Octopus Overlords

I picked it up as well, that 60% made me bite. I'm playing in Normal mode and after 1.3 hours I'm not quite sure if I like it or not. I'll spend more time on it tomorrow.

ColdSteel wrote:I am soooo glad I bought this. I've been playing it all weekend and it.. is.. awesome.

Yes, yes and yes.
On my second planet a herd of predators stood between me and my ship. They decided they wanted me for lunch and the peashooter I had built was not enough. They surrounded me, but I jet-packed up and landed right into my ship. So awesome.

Dave Allen wrote:

ColdSteel wrote:I am soooo glad I bought this. I've been playing it all weekend and it.. is.. awesome.

Yes, yes and yes.
On my second planet a herd of predators stood between me and my ship. They decided they wanted me for lunch and the peashooter I had built was not enough. They surrounded me, but I jet-packed up and landed right into my ship. So awesome.

My starting planet only has hostile flora on it, no hostile fauna. It's an ice planet and only has 5 total fauna and they're all friendly. That said, I had to go to a neighboring system last night to recruit a scientist for a mission. I found and hired him and was getting ready to go back home when I found myself in the middle of a thick asteroid best. Most of it was common iron but it had a few of these big purplish asteroids mixed in. I sampled one and it was iridium!! I loaded my cargo hold with the stuff and right when I was finishing up I got a warning that a swarm of hostile pirates were in-bound. It was classified as a peaceful system but I guess the value of my cargo became great enough to draw them like flies.

They were closing on me fast so I quickly called up the galaxy map and plotted a course back to my home system. I hit the jump button right when they were on top of me. Whew, close call. I need to make some money because I've been having a hard time accumulating it. I hope selling some of that stuff helps. Someone also said to upgrade your scanner visor so that you get more cash for your discoveries. I didn't know that so I'll have to try it out.

76% of the reviews on Steam in the last 30 days are now positive. Before the latest patch it was around 53%. Definitely making people happier. Good for Hello Games trying to fix what they did not deliver upon release.

I've got in 2.9 hours now, so no refunding for me . I'm... enjoying the experience I guess, although I filled up all my slots already on both backpack and ship. I did use the signal beacon to unlock one more slot, but sheesh, this is going to be annoying. I imagine I have to do more planning on what I pick up so I don't waste space and time carrying around stuff I won't be unloading for awhile.

However, I am finding the game a difference sort of adventure, which is important to me. Yeah, it's dumb that I have to save by getting into my ship and then getting back out, but I guess it's no dumber than in Far Cry 2 when I could only save at camps I owned.

jztemple2 wrote:although I filled up all my slots already on both backpack and ship

Try to find an observatory or alternately a structure with a tall antenna. The observatories have a terminal inside that will present you will a series of number codes and ask you to pick the last number in the sequence. It's a simple number puzzle. If you complete it correctly it will sometimes give you a marker for a crashed ship. The other building with the big antenna just does a wide scan and also sometimes finds crashed ship sites.

Very early on in my game I found one of these crashed ships and it had 29 slots. 15 of the slots needed repair but the value of the ship was about 2.8 million credits so I swapped ships then took it to a space station and traded it there for a ship with 24 repaired slots that was worth 2.7 million. You can trade for ships equal or less in value to what you have. That was a huge step up because the starting ship is only worth about 800K credits.

Also, build a Signal Booster and use it to search for Drop Pods. Each one of those will expand your suit slots by one.

Thanks! Those are some good suggestions. I can see where the game has a lot of appeal, since you have the choice on what to do a lot of the time, but having a series of objectives in the early game is helping me to learn the game mechanics.

I just spent a good fifteen minutes flying around in space and using the galaxy map to try to get to another system to obtain a scientist before I realized that I didn't have a warp engine with which to warp

NMS's charm rests on using one's observation and problem-solving abilities upon the randomly discovered resources and tools.
I say this to emphasize: the rewards of playing NMS are easily sucked out of this game by spoilers.

Really if you don't want spoilers you shouldn't read the thread.

Dave Allen wrote:NMS's charm rests on using one's observation and problem-solving abilities upon the randomly discovered resources and tools.
I say this to emphasize: the rewards of playing NMS are easily sucked out of this game by spoilers.

While I can appreciate the charm of doing one own discovering and problem-solving, I'm not a person with lots of gaming time nor a heck of a lot of patience .

Nor apparently the most basic logic. I was accomplishing the secondary goals but forgot to highlight the primary goal to make it active . Once I did that, everything started falling into place. It's hell getting old...

Dave Allen wrote:I say this to emphasize: the rewards of playing NMS are easily sucked out of this game by spoilers.

