Game feedback

[Mur]

This is my experience with the game and might not be the same experience as others, feel free to share your experience / comments!

These might be nitpicking but I think a few tweaks would help smooth game play.

1) I was playing the demo and at level 3 I started to feel overwhelmed because I messed up my electrical power station somehow and it always needed more coal, this was made worse by the constant attacks by the enemy at timed intervals taking a lot of my iron.
After playing the alpha build I felt that I did not have as much issues as I previous did so I don't know if it was due to tweaks made during that time or better layout.

Suggestion: Ammo manufacturing cost needs to be reduced or increase the amount of shots per clip (which actually might be better because then you will need to reload less) because it really takes a lot of your iron to keep the turrets stocked.


2) After figuring out how to set-up electricity properly, I got to level 4 and again I felt overloaded by more enemy attacks which forced me to get even more efficient.

Suggestion: There should be an extended electrical tutorial, injector tutorial (box -> furnace -> box) and explain how to do mass manufacturing. (Iron -> box -> machine:Gear -> gear -> etc)
I would also suggest reducing the attacks during the first few levels a bit to ease people into the game and give them more time to wander around to focus on making their build better.


3) On level 4 while I tried to get my manufacturing going the larger annoyance was the power poles, they had such a small area and were incontinent to place.

Suggestion: Either make the AOE that gives power larger and the distance longer from pole to pole or make it so placing a pole does not take a spot for placing buildings.


4) Injectors seem to only load an object like coal -> boiler when it gets low on the required item, this can have issues when manufacturing an items and the injector just sits there half the time and then madly tries to load the parts which ends up causing downtime.

Suggestion: Let us change a setting on the injector to say how much to fill / unload so if we only want it to stock when there is 6 or stock @ max all time. (Later suggestion: I would also suggest maybe limit what its allowed to pick-up, so say if I have a conveyor belt with copper and coal I can tell it only to pick-up coal)


5) When finally getting my research going and setting up my fabs, I needed to build rockets to take down the enemy turrets. The enemies would attack with massive ways where I needed to be guarded by 4~6 turrets just to keep them off me. Each rocket took a very long time to make and it took multiple rockets to destroy a turret. I guess it was a combination of needing to stock turrets, holding off the increasing waves of attacks, slowly babysit the slow research and start building the rockets to take down the multiple turrets that I got a bit frustrated.

[kovarex]

This is my experience with the game and might not be the same experience as others, feel free to share your experience / comments!

Thanks for the feedback.

1) I was playing the demo and at level 3 I started to feel overwhelmed because I messed up my electrical power station somehow and it always needed more coal, this was made worse by the constant attacks by the enemy at timed intervals taking a lot of my iron.
After playing the alpha build I felt that I did not have as much issues as I previous did so I don't know if it was due to tweaks made during that time or better layout.

Suggestion: Ammo manufacturing cost needs to be reduced or increase the amount of shots per clip (which actually might be better because then you will need to reload less) because it really takes a lot of your iron to keep the turrets

What difficulty did you choose?
We were facing the other problem most of time, we felt that the game is too easy, and we were looking for any way to use the huge amounts of production our factories were generating. On the other hand, we spent big amount of the time with the game, so our perspective of what is easy is deformed.

If the level is too hard even on the easy difficulty, we can tune the difficulty down, but we certainly want to keep the higher difficulty challenging.

2) After getting over and figuring out how to setup electricity properly I got to level 4 and again I felt overloaded by even more attacks which forced me to get even more efficient.

There should be an extended electrical tutorial, injector (box -> furnace -> box) and explain how to do mass manufacturing. (Iron -> box -> machine:Gear -> gear -> etc)
I would also suggest reducing the attacks during the first few levels a bit to ease people into the game and give them more time to wander around to focus on making their build better.

This is constant struggle.
We want the game to be understandable, and documented, but on the other hand, we want let the player to enjoy the process of finding out how to do the stuff on his own.
We definetly need to extend the wiki and tips and tricks a lot, it is hard to do any work these days, as so many different tasks are needed to be done.

3) On level 4 while I tried to get my manufacturing going the larger annoyance was the power poles, they had such a small area and were incontinent to place.

Suggestion: Either make the AOE that gives power larger and the distance longer from pole to pole or make it so placing a pole does not take a spot for placing buildings.

We are definetly planning to have larger electric poles, these would be more expensive and would provide larger coverage radius.

4) Injectors seem to only load an object like boiler when it gets low on the items, this can have issues when manufacturing an items and the injector just sits there half the time and madly tries to load the parts other times causing downtime.
Suggestion: Let us change a setting on the injector to say how much to fill / unload so if we only want it to stock when there is 6 or stock @ max all time.

We need to document this, and probably give the player some way to control the behaviour.
One of the possibilities I could imagine is to let the inserter have
1) lightweight - the current behaviour
2) full - insert as much as possible always (would fill burners, assembling machines, labs as much as possible)
3) Maybe even third option to specify the count, but I would leave this option for smart inserter setups.

(Later suggestion: I would also suggest maybe limit what its allowed to pick-up, so say if I have a conveyor belt with copper and coal I can tell it only to pick-up coal)

This is in the game already, and it is called filter inserter (http://kovarex.com/wiki/index.php/Inser ... r_inserter)

5) When finally getting my research going and setting up my fabs I needed to build rockets to take down the enemy turrets where enemies would attack with massive ways and being guarded by 4~6 turrets just to keep them off me. Each rocket took a very long time to make and it took multiple rockets to destroy a turret. I guess it was a combination of needing to stock turrets, holding off the increasing waves of attacks, slowly babysit research and start building the slow rockets to take down the multiple turrets that I got a bit frustrated.

Well we complicated all this to make it industrial challange, but as I said before, if this is too hard on easy difficulty we will tune it down.

[Mur]

What difficulty did you choose?
We were facing the other problem most of time, we felt that the game is too easy, and we were looking for any way to use the huge amounts of production our factories were generating. On the other hand, we spent big amount of the time with the game, so our perspective of what is easy is deformed.

