This game is kind of an odd twist on the "job simulator" genre, in that it simulates a job that doesn't actually exist. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is set in the year 2349, in a sort of Cowboy Bebop / Planetes future where interstellar spaceflight isn't a thing, but the Solar system is heavily settled. (The setting also has more than a touch of The Fifth Element about it, as well, in the sense that Earth is a massively overpopulated shithole ecumenopolis about which "dystopia" would be an unrealistically complimentary choice of words, and it's generally implied to be the worst place in the Solar system to live.)

The player character's job, as the title suggests, is breaking up decommissioned spaceships for scrap. You work in an orbital breaker's yard with a nice view of Earth and nothing else to recommend it. It's an unpressurized, zero-G environment, so you spend the game maneuvering around in the 24th-century industrial equivalent of a spacesuit with an MMU on it, cutting apart hulked spacecraft with a laser cutter and wrangling the bits into various facilities along the periphery of the dock to be recycled or salvaged, depending on what they're made of.

It's a tricky job. Your laser cutter doesn't work on everything, so you have to know where to cut (you have a scanner to help you out with that part, though the "engineering language" of the ships becomes reasonably clear once you get familiar with it). Your tools have limited durability, although not so limited that you can't get through a shift without repairing them. In the default mode, you're limited to 15 minutes per work shift, and your suit holds enough oxygen for only a few of them (I haven't timed it), so you have to scavenge for more aboard the ship you're salvaging or buy it from a kiosk nearby. (Fuel for your thrusters is handled similarly.) And there are lots and lots of ways to blow yourself up, set yourself on fire, electrocute yourself, or crush yourself between weightless-but-massive bits of ex-spaceship.

But that's OK. If you do manage to kill yourself, your employers will clone you and send you back to work. That almost never fails.

Oh yeah, also, you start the game a billion credits in debt to your employers, and you start out having to rent all your equipment from them. Including the dock itself. And the habitat module you live in when you're not cutting. And the air that goes in it. So if you're not clearing at least a half-mil per shift, you're not only not making money, you're going farther into debt. But this is so much better than the deal anyone on the surface is getting, this horrifically hard and dangerous job with its visibly rigged financials is one of the most sought-after and competed-for jobs in the world.

Good luck, cutter! You're gonna need it.

The grimness of its setting aside (and it's mostly played for laughs,* albeit very dark and cynical ones), this is a neat game. The controls take some getting used to, because your maneuvering physics are semi-Newtonian (you have a maximum speed, which objects under thrust in a zero-G vacuum really don't on that scale, but you have to cancel your motion to stop or change heading, and "up" and "down" are all in your head), and because you start out with a less-than-ideal thruster rig that you can upgrade as you go. (The experience system is presented as a secondary in-game currency which you can use to buy upgrades for your gear, separate from the "regular" money you earn for your work and owe to the company.)

And, like I said above, there are a lot of hazards. Cut into a compartment that's still pressurized, and BLAMMO, you have at best made an unholy mess of flying wreckage you will have to chase down and ruined a lot of the delicate (and valuable) internal equipment, and at worst blown yourself to bits along with the ship. Grab the wrong object with your grapple gun and you may find yourself holding a live power conduit. Pull the reactor core before you have a solid plan for what to do with it and your shift ends at SL-1 o'clock. Forget to vent the fuel system before you cut the pipes and... well, you get the idea.

But even with all that, once you get into the groove, there's something meditative about it, as there is with many games in the "job sim" genre. And I respect the designers for figuring out a way to work mortal danger into a game that has no conflict. You're never going to get shot at working the breaker's yard. Your only enemies are the laws of physics, the design of some of the ship parts, and, most frequently, yourself.

It's also got a nice twangy Old West-style soundtrack (another characteristic it shares with parts of Cowboy Bebop), which gives it a proper "lonesome struggle against the elements" kind of vibe. Except when you get electrified and your helmet radio goes haywire, then it usually plays ragtime until the circuitry settles down again. :)

In fact, the sound design of the whole game deserves a mention here, because it's great. The music is effective without being obtrusive, and the sound effects are largely fantastic. The noise the cutter makes, in particular, combined with the visual effect of it doing its thing, is so effective I sometimes feel like I can almost smell hot metal (even though your character wouldn't be able to).

