Muting this for now, but I went ahead and explored all of the current upgrades and stuff in the first area (not sure if you can enter the other areas right now) but muting this for tonight. Tomorrow morning I will write up one big spicy meatball of my opinions on balance and how this current alpha differs from the first game and how it could improve it’s current balance!
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Something I’m noticing, upon going in and out of the cave, some platforms I built on the upper ledge have now ended up in front of the buildings I have on said ledge.
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The drone floated above the pilot and that made it harder to tell where the laser was. It’s not a game-breaker since I can auto-mine but it did make manual defense/mining rather more difficult
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This happened to me too. I think for me it happened the first time the pilot grew a stage, but reset when I walked in and out of the cave by accident.
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And since drone floated It cant mining/damaging incave
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Managed to softlock myself hard- I got just too heavy for the normal elevator and panicked, deleted the elevator while it was stuck and was still locked out of all controls.
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Interestingly reached a point where elevators stopped working for some reason not sure why wasn’t too heavy for them. They brought me to the next level but the platform didn’t move so I just fell back down.
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Managed to crash the game- was building a level 3 wind turbine and 2 Hab walls at the same time. As soon as the walls were finished the game crashed.
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for me, this seemed to happen when I opened the Q menu, or the research/upgrade menu.
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I… Think I’ve made it to the end of the content, so far.
Here’s my hoard. I tell ya, it’s hard getting past that no-man’s-land without losing a weight stage.
It’s definitely got potential. A lot of growing pains, between this one and the first one, but a lot of potential. The only thing that feels clunky that I never quite got used to is how just being near a research table or upgrade table makes you steal its power and renders it inoperable. And then you have to do that painful shimmy off to the side while you’re huge so that literally no part of you is touching the table.
I’m also not sure about having to manually grab materials from the miners, and also having to manually fill the Reactors. I imagine you’ve got a better system in the pipeline, so I’m not going to harp on it too much, but it was a bit tedious. It definitely makes the Reactors more balanced against the other power generation, though, if that’s the be-all, end-all. It kinda did mean that I only seriously touched the Reactors when I was trying for the screenshot, though.
Regardless, I’ve been looking forward to this, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. I look forward to whatever’s coming in the future.
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crash report: I might’ve misclicked on a building whilst it was under attack
I’m liking having the three characters on the go, “Lost Vikings” style as it suggests some fun interactions between the three in the future. Suggested research ideas coud be for suit communication to “radio in” a character so that they come to your location - or just chat with them. Slowly, at their current weight-determined speed, then more rapidly (“Emergency Signalling”), eventually upgrading to switching between characters instantly via “localised spatial shifting” or the like - handy when everyone is massive!
The power draw of buildings, as to whether they were connected or not, took a little getting used to and it would be good if this was highlighted on the generators. I’d like to think there’d be “grid” research that boosts power infrastructure alongside power generation. Having to build generators everywhere doesn’t seem all that efficient. Or it might be the case that better versions of generators have a boosted range, to keep things simpler?
Happy to see this back in action!
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I also ran into this problem, at some point pressing W/up to make the elevator go up just makes your character teleport up in the air and then fall back down.
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Am I missing something? Suit upgrades are disabled in V.0.2.4 for me
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You unlocked and built the upgrade table, right? I downloaded my copy from the link in the OP, but I don’t know if that makes a difference.
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Yes, I’ve built the upgrade table and there’s no upgrades there and the bot says the upgrades are not yet implemented 
I’ve tried downloading from both the OP and the post - zip file says it’s V.0.2.4
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Disregard everything, I’m an idiot and it didn’t have enough power 
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Okay! incoming gripes & praise:
let’s start with the gripes:
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In the first game, it made sense for the suit elasticity upgrades to cost as much energy, as this way it accentuated what you were doing- harvesting energy and using your body to transport it around. That was the main goal of the game and naturally there was a big reason to focus on it, since it was literally required to do so to beat the game- But, unless a similar focus is used now, the suit elasticity upgrades have no purpose other than just that: lugging around a greater amount of energy. A greater amount of energy, which, notably, makes you slower, and you lose more energy when you move the bigger you are… making it a straight downgrade from every size smaller if it wasn’t required to build that thing in the first place. Meaning the upgrades are now the biggest reason to get the upgrades, since nothing else costs that much energy. And, if you do want it to play a keen role in gameplay progression, I would reccomend tying it in with story progress somehow. Maybe it requires a rare material used exclusively for suit elasticity expansions, which can only be found at certain story locations?
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The nerfed initial energy transfer speed, along with the cheaper energy transfer speed upgrades, doesn’t make sense to me. If the first four upgrades only take about two to five minutes to get each, why not just bump up the player’s starting energy transfer rate and then increase the cost of the upgrades and reduce the number of them? Your first impressions matter, and someone who’s new to the game wouldn’t know first thing to gun for a few energy transfer speed upgrades, but if I pick this alpha up a second time to look for more things, I definitely would.
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All right, let’s talk about building economy. More specifically, space economy. The t2 and t3 solar panels have virtually no difference, because the t3 solar panel takes up two tiles… meaning that a t2 solar panel could just be built twice in the same space, and give you the same energy output. Meaning the only major difference between them is that the t3 solar panel in this build specifically, is that it gives double the power as a t2 IF there is no building on the other side of it. adding ANY range to energy transfer in future updates will make them a direct downgrade because they cost more and are less flexible. I can’t attest to the windmills, however, notably because I didn’t use the t3 version. I did note, from it’s stat page, that it’s energy output was 40, I believe, meaning it is properly statted to have a difference from the t2 windmill when automatic local energy transfer beyond just immediately adjacent tiles is added to the game.