If the level is too hard even on the easy difficulty, we can tune the difficulty down, but we certainly want to keep the higher difficulty challenging.

normal, campaign 1

This is constant struggle.
We want the game to be understandable, and documented, but on the other hand, we want let the player to enjoy the process of finding out how to do the stuff on his own.
We definetly need to extend the wiki and tips and tricks a lot, it is hard to do any work these days, as so many different tasks are needed to be done.

I think that giving a good explanation of how you "can" do stuff and let people figure out what works best for them afterwards otherwise people won't really get the idea to do some of the more advance methods.

We are definitely planning to have larger electric poles, these would be more expensive and would provide larger coverage radius.

I will follow up when I get to test the upcoming poles because I think this is one big issue on the line of being a nuance instead of an added layer of complexity.

We need to document this, and probably give the player some way to control the behaviour.
One of the possibilities I could imagine is to let the inserter have
1) lightweight - the current behaviour
2) full - insert as much as possible always (would fill burners, assembling machines, labs as much as possible)
3) Maybe even third option to specify the count, but I would leave this option for smart inserter setups.

That would help a lot in future

This is in the game already, and it is called filter inserter (http://kovarex.com/wiki/index.php/Inser ... r_inserter)

My mistake, thanks.

Well we complicated all this to make it industrial challenge, but as I said before, if this is too hard on easy difficulty we will tune it down.

I think that easing someone into the game should be priority #1. After that you can get them to understand the complexity of how to do stuff then ramp up the difficulty and add more things to do. The way I see it, its not about being difficult / combat that makes it fun, hell sometimes when I play minecraft I turn it to peaceful because I enjoy just building and fine tuning stuff. I understand that each person has in their mind what is fun and you can't satisfy everyone (nor should you) but I think that the building aspect on its own will call out to anyone who has interest in minecraft because its unique and interesting.

Fixed quotation by a moderator.

[bill]

Hi!
This is my first time posting about a game. I play a lot, and make games for a living for the last 30 years, but I don't like posting... this game is so cool, I could not help myself!!
Great game. Very inventive. Minecraft + railroad tycoon + TD... nice.
First off: have you played SpaceChem? If not, check it out (iPad is great version). Lots of factory managment stuff there.

As a programmer, this game is very close to a programming game, so I have been unable to stop playing. 30+ hours so far and 3 fresh games... I'm finally figuring it out.

Questions:
1) I notice the car and train do nothing: do these work yet, and if so, how, if not, when?
2) Are you planning weekly updates? Please!!!
3) what is the best way to report bugs? I have semi-repeatable crash. Build a few assemblers in the queue, then select one and try to place. Hard lock about 20% of the time. I've learned to not place assemblers while I have some in the build queue (personal queue whatever that is called).
4) Can you explain the logic of the ai spawning? I saw totally different behavor in "free play" mode (when I just say new game, not campain). I had one wave attack me 10 mins in, then never again?

Easy suggestions:
1) PLEASE ADD A PAUSE KEY!!! This is so important that I put it first. Just let me pause and look around the map. this game requires a lot of thinking and planning and sometimes I just want to look at my factory to find the problem, but if in real time, the problem can get out of hand. Please!!
2) PLEASE reduce collision on small (1x1 and 2x1) objects!! This is painful. I would suggest no collision on 1x1 objects (poles, lights) and also 2x1 (mainly injectors). Complex areas are important, but the fact I have to move around them, is SOOOO painful. Pretty please?
3) Show # of bullets in turrets on mouse over: looks like oversite as all other objects do it.
4) add a "blocked" indicator (much like the "no fuel" indecator) to tell me that a injector/furnace is blocked and that why it's not working. Now that I am 30 hours in this is not a big deal, but would have saved me a ton of frustration in the early hours.
5) Increase the placement range around the player. It's very hard to place power poles expecially in tight areas. Add another 2-5 blocks range will help a ton!!!
6) also, increasing the powering range of poles by 1 would help a lot. The limitiation on poles giving power makes me make some less than optimal factory choices (for instance packing 2x2 mining stations means I have to put poles all around the edges). Not a huge issue, but could help a lot.
7) Some extra info on the mouse over. two that came to mind (and took me HOURS to figure out): 1) put a little message on the mouse over and description for science packs that says ("put these in labatories to research"). Took me forever to figure that one out! 2) for UFO's (whatever they are called... best feature ever BTW) a message that says "place requestor and provider cheasts to make these puppies work" would have saved me a ton of wasted time. In general, add a line or two to the higher level objects decsription will go a long way for usability.
8) Maybe a message on features that don't work yet in the description bar (like cars and trains) so I don't waste time trying to figure it out.
9) Weekly updates please! Be nice to have an ingame "release notes".
10) like above: invest a few hours to make a simple text display system so you can just throw text files in the game. no reason not to take everything from the wiki and put it on a few pages in game. Ugly is fine, but why not allow me to click any item name, and it will jump me to the description.

I really love this game!! It has many of the ideas that I really wanted in minecraft/terreria and some that I never thought of. Keep up the great work, and I am telling all my friends to take a look. I have a lot of programmer friends, and I really think this is one of the few "programming games" out there. I was working last night on a load-balancer (to make sure that both lanes of the conveyor were even to reduce clogging).

Keep the updates coming!!

Cheers,
Bill.

[Mur]

umm you could of posted this in the other thread with the exact same name.

http://kovarex.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28

1) Sounds good to me
2) Agree
3) Agree
4) Not sure what you mean by "blocked" but this makes me suggest letting you set a "Low" status on things like stone furnace
5) After looking over it, I do agree
6) Agree
7) I am sure this will be filled out later

[zlosynus]

Hi Bill,

I merged two topics of the same name and content. Thanks a lot for an excellent post, I agree with many suggestions of yours. We have a wiki page http://kovarex.com/wiki, sadly it is still very unfinished and I would be lost in many parts of the game if the creators wouldn't explain me the stuff. I especially like your suggestion 2, to make the bounding boxes smaller. For instance, it bothers me a lot that you cannot walk between two inserters placed diagonally. If they are placed next to each other, you mostly don't need to walk there, but in this case it would be really helpful.

