Quality of Life Shouldn't be Rocket Science

[Wandering Sentinel]

I'm starting to seriously wonder about a few obvious quality of life features that seem to have been ignored that are quickly becoming vital, namely the ability to order a large volume of things without several hundred clicks. The reason why I'm bringing this up is I'm reaching a point where I actually think it's starting to kill my mouse.

1. Shipments in rockets: If you're trying to bring a few tons of resources up, this isn't a problem. When you need to fill an entire rocket with something like electronics, machine parts, food, or polymers? Better get ready to spam your left mouse button. This could be fixed so easily by having a box we click and then type the amount of the resource we want to buy.

2. Drone/biorobot manufacturing: same as above, if you want to have drones or biorobots produced in large numbers (more likely with drones, biorobots not so much unless you're trying to force the fleshy humans to go extinct) you need to spam your mouse button to do this. The same solution as the first issue would work, or a slider to indicate how many drones you want to have total in relation to the number of drone hubs (ie, setting the slider to 10 per hub when you have 5 hubs will cause it to automatically order production until you have 50 drones either on standby or deployed at a hub, but it will keep producing if there's a hub with less than ten)

3. Drone hubs: Want to deploy a drone from a prefab? No problem. Want to fill up a hub in a high-traffic area? it's going to be a while. Same as above, a slider to say "keep at least this many drones at this hub" would be so much easier.

For things not related to the "mouse killing tedium" variety above:

4. Less needy transports: It'd be nice if, late game, I could build an RC transport and click a button to have it start trying to spread, say, food between storages and depots near domes automatically (but keep each one above a certain amount) so you don't need to check in on your growing fleet every few minutes to find out how many have stopped their relatively simple transport routes and reassign them.


These are the complaints I can currently think of off the top of my head. Does anyone agree with any of them?

 

[Magdaki]

I definitely agree with the last one. I hope at some point we get a much better system for managing where resources go and how they get there.

The other ones, I wouldn't disapprove of them, but they've never bothered me personally.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Like I said, the first three are more pressing concerns for me simply because I'm very much aware that kind of spam clicking can and will eventually mess up the buttons on your mouse. I have an old one from a previous computer where it got bad enough that for some reason it treats almost every click as a double click, for instance. I also have another I had to get rid of because the left mouse button would only work if you hit it a very specific way, and even then it wasn't guaranteed to work. For me, I'm aware that the lack of more modern solutions to a simple problem like this could eventually cost me real-world money to replace hardware.

 

[SillySMS]

1-3 all run into the issue of "how do you implement it on consoles?". Surviving Mars isn't only game where the PC experience is dragged down by the limits of console control schemes.

Better resource distribution AI would be appreciated.

 

[Jaol]

I also think #4 is in a category of it's own. A "balance across all depots" or even better a "balance across selected depots" thing would be great.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

I mean, I get that the first three can't be implemented as said for console players (except perhaps the slider option) but at the same time the way it's set up right now makes it seem like the devs didn't stop to consider that it can cause problems for people playing on the PC in a way that can lead to them needing to replace things. I know, some mice are cheap, but not everyone's thrilled by the idea of having to replace them every so often just because developers decide to port a game like this over to consoles and seem to neglect things like this regarding PC players.

On a console, you can just hold the stick to the side until the number you want comes up. You can't do that with a mouse. Clicking and holding doesn't do anything when ordering more resources, and a slider for the other two would benefit console players anyways so there's no real reason to explain how that wasn't put it.

#4 was included on its own as it didn't fit the other three but it was still an issue I could come up with off the top of my head.

 

[Liquid Sky]

Shift-Click to move 10 at a time would work on both console and computer.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Didn't think about that. You're right, actually.

 

[DominusNovus]

1-3 all run into the issue of "how do you implement it on consoles?". Surviving Mars isn't only game where the PC experience is dragged down by the limits of console control schemes.

Better resource distribution AI would be appreciated.

I wrote a relatively detailed paragraph in response to this, but it ultimately boiled down to: screw console gamers, strategy games are for PCs. I figured I might as well own up to my bias, so I cut out all my sophistry.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go complain about some other game not working as well on MacOS as it does on Windows.

 

[AtmaDarkwolf]

Simple fix, for keyboard, mouse, and controller:

Single press = 1 unit. (Or 1 'grouping' of 5 units in case of transport on rockets)
Long press = multiple units, number speeds up the longer you hold.

Want 200 units of electronics, just hold down left button / controller button for 3-4 seconds. Just want 15 units, tap it 3 times.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Actually I looked at it again and if you hold down the mouse button when ordering supplies, it does increase the amount incrementally... At an unchanging pace of five units of resources per second. If you want those 200 units of electronics, it's going to take almost a minute if you don't spam the mouse button.

