One week has passed since the Improvement Update got released!
Overall I think it was well received. In the first couple of days there were still some bugs to iron out, but after 3 quick patch updates in the first 2 days these seem to be ironed out. If you still have issues, let us know.
What’s next?
We’re preparing InfraSpace for leaving Early Access, but before that happens we decided to take some extra time for an additional improvement update, which will focus on 4 things:
Balancing
UI Overhaul
World Update
More Bugfixes
That’s right, we’re trying to give you a better game world! The new map in the Environment Update in December was not super well received, so we’re giving it another go. I can’t promise that it will satisfy everyones dreams and wishes, but we’ll give our best.
The Balancing change might sound like a small thing, but it’s actually pretty big! I’ll give more information in the coming weeks, but you can expect multiple new production chains
As for the UI Overhaul, we already have some concept ideas, let us know what you think:
There’s lot’s of changes here, but focus on the changed menu on the bottom, the info panel and the info numbers on the top right. What are your thoughts?
UI Update sounds nice. I’m convinced it’ll make the game better.
I have the following remarks about the UI so far which I would be glad if you’d consider them. Both the numbers for powers and for workers are somewhat in an unintuitive order. For power I think it should be consumption/production, but it’s the other way around. For workers I think it should be required/available/housing capacity. This way, the numbers will always be from lowest to highest (at least that’s what you should try to aim for).
Secondly, the research icon in the top left is also a progress bar at the same time, which is really cool. It would be nifty if the spaceship icon works the same way for the currently assembled spaceship component. Currently you always have to switch to orbital view and then click the spaceship and then click the component (so 3 steps in total) to check progress.
More hotkeys for buildings would be nice, and to have them configurable. The current scheme only allows to select the categories through shift+number, which is a) not enough because too many menus, b) hard to press for higher numbers and c) not super useful if you can’t select the sub-menu (roads) and actually building also with a hotkey. But I found I can enjoy the game even without building hotkeys quite well.
As for the teaser screenshot you posted:
resource bar top right instead of bottom left I’m not super sure, because the compactness of the current version is also quite appealing and blends in with the rest of the UI
separate main categories for roads, pipes and rails: big yay!
more colorful icons: yay (not sure about the palette used, but I’m not good at art anyway)
reordering of build menu icons: will have to see
button to clear traffic: neat! I wonder how it works though?
Do I click on a section of road and those cars are cleared? That’s my best guess for now.
How to clear things in a bigger area, maybe rectangle select would be useful? (also for moving and deleting, by the way, and for laz0rs)
Can it clear/reset trains, too?
The button next to it looks like the laser: also really nice to have
As for the balancing I am fine with the most of the current production chains. But if you want to give us several new ones I certainly won’t say no
So instead I want to mention some other findings:
Please make one-way roads a blue tech (currently: green). New players won’t find it very useful so it doesn’t need to be high tech, but experienced players may want to use them earlier. At the moment you’re stuck with single-lane two-way gravel roads until you build up green tech, because all infrastructure options are green tier or higher. If you want infrastructure to be a main topic of the game, it’d help to have at least some blue tech for it. See also next point.
Make traffic lights (or maybe even all intersection settings) a cheap blue tech instead of being available from the start. Just throwing a suggestion out there.
Aluminum, computers and large buildings can be green tech for all I care. Like I said, with only blue I can tech all the way to level 4 habitats but I can’t build more than the most basic and lousy kind of road.
Have a bit more awesome red tech would be cool. Maybe high-tech tools for example or some completely new stuff if you come up with something.
In order to get large mines, you need to tech motors first, which from a lore perspective might make some sense, but game play wise the large mines don’t have anything to do with motors, so that feels a bit off. Maybe if large mines consume motors to produce better output, that would be interesting (or maybe not ).
I’d love to see more options to make the game even more difficult than the currently available ones. Not sure what exactly could work though. A simple one could be to reduce overall car speed and thus road throughput. But that’s a bit lame.
Some tweaking suggestions regarding population: The „200 people immediately come to join you“ bonus seems completely useless to me. What wouldn’t be useless however would be if you made those people available as workers who are always there, like the 20 starting people. They can never leave again and don’t need to be cared for. That would be a really nice bonus. So much so that you probably don’t want to give 200 of them for one spaceship part.
Speaking of the starting people, do you think it would still be balanced if there were a tiny bit more than 20? Maybe 30 or 40? That would give new players a bit more leeway during the tutorial and experienced players can get a faster start. Also during the early days the required habitat level rises very steeply with the population, which could be a bit flatter to better match later city level progress. But I don’t mind too much.
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