Btw. you seem to have quite a lot of experiences with the game. It would be great if you could take a few screenshots of your factories and add them to our Show your Creations forum.

[kovarex]

Hi!

Hi

This is my first time posting about a game. I play a lot, and make games for a living for the last 30 years, but I don't like posting... this game is so cool, I could not help myself!!
Great game. Very inventive. Minecraft + railroad tycoon + TD... nice.

To be honest, I have a lot of programming experience (I have been programming for 16 years already), but this was my first serious attempt (apart some childish - never finished attempts) to make a computer game. I have been told many times, that the first game is never good, and I can't expect anything good. I really wanted to prove them wrong.
So you probably understand, that I'm really honored by your positive feedback, it means a lot for me, seriously.

First off: have you played SpaceChem? If not, check it out (iPad is great version). Lots of factory managment stuff there.

I would love to try it, you are not the first one to mention it, but there are so many tasks we need to do currently, that there is no chance to find time to try it out.

As a programmer, this game is very close to a programming game, so I have been unable to stop playing. 30+ hours so far and 3 fresh games... I'm finally figuring it out.

We love programming, the game most probably reflects it

1) I notice the car and train do nothing: do these work yet, and if so, how, if not, when?

I'm not sure what do you mean by not work, the car needs fuel to work, the train needs nothing (work in progress).
The car can be used for personal transportation (we have just placeholder graphics with 16 directions, so it is painful to watch now ^^)
The train can be used for personal transportation as well, we plan to incorporate it in the automation, more here: http://kovarex.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9

2) Are you planning weekly updates? Please!!!

Yes.

3) what is the best way to report bugs? I have semi-repeatable crash. Build a few assemblers in the queue, then select one and try to place. Hard lock about 20% of the time. I've learned to not place assemblers while I have some in the build queue (personal queue whatever that is called).

Best way is to report here https://github.com/kovarex/Factorio-iss ... state=open
The second best way is to make topic here on forums in the correct secion.

4) Can you explain the logic of the ai spawning? I saw totally different behavor in "free play" mode (when I just say new game, not campain). I had one wave attack me 10 mins in, then never again?

Attacks are managed by the lua script of the level, and may depend on many things (difficulty, game phase etc).
In the freeplay mode, there are some attacks, and the deley is randomised, we plan to enhance the freeplay script a lot, but it is one of the 1000 issues we need to solve right now

1) PLEASE ADD A PAUSE KEY!!! This is so important that I put it first. Just let me pause and look around the map. this game requires a lot of thinking and planning and sometimes I just want to look at my factory to find the problem, but if in real time, the problem can get out of hand. Please!!

Ok, if you want to save my head from exploding, you are free to post this in to the github tracker mentioned earlier

2) PLEASE reduce collision on small (1x1 and 2x1) objects!! This is painful. I would suggest no collision on 1x1 objects (poles, lights) and also 2x1 (mainly injectors). Complex areas are important, but the fact I have to move around them, is SOOOO painful. Pretty please?

Right, this is not the first time someone suggested this. We might solve this also by enhancing the sliding. We are aware something has to be done with this.

3) Show # of bullets in turrets on mouse over: looks like oversite as all other objects do it.

Totaly agree, 1 minute job for me, just add it to the issue tracker please.
I'm for warning icon for turret without ammo as well.

4) add a "blocked" indicator (much like the "no fuel" indecator) to tell me that a injector/furnace is blocked and that why it's not working. Now that I am 30 hours in this is not a big deal, but would have saved me a ton of frustration in the early hours.

Good idea, we will do it, I'm also considering icon for steam engine that is not connected to the network (unplugged).

5) Increase the placement range around the player. It's very hard to place power poles expecially in tight areas. Add another 2-5 blocks range will help a ton!!!

The distance is one of those many things that just came to the game in this way: "Hmm what should the distance be? Lets say ... 5".
I can image that the distance could change over time (research, equimpent, level, class etc), but increasing it a bit might help, I just don't want it to be abusable too much later.

6) also, increasing the powering range of poles by 1 would help a lot. The limitiation on poles giving power makes me make some less than optimal factory choices (for instance packing 2x2 mining stations means I have to put poles all around the edges). Not a huge issue, but could help a lot.

We are planning tier II iron poles, would it be enough?

7) Some extra info on the mouse over. two that came to mind (and took me HOURS to figure out): 1) put a little message on the mouse over and description for science packs that says ("put these in labatories to research"). Took me forever to figure that one out! 2) for UFO's (whatever they are called... best feature ever BTW) a message that says "place requestor and provider cheasts to make these puppies work" would have saved me a ton of wasted time. In general, add a line or two to the higher level objects decsription will go a long way for usability.

Please, add it to the issue list. This is very simple thing to do, we have already mechanism to add description for certain kind of items.
We should also document this in wiki.

8) Maybe a message on features that don't work yet in the description bar (like cars and trains) so I don't waste time trying to figure it out.

If it really doesn't work for you, it is a bug.

9) Weekly updates please! Be nice to have an ingame "release notes".

You may have noticed, we started writing changelog since 0.1.0, It probably does not contain everything, but we try to write everything important there.
The changelog is opened automatically when you install the game on windows, on other systems, you can always check it out at doc/cangelog.
We also plan to write posts like this from now on: http://kovarex.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21
You can check our blog as well: https://www.factorio.com/blog

10) like above: invest a few hours to make a simple text display system so you can just throw text files in the game. no reason not to take everything from the wiki and put it on a few pages in game. Ugly is fine, but why not allow me to click any item name, and it will jump me to the description.

I want it too.

I really love this game!! It has many of the ideas that I really wanted in minecraft/terreria and some that I never thought of. Keep up the great work, and I am telling all my friends to take a look. I have a lot of programmer friends, and I really think this is one of the few "programming games" out there. I was working last night on a load-balancer (to make sure that both lanes of the conveyor were even to reduce clogging).