TLDR: You scrap old spaceships in a future-Victorian-capitalist hellworld. Cool concept, fun mechanics. Good game. Not finished yet, but it's in a reasonably advanced state of early access (compare Subnautica around the time that it became properly playable), so I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10 provisional, likely to go higher once it's completed. Twenty or 25 bucks on Steam depending on whether it's on sale on any given weekend. Other platforms later, I believe.

--G.
* One of my favorite touches is the fact that there is a huge NO SMOKING sign painted on one wall of the dock, despite the fact that it's just a huge open corral floating in orbit and smoking there is physically impossible. This may give you something of a flavor for the game's brand of humor.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>The controls
>take some getting used to, because your maneuvering physics are
>semi-Newtonian (you have a maximum speed, which objects under thrust
>in a zero-G vacuum really don't on that scale, but you have to cancel
>your motion to stop or change heading, and "up" and "down" are all in
>your head)

That may be somewhat more realistic than it seems - yes, objects don't have a maximum speed per se, but there is a hard limit for rockets using reaction mass: they can go no faster than the velocity of the mass they're throwing out, whether it be chemicals or ions.

Thus, your thruster pack? May just be -very low velocity-, to fit in with how crap the rest of the equipment is.

>That may be somewhat more realistic than it seems - yes, objects don't
>have a maximum speed per se, but there is a hard limit for rockets
>using reaction mass: they can go no faster than the velocity of the
>mass they're throwing out, whether it be chemicals or ions.

Huh. I actually didn't know that, although it's logical now that you've pointed it out. I was under the impression that an object would, theoretically, continue accelerating as long as thrust was being applied, at least until you started getting into relativistic speeds, but I suppose now that I think about it there is a conservation-of-energy consideration there.

This suggests that the starting thruster pack is basically a can of Raid, which, as you note, is not entirely implausible. (Although, to be fair to the Lynx Corporation, the rest of the starting equipment is perfectly serviceable, if basic. I mean, you're not going to have a random helmet blowout if you didn't hit yourself in the face with a computer console or anything like that. I really need to save up for the range upgrade on the laser cutter, though.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>
>This suggests that the starting thruster pack is basically a can of
>Raid, which, as you note, is not entirely implausible.

Albeit one would hope with a bit of a longer continuous lifetime for thrust XD

The term you want for this is the "effective exhaust velocity" and you plug that into the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation to find out the ideal case...and then since you're in a crap job, cut those numbers by 50% or so XD

>>That may be somewhat more realistic than it seems - yes, objects don't
>>have a maximum speed per se, but there is a hard limit for rockets
>>using reaction mass: they can go no faster than the velocity of the
>>mass they're throwing out, whether it be chemicals or ions.
>
>Huh. I actually didn't know that, although it's logical now that
>you've pointed it out.

You probably didn't know it because it's not actually so, at least not in general. It's actually a restriction on the maximum velocity of a Bussard ramjet relative to the interstellar medium¹ because you have to accelerate the incoming material. You could go faster² by switching over to internal propellant reserves once you approach that maximum speed.

There _is_ a practical limit for total deltaV of about three times the exhaust velocity because that's where the increased propellant requirements to move your propellant tanks reaches the amount of propellant those tanks hold.

(You can 'cheat' this by using staging because dropping engines/tanks/etc. increases your mass ratio.)

1: If we were to assume that Bussard ramjets actually worked, which they don't. They would have so much drag that it would be impossible to get any net positive thrust from one.

2: Again, assuming they worked as anything but a brake.

Achievement Unlocked: Fandom Evolution
Someone has made a fan-comic of your work. It's all downhill from here, buddy.

Nothing like forgetting to vent, and THEN flubbing the reactor grab. Luckily I was able to chuck it out into open space before I ended up with another 500k clone debt.

DaemeonX

>Nothing like forgetting to vent

Have you fallen into the airlock state trap? That has to be deliberate on the part of the designers.

