Planet Crafter: Now with Full Release

[Lordnine]

Well that is probably not good.

[Blackhawk]

I know about the external stairs, and I know about the ladders. I was wondering if there was an actual internal stairwell anywhere in the game. Anyone seen anything like that?

[Lordnine]

I don't think there are any internal stairs. The ladders will span into a room built directly above though.

[Lordnine]

Actually, I take that statment back. After testing it, you CAN use staircases inside, it just has to be a double tall room.

[Lordnine]

My children are small and ugly but I worked real hard to make them.


Also, should I feel bad about launching fish into orbit in a rocket?

[Blackhawk]

Who do you have mowing your lawn? They're doing a great job.

I finally unlocked the Big Living Compartment, so it's time to finally start on my actual, permanent base. I've got the spot (the same spot everyone seems to choose, north of the starting point), and I've got a rough idea of how I want to do it.

My working list:

• Home/working area (computers, personal gear, comms, collectible rocket penises, nice views, etc.)
• Crafting and storage area (likely centrally located between all of the other buildings)
• Agricultural area
• Power generation
• Drilling area (away from the main base)
• An area with heaters hot enough to warm the entire planet, but not turn me into ash
• ?
• Prophet

#7 is why I'm posting the list - what can I expect to need to include later in the game?

#8 is for when I get to the part where I start a cult.

[Lordnine]

There are actually some really cool areas southwest of the spawn that I might have picked for my base if I were to start again. You will end up spending quite a lot of time in that area too.

Also, I strongly recommend leaving space for expansion around your main resource room. Once you move into genetics you will almost certainly run out of space.

[Blackhawk]

There are actually some really cool areas southwest of the spawn that I might have picked for my base if I were to start again. You will end up spending quite a lot of time in that area too.

Also, I strongly recommend leaving space for expansion around your main resource room. Once you move into genetics you will almost certainly run out of space.

Extra large storage/crafting system, got it. How big is big?

[Lordnine]

Well, to give you an idea, this is my main storage room.



And this is my genetics room that now doesn't fit everything it needs to do what I need.



Honestly, I probably should have built my genetics room ABOVE my storage room. I am pretty sure Autocrafters can pull items from storages 360 degrees around themselves and it would have saved me a ton of space.

You will also want space for at least 1 biodome somewhat close by and they are huge.

[Blackhawk]

Not as big as I'd feared. I think I'm just still feeling trauma from discovering that my beloved and well-planned base in Satisfactory was about 5% the size it needed to be.

Thanks.

[Blackhawk]

Meaningless discovery: Tapping the F4 key allows you to fly. It's only straight up, although you can angle your descent just a bit. But hey - it's an easy way to get on the roof to build that comms dish without building floating stairways.

[Lordnine]

Well, I’ve gotten two of the endings. Great game and well worth the price but I feel the endings are lackluster and an afterthought. Probably not surprising given the type of game.

The game seems like it has been a huge success for the (2?) man team though so I am curious where they go from here. There has been some talk about maybe adding new planets down the line.

[Blackhawk]

Well, I've achieved water. Or at least I've been told that I have - I haven't seen any yet. Still, I'm taking the opportunity to clean out many of the resources in the starter basin. There may be a way to get them later, and there are likely alternative sources, but I needed some of them anyway, so this is as good a time as any to farm them up.

And, in an echo of the other thread, doing that while listening to A Short History of Nearly Everything on Audible is really relaxing.

[Blackhawk]

Honestly, I probably should have built my genetics room ABOVE my storage room.

When you say, "Genetics room", what are you referring to? I have a biolab, but I don't see any genetics room/gene lab/etc. Did you just mean regular rooms into which you placed gene-related machinery?

[Lordnine]

It’s a room I have adjacent to the biolab. You are going to want a bunch of the ingredients used by the biolab. Crafting them by hand takes a long time so I have 4 different auto crafters set up to process the materials automatically. One creates bacteria samples, another turns bacteria into mutagen 1, then mutagen 2, and also one for fertilizer.

You will also want multiple growth chambers that combine the genetic material into new life forms. I had two of them and 4 would have probably been better. Each one is as large as the advanced crafting station.

[Blackhawk]

That's fine. I've been taking it into account as I build (and left a space explicitly for it), but wasn't sure whether you were referring to a prefab building or just some generic rooms with specific machinery.

[Blackhawk]

I have had algae generators out for several days. I kept trying to figure out how to get the actual algae. I went and read online that after you placed them, it would grow underwater. For two days I've been periodically diving down and checking the ground underwater beneath them. I've gone and checked probably two dozen times. Nothing. Everything has been stalled while I wait for my damned algae, as everything I need to make requires it.