I'm thankful for spreading the word, this helps the chance of our project being funded a lot.

Keep the updates coming!!

The last few days we didn't have much time for programming, and I can't promise a lot until the end of the campaign, but If we get funded. We will do all we can to fulfil the expectations.

Thank you for all the feedback and support.

Marwin

[bill]

Hey all,
Thanks for the quick replies: glad to see you guys responding to your fanbase

So: Cars and trains. I researched and built both. Can't figure them out. Trains: i place on a track and i can no longer selecte: it tries to select the tracks. Just sits there and cant move it.
Car: I can place it. if i right click I can add fuel and put stuff in the trunk but.. how to get in/use, whatever? I must be missing something.
I am at the top of the tech tree with a massive factory (I will post pics) so looking forward to playing more.
I think there may be some bugs in game modes. I notice I pick normal difficulty and the difficulty shown in the savegame is random (oldschool on the current!). Maybe some explaination on the (3?) game modes: campain, custom game, and new game (the one I play which is a large (infinite) map with specklings of alien bases that are all the same: a spawner and 4 turrets)). Also, i have 13+ hours on the save game and only one small wave ever attacked:( I built some cool autoloading turrets I never used.

By "blocked" I mean: cant fill a furnace because it is full (same goes for assemblers). Basically it just stops, and took me a while to figure out why. If you aren't looking you won't even notice which is the sucky part. Same with inserters: not always obvious why they are not movig (now it is!!). Expecially if you place them backwards: they just stop and no idea why.

Also, can you briefly explain steam power and water temp? I have tried various configuratiuons (as my screen shots will show) and still don't understand how to optimize (sorry graphics guy: need to optimize!!). As someone else mentioned, some basic stats would be good to publish, at least in a txt file.

Tier II Poles: yes multiple levels for all! Like furnaces that work faster (electric ones!!). Love to get off of coal.
Speaking of which: don't understand solar without batteries (sorry if this was the plan: I totally understand this is alpha). What sucks is that you always need more power at night, so...
Maybe if I could shut off the steam power in the day that would also be something that would make me use solar.

And on Creeps: I really missed the waves from the Campaing missions, they added a fun balance to building protections and climbing the tech tree. Some suggestions:
1) Have stronger enemy bases the farther from the spawn point. Mucho easy.
2) Have enemies send more stuff based on your tech level (I think it does that in campain).
3) have the enemy build up as you build up: so bigger waves and more stuff at the home base.
4) vehicles.

Loving the game: now I will spend the night trying to get trains and cars working.

[bill]

SHAZAM! Press the space bar to enter the car!! SCHWEET! Also fires off a flamethrower lighting nearby stuff up Maybe use the enter key?
Now to get trains working.....

[kovarex]

Hey all,
A spawner and 4 turrets)).

The further you are from the starting position, the larger the bases are becomming, but their shape is stupid anyway, we need to upgrade this a lot, we are aware.

Also, I have 13+ hours on the save game and only one small wave ever attacked:( I built some cool autoloading turrets I never used.

Most probably bug in the script.

By "blocked" I mean: cant fill a furnace because it is full (same goes for assemblers). Basically it just stops, and took me a while to figure out why.

I consider this state to be quite standard (assembling machines not producing, as they are full).

Also, can you briefly explain steam power and water temp? I have tried various configuratiuons (as my screen shots will show) and still don't understand how to optimize (sorry graphics guy: need to optimize!!). As someone else mentioned, some basic stats would be good to publish, at least in a txt file.

Did you read this already? http://kovarex.com/wiki/index.php/Electric_network
It is rough and simple, but it might help.

Tier II Poles: yes multiple levels for all! Like furnaces that work faster (electric ones!!). Love to get off of coal.

I love tiers too, who doesn't
For smelting, I could imagine iron furnace, and tier III Blast furnace like this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alto_ ... Sestao.jpg

Speaking of which: don't understand solar without batteries (sorry if this was the plan: I totally understand this is alpha). What sucks is that you always need more power at night, so...
Maybe if I could shut off the steam power in the day that would also be something that would make me use solar.

http://kovarex.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5

And on Creeps: I really missed the waves from the Campaing missions, they added a fun balance to building protections and climbing the tech tree. Some suggestions:
1) Have stronger enemy bases the farther from the spawn point. Mucho easy.

It is already implemented, I just probably need to play with the settings to make it grow faster.

2) Have enemies send more stuff based on your tech level (I think it does that in campain).

In campaign, they just send more stuff over time.
In the freeplay (New game mode), when the bug will be repaired, it will be similar.
We also planned that larger industrialisation and pollution would attract them even more.
This would make you think twice before adding 10 more furnaces

4) vehicles.

Enemies, let's make them complex, let's make the fight complex, but first things first

Marwin

[slpwnd]

2) PLEASE reduce collision on small (1x1 and 2x1) objects!! This is painful. I would suggest no collision on 1x1 objects (poles, lights) and also 2x1 (mainly injectors). Complex areas are important, but the fact I have to move around them, is SOOOO painful. Pretty please?

Right, this is not the first time someone suggested this. We might solve this also by enhancing the sliding. We are aware something has to be done with this.

Another option we have considered is adding something like a jetpack armor that would allow the character to fly. Moving around especially in the big and dense factories can get really tricky and annoying (like when you have to run against the direction of a fast transport belt and don't have a way around). I picture it being unlocked by a rather advanced technology.

[SupaNova]

Ive Got to say, Bravo, Great job with this game, ive been hooked.

[Ween]

About that, wouldn't it be also possible to have an underground or wireless electricity system (or electricity through belt). All this posts are kind of ... too much after a while, no? And if you add to that the collision problem, it is much trouble...

[Edhen]

Hello everyone,

I looked around a bit and couldn't find a specific section for game feedbacks, so I figured I better use that existing thread to do so. It seems the devs are quite active on the forum, so I'm quite sure my post will find its way to you.

