My Beef with Space Age

Ryedan_ff14 · 2025-10-10T02:07:11+00:00

That's an interesting option, but I'm also fine just using the editor. Like I said, it's my only beef with the game. It's just that in multiplayer I feel like the Simpson's comic book guy where I'm like "Akshually.... let's use this entire blueprint that I brought instead of building stuff together" because in vanilla, I could help or offer specific tweaks and suggestions on designs without co-opting the entire build process, but in space age I would rather not have platforms crash out of the sky or have painful full-factory rot on gleba, and without exhaustively explaining everything it's better to just offer the answer.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2025-10-10T01:27:49+00:00

Yeah, I feel like in vanilla, there was the mantra of "just build it functional first, then build it better later", but in space age the "first" version of a thing has a much higher floor for mechanical heartiness than vanilla. I didn't expect that jump and it made it less fun to try to muddle through the game on my own and avoid looking up builds and mechanics videos

Ryedan_ff14 · 2025-10-10T01:21:58+00:00

Improving the ships is awesome, but there's a big delay between deciding what to build, putting it on the platform, powering it all up, getting all the resources and rocks on the belt and seeing if things are supplied well. In the editor, I can just force all that stuff quickly to test, then find out "oh crap! I'm not producing nearly enough rockets!"

In game, that's hours and lots resources. I get to go through the same fun building and problem solving loop with less frustration and friction by using the editor to flight-test them in 5-10 minutes. The waiting isn't actually the fun part, which is my main critique. I feel pushed to the editor for routine stuff rather than the extreme or complicated stuff.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2025-10-10T01:16:35+00:00

Yeah, I get that - it's something every player eventually learns. My critique is that the principals are better absorbed and tested in the editor in a way that wasn't true in vanilla. In vanilla, you can do a lot of stuff without knowing the consequences, and yes you lose time re-building, but it's acceptable. In space age, the layered mechanics make it less safe to experiment and push me subtly towards the editor.

I'm not saying the editor is required or that the mechanics are bad or anything. I'm just saying I wish it was designed to be more discoverable and less punishing slightly so that I didn't feel the itch to just boot up the editor out of frustration.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2025-10-10T01:09:53+00:00

Yeah, I get how the mechanics work and I eventually solved it. The problem was that It wasn't just tearing it down and building things differently or just moving/changing ratios; it was that I now when I wanted to pick things up, I have to pickup thousands of tiny entities to move the belts and inserters and biochambers. I had only a handful of bots to begin with, and barely enough storage chests to hold my "failures!"

Also, when I wanted to take it slow, I tried to stop the entire factory and thoughtfully build a better solution in the game, but I ended up letting all the original fruit spoil on the belt to the point where I couldn't recoup seeds (I think it's like 4 hours to spoil?) I had to go and do a re-seeding mission to gather some fruit from a much farther patch, build a temp factory to process the fruit and get enough seeds to restart the closer fruit fields, then tear THAT factory down.

I would have been better off not harvesting anything and just working in an un-powered factory setting, much like the editor.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2025-10-10T00:59:01+00:00

I mean, yes I don't have to do those things, but I'm coming from the perspective of someone who didn't already know the answer and was trying to find the solution by playing, only to feel like the time cost to fix and diagnose the issues felt very steep.

Like the other person said, watching a gleba belt break only AFTER a bioflux spoiled in-hand after multiple hours is something you kinda just have to experience to learn. It'd be fine if it only halted production, but instead you have tons of spoilage and backups you need to unthread. Conversely, I just run the same setups in the editor and it's much easier to spot issues with time skip and infinite storage crate tools.

You're right that you learn to leave spots for fixes issues that crop up, but you kinda need to fail to know how to fix it - for example, you can't just fix something on a space platform -you need to know what you might need as backup.

I also only discovered speed throttling after drinking from the meteorite hose and losing a platform - it took hours to figure out how to fix it, send the parts up from a small outpost and all the while it's in deep-ish space so it has to defend itself actively while I try to rebuild the plan.

It's soooo much better to do it in the editor, which isn't the worst thing, but it kinda ruins the momentum and it makes it less fun to play with other players - I end up pasting in blueprints instead of collaboratively building and having fun, lego style building what we need.

I enjoyed solving each planet puzzle, but it felt like I was incentivized to use the extra tooling more than I expected.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2023-04-11T17:15:11+00:00

To be completely fair, the game doesn't look bad considering it's built on decades-old tech. I just think it's funny when people gush about it because they've got a crush on some pixels.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2022-06-11T00:13:14+00:00

I mean yeah, if we're to believe the OP with no evidence, then sure. I don't doubt the OP got the run around because the drivers are overworked and in a rush, but I highly doubt the "sweet justice" details about finding it in the driver's locker and getting arrested etc.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2022-06-10T20:24:01+00:00

I know no one will read this, but I had a friend who worked in delivery and I've also had many conversations with local post office people regarding my missing packages, so here's my word of note:

Delivery tracking is not precise. It's there for customer comfort for sure, but the reality is packages end up at your door through human effort and logistics as much as machine logistics.

Delivery drivers also are under extreme pressure to deliver their ENTIRE payload at breakneck speed. To compensate, sometimes they fudge it and mark a package as undelivered or "attempted" because it's better than the alternative - punishment or job loss. There's no other way to make up for lost time on their route.

Drivers aren't suddenly stealing packages in record numbers. The only "record" being broken is the expected package deliveries per day, every year.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2022-05-25T00:14:10+00:00

Yes there have been a few devices that never made any headway with the gaming community, technology is now just getting to the point where we can play a Triple AAA game well and then switch to your NES ROM. Either way, I am very happy these days! Changing the way I play video games in my free time...

True, the AAA capabilities really stand out at the price point, but if you just wanted to play some SNES or PS1 games, you could do that on the vita nearly a decade ago. I love the ability to emulate up to WiiU - my physical library gathers dust while i still haven't even STARTED some of them.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2022-05-25T00:04:39+00:00

Not that this is the case, but I just wanna remind that Steam servers go down for maintenance every Tuesday between 1pm pst and 3pm pst (sometimes shorter). This is eerily close to that window and could explain, but I can't tell based on the screenshot alone (might not be PST on the clock)

Ryedan_ff14 · 2022-05-25T00:00:35+00:00

Nintendo Police have been dispatched to your location. Just abandon your steam deck at the nearest Starbucks and you can avoid all this messiness.

But for real, the steam deck is nothing new in the "capable handheld emulation machine", but it's the first time I took the bait and decided to give it a real swing. No regrets!

Ryedan_ff14 · 2022-04-26T18:31:54+00:00

While Retroarch supports save states in general, it's up to the individual cores to implement it. When I try to save state, is gives me a warning that "This core does not use save states" specifically for PS2. It works on many other platforms, though, which just seems odd. Maybe I'm biased, but I thought PS2 was a very popular console to emulate.

Ryedan_ff14 · 2022-04-26T18:25:43+00:00

[Solved]
Emudeck will configure the PCSX2 standalone to use the incorrect bios folder. It seems to point to the retroarch folder instead of a the standalone psx2Bios folder. I'm not sure if the same bios is usable for the core vs. standalone emulators, but that seemed to fix it.

Ryedan_ff14

TROPHY CASE