(For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: Normally, the ships you're assigned to break arrive with the hull still pressurized. What you're supposed to do is board through the airlock, then frob the atmosphere control unit(s) inside the ship to vent the internal compartment(s) before proceeding. But when you vent the compartment that the airlock goes into, the airlock automatically cycles behind you, so now the ship isn't pressurized, but, unless you manually cycle it again, the airlock you just came in through is! Which you may not notice until you cut it open.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

If not deliberate then a perfect example of a happy accident, I'd think.

I mean, if your airflow model does that, you can't help but agree that it's Doing It Right -- whether you intended it to make life more interesting for the player or not. :D

I would just like to take this opportunity to note that this thread got me watching Hardspace vids, and that, coupled with my recent bout of playing Satisfactory until way too late in the evenings before bed, made for some... interesting... mashup dreams.

(I mean, they both have the 'you are a cog in the vaguely-evil megacorp' vibe, for starters.)

The dream can be summed up as: look man I'm just trying to build conveyors fast enough to keep up with that jackhole upstairs who keeps sending me freakin' ship parts down the spacevator when I'm asking for turbo-motors, get out of here with your alien fireball bullshit.

--sofaspud
--also I had a shipment of square pigs that I couldn't get rid of and it was annoying as hell

>--also I had a shipment of square pigs that I couldn't get rid of and
>it was annoying as hell

What do you do with square pigs, anyhow? I mean, other than failing to fit them in a round hull?

Peter Eng
--
Yes, my first reaction is to make terrible puns. Why do you ask?

>What do you do with square pigs, anyhow? I mean, other than failing
>to fit them in a round hull?

I assume they're what they make those suspiciously rectangular hams you see in the supermarket deli case out of.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-24-20 AT 09:21 AM (EDT)
 
>>--also I had a shipment of square pigs that I couldn't get rid of and
>>it was annoying as hell
>
>What do you do with square pigs, anyhow? I mean, other than failing
>to fit them in a round hull?
>
>Peter Eng
>--
>Yes, my first reaction is to make terrible puns. Why do you
>ask?

What a square pig might look like: https://i.imgur.com/B5z2L7b.jpg?x
Well, more of a rectangular pig really, but details, details.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "RIP Wildstar"

>
>What a square pig might look like: https://i.imgur.com/B5z2L7b.jpg?x
>Well, more of a rectangular pig really, but details, details.
>

Well, in this case I can tell you *exactly* what they looked like.

That is a shot from the movie Space Truckers, though I note that the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQOqLOErhZA) is a dirty, misleading, gloriously 80's lying sack of something that lies.

--sofaspud
--I actually love this movie to death but I'm a huge fan of bad B-movies in general, it's a curse, honest

I fell into the "I'm in the ship, it's vented, let's cut a hole in the ship from the inside and.. wow that's a big hole I made, well makes cleanup easier. I didn't need that chair anyways." trap.

Nothing more exciting than cutting into a ship and finding yourself flying at the furnace at decompression speeds.

DaemeonX

>Nothing more exciting than cutting into a ship and finding yourself
>flying at the furnace at decompression speeds.

Yeah, you're mostly carbon, so you should really go in the processor.

--G.

-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>Nothing more exciting than cutting into a ship and finding yourself
>>flying at the furnace at decompression speeds.
>
>Yeah, you're mostly carbon, so you should really go in the processor.
>
>

So I picked up the game a bit ago and have been playing it, and discovered that trying to fling something too massive to fling with the grapple gun instead propels you backwards at ridiculous speeds and ...

... well, let's just say that I discovered what, precisely, I am worth to the company.

--sofaspud
--$8.14, as it turns out

One of my favorite little touches:

Yes, you can (accidentally, one hopes) process yourself. And yes, your (ex) corpus has a (very small) value.

>One of my favorite little touches:
>
>Yes, you can (accidentally, one hopes) process yourself. And yes,
>your (ex) corpus has a (very small) value.

I nearly drifted into the furnace once, and always wondered if it would chide me for putting something unsuitable in there. "Please review your training."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"Demerits have been added to your Personal Record", I believe is the answer I got when I slipped past the Point of No Refund.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Aug-12-20 AT 07:50 PM (EDT)
 
> Good game. Not finished yet, but it's in a reasonably advanced state of early access

This is the part that impresses me the most with Shipbreakers- the game runs really well, considering that the goal is to chop up a ship into many smaller physics objects and the failure condition is reducing said ship into a vast multitude of tiny physics objects, all spinning and twinkling merrily in the bay.