I'm curious what you are seeing as spoilers here? As far as I am concerned there is nothing to spoil in the game, at least not in the original game. I am only a few hours into the current game. I mean I guess you can spoil the utter disappointment at what happens when you reach the end, but I think that is a positive.

coopasonic wrote: I'm curious what you are seeing as spoilers here? As far as I am concerned there is nothing to spoil in the game, at least not in the original game. I am only a few hours into the current game. I mean I guess you can spoil the utter disappointment at what happens when you reach the end, but I think that is a positive.

Um... "go to place "A" that you didn't know even existed, and then look for thing "B" that you haven't found yet, and if you solve the puzzle you might get "C" which now is longer a surprise?

Dave Allen wrote:

coopasonic wrote: I'm curious what you are seeing as spoilers here? As far as I am concerned there is nothing to spoil in the game, at least not in the original game. I am only a few hours into the current game. I mean I guess you can spoil the utter disappointment at what happens when you reach the end, but I think that is a positive.

Um... "go to place "A" that you didn't know even existed, and then look for thing "B" that you haven't found yet, and if you solve the puzzle you might get "C" which now is longer a surprise?

Honestly, for a game that's been out and well covered for over a year, if you're bothered by spoilers, WTF are you doing in here. This thread has been way beyond simple impressions for a very long time. Since I doubt that people are going to go back and despoil the hundreds of posts that are in this thread, I suggest you either accept it or move on.

I started over in Survival Mode last night. Not sure if that's a good thing or not long-term, but it's fun for now.

Dave Allen wrote:

ColdSteel wrote:I am soooo glad I bought this. I've been playing it all weekend and it.. is.. awesome.

Yes, yes and yes.
On my second planet a herd of predators stood between me and my ship. They decided they wanted me for lunch and the peashooter I had built was not enough. They surrounded me, but I jet-packed up and landed right into my ship. So awesome.

Are animals actually moving with intelligence now? I mean, other than just attacking the player. Are the reacting to each other? Do they seems to feed or sleep?

YellowKing wrote:I started over in Survival Mode last night. Not sure if that's a good thing or not long-term, but it's fun for now.

I heard survival requires uses the full fuel from the launcher on every launch... no thanks.

rshetts2 wrote:

Dave Allen wrote:

coopasonic wrote: I'm curious what you are seeing as spoilers here? As far as I am concerned there is nothing to spoil in the game, at least not in the original game. I am only a few hours into the current game. I mean I guess you can spoil the utter disappointment at what happens when you reach the end, but I think that is a positive.

Um... "go to place "A" that you didn't know even existed, and then look for thing "B" that you haven't found yet, and if you solve the puzzle you might get "C" which now is longer a surprise?

Honestly, for a game that's been out and well covered for over a year, if you're bothered by spoilers, WTF are you doing in here. This thread has been way beyond simple impressions for a very long time. Since I doubt that people are going to go back and despoil the hundreds of posts that are in this thread, I suggest you either accept it or move on.

Besides which, and I suppose it's possible that they have completely overhauled how their puzzles work, but as of the prior patch, at least, their puzzles were of a few different and basic varieties. A simple math puzzle, a little mini-game, nothing too unique or mindblowing even when experiencing it the first time, much less the tenth or twentieth. I do plan on diving in again soon to experience the changes, but for me this game is simultaneously full of diverse sights and sounds, and monotonous at the same time, due to much of the diversity being pixel deep. Again, I haven't played it post "Atlas Rising" and I'm not trying to shit on other's enjoyment, but unless they add things to spoil, you'll have seen most of what the game is fairly quickly beyond the cosmetic variations.

Dave Allen wrote:NMS's charm rests on using one's observation and problem-solving abilities upon the randomly discovered resources and tools.
I say this to emphasize: the rewards of playing NMS are easily sucked out of this game by spoilers.

That can work both ways though. For a certain quest all I received as a clue was "build an X". Well, I don't know how to build that. I finally find out that it's made of Y and Z components. OK, I can build those, but I have never come across Element A that you need to build a Z. Shouldn't be too hard to find. 5 jumps later, no luck finding it. 10 jumps later, wtf, where is this stuff? 20 jumps later: FUCK THIS GAME!

P.S. Needless to say after the 1.3 patch I started a casual game.

If anybody is that worried about spoilers and still wants to post about NMS, why not start a "no spoiler" thread for hints, tips, and new impressions? That would end this discussion and allow those who want to discuss the game more directly to do so without tiptoeing around you spoiler fearing freaks .

Or use spoiler tags....

Scoop20906 wrote: Are animals actually moving with intelligence now? I mean, other than just attacking the player. Are the reacting to each other? Do they seems to feed or sleep?

No, no and no - "surrounded me" should be replaced by "and I carelessly stumbled into their midst".

