RELEASED FrackinUniverse 6.4.22

Might consider a Watcher for that, it keeps the area loaded for that kind of stuff.

 

sayter updated FrackinUniverse with a new update entry:

6.1.14

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So, I wanted to write a bit about the research system, since to me I feel it's a mixed bag, with problems that, maybe I'm playing "Wrong" but, it feels like nothing but a major time gate, that also exacerbates a problem it claims to try and fix.

"Progression skipping: players would immediately go to max-tier world, get the best possible ore, and then will be bored at "game over" state in a couple of hours. While doing so, they would also miss amazing low-tier weapons (with unique projectile mechanics, special abilities, etc.), powerful low-tier mech components like Lunari Mech Arm, and also some useful low-tier buildings (e.g. Liquid Collector is much less advanced than Atmospheric Condenser, but generates significantly more liquid - but a player who skipped tiers would just build the Condenser and wouldn't even try the Collector, assuming it to be inferior). Because all armor/weapons in Frackin' Universe is upgradeable (up to tier 10), many low-tier armors gain extremely good stats at tiers 6-8. When skipping tiers, most players would just walk in tier 6 armor without noticing how cool low-tier armors can be."

So, in short I assume that you wanted people to play lower tier stuff for a lot, lot longer. How much longer? Because one of the first smacks I had was getting my ship moving out of the star system. My play style has always been to get to tier 3 and 4 and stay there a while, I couldn't even do that without having nearly an half hour of wait time, simply because while I had the resources to move to the next star system but the system literally created a "Time gate" on me. This kind of system made me decide against playing minecraft continuum, and I'm appalled I see this here. So this makes me think of another problem, after running into time gate after time gate the last few days of my weekend;

"Passive research from exploration, which accumulates faster when you are exploring higher-tier worlds (note that tier 6 is the maximum - if you explore a tier 10 world, the rate will be the same as for tier 6 world). This increase starts 5 minutes after arriving on a world."

In short, people research faster when they explore higher tier planets. So combine this with exponentially increasing research point demands kind of encourages people to rush to higher tier worlds. Seems rather counter-productive towards your goal of making people spend hours on every tier.

But then you ask why do people rush to higher tiers to begin with? Many lower tier armors you make take significantly more time to craft and obtain than vanilla armors. Theres always been a disparity in regards to investment vs power. And sure, you could craft an armor otherwise awesome at a lower tier, and then dump about 40 upgrade modules into the set to make it amazing, but 40 upgrade modules is a LOT of upgrade modules. I remember when crafting them took a few thousand research points and research points were impractical to obtain in that count, and because you got MORE upgrade modules at higher tiers why not go to a higher tier? Which meant crafting a higher tier set was simply easier and more practical.

And tier 1 and 2 are kind of boring, and for my playthrough? I didn't have any bogs, primevals, fungals ect in my starting star system. Litterally had 1 lush, 1 desert(which was large btw, and not good for getting metals, simply larger planets mean taking MUCH longer to get to the mining layers) and a forest, with 2 moons with very poor erchius supplies(sub-biomes with no liquid erchius or erchius crystals below surface) completely screwing my playthrough. If not for the forest having energy wood i'd have been dead in the water with almost no chance of leaving the system in a remotely feasable time, and this would have been exacerbated by the severe resource shortage I had in my system. When I tried a research computer(it was the lowest tier I admit, I didn't expect much), I found it needed resources and seemed to be extremely inefficient(do the higher tier ones provide better research per resource cost? Please tell me, but 1000 of an item for 1 research point? huge pass, unless it was more, but some items only gave 1 research point for like, 5 of them, if it's saying 1000 I assume it's 1 point), so i was left feeling even more it was hard time gated.

With little practical way to speed it up other than simply going to a higher tier as fast as possible. Which meant everything not contributing directly to progressing to the next tier was very much skipped. When I did try to deviate a bit, going for poison protection(floran, so needed a hard counter for poison, enviro packs don't work when you have -25 poison resist and -50 fire), I ended up finding that because of liquid creation requiring a tremendous amount of research, I ended up crafting 3 normal sifters and dumping about three thousand units of proto soil to get liquid protocyte for the augment. It felt like a hallow achievement. I ended up directing research into simply getting to tier 5 since my patience had run thin.

A few positives: It at least gives you an idea what new resources you'll need in a research tab. It's pre-reqs also give you an idea whats expected to be obtained beforehand or what needs to be obtained beforehand.

Beyond that? I feel the research numbers are VERY skewed, and can easily leave a player feeling locked behind a time gate if they wish to take certain directions. I wanted to try the power system out, and mostly abandoned it simply because the slow research speed meant it'd drastically slow down progression in a bad way, especially the reactors which need pretty much all tier 4 and 5 metals researched. It overall greatly reduces my ability to really enjoy this mod. I kept hitting time gate after time gate and felt no incentive to throw more precious research points into side projects since it'd just slow down advancement to the next tier with nothing to really gain.

Ultimately, the research system made me feel compelled to rush the system rather than take my time on the tiers like I used to. It achieved the complete opposite for me, and proved to be greatly frustrating.

Techs I did grab on the side: Hydroponic tubes and Lamp trays, solar panel and low tier battery(I admit, I never used either, energy wood and actuators worked for the few very low power machines I did use). Lunari crystals so I could get an augment extractor.

 

So I thought of some ideas to both reduce the grindy/time gate feel and smooth progression. What about multiple tier research points? With some emphasis on using lab equipment for the tier research stat. This is an approach similar to factorio, in which it's possible to speed research up by expanding more and increasing science pack production. I also thought about player gaining research points for crafting things at varying tiers which would also drastically cut down the research time and could be fine tuned to enable smoother progression compared to the time gate laden struggle I had above. Mining resources could also be setup to help.

