Feedback for VS2.2 from Dirk

TL;Dr

Overall: I need problems to solve, not just errands to run or chores to do. With every iteration of the Vertical Slices the game gets 10x better. Keep up the good work. I imagine some of what I'm talking about will get rectified in later iterations with things like NPC's. It's in Alpha. I hope that the Verdure and some of the Kemik contracts feel like a turorial where you solve a problem. ("Needs to communicate between this outpost and somewhere else"). you need build a spot for an antenna and set the broadcast radius to large enough to reach the other point so comms work. Things like that. Found 2 bugs listed "BUG" for search reasons.

Reaction: (emphasis added to pick out key points)

I played through VS2.2. Love this game. I'm getting more used to the Unified grid system and am thinking less about how to make sure everything fits on a small or large block and really releasing my creativity. I blueprinted some flush mounted conveyor setups which looks really cool. I need to put lighting in it just to give it that spark. The ray tracing on the lighting gives it a crazy sci-fi look. Love it!

I like the ability to turn up or down the volume of the tools. Having the drill/else not be overpowering is excellent. Having moving parts (piston/rotor) now makes this feel like more of the game I know and love. can't wait for the next slices. :).

I severely miss being able to overlay my blueprints over my grids to fix/repair/append to my builds. I will take builds into creative to build chunks on. cut things off. Repaste it somewhere else. I do a lot of creative stuff in "creative". I then will take it and overlay it on my current build in Survival and build it. I hope that this is just an early iteration and that's why I can't overlay a blueprint over a grid to weld parts on or just repair it. It's really nice to have whatever got blown up just show up as an image if the part needs to be reapplied. It makes repairs 100x faster when I dont' have to G-menu > find the block > add to bar > place > weld up. I just go weld up. Couple that with that area welder. That's some spicy awesome stuff.

The "streaking stars" effect (when going fast) is a lot of fun! I like the idea.

The issue: It gets really distracting to have what feels like the whole screen moving in different directions (out from center). As a veteran SE1 player you got good at watching for things that didn't move the same as you because that likely was an obstacle you were going to crash into. Also the effect picks up at around 25m/s. That's far from "going fast" in the realm of SE2 especially since 300m/s is the top speed. The effect is diminished by kicking in so early.

Possible solution: I would move it off of the center 45% (even center 60%) of the screen and make it more of a peripheral thing. I imagine it's supposed to enhance the effect of feeling like you're going fast, and I like the idea. I just get overwhelmed with the streaks and almost want to turn it off somehow. In short: Less is more and move it to the periphery.

Possible solution: For the secondary issue of kicking in early and losing some of the effect. Make it ease in, but at 100m/s. At 100m/s it starts a slow and sparse "star streak" that increases in speed to max at 300m/s. The effect will be the same. The mind will understand it and it'll be a cool effect. Also have a lower end that if you reach 100 and queue the effect, have it taper off to nothing at 90m/s on the low end. The inconsistent start will help it feel less mechanical. Again: Less is more.

On the new contracts: Initial thoughts. This game is pretty sandbox-y. Similar to Assassins Creed where you have objectives that you need to do, you also can fart around doing meaningless stuff for hours. In the current scope of things right now, there's only the contracts to do/interact with. I imagine once NPC's and other things get added in, this opening setup will seem far less linear. I imagine that things will seem less 1-dimensional once NPC's are in it and can ask you to do things rather than just "Go Here" (obligatory loot...) > "Weld this up" > "(While on the planet) Fly over here (for seemingly no reason)..." I look forward to more interactive reasons of why I'm doing things. My recommendation: (Likely what you're all working for) is tying build projects to helping colonists (or whatever the builders of the little outposts are out there. Hopefully you'll bring me (the player) in on that when the game gets more fleshed out.

Other Thoughts on gameplay: Having a pod crash land conveniently meters away from an established little facility (not quite a home, not quite a facility. An outpost?) of some kind is convenient to get people started while in Alpha, but it possibly needs some dialogue like "The Transponder has locked on to a signal. The pod rockets are guiding my descent" (small cutscene of a pod breaking atmo from the ground). Pod lands... This all goes without saying. I imagine you guys are on it, but the story just lacks a reason why I'm just showing up and looting places and stealing ships (with the exception of the first base just outside of Vallation Station). Same with some of the contracts. Since no one is "there" there's these pre-built outposts, obviously built by someone, that I just show up and loot and fix then leave. Stuff is already built. I'm not having to solve a problem. Having more interactions with NPC's when they come available will probably help this a bit. The contract will say "go help this guy. Needs help with [comms/whatever]". Then you show up and talk to the NPC and he asks for help with whatever the contract is. The current setup: show up > loot > fix something > leave is really primitive and needs some more substance though shows huge potential.

