Empyrion - Galactic Survival

[Paingod]

We recently learned that you can attach a core to a (core-less) structure and steal all the things. This should get us a capital vessel much more quickly.

Yup. I love playing "Find the Core" with structures and crashed ships. If I can, I get some nice goodies. I'll even dig around for a while to try and uncover it.

[Hyena]

I've strip-mined entire structures in this way. Hundreds and thousands of components, minerals and items.

[Lorini]

Trying it yet again. I'm seeing reviewers with +2K hours in the game, gotta be something there. The start is so slow though!!!!

[Apollo]

I've got 427 hours in myself. I've got 79 games on my steam account, but Kerbal Space Program is the only game I have more hours in than Empyrion. Not bad for a game still in early access!

[Paingod]

Trying it yet again. I'm seeing reviewers with +2K hours in the game, gotta be something there. The start is so slow though!!!!

The game is a steady progression that starts with you being naked and alone after crash-landing and ends with you piloting a self-made capital ship around the star system to explore other worlds with smaller self-made ships.

It has a very deliberate pace that can be a bit of a slog, but always seemed fun.

[coopasonic]

The start is so slow though!!!!

This is kind of hilarious to me. In Ark or Conan after a couple hours you are struggling to put together leather armor and build a wooden shelter. In Empyrion after a couple hours you are building a hovercraft and contemplating shotguns vs assault rifle for personal defense.

[Lorini]

The start is so slow though!!!!

This is kind of hilarious to me. In Ark or Conan after a couple hours you are struggling to put together leather armor and build a wooden shelter. In Empyrion after a couple hours you are building a hovercraft and contemplating shotguns vs assault rifle for personal defense.

That didn’t happen in my first couple of hours!!

[Paingod]

The start is so slow though!!!!

This is kind of hilarious to me. In Ark or Conan after a couple hours you are struggling to put together leather armor and build a wooden shelter. In Empyrion after a couple hours you are building a hovercraft and contemplating shotguns vs assault rifle for personal defense.

That didn’t happen in my first couple of hours!!

Me either, and I've logged hundreds of hours in the game. Granted, it's been a while, so maybe things things have changed.

Usually my first two hours in Empyrion are spent trying to make a basic shelter, survive wild animals, and hoping I stumble across a wreck with some useful items in it. I scavenge a lot of food items and get myself nicely sick on raw foods, too. IIRC, it takes a couple evenings of work to get to a point where I've got a hovercraft. I mean, you need a lot of different ores and fuel to power it, which takes a lot of drilling and refining.

[coopasonic]

I've done the starting stuff a couple times in this game and a dozen or more times in various survival games, I can get to the interesting stuff pretty quickly. Also I said "after" a couple hours not in the first couple. That gives me a little leeway.

[Sepiche]

I haven't played this in a few months, but last time I played at least there was a slightly more advanced start that gave you a crashed ship for a base and some extra starting resources to get things rolling faster.

[Paingod]

I fired this up to see how it felt. I haven't made it far, but ...

• I love that the Hovercraft is accessible using just the Survival Constructor.
• I don't care for the changes to the Motorcycle. It's too sluggish to get going and gets stuck on hills too easily now.
• I really like using one cargo box to hold goods and directing my constructors to pull resources from that.
• I like the new block designs for building.
• I like that there's a spider nest 200m from where I settled. I need to investigate that. I've already been investigated by spiders. They were delicious.
• I'm uncertain, but impressed, with the power of Hovercraft mining tools. One click blew a huge crater in the ground. That would have taken 30 seconds before.
• There's a disconnect in the HV engine descriptions vs. function. The ones I'm using say they're not used for traversing water, but worked fine for it.

... and that's as far as I got in 3 hours. Basic tiny base with small fuel tank & generator, 4 large solar & 1 capacitor, small & large constructor, hovercraft, a couple crates, some loot (including the aforementioned HV mining tool), and a minigun on my roof with 1000 rounds in it. No drone attacks yet, but I'm ready. I expended the tutorial content pretty quickly, but see that there are a number of other missions - including faction missions, to get into after. I didn't get into digging in the ground for resources. Everything I made was with resources from surface rocks.

