Dyson Sphere Program (Early access)

[MadMaxHellfire]

When did this insane, mental return to the inhuman amount of micromanagement started? I know yellows and the likes enjoy this kind of stuff because it makes them feel at home like in a concentration camp, but what about the rest of the world?
As soon as you plop your first extractor followed by a smelter you notice there's a devastating amount of disparity of working speed, which means sooner or later you'll have to build and move and demolish and rebuild and move and demolish and rebuild and move and demolish for who knows how long until you strike a balance. Hell, even Anno 1800 has timers clearly shown.
What's the fascination with these exercises of frustration? I started a game and when it was too late I realized I did everything wrong, so I gathered strength and restarted, and just when I was growing bored of it power went down and I lost progress. It must have been the hand of god.
Also: cartoon style in epic sci-fi, the perfect way to waste both.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Looks like another fine piece of trash game

 

[HoboForEternity]

games like this keeps popping out because there are endless autistic customers who played 10k hours of factorio and do it all over again with different title

 

[Dickie]

Just over 1k reviews on Steam in one day. 94% positive. I definitely underestimated the number of people who like this stuff.

 

[ADL]

I'm usually never interested in games like these but the theme of this one is pretty neat. Might check it out on a sale later.

 

[Geisler]

The hell is it, looks like some kind of retarded chink version of Surviving Mars? God that was hopelessly boring game.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

don't get me wrong, the game is not intrinsicly bad (despite some naive issues in the interface), i just can't wrap my head around this kind of insane micro of moving numbers back and forth for the sake of moving numbers. it's like an idler but you must suffer while you're idling. on top of this, me being a total prefectionist i can't stand the random part of it with deposits scattered everywhere.
i made the game a bit more bearable setting the resource to unlimited (thus cutting 90% of the reasons to travel =_= ), putting in place a chain of research stuff and leaving the game be for a couple hours. i doubt that's supposed to be fun.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

stockholm syndrome.
once unlocked the interplanetary logistics i realized the amount of required materials is way beyond the mere "build as much as you need and have some surplus" and i was ready to ditch the game for good. but instead i started over, still unlimited resources, but now i want to extract and produce as much as possible at once since start with multiple batteries building every item, because i'm starved for sci-fi that much =_=

 

[Quatlo]

and leaving the game be for a couple hours.

That sounds like any X universe game, count me in.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

and then i faced again how annoying it is to set up multiple oil refineries.
i'm probably cured.

 

[Ironmonk]

- Some other games that I forgot the name
- Low Magic Age
- Sands of Salzaar
- Amazing Cultivation Simulator

and now this... the progress of chinese studios is impressive, I guess this new decade we will see in games what happened in the last decade with novels/manhuas (chinese manga) rising to prominence.

 

[Joggerino]

Since when were there so many retards on this site? This game is great, its obviously in the genre of factorio and satisfactory. All the input/output information are clearly displayed and easy to understand. The biggest flaw is that rebuilding/upgrading is a giant pain in the ass but that can be mostly avoided by using the main bus design.

Spoiler

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the informations might be in plain sight, yet "this extractor will produce 217.5 units per minute which will wildly fluctuate if not at 100% power with 0% predictability" is 3 ways retarded.
1) no way you can strike a balance for "217.5", even less because deposits have random shapes and no two extractors will work the same
2) when power is low you're screwed because cycles have different timings and while some machines will keep working at full regime some others won't because their cycle starts on low power, disrupting any balance you might have tried to achieve
3) 0% predictability. as is.

 

[Joggerino]

Whats retarded is trying to balance anything while not producing enough power.

 

[Joggerino]

This main bus project is turning out to be a major pain in the ass.

Spoiler

 

[exe]

If you have interstellar logistic stations in two star systems, will the freighter try to slowboat over or will they only fly there when they have space warpers?

Edit: Yes, they will try to slowboat over.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

in the end the game grew on me, because i was treating it the wrong way: it's an idler. i don't have to try to balance and maximize and calculate and compute. i just have to plop some massive amount of production buildings, drop a storage complex or two at the end and leave the game be. after all the ost is not bad. after some hours, when everything is filled, i take a step up the ladder, plop more and leave again.

 

[DDZ]

It looks nice, it runs nice, so far it's just nice.

I wish these games had more of traditional RTS control, I don't like controlling the mech or the dude in Factorio. Though this game seems to be more of a hybrid, control wise. Building conveyor belts and inserters is such a big improvement over Factorio's way.

But because of the game being 3d everything just feels like it costs so much more effort. And I would like the 3d more if the game as less cartoony and the scale was bigger. The small planet size is giving me flashbacks to Planetary Annihilation.

 

[exe]

For an early access game from 5 man this is amazing and basically finished.

