coldend

What I meant by quantitative data, is some kind of population representative of the market that Stray Fawn is appealing to with Nimbatus (this is kindof in the realm of what I do for a living so bear with me please). The Nimbatus Kickstarter had 2,892 backers. On the Nimbatus Facebook page, there are 549 likes, and 616 follows. On the Nimbatus Steam Store page, there are currently 327 reviews. In this forum, we were talking about votes, and the numbers there are in simple double digits, if that. We can make some educated general statements based on these numbers, but I'll just call your attention to the declining ratio of participants in the kickstarter vs. the number of people posting in these forums. Obviously the population of active forum members voting on suggestions is not nearly a representative population of even the participants in the Kickstarter; and therefore it can't be representative of the population that would make Nimbatus a commercial success. I would assume Stray Fawn has better market research around what their target demographic is actually looking for. If we compare another title to this one that shares a similar set of steam tags ["Indie", "Action", "Sandbox", "Space/Sci-fi"] (just for demographic purposes). The title "Edge of Space" has... A Facebook page with 3,847 likes, and 3,741 follows. A Steam Store page that shows 2,631 reviews (beginning as positive in 2014, and then trending negative as market penetration increased) Edge of Space was commercially a failure, I bring it up only as an example of how new Nimbatus is to the marketplace, and how their current available statistics show a very small market penetration. So it's hard to see if they are currently exposed to the base of their target demographic. With all that said... No, I really don't find the forum vote count compelling.

Oh, don't take my response as frustration, just disappointment. I play quite a few sandbox games, and I have pretty high standards for them, but I like to think I am fair. Those titles that I do enjoy, I have not only purchased for myself but for friends as well. Those games get quite a bit of my time and money. In fact, I've dedicated space in my steam library just for them. The tone I have in my response is not defensive, just a simple statement of fact. The company that gets it right, gets my money and my time. Those that don't, I toss into a dusty part of my steam library and when my friends or kids ask I say "meh" and I forget about them. With each title, I hold on to hope for a while and wait to see how things play out.

I suggest the separate UI, because I too like the mechanics behind building the logic structures. Ideally, those mechanics would remain exactly the same... only instead of placing those blocks physically on the drone itself, they would fit virtually withing a single 'computer core' block, that is then placed on the drone. Today, I have been creating a single "control satellite" with all my logic blocks on it, and couple thrusters off of a factory. I spawn it and then kick it way off out of harm's way, so it's not physically near any of my main drones. If need be, I can respawn it. Seems like a tedious extra step though, when the logic circuits don't need to all exist physically in the first place.

I hear what you are saying, that the devs decided that the ease of success was not interesting. That's an aesthetic choice... which does not make it arbitrary, not exactly... but to the player that feels the brunt of that artificial imposition, it certainly feels so. Also, I don't see how we can blame 'the physics', since we are talking about an entirely artificial game world, how forces interplay is entirely within the scope of the devs control. When I opened the Nimbatus game, there was an invitation to join the forums and make suggestions, and to place a review on steam... as I have done. In the role of critic, I am offering up my opinion, as requested. In my role as a consumer, I am stating my preference in relation to a product I may wish to spend additional money on in the future. I understand the rationale behind some of the design decisions thus far, and while I respect them, I simply disagree with them... and in line with that respect, I was not offering a debate. In the game's current state, it was well worth the 61hrs I dedicated to exploring it and the $20 I spent, and I don't regret it one bit... however, for me to recommend the game to others or purchase additional copies for friends, I've stated the features that would convince me to do so. The forums alone tell me I am not the only one who feels this way, but I don't have any quantitative data to support if my opinion is in the majority or minority, so it's really a business & artistic decision for Stray Fawn to make, whether to appeal to those consumers... or not. The quotes you offered seem to say that decision is made; well if that is the case...there's probably not much more to discuss.

To me this is a "Dark Souls" type of argument, which is again a philosophical / aesthetic choice. I enjoy the challenge of designing a novel solution to a scenario, which I see the potential for in Nimbatus. I personally do not enjoy the "challenge" of overcoming an artificially imposed handicap on all designs in order to "git gud" at being able to do so (overcome the handicap). That is disappointing to hear, because I interpret that statement to mean that the devs are more interested in making the challenge of the game the design of the drone itself. To me, the design & stability of the drone should be intuitive and consistent (this, to me, is not boring... it is science, math, architecture, and engineering), whereas the challenge, artistry, and creativity comes in the application of those designs to the challenge scenarios presented. This is not to say that the choice to use materials that are pliable and non-rigid is not more interesting to some, and in fact in the real world there are many examples in engineering and material science where a novel approach yields a better result. To me, that should be less of a dev imposed handicap, and should instead be a feature offered to player. It is not entirely obvious to me why this would be a binary issue, nor how one could consider the introduction of more options "boring". Material features such as... rigidity - firm & solid to rope-like (imagine a bolo type launch-able projectile) buoyancy - This would require the introduction of fluid mechanics, but would be very interesting fragility - a container with a breaking point that allows it to shatter on impact releasing loose contents Perhaps my excitement for the potential of the game is more than the scope of the devs original intention; but seeing as this is an alpha build, and such features exist in other games of a similar nature I was hopeful.