> One of my favorite touches is the fact that there is a huge NO SMOKING sign painted on one wall of the dock

I've also seen a loading screen tip (I think?) that says something along the lines of "the recovery bays are coated in a proprietary anti-debris coating. Please do not lick the recovery bays."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>This is the part that impresses me the most with Shipbreakers- the
>game runs really well, considering that the goal is to chop up
>a ship into many smaller physics objects and the failure condition is
>reducing said ship into a vast multitude of tiny physics objects, all
>spinning and twinkling merrily in the bay.

This statement holds true up until you force both furnaces to swallow half a Gecko-class cargo hauler at the same time. At which point the game turns into a slideshow as it desperately tries to choke down what you've just shoved in there.

Granted, it clears up quick enough. Usually.

(I've triggered at least one crash pulling that stunt. Whoops.)

--sofaspud
--every. last. bolt. MWUAH HAH HAH!

> This statement holds true up until you force both furnaces to swallow half a Gecko-class cargo hauler at the same time.

Considering that the core gameplay loop is to break ships down into bite-sized chunks for easy digestion, I have the feeling that might not get fixed anytime soon.

Tangentially related, I'm tempted to spike a whole ship onto the Barge with tethers, see what happens.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>Tangentially related, I'm tempted to spike a whole ship onto the Barge
>with tethers, see what happens.

One thing I've noted, and been vaguely disappointed by, is the... mass cutoff? I don't know what exactly to call it, but there's a point where it very obviously stops bothering with the physics model and instead just says "nope, you can't do that".

I mean, I discovered this blowing my entire stack of tethers trying to force a furnace to swallow an entire Gecko, but I imagine it works the same when trying to force the ship to move down instead of sideways.

That attempt was also when I discovered you don't want to be standing (floating?) between the ship and the wall when a tether tears a chunk loose.

--sofaspud
--clones are 'spensive, yo

So basically it's kind of the opposite of Kerbal Space Program, but with the plot of Recettear? Sounds like a good thing to try when the next sale starts.

As there's apparently some interest in this game around here, I thought I'd throw out the notice that, at least on this side, it's on sale on steam. 25% off. Don't, of course, know if that's global but I would presume.

Having a game that's not even finished and released be on sale seems all sorts of weird to me, but that's another matter.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

And the game is, once more, on sale, at least on the EU steam store. 25% off until Sunday.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

I watched a live stream where they referred to this as "SPACE WEST VIRGINIA SIMULATOR" and it makes me want to buy it even more.

>I watched a live stream where they referred to this as "SPACE WEST
>VIRGINIA SIMULATOR" and it makes me want to buy it even more.

"I owe my soul to the company stoooorrrrrrre..."

Well hey hey, sounds like somebody watches Tex~!

One of my favorite parts, and relatively recent, is the introduction of a new timeless mode.

Originally there was only one setting, where you had to have the 15 minute shift timer, and the limited oxygen (though that was less of a problem to me).

Fans spoke however, and the devs introduced a new mode that does away with the shift timer but, and this is the important part, keeps progression intact. It's not a creative mode, you still have the 1B debt, you still have to upgrade and rent your gear, you still have the certification system, you even have the option of disabling the limited air supply. The only thing that goes away is the 15 minute shift timer.

--

Also fun is the idea that the larger reactors are very complex. They are perfectly fine sitting there as long as their fuel and cooling supply are intact, disable both and the reactor immediately begins melting down.

This prompts you to move fast to remove the reactor and store it, but the large reactor is made out of parts (unlike the smaller ones you've been removing for quite some time) so just grabbing it with your tether and yanking it will end up with you getting a single panel door instead of the still-melting, reactor. This can be quite panic inducing, even if you were expecting it.

So a new update dropped, and brought with it a new variant of the Gecko, a salvage model with some *interestingly* complex bits.

I haven't yet managed a clean teardown of the new model. Every time I try to vent the atmo, no matter what order I open doors or trigger atmosphere regulators in, something cracks the coolant pipe towards the aft end and everything goes sideways from there, ranging from minor bits of salvage being lost all the way to reactor meltdown and a dock full of debris. I'm starting to think there's either a bug or there's a non-obvious trick I'm missing, not sure which.

