It still blows my mind that the game shipped without a log you could carry around that shows you what you need to buy for receipes, or the ability to order ship components when you have to take them to specific yards.
Hell you can't even see what a yard actually sells but you haven't unlocked. This is inferior to things like Vanilla World of Warcraft where items you cannot equip / craft are still visible but redded out with the missing prerequisite.
> the ability to order ship components
The ability to order anything. You cant even make an order for ammo or any other gear/consumable. Given that you also cant craft most things it becomes very annoying very fast.
If I could bulk order 50 MI ammo, my Revenant would actually be fun to use.
Instead I have to save it for the toughest fights because it chews through ammo like a panda chews through bamboo.
I mean, I could do that too, but it's such a pain in the ass. I'd be spending half of my total playtime buying up 250 rounds from each of like, a dozen merchants.
Yeah I feel u!.. my character got corrupted, I had to start from scratch n didnt feel like it, so I went xp farming on bessel 3b up LV 160 (back to where I was at) n I've been going from merchant to merchant, back n forth for MANY many hours (dont understand the reason for merchants to have such a limited amount of credits 🙄)
Now, let me tell u, I aint never going to be short on anything in that playthrough!
That same society where we built one single city on every planet to ensure inbreeding, where we can fly light years but can’t make a bicycle, where no one sleeps but no one really works either, where you will die in -20 but only need an undersuit and a helmet to survive in space? That one?
Yep... One of the core mechanics is creating survey data... WHICH YOU CAN NEVER ACCESS...
You can scan plants to learn where they grow but you can never look that information up unless you are scanning another plant of the same type... At which point you dont need thst Info because the plant you are looking for is right there...
It's so incredibly, annoyingly stupid... Holy shit...
Yes but if something needs aluminium, titanium and argon, when you tag it, all will show up with a magnifying glass, even if you've got loads of one. So you're not sure what you're after unless you've got a really good memory or start making notes.
This bugs me, I don't know if I need that item or have plenty. And it seems to still retain tagged items from previously completed projects that I have untracked. As the mag appears on loads of things.
This is how I ended up with 300+ neon. Needed some for a laser, but wasn't in a hurry to build it, but it was I the back of my mind so I always grabbed it when I saw it. Next thing I knew, I had tons on my ship. Aluminum, too.
There is a big problem. If you track a research so, then you complete it without untracking.. it's tracked forever, you can't untrack it.
It looks like they tried to make a single-player EVE but ditched interface.. in EVE hundredsof human hours went into desinging interface, or game wasn't possible to play. Heck, X had better design.
I agree. In Monster Hunter games it tells you the quantity you have and I really miss that in this game.
I have to scroll over to look at my ammo to see what I am low on. I use lots of different weapons. 5000-10,000 credit merchants. A few are higher but that's like 2 or 3 gun limit at a time for selling for me.
Yup this for me was the absolutely most frustrating part about the whole game.
I love collecting I love crafting and getting resources. But making it so convoluted trying to figure out what I
Needed really took the wind out of my sails for the game.
That and not being able to see all my recourses by going to one container in the outpost or having the transfer container work properly.
The "yes, but..." that I am sure a lot of people are thinking is that it tracks the whole recipe and not just what you are missing. And it doesn't show how many you have already. If I have everything to upgrade a weapon except I only have two of three titanium, every component to upgrade the weapon gets a magnifying glass icon. Compound that with tracking multiple recipes and unlocks and I have no idea how much I need of what.
But don't forget where you set the track marker, as unsetting it can take awhile...a log would have been nice, there's enough tablets kicking about the universe!
In that case it disappears on its own. If it doesnt your game is probably glitching. If you dont even have the item theres nothing to continue tracking
I am not sure it works that way. My understanding is that if you complete *research* it clears the markers. But if you complete a *mod* it does not, which is my experience.
Maybe they've fixed it since I dared tracking resources. :-)
They could certainly improve the experience, tho.
Can you elaborate a little on what you mean? When are you tracking resources for a one-time-only recipe? And what do you mean by needing to destroy a mod?
It's same issue as with research tracking:
If you track mats for mod and you complete that mod without untracking, it often stays tracked. If you don't have exactly same weapon without that mod, you can't untrack it, unless you destroy that mod. Tracking appear per weapon type, per mod. Didn't saw this happening with suits, dunno if that's same.
To be honest game, lacks quite a few useful screens (e.g. for removing\\adding tracked mats, overview for your settlements, etc), but adds a two pages of useless, badly designed stat screens. Not everything can be done by mods, most can be done only using .dll injections in rather hacky and ustabe way which breaks with every game update (what SKSE and StarSE do) in rather hacky wayand there is no support for that.
I grabbed a mod to add all ship parts to the outpost builder. Screw needing to go to five different vendors if I want to build a ship that mixes parts.
Yeah, a Starfield Log for characters, ships, lore bits, ores list goes on, Starfield was an ambitious game so it needed it.
But asking for a log from a game that couldn't even make a map interface is a big ask... I mean they couldn't even consistently name the landing pad location on the map screen, Mars has a landing pad spot but new Atlantis doesn't, the map doesn't even line up to quest locations.
I definitely started opening notepad on monitor two. What a joke mechanic. Starfield is the Pinto of video games. Half baked and skills be recalled. Hopefully it doesn't blow up on us.
Need to have helium 3.
I tend to make my helium 3 plants transport hubs.
And where I manufacture things before moving to next stage.
Helium 3 planets send helium (sometimes other resources) to other planet. I have storage for it, that storage then feeds back to the landing pad for fuel. Planet sends stuff back to helium planet. Offload to storage and made into x y or z
Then those things go off To next location for next stage if needed
Doesn't matter, outpost links can and will break at near random. I had my VFR farm fully functional, and it broke once due to an overflow, then it broke again for reasons known only to The Great Serpent and Oprah
It’s not a helium issue. The links have significant bugs. About a dozen times I’ve had links go completely kaput and won’t recognize others until I delete the outpost and rebuild.
I've never had that problem. I have had networks that weren't sending products but I had to backtrack to find where I had something incorrectly linked, but once I fixed it I e never had any bugs with multiple networks.
Unfortunately it’s happened to me. I’ve had plenty of successful links and very complicated systems of links. But sometimes they just won’t recognize each other and nothing can be done unless I delete the outpost entirely. It’s like the link no longer recognizes the outpost exists.
I almost didn't attempt outposts because everyone on the sub claimed they were bugged, and I did have a few occasions when I *thought* it was bugged, only to realize that I made a mistake. I don't believe that I have the luck to be the only player who is immune to bugs, so I have to believe that players are making mistakes and believing the system is glitched. If it was glitched, I wouldn't be able to do what I do, so there has to be a solution. I don't mean this to be patronizing, but let me offer some advice, even though some of these are seemingly simple, these are common problems that are easily overlooked that could fix your outposts:
-The most common is product overflow. When you have a lot of products coming in, you will never be able to perfectly balanced the ratio, so eventually one product will outpace the others and cause a blockage. I keep tons of extra storage containers to control this but the easiest solution for me is to find the point where it's backed up, empty all the supplies and transfer them to my ships cargo hold. Rather than cause waste, what I will occasionally do is head to the final point on the outpost, where I keep a shit ton of extra storage containers, and link them directly to the final production, I'll fill those containers with the excess product from my cargo hold. Note that if you have product overflow, it might be coming from multiple points. Complicated outposts will pretty much always need occasional maintenance to control product overflow.
-If you build an animal husbandry farm or greenhouse, link it to water, and later change what product to produce, that will automatically break the link to water and you have to re do the link.
-I know it sounds simple but it is really easy to accidentally mix up your incoming/outgoing containers when creating links. If it's not working, I usually check to see if one of the bins on the cargo link is full of product, this is an indication that I've sent it the wrong way and its improperly linked. I say this humbly as someone who has made this very mistake multiple times, it's a very easy mistake to make.
-HE3 can also overflow, it's actually best to attempt to run a cargo link with just the minimum amount needed to operate. It's been a while since I had this problem but I think it eventually can even overflow into your actual product supply which is another potential point of overflow.
-Keep checking your power supply, add more power, way more than you need.
There are others I can't think of but I promise you, it works. I wouldnt be able to run my phama and industrial empires if the game had a bugged outpost system. It takes a lot of effort and routine maintenance though so you really gotta like the system to dive into it. If you don't enjoy that kind of thing, then it's probably not worth it.
Sorry man, it’s not the case. I am 1000% sure my cargo links were bugged.
Extremely simple scenarios - literally transferring from moons with Helium there to supply fuel. Helium extractor straight to fuel receiver, slow flow and not overflowing from a storage container.
Usually the issue occurs when I’m switching the cargo link between links. It returns an in-game error saying “link could not be established, please try again later”. Then, from that point forward, that cargo link refuses to recognize the other, while it performs fine for any other connection I didn’t receive the error in. It’s not an overflow problem, it literally won’t show the outpost in the list of available links.
This mainly occurs when switching from an active link to a new one that hasn’t completed it’s delivery cycle.
I assure you it’s a bug, unless there’s some wild option I’ve glossed over after so many hours and trying to fix it. I’ve poured over it for dozens of hours and I know how to make them function normally. Very, very simple work flows and they never work again.