The goal/fun of Space Engineers is to solve problems presented to you presumably while working on the end goal of "colonization" (however that ends up looking). Maybe there have been raiders in the Ferric Drift and you have to go in there to help reestablish the relay to arm the defense system. But the last few ships who went in said there are about 3 small ships and 1 larger ship before they lost contact with them. NPC/Contract suggests [shows ship buildout/grid size] and recommends some armaments. With this type of contract you have a problem to solve in a way you see fit. You could build an advanced battle barge with PBW vertical launch tubes (obv. when the game is fully done) with warheads in it. Makes short work of the raiders. OR you can go with a fast fighter and try to maybe disable 1 or 2 and focus on sprinting to the relay to fix the weapons systems. Both achieve a goal. They are less linear in doing it. I found that I didn't need to build/create anything other than drills on the front of the first hydrogen ship you get (The Skiff? The Scow. Whatever it's called). I could do anything by just mining some stuff and backpack welding.

I found myself REALLY wanting non-linear play. The goal is to colonize the almagest system. I want the contract system to get to 40%-60% then open up Kemik/the next sector. Then possibly have the last few missions in Verdure sector needing things like Platinum or Uranium brought back. Then I have a reason to not just play straight through. I have a reason to come back to my old base and load up or make a bigger ship that has production on it to be able to mine/build/haul/etc whatever I need. Key point: I'm jumping back and forth from system to system. If my contracts weren't totally done in Verdure but I could get to Kemik and (because I'm a veteran player) I could go there, mine some good stuff and build a ship that's a mobile base, I can come back and do contracts possibly easier. Also give me contracts that take me to what amounts to the discoverable portions of the map. Make me go back down to Verdure again and run around there for a bit. Right now there's no reason to build wheeled vehicles because I'm on the planet for about 30 mins before I get into space and there's never a reason to go to the planets. Again, I imagine this will be fixed in a later installment, but it's just what I felt was lacking/needed. Also it makes the ability to create very difficult contracts in the "starter" sector.

-----Spicy Idea(s)----

As things go forward (this dovetails in with contracts and colonization):

Something that will create massive gameplay would be to have entropy in the systems where you can reach 100% by maybe doing some chores, or solving problems, but then the real work begins. There's a mcguffin in a few (maybe every) sector that needs to be fueled/defended/else... Example: In one sector, you need to build out some ornate defenses around given coordinates so that transport ships can get into the area without getting immediately descended upon by raiders/opposing factions. The amount of firepower, Power/energy, range, and other defenses can be sort of lump calculated and sorted out via encounter generation vs calculated grid "power" (firepower/range/energy/resources available). At some point ammo runs out, uranium powering the reactor dries up, the sector starts losing % points of colonization. Raiders are blowing up defenses and are able to intercept and blow up some of the transport ships before they reach the surface of whatever planet. Or better yet, the game is programmed to throw bigger and bigger waves at it. This harkens back to the Never Surrender scenario in SE1. Maybe the engineer(player) is like me and puts railguns on Custom Turret Controllers and has them reaching out to 2km as soon as something shows up. The little ships don't get close unless they're agile. Big ships get blown to pieces. At some point the computer/game generates bigger/more grids and starts to overwhelm the defenses. The player starts losing % points. Has to pop on over to [sector] and finds... a 30k PCU battlecruiser/Battleship/(whatever its classified as) laying waste to the outer defenses and stopping ships from reaching the surface. Now you, the engineer, have a serious problem to fix and a fight on your hands. Can you build what it takes to keep things together and "colonized" in this sector?! (I would play the crap out of this). On easy mode, you can have a finite size of spawn, but on harder modes it goes to double that...

How that would work in game mechanics from a logical level (as I see it, I haven't done much game making): Once colonization hits 100%, the waves come every 1-3hrs depending on how many sectors are colonized or hardness level/some other modifier so as not to overwhelm the player with having to try and keep 14 sectors colonized in the end. Then the computer would take stock of (in this example) the route between the station and the ground and how many player grids are within a distance of that. GRANTED: The player is absent from this sector. Calculate those grids, firepower, resources, energy and put a number on that. Make the points of interest run a sweep of player grids within 3km of a point of interest and that's your number. Run the calculation if the number changes (sort of like Change Block Tracking in backup servers; if no changes, no compute cycles used; keeps the game lighter.). Likely run when player jumps out of the system (otherwise run the encounters live). Save the power score as a number and start throwing mock waves against it. The first hour are some small drones. They die fast. Nothing happens but some computations on the back end. minimal processing power. Have a set progression of ship/encounter size and if the power of the player grids and power of the generated encounters are. This plays out like the game of war on the back end. My number is higher than yours: I win. If NPC numbers exceed the player number, randomize block destruction level based on target priority, % higher than player grids, and mark it off. (That's just how I would approach it; just numbers unless the player was present).

