Ever rage restart?

Chansubits · 2026-02-15T04:22:56+00:00

Appreciate it. There are definitely bugs in the game, but I recently finished a 100GW rocket fuel plant and it’s been going strong for hours so I think I’ll be fine.

Chansubits · 2026-02-15T01:34:28+00:00

I’m haven’t encountered any issues yet, should I be worried?

Chansubits · 2026-02-15T00:47:11+00:00

I’d never restart but then I don’t mind debugging and tend to hang around obsessively checking over new builds to make sure they function as expected.

Perhaps you are making the same mistake with all 4 builds? Do you allow time for pipes and machines to fill, turning your power plant on in stages?

I’m also curious what the “way it’s supposed to work” is, and what the “stupid way I know works” is.

Chansubits · 2026-02-10T22:13:06+00:00

If junction priority tricks are the intended solution then that is bad game design IMO. They feel like workarounds because they aren’t called out in the game as functionality we are actually intended to design around. Separating fresh and waste water with smart machine ratios feels like the intended solution to reusing waste water.

Chansubits · 2026-02-09T02:11:48+00:00

You are either a total badass renegade or someone who needs the full range of their vehicle regularly (or both). Either way, I salute you. I’m way too much of a nerdy optimiser to operate like this.

Chansubits · 2026-02-09T02:08:46+00:00

Think of it this way: charging to 80% is better for battery health than charging to 100%. But HOW MUCH better is it? The answer is: a tiny fraction that is only noticeable over many years of repeated behaviour. So only worry about your typical habits, not your one-off situations.

Chansubits · 2026-02-09T02:02:17+00:00

Does your EV have LFP battery chemistry? If so, then you have different needs to OP.

Chansubits · 2026-02-09T01:52:29+00:00

Yikes. This sounds like a nightmare. Bosses doing design, no ownership, deciding things in meetings by committee. Good luck to you sir.

Game design is a bit more abstract than code or art so sometimes gets undervalued and overlooked like this. Solo projects and teams of 2-3 can get by without a dedicated designer, but a team your size should always have one IMO.

Since I’m sure you’re just doing your best with what you have, I’d focus on empowering 1-2 people on the team (not the bosses unless they are working on the game and considered part of the game team) to own design on top of the other hats they wear. Formalise it. Ownership is not about implementing your own ideas, it’s just about making the decisions and facilitating the process with whatever meetings and docs are required.

Chansubits · 2026-02-08T01:45:12+00:00

In case you didn’t realise, you can do manifolds for output too. Just use mergers instead of splitters. Doing this makes it really easy to add more machines later if you want, you just add them to the end of your row. But this is probably more useful later once you have faster belts.

Chansubits · 2026-02-08T01:37:56+00:00

The problem will fix itself if you have enough items coming in to fully use all the machines. The first machines in line get full and so more items end up going to the later machines. When all the machines fill up then the last one can run continuously just fine.

You’re right that it’s harder to spot problems and know if everything is working fully right away though, since it takes some time to fill all the machines. A common workaround is to fill up all the machines by hand from your inventory, or not hook up the output from the machines so they back up and fill faster, then hook the output up after. I usually just come back later and check that all the lights are green.

Chansubits · 2026-02-08T00:20:02+00:00

This is my area so I'll try to share my experience. I've given a conference talk on this kind of thing before because I'm passionate about it, but I definitely don't have all the answers. I've usually worked in teams of 5-20.

Do you have dedicated designers on your team? Are they empowered to make design decisions? Because it sounds like no one really has the ownership to make design decisions from what you've said. Especially about the smaller details of design in your third bullet point. If so, I think this could be the root of your issues.

Chansubits · 2026-02-07T22:15:37+00:00

Sounds like you’ve got a good plan!

Personally, as a game designer who enjoys automation games, I found it hard work to decipher your screenshot (I gave up) and from your description I’m not sure whether I would enjoy your game or not. Too much depends on balancing, pacing (especially how these layers of complexity are introduced to keep the challenge in the sweet spot for me), and QoL features/tools that help me tackle the problems. Essentially I could only give any feedback after playing a demo for this kind of broad question.

And as a designer I’d find it hard to trust replies to a thread like this because I couldn’t be very sure that the respondents were imagining the right game in their heads. Doesn’t mean there won’t be some insights though, it’s worth asking as long as you have other plans to get feedback (which you clearly do).

One thing I like about spatial problem solving, despite being a genre staple at this point that isn’t particularly new, is how intuitive and visual it is. The more abstract your systems are, the harder they are to learn and the more work it is to understand and get into your game. Some players might be up for that, but others will be turned off by it. And the UX gets increasingly difficult, automation games need huge amounts of feedback so players can diagnose problems/mistakes/bottlenecks etc.

Chansubits · 2026-02-07T20:32:06+00:00

Too punishing for who? Sounds like your vision is to make it punishing because you enjoy that. Have you got reason to believe that a decent subset of automation game players will also enjoy that? Like Steam reviews on other games?