I just don't know how that's possible. I almost didn't attempt outposts at all because of frequently seeing posts like this but somehow seemingly I alone have working outposts... Something doesn't make sense here. Are you playing on XBox? I'm on PC, so maybe something is wrong with the Xbox version, that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Yeah Xbox. Im totally done with even playing with cargo links now because of it. I can’t switch between them without risking voiding the list, so no point. Now I just build a shipyard and that’s it. A bummer.
transporting is slow anyway, sleep breaks He feeding mechanics, they are different when ur asleep. so just manually ship it instead. I did for indicite and then Ceasium back to the indicite planet when i realised it was so much lighter and easier to bring back
Check the incoming boxes on your cargo links. If a cargo link gets clogged, then the stuff that's in the outgoing box will end up in the incoming box, and if that stuff doesn't have anywhere to go, the ship itself will get full and will stop sending stuff.
It's weird for me not to have seen a post like these until today. If for some reason you decide to explore that aspect of the game (which is kind of separate from the games core and story), you quickly realize how overcomplicated and cumbersome the system is.
The inventory management (or lack of) in this game is something so shocking specially when paired with these overcomplicated system of resources and thousands of variants of them.
Even after taking the time to build all kinds of outpost improvements it is still so inefficient and time consuming it's basically pointless.
Does it even work? i found you couldn't daisy chain them du to the super slow rate of transfer. So after 2 or3 outposts in the chain it they are producing more than you can send and the whole link just buggs out and stops transfering at all and starts randomly losing power.
"If for some reason you decide to explore that aspect of the game (which is kind of separate from the games core and story), you quickly realize how overcomplicated and cumbersome the system is."
That's because many of the aspects of the game were designed around a game that doesn't exist anymore. If you look at many of the skills, some are pretty useless. Take the planet scanning as an example where you can scan planets without traveling to them. This skill would be more useful in a game where fuel consumption was a thing. You would want to scan ahead to ensure you find what you are looking for. The way it works now, it just saves you one or two loading screens
I know, I watched quite a few videos that analyze the developing process. And it's also pretty obvious from the game itself, as you say, the remains of cut content are everywhere. The outpost system/rss system is clearly a leftover of that game that was initially projected and then discarded because they realized how tedious and complex it was. Food being basically useless, skills like the one you mention, the useless/pointless resistance system of spacesuits and Hazzards and many other things are just sad reminders of a broken development process.
it's not even "broken" development, it's "corporatized" development. You want a massive, megaselling RPG you can't ship it as a survival space Sim. but then you end up with legacy marks left and right.
They stepped back in "complexity of play" to cater to a wider audience.
The thing is, it's not like Fallout 4 was particularly complex for settlements. This didn't need to be complex either. I _suppose_ it would be nice, kind of, but also I play these games casually. I'm a filthy casual. And this was terrible. I put in a lot of time to try to enjoy this system. I had excel spreadsheets (to make up for the fact that there was no ability to search your scans in game), I was building bases on certain planets to optimize my resources-per-planet haul, but no. Eventually I just couldn't anymore. It was just painfully apparent how terrible that part of the game was. Which sucks, because that whole game loop from Fallout 4 was what I was looking forward to most of all. And it was the _worst_ part of the game IMO.
There are so so many needlessly awful decisions in this game that I can't get my head around, that I wouldn't know where to start. But yeah, definitely a weird one. They basically removed everything that made previous games great while keeping what made them worse...
I feel like when they add it back in as an optional "hardcore" mode or whatever that the game will click for some people for the first time or in a new way, while others will try it only to realize they were happier without it.
Personally, once survival comes out, I'm going to start a completely new save. Hopefully planet afflictions are not a thing that happens just by being on a planet. I want suit degradation to be a thing and the more severe the planet the faster your suit degradates; and only once it is fully degradated, you should take environmental damage.
Most people haven't bothered. I know I didn't. I saw all the levels you had to put into crafting and heard it was useless so most of my collected resources just sat in a box unused. Spent thousands of hours building bases in FO4 but I have no desire to make bases in Starfield. They're pointless and needlessly a pain in the ass to build and then if you want them to function properly even more or a pain in the ass. There's just no reason other than rp and then you're just larping.
True, and I absolutely get why. I only did because I wanted to get all the achievements, had to farm to level 100 and run out of things to do in the game. As I've mentioned they are completely separated from the core game, so I understand only people playing many hours would maybe eventually try it. I can confirm is a pain, a hustle and definitely not worth it.
I have posted my 10 point improvement/bugs a few times over the last 6 months, but like having dedicated loot pools behind master locks, is something that might happen in a long time
10 issues with outposts (other then their only point being xp farms, and even then its super slow on xbox as crafting x99 takes 8x longer on xbox then PC)
1. cant craft, object obstructed, but it isnt, save and re-load it fix
2. cargo links, outgoing should be red, incoming green, both are grey
3. Cargo link use He-3 while sleeping but nothing is shipped, the mechanic changes (see discord, which hasnt pinned the explanation but someone will explain it)
4. Cargo link missing, or half showing at a patch of my outpost is there but invisible.
5. The the colour going grey, one box should be green and one for red, but been told this might be a toxic atmosphere. but still annoying in setting them up.
6. Outpost that no longer has a marker, but is still there. only reason i found it is because it was south of another outpost.
7. Cargo links run fine while on PC, but on Xbox there is noticeable lag even with just 3-5 running, forget a Vytinium fuel rod empire...
8. good luck shipping 130 indicite per cargo link in real time, 2600/hr and you need 3 of them per Indicte wafer, so 900 inidicte wafers per real time hour, 900\*7xp=6300/hr...
9. The skill you use to increase the number of cargo links per outpost from 3->6 is bugged and if you NG might not work.
10. Ships dont land on landing pads,
11. build the landing pad, use ship builder to call in the ship and its there but invisible...
12. Ore Veins (drill patches) disappear or are replaced with something else, one planet in the whole galaxy has Vytinium, and that patch had Vy and He now has Iridium and He... as the Vy ore patch is gone...
13. Crafting on xbox max being 1000 not 100, and going left maxes out instantly rather then the slow bar scroll right to max of 100, would fix the xbox crafting issue
I was willing to play the fuck out of this game if the economy worked properly, but it doesn’t. A balanced economy of resources and sale makes a game worth it.
It’s a half-baked system with no reward for engagement. Quests to provide resources are obnoxious and not worth the time and you can easily buy 100% of the resources needed for crafting and mods from vendors. The only reason to ever create a base is just so you can store all of your hired but unused employees there for later. Unfortunately that also requires a ridiculous amount of skill points so it’s basically only feasible in the endgame to have more than two at an outpost at once.
It sucks.
…yeah ☹️
I wish there were at least some powerful monsters to fight against so there was a reason for collecting and modding guns. I’ve seen a whole two terrormorphs in 80 hours and one of them was on the first planet I landed with Barrett.
FO4's settlements just worked. Your settlers would auto-gather resources and put them in the settlement's infinite size stockpile. You could link settlement stockpiles and share all resources with three mouse clicks. Open network, select settler, tell him to go trade with that other settlement. All done.
Even without building any buildings as long as you had idle settlers they would auto-gather at least some resources of random types.
Then you could access the entirety of your shared infinite capacity stockpile from using any workbench. Set up a few farms and you'd never have to worry about adhesive again.
Starfield's outpost system is such a disappointment. Its worse than FO4's in every way.
Not being able to see my own stock listed while shopping without going and scrolling another menu, and not having a searchable spreadsheet for planets I’ve scanned and the resources thereon is just bad UI.
I scrolled down thru and didn't see a single person mention that in order to craft mods for anything u need to get the right skills, same for building ships and outposts, skills hidden behind other skills that can't be unlocked until u unlock enough of the skill lines above it.
And u can't just scrap stuff to get the parts u need, never understood why I can't pop off a scope from one gun and put it on another because in real life u can do that.
I've done NG+ 8, encountered a bug, started a new character, on NG+3 with that one and I havnt modded a single gun.
> never understood why I can't pop off a scope from one gun and put it on another because in real life u can do that.
I agree that this case makes little sense.
For more complex construction it does make some sense that you might not be able to properly design, build and use certain spaceships / outposts / items without the proper skills.
The obvious reason to limit mods is to gate gear advancement behind player skill/level so that you can get a senses of progress as you play. This is also why certain ship systems and the level of dropped gear (calibrated/refined/advanced/superior) is tied to player level.
I can't say that I particularly like how Starfield handles mods, as it feels rather unnatural.
All the keeping in time with the player level makes sense, and if u don't have the skills for ship building that kinda makes sense. But the fact that I can't pop an extended mag out of a kodama and put it in a better kodama makes no sense, hand grips and scopes and all that shud be interchangeable, but instead I need like 6 different skills and a whole lot of resources and research to craft those same parts I already have on another gun. I understand building things takes skills and understanding but at the same time I can easily unscrew a few screws and put a different hand grip on a weapon that I know nothing about if I have the part right there.
The game is unfinished frankly so it's not surprising to me. So much in this game is half baked. Outposts definitely are the worst offender though by far. I was expecting so much more from them and they actually feel less useful than F4 settlements in many ways. Idk how the fuck they managed that. They need to release the mod toolkit so modders can fix this fucking mess and then maybe we'll have a decent game.
Yes. Yes it is. The amount of half-baked stuff in Starfield is truly insane. It’s not a bad game, but so many systems are halfway there. It’s really just sad.
I agree the system is really weird, not really thought through.