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Other Notes:

- The dark of space is too dark. It's so hard to fly around and try and pan the camera around to see asteroids. Asteroids should have some color profile. Even if they appear as large shadows. Right now, you can't see anything. This goes also for trying to fly anything at night on the planet. I love the planet setups and I love the Day and Night rotation as it gives rise to making lights necessary. I find satisfaction in lighting an area. However the dark is too dark. Instead of creating some natural luminescence on things like planet surfaces or asteroids (not as realistic, but still would work) make night vision. Even if it's a grayscale overlay. With all the tech that we have, it makes sense. I crashed into a mountain peak in the dark trying to get to a location. Had no idea that the mountain peak was there. It's not worth flying on planets at night which always feels like 80% of the game when you can't see.

- The size of icons on points of interest (GPS, Antennas, special locations) is WAY too big. It completely conceals midsized frigates when you're investigating an unknown ship. I have a dog fight with an icon that sheds parts. It completely obscures the grid I'm fighting. They need to be smaller or underneath or hide-able. The markers are just to big. They can even conceal asteroids. That's one thing in SE2 that I currently see as a deterrent in gameplay. And I can't hide them. If I was a dev, I'd take out the hexagon ring and the background color. Just leave the little icon and see how that looks. As ships get more armed and more aggressive, seeing if they're better armed from a distance would be good. Seeing if they're coming for you would be good. At this point in time I can't even tell which way it's flying because it's completely obscured by the icon. Needs rework.

- The docking setup. Love the idea of being able to just park and have it draw me in. Don't change that. It's a brilliant setup.

The issue: It's REALLY jerky. Almost violent. I know this is Alpha, but the feedback is that the docking is rather violent. If this gets fixed over time, then we are good. Just feedback that it's Awesome! but really violent in its execution.

- The Trade Station

Love the idea. I can acquire parts maybe I'm too far away from my base or can't do because of current restrictions. Excellent idea. Could be something to introduce in Verdure where the contract will say "you'll need 3 gravity cores" which you can't make right now. Go mine some gold or something and trade for it if you need (which you will). It'll get people used to using the block.

QOL UPDATE: A suggested fix. Since the credits balance is finite (good, imo), make a barter window open. If I have 6000 gold to sell, I have to sell 700 gold, trade credits to buy some of what I need, sell 700 more gold, then trade those credits back again to buy some of what I need... (and so on). Would be easier to open a window that has 2 sides and lets me put up what I have to sell and pick what I want and keep it in some calculated mode until I hit "Trade". Also: One issue I foresee is someone not having backpack space for what they traded for. Have the "Reward Hatch" (call it whatever you want), and have the extra items placed there. Would be a healthy quality of life update.

BUG: I found that as I was drilling with ship drills, I would get the drill noise after I was done drilling and it would persist ad nauseum until I got back into my cockpit and ran the drills once. It seems to have the problem when I shifted perspective from cockpit to outside the ship while drills were running. Somewhere in there.

BUG: The Area welder is gold. At first I felt like it was cheating not to have to weld up each block. Now I'm a believer. I love that thing. It's very nice to spend 1/4 of the time repairing your ship armor after an encounter. I will say that I ran into a BUG where if I had the area welder out, and it was picking up blocks around me, It would error out trying to select something (far as I could tell) and would disallow me from accessing anything in the game. Couldn't access inventories. Couldn't get into cockpits. Couldn't use anything (f-menu is dead). Nothing would simply highlight. Jumping out of the game and back into it would fix this issue, but I never found a way to get around this or set it right again in-game.

Issue: Small ship drills need to drill a larger area (See attached picture) Even if it's by 25cm in radius. Drills are a big pull on PCU and needing less of them just helps the game run smoother. I found that, mounted at the base, on either side of my cockpit that was raised by .5m (2 small blocks; so I could actually see over my drills and fly from the cockpit) would consistently have a "string" of ore that would not get mined that would come up to my ship's window. It made me have to bobble around with my mining to not get stuck by tiny remnant voxels. Unless I place drills on all 4 corners of the basic cockpit, I can't drill in a straight line. It's wildly inefficient.

I greatly miss my Event Controllers. They were so clutch with multiple grids. Can't wait for AI blocks. Can't wait for Timer Blocks. Can't wait for full functionality of Rotors and Pistons... It's coming together and it's exciting!

Would love to see(WLTS):

WLTS Pistons work like they do, but also like struts on a car where if the pressure on them is greater than their strength, they contract.

WLTS Landing gear, with all their pistons and cool fascia actually work with some sort of piston/shock absorption and inverse kinematics.

WLTS Contracts be problem solving or new block use/setup (a pseudo-tutorial) rather than errands or chores.

WLTS Small ship drills go 1 more small block in "size of mined area" (no idea what the word is). See attached picture. 50cm would be amazing. Haven't gotten to play much with large drills.

WLTS full functionality on blocks just currently in the game. :).