I think that with the way Survival Constructors and resource rocks are working, its easier to push through the initial slog. Making a HV without a base or bundles of research is a HUGE step up from before. I absolutely love having a safe platform to work from and not get freaked out by fauna finding me.

*Edit: 2019-08-27 - I thought I could just keep adding to my HV, but ended up with a monstrosity that could only waddle backwards with its nose in the air. It seems the "Green" HV engines will provide some thrust, while the "Blue" ones do not. Additionally, the Detection antenna weighs 500kg when a solid steel block weighs 8kg. In the end, I had to ride my motorcycle around looking for Promethium Ore, and finally found some on the surface of a radioactive wasteland, and was able to build a multitool. That, in turn, let me safely break down my HV and rebuild it properly with engines and thrusters. Now I've got that mining turret I found (but can't yet make) nestled up on the front underside, and I run it from my enclosed cockpit instead of getting out. The only downside is that my basic 3-engine, no frills HV could run for 800 minutes on 50% of one fuel tank. This one runs for 80 minutes on 40%. It's not so great for simple exploration anymore. It's time to start saving up for a SV.

I have noticed that the glass windows in the game seem much clearer and easier to see through. Maybe this means I can revisit my "RV" designs from before that I had to scrap because I couldn't see where I was flying? That'd be nice. I really wanted to make something that looked like the flying RV from Spaceballs, and when I stood up from the pilot's chair, I'd be inside instead of outside.

*Edit: 2019-08-28 - Base invasions aren't just drones anymore! Last night I was attacked by two dropships that landed and spit out 2-3 troopers each from a hostile faction. Those soldiers carried a lot of delicious ammunition and largely did nothing to my base... but their drop ships were basically immune to my minigun turret, and if I wasn't there to defend, my base would have been toast. I'll have to rethink base defending and see if I can set up turrets that just target soldiers on the ground with a turret in the sky for drones.

Faction missions are ... interesting and new. Well, okay, interesting for being new. Each faction has missions you can run and re-run to gain faction standing, often requiring Neutral standing or better to start them. Since one faction starts hostile, you need to find ways to make them happy - which usually means losing faction with the other two; assuming you want them all friendly. I don't know if it's worth it.

I've started rebuilding my HV as a mobile base of operations for the planet I'm on with a glass panel front, drill mount underneath, and minigun on top. It's 10m/s slower than a SV, but far more fuel efficient, defensive (it can fire at hostiles by itself) and generally useful for gathering resources. I wish I could find a way to build sexy HV's that didn't look like flying bricks. Every time I think about getting decorative, I think about how inefficient it is and how more bulk makes for harder navigation.

This game has a solid base and theme that might not need much more tweaking. I think what the dev should focus on now is AI and world events.

[Paingod]

Every one of my CV's ends up looking like Benny's SPACE SHIP! from the origina LEGO movie. Just a conglomeration of parts and things sticking out. I really need to spend time working in the creative mode to make a nice blueprint instead of relying on whatever I can get done in space while watching my air bar run down.

It's super-helpful that there are some derelicts you can claim in space by adding a core to them, as well as some Alien ships you can fight through and find cores to destroy at the end. The combat isn't easy, though. The AI is compensated for by being hard to kill and doing high damage. The Alien ship near the trade station took several lives and something like 2000 ammo to clear out with a T2 Assault Rifle... but I've claimed it and pulled off most of the useful bits. It's far easier to accumulate steel and components to build with this way than to mine it.

[Apollo]

Alpha 12 experimental is out, and wow! Lots and lots of changes. Looks like a good time to jump back in and get acquainted will all the changes since the last time I played (once the experimental phase is over, of course).

Spanj goes over some of the changes here:

[Paingod]

I've been on and off with this game now for years, and it's probably in my top five for most hours on Steam. I don't know if it'll ever be done, but it's always fun.