Then I went and watched a video - it grows on the surface of the water, growing downward.

They really need to do a better job of communicating some aspects of this game.

[Lordnine]

Yeah, there are a few things like that. Because of how the tech tree unlocks you will also occasionally unlock something new only for it to be worse than a previous item. That happened to me with the Aquarium biosphere. They look cool and I was excited to build them only to discover they were worse than fish farms which I had unlocked long before.

[Blackhawk]

I also find it irksome that the buildings are direct upgrades to existing buildings rather than new ones, and you can't upgrade them in place. In other words if you build a [whatever] into your base, then unlock the [whatever V2], you have to deconstruct the existing one and try to fit the new one into the same space. That makes building connected bases a huge pain.

I wish they'd gone with upgrade-in-place (set the new structure over the old one and it replaces it), add-ons (instead of replacing your [whatever], you add additional parts to it), or simple efficiency tech upgrades (your [whatever] remains as it was, but you unlock technologies that improve its efficiency.)

I don't know how much longer I'm going to stick with it. There's some interesting stuff here, but it isn't holding up over time. The exploration is only so-so. The new stuff I discover feels much like the previous stuff, just on a different color of sand. The world feels tiny, and the lack of any threats means that there's near-zero challenge. The endgame seems to just be 'launch a bunch of rockets, build a bunch of drills, and wait. A lot.' The production process is mostly passive without much of an 'economy' or factors to balance out. The research is uninspiring and largely out of player control (and half the time you'll have unlocked a replacement for something before you've even found the resources to build the first version.) The resources are so abstracted with so little feedback that I don't feel like I'm really managing the process so much as I'm a passive observer. And, as I mentioned, the base building is kind of messy.

It's like Subnautica without the monsters, combined with Satisfactory without the planning and design.

I really love the theme, but the implementation isn't all that interesting to play.

[Blackhawk]

Yeah, I hate to say it, but I think I'm done. There are no hard 'this is bad' elements to the game, but there's nothing there that's drawing me in. The game plays itself. I could literally walk away and just let it sit there, then come back in a few days for the victory screen. I don't feel like I'm a necessary part of the equation.

[Lordnine]

All valid points. From the start I considered it akin to the idle gameplay of Stardew Valley combined with subnautica. The game is as fast or as slow as you want it to be. If it is taking too long to get to the next level it’s because you haven’t built enough machinery. The incentive for exploration is to build more and better types of machinery and upgrade yourself so that you can do it faster and more efficiently.

Once you get tier 3 jetpack you can fly from one end of the planet to the other in about 5 minutes but if that is too slow you can also build teleporters. All of this is important because the endgame is basically a scavenger hunt over the entire planet.

Personally, I find it fun and relaxing but if you want a challenge then the game isn’t going to offer that.

[Blackhawk]

The incentive for exploration is to build more and better types of machinery and upgrade yourself so that you can do it faster and more efficiently.

Absolutely. The problem is more that the actual act of exploration feels more like looking for lost keys than exploring an alien planet.

Once you get tier 3 jetpack you can fly from one end of the planet to the other in about 5 minutes but if that is too slow you can also build teleporters.

That's part of what I meant about the map feeling too small. I'm always just a couple of minutes from home, and I've seen every corner of the map (including most of the er... locked locations) and I'm nowhere near the end. I don't feel like there's much more to explore.

Personally, I find it fun and relaxing but if you want a challenge then the game isn’t going to offer that.

To be clear, I'm not looking for Dark Souls. I just think that there needs two things:

1. Some risk/reward mechanic for the exploration. You mentioned Subnautica, and it's a very close parallel. While Subnautica wasn't challenging as such, it created tension during exploration, partially because you were so far from home, and partially because there were actual risks out there. It also had a certain sense of awe when you discovered a new area, which Planet Crafter is lacking (like I said - most of the time you're just getting a slightly different color of sand.)

2. There needs to be more interactivity with the building/research process. It all feels passive, like the game is playing itself, and all you're doing is throwing a little more coal on the fire from time to time.

[Lordnine]

That is kind of the Stardew quality. It is intended to be cozy with no fail state. You can regrow the same parcel of land forever or you can expand your field as much as you want. Both will get you to the same place but one is a lot faster.

Now, I would have liked more points of interaction similar to Stardew or Subnautica but I was still satisfied without it. Another thing I would have liked to see is positioning matter more. Like, placing 10 tree planters around my base was just as effective as putting them miles apart. I would have preferred it if terraforming was stronger if you spread out your operation as it would have given greater emphasis on building up different areas of the planet.