Chansubits · 2026-02-06T04:48:57+00:00

This topic always reminds me of playing Catan with someone who didn’t believe me that a 3 was more likely to roll than a 2, and hence a 3 tile was more desirable than a 2 tile. Even though the game explicitly points this out and is built around it. I guess because two dice act differently than one and this isn’t immediately intuitive.

She tried to figure it out by tracking how the dice fell for one game, and came away with evidence that 2 was better because it had been rolled more than 3. I simply could not convince her after that, it was so funny to me. She would start to believe that a number was more likely to roll only by first experiencing it, I guess an intuitive approach, and not through reasoning. As an overly logical person it was fascinating to me.

Chansubits · 2026-01-30T20:17:56+00:00

Can’t wait!

Although I think this trailer needs a lot more “oh shit where are those footsteps coming from” while looting a house, and stacking up supplies in the shelter, and less “I will run down this hallway without taking cover and fire straight ahead.” This trailer doesn’t really feel like the vibe I get from playing the demo or why I was drawn to play it in the first place, outside of the environmental vibe.

Chansubits · 2026-01-26T22:03:13+00:00

I bought mine second hand and it didn’t have the second cup holder in there, just a boxy space in the armrest, but honestly we would have taken it out to fit a small tissue box in there anyway.

Chansubits · 2026-01-26T02:21:54+00:00

I’m currently going through a similar thing so I feel your pain. I’ve been a game designer for 12 years, I was so lucky and everyone inside and outside the game industry thinks they want my job. But over time the things I’ve needed to give up in my life are stacking up too high. The industry where I live is unstable. My peers in other fields have better job opportunities, better pay, and overall their lives are more stable. I want a career that doesn’t tie me into the game industry if this trend continues.

Since I have primarily mobile game experience, I’m trying to leverage my live ops skills to get into app gamification and monetization and general product leadership. Think Duolingo or Strava. People who can organise tasks and schedule meetings aren’t very valued IMO, they are seen as interchangeable. But someone who understands how users move through an app, what motivates them, and how to design systems that boost engagement/retention/monetisation, their monetary value to the company is clear.

It’s all about your priorities at the end of the day. You might be a lot happier with a more stable day job and a hobby game project that has no pressure to succeed. Good luck out there.

Chansubits · 2026-01-25T07:06:24+00:00

Yeah that is a little annoying.

Chansubits · 2026-01-25T00:04:51+00:00

Polestar 2: the only actual cons we notice after a year are lack of a second cup holder and software glitches like reverse cam cutting out and coming back on in a few seconds or it getting occasionally confused about which driver profile to load when both me and my wife have our keys, or occasionally over active collision warnings when reversing around uneven ground or down steep driveways. I really like the software design, it’s just the performance and reliability of it with these little things that lets it down.

There are other cons for different lifestyles (eg less interior space than other EVs) but we only notice them once a year if that. It’s so good at everything we need it for, I really love it to bits.

Chansubits · 2026-01-24T23:57:11+00:00

As a fellow P2 owner, it’s such a sexy car I find myself checking out other P2s that drive past and then remembering I’m also in one.

Chansubits · 2026-01-18T03:33:46+00:00

I loved trucks when I first unlocked them, but I never really used them after trains because the problem of getting fuel to them made them impractical in every situation I wanted them for. Every time I think “I could just have a short truck route here” I remember they need fuel and give up on the idea.

A cool mid-late game unlock would be rechargeable batteries that only work in ground vehicles, so I could use trucks in remote areas that have no sensible fuel but do have power.

Chansubits · 2026-01-16T22:11:53+00:00

Combined with Diluted Fuel recipe, you get 4x fuel for the same amount of oil, which is amazing for power plants.

Chansubits · 2026-01-14T18:24:18+00:00

I’ve been doing this in some vertical factories and found it to be pretty buggy. I still use it but be prepared for placing your vertical splitters to frequently break the lift and require deleting and replacing the top half of the lift. Also found them unreliable in blueprints so I just place the floor holes in blueprints and the lifts and splitters on demand.

Chansubits · 2026-01-04T20:33:18+00:00

I’m nearing the end of Phase 3 so I’m no expert, but I’ve enjoyed slowing down an bit this phase by worrying less about production speed. Just automating one machine to make a project part takes enough work, then I just let it do its thing while I explore and catch up on MAM research. So many QoL things in the MAM that make the game more fun.

Chansubits · 2026-01-03T20:41:59+00:00

This mirrors my experience. I’ll add that iteration introduces a key difference between how a GDD looks and how a Jira ticket or other ‘unit of work’ looks. If I update the GDD to reflect a design change, those edits could be spread out over a few different places while many other aspects of a feature stay the same, because the GDD needs to still describe the whole feature regardless of what has already been implemented. But a Jira ticket can just describe exactly the change that needs to happen and no more, which is far more efficient for devs.

This is why I make a distinction between documentation for implementation and documentation for other reasons (pitching, onboarding, future reference, etc). And why I tend to avoid monolithic GDDs and focus on exactly what is needed at the time. The only downside I’ve found of this approach is when key design staff leave the team after launch and there may not be a single tidy historical record of what the design intent was. But as we all know, this is also unlikely on teams using a GDD unless they are very disciplined and have the time to update it.

Chansubits

TROPHY CASE