I dropped Factorio after like 10 or less hours, it just felt pointless: automate to research more complicated stuff to automate more, all to launch a rocket to get a win-screen lol(also aliens to waste your time).
But this game I absolutely love, even though it's almost the same. Maybe it's the sci-fi and trying to build a motherfucking Dyson Sphere as a endgoal.
Even though it's Unity the performance is super smooth. The game looks beautiful, most of the planets (not lava ofc) are gorgeous, the music is amazing and fits wonderfully to the look and feeling of the game and it all comes together into really nice optimistic sci-fi. When's the last time you have seen optimistic sci-fi? Apparently you only get it from the chinese nowadays.
So if you're vaguely interested in such games, definately give it a try.

As a tip, restart till you have fire ice in your starting system, it saves you so much time if you don't need to go oil-sulfur-graphene and can just turn the fire ice straight to graphene. Just press V the moment you land(you can skip the prologue by pressing escape) and then you scroll out and click on the other planets. It will say unknown on all the resources, but if it has a special resource it will also say unknown tier 2 vein in yellow at the bottom. Seed 0000 0000 has fire ice and an arid with 150%wind.
The starting system is unfortunately very generic, you always start on a mediterrean orbiting a gas giant or ice gas giant, then 2 more planets, either gobi,arid,lava or ice. Gobi/desert are trash with 0%wind. Ice is the best because it can have fire ice, the only special resource you can have in your starting system and also the best in the game.
I have been to a few other planets, some of them are gorgeous like Red Rock. The other planets I have seen are ashen(like lava but with sulfiric acid ocean), barren and ocean world. Also black holes are scary, almost got sucked in.

 

[Communist]

Just stumbled upon this game on Steam. Very ambitious and very interesting.
I hope they bring the concept to its logical conclusion, otherwise ...

 

[Ranselknulf]

When did this insane, mental return to the inhuman amount of micromanagement started? I know yellows and the likes enjoy this kind of stuff because it makes them feel at home like in a concentration camp, but what about the rest of the world?
As soon as you plop your first extractor followed by a smelter you notice there's a devastating amount of disparity of working speed, which means sooner or later you'll have to build and move and demolish and rebuild and move and demolish and rebuild and move and demolish for who knows how long until you strike a balance. Hell, even Anno 1800 has timers clearly shown.
What's the fascination with these exercises of frustration? I started a game and when it was too late I realized I did everything wrong, so I gathered strength and restarted, and just when I was growing bored of it power went down and I lost progress. It must have been the hand of god.
Also: cartoon style in epic sci-fi, the perfect way to waste both.

Games like this almost seem like a data gathering experiment.

Protip, stop trying to be perfect, just make some cool shit.

 

[exe]

Just finished the victory tech.
My first game I abandoned at 15h for terminal spaghetti and no fire ice. Second try I launched my first rocket at 35h, this here is 5 hours later with 30 rockets per minute. The nodes are done, but I severely underestimated how many solar sails you need. So I have no swarm left, they get immediately sucked into the construction. It is a very small sphere with just an radius/orbit of 5000, but already 2GW output. You actually need the sphere to get the white matrixes, so it's not just a vanity project.
It's a full and complete game, just needs some UI and logistic station tweaks.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

15h? 40? 188:30 and still have to make green cubes :V i can't be arsed to upgrade my power production =_= probably moving entire chains to another planet (like the engines) would be for the better, but still... depression is a stupid bitch.

 

[Ironmonk]

I'm at 100h and my dyson sphere is sitting at 22.000 rockets out of 30.000.. probably going to create more layers later. And right now, all that energy I'm using to produce photons for antimatter.

If you create a orbital collector belt (around 40) on your gas giant, you will have endless hydrogen that can power hundreds of thermal generators (I think I have 600 on my main star system, and the production from the gas giant still is higher than my consumption.), I only realized this much later... but its simpler and you don't need to create production chains for more advanced fuels.

And I really hate my planet, too much water and I have to terraform a lot in order to build stuff on it. But moving entire production chains for other nearby planets is the best for a easier management.

Special resources like sulfuric acid, deuterium and organic crystals can be found in other star systems, so if you set up interstellar logistics, you can dismantle your production, at least for deuterium and sulfuric acid, they are limitless.

I'm playing with x8 resources and I kinda wish I had tried x2 or x4 at max, because all my nodes are still producing, some near its end... and by the time a dyson sphere of this size is complete, I think at least you starting planet should be depleted or very close to depletion.

 

[exe]

I was playing with infinite resources, so I didn't have to deal with remaking mining/smelting. Every vein gets a billion.
I thought building a equatorial power belt was both ugly and stupid, but maybe that is actually a good idea, since I also had serious power problems late-game. I build the entire factory complex producing dyson components on my ice planet because of power. Don't forget to build ray receivers at your poles so they can get power from your swarm always. I was mostly using wind turbines early, but burning your unused oil and coal(you need very little coal for production) is actually a lifesaver. Once you start your dyson sphere keep adding ray receivers for the power and you can even tear down your thermals. I wouldn't burn the hydrogen, because you need so much hydrogen and deuterium for rockets, I think 68 hydrogen per rocket, which is an insane amount. You can only spam so many collectors on your gas giant, and they are a real ballache to make and deploy.