And give us a better idea how much research the computers give when we put things in there. When I saw I'd need 1000 seeds(yes, a thousand) to put in a research station, it was extremely discouraging and thats ultimately what made me feel you had to go to tier 4-6 just to get the research points to unlock things in a reasonable time and even that felt it wasn't enough.

 

Well, you can get a researcher that gives you a bonus for generating research, and there's also the researcher's armor that boosts it.
I tend to get both asap, just to speed things up.
Also, it's worth just going exploring for the stuff you need in advance and spending time just exploring around. I find it's worth just going hunting for misc stuff on random planets, or hitting up things before you need them, just so when you do have the research points, you can learn it immediately.

 

Yeah I will have to try that, I have also found the advanced computer to be decent. While searching for a good tidal world to build a new base on I found a rather comical bug that kind of ruins the ones with purely water weather patterns;

Effectively, look closely weather patterns causing water to drop onto the terrain is causing dark dirt to form on the dark water. Might want to correct that, it begins to look silly very quickly, I was able to walk across most of the planets surface without difficulty.

I'd also consider setting the surface to be only the tidal surface, I saw a lot of weird island patterns with no proper water background, which while not a complete deal breaker for building on such a planet(just pick a spot in the normal reef biome), it also adds an odd feeling of inconsistency to an otherwise very cool planet.

 

sayter updated FrackinUniverse with a new update entry:

6.1.15

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

sayter updated FrackinUniverse with a new update entry:

6.1.16

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

Hi! returning starbound player here.

I just downloaded the new FU and started a new playthrough, this system seems quite interesting, for starters, since I got bored of the old vanilla starbound progression, I welcome something new as this.

I have a few questions regarding your post, since im new to this system, I would like to know, in which way are you affected by this time-gate while trying to reach other star systems? from my old playthoughs it goes like this: as long as you have enough fuel in your ship you can reach any star system...so what do you mean you get a time-gate for accessing a system?

Also you are talking about going asap to higher tiered planets...can you even do this while poorly equipped? Im going slow (since im new to this, and mostly, I don't know how everything works so far), and Im having fun.

Last question, I choose the vanilla ship over BYOS, but I found another SAIL interface in my invetory, placing it spawns a new pet...I can also deconstruct it, should I be worried about this new SAIL interface? what can I do with it? can I just throw it away?

Thanks!

 

Yeah, you can jump to any of the more difficult systems without having the research, as long as you have the fuel to do so.

I do this myself, usually to hunt down certain materials, or possibly a weapon or two. Sometimes, just to see how far I can make it on a planet before I croak, lol.

 

Quick question,

Whenever it is raining..my crops don't actually get watered, nor can I collect the said rainwater in anything...is this intended?

 

For rain to collect you have to have a background wall. With no background wall, it drains out.

 

Alright, makes sense, thanks!

What about my crops though? they dont seem to get watered, even though, that doesn't matter too much..

What I would like to know better, is where can I get some contaminated water though? in the chemistry research, once I unlock liquid creation Tier 1, there appears to be contaminated water, among others...but in my chemistry lab, I can fabricate all the indicated liquids, except for contaminated water...

 

The rain needs to be heavy enough to water tilled soil. You can get contaminated water as a byproduct of centrifuging various fluids, including water.

 

I rely less on rain for watering crops. They do have sprinklers you can make.

I use a mod, Garden bots 2.0. Makes it easier to get some things set up on the world/ship early on, once you hit the Outpost. They don't produce as fast as the hydroponics do tho.

 

each queen subsequent research with a given microscope gives me more and more genes somehow. like 1-3-5-7-12 etc genes per research. is that a bug or a feature? cos picking microscope up and setting it up again kinda resets that behavior. tried with basic and apex.

 

Can't help with the crop watering - I've not noticed either way. Contaminated water you can get by slinging normal water in any centrifuge.

 

Time-gate is where your forced to wait around or 'try' to busy yourself while progress accumulates with little inpute from you. Progress has nothing to do with your knowledge of the mod or how things progress, it's purely time. This is ok if a dev wants people to slow down, but bad for people who have things outside of the game or also wants time for other games. It's for extremely hardcore players exclusively. This is what the mod continuum for minecraft did, where a crafting bench for example would take say, an hour to create an iron pickaxe.

The research system isn't as bad I found if you have plenty of planets to explore in the starting star system and good places to build your base. But if your unlucky with none of that, it quickly kills the initial impression, and that post was based on a star system with one giant desert(high gravity, crap for mining or quests), one forest (with only minimal stuff on it) and a lush (bare as usual). It was very dull and I was left feeling trapped by a clock when I had a job and only a few days off.

It's also off putting you cannot even SEE what you have to look forward to until you can get proper FTL. That is also not a good thing to me, I'd rather know if I should just say "NOPE!" before just saving time by restarting. At least I got lucky and had a system with some good FU planets and just more in general right next door. It felt like a proper starting star system.

My second character had FAR better luck. Still no FU planets but at least she had more forests, deserts, and interesting sub biomes in them with good backgrounds. So taking time to build the base helped a metric ton.

 

Yeah, I've had starts like that. Sometimes, I just admin in the FTL drive, and get things rolling. Other times, I take stock in what I have, and try to get things legitimately.

My go to, later on, for killing time, is to make a small pool of the food filling fluid(name escapes me atm), and a bed in it. Lay down, watch some youtube, get food, go to the bathroom, etc.

 

can someone check if genes output from microscope research of queens is proper? it seems bugged for me, every next research from the same microscope gives more and more genes.