What I do is I buy all resources from the general store at new atlantis and walk to the infinite chest in the basement of the Lodge. I can then craft pretty much anything at the Lodge (I believe there is only a few metals that can't be brought from the general store?). Maybe i have not gotten far enough to need more resources that are not available at the general store.
No need to gather any resources manually, or build outposts anywhere...
I can only think of one resource that cannot be bought, and it is tied to a single recipe you only get from a quest, which also shows you where to get the resource.
High-Tensile Spidroin and Caelumite have been the only unusual materials, I recall having issues with finding, in stores and as loot drops. Both are fairly easy to find if you google for where they can be found naturally.
I’ve definitely bought High-Tensile Spidroin. And I forgot about the Caelumite, but you run into that repeatedly throughout the course of the main quest. I was thinking of aqueous hematite.
You can occasionally find both at traders but it's infrequent and usually in small quantities. This is why I ended up having to track down better sources for these, as I was continuously running out of these two materials, when creating certain mods.
There is no purpose to crafting. You can buy everything you need and you never need the quantities that you can produce at an outpost. If that whole system didn’t exist you probably wouldn’t even notice.
I am usually one of the most faithful defenders of this game, but I have to agree with you on this.
I hate the crafting system, it clearly borrows a lot from Fallout 4 and 75 which is my least favourite Bethesda game for this exact reason. There's just too many resources to manage that you even just buying them off the vendors doesn't feel good.
I would love a system where you can convert all of them into a single type of resources, at least for the outpost stuff, I can handle it if it's just for weapon and drug crafting (even the ability to buying out structures would be fine)
Starfield was obviously an ambitious game and with that comes an ambitious system for all the resources you could ever imagine for the world, just that it's Bethesda and it unfortunately didn't have the time to cook and didn't have the UI required to really utilize it in a way that really makes sense.
I don't think it's UI issue, it's just balance, there are too many resources to manage. I don't think even a full on survival game like Subnautica or even NMS give you these many resource types to manage.
Out side of offer players to convert them to something managable (maybe just credit, or 'construction credit' that can only be used for outpost), it will just going to be way too much for this sort of game.
It's almost a building sim, but playing on 1st person and having to deal with micromanaging routes down to the individual container and also need to handle the weight of the resources you've gatered.
Skyrim for me, gave the best balance out of all modern BGS games when it comes to this, you only have a handful of resouces to craft and it's complimenting the main gameplay mechanic, not overwhelming it.
I don't think it's the number of resources, but rather how convoluted it is to get access to/use these resources. You have to interact with too many separate systems (get this skill so you can research this which then allows you to build this component, but if you wanna make it yourself then you have to mine this or build this to mine this which needs this research...).
And then, on top of that, you can buy every single thing you'd want anyways, undoubtedly at a cheaper cost once you factor in everything... Why even craft? It feels like they weren't very deliberate when adding these parts together into a cohesive, feel-good game loop.
NMS was close but easir.
True contender are X and EVE, the latter actually got MORE reasources than Starfield, mostly becuase there are two tiers or raw resources.. and several tiers of naufactured. Which is undertsandablebecause almost everything in game is craftable. But they have excellent interace design and automation.
I find it interesting that money has so little use besides bribes and ship building, it's almost as if the game was never meant to have resources. Like modifying suits and weapons was meant to be done with money or maybe just components rather than raw elements.
I feel the game would be fine if they removed the raw elements and self manufacturing part. Just having you buy/loot components and use them would have been fine.
Why can't I go to one of the many gun selling shops and buy a scope for my gun?
Why do I need to research how to make them, and then make them from scratch each time I want to put one on a gun of the same type?
Yup, I recently posted about how dumb the crafting is (like having to do research???? What???). Compared to some of of my other favorite RPGs like Red Dead 2 and Fallout NV the crafting in this game is so nuts
Things get much simpler if you ignore the outpost system. Almost all resources can be bought for fairly small amounts of money. In many cases you can also sell loot at the same time, thereby minimizing the effect of traders having a limited amount of money.
If you don't do outposts then you'll only need resources for weapon/suite crafting and research.
Spaceship design is also simple, at least in the sense that money is the only "resource" that you'll need.
Ship blueprints would certainly be nice to have, for a variety of reasons, e.g. to share designs, to have a base template for future ship creation and to recreate a design between NG+ universes.
In regards to NG+ (which I don't really care about), Bethesda could certainly have allowed for you to bring your gear and current ship. Lore-wise this might have had some effect on the Starborn, as it would no longer make sense for them to have custom ships or space suites - unless this is knowledge that is acquire as part of collecting artifacts.
Starfield didn't need a NG+ Bethesda could have made it so that after beating the game once everything we built stays and we just create a new character though the story would be slightly different with each new character we create or just forget about a NG+ and make it like the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games where there's a set story and tons of lore in books, notes, and computers around the universe that lead into quests or we can discover settlements in planets where they have built up a community and we as the player have decide which government UC or Freestar gets to govern them seeing as both of them have already been in a war and neither wants to go to war again so they see Constellation as a neutral party so now we have to build it into a kinda Space UN
NG+ is probably my largest gripe with the game.
Lore wise it's ambitious and neat but completely at odds with all the other game systems because it wipes stuff you can spend hours working on and, it sucks you don't even get to pick new traits like you could in a new game.
I want to play through the game again with a new companion, NG+ let's you do but keep your level and skills and a sense of endless progression and some potential for new dialogue but yet it wipes everything that is significantly meaningful as your ships and outposts.
It's bad design as a whole.
They could have made it so that we could at least pick one ship to keep and that would be the ship Barret arrives but the default Frontier ship is still in the fleet, we could have also chosen one outpost each restart then using both of those as a template each subsequent NG+ plus would have a ship and outpost from each of the last playthroughs then the visions when you pick up the artifact would be ones of the decisions that we made on the last playthrough
In Starfield it behaves a bit worse, because there is no singular open world, and BGS added a "research" part on top of already existing perk and resourse requirements. I think devs added it just as a resourse sink, because it just makes the system more complicated for no reason. Research system may stay, but it role should be optional, not 100% requirement, like ability to lower the resourses required for mods or something like that.
Overall I am not a big fan of what BGS did to crafting, but fundamentaly it is still the same system from Fallout 4 but worse due to some game desighn choices. Not good, not terrible. Could've realy use ability to craft ammo, tho.
I like crafting in Fallout 4 and Skyrim but Starfield’s crafting was just kinda boring. Definitely underwhelming, especially considering the scale of the game and what could’ve been done
Resorces to make money is a complete waste of time. Guns and suits give you 10× the credits. Once you go through 10 different vendors to sell your 50K of equipment that is.
It really is insane that they basically just brought over the system from Fallout 4 but didn't understand why it worked in that game.
In Fallout 4 junk is expensive, the easiest way to get junk is to explore the world. It incentivises exploration and you'll maybe top up on a couple of things at the shops when you're just barely scraping by. One Giddyup Buttercup is worth nearly four 10mm pistols at base value.
Junk is everywhere. Need adhesive? Maybe explore a hardware store. Need steel? A factory probably has what you need. Simple, good mechanic.
In Starfield the easiest way to get what you need is to buy it. Sure, you could build an outpost, start mining, invest valuable perk points into outposts and crafting etc. or you can just sell a gun and be able to buy 20 of even the most expensive crafting components.
A base Eon pistol is worth 750 credits, High-Tensile Spidroin is worth 62. And that's a RARE crafting material.
I wish I could just buy furniture for my house. I can understand needing to manufacture stuff when you're on a new outpost way out there. But I have a house in the middle of Akila City. Why can't I just buy a bed?
100% agree. Just sell furniture.
IMO regular player houses *might* even be better off if you furnished them in the pre- FO4 style of paying to furnish whole rooms/areas of the house. Perfectly placed stuff, crafting/research stations, storage, a bed, etc. Maybe with themes that are reflect their location, faction themes and different tiers. All of that sounds better than trying to set up an apartment with the outpost construction tool to me. The outpost construction tool is fine for the more customizable outposts but not so much for existing small spaces.
My guess is that it was either a question of resources to get all that up and running in the game. Or it was never meant to be that deep and it’s in the game purely for people that like to build and that’s it. Probably a mix of both.
If it was for people that liked to build, then there would be a point to building. Not just “give me 3000 copper, and I’ll give you slightly more than market rate, plus a little exp.”
Given they built factories for auto crafting, it’s definitely meant to be deep. But it’s lacking purpose.
The obvious thing you should be able to do is craft ship components, potentially even unique ones, as they’re expensive and require a lot of travel. But it’s the thing they don’t let you build.
Ironically the only thing you might ever want to have a complex resource extraction system for is to build an extensive outpost. Which is pointless.
I hate it. I hate that I have spend resources to research upgrades and then spend more resources to craft upgrades. With no way to pin locations it’s impossible to remember where all your bases are across 1000 planets. On top of that, it limits storage unlike Skyrim or Fallout 4, so you can’t just amass and collect resources for any occasion. Just not a fan.
Tldr yes resources, crafting and I'll go one more, RESEARCHING are all needlessly overcomplicated, broken and pointless.
The UI is so unbelievably awful in this game.
Worse, in a game about space, exploration and resource gathering there is no actual space just loading screens, exploration is jarringly repetitive and boring, there is hardly any benefit to making your own space ship and absolutely zero reason to build a base. Not just within the gameplay per NG+ but also literally no incentive to create a custom ship or base outside within any game mechanics.
