What can I say? I apparently have a type, and it's voxel based survival games? Who'da thunk it.
Anyway: On to the game. The survival aspects are surprisingly easy, so it's not a bar to the actual fun of the game: making enormous structures and vessels. Eat once in a while... that's it. Water exists to use as a recipe ingredient and to help stamina regeneration a touch. You can make power bars from vegetable proteins, and various other sundry items using the various workbenches in the world, like the food processor and the various grades of constructors. The fridge, of which you can build into not only into your base, but all your vehicles as well, prevents food rotting entirely. Which is a nice touch. Splits the line between minecraft/7 days to die where food doesn't rot at all, and games like F76 and miscreated where fresh foods will eventually rot into another recipe item or just garbage regardless of where you put them.
I don't think they could decide what they wanted to be the enemies in the game. So far, I've fought giant spiders, giant slimes, velociraptors, and spear wielding xeno natives. It's... a hell of a leap there. Dinosaurs, and aliens all in the same space. Meh: meats meat, I really don't care if it's giant bug, or sauropod. The food processor makes the steak taste just like beef.
Building! Yeah, on top of making your home base, your mobile bases, and your vehicles (You can construct hover vehicles good for planetary surfaces, small space vessels good for a jaunt around the solar system to grab rareified resources, CAPITAL ships which are giant mobile bases, and STAR BASES where in you can dock your cap ship. Oh, and a motorcycle. There, I think I got everything.) you need to construct various workbenchs, tools, weapons and armor for yourself. These are done using the various sizes of constructors, but don't get discouraged at my wording. As you move UP the constructor scale, they can build everything the smaller one could, plus new stuff. So the order is 1.) suit (which lets you crank out basic workbenches and early game foods.), 2.) survival, 3.) small, 4.) large, 5.) advanced. Everything is built in the same way; feed the constructor resources, and it'll make everything it needs (if the resources are present.) including advanced materials like motors, circuit boards, power supplies. You don't have to get bogged down either scavenging the technical parts or remembering ten thousand recipes while running between specialized workbenches. Some tools also qualify as weapons: and I can confirm that killing raptors and spiders with a chainsaw is all kinds of fun, so don't skip the tools!
Access to recipes are determined by player level, and which recipes you've bought on the player screen. It's divided into the various aspects (like recipes specifically for hover vehicles, bases, tools and weapons.) so you end up having to purchase the same things repeatedly because of how the game handles blocks and attachments. Let's move onto that, shall we?
BLOCKS! You make blocks, you place blocks. You paint and texture blocks! It took a bit to get used to how this game handles construction, but I think I got it. First off: there is no individual block physics. If a block is no longer connected by other blocks to the core for that build (be it base or vehicle.) it will turn into debris which you can pick up for the salvage. So if you want to build a structure 100 blocks wide, on a single wood log that spans 1000 blocks high: you are perfectly free to do so. Destroy the builds core, and the entire thing turns into debris. Why was it done like that? To allow the game to differentiate between the different kinds of vehicles and bases. This system also allows for the creation of blueprints, so if you REALLY like something you built, you can save the build to recreate later OR drop in something that your friends made/you downloaded off the internet. Creative mode allows for easy construction of massive structures to turn into blueprints which all you have to do is keep feeding it resources in the free mode/survival mode until it builds itself. Kinda handy if you don't feel like starting entirely fresh and just want to get to work recreating all of histories greatest atrocities on digital aliens. Now, the game handles the actual blocks exactly as you expect it to... maybe? It offers dozens of shapes of both utilitarian and artistic kinds, allowing you to make your structure in basically the closest possible way to your imagination. But be warned: a block is still a block. If you change the size of the block you're using to smaller than the entire space (like a half sized one, or a beam. Or one of the styles of ramp or cut corner.), the build engine will still qualify it as a WHOLE block for the purposes of placement of items like furniture, other blocks, or workbenchs and power generators. Yes, even if you can walk through that block. As for building ITSELF: you will have to place a starter block for your whatever: and then every block placed AFTER will HAVE to be attached in some way (either by touching the "core" directly OR touching something that's touching the core.) to the core block. It does make some designs a little awkward to build, but again: handled this way so vehicles and blueprints could actually work.
Every time you start a new game, it generates... a solar system. A bunch of planets of varying degrees of danger, with accompanying rewards. Rare equipment and resources are found on harder to survive on planets, requiring ever more expensive and technical equipment and vehicles to attain. If you plan your stuff out well, you can make small structures and vehicles which fit all your needs and requirements, including storage and processing (a constructor can make ingots from ore, but a smelter does it faster... and automatically? I think.), but what's the point of having an ENTIRE solar system to exploit if you aren't going to bother exploiting it?
Edit: and that's just me recovering from the tutorial! There's literally HUNDREDS of different POI's (points of interest.) in the game which spawn rare equipment and resources, enemies, and are generally worth the effort to exploit and explore and I've BARELY even touched on those myself yet. Apparently there are scuttled and almost abandoned capital ships and space stations out there, full of all kinds of kit waiting for the adventurous, the brave or the clinically insane.
Edited by wonko the sane?, 10 July 2019 - 06:56 PM.