First of all, I should say that I probably haven't played the game enough to know all of its mechanics and subtleties. I have done the solo campaign, with many restart on each mission to try and optimize my gameplay. I guess I'm around 15 to 20 hours in-game, and I also spent some time on the wiki and the forums.
So, here are my thoughts about the game. I will try to put some order in them, and I will try not to forget that the game is still in alpha. Anyway, I should say right now that I'm very enthusiastic about it, and I hope I will be able to help you out with my comments.

Menus and controls

That's the very first thing I came across in the game, so maybe I should start here.
Your menus are good, sober and reactive. That's a good thing. I don't have much to say about them, except for 3 aspects : the control options, the menu after a death or a win, and the autosave.

Controls option : I must say that I have a weird feeling about this screen. There seems to be so many controls, but at the same time it's like only some of them are really that important. I would suggest to hierarchise them a bit more, by creating sub section in every tabs. For example, in the first tab, "Game", I guess you could be a bit more clear by having different sections in this tab, such as "Movement & Interactions" (with movement keys, mine, open object, Pick item, Drop item, Enter/Leave vehicle) // "Combat" (Next weapon, Shoot enemy, Shoot enemy selected) // "Sheets" or "Windows" (Character screen - which should be renamed "Inventory" in my opinion - Technology Screen, Close window, Confirm Message, Toggle Menu) // "Construction" (Build, Rotate, Show info, Connect Train, Disconnect Train).

This way, just by giving a quick glance at the controls and how they are organized, you can guess what the game expects from you, even if you don't have heard of it before, or you don't know how it looks. You anticipate to have to move around and interact with stuff, build stuff, and look at menus. Depending on the length of each section, you can also guess how much place it will take in the game. So for instance, you know that combat is not taking a major part of the game, because there is very few controls.
Moreover, this helps a lot setting your keys up, without having to change your layout every two minutes until it fits you (Yeah... that's what happened to me...). I just came up with the names for each sections, if anyone has a better naming or organizing suggestion, you know what to do : tell us !

Finally, biggest issue for me : you can't unbind keys ! If I don't want to use the quickbar keys, and set the "1, 2, 3 etc..." for something else, I can't unbind them. Plus, it's possible to set the same key for two different actions, the game doesn't remove the previous one, or at least switch them.


Death and Win : Maybe this has been suggested elsewhere, but I find it kind of weird that when you die the game offers you to save your game. Same for when you win. Once the game ends, you don't care about saving, do you ? And there is no loading options either, which forces you to exit, and load the game again, in both cases. I guess it's still under work, and maybe you already planned to change it, but I prefer to mention it.

Autosave : It's good that there is one, because I tend to be absent minded, and I forgot to save a lot ! But.... Autosave every 2 minutes ? Isn't it a bit short ? I would suggest making it to 5 minutes, so you can go back up to 15 minutes in case you messed up something that took time for nothing. What do you think about it ?


Gameplay and construction.

Honestly, the gameplay is quite simple, but very deep. I liked it a lot. I just have few suggestions about it, but everything is very well done, and going in the right direction, so I don't feel like I have much to say about it.

Moving and setting up buildings : It's easy and well done. Very neat. It's uncommon to misplace something or to screw up with the commands. I like the fact that you can build only in a certain area around the player, and the green/red/transparency to indicate it.
--> Only thing I have to say is : Would it be possible to have a toggle option to make the grid visible ? I think there's something alike (F7 maybe ?), but it comes along a lot of info onscreen and it's quite bothering. No need for grid that will make the game look like a chess board, but something soft, thin lines barely visible to help us plan our layout.

Interaction and combat : First of all, I have to say that I must be stupid, but I still can't remember anything about the "Alt + click" / "Shift + Click" / "Ctrl + click". Every time I forget which one does what, so I end up randomly using shift or ctrl + right/left click until my stacks looks like what I want. So, I guess it's my fault here ^^.
That being said, I would like to be able to split stacks in my inventory and enter a number to specify how much I want in each stack. For example, if I have to reload my turrets and I'm a bit short on ammo, I might want to spend ammunition evenly between them. So I would like to be able to prepare stacks of 10 ammo each, and be able to drag & drop them, in order to reload the turret quickly. My apologies if this is already doable and I missed it.

About combat, I have a question : what's the difference between "shoot enemy" and "shoot selected" ? Is it for "foes only" and "everything you point at" ? Because in the end, with the auto targeting option, I ended up using only "shoot enemy", and never used the other command. Maybe one of them should be dropped, or the description should be more precise.

During the campaign mode, or even in free play, how about some roaming aliens on the map ? Like a patrol, that goes from camp to camp. It would lessens the predictability of the AI, and spices things up a bit each time you go out of your base. Because right now, you know you won't come across any enemy except if : a/ There is a wave of aliens, always going from their camp to your base, and nowhere else ; b/ You get to close to their camp and they saw you. Once again, I know this is just an alpha, and you must have focused your efforts on the construction part, not the AI, so I guess this is not a pressing matter

Another point : It's quite difficult to explain. The horizontal line of sight is way bigger than the vertical one. An example to be clearer : The third (I think) mission of the campaign. You have to destroy an alien camp. When I try to shoot at a turret coming from it's right or left, I have no trouble staying out of reach, and shooting it with the rocket launcher. But when I come at the turret from the top, it shoots at me even before I see it. So I have to take damage to come close enough to it so it's not hidden by the GUI.
Honestly, I don't have anything to suggest here. The problem is the size of the screen, and I don't know how easily this can be modified without messing up with everything. So, any thoughts about that ?

Pause button : I already saw that mentioned elsewhere, and I think it's a good idea. Right now, I have to toggle the main menu and move it out of the screen, so I can get a good view of my surroundings and plan how I'm gonna build my factory. My feeling is that this game is more about logic and thinking than it is about action. So a way to pause the game, but still be able to zoom in/zoom out, would be awesome.

