This isn’t as much of a review as it is a “state of the game”. I’ll divide the post up into bugs I’ve encountered that annoy me and enhancements I’d like to see.

BUGS

I’ve encountered a few that are still hanging around even as of 1.13. One in particular has had me nearly throwing my controller at the TV in frustration …

Bases – Rooms “Wandering”: It’s most noticeable in Freighter bases. When you build a room using multiple “cuboid” rooms, they can, over time it seems, drift in position so much that gaps appear in the walls and floors, and even drift so far as to make new internal walls appear where there shouldn’t be any. This “drift” exists for things within the room (or attached to the walls) and can make things like Galactic Trade Terminals or Containers impossible to reach to even delete and rebuild.

There’s a “Math Bug” in the Galactic Map, where the linear distance between you and another system that’s directly between you and the Galactic Center (one of the goals to get to) only gets you 1/4 of that distance closer to the Center. In other words, if I pick a system that’s directly between my current system and the Galactic Center and it’s 1600 Light Years away from me, it only gets me 400 Light Years closer to the Center. That math needs work. It becomes somewhat obvious that a figure was changed somewhere to make take longer to get to the Center, but that figure doesn’t seem to apply to everywhere it should.

While it’s a lot better in 1.13, there was a bug with freighter/container inventories where attempts to move something out of a container/freighter inventory for a “new” freighter would cause Exosuit technology to move to the ship inventory – and it still exists (it’s rarer, but it’s there). Currently it’s safest when claiming a new freighter to allow the save to occur immediately after purchase, but then close the game completely and restart.

Subject to monetary abuse, there’s a duplication bug with Galactic Trade Terminals, which supposedly require 500 Emril, 6 Voltaic Cells, and 10 Circuit Boards (and 1 CB requiring 1 Copper Wire and 1 Non-Ferrous Plate). If you have 1 CW and 1 NFP in your ship inventory (along with 500 Emril and 6 VCs), and no other CBs anywhere else, you’ll be able to build a GTT – which you can then disassemble and have 10 CBs (as well as the 6 VCs and 500 Emril). Store the CBs in a container, build a new GTT with 1 CW and 1 NFP, and you can sell the other 10 CBs for a hefty profit.

“Falling Out Of Your Ship”: Blurring the line between bug and enhancement, some ships have the tendency to drop you from just high enough to take damage when you exit, even if you’ve managed to park on the peak of the slightest hill. You’re ejected from your ship rather forcefully when you land; I think you should have some way to take a look at the what’s below your ship before you’re unceremoniously dropped out of it, either by not being ejected right away, or always starting on top of your ship, so that you can peer off of it and ready yourself for the need to jetpack to the ground, no matter how far down it might be.

ENHANCEMENTS

Some of these enhancements are seemingly minor things, but even those “minor” things I think are desperately needed. There are often complaints about how the “slots” in a ship don’t bear resemblance to the size of the ship; that’s not a big deal to me, but I understand the desire for at least some physics to apply. There are also rumors that ground vehicles are on the way; I don’t so much need them, but I would like:

Ship building: Both with the ships you fly and freighters, I’d like the option to change the look a little without having to track down a whole new ship. I don’t need a new chassis; just a slightly different nose and a fin on the back. Or maybe a color change.

Ship buying: It’s bugged me for a while that there are two ways to get a new ship: find it crashed or buy it. Finding it crashed is an experience in random number generation, which brings about its own frustrations – you are either stuck with whatever that ship looks like, or you just move on. But buying a ship has issues; I always feel like the pricing of the new ship does not appropriately reflect my trade in. That could use adjustment.

Freighter “Flying”: Right now you can call your freighter to you from where ever it last was. I kind of understand the idea and mechanics; you should always have access to your freighter, but then you shouldn’t be able to abuse its ability to pretty much go anywhere for your own travel. Still, right now they’re just big bases/warehouses in space that you can magically make appear at no cost to you, even if you’ve traveled through a Black Hole (which should really be called Worm Hole, but that’s nitpicky). I’m not sure exactly how or what, but there probably should be a little more to Freighters than there is now.

Base building: I would like the option to move certain key portions of the base, such as the Terminus. Every base starts as a room on the ground; I would like the ability to move the Terminus to another room (or make it something that you have to construct) and get rid of the basic room or change it with something else. Especially since I’ve started doing the “floating base” thing.

Base building: I would like the option to move certain key portions of the base, such as the Terminus. Every base starts as a room on the ground; I would like the ability to move the Terminus to another room (or make it something that you have to construct) and get rid of the basic room or change it with something else. Especially since I’ve started doing the “floating base” thing. More “missions”: Bases and Specialists brought more to do for me other than just flying to the center. Farming is getting me the money I need to buy bigger freighters (but then, I like the way my current one works and would love to be able to just buy the additional slots like I did for my Exosuit). And, there’s a hint of the ability to add missions since you can defend a freighter from attack and land on it for a reward.

Better maps and navigation: If I find a waypoint of some sort, such as a Shelter or Outpost, I should be able to highlight it somehow in order to fly back to it while on a planet. Ditto for systems in the Galactic Map; if I’ve been there, I should be able to highlight it and have a path show up between me and that point. More frustrating to this point is that the list of waypoints for a given planet only show you the six most recent ones, and there’s no way to scroll that list to older waypoints.

Related to that, on the Galactic Map, paths that show up (for next “Atlas Interface” or “path to the center”) shouldn’t be “lowest common denominator” paths. They assume that I don’t have any warp drive upgrades. When I do have upgrades, the pathing should use both the distance I can travel and the type of stars I can travel to in the calculation of the path from where I’m at to where I want to go.

Constructing items in your inventory needs an overhaul. It’s not “horribly” broken except in the manner that it’s difficult to page between potential recipes; where it requires cursor movement and a button press could be mapped to other buttons to navigate more quickly. However, the inventory management system overall could use a hefty overhaul, which might make the item construction easier to manage.

Dark Isn’t Dark Enough: At night with no other celestial body in the sky, you can still make your way around the planet without a light (even though you have one you can turn on). I understand sometimes that the nebulae in the sky or even some of the plants or crystals nearby can give off significant light, but I think the game would be significantly enhanced if nighttime or other situations actually required a flashlight or headlights from your ship. I should have trouble seeing things at night.

SUMMARY

Overall I still find it a fun, relaxing game; while I sometimes only land on one planet in a system before moving on, I do occasionally find reason to hang out on the planet for a while. I’m slowly farming my way via my Coryzagen and Mordite farm on the Heisenberg III to 150M units or so, so that I can buy my way through three more freighters to get more inventory slots there … or buy a nice blue, dome canopied fighter with a fin on the back to replace Blueberry Dream. I like it when pirates show up, and even like finding the occasional aggressive sentinel planet to hang out on to collect the materials to sell. And starting all over again but in SURVIVAL mode has been exciting (and does require the occasional “reload from previous save”).

But, the game has a few bugs, and could use some enhancement.