Spoilers, to me, are story elements or events. For the most part, this game has neither.

Is there some kind of mapping function I haven't uncovered? I try to use the compass but that doesn't begin to be enough.

Scoop20906 wrote:Are animals actually moving with intelligence now? I mean, other than just attacking the player. Are the reacting to each other? Do they seems to feed or sleep?

Today I was opening some containers and the icon for a hostile animal popped up. I looked to my right and there was this tigerish sort of creature that was obviously a predator by the way it looked and the hostile way it acted. I backed away so I didn't get too close and it then turned around and pounced on one of the smaller animals there and killed it. It looked somewhat like a lion bringing down an antelope.

So it looks like the AI has some feeding behaviors at least. I have no idea what the AI used to be like previous to the big update since I just started playing.

jztemple2 wrote:Is there some kind of mapping function I haven't uncovered? I try to use the compass but that doesn't begin to be enough.

Much to my own dismay, there is not. About the best you can do is set a waypoint and then use the navigation icons on your HUD to find your way back.

There are a few ways to set waypoints. First, you can craft and set a beacon which will always provide a navigation point to return to. That's probably the best option but until you do some of the home base quests, you won't have the beacon blueprint.

Second, you can set a waypoint for a structure by scanning it with your visor when outside your ship (f key for PC keyboard). That will create a gigantic white dot on your HUD that will remain marking it unless/until you leave the system and return, that wipes them. There's currently no other way to remove those, which is a PITA.

One other thing you can do if you're looking for interesting structures is to fly up into space away from the planet a bit and then turn around and scan the planet with your ship scanner. Do that a few times and some interesting structures should pop up. You can also scan the other planets in the system the same way from very great distances.

It's certainly not ideal. I don't know why they did it this way.

Did they ever patch in proper HOTAS support for flying the ships?

ColdSteel wrote:

jztemple2 wrote:Is there some kind of mapping function I haven't uncovered? I try to use the compass but that doesn't begin to be enough.

Much to my own dismay, there is not. About the best you can do is set a waypoint and then use the navigation icons on your HUD to find your way back.

There are a few ways to set waypoints. First, you can craft and set a beacon which will always provide a navigation point to return to. That's probably the best option but until you do some of the home base quests, you won't have the beacon blueprint.

Second, you can set a waypoint for a structure by scanning it with your visor when outside your ship (f key for PC keyboard). That will create a gigantic white dot on your HUD that will remain marking it unless/until you leave the system and return, that wipes them. There's currently no other way to remove those, which is a PITA.

One other thing you can do if you're looking for interesting structures is to fly up into space away from the planet a bit and then turn around and scan the planet with your ship scanner. Do that a few times and some interesting structures should pop up. You can also scan the other planets in the system the same way from very great distances.

It's certainly not ideal. I don't know why they did it this way.

Thanks for the info. I've not been using the scanner enough before, but I'm finding all sorts of things to catalog and now I know how to set waypoints. It would be nice if I could label them, but oh well...

By the way, I'm nine hours in and while I've gone off planet to fulfill quests to recruit workers, I'm still enjoying exploring my starting planet. I've unlocked my ground vehicle which gives me needed inventory space and it's fun to drive around.

I've also uncovered a wrecked ship. It has 31 storage spaces, way more than my starting ship with 15, but it's in sad shape. I'm guessing that I can't have two ships in my possession, so I've held off swapping for now since I'd be stuck doing a lot of repair work. Still, it's nice to know that I can grab it at some point.

I might be forced to create my own paper map of my planet so I can find things again. I know I also ran into this in Subnautica, the lack of a built-in mapping function, but in that game you could lay out labeled beacons. I'd be all for that in this game.

I'd have to say that I'm enjoying this game more than Elite: Dangerous, which I had in it's pre-Steam version. It may not be as good a starship simulator, but I really like being able to explore the planet.

I left my starting planet behind as quickly as possible. It was a radioactive hell planet. I've explored a half dozen planets so far, and the only one that didn't have dangerous environmental extremes was completely barren - minimal flora, fauna absent. I'll wait until I find a hospitable planet to set up a base.

jztemple2 wrote:I've unlocked my ground vehicle

Wait, you can get a ground vehicle in this game? How did you unlock that blueprint?

Blackhawk wrote: It was a radioactive hell planet.

That made me laugh out loud, because that's exactly what my starting Survival Mode planet is. I think I'm going to start from scratch tonight, blowing away both my Survival Mode and normal saves. Kind of want a fresh start knowing what I know now.

ColdSteel wrote:

jztemple2 wrote:I've unlocked my ground vehicle

Wait, you can get a ground vehicle in this game? How did you unlock that blueprint?