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Okay, kind of a big one here: I didn’t research the t3 fusion reactor. why? Because the first one is the best one, and it’s directly outclassed by the t3/2 solar panels. Having the higher tiers have a lower crystal efficiency absolutely shoots them in the fucking knee with more than a dozen arrows, my friend. As soon as you get the accumulator, and t2/3 solar panels, there’s straight up no purpose to build the other reactors because their crystal efficiency is so abysmal, that the first one is hands down the strongest generator pre-t3 solar panels. The ONLY reason to use them in the current build would be as some kind of… battery, you know? something you can stand in front of and chug energy from really fast. Which, would make sense, if there wasn’t the accumulator and t2/3 solar panels. If you’re going to implement an energy source that requires you cart around minerals by hand in a game where moving around is disincentivized by penalizing you energy, AND every other energy source is free, it NEEDS to be worth it. Maybe even doubling their energy output might not be enough to stand in the face of their sheer inefficiency at higher tiers. Also, having them consume minerals faster than a single miner can produce them, also makes them completely worthless because it has no sustained output value. If you’re keen on keeping them this way, why not just add a battery instead? something that gathers energy up into an internal reserve and allows you to rapidly draw hundreds of energy a second based on it’s setting (which would hopefully control power per output and not total power output!). It would be miles more useful and serve a similar niche.
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Love the multiple characters. Hate the fact that I have to walk all the way back to the cave just to change between them. Two changes I suggest: One, make a dedicated button to swap between characters, a la pikmin 3. Two, make characters STAY where they are when you swap from them. Without this, it’s more of the question of “Who do you want to play the whole game with”, and the answer is obviously the pilot because their speed upgrade and energy limit upgrade simply makes them the best in the face of the new mineral-transport system.
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yeah, you’ve probably heard this one to death- I’m not sure what is doing it, but having the laser actually come out of a flying drone, if the drone can’t stay in one place, absolutely makes it useless, and the only way to reset it is to travel across the screen transition into the cave.
Recommended changes, outside of my gripes:
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give the elasticity upgrades a use beyond other upgrades. Maybe add an enemy that directly attacks the player by adding to their energy amount with useless stuff that can’t be used as energy and needs to be removed via some kind of medical bay or something? this would make the energy elasticity system a kind of “health upgrade” system as well, which I like the idea of.
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Gallery unlock upon beating the game?
And, praise:
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I really like what you’re doing with taking the multiple characters route. Having multiple people running around to handle different areas/portions of your base? genius, if you add quick swapping.
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the subtle stretching sounds added when you change weight stages are really nice. I know how hard audio design can be so I wanted to congratulate you on these.
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multiple areas is a godsend. not only are we getting multiple ore nodes per area, but also multiple levels to build on? Love it. Just buff some kind of energy source that isn’t penalized by being closer to the ground (that isn’t the steam generator, that one is completely fine, other than the fact that you need a geyser)
Aaaand that’s it, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and that you will take my words into consideration when making future updates! thank you!
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After a playing through it last night, two things definately come to mind:
- the fusion reactors are borderline pointless and as a result, so is the level 3 miner.
- There is no real incentive to use the platforms to do anything.
To elaborate, the level 3 miner requires so much power to operate that the only thing that can keep it running is the level 3 fusion reactor, but even then it can’t mine fast enough to keep up with power. If anything the fusion reactors should become more effecient with size not less in my opinion.
- the only reason to make an elevator platform is to reach an ore spot at the top of a cave area, but at no point did I actually need two ore mining spots, so there wasn’t really much point. I think we need better reasons to go up there, I’m sure we can come up with some.
The ability to switch between characters was nice, but I only really needed the engineer, because most of my time was spent building stuff. I think we could spend more time filling out their unique abilites.
Anyway, I did enjoy messing about with all of the stuff I could build and I think that most of the issues people have been mentioning should be easy enough to iterate on.
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So far I found one bug, when you exit out of the cave and immediately press up, while you’re way too big for the elevator, the player will freeze in place and you have no way out of that. Tried to size down, even rebuilt the elevator and it didn’t help. And there is one quality of life thing you could do. Energy blueprint mode, so you can hook things up to the right outputs. Thanks for reading!
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Love the stuff that’s in there so far. I like the variety of characters, returning and new. Interesting to see the Prestige 1 ending from the first one seems to be the canon ending since the Pilot is huge.
Most of the complaints I have about it have already been addressed, kinda no reason to build Fusion Reactors beyond Mk.1 and even then the Mk.1 is severely outclassed by the Solar Mk.3. A nice change might be to increase the power generation of the Fusion Reactors and have it automatically pull crystals from an adjacent miner.
Another thing I don’t see many people mentioning, but the little area underneath the overhang is pretty much impossible to defend properly while also extracting from the crystal node that’s there, since so much space is being taken up by Wind Turbines and the Miner there’s not enough room to put a proper defensive line there, I know this because while I was on the other side of the map setting up a defensive line there, a group of 5 slimes spawned at once near the cave entrance, overwhelmed the defenses I did put there, and destroyed pretty much everything on that side of the map before I could get over there. Maybe reduce the amount of spawns from that direction?
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