Just a note: Casual gamer here.
To be honest, I expected this game to be something like Settlers. Gather resources, build stuff, expand to new territories, etc.
It turned out to be not that simple and relaxing as I expected. Where should I start..
First of all, resources are scarce. Some are limited straight by their amount on surface, others limited by amount of "access points" where you can get them, So called Advanced resources and buildings for them cannot be produced at all, only ordered from Earth. There are complications to that, which I will mention later. To add insult to injury these advanced resources are required to build some critical components required from very beginning, like sources of energy that don't die at night or energy reserves in case something went wrong.
Second, this game is a logistical nightmare. Everything have it's range limitations. Water and air require pipes, electricity requires cables, resources require drones to bring things manually. Pipes and cables cost resources, and drones.. well, that's the sad part of the story. If you need to expand to nearest sector expect lengths of pain as your drones slowly drag hundreds of resources one by one from one drop point to another.. after you order them to do so manually as otherwise they'll find more interesting thing to do. If you built a mine - it can only operate if it is within Dome's quite negligible operations radius.
Third, every building degrades. Which is annoying. Then Drone have to repair it. And it degrades quite quickly. Drones do not degrade (wow) but have battery charge, so they won't go far from your main base anyway.
Fourth. Research "tree" is randomized at start of every game, say farewell to pre-planned strategy not including "restart, hope I'll get required tech next time". By the way research is super slow, someone clearly misplaced research speed and buildings degradation speed.
Fifth, no Tutorial. Just list of suggested buildings. First time I built Dome in the direction of presumed expansion, I found a bit later that Rare Metal deposit is out of it's range. Wow. Great. Game advertises Tutorial made by some person, but it is a set of 5 youtube videos, first of which is about 25 minutes long. I came to play game, not to watch 2 hours tutorial while taking notes.
Sixth, lots of bad design solutions, like advanced resources required from start, main energy source non-functioning half of time, drone control center requires power as well (micromanage every assigned bot manually at night, my dreams came true.. NOT). Honestly, there are lots of thing that makes game experience annoying and overcoming them is not rewarding for me at least.
To be short, maps are large but mostly resource empty, expanding is a some kind of a bitter cure to not to die. Half of your infrastructure dies at night as wind energy source requires Advanced resource that you cannot manufacture from the beginning, Mostly you feel like you are fighting some game design flaws rather than anything else.
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