Thoughts about PCU Limit

As a software engineer, I understand what the PCU limit is and why it's part of this game--basically to solve a performance issue.

So, I understand that there really isn't a choice--the PCU limit must exist.

I started a new Survival playthrough with the release of v. 2.3. I love how the new contract system works--it is basically forced exploration, sending you to all the interesting locations, starting the Verdure, then to Vallis Reach, then to Palatine, etc.

However, this lead to a problem I was unprepared for. On SE1, I never ran into the PCU limit, because I basically didn't go far from my starting location. I built two bases on the starting planet, neither very significant in size, and one small and one large base in space, with only one capital ship, with a number of small ships. I have no idea if I ever even got close to the PCU limit. However, I did occasional self-maintenance on scrapped projects.

In SE2, however, at each location, starting with The Barn which was given to me, I set up a base close to the contract station--a place I could build ships and experiment with concepts. At Vallis Reach in particular, I attempted an over-sized roving base with under-sized wheels (I hadn't unlocked the large wheels, yet) and lots of rotors. One of my atmospheric ships ended up stuck upside-down, and I just abandoned it close to my base, intending to eventually try to save it. I eventually completed all the contracts at Vallis Reach and moved on, now setting up on Kemik at Dustpire. When I was at Palatine, I made an attempt to build my first capital ship, having the projection complete but running into the problem of not being able to get certain resources in that area to complete the construction. I temporarily abandoned it with the intention of returning once I got what I needed to complete it.

When at Kemik Station, I tried to drop in one of my blueprint ships (which was relatively small), only to discover I had reached my PCU limit. I understood this meant that I needed to go back and find grids to remove, but this was a rather large annoyance. My grids were scattered about quite a bit, and I really didn't know what all counted toward my limit, and some grids were in locations I'd probably never find again.

So, I resorted to using the Debug Menu to shortcut the clean up.

Okay, so now that the backstory is done, here are my thoughts I hope the developers will take into consideration.

1. Emphasize the PCU limit early on. I'm not even halfway through the eventual list of contracts (I'm only on Kemik--how many more contracts and planets will eventually be added?) but I've spent a lot of time building and abandoning grids that now are causing a problem. Yes, I knew the PCU limit from the beginning, but since it was never an issue for me on SE1, I really didn't think much of it here. If the limit can be reasonably increased, that would be great, but on the developers know how that limit increase will impact the game. But if I knew from the beginning that I need to carefully manage my PCU, then I'd make sure to clean up abandoned grids before moving on to the next area.

2. Make the PCU limit part of the lore. As it currently stands, we look at the PCU limit as, "it's there for performance", which is kind of emersion-breaking. But if you can establish something along the lines that PCU has some kind of impact to the Almagest system, it makes it more interesting and helps to keep the emersion.

3. While I found the Debug menu a bit confusing at first, I don't expect any real tutorial or improvement to this--it isn't supposed to be part of normal gameplay, after all. However, on the Entity tab, showing who owns a particular grid, and how much PCU that particular grid is would be very useful. Knowing that a particular grid counted 50,000 PCU to my limit would make it clear that is one I might want to prioritize for deletion. I was also surprised to learn that even blocks that were nothing but projections were counting against my PCU.

4. I might have missed it, but I don't recall seeing what the PCU count is on any of the blocks. For example, the interior lights count 50 PCU, but I don't think that shows up anywhere. It wasn't until I ground down a bunch of rotors on my base at Vallis Reach that I discovered that rotors cost a huge amount of PCU. But back to the early emphasis on PCU management, I probably wouldn't have cared anyhow, unless I was aware I needed to carefully manage my PCU.

Extending to NPCs and grids that are not player owned, I realize the game does need to manage these grids to keep the overall PCU number down. However, because of this, I've "strategically transferred equipment to an alternate location" and had said grids suddenly pop out of existence. It was rather jarring to be flying along in space, 20 km from anything, only to suddenly find myself floating alone with no spaceship, because I was using a craft I didn't own, and the game decided it was time to delete that grid. For this issue, I suggest the following:

1. Don't remove unowned grids within the player's view.

2. For any grids within the player's view that need removed, use some kind of lore as to why the grid is being reclaimed by the original NPC owner, and give disincentive for the player to use it. Perhaps have the owning faction send an overwhelming attack on the player until the grid is destroyed. Something like that, perhaps? Or have the grid switch to auto-pilot and go somewhere out of view, and the player never able to regain control. Or have the grid self-destruct spectacularly.

Of course, if the grid is out of view, popping out of existence is fine. It's just when the player is where he can interact with the grid, it feels like Klang is just messing with us. And yes, I've encountered Klang a few times in SE2, though I'm uncertain if his presence is as ubiquitous as in SE1. My oversized mobile base with undersized wheels did some rather terrifying things when I tried getting it to work.

I suppose my suggestions for using lore to solve some of these issues arises from the changes in the Fast Travel between v 2.2 and v 2.3. I like that change--I think it added a lot to the game, even though it amounts to little more that a simple cut-scene. Little details go a long way.