Revert the Control Bracer update changes.#1089

This might just be one of my most important posts. It’s also a means for me to communicate my feedack on the update.
First off, my general feeling on this update is that it tries really hard to make the game a lot more easy and less complex to understand ; but, as a result, the game has been dumbed down, and now feels dull and lackluster. Most of the spice and the charm it had is now gone. It feels like this update was made to accomodate for the people who made no use of their brain while playing, those who made no efforts to understand the game’s mechanics. And it sure did, but the issue is that now there are no efforts to make, which just removes the point of the game.

I’ll go over each patch note entry that I feel is bad.

• Reworked boiler : I don’t understand why it was changed. The two new dials are practically useless, and the core slots dial, which was useful, is now gone. Players were confused about the dials only because they didn’t know what they meant. Simply explaining what they mean and do would’ve worked, and maintained its relevance.

• Geothermal module : It sounds and looks cool, but is virtually useless. I can’t see people having enough stations running at the same time underground to justify its use, especially considering the risks you need to take to be able to use it.

• Fixed doors closing by themselves in enemy drillships : What ? This was never a bug. HOW and WHY would you fix this ?

• Removed non-vital devices from submarine : This is very sad. The submarine is now essentially back to its pre-alpha state. We’ve gone back, the sub has downgraded. It used to look steampunky, now it looks empty, barren, void. It looks like it was quickly made in a working state with no regards for cosmetics and visuals. And no “non-vital” devices have been removed, only chests. The sub has gone back to an older, sadder state.

• Removed non-vital devices from the starter drillship : same thing. It just makes it look empty and sad. But at least this can be changed by the player.

• Hid destroyed drillship icons on travel map : Why ? This is a change for the worst. How can we go loot these locations now ? Do we have to remember them all, their location and type ? I know the reason for this : people got confused because they didn’t read the “technology spawn point” part, and assumed they could go up or it marked something on the surface. But removing the whole thing is such a bad solution. You didn’t fix the issue, you got rid of the problem. The text should simply have been made clearer, to something like “Resource spawn point marker”. And, if people can’t understand what a marker is and/or means, I don’t think there’s much the devs can and should do.

• warning text when drillship is about to explode : see #1088

• Bypass core : I like the idea of being able to claim a ship without damaging it, and have ideas for how to do it, but this isn’t it. Just making it cost more resources changes nothing. Resources are plentiful enough for this to not matter whatsoever. A cooler way to implement it would be #1097.

• Pickaxe and wrench items : This is bad, because these are two essential items, and now you can lose them. I know you can always craft them because they can be made from scrap and there’s always worktables in basements and mines, but this update made it so that you don’t need to use your brain to play the game, do you really expect people to figure this out ?? They’ll lose their stuff, assume they’ve lost their tools and just start over an entirely new save, if they start over at all. I’ve thought of a way to fix this, see #1090

• Production changes : This is THE BIG negative of this update. If you want the whole deal, go read my conversation with Ondrej in this steam thread : https://steamcommunity.com/app/951440/eventcomments/4588603157855086198/
  TL;DR : modules are now almost useless, the whole focus of the game has no reason to exist anymore. The core feature can be overlooked for the duration of the entire game. A much better solution was found and agreed on in the thread, see #1094

• Storage changes : Why ? Why oh why ? In the same thread than above, I discussed the idea of not changing the online storage functionally, but only making it so that we would be able to SEE it as if everything was deployed. But nothing changed, and now we are stuck with this. Why has the ability to deploy storage modules not been removed ? Why would anyone in their right mind want to deploy a storage module ? You lose 75 armor and 5 core slots, but nothing changes. Closed or deployed, they act the same. Why would anyone deploy their storage modules ? No one. So why is it still possible ? Again, the change should have been on what we ended up on in the steam thread.

There’s also issues about the update - not talking about the bugs, of which there are a fair few, but that’s to be expected considering this update went through neither closed test or preview branch - but things that feel odd, almost as if rushed and not tested enough. Mainly, the wrench. If you have multiple devices or modules to place, that’s too bad. Scrolling will switch from the wrench to something else. You have to build one device in your inventory at a time, now. For a solution I’ve thought of, see #1091
The researdh worktable has also been removed from the submarine and starter drillship. Again, this was made to “de-clutter” things, but it still feels quick and cheap. It feels like “I don’t know how to deal with this issue, so let’s remove stuff and hope it works”. It just doesn’t make any sense how we get on this island, get one copper ingot and make a drillship core. It made sense before, at least we had to research a bit before claiming our first ship, but now we’re back to being these omniscient beings. We’ve never seen or met a COG, we are not aware of the existence of Drillships, yet we are perfectly able to make a drillship core, from a single ingot. I remember the devs saying they want to increase the time it takes to obtain your first ship, to make it feel more like an achievement, like something you truly work for - but I guess this is not the case anymore, given this has reduced said time down to seconds. I feel like this is sad, because now getting a ship just feels so easy. Why not just directly put the core in the player’s inventory when they spawn ? Why not make them spawn directly in the start drillship ?

