Hey I’ve just dipped my toes in so far and I saw that you’re looking for notes so, here’s a few for starters:

• I think the base concept is awesome, very ambitious but I like it a lot, I’m having fun.

• I feel that the basic loop on Neumann V needs to be fleshed out more. With its relatively cheap discovery cost and only being 5kkm away from nauvis, plus the relatively simple requirements for the pack and all the free shipbuilding materials you get out of it, it seems like it’s intended to be a relatively early visit upon building your first ships. However, it’s also extremely softlock-able, similar to aquilo. I feel that there ought to be some way to build basic automation, and a rocket silo, using only on-site resources, or else it should be rebalanced as a more lategame destination. At the very least there should be a warning in the tips and tricks about it.

• what am I supposed to do with all this lubricant? I feel like I’m missing something here, it feels like a truly useless byproduct that’s also pretty complicated to get rid of. If that’s intentional, I feel like there should be some additional flavor there or something to make it more of a signature mechanic. Maybe just reskin it to “hazardous nanite waste” or something?

• I think bots not working is good design, it encourages you to get it right the first time since fixing it requires a whole trip. Since the chain is ultimately so simple I think it works well and isn’t too onerous.

• a minor bug, I’ve got rare exoskeletons in my mech suit, so I’m very fast. If I just cruise one direction on Neumann V, the entities spawn only right along my direction of travel.

• I feel that as a gameplay mechanic, having to just explore around Neumann V to find more production buildings doesn’t lend well to larger developments. It gets repetitive once you start needing like 100 microassemblers at a time.

• The Neumann V map could use more decorative elements.

• In general, I think Neumann V is a very fun concept, but it needs more love, and some guardrails to prevent an unprepared player getting trapped there early into their space program.

• Brainstorm idea: limit the size of the platform significantly, to like a 3x3 chunk space or less. Have just one small pool of grey goo, but nanites can be used to make all kinds of things only on the platform. Make microassemblers craftable to make more of themselves with nanites for free. Maybe 10x nanite production from microassemblers to make builds more dense. The challenge is to use the “limited/unlimited” resources in the constrained space as efficiently as possible. Reward is a steady flow of free space supplies just like it is now, but significantly limited to be appropriate as a first-stop destination on leaving nauvis. Effectively a unique location designed to bootstrap an early space automation system. Maybe later packs allow you to place down more grey goo on the platform, so you can expand its production.

—-

Let me know if I’m just being annoying here, it’s no offense intended, I think this is super cool. I’ll give more notes as I reach other planets.

Update: I’m calling my Neumann V base done. 125 SPM. I’d like to quadruple that at least but I’d have to spend so long gathering the assemblers I’d rather move on.

Big bug, it appears speed modules are having no effect in microgravity assemblers, which is preventing me from just directly increasing production (also frustratingly there’s no way to automatically remove the 200+ purple quality tier 3 speed modules I shoved in all the assemblers but, that’s on me for not noticing they weren’t doing anything earlier I guess)

I’ll say, it feels like one of the coolest parts of Neumann V is that the cheap rockets make transferring material between ships much more efficient than anywhere else in the system.

Update 2: Just for fun I tried building a small up cycling pod converting nano-built grabber arms into quality components. It seems like it has the potential to be quite broken lol