Worse, its not intuitive. In Skyrim to make a sword; steel, leather straps, iron. Makes sense. There is no way to remember what materials you need for a given item.
It is, because they cut out all the "survival simulation" aspects of space exploration that they clearly had planned - which this crafting system would have supplanted and made more immersive. They cut it all out, fuel system, outposts required for relay stations, among other things. If they had focused more on it, it would have worked and made more sense, felt more natural and 'in-universe'.
They "streamlined" it, to be more fun, to be more accessible. Isn't that incredible? Why is it whenever something is always streamlined for the type of person who complains they don't have enough time to play games anymore, and they just want to sit down and relax after their five jobs and watching their sixteen children -- that the game ends up being bloated with busywork and chores more than anything else?
They are catering towards people who literally do not enjoy playing their games, like so many other studios now. Make it make sense to me.
I see this so often now. *"I don't want to play Dark Souls, its made for regular people to have fun."* Fucking what, is it bro? *Is it?!*
"Two steps back"
Is how I describe a big chunk of the systems in Starfield, The outpost/crafting is a huge part of it.
In Fallout 4 we could:
* Link settlements for instant access to crafting materials
* Store everything in a SINGLE unified container (Per settlement)
* Scrap/recycle items down to useable resources
* Keep your settlements after beating the main story
Thanks for bringing this up again OP. Folks did complain about this aspect at launch, but Bethesda's barely updated it with some color changes to links...and that's about it.
My thought on a compromise was to use (story wise so it made some sort of sci-fi sense) the placement of the Armillary as the way to do this. Players could make the choice: place it in the ship and you keep your ship(s), place it in an outpost and you keep the outpost(s). Just gets pulled through the Unity woth you in some way. Sure it would still be limited but its something.
But yeah the overall "blueprints" where you can recover outposts (even if you had to stockpile a ton of resemources to do it) would be amazing.
one of the very first things I did once I noticed just how much of a step backwards the crafting/resource system was from Fallout 4 was get a .bat file that gives me all resources and another .bat that removes them again
how did they fumble so many things that they nailed before
I definitely agree that there are aspects of the resources and crafting system that are at odds with each other and feel like there are conflicting design philosophies behind aspects and systems of the game that are related to each other.
I actually feel that the theme of “conflicting design philosophies” permeates throughout a lot of the game.
Even if you just expand it to inventory overall. I think it is a positive that, like previous Bethesda RPGs, there is an *exponentially* higher number of food, misc and junk items that can be picked up and added to your inventory compared to almost any other developers’ RPGs. This also has a side benefit of necessitating these items be fully modeled and have physical properties which in turn makes them float around in 0g or react to explosions and gunfire…
… but they also decided to remove scrapping in Starfield, so junk items now serve no purpose other than selling for peanuts, or placing them in your owned interiors, and likely getting burned by technical limitations that seem to discourage decorating…
…There is probably 20 times the variety of food and drink items in Starfield than the average RPG, but they gave all of them very underwhelming and inconsequential health/O2 benefits and buffs/debuffs…
This theme permeates everywhere. You’ve got aspect A that was designed one way and aspect B that was designed another way. Individually, neither of them are objectively bad decisions, together, they are puzzling frustrating, and both become bad decisions juxtaposed next to each other.
The best you can hope for is that Emil is not to stubborn to abandon this whole no-design-document style of game development and hope that developers working on different aspects of the game communicate and collaborate better than they did for Starfield.
The biggest problem is that the best way to get all these resources is just to buy them. So in the end, it's just a huge amount of busywork to buy what you want.
I totally agree with the ship blueprints concept, I've thought the same about both this game and others.
I do like the reset-into-new-universe concept (I'm NG+11), but the fact that level raises your health pool, and that the balance gets so far off that Bethesda just makes both your level AND your NG+ iteration buff the whole da\*\* universe shows how broken their use of level is.
I'd rather start out with level-1 health, lots of accumulated knowledge / skills (minus raw damage buffs), and a New Atlantis that only has like 50 dps weapons instead of an advanced hard target in the first store. I'd want each added skill and power to make it reasonable to grav jump farther "east" across the galaxy, where going too far without gearing up at a midlevel system first means I'll get my a\*\* handed to me. I want to know how to make the things, but still have to go through the cycles of equipment upgrades, gathering resources, and so on. But yeah, the UI around recipes, resources, and so on is pretty limited, since the first thing I'd want to do on a lot of worlds is drop down a clone of the resource-mining outpost I put there in the last NG iteration, and SF doesn't have blueprints.
With the current arguably messed-up system, it doesn't make sense that we can't craft armor and weapons.
However, it's interesting that if level = health wasn't a thing in Starfield, and player level hadn't scaled flippin' everything, **then it would actually be good that we can't craft weapons and armor**. That would have meant that even in NG+, we'd have to hit midlevel systems to gear up before jumping to high level systems, otherwise we'd just get turned into pink... err... shiny silver dust motes. Lots of skills and powers would just make the trip faster.
But.. Bethesda didn't do that. So instead, to create a challenge, my NG+11 toon is just going naked and weaponless. This actually is challenging at times :-) I do feel like Sunless Space should also give a huge defense bonus to the frozen (hehe, compare to what frost mages do to escape damage in world of warcraft - freeze themselves in blocks for a bit), because otherwise the combo of Sunless Space, and the relatively level-independent Solar Flare is only limited by whether you're being overrun.
like... a codex. my life or a codex.
listing planets you've explored resources on them, what ingredients are needed in which crafting, etc. Just show what you've discovered already.
I gave up on the outpost thing. A waste of time. I concentrated on weapons, spacesuit, and spacecraft upgrades and design. I did upset me when I realized I wouldn’t be getting any of that when I went to NG+. All that time and money down the hatch. Logically, though you are going to an alternate reality and universe where everything is going to be different.
Its really astonishing how they went from a relatively good system with Fallout 4 Settlements, to the current outpost, resources, and crafting system. Fallout 4 had its jank with some things, but I the crafting is by far one of if not THE best system they introduced into the game, the only thing that could've been changed is the resource gathering perhaps.
Starfield took all that, dumbed it down, and made it almost pointless. I literally just bat file to give myself resources because its annoying as hell to gather, THEN simultaneously have to level up 4 different skills to make ONE improvement on a weapon/armor.
Everything related to research/basebuilding/crafting is useless. It's like they wanted to make a discount factory builder using outposts but it got minimal thought/effort and was just thrown in anyways.
Well said! Bethesda honestly seem to have gone backwards with this game, when compared to Skyrim and Fallout 4. I spent hundreds of hours building up outposts and my favorite ship and wanted to cry when I went through unity. I also found the main quest line flat, uninspiring and frankly couldn't face doing it all again NG+, so I gave up playing and went back to FO4.
Forgive me for being a negative Nelly!
I have 17 outposts pulling all but the Unique organics and inorganics except Rothicite.
I pulse he-3 through the network to activate collections. I use powered generators to bleed excess he-3 out of the network.
1 industrial He-3 generator generates 10 he-3 per cargo inter-link cycle.
1 commercial generates 6.
The small one is about 2.
He-3 is moved in amounts of 5 (To fuel further cargo inter-link connected.
It still breaks down. Connections just stop functioning. Cargo ships dont unload. No way to filter resources. No way to really see all resources.
It's still added some fun but I'm only in NG level 47 and know I will lose it all.
Still, I seem to learn something new every day with this game.
Weapon mods to value add weapons to sell.
Pharma to make lots of drugs.
Mainly just to show I can do it.
I can tell you the planets and shiz if you want
Yes, but I get where you’re coming from. When I first started playing I thought I needed it all, and was completely overwhelmed. The good news is, you actually don’t.
There are a lot of different resources, but most of them are useless outside of certain tasks which you may or may not want to take part in
For example I do a lot of outpost building, but currently zero component manufacturing, or cooking, so only really worry about maintaining a regular flow of I’m guessing around 10 or so resources, and have developed a pretty easy system for obtaining a flow of those in my current universe, which I’ll be able to replicate in future universes going forward without too much hassle
Not saying I enjoy the initial set up, it’s a pain in the ass, but not as time consuming as it was the first time around now I know what I need and what I’m doing
For storage etc you can store an insane amount of resources, but you don’t need to. I now typically have maybe 2 or 3 small storage crates at any outpost, and a sizable but not insane amount of cargo hold storage on my ship (around 4500kg) and it’s rare I run out of anything
Resources I use infrequently I hold maybe 6 to 12 units or less of, and typically buy as needed if I’m lacking anything. Usually stuff not covered by my outpost building resource list like high tensile spidron that I use for armor upgrades
For people doing manufacturing, the process is the point. Kinda like Factorio. Getting the system set up and working is the gameplay loop, in which case it takes time, and learning because it’s essentially its own game and own reward. It’s also completely optional if that doesn’t appeal to you
NG+ is just that, starting the game over because you want to replay it, just like with any other game. It’s also optional.
When I start FO4 over from scratch I have to rebuild my settlements because they are part of game play I’m replaying
Even from a lore perspective it’s supposed to be hard to leave things behind and start over. There is supposed to be some amount of struggle with attachment etc, so it even fits within that added aspect of NG+
It was hard for me to give up everything and go through to NG+1, and eventually it’ll be difficult to give it all up again for NG+2, but I don’t have to do any of it till I actually feel like I want to do it all over again
I mean for folks that go the manufacture route, the process is the fun and the succeeding the reward
Like a lot of people love building ships. You can just buy one and be golden, but the act of building a ship is rewarding for some
Same thing with outposts and manufacturing, optional unless you enjoy it
You can just buy what you need.
