and needing/wanting a base, as well as having a built in side goal for gameplay depth. want a super awesome backpack? Go hunt down the materials and upgrade it to your heart's content. Don't care? Cool, skip it and focus on your base, production line or your ship. (upgrade systems are more satisfying than tool tiers anyways, you can even put the upgrades on the gearforge so you don't lose all your progress when you die and lose your tools.)

So looping back to the livestream, Y'all wanted more details on why we want ingots back, right? Well here I go. So while I know some of y'all are all about getting to the spaceship battles and such but something that might help contextualize the want for ingots is what are y'all fighting over? Without ingots, you will have production lines that convert your ores to the components you want on the fly and without any processing time for ores to ingots why not just head out and just mine a different area? Why risk your ship if its more cost effective to just find an un-mined area and mine yourself? your backpack can convert ores on demand. If your waiting on your production build more smelters to feed your assemblers. Ingots provide a resource that's worth fighting over, a resource that's what you carry on your ships for expeditions away from your base and a reason you definitely need to put in 200 hours building a capital ship that can carry that part of your base that most don't want on a ship. Refiniting bases, just like refueling stations provide that tangible reason to have a base or massive capital ship that worth defending rather than abandoning because you put to much into this battleship to risk over something you can just relocate and mining some more. Also Gameplay depth, having ingots provide depth to your production, another area for modders to hook into, rather than have to create wholesale, wealth and decoration, storage benefits and trading options that add depth to the economy system. Of course that also plays into the volumetric storage that's missing. These things that add depth arent frustrating side systems, they are the hooks and the challenges that the game is about overcoming. That's what so awesome about SE1, you have incredible depth to in the game, you catch the factory builders, and the ship builders, the space battlers, explorers and the RP players because you have enough depth in the game to support multiple genres of players. I know some developers probably want to focus on what they liked about SE1 over the parts that were just cool add-ons to them but the diversity of the players makes this game so great and has spawned an amazing modding community to tweak things to players specific tastes. Don't cut that depth to try and attract new players at the expense of the existing community that make SE1 so great. Add to what SE1 is with SE2. The new engine, story and tutorial will, with a little polish, already solve 90% of those new player issues with the first game.