List of my frustrations on my 1st playthrough

Hello everyone,

I bought this game yesterday afternoon and am enjoying it a lot so far. I think the developers spent a lot of time and efforts into this early access release and it really shows they've poured their hearts into this game. There is a lot of potential and am excited for what the future might hold which is why I left a positive review on Steam. I strongly believe the first 60 minutes of a game is the most crucial time frame into making a good first impression. Here's my list of frustrations on my 1st play through as a new player with no prior play time beforehand.

MY 1ST PLAY THROUGH:
TOOLS FACILITY
When the game first starts you're greeted with an information window that tells you to build a Tools Facility. That's great but as a newcomer I struggled for a few seconds before realizing which button to press on the UI to bring up the build menu. And when I finally did, the information window indicating where the Tools Facility was located disappeared and left me struggling because I couldn't remember that I had to go through BUILD MENU > OBJECTS > RESOURCE > TOOLS FACILITY. I ended up clicking on ALL and going through the list until I found what I was looking for.

ROTATING
Once the Tools Facility was finally selected my first reflex was to rotate the object. Unconsciously, I pressed Q and E which didn't work at all and only added to the confusion as the screen started changing view modes. The problem is that the UI is so daunting at first and there's so many things going on that my brain involuntarily got conditioned into ignoring most of the interface which made me miss that tiny info box on the bottom of the screen that ironically instructed me to use the F and G keys to achieve what I was trying to do.

LINK POWER NODE
As I built the objects that were requested of me in the tutorial I was soon prompted to expand the power network which I did. Then, came the part where I had to link the power node I had just created. My first instinct was to click on the big red flashing icon above the power node but that didn't work. Then, after scanning the yet again daunting UI, I finally found the links button on the bottom of the screen which brought forward the link interface. Somehow, I couldn't grasp the concept of linking stuff together, no matter how many times I clicked the power node and the power generator nothing would happen and I was starting to get irritated until it finally dawned upon me that I had to click on the small green electrical cord icon. Seeing as how clicking on the icon previously didn't work I felt this was kind of counter-intuitive.

BEDS AND A TOILET
The next part of the tutorial was to build lights and then expand the ship's hull which I honestly think isn't a critical necessity this early in the game. The issue it brought, is that by the time I got to beds and a toilet I had spent so much time fiddling around trying to follow the tutorial that half the crew were sleeping on the floor, shat themselves and were now at minus hundreds comfort. It should be considered that newcomers take much longer to do stuff versus a seasoned player who already understand most of the mechanics of the game.

COMFORT
Regrettably, I buit the crew quarter right next to the room which enclosed the power generator. The beds were now nullified because of negative comfort. Understandably the wall weren't thick enough to stop the noise it made and so it seemed very logical to make them thicker which I did. Unfortunately, that didn't make the tiniest of difference and so I had to relocate everything to my dismay which prompted me to start a new game instead.

MISC: 
SOUND EFFECTS
There are no sound effects! Where's the humming of the generator, the metallic clanking of the footsteps as the crew walks around or the sound of welding tools they're using as they build stuff around the place for example? The lack of sound effects really has a negative impact on the immersion and overall game experience. Hopefully this issue will be prioritized in the next patch.

Hopefully this thread can inspire some changes to make the experience a little less challenging for new players. As always, thanks for reading.

Hi Mat,

From the main menu, you can press, "Options" and then "Key Bindings" to view or change key functions. To rotate objects it's 'F' / 'G' for clockwise and counter clockwise.
For linking power modules, just click on the power module which brings up options along the bottom of the screen. Then click on "Links" and your power map appears and you can click on the "+" above a nearby power module to link with it. I generally use bidirectional links.

I usually build the tools facility, then main power, life support, then the beds and toilet. If building a new ship, start small that fits the basics and then expand.

You may be able to load a save game if you don't want to start a new one.

Hope that helps.

Hey danzig70,

I appreciate that you took the time to respond to this thread with advices. I have now played the game long enough now to know better.

I just wanted to point out some of the stuff that got under my skin as a new player on my first play through. I imagine it could upset some other players too.

That's the good thing about these boards. One person asks a question and then all the future members can find the answer. One thing I would like to see is to have a "home" planet you can end the game on. .Otherwise you just eventually run out of resources.

So I would mirror your initial thoughts on the game. It is a lot to take in, and for the most part, the designers have done a first rate job of making a lot of things intuitive and easy to manipulate. There is a learning curve you need to sacrifice a few games as you learn.

I think some things are beyond a learning curve and need to be tweaked. The shuttle dropping off people to explore a derelict is one of those. I don't know how many times I drop someone off at an airlock and right click to move them and woosh, there goes my shuttle. Then I spend some time telling it to dock again. That interface needs to be smoother.