[Apollo]

I bought this game in the first week of release almost 5 years ago thanks to this thread. During that time I have put 427 hours (#2 on my steam list behind only KSP) into the game and have spent at least a month every year playing it. I just love the idea of starting from nothing and fighting just to stay alive to eventually exploring the solar system with a huge carrier loaded with scouts and fighters I built and designed myself (well, designed half of them anyway ).

And now with millions of worlds of a greater variety to explore, new factions, being able to dock any craft type to any other, teleporters, etc. I'm dying to jump in again. Just need to wait until this version is out of experimental in a month or two.

[Paingod]

millions of worlds

My only concern with the concept is that these numbers are only achieved with procedural generation, which means after maybe the 10th world you'll be feeling a lot of "Been there, done that" ... I prefer a smaller number of unique, hand-crafted worlds with their own flavor. This "millions of worlds" concept is part of what sounded great in Spore and No Man's Sky, but in reality I got tired of visiting the same things quickly.

[Apollo]

millions of worlds

My only concern with the concept is that these numbers are only achieved with procedural generation, which means after maybe the 10th world you'll be feeling a lot of "Been there, done that" ... I prefer a smaller number of unique, hand-crafted worlds with their own flavor. This "millions of worlds" concept is part of what sounded great in Spore and No Man's Sky, but in reality I got tired of visiting the same things quickly.

I can't disagree that hand-made worlds would be more interesting, but procedural worlds are what they promised from the beginning, and in a sandbox game like Empyrion, I actually prefer them. I would rather have millions of randomly generated worlds and moons than 10 hand-made worlds in a game like this one. Of course, it helps that Empyrion has much more realistic and interesting worlds than No Mans Sky. I also believe that scenario designers are able to insert hand-crafted worlds into a randomly generated galaxy, so that will help keep things from seeming too random.

[Blackhawk]

Any current impressions? I burned out on No Man's Sky due to the repetitive nature of some of the grinding, but haven't burned out on the desire to play that sort of game. And this looks like it will be going on sale next week during Steam's 'Survival Fest.'

To clarify - in advance - what I found repetitive about No Man's Sky that burned me out wasn't the moment to moment gameplay or gathering resources. My problem ended up being that I'd repeat the same 15-minute gameplay loop over and over. From my notebook where I note why I quit a particular game:

~Go to system, scan planets from space, go to station, talk to X number of aliens to learn words, check the multitool, stand in the launch bay for five minutes buying tritium, fly out and check the frigates on all the nearby freighters, go back to your freighter, go to next system, repeat.

~The story is extremely abstract , like it was written by Carlos Castaneda and every fifth word was replaced by static.

[Apollo]

It's one of only four or five games that I've played since it was first released in early access, but it is very different than "No Man's Sky" IMHO. No Man's Sky is a traditional video game to me, but Empyrion is a sandbox with a storyline that you can follow if you want. I always enjoyed the survival aspects of the game, and I loved starting with nothing and ending with a huge capital ship stuffed with a variety of ugly, yet efficient craft that I had designed for a variety of purposes. The game only fell apart for me after I had my capital ship and my autominers set up, there wasn't much left to do other than travel around and sightsee.

It's a great game for some but it's really more of a building and exploring sandbox set in Outer Space. If that sounds fun to you, give it a try. I'm definitely a fan.

[Blackhawk]

Thanks!

Empyrion is a sandbox with a storyline that you can follow if you want

The funny thing is, I would call that an apt description of NMS, too!

[coopasonic]

It really is similar in that way and harvesting is actually more intensive but somewhat less important. The big difference is, I feel, Empyrion is more known for its custom vehicle/ship building aspects than its exploration. A lot more time is spent building your way up to space travel in Empyrion, doing a lot more survival and crafting progression than NMS. I never really played the space exploration side of it because I didn't care much for the ship building aspects, but I enjoyed the initial planet stuff pretty well.

[Blackhawk]

And this looks like it will be going on sale next week during Steam's 'Survival Fest.'

Sure enough, ten bucks. I'm tempted (although I promised myself that I wouldn't spend any more on games for a while...)