Technologies and Products

I like the technology screen and the description for each one. But once again, I must admit I have been dumb, and the game didn't help me with that ! (Well, good luck on that...) I couldn't find a way to produce steel until I took a look at some factories screenshots from the forums
When I did the research, I kinda expected to have a new item to build in my character screen, but it didn't. And it never crossed my mind to try to reprocess Iron through a smelter. I thought it was kind of a finished product, so I never thought you could make it go into a furnace again.
So, in order to help silly people like me, I think about 2 possibilities :
1/ Create a "Product Table" in the Main menu, which summarizes recipes that you unlocked, or all of them, as you see fit. It would be the same as writing "Coal + Iron ore -> Furnace -> Iron plate", but with little pictures.
2/ In the technology screen, list the "new recipe" in the description of the selected research. It would be logical, since you already list all technologies, locked or already unlocked.

The main reason behind that : I think it breaks immersion to be forced to alt tab, go on a wiki or check forums, to learn about something as important as a recipe that unlock all the last tier items. The less I have to "leave" the game to look up something, the better.

Inserter : How about an On/off switch on them ? I was about to write "a way to set up a timer on it", but that's doable with the smart inserter/smart chest. So I guess I will stick with the "on/off" switch. Another reason that comes up to me for such a feature, is that it's an easy way to preserve your production if you have a power shortage. For example you could turn off some research building while you fix the power shortage, without having all of your production being affected. You could make a symbol appear on the building (like the No ammo for turrets), so if you forget you turned off something and you notice something is wrong but can't figure out why, you can spot it easily.

I think I will stop here for today. I still have a lot to learn and discover, so I can't give my opinion on everything, but hopefully I covered most of the things that came to me while playing the campaign. I'm off to try a Free game mode now !
This is quite a long post, sorry about that.

Thanks a lot for you hard work, I hope you have the success you deserve !
Cheers.

[kovarex]

Hello everyone,

Hello

Controls option : I must say that I have a weird feeling about this screen. There seems to be so many controls, but at the same time it's like only some of them are really that important. I would suggest to hierarchise them a bit more, by creating sub section in every tabs. For example, in the first tab, "Game", I guess you could be a bit more clear by having different sections in this tab, such as "Movement & Interactions" (with movement keys, mine, open object, Pick item, Drop item, Enter/Leave vehicle) // "Combat" (Next weapon, Shoot enemy, Shoot enemy selected) // "Sheets" or "Windows" (Character screen - which should be renamed "Inventory" in my opinion - Technology Screen, Close window, Confirm Message, Toggle Menu) // "Construction" (Build, Rotate, Show info, Connect Train, Disconnect Train).

This way, just by giving a quick glance at the controls and how they are organized, you can guess what the game expects from you, even if you don't have heard of it before, or you don't know how it looks. You anticipate to have to move around and interact with stuff, build stuff, and look at menus. Depending on the length of each section, you can also guess how much place it will take in the game. So for instance, you know that combat is not taking a major part of the game, because there is very few controls.
Moreover, this helps a lot setting your keys up, without having to change your layout every two minutes until it fits you (Yeah... that's what happened to me...). I just came up with the names for each sections, if anyone has a better naming or organizing suggestion, you know what to do : tell us !

This is good idea, sooner or later we might do that.

Finally, biggest issue for me : you can't unbind keys ! If I don't want to use the quickbar keys, and set the "1, 2, 3 etc..." for something else, I can't unbind them. Plus, it's possible to set the same key for two different actions, the game doesn't remove the previous one, or at least switch them.

Unbinding might be possible (Right click?)
Having more actions at the same key might have sense. It depends on context, F is both for picking items on ground and connecting train, it is ok, as you can't pick items when you are in train ...

Death and Win : Maybe this has been suggested elsewhere, but I find it kind of weird that when you die the game offers you to save your game. Same for when you win. Once the game ends, you don't care about saving, do you ? And there is no loading options either, which forces you to exit, and load the game again, in both cases. I guess it's still under work, and maybe you already planned to change it, but I prefer to mention it.

The save button actually have reasoning, we don't advertise it too much, as it is still not working 100% correctly, but the game has replay function and every save is both save game and replay.
This way, when you finish game, you can save it so it might be replayed.
I agree, that the load button should be there, I miss it too.

Autosave : It's good that there is one, because I tend to be absent minded, and I forgot to save a lot ! But.... Autosave every 2 minutes ? Isn't it a bit short ? I would suggest making it to 5 minutes, so you can go back up to 15 minutes in case you messed up something that took time for nothing. What do you think about it ?

Autoplay interval will be configurable in the 0.2.9 version.

Moving and setting up buildings : It's easy and well done. Very neat. It's uncommon to misplace something or to screw up with the commands. I like the fact that you can build only in a certain area around the player, and the green/red/transparency to indicate it.

Interesting idea, I really like it, this would show only when you have something buildable in cursor ...

--> Only thing I have to say is : Would it be possible to have a toggle option to make the grid visible ? I think there's something alike (F7 maybe ?), but it comes along a lot of info onscreen and it's quite bothering. No need for grid that will make the game look like a chess board, but something soft, thin lines barely visible to help us plan our layout.

We can make it togglable as separate option ...

Interaction and combat : First of all, I have to say that I must be stupid, but I still can't remember anything about the "Alt + click" / "Shift + Click" / "Ctrl + click". Every time I forget which one does what, so I end up randomly using shift or ctrl + right/left click until my stacks looks like what I want. So, I guess it's my fault here ^^.
That being said, I would like to be able to split stacks in my inventory and enter a number to specify how much I want in each stack. For example, if I have to reload my turrets and I'm a bit short on ammo, I might want to spend ammunition evenly between them. So I would like to be able to prepare stacks of 10 ammo each, and be able to drag & drop them, in order to reload the turret quickly. My apologies if this is already doable and I missed it.

Well, most of our players are used to shift click and right click from minecraft, so we just extended it with ctrl-click.
Chance to put some exact amount might be considerable, but I'm not sure about it, as every extra gui adds complexity to the game.

About combat, I have a question : what's the difference between "shoot enemy" and "shoot selected" ? Is it for "foes only" and "everything you point at" ? Because in the end, with the auto targeting option, I ended up using only "shoot enemy", and never used the other command. Maybe one of them should be dropped, or the description should be more precise.