Also it looks like engine nacelles now have fuel lines connected to them. Which is nice!

--sofaspud
--

>So a new update dropped, and brought with it a new variant of the
>Gecko, a salvage model with some *interestingly* complex bits.
>
>I haven't yet managed a clean teardown of the new model.
>

Silly question: Is there anything you can safely disassemble without venting the atmosphere first?

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>Silly question: Is there anything you can safely disassemble without
>venting the atmosphere first?

Sometimes they come pre-vented. Not often, but occasionally.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The first three Gecko-class ships I salvaged came pre-vented. I thought that was pretty cool!

Then I ran into one that wasn't and I had gotten cocky about just carving the doors off rather than waiting for the airlock to cycle.

Boom.

--sofaspud
--ow

In any case, my first thought was that there's something you have to do to shut down the power plant before you can vent the atmosphere.

I listen to game design videos, and some designers recommend making something that is different, so the player can't just use the same strategy all the time.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

You may be on to something.

So the typical routine for a Gecko is to strip off the exterior bits while you're making your way towards it -- antennas, sensor pods, etc -- and salvage those, then pop in through the airlock, find the nearest atmo regulator, and depressurize.

Then you go about dismantling things, in whatever order works best for you. I usually start by peeling the outer hull from the front working towards the back, and after I've done that, then I shut down the fuel pump, shut off the coolant thingy, and yank the reactor. Which is the big prize out of the entire ship and if you can only get one thing, get that reactor.

On these new salvage runners, *every* time I follow that routine, I get disaster. So this last time I instead left the atmo in place, went and found the fuel computer, and shut it off. Only then did I vent the atmo. And for some reason, even though where it was at is a different part of the ship entirely from where I was before, somehow it vented the atmo for the entire ship -- safely.

That's a helluva curve for the devs to throw at us and I'm not sure if I like it. I mean, if it was on a different class of ship, sure? Like they came out with, I dunno, the Iguana hull or soemthing, then a completely different way of going about things makes sense? But this is a Gecko, which every other variant of behaves the same way. Except this one.

Hm.

--sofaspud
--still fed it to the furnaces, though. *nomnomnom*

>
>That's a helluva curve for the devs to throw at us and I'm not sure if
>I like it. I mean, if it was on a different class of ship, sure?
>Like they came out with, I dunno, the Iguana hull or soemthing, then a
>completely different way of going about things makes sense? But this
>is a Gecko, which every other variant of behaves the same way. Except
>this one.
>

Yeah, that sounds like what the Infocom people called an "earless rabbit."

("When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, you see the ears first. People should be able to see it coming when you pull a trick on them, or that isn't fair game design." - paraphrased)

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

So I've been taking notes as I experiment with this salvage runner variant and I've come to the conclusion that it's bugged (even after the hotfix they put in)
I shall explain!

Hardbreaker Shipspace uses procedurally-generated ships, all following a basic template. During the load phase it 'fills in' all the detail bits. So a Gecko is going to have the same basic hull shape no matter the variant, and a, for example, cargo hauler is going to be kitted out as a cargo hauler, regardless, but the RNG can and does throw little custom bits in there, but nothing *structural*. The ships are basically constructed like Lego sets -- all use the same pieces, they're just snapped together slightly differently.

The thing is, though, that on the Salvage Runner, I *always* find at least one piece that isn't aligned properly. A frame spar is overlapping with its neighbor, or a little interstitial cube (I don't know what else to call them) is floating free a few inches away from the surface, though the game thinks it's still attached. Little bits like that. And it seems the physics engine treats them as though they're where they are rather than where they're supposed to be, because when you release the tension via a otherwise-innocent cut -- boom! Suddenly the panel is flying by at warp six. Or as happened last night, the ship itself began spinning like a top when I cut away a six-foot section of lightweight coolant pipe.

No other ships have had this problem, so I think it's this variant that is buggy.