Soon you will encounter the logistics of supplies and creating better building blocks. This is a major stop-game situation for me. There are some items that you must have high-tech materials to build, and if you run out of those, you cannot proceed. The machines that make these high-tech materials require those high-tech materials to build them, so it is a catch-22. i cannot build a machine that makes widgets because it takes a widget to build it. Now, if you could recover widgets from derelicts, or trade from trade ships, it would be OK, but you can't. What they need to do is make sure you can build a machine that makes widgets without requiring a widget to build it. This is a natural thing in a lot of these empire building games. If I need dragon eggs, I need to build a dragon nest, which requires a dragon egg, so I can't build it and I can never get dragon eggs. So the dragon nest should NOT require a dragon egg to build it.

I would like it if I could rotate the map so i can see my ship and building areas from different angles.

For the most part, the game is very good about telling you about something if you hover your mouse over it. For most things this is great, but for a lot of other things, I need more information. What i think this game needs is a "space haven wiki" if you hover over something, it has a pop-up that tells you what it is, if you click on the pop-up it opens a browser window and takes you to the space haven wiki on that topic. If the wiki were player-editable, then we could all build on the pages, giving hints, helping each other out.

A good example is something you touched on - comfort. When it tells you about comfort, you should be able to click on the link to take you to the wiki, which should have a lot of information on how comfort works, tricks to help it (walls, building in a modular fashion to use the vacuum of space to block sound, etc.) As it is, we just don't have any information about how far away, how much insulation, how much sound before crew become upset, etc.

So i've played about 15 games since getting the game, each time I get a little farther before I realize I've done something that cannot be fixed. I have never gotten to a point where I could build a cannon on my ship. Just can't get there, requires too much tech. My last game, my ship was huge, modular, 2 hyperspace drives, but I ran out of high tech and couldn't build the machine to make it, so I am dead in the water.

Many things in the game that kill you slowly can't be fixed in time, you have to load a previous game and start saving yourself earlier. Starvation is a good example. I had plenty of grow modules, but it turned out I had run out of water. No ship to trade with, no asteroid to mine, I was dead. Once I ran out of hyperspace fuel. Sat in a system for 20 days hoping a trade ship would pop in with some. Never happened. New game! I mean, what else can you do? Maybe the game needs an emergency transmitter to summon a trade ship???

Some high tech items are so costly for such a little return. Do I really need a whole console to turn the shield generator on? This should be combined with the weapons console. Do i need a costly console to run the scanner? This should be combined with the navigation console.

I've also run into some strange buggy behavior. Sometimes I will have a single crew member starving. They just don't eat. Everyone else is eating. This guy is dancing to the jukebox but slowly starving next to the kitchen table where his crew mates are having a lovely meal. Can't figure that out....I think it is a bug.

I wish i'd seen this thread earlier, it answers a lot of the stuff i had issues understanding...

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

We've addressed the rotation box in the experimental build we have out right now. You can check on how to join that below:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/979110/di...670563162/

We're super swamped at the moment but rest assured we are monitoring all channels and trying our best to make improvements! =)

Soon you will encounter the logistics of supplies and creating better building blocks. This is a major stop-game situation for me. There are some items that you must have high-tech materials to build, and if you run out of those, you cannot proceed. The machines that make these high-tech materials require those high-tech materials to build them, so it is a catch-22. i cannot build a machine that makes widgets because it takes a widget to build it. Now, if you could recover widgets from derelicts, or trade from trade ships, it would be OK, but you can't. What they need to do is make sure you can build a machine that makes widgets without requiring a widget to build it. This is a natural thing in a lot of these empire building games. If I need dragon eggs, I need to build a dragon nest, which requires a dragon egg, so I can't build it and I can never get dragon eggs. So the dragon nest should NOT require a dragon egg to build it.

hi, 
to your point about needing lots of tech blocks to build the assembly line for tech blocks, here is something that worked well for me.

i had a similar roadblock where i didn't have enough tech blocks to make the series of machines the lead to making tech blocks.
i think sometimes you have to manage your resources by disassembling things you don't need at the moment. 
this is how i got around it on Medium difficulty.

i had used all my tech blocks to build the various consoles, a turret (saved me from a pirate) and crew entertainment when i first started heading out. i had 0 at that point.
when i got to place where i wanted to start making my own, i disassembled all the consoles save the navigation one (in case i had to bolt from a pirate), disassembled the turret, the arcades, the jukebox, the medical bed, and anything else i did not need right that minute.

then i built the assembly line of machines needed to make my own tech blocks. once i started making them, i started to rebuild what i had disassembled until i had it all back and still had the assembly line. (plus a second turrent)

i also traded with other ships for some infrablocks when i could, since they were cheap to buy (around 130 credits)


i've seen this complain on a few threads so i might make a thread mentioning this in case it can help other players.
this has been a very fun game.

You actually can get tech blocks from derelict ships. Not always though, and generally, no more than one or two. I've seen three a couple of times, but never any more than that, as far as I have seen. (Though it seems like you should be able to deconstruct the generators and hyperspace engines of a derelict ship for the building materials, that would probably make things too easy.)