I haven't played it since it came out initially. If I do get back in, is starting over mandatory? I seem to remember that the ship I had was kick-ass.

Sectoid wrote:I haven't played it since it came out initially. If I do get back in, is starting over mandatory? I seem to remember that the ship I had was kick-ass.

I ended up starting over, but no, when I initially logged into my old character, it seemed to run an extra long process to update my character, but after that long load I was able to get in and play him fine.

killbot737 wrote:

Dave Allen wrote:NMS's charm rests on using one's observation and problem-solving abilities upon the randomly discovered resources and tools.
I say this to emphasize: the rewards of playing NMS are easily sucked out of this game by spoilers.

That can work both ways though. For a certain quest all I received as a clue was "build an X". Well, I don't know how to build that. I finally find out that it's made of Y and Z components. OK, I can build those, but I have never come across Element A that you need to build a Z. Shouldn't be too hard to find. 5 jumps later, no luck finding it. 10 jumps later, wtf, where is this stuff? 20 jumps later: FUCK THIS GAME!

P.S. Needless to say after the 1.3 patch I started a casual game.

did you check all the vendors in those 20 jumps? You can also trade with any other ships when they are docked. They usually have the more rare stuff.

morlac wrote:

killbot737 wrote:

Dave Allen wrote:NMS's charm rests on using one's observation and problem-solving abilities upon the randomly discovered resources and tools.
I say this to emphasize: the rewards of playing NMS are easily sucked out of this game by spoilers.

That can work both ways though. For a certain quest all I received as a clue was "build an X". Well, I don't know how to build that. I finally find out that it's made of Y and Z components. OK, I can build those, but I have never come across Element A that you need to build a Z. Shouldn't be too hard to find. 5 jumps later, no luck finding it. 10 jumps later, wtf, where is this stuff? 20 jumps later: FUCK THIS GAME!

P.S. Needless to say after the 1.3 patch I started a casual game.

did you check all the vendors in those 20 jumps? You can also trade with any other ships when they are docked. They usually have the more rare stuff.

Also, a lot of the rare stuff can mainly be found in asteroids. Did you look there?

Sepiche wrote:

ColdSteel wrote:

jztemple2 wrote:I've unlocked my ground vehicle

Wait, you can get a ground vehicle in this game? How did you unlock that blueprint?

Spoiler:

Establish a base and keep completing the quests they give you and it will eventually unlock 3 different vehicles, advanced mining beams, and hazmat gauntlets among other things.

Thanks Sepiche, I'm not quite to that point yet. Just got the gauntlets.

I'm now thirteen hours in and except for a quick warp jump to go hire a scientist, I've been staying on my planet and building and exploring. The lack of a decent mapping system is a pain; I found another crashed ship, not as good as the first one I found, but now I can't find that one

I built the Nomad, which is the medium sized roamer, and I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to build the small one. Maybe more slots? Anyway, I've now tricked out the Nomad with a half-dozen techs, between engines, shield, cannon, mining laser and signal finder with a separate booster. Of course that eats up my cargo storage.

Speaking of storage, I've built two storage containers and will probably build more. Yeah, I'm that guy in Fallout that always picked up every single damn bit of crap I found

I can see a definite problem with future play of my game. I've spent so much time and energy building up a pretty nice base I don't know that I want to go roaming all over the galaxy afterwards. At some point I'm going to get tired of mining resources and then I'll have to figure out my long term game plans.

jztemple2 wrote:I found another crashed ship, not as good as the first one I found, but now I can't find that one

You can build beacons to mark locations you want to return to.

jztemple2 wrote:I can see a definite problem with future play of my game. I've spent so much time and energy building up a pretty nice base I don't know that I want to go roaming all over the galaxy afterwards. At some point I'm going to get tired of mining resources and then I'll have to figure out my long term game plans.

You can return to your base (with your ship) from any space station in any system by using the portal in the left hand door as you are landing, and then return to that station using the portal in your base.

Sepiche wrote:

jztemple2 wrote:I found another crashed ship, not as good as the first one I found, but now I can't find that one

You can build beacons to mark locations you want to return to.

jztemple2 wrote:I can see a definite problem with future play of my game. I've spent so much time and energy building up a pretty nice base I don't know that I want to go roaming all over the galaxy afterwards. At some point I'm going to get tired of mining resources and then I'll have to figure out my long term game plans.

You can return to your base (with your ship) from any space station in any system by using the portal in the left hand door as you are landing, and then return to that station using the portal in your base.

Good info about the portal.

What kind of beacon are we talking about? One of those in the Build menu (z or D-pad Up)? I just looked and I saw a Signal Booster, a Save Point, and a Communications Station in the Tech ring, but nothing that said Beacon.