Clues to other Habitats co-ordinates should be found in documents
I'm at the point in the game where I need to find two other habitats. (Not that far in, I know.) But I am not given any clue to where they are, and I am left to crawl the Martian landscape blinding looking as far as I can tell.
I wish there was a document I could find, in the landing crafts or the first habitat, that could give me a general direction to try to find the next habitat.
Mouse control for tablet/inventory.
There needs to be an option for mouse control for operating the tablet on PC.
The current control flow is as follows:
*Need to look something up on pad*
Press e
Takes hand off of mouse
right cursor, down cursor, etc
puts hand back on mouse
press e to close.
So, with the current control scheme I'm having to take my hand off of the mouse anyway to be able to operate the tablet. So making a floating mouse cursor (finger/glove?) to easily and intuitively click on items on the tablet would make it allot less aggravating. Please at least consider making it a game option.
Quantity of foods
Started a new game today, got the systems up and running. Finally got enough O2 to go explore for more supplies. I took a walk and found 4 boxes of supplies. There were only 3 food items among all the other items found. As we can not eat when in the EVA suit, I picked everything up and returned to the hab.
I ate the food I had when I got back, but it was only about 400 calories worth. This will not provide enough energy to find more boxes or another hab. I was already out of food when I went exploring.
I'm thinking that the rate of food consumption is too fast. Water is constantly being made so is not as much of an issue. Increasing the starting food quantities seems like a good idea, as well as making at least the largest box in the caches full of high calorie foods. Foods which only give 100-400 seem to be a waste of time as they offer little gain. Astronauts would have high calorie foods on hand to prevent excessive weight and storage needs. I'm thinking 400 calories minimum for any food, and 800-1200 should be the norm. Call it a meal maybe? The escape pod should have some type of food and medical supplies in it. I did not find anything in the pod's storage when I ran across it again while exploring.
Also, not being able to eat while in the suit is an issue. If I am starving and find a box of food but can't eat until i make it inside a hab then I die. OK, I can see having to plan your trip and eat before you go. But with long exploration trips required to explore most of the map, we need to be able to eat when in the suit.
I suggest that 25% or so of the foods be in a tube which can be plugged into the helmet and we can eat as we are in the suit. Limit this type of food so we have to save it for when we are not in a hab where we can eat other foods. May want to do this with water too. Perhaps water could be recycled in the suit. There could be filters we need to replace in the suit to keep the water recycling working.
Add previous track or explored area to the map
The map should give some indication of areas that have been explored, either by using 'fog of war' shading or by simply displaying all of the players GPS tracks on the map.
Create notification if a component fails while being installed if the power to the unit hasn't been turned off first
Sometimes if you install an electrical component into a module it will fail if the power to the unit has not been turned off first. I will add a tutorial notification so that this is explained. It is in the equipment manuals, but it should be more clear.
Stamina bar/meter
Running has a hidden stamina meter that is also influenced by how exhausted you are (how long it's been since you've slept). Would be good to have a way to show the player their stamina while running, but that's hard to do in a "scientific" way like all the other survival stats. Open to suggestions.
Days are too short
I feel like days pass by Waaaay to quickly. This is particularly noticeable at sunrise/sunset, but when im just walking around it feels like not much time has passed between sunrise an sunet.
Since it seems that you are making 1 hr = 1 min, 1 day = 24 min. I would like to see 1 day = 1hr, perhaps even 2hr.
Also it would be neat if the clock went to 24:40 before resetting for a day, since a day is 40 minutes longer on Mars. Of course perhaps we are just using Mars minutes.
EVA load carrying....
Relating to the tricky to deal with encumbrance issues....
When dealing with carrying a bunch of gear across the Mars-scape, it would stand that the following would be useful for moving loads.
A constructed/improvised travois (structural tubing and space tape):
Or the Para-cassion... which was an ammo carrier with wheels that could be attached and connected to an airdropped container. This would work well for the existing supply crates allowing the player to extend a draw bar and attach 2 wheels for moving loaded crates around.
Here's what was used apparently on Apollo 14.
These would be ideal for some of the supply drop items that are spread around and would mean that a player could extend his carrying capacity over long distances.
Obviously it would be a pain to maneuver over rocky steep ground and ledges but far easier if the terrain was shallow grades and martian regolith.
Need warning when systems fail when you are in the Hab sleeping/crafting
If a system fails while crafting it wont be visible until the lights go out or other catastrophic failures, so if your suit is empty you cant even go outside to fix the problem because neither hab or suit has any power, this needs some warning or maybe blue lights when the power drops below 10% on the hab.
Customer support service by UserEcho