--sofaspud
--nothing like slicing one cut point and watching half a dozen hull pieces go flying in all directions

So, new update. They've been finding 'Ghost Ships' on the frontier, with all the crew vanished. Naturally, LYNX has brought them back to be salvaged, and does not support any claims of these craft being possessed by unnatural forces that serve a supposed machine god. Between you and me though, I think the ships are starting to fight back...

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

At least now I know. It's not bugs. The ships are killing me out of spite.

--sofaspud
--the stickers are kinda cool tho, not gonna lie

>possessed by unnatural forces that serve a supposed machine god.

praise be to the Omnissiah

oh, wrong dystopia

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>possessed by unnatural forces that serve a supposed machine god.
>
>praise be to the Omnissiah
>
>oh, wrong dystopia

Yeah, that one at least sees a use for humans. This one is apparently of the opinion that humans are meant to be on Earth, and nowhere else, and is willing to enforce that with energy weapons.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

So just thought I'd share:

The other night, I cleared my debt. Quite thoroughly, in fact! If the balance is to be believed, LYNX now owes me something north of $13MM.

Of course, as might be expected, there were some accounting irregularities discovered when they had to retire the clone of their most recent financials manager, so my contract is still in effect while they sort that out. Just keeping filling those work orders, Cutter.

This game is strangely addictive. For some reason I'm loving the banal dystopia feel.

--sofaspud
--and now I feel dirty having typed that

Like the subject says...

It's a full progress reset, which I expected; what I didn't remember is just how painful the early game is before you get any equipment upgrades. How the hell did I get through this without *tethers*? Arrgh!

The new voice-acted characters (even if it's, as the devs note, just poor schlubs from around the office until they can get actual VAs into the recording booth) are kind of entertaining. I'm looking forward to seeing more of them.

The new intro is *decidedly* more sinister and really drives home the soulless megacorporation vibe. Yikes.

I'm looking forward to working off another lifetime worth of debt!

--sofaspud
--speaking of, I don't remember owing the company 1.25 billion last time, I thought it was 999 million. Inflation sucks, man.

Steam had it on sale this weekend, possibly in honor of the big update, so I picked it up. Broke down the first tutorial ship, made my self rather dizzy several times as I mostly failed to get used to the controls (I assume that will come with time), ended my shift, exited the game, and then it crashed pretty hard. I'll try again tonight probably, but it may turn out that my computer is too creaky to play it after all.

--dbrandon

>Steam had it on sale this weekend, possibly in honor of the big
>update, so I picked it up. Broke down the first tutorial ship, made
>my self rather dizzy several times as I mostly failed to get used to
>the controls (I assume that will come with time), ended my shift,
>exited the game, and then it crashed pretty hard. I'll try again
>tonight probably, but it may turn out that my computer is too creaky
>to play it after all.

I've seen other reports of 'crash on exit', including people with fairly beefy rigs, so it looks like it's a problem on the coding side.

>I've seen other reports of 'crash on exit', including people with
>fairly beefy rigs, so it looks like it's a problem on the coding side.

Well, that's vaguely... reassuring? I guess?

Anyway, I played a bit more last night, and it was fine, so who knows.

Also, I am trying it out on "no oxygen drain" and "no timer" because who needs that stress right now, right?

--dbrandon

>Also, I am trying it out on "no oxygen drain" and "no timer" because
>who needs that stress right now, right?

One of Spuds friends SHOULD be trying it out on that setting. He is not, and it's messy and glorious.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

"Stop using the grapple gun to get around! You have thrusters for a *reason*!"

--sofaspud
--it would also help if he could tell up from down, but, baby steps

>"Stop using the grapple gun to get around! You have thrusters for a
>*reason*!"

*Crunch!* "Why is my oxygen plummeting?"

Alternatively, flying off into the void. Again.

Has he managed to furnace himself yet?

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

>Has he managed to furnace himself yet?

5 trips to the furnace and you get a commemorative sticker! They're like achievements but you can slap them onto your tools.

The basic "skull in spacesuit pointing at the danger" sticker is hilarious, and needs to be a piece of RL merch.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>
>Has he managed to furnace himself yet?
>

Twice in one night last night!

--sofaspud
--well, processed instead of burninated, but I figure that counts

>--well, processed instead of burninated, but I figure that counts

You should get credit for that. I mean, what isn't water is mostly carbon.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.