In preparation for this suggestion I spent some time combing through the threads here. I have decided to place this suggestion in the "Feature Requests" section, because I don't think a single drone part solves what I see as the problem, which may be philosophical or aesthetic in nature. THE PROBLEM: Drones, even well designed ones, lack the strength and rigidity I would expect.and enjoy. They bend and act as though made of straws or pipe cleaners and styrofoam. I have seen a couple of threads on the topic, and some commenters suggest this is a Nimbatus feature that the developers have intentionally included as an aesthetic choice. I'm too new to say for sure, and my cursory searches have not yielded results to prove that. So, my suggestion comes in two parts... A change in philosophy. To me, the fun and challenge of Nimbatus, is the test of the player's creativity to create varied and innovative solutions to the assortment of scenarios presented, some of them being PvP. The artificial challenge imposed by constructing ships using sub-standard building materials (i.e. springy sponge-board), that wobble and create an unpredictable or inconsistent application of forces on your design... is enough of a annoyance as to be game ruining, at least for me as a player. There are a few ways that one could solve "the problem" should the developers think as I do, that it is indeed a problem. The introduction of larger "ship hull" parts, that can contain other parts. The introduction as others have suggested of solid or rigid struts. https://strayfawnstudio.com/community/index.php?/topic/3411-rigid-strut-part/ https://strayfawnstudio.com/community/index.php?/topic/3685-solid-connectors/ P.S. - I very much enjoy the game. The potential of Nimbatus when i saw it on steam early access, made me snap it up in spite of all the previous early access titles I have been burned by. This game scratches the sandbox game itch I have had for quite a while now, and I have been unable to quite put my finger on. Stray Fawn not only showed me what I was missing from the genre, it excited me with the promise of Nimbatus to solve them. I can see myself re-living with Nimbatus, the hours, days, months, years I spent in Terraria, buying copies of the game for friends and family just to show off the creations I built... but the reservations I have about the ships seemingly constructed of Nerf materials is enough to put me off all of that potential.

I have several suggestions on the drone design UI... Please offer an option to close the drone design window WITHOUT saving the changes to the drone. (Sometimes you just want to revert to your original model after a design session gone wrong) When the warnings for "Parts with unassigned keys", "attaching too many parts to a single part...". Please highlight the parts being specifically referenced. Do not include parts that have been assigned tags among the "Parts with unassigned keys" warning. Create a toggle view on the top left (similar to the "center of mass" toggle) that shows all parts simultaneously, WITH all keys & or tags displayed on them. (This way you can see if you have any parts that you have forgotten) Allow the user to re-calculate the "center of mass" for a drone, based on selected parts. This is important when creating drones that use factory mechanics for individual modules that operate independently.

As of v0.5.10 Early Access... The only way to access the drone editor is by following this breadcrumb navigation... Start Game > "Select Save Game" > Galaxy Page / "Select Planet to Visit" > "Select Drone" > "Edit Drone" I suggest changing the UI of Nimbatus so that there is a button or navigation on the "Galaxy page" that allows the player to access the drone bay / drone workshop of their ship. It may also be fun to customize the starship "Nimbatus" itself, which would be a more fun way to access other star systems, rather than just meeting arbitrary planet objectives. The drones not only mine upgrade materials for themselves, but they also mine upgrade material to upgrade the Nimbatus vessal's ship engines, shields, et-cetera to make it possible for the ship to travel to other star systems. This would be a more story driven method of accomplishing the same goal.

I would like to see a few things in relation to the logic circuits of the drone... Firstly, I would like the logic circuits NOT to be physically represented as blocks on the drone. Complex logic and interesting solutions should not be penalized by weight and design concerns, such as "how do I position this 'AND' gate so it doesn't blow up and render my whole drone useless when it first encounters the enemy". That's not fun. It feels like making the logic be a physical block is a hold over from games like Minecraft or Terraria, when automation and logic was a fun little afterthought rather than an integral part of the game. The drone build UI should have a "programming" or "logic" UI, similar to that of the "Weapon Workshop" , with the end result being a powered 'computer core' block. The more complex the logic stored in that computer core, the heavier and or more power hungry that part would become... but it would be important for this to be a single block in the overall structure of your drone. This idea has the following benefits... avoids the issues caused by a single critical part of a logic circuit being destroyed, because it was inconveniently located due to arbitrary space concerns. Introduces an interesting new part customization UI. Adds a new level of power management to the game. Allows players to design complex program templates, and name them modular enough to be re-used. (re-designing a navigation array from scratch with each drone is pretty tedious) Suggestion made as of Version 0.5.10 Steam Early Access