Experience and feedback

Hi all
 First thank you Bugbyte devs for making the game, Ive been following this game for quite some time and decided to pick up a copy after the release of alpha 10. 
Having played for the last couple weeks, I’m impressed with the depth the game presents when designing your spaceship. However I found microing crew members on away trips very tedious, but maybe I’m just noob, thus I generally avoided any boarding action. However I still had a blast and is optimistic about the potential of this game.

So I played on default medium difficulty with the mining base start, I found the ship you get with the platform start to be harder as you need to be as space/resource efficient as possible at the start, and the starting ship you get is just not. i learnt this the hard way as my previous 2 runs ended in the typical newbie way of running out of ice and power respectively. 

So on my 3rd run, I started off meticulous about the usage of tech/power blocks. Designed my starter ship to be just big enough for the essential structures while small enough so I’m using the least amount of life support facilities. After plundering the mining station bare, with A cargo hold full of resources, and a workable amount of tech/power blocks remaining, I jumped off with high hopes.

https://i.imgur.com/m0Jhlge.jpg

I spent the next 100 in game days mining as much raw material as possible while keeping progress on my research, (I focussed on getting the full block production chain first) all the while avoiding combat of any kind, I think I only explored 2-3 derelicts this entire run. 

Then I jumped into the abundant resource system. Admittedly I probably spent over 200 days there mining, trading, building and researching. By the end of it all, I had finished all research, completed my ship and had enough credits and materials to just sit there and do whatever, I’m basically playing creative mode at this point. So I decided to build a second ship that was more focussed on ship to ship combat. 

https://i.imgur.com/gwvoIjz.jpg

As seen in the screenshot, my main ship is completely solar powered, however I kept 2 x3 generators for backup during high industrial production Hours. I’m not sure what the optimal amount of shields is to have, but I found once I had 2 shield generators, I could comfortably tank the entire duration of micrometeorites without anyone manning the shield console, as well as giving me enough time to escape any hostile ships while tanking shots. But I decided to go with 4 shield gens just to be safe. Also I found the option to set a condition for all facilities to be the most helpful for managing crew logistics, example: I set all my farms to only grow if that particular raw food is below 10 units in my storage, this way the farmers will not be farming unnecessarily and will save you that precious ice(water). I do this with my entire production chain, including the production of energy/fertilizer (I did this with EVERYTHING), this way my somewhat undersized crew hardly ever get overwhelmed with logistics. 

I’m currently half way through building my 2nd ship

https://i.imgur.com/r9iwRHq.jpg

As you can see, this ship is fully solar, no back up generators at all. At this point my carbon reserves are kinda low (50 units left) so I’m prepping to traverse to the next abundant resource system. 

So far the game has been well worth the money spent, even in EA stage. I have a lot of suggestions and feedback as I’m playing, mostly about very minor things I’m sure other people have already pointed out. My biggest suggestion would be to make the UI more compact, specially for the crew at the top of the screen. Also if any veteran Uber pro players have any tips and pointers will be much appreciated and welcomed. 

Till next time, stay safe, stay healthy
Rex

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Damn the screenshot are not showing up for me.... Oh well I cbf. Lol. Edit(changed it links)