It also seems like T3 items aren’t able to be produced in stations, only in HUBs - this might be a bug, since I found no mention of it in the patch notes - but it does sound like something this update would do.
I find this bad as well. Stations and HUBs aren’t supposed to have exclusive recipes, HUBs are just meant to allow automation. If the point was to try to make HUBs feel like an upgrade, this was not a good way. Instead, #315 sounds a lot better.

To be honest, I never realised that the boiler really had some drillship information, I never looked on it that much.

The geothermal module makes not really sense to me, there are other modules that are missing and more important.

Selfclosing doors are a bug, why not?

Completely agreeing to the submarine as well as to the hidden icons

Some more time to leave the ship actually would be cool.

I actually like the Bypass Core. It can be very useful in some situations.

I can understand why they did it with the pickaxe, but making the wrench also able to loose is just useless. Overwriting the pickaxe with the cogpickaxe, as soon as you found it, and making it be there when respawning would be cooler I think.

The production changes really make me have less challenge. Your idea with the workbenches is much better.

I totally agree with the storage.

Beside that, I got very confused with the computer, because when enabling for example the map on 3, I can’t disable it with 3 anymore. That’s something that definitely misses for me. I accidentally sent the drillship up/down some times already because I was stuck in the ui.

I don’t like that the guns aren’t stackable anymore, a friend thinks the same. I don’t like that the toolbar got more slots, I won’t use them anyways because I can’t comfortable click on 7,8,9 or 0.

I agree with all of the points of the original post, especially the storage change and the removal od “non-vital” devices in starter shit and sub. It looks like a hollow shell of what it used to b.
And the doors not locking you inside if cog ships was a cool feature imo. If you didnt get inside via hole in the wall, you gotta make one yourself on the way out.

And as per Finn’s post about the numbers 7,8,9,0: you can rebind them to different keys if you prefer to, just like in other games.

I kind of disagree on the Production part. Its not completly broken. Of course you now can produce stuff underground but only the ones which are available without any Production module and its way slower so basically only ammo and grenades and basic armor. I think its ok that this is at some point automated even underground. I dont want to go back from automation to handcrafting because I went underground. But maybe thats just how I see this.

About storage: Every opened storage module gives 5 production points so increasing the production speed. T1 productuon has 10 points so 2 additonal opened modules give you a 100% speed boost in production

The thing is, all of this could already be done with the worktables.
“you now can produce stuff underground but only the ones which are available without any Production module and its way slower so basically only ammo and grenades and basic armor”
That quite literally describes the worktables. This update took away from the modules (they aren’t needed as much), and from the worktables (they are entirely useless from the moment you get your ship). It could have added to the worktables without taking anything away from anyone (once again, check #1094).

As for the storages, this just makes things even worse. To me this just screams “this was confusing, so let’s just remove the entire mechanic, but now they have no point, so let’s just add the function of another module to them”. This, again, takes away from production modules. And it doesn’t even make sense.

I completely agree with everything here, the game was perfect the way it was. I dare say, the Volcanoids studio may be turning into a repeat of Keen…

It’s funny you mention that - although I have no knowledge about Keen - because the 2 og devs (not forgetting about you Rich, but I mean the ones who are responsible for the code and textures) worked for Keen before leaving and immediatly starting work on Volcanoids. I think they were both respectively lead artist and lead programmer on space engineers, although I could be wrong.

I don’t think the game is headed in a bad direction, this update had especially bad development conditions, I have to admit that. The ideas and mindset of the update were good, but I honestly think the execution was terrible.
Now it’s all about how they’ll bounce back from that.

You say all of these things are false, yet you wouldn’t know, seeing as you haven’t used it in a long time

I only stopped using it in 2019, four years ago.

I mean, sure the years were long. COVID-19 Pandemic and all. But still, only four years.

At the time I last used it none of the items you had listed, were implemented. So I can pretty safely say “Lies” when you say anything about Discord, and be fairly certain that I’m correct, remaining correct to this day.

“Lies”

I stand corrected. With these changes, I just might try Discord again.

Edited to add: AFTER Alpha and gang are banned.

Well, more bad news for Discord:

Again, just another example of phishing. Can and does happen with most companies.

As expected.

I still want to try Discord again, but I’ll only do so AFTER Alpha and crew are caught and permanently banned.

Let me know if and when you catch them.

what the duck happend here?