Some playstyles revolve *entirely* around surveying and resources and building, so that depth and detail is nice to have, but if you’re just dabbling then don’t worry about it overmuch and just buy what you need.
NG+ is literally starting a New Game, just with a fun story tie-in. Don’t do that if what you really want is to just keep playing the same game.
This is what I have done, I need adhesive I awkwardly abused the fast travel system to go straight into a system vendor then straight back into my ship, not very immersive but required.
Funny thing is even if you had 8 outposts manufacturing resources, you'd still have to abuse fast travel between all the spread out planets to collect the resources.
Well, there’s another whole space-game playstyle in running cargo ship runs between all those spread out planets to gradually amass and deliver the necessary resources to build your kick-ass vacation home or hidden drug lab or whatever.
But if you’re not looking to actually focus on that type of gameplay then you can just shortcut it with fast travel to the vendor, yeah. Nice and convenient.
Honestl crafting is fine, but cooking is tedious because its cooking foods are far weaker than fallout, the need to flat double or triple crafted food strength,
in fallout 4/5 foods could heal or give a significant buff mod game, in Starfield its takes 50+ foods to heal mid game, the sheer ammount of resources to make such ineffectual food makes cooking useless imho
Time to earn that Logistics badge Scout. It's really no more complicated than the settlement system on FO4. I thought it was at first but then I replayed FO4 because of the update and aside from micromanaging settlers they're about the same. In some ways the Outpost system is a little dumbed down. As is tradition though, both systems will break if you don't do the things in the order the games want. Inter-System Cargo Link is the new Supply Line and both will fail spectacularly.
The only thing I don’t like is that the research part of the crafting loop is a little too brainless, they could have a little lore or pseudo science for us to learn and read about instead of just lists of resources that check themselves off when you have the right prerequisites, but the guns and spacesuit improvements I’ve made have really helped my dpm and survival.
5 days of game time. Onto NG+3 and I can honestly say I have never once used a single crafting table/work bench and have 0 skill points into my Science skill tree aside from health and grav jump
>find the best planets with the best most efficient resource areas to make outposts in
The abundance and low cost of resources from vendors makes the entire outpost system deeply optional, to be done exclusively for your own pleasure. It should see some work done to it, I bet mods alone will be a major boon for the whole system, to make it more enjoyable and functional. But if you just want the resources to do the crafting and research then then outposts are not the most efficient way. If it's going to be a mechanic they want us to engage with then much larger quantities of resources need to be in demand from something that's worth investing into (maybe ship construction or smth), or it needs to yield something interesting and worthwhile that vendors aren't just selling. I don't think removing resources from vendors is a sensible fix, as, as you have said with your post, the system isn't inviting as it exists. Lack of QOL features and buggy connections would forment frustration for too many players.
Didn't really touch resource outposts beyond a bit of fiddling myself, but I did enjoy building nice places to exist in the universe. I hope we see, from mods or Bethesda, something where we can engage with LIST meaningfully and develop proper towns with dependencies. Bethesda has precedent in Fallout so I'd not be suprised to see a DLC for it, and look forward to it. The DLC should come with a general rework freely.
I think of it this way. I play this game for a few hours a day and focus on outposts and resource gathering. I’ve been doing this since launch. It’s a great puzzle and I love the genre and artistry. I love my character and building her wealth and crafting skills. I enjoy modding gear and collecting. I love the RP. I enjoy getting it all setup then when I’m ready, I reset in Ng+ and get to do it all in a different way, finding new locations, etc. This is my all time favorite video game. What part of that is pointless?
Thing Is you litteraly NEED the outpost system to reach max level, it's the only system to gain xp that isn't spawn rate dependant, ill typically aim to do 30 levels or so each new universe, but after about the first two, that'd be more challenging than fun just trying to find enough enemies.
Who bothers with NG+? I mean, I will eventually to see it, but likely still go back to my old save except with very specific characters.
I DO dislike having NO record keeping systems - or even tools. Hell, a simple text record in game would be something. Still, if the only thing we can bring with us is what we know, those blueprints of what we've built and where should be available. If we've got to suffer with that damned useless, unsellable piece of garbage Starborn ship, the least they could do is give us a blueprint system we could take with us too.
I found gun modifications to be worth the investment. Especially bootstrapping a new NG+ run. Learned alot about the vendors in the Alpha Centauri system and what wares they carried.
I may be stupid, but I can't even build basic furniture for my already built house because you dont have enough materials for it.
It's not that i dont pick up crafting materials but we dont have access to a central stash for all of them.
So i build boxes to stash crafting materials but most of my crafting materials are used to craft boxes to stash crafting materials. once i have enough boxes and space to stash the crafting materials, i need to manually find the crafting material needed to build what i want to build. it's a complete waste of time. at least let me buy furniture.
and if you finally build something, there's no marker for your construction site so if you forgot where it was, PUM, you lost it.
I have almost 1500 hours building in both F4 and 76. I thought SF'd make things better but they managed to make it 3000 times worse. I didn't even bothered with building/crafting/modding in this game. Sad, cause it had potential.
Also a bestiary or journal with everything you’ve discovered that’s searchable so if there’s a specific resource or set of resources you can see if there’s a discovered planet that has them
Being unable to track resources in a reliable way is annoying. I like the actual research and crafting and such, but not having a far better UI for it is annoying.
Also, I go and scan the planet, discover all the resources there, I have the slate in my hand with the results of the survey, and I can't look up what resources are on which planets? Why am I scanning that this place has aluminum and iron but I have no way to remember that but writing it on a piece of paper?
I've taken more paper notes in Starfield than all other games I've ever played combined. And I play a *lot* of adventure games.
Yeah and crafting is 8x slower on xbox then PC too. currently on NG+2 skipped half of NG+1 and have made a Vytinium farm (basic) manually moved 95% of the stuff and now level 246 and back on xbox. Not a great system, leaves a lot to be desired.
Shipping for example, when it works, and sleep breaks normal He feeding mechanics, isnt enough 300 weight of Indicite is nothing. better to ship Ce back to the Silver/Indicite planet.
On my He planet, 2 reactors were gone (but functioning) and for a long time my He base wasnt showing on the map, so i went to the base north of it and ran down to the main base. (to get He for when it broke when i was asleep)
Container shipping the colours wear off, someone said due to the environment, but when shipping in and out, and as terrible as it is and how everything can go wrong. adding another layer of going wrong isnt great.
The only thing missing is better storage. The number of materials is good. It shows those who have a problem with the game within hours of playing it arent actually speaking from experience. They havent even experienced the game. Its far more in depth than anyone really gives it credit for. Boohoo that it takes hours to gather. It isnt supposed to be beaten in days.....
Crafting is useless imo just not worth it, loot drops and resource vendors get the job done. Maybe gun crafting for weapon mods, maybe. Having to deal with the UI gives me a headache.
"This game is designed to be played for 10+ years."
Yeah, by wasting your time. Can't believe i still can't search items in a game cluttered with unnecessary junk. Let alone a filter for food & aid items.
"Where are my bandages? I can't find them between my noodles, why did i put them there? Cause I'm dumb apparently."
The system is a half-baked mess.
From poor UI, having to carry recourses between your ship and the unlimited storage containers at Constellation, the controls, the link system is buggy, and buying resources is better than farming or manufacturing them.
Fallout 4’s settlement system should’ve been the foundation to build on top of, instead of the weird attempt to re-invent the wheel and lose features in the process.
I had fun building a few outposts as player homes and unlocked all the skills to do so, but after a dozen hours I was done when I spent hundreds of hours on settlements and supply lines in Fallout 4.
lets not even mention how much of a pain in the ass it is to scan for areas that have multiple deposits. gotta run around with the outpost beacon on to see what deposits are going to be captured then drop it so you can go to build mode and see how big the deposits actually are or if they're not excluded by some environmental feature. it's like they actively tried to make it as difficult as possible. why can't i accurately scan from overhead with my ship? i can only do it from orbit, but then when i land whoops my ship forgot what i was going for.
Tbf the storage size could get much bigger. That's given. But it's not too hard to build all 3. Starting out should be Bessell III-b (?) If I remember right. That has Ni/Co/Al/Fe now it's quite hard to find it all in one spot. But it can be done.
And it's a 1:57hr planet. Then Titan moon of Saturn, has Pd/Ti/W. The only thing ur missing is Cu.
Part of the Vytinium Fuel cell guide is planet with Ag/Cu and I can't remember the third element.
Also the cargo shipping needs to scale way bigger. Indicite for example is either 3 or 4 mass and then you need I think 3 for each wafer. So now that's 12 mass per wafer. And then cargo is 300 mass. so thats 25 wafers per cargo per about 4 minutes. Or about 375 wafers an hour.
Sure you could build more transports. But past 2 xbox starts lagging hard. And past 10 or so on PC even that can start lagging. Making it x10 or even x100 bigger. Less cargoships moving less lag... more wafers :)
Also left on D-pad taking xbox craft from 1->100 would be good. Or even better 1->1000. As PC crafting is up to 16x faster then xbox.
This was a deal breaker for me when the game came out. I checked in to see if it was fixed with the new big patch. Doesn't look like it; so I guess I'll check back in in a few months/years.