 

[AtmaDarkwolf]

ya which was why i suggested that they do it as I said above. its hell on mouse or waiting(I personally just use a ghost and macro a 1click per 1/100th second for 1000 clicks, but its still a TON of clicking. for everything. And it just gets worse the larger your colony gets.

 

[Eric Danieros]

Interesting suggestions which I believe is on the list of things that can be improved. Resupplying is very clunky right now, the room for improvement is huge.

Just to add a few ideas in - besides getting increasing speeds by holding the increase button we could also get some presets that you can save (which would include the last shipment you did, in my experience I sometimes find myself getting similar shipments in a row), and you should also be able to set some thresholds on a per-resource basis, so if your electronics are below a number you set, like 50, then when you open the resupply screen and you have 5 electronics, it would already have 45 set.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Interesting suggestions which I believe is on the list of things that can be improved. Resupplying is very clunky right now, the room for improvement is huge.

Just to add a few ideas in - besides getting increasing speeds by holding the increase button we could also get some presets that you can save (which would include the last shipment you did, in my experience I sometimes find myself getting similar shipments in a row), and you should also be able to set some thresholds on a per-resource basis, so if your electronics are below a number you set, like 50, then when you open the resupply screen and you have 5 electronics, it would already have 45 set.

Honestly I feel like this would be even more streamlined if you could select to use a rocket for continuous resupply runs in the way we use them for continuous exports. While it's on the surface, if you click a button it'll set it so if your stores of a certain resource drops below a threshold, it automatically loads up with an amount of resources equal to your deficit plus however many will be consumed during the travel time between Earth and your colony (based off the consumption and maintenance for the previous Sol) and if you have it making trips to pick up rare metals for export as well, it will automatically load up on resources for the return trip if you need them or will need them when it arrives.

 

[AtmaDarkwolf]

Honestly I feel like this would be even more streamlined if you could select to use a rocket for continuous resupply runs in the way we use them for continuous exports. While it's on the surface, if you click a button it'll set it so if your stores of a certain resource drops below a threshold, it automatically loads up with an amount of resources equal to your deficit plus however many will be consumed during the travel time between Earth and your colony (based off the consumption and maintenance for the previous Sol) and if you have it making trips to pick up rare metals for export as well, it will automatically load up on resources for the return trip if you need them or will need them when it arrives.

Yea idk why its not that way as it is. Same with the space elevator, it only exports when you specifically order something.

I'd like the elevator to act more like the rockets(automatically export 100 unless u 'ban' exports) and the rocket should have the ability to auto-load resources when at earth (when set to auto)

Seems like a waste of fuel, time, etc to NOT keep cargo full at all times while transporting.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

It really is a waste of fuel, isn't it? I mean if your colony doesn't need any resources from Earth, there's nothing to be done with it, but the issue is you can have a colony where you've stabilized and are self-sufficient to the point that you only really buy something from Earth to get another rocket sent for exporting rare metals. There isn't really much middle ground, honestly. You either have at least one resource you're constantly buying in bulk to make up for a production deficit or you have so much stuff that you don't know what to do with it all and you're constantly getting more funds from Earth that you'll never use.

 

[DominusNovus]

Yea idk why its not that way as it is. Same with the space elevator, it only exports when you specifically order something.

I'd like the elevator to act more like the rockets(automatically export 100 unless u 'ban' exports) and the rocket should have the ability to auto-load resources when at earth (when set to auto)

Seems like a waste of fuel, time, etc to NOT keep cargo full at all times while transporting.

It does do that.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

It only checks once every Sol by default and only sends the exports if there's 100 rare metals ready. I think what was meant was that they wanted it so that it automatically sends it up the moment the hundredth unit of rare metals is delivered if the elevator's ready instead of doing a check occasionally for it.

 

[AtmaDarkwolf]

It only checks once every Sol by default and only sends the exports if there's 100 rare metals ready. I think what was meant was that they wanted it so that it automatically sends it up the moment the hundredth unit of rare metals is delivered if the elevator's ready instead of doing a check occasionally for it.

correct.

Multiple games I have had where i end up with 3-4 storage (and 10-15 depots) 100% full, and the only time I can export with elevator was by 'buying' something.

 

[dreamrider]

I don't disagree with your ideas, but...

...if the amount of clicking necessary to create/manage a viable colony in this game is giving you pause about the health/durability of your mouse,
you need a newer, higher quality mouse. It simply is not a terrible click fest compared to many others.