Probably the second is true.
The shoot target is useful when you want to destroy your own creations, or trees, fishes or anything like that.

During the campaign mode, or even in free play, how about some roaming aliens on the map ? Like a patrol, that goes from camp to camp. It would lessens the predictability of the AI, and spices things up a bit each time you go out of your base. Because right now, you know you won't come across any enemy except if : a/ There is a wave of aliens, always going from their camp to your base, and nowhere else ; b/ You get to close to their camp and they saw you. Once again, I know this is just an alpha, and you must have focused your efforts on the construction part, not the AI, so I guess this is not a pressing matter

This is great idea!
It is certain that the world needs to be more diverse and less predictable, stuff like this might help a lot.

Another point : It's quite difficult to explain. The horizontal line of sight is way bigger than the vertical one. An example to be clearer : The third (I think) mission of the campaign. You have to destroy an alien camp. When I try to shoot at a turret coming from it's right or left, I have no trouble staying out of reach, and shooting it with the rocket launcher. But when I come at the turret from the top, it shoots at me even before I see it. So I have to take damage to come close enough to it so it's not hidden by the GUI.
Honestly, I don't have anything to suggest here. The problem is the size of the screen, and I don't know how easily this can be modified without messing up with everything. So, any thoughts about that ?

Did you use the zoom? (standard control is mouse wheel).

Pause button : I already saw that mentioned elsewhere, and I think it's a good idea. Right now, I have to toggle the main menu and move it out of the screen, so I can get a good view of my surroundings and plan how I'm gonna build my factory. My feeling is that this game is more about logic and thinking than it is about action. So a way to pause the game, but still be able to zoom in/zoom out, would be awesome.

Good idea.

Technologies and Products
I like the technology screen and the description for each one. But once again, I must admit I have been dumb, and the game didn't help me with that ! (Well, good luck on that...) I couldn't find a way to produce steel until I took a look at some factories screenshots from the forums
When I did the research, I kinda expected to have a new item to build in my character screen, but it didn't. And it never crossed my mind to try to reprocess Iron through a smelter. I thought it was kind of a finished product, so I never thought you could make it go into a furnace again.
So, in order to help silly people like me, I think about 2 possibilities :
1/ Create a "Product Table" in the Main menu, which summarizes recipes that you unlocked, or all of them, as you see fit. It would be the same as writing "Coal + Iron ore -> Furnace -> Iron plate", but with little pictures.
2/ In the technology screen, list the "new recipe" in the description of the selected research. It would be logical, since you already list all technologies, locked or already unlocked.
The main reason behind that : I think it breaks immersion to be forced to alt tab, go on a wiki or check forums, to learn about something as important as a recipe that unlock all the last tier items. The less I have to "leave" the game to look up something, the better.

I'm aware of this problem, we added some description of the steel research that should lighten it up a little in the last version.
Some kind of in game technopedia might be created later (but is quite low on the priority queue), for now we aim on making the wiki.

Inserter : How about an On/off switch on them ? I was about to write "a way to set up a timer on it", but that's doable with the smart inserter/smart chest. So I guess I will stick with the "on/off" switch. Another reason that comes up to me for such a feature, is that it's an easy way to preserve your production if you have a power shortage. For example you could turn off some research building while you fix the power shortage, without having all of your production being affected. You could make a symbol appear on the building (like the No ammo for turrets), so if you forget you turned off something and you notice something is wrong but can't figure out why, you can spot it easily.

We already had on/off switch, but it was too ugly, so we removed it.
The game is able to do that, we just need some good way to do it in gui


Thank you for the feedback a lot, you gave us lot of useful ideas, I can see you really have been thinking about that.

[evene]

Hi,

so I played the demo, the 3 missions went fairly well, even the radar mission, I found they where balanced ok in term of progression, and a good introduction to the game. After that I played 2 games (normal difficulty) of the alpha after picking up the game from indiegogo and started with the mission where you need to get the computer.

Mostly I had a great time, but I had the same kind of feeling the OP had. First game lasted something like 3 to 4 hours, I hadn't automated everything, so I had to put coal in everything myself, I had done all the research but by the time I started to work on ammo for the flamethrower and the rocket launcher I became really overwhelmed unable to produce enough ammo for turrets while the enemies kept coming in bigger numbers. At this point I knew my base was doom. I tried to attack one or two to attach the enemies, but they respawn so fast, you can't do anything if you can't setup a long campaign of harassing them. After losing my turrets, I started a new game.

Let's add that I had picked up already some basics techniques from the forums like using pipes as wall to protect the turrets, etc (so a bit more advanced than the first newcomer). The bad point, is that even if overall I had a great time building my base, and with most of the game mechanics, it is very frustrating to fall behind the progression of the enemies without really realizing you have lost a long while ago (put in a simpler way, you already lost for sure at some point but you may play one hour or two before you realize that)

Second game, I read a bit more about how to setup my base, and how I should attack the enemy base (flamethrower + rocketlauncher). I was able to automate almost everything (coal was automatically distributed everywhere, research was almost fully automated, only had to put some stack of silver bars at time in one or two things, or put the ammo in the turrets. Well I was able to do a much better game. Lasted something like 5 hours (not quite sure, only thing certain I discovered the game in the evening and played until 4:30am) and even if I had destroyed half of the buildings of the enemy base, the same thing happened I started to fall behind to the point I was not able to produce enough ammos between my raids to attack the enemy base until I realized this game was doomed again and pretty much raged quit (but with a great desire to come back to beat the game).

Now some things I inferred from this experience :
- you can automate the filling of ammunition in the turrets, but it's not flowing as well as the rest of the game, either :
=> you got a only one line of ammo, and the first turret eat everything => fail
=> you build a line for each turret => rather complicated and messy for the base, especially in a early mission where iron is not well placed to easily automate the turret ammo filling
=> you build a complicated line, with the filter thing and the chest with conditions, but it's not perfect and quite advanced technic for beginners.