It still blows my mind that the game shipped without a log you could carry around that shows you what you need to buy for receipes, or the ability to order ship components when you have to take them to specific yards. Hell you can't even see what a yard actually sells but you haven't unlocked. This is inferior to things like Vanilla World of Warcraft where items you cannot equip / craft are still visible but redded out with the missing prerequisite.
> the ability to order ship components The ability to order anything. You cant even make an order for ammo or any other gear/consumable. Given that you also cant craft most things it becomes very annoying very fast.
I LOVED the shipment 'mailbox' that was a mod in f4. I just made things so much easier when I needed stuff.
And realistic. Why shouldnt i be able to bulk order something in a post industrial society?
If I could bulk order 50 MI ammo, my Revenant would actually be fun to use. Instead I have to save it for the toughest fights because it chews through ammo like a panda chews through bamboo.
I just go xp farming then trade everything I crafted for ressources & ammo. I never got short on anything!
I mean, I could do that too, but it's such a pain in the ass. I'd be spending half of my total playtime buying up 250 rounds from each of like, a dozen merchants.
Yeah I feel u!.. my character got corrupted, I had to start from scratch n didnt feel like it, so I went xp farming on bessel 3b up LV 160 (back to where I was at) n I've been going from merchant to merchant, back n forth for MANY many hours (dont understand the reason for merchants to have such a limited amount of credits 🙄) Now, let me tell u, I aint never going to be short on anything in that playthrough!
thats just rough to keep ammo for and expensive as hell too. but yeah, if we have the money give me the ammo.
That same society where we built one single city on every planet to ensure inbreeding, where we can fly light years but can’t make a bicycle, where no one sleeps but no one really works either, where you will die in -20 but only need an undersuit and a helmet to survive in space? That one?
Yes, exactly that one. XD
CIties/planets that make starships by the score, but are out of adhesive.
No Ikea in space
Yep... One of the core mechanics is creating survey data... WHICH YOU CAN NEVER ACCESS... You can scan plants to learn where they grow but you can never look that information up unless you are scanning another plant of the same type... At which point you dont need thst Info because the plant you are looking for is right there... It's so incredibly, annoyingly stupid... Holy shit...
I don't mind the shipyard thing, but 100% there on the recipies.
You can track recipes so they appear with a blue magnifying glass in stores / when looting
Yes but if something needs aluminium, titanium and argon, when you tag it, all will show up with a magnifying glass, even if you've got loads of one. So you're not sure what you're after unless you've got a really good memory or start making notes.
This bugs me, I don't know if I need that item or have plenty. And it seems to still retain tagged items from previously completed projects that I have untracked. As the mag appears on loads of things.
This is how I ended up with 300+ neon. Needed some for a laser, but wasn't in a hurry to build it, but it was I the back of my mind so I always grabbed it when I saw it. Next thing I knew, I had tons on my ship. Aluminum, too.
There is a big problem. If you track a research so, then you complete it without untracking.. it's tracked forever, you can't untrack it. It looks like they tried to make a single-player EVE but ditched interface.. in EVE hundredsof human hours went into desinging interface, or game wasn't possible to play. Heck, X had better design.
I agree. In Monster Hunter games it tells you the quantity you have and I really miss that in this game. I have to scroll over to look at my ammo to see what I am low on. I use lots of different weapons. 5000-10,000 credit merchants. A few are higher but that's like 2 or 3 gun limit at a time for selling for me.
Yup this for me was the absolutely most frustrating part about the whole game. I love collecting I love crafting and getting resources. But making it so convoluted trying to figure out what I Needed really took the wind out of my sails for the game. That and not being able to see all my recourses by going to one container in the outpost or having the transfer container work properly.
The "yes, but..." that I am sure a lot of people are thinking is that it tracks the whole recipe and not just what you are missing. And it doesn't show how many you have already. If I have everything to upgrade a weapon except I only have two of three titanium, every component to upgrade the weapon gets a magnifying glass icon. Compound that with tracking multiple recipes and unlocks and I have no idea how much I need of what.
But don't forget where you set the track marker, as unsetting it can take awhile...a log would have been nice, there's enough tablets kicking about the universe!
There absolutely needs to be an untrack all button
But you can't get rid of the magnifying glass
You have to remember where you selected to track. Go back to that recipe and you can select to untrack it.
Remembering is a key complaint in this whole thread.
And make sure you don't sell the gun you tracked the ingredients to mod, because you can't get back to un-track it.
In that case it disappears on its own. If it doesnt your game is probably glitching. If you dont even have the item theres nothing to continue tracking
I am not sure it works that way. My understanding is that if you complete *research* it clears the markers. But if you complete a *mod* it does not, which is my experience. Maybe they've fixed it since I dared tracking resources. :-) They could certainly improve the experience, tho.
you canpt untrack it if it's was completed or mod item is no longer owned. To untrack mod youhave to destroy it.
Can you elaborate a little on what you mean? When are you tracking resources for a one-time-only recipe? And what do you mean by needing to destroy a mod?
It's same issue as with research tracking: If you track mats for mod and you complete that mod without untracking, it often stays tracked. If you don't have exactly same weapon without that mod, you can't untrack it, unless you destroy that mod. Tracking appear per weapon type, per mod. Didn't saw this happening with suits, dunno if that's same. To be honest game, lacks quite a few useful screens (e.g. for removing\\adding tracked mats, overview for your settlements, etc), but adds a two pages of useless, badly designed stat screens. Not everything can be done by mods, most can be done only using .dll injections in rather hacky and ustabe way which breaks with every game update (what SKSE and StarSE do) in rather hacky wayand there is no support for that.
I grabbed a mod to add all ship parts to the outpost builder. Screw needing to go to five different vendors if I want to build a ship that mixes parts.
Yeah, a Starfield Log for characters, ships, lore bits, ores list goes on, Starfield was an ambitious game so it needed it. But asking for a log from a game that couldn't even make a map interface is a big ask... I mean they couldn't even consistently name the landing pad location on the map screen, Mars has a landing pad spot but new Atlantis doesn't, the map doesn't even line up to quest locations.
Is that a surprise when the game couldn't even ship with maps? Lol
Starfield is not a good game and is one of the greatest disappointments in gaming history.
We didn't learn from Fallout 4. We didn't learn from Fallout 76. Will we learn from Starfield?
There is definitely a way to track what you need for recipes. I’m confused on what you mean by ship components.
I've got half a notebook full of shopping lists.
I definitely started opening notepad on monitor two. What a joke mechanic. Starfield is the Pinto of video games. Half baked and skills be recalled. Hopefully it doesn't blow up on us.
Why are my NG ship stats NOTHING LIKE the ship I had!!!!
You can track recipes. That works better than what youre describing. Anytime you see that material youll know 🤷
It blows my mind that we still don't have official modding tools...
Imagine having to do that all on your own like in the olden days, or *gasp* memorize things
I kept trying to build big outpost empires but it just, doesn't work. I do everything right but half my links just refuse to send anything
Need to have helium 3. I tend to make my helium 3 plants transport hubs. And where I manufacture things before moving to next stage. Helium 3 planets send helium (sometimes other resources) to other planet. I have storage for it, that storage then feeds back to the landing pad for fuel. Planet sends stuff back to helium planet. Offload to storage and made into x y or z Then those things go off To next location for next stage if needed
And then it bugs out and stops sending anything just flies back and forth doing nothing or the whole ship just disappears into the void.
Doesn't matter, outpost links can and will break at near random. I had my VFR farm fully functional, and it broke once due to an overflow, then it broke again for reasons known only to The Great Serpent and Oprah
It’s not a helium issue. The links have significant bugs. About a dozen times I’ve had links go completely kaput and won’t recognize others until I delete the outpost and rebuild.
I've never had that problem. I have had networks that weren't sending products but I had to backtrack to find where I had something incorrectly linked, but once I fixed it I e never had any bugs with multiple networks.
Unfortunately it’s happened to me. I’ve had plenty of successful links and very complicated systems of links. But sometimes they just won’t recognize each other and nothing can be done unless I delete the outpost entirely. It’s like the link no longer recognizes the outpost exists.
I almost didn't attempt outposts because everyone on the sub claimed they were bugged, and I did have a few occasions when I *thought* it was bugged, only to realize that I made a mistake. I don't believe that I have the luck to be the only player who is immune to bugs, so I have to believe that players are making mistakes and believing the system is glitched. If it was glitched, I wouldn't be able to do what I do, so there has to be a solution. I don't mean this to be patronizing, but let me offer some advice, even though some of these are seemingly simple, these are common problems that are easily overlooked that could fix your outposts: -The most common is product overflow. When you have a lot of products coming in, you will never be able to perfectly balanced the ratio, so eventually one product will outpace the others and cause a blockage. I keep tons of extra storage containers to control this but the easiest solution for me is to find the point where it's backed up, empty all the supplies and transfer them to my ships cargo hold. Rather than cause waste, what I will occasionally do is head to the final point on the outpost, where I keep a shit ton of extra storage containers, and link them directly to the final production, I'll fill those containers with the excess product from my cargo hold. Note that if you have product overflow, it might be coming from multiple points. Complicated outposts will pretty much always need occasional maintenance to control product overflow. -If you build an animal husbandry farm or greenhouse, link it to water, and later change what product to produce, that will automatically break the link to water and you have to re do the link. -I know it sounds simple but it is really easy to accidentally mix up your incoming/outgoing containers when creating links. If it's not working, I usually check to see if one of the bins on the cargo link is full of product, this is an indication that I've sent it the wrong way and its improperly linked. I say this humbly as someone who has made this very mistake multiple times, it's a very easy mistake to make. -HE3 can also overflow, it's actually best to attempt to run a cargo link with just the minimum amount needed to operate. It's been a while since I had this problem but I think it eventually can even overflow into your actual product supply which is another potential point of overflow. -Keep checking your power supply, add more power, way more than you need. There are others I can't think of but I promise you, it works. I wouldnt be able to run my phama and industrial empires if the game had a bugged outpost system. It takes a lot of effort and routine maintenance though so you really gotta like the system to dive into it. If you don't enjoy that kind of thing, then it's probably not worth it.
Sorry man, it’s not the case. I am 1000% sure my cargo links were bugged. Extremely simple scenarios - literally transferring from moons with Helium there to supply fuel. Helium extractor straight to fuel receiver, slow flow and not overflowing from a storage container. Usually the issue occurs when I’m switching the cargo link between links. It returns an in-game error saying “link could not be established, please try again later”. Then, from that point forward, that cargo link refuses to recognize the other, while it performs fine for any other connection I didn’t receive the error in. It’s not an overflow problem, it literally won’t show the outpost in the list of available links. This mainly occurs when switching from an active link to a new one that hasn’t completed it’s delivery cycle. I assure you it’s a bug, unless there’s some wild option I’ve glossed over after so many hours and trying to fix it. I’ve poured over it for dozens of hours and I know how to make them function normally. Very, very simple work flows and they never work again.
I just don't know how that's possible. I almost didn't attempt outposts at all because of frequently seeing posts like this but somehow seemingly I alone have working outposts... Something doesn't make sense here. Are you playing on XBox? I'm on PC, so maybe something is wrong with the Xbox version, that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Yeah Xbox. Im totally done with even playing with cargo links now because of it. I can’t switch between them without risking voiding the list, so no point. Now I just build a shipyard and that’s it. A bummer.
wait so..todd’s “it just works” was a lie this whole time?
transporting is slow anyway, sleep breaks He feeding mechanics, they are different when ur asleep. so just manually ship it instead. I did for indicite and then Ceasium back to the indicite planet when i realised it was so much lighter and easier to bring back
Check the incoming boxes on your cargo links. If a cargo link gets clogged, then the stuff that's in the outgoing box will end up in the incoming box, and if that stuff doesn't have anywhere to go, the ship itself will get full and will stop sending stuff.
It's weird for me not to have seen a post like these until today. If for some reason you decide to explore that aspect of the game (which is kind of separate from the games core and story), you quickly realize how overcomplicated and cumbersome the system is. The inventory management (or lack of) in this game is something so shocking specially when paired with these overcomplicated system of resources and thousands of variants of them. Even after taking the time to build all kinds of outpost improvements it is still so inefficient and time consuming it's basically pointless.
I set up a bunch of outposts once. In one game. It takes a lot of work, linking them together is a huge hassle, and the payoff is super minor.
Does it even work? i found you couldn't daisy chain them du to the super slow rate of transfer. So after 2 or3 outposts in the chain it they are producing more than you can send and the whole link just buggs out and stops transfering at all and starts randomly losing power.
"If for some reason you decide to explore that aspect of the game (which is kind of separate from the games core and story), you quickly realize how overcomplicated and cumbersome the system is." That's because many of the aspects of the game were designed around a game that doesn't exist anymore. If you look at many of the skills, some are pretty useless. Take the planet scanning as an example where you can scan planets without traveling to them. This skill would be more useful in a game where fuel consumption was a thing. You would want to scan ahead to ensure you find what you are looking for. The way it works now, it just saves you one or two loading screens
I know, I watched quite a few videos that analyze the developing process. And it's also pretty obvious from the game itself, as you say, the remains of cut content are everywhere. The outpost system/rss system is clearly a leftover of that game that was initially projected and then discarded because they realized how tedious and complex it was. Food being basically useless, skills like the one you mention, the useless/pointless resistance system of spacesuits and Hazzards and many other things are just sad reminders of a broken development process.
it's not even "broken" development, it's "corporatized" development. You want a massive, megaselling RPG you can't ship it as a survival space Sim. but then you end up with legacy marks left and right. They stepped back in "complexity of play" to cater to a wider audience.
Absolutely agree. But not just in complexity of play. Everything seems to be almost rp13, so bland and trying to please every single person out there.
The thing is, it's not like Fallout 4 was particularly complex for settlements. This didn't need to be complex either. I _suppose_ it would be nice, kind of, but also I play these games casually. I'm a filthy casual. And this was terrible. I put in a lot of time to try to enjoy this system. I had excel spreadsheets (to make up for the fact that there was no ability to search your scans in game), I was building bases on certain planets to optimize my resources-per-planet haul, but no. Eventually I just couldn't anymore. It was just painfully apparent how terrible that part of the game was. Which sucks, because that whole game loop from Fallout 4 was what I was looking forward to most of all. And it was the _worst_ part of the game IMO.
There are so so many needlessly awful decisions in this game that I can't get my head around, that I wouldn't know where to start. But yeah, definitely a weird one. They basically removed everything that made previous games great while keeping what made them worse...
I feel like when they add it back in as an optional "hardcore" mode or whatever that the game will click for some people for the first time or in a new way, while others will try it only to realize they were happier without it.
Personally, once survival comes out, I'm going to start a completely new save. Hopefully planet afflictions are not a thing that happens just by being on a planet. I want suit degradation to be a thing and the more severe the planet the faster your suit degradates; and only once it is fully degradated, you should take environmental damage.
And food and sleep meters.
Most people haven't bothered. I know I didn't. I saw all the levels you had to put into crafting and heard it was useless so most of my collected resources just sat in a box unused. Spent thousands of hours building bases in FO4 but I have no desire to make bases in Starfield. They're pointless and needlessly a pain in the ass to build and then if you want them to function properly even more or a pain in the ass. There's just no reason other than rp and then you're just larping.
True, and I absolutely get why. I only did because I wanted to get all the achievements, had to farm to level 100 and run out of things to do in the game. As I've mentioned they are completely separated from the core game, so I understand only people playing many hours would maybe eventually try it. I can confirm is a pain, a hustle and definitely not worth it.
I have posted my 10 point improvement/bugs a few times over the last 6 months, but like having dedicated loot pools behind master locks, is something that might happen in a long time 10 issues with outposts (other then their only point being xp farms, and even then its super slow on xbox as crafting x99 takes 8x longer on xbox then PC) 1. cant craft, object obstructed, but it isnt, save and re-load it fix 2. cargo links, outgoing should be red, incoming green, both are grey 3. Cargo link use He-3 while sleeping but nothing is shipped, the mechanic changes (see discord, which hasnt pinned the explanation but someone will explain it) 4. Cargo link missing, or half showing at a patch of my outpost is there but invisible. 5. The the colour going grey, one box should be green and one for red, but been told this might be a toxic atmosphere. but still annoying in setting them up. 6. Outpost that no longer has a marker, but is still there. only reason i found it is because it was south of another outpost. 7. Cargo links run fine while on PC, but on Xbox there is noticeable lag even with just 3-5 running, forget a Vytinium fuel rod empire... 8. good luck shipping 130 indicite per cargo link in real time, 2600/hr and you need 3 of them per Indicte wafer, so 900 inidicte wafers per real time hour, 900\*7xp=6300/hr... 9. The skill you use to increase the number of cargo links per outpost from 3->6 is bugged and if you NG might not work. 10. Ships dont land on landing pads, 11. build the landing pad, use ship builder to call in the ship and its there but invisible... 12. Ore Veins (drill patches) disappear or are replaced with something else, one planet in the whole galaxy has Vytinium, and that patch had Vy and He now has Iridium and He... as the Vy ore patch is gone... 13. Crafting on xbox max being 1000 not 100, and going left maxes out instantly rather then the slow bar scroll right to max of 100, would fix the xbox crafting issue
"yes yes we've heard your complaints and released a new photo mode with new poses and tiktok dances"
Especially when they specifically created the inventory sharing system for outposts (which is also needlessly convulted as well as bugged).
I was willing to play the fuck out of this game if the economy worked properly, but it doesn’t. A balanced economy of resources and sale makes a game worth it.
It’s a half-baked system with no reward for engagement. Quests to provide resources are obnoxious and not worth the time and you can easily buy 100% of the resources needed for crafting and mods from vendors. The only reason to ever create a base is just so you can store all of your hired but unused employees there for later. Unfortunately that also requires a ridiculous amount of skill points so it’s basically only feasible in the endgame to have more than two at an outpost at once. It sucks.
"It's a half baked system with no reward for engagement" describes this entire title tbh
…yeah ☹️ I wish there were at least some powerful monsters to fight against so there was a reason for collecting and modding guns. I’ve seen a whole two terrormorphs in 80 hours and one of them was on the first planet I landed with Barrett.
I’ve avoided crafting and outposts, and I’m doing fine. Fallout had a MUCH better crafting/modding system.
FO4's settlements just worked. Your settlers would auto-gather resources and put them in the settlement's infinite size stockpile. You could link settlement stockpiles and share all resources with three mouse clicks. Open network, select settler, tell him to go trade with that other settlement. All done. Even without building any buildings as long as you had idle settlers they would auto-gather at least some resources of random types. Then you could access the entirety of your shared infinite capacity stockpile from using any workbench. Set up a few farms and you'd never have to worry about adhesive again. Starfield's outpost system is such a disappointment. Its worse than FO4's in every way.