- so it would be great to have something better for the turrets, like a max ammo you can setup so when it's full it goes to the next turret but it doesn't take so long to be full or a way to dispatch objects from one line to several lines, or any good idea to fix this
- I found too that ammo was really costly in this mission, but it may be a more complicated than that,
- maybe the turret use ammo too fast compare to the respawn rate of creepers

Secondly I think it's too bad it takes hours to fall behind the game (the enemy) and to realize it

Several things lead to that situation
=> the very intense respawn rate when you attack the enemy base is really hard to handle when you are discovering the game
=> it's very long to destroy the entire base, and so it's very easy to fall behind (raid, heal, attend your base, fix turrets, raid, heal, attend to your base, etc => very very long)
=> some research is not available in this mission, making it harder it seems, as laser turret seem to really protect your base, and vehicle is a great way to attack the enemy it seems, so I feel the mission may indeed be harder than it should because of the research you don't have access to.

A thought
=> some iron to mine near the logical place for turrets would be good on this map, as beginners would have it easier to fill and automate turrets
=> maybe there should be a max of creepers spawning depending of the difficulty (so that if you played decently but slowly, you don't get overwhelmed), especially in the normal difficulty and in the first missions. (like a difficulty cap => if you can handle a wave of this much max creepers you will win at some point => your base is good enough to handle this mission => better than => your base is not good enough but it took you 2 hours to be able to see that, you should rush and build faster).

So overall I found the mission really hard, considering I'm not a hardcore gamer (I will never have the crazy well organized factories some people show), but still a quite good player in general with lot of background of many many games, and I felt very hopeless after playing this very long mission of not being able to turn the game (base is too full to change too many things on the production lines, and at some point I'm not sure you can even do something to change the game).

Note : I realize for sure it's a alpha, just making some points about what I've seen so far (don't want to make anybody think I'm complaining).

Haven't been so drawn in a game for a very very long time.

[evene]

On another note (shorter), I'm used in most games that left click is the building button (you left click to put something on the map), and right lick cancel the action/building/stack in your hand, is there a reason it's not like that and you have a key to cancel your stack ?

=> Right click could still pick up something what you built instead of left click in this configuration.

That's the intuitive way for me, didn't see anybody else talking about this, so maybe others should say what they think about that.

[Nightchill]

I am also having problems with the first mission of 'New hope' (get the computer).
I gave up when researching rocketry as by then I was having problems with the attacks (both frequency and size)

Two things would make things easier - have an Easy difficulty (with very low enemy spawn rate) and have a pause key

For most building type games I prefer to play in peaceful mode and be able to take my time

[Edhen]

Unbinding might be possible (Right click?)
Having more actions at the same key might have sense. It depends on context, F is both for picking items on ground and connecting train, it is ok, as you can't pick items when you are in train ...

When I choose to set a key and I use right click.... it binds right click
About the same key assigned twice, I understand, and it makes sense to me now. Plus, it helps having less keys to remember, so it's okay indeed.

Moving and setting up buildings : It's easy and well done. Very neat. It's uncommon to misplace something or to screw up with the commands. I like the fact that you can build only in a certain area around the player, and the green/red/transparency to indicate it.

Interesting idea, I really like it, this would show only when you have something buildable in cursor ...

Err... I'm sorry, I don't get it. That was not a suggestion, just the fact that I like what's already In-game (like when you try to build something too far away from you, and the building turns to transparency to indicate you're not in range). But if it made you think of something else, then it's good anyway !

We can make it togglable as separate option ...

That would be great

Well, most of our players are used to shift click and right click from minecraft, so we just extended it with ctrl-click.
Chance to put some exact amount might be considerable, but I'm not sure about it, as every extra gui adds complexity to the game.

That's true. Anyway, this was not something very high on my "suggestion list", just a random idea. I understand it's not a good idea ^^

The shoot target is useful when you want to destroy your own creations, or trees, fishes or anything like that.

Oh, all right. Well that's frustrating, twice now I destroyed an electricity pole while fighting, and didn't see it immediately. It was quite tough to recover in time after that ^^
But now that I have seen some of the large forest you can come across, I understand how it's necessary.

Did you use the zoom? (standard control is mouse wheel).

I'll be damned...
You know those moments when you're so focused on something you don't even remember the most basic things ? Well, when I had this issue with the turret, that's exactly what happened. You're definitely right, I should have just zoom-out a bit, I didn't even think about that at that time. The worst part is, I'm used to zoom-in/zoom-out all the time with the mouse wheel, I knew there was such a bind key and I was using it, but while I was drafting my message I completely forgot it existed. My bad

We already had on/off switch, but it was too ugly, so we removed it.
The game is able to do that, we just need some good way to do it in gui

Well, I was thinking about something simple, such as a button (simple square, the size of an input box) in the window description of the selected building, with something simple like "Turn On" / "Turn Off" depending if the machine is working. Later on, if you got time, you can set up a bind key, to do it more efficiently.
But anyhow, it must be low on the priority list, so take your time to think about it !

In any case, thanks a lot for your quick answer. I was sorry to hear about the paypal thing, I hope things get better for you. Do not hesitate to ask us to flood paypal's mailbox with complaints. If every last people that contributed do the same, they might act a little bit faster.
Take care.

[Edhen]

Separate message for evene and Nightchill

I kinda had the same issue. My way of resolving it was to create separate production lines, with iron and coal directly being processed and going to an assemble factory dedicated to ammo. 3 x 2 assemble factories (3 for each group of turrets protecting my base).
Then I used a lot on conveyor belts, slowly making my way across the map, until I came near the enemy camp. There, I used the cover off the turrets, and went back & forth, shooting a few rockets in the enemy turrets/building, and quickly retreating to the safety of my turrets each time the enemies were too numerous.
To be even more effective, you can also use nearby coal / iron deposit to create ammo factories near the enemy base, and convey the ammunition to your turrets. Usually, I build a belt forming a loop just behind the turrets, so that when the ammo are "delivered", they stay around. Plus, if you don't properly close the loop (G-shaped circuit), the magazines drop on the second lane of your belt, allowing more ammo to be stored near the turrets at the same time.

Good luck guys.