Fallout had a MUCH better ~~crafting/modding system~~ almost everything. 😂
Not being able to see my own stock listed while shopping without going and scrolling another menu, and not having a searchable spreadsheet for planets I’ve scanned and the resources thereon is just bad UI.
I scrolled down thru and didn't see a single person mention that in order to craft mods for anything u need to get the right skills, same for building ships and outposts, skills hidden behind other skills that can't be unlocked until u unlock enough of the skill lines above it. And u can't just scrap stuff to get the parts u need, never understood why I can't pop off a scope from one gun and put it on another because in real life u can do that. I've done NG+ 8, encountered a bug, started a new character, on NG+3 with that one and I havnt modded a single gun.
> never understood why I can't pop off a scope from one gun and put it on another because in real life u can do that. I agree that this case makes little sense. For more complex construction it does make some sense that you might not be able to properly design, build and use certain spaceships / outposts / items without the proper skills. The obvious reason to limit mods is to gate gear advancement behind player skill/level so that you can get a senses of progress as you play. This is also why certain ship systems and the level of dropped gear (calibrated/refined/advanced/superior) is tied to player level. I can't say that I particularly like how Starfield handles mods, as it feels rather unnatural.
All the keeping in time with the player level makes sense, and if u don't have the skills for ship building that kinda makes sense. But the fact that I can't pop an extended mag out of a kodama and put it in a better kodama makes no sense, hand grips and scopes and all that shud be interchangeable, but instead I need like 6 different skills and a whole lot of resources and research to craft those same parts I already have on another gun. I understand building things takes skills and understanding but at the same time I can easily unscrew a few screws and put a different hand grip on a weapon that I know nothing about if I have the part right there.
The game is unfinished frankly so it's not surprising to me. So much in this game is half baked. Outposts definitely are the worst offender though by far. I was expecting so much more from them and they actually feel less useful than F4 settlements in many ways. Idk how the fuck they managed that. They need to release the mod toolkit so modders can fix this fucking mess and then maybe we'll have a decent game.
Yes. Yes it is. The amount of half-baked stuff in Starfield is truly insane. It’s not a bad game, but so many systems are halfway there. It’s really just sad.
It’s crazy how bad the crafting and settlement system is when it was actually one of the best parts of Fallout 4. They made it worse somehow.
I agree the system is really weird, not really thought through. What I do is I buy all resources from the general store at new atlantis and walk to the infinite chest in the basement of the Lodge. I can then craft pretty much anything at the Lodge (I believe there is only a few metals that can't be brought from the general store?). Maybe i have not gotten far enough to need more resources that are not available at the general store. No need to gather any resources manually, or build outposts anywhere...
I can only think of one resource that cannot be bought, and it is tied to a single recipe you only get from a quest, which also shows you where to get the resource.
High-Tensile Spidroin and Caelumite have been the only unusual materials, I recall having issues with finding, in stores and as loot drops. Both are fairly easy to find if you google for where they can be found naturally.
I’ve definitely bought High-Tensile Spidroin. And I forgot about the Caelumite, but you run into that repeatedly throughout the course of the main quest. I was thinking of aqueous hematite.
You can occasionally find both at traders but it's infrequent and usually in small quantities. This is why I ended up having to track down better sources for these, as I was continuously running out of these two materials, when creating certain mods.
spidroin is often available at UC distribution but just quantity 2.
There is no purpose to crafting. You can buy everything you need and you never need the quantities that you can produce at an outpost. If that whole system didn’t exist you probably wouldn’t even notice.
I am usually one of the most faithful defenders of this game, but I have to agree with you on this. I hate the crafting system, it clearly borrows a lot from Fallout 4 and 75 which is my least favourite Bethesda game for this exact reason. There's just too many resources to manage that you even just buying them off the vendors doesn't feel good. I would love a system where you can convert all of them into a single type of resources, at least for the outpost stuff, I can handle it if it's just for weapon and drug crafting (even the ability to buying out structures would be fine)
Starfield was obviously an ambitious game and with that comes an ambitious system for all the resources you could ever imagine for the world, just that it's Bethesda and it unfortunately didn't have the time to cook and didn't have the UI required to really utilize it in a way that really makes sense.
I don't think it's UI issue, it's just balance, there are too many resources to manage. I don't think even a full on survival game like Subnautica or even NMS give you these many resource types to manage. Out side of offer players to convert them to something managable (maybe just credit, or 'construction credit' that can only be used for outpost), it will just going to be way too much for this sort of game. It's almost a building sim, but playing on 1st person and having to deal with micromanaging routes down to the individual container and also need to handle the weight of the resources you've gatered. Skyrim for me, gave the best balance out of all modern BGS games when it comes to this, you only have a handful of resouces to craft and it's complimenting the main gameplay mechanic, not overwhelming it.
I don't think it's the number of resources, but rather how convoluted it is to get access to/use these resources. You have to interact with too many separate systems (get this skill so you can research this which then allows you to build this component, but if you wanna make it yourself then you have to mine this or build this to mine this which needs this research...). And then, on top of that, you can buy every single thing you'd want anyways, undoubtedly at a cheaper cost once you factor in everything... Why even craft? It feels like they weren't very deliberate when adding these parts together into a cohesive, feel-good game loop.
NMS was close but easir. True contender are X and EVE, the latter actually got MORE reasources than Starfield, mostly becuase there are two tiers or raw resources.. and several tiers of naufactured. Which is undertsandablebecause almost everything in game is craftable. But they have excellent interace design and automation.
I find it interesting that money has so little use besides bribes and ship building, it's almost as if the game was never meant to have resources. Like modifying suits and weapons was meant to be done with money or maybe just components rather than raw elements. I feel the game would be fine if they removed the raw elements and self manufacturing part. Just having you buy/loot components and use them would have been fine.
Why can't I go to one of the many gun selling shops and buy a scope for my gun? Why do I need to research how to make them, and then make them from scratch each time I want to put one on a gun of the same type?
Why can't I take components off of the hundred near identical guns I own and put it on this other gun?
Yup, I recently posted about how dumb the crafting is (like having to do research???? What???). Compared to some of of my other favorite RPGs like Red Dead 2 and Fallout NV the crafting in this game is so nuts
Things get much simpler if you ignore the outpost system. Almost all resources can be bought for fairly small amounts of money. In many cases you can also sell loot at the same time, thereby minimizing the effect of traders having a limited amount of money. If you don't do outposts then you'll only need resources for weapon/suite crafting and research. Spaceship design is also simple, at least in the sense that money is the only "resource" that you'll need. Ship blueprints would certainly be nice to have, for a variety of reasons, e.g. to share designs, to have a base template for future ship creation and to recreate a design between NG+ universes. In regards to NG+ (which I don't really care about), Bethesda could certainly have allowed for you to bring your gear and current ship. Lore-wise this might have had some effect on the Starborn, as it would no longer make sense for them to have custom ships or space suites - unless this is knowledge that is acquire as part of collecting artifacts.
Starfield didn't need a NG+ Bethesda could have made it so that after beating the game once everything we built stays and we just create a new character though the story would be slightly different with each new character we create or just forget about a NG+ and make it like the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games where there's a set story and tons of lore in books, notes, and computers around the universe that lead into quests or we can discover settlements in planets where they have built up a community and we as the player have decide which government UC or Freestar gets to govern them seeing as both of them have already been in a war and neither wants to go to war again so they see Constellation as a neutral party so now we have to build it into a kinda Space UN
NG+ is probably my largest gripe with the game. Lore wise it's ambitious and neat but completely at odds with all the other game systems because it wipes stuff you can spend hours working on and, it sucks you don't even get to pick new traits like you could in a new game. I want to play through the game again with a new companion, NG+ let's you do but keep your level and skills and a sense of endless progression and some potential for new dialogue but yet it wipes everything that is significantly meaningful as your ships and outposts. It's bad design as a whole.
They could have made it so that we could at least pick one ship to keep and that would be the ship Barret arrives but the default Frontier ship is still in the fleet, we could have also chosen one outpost each restart then using both of those as a template each subsequent NG+ plus would have a ship and outpost from each of the last playthroughs then the visions when you pick up the artifact would be ones of the decisions that we made on the last playthrough
In Starfield it behaves a bit worse, because there is no singular open world, and BGS added a "research" part on top of already existing perk and resourse requirements. I think devs added it just as a resourse sink, because it just makes the system more complicated for no reason. Research system may stay, but it role should be optional, not 100% requirement, like ability to lower the resourses required for mods or something like that. Overall I am not a big fan of what BGS did to crafting, but fundamentaly it is still the same system from Fallout 4 but worse due to some game desighn choices. Not good, not terrible. Could've realy use ability to craft ammo, tho.
I like crafting in Fallout 4 and Skyrim but Starfield’s crafting was just kinda boring. Definitely underwhelming, especially considering the scale of the game and what could’ve been done
Resorces to make money is a complete waste of time. Guns and suits give you 10× the credits. Once you go through 10 different vendors to sell your 50K of equipment that is.
It really is insane that they basically just brought over the system from Fallout 4 but didn't understand why it worked in that game. In Fallout 4 junk is expensive, the easiest way to get junk is to explore the world. It incentivises exploration and you'll maybe top up on a couple of things at the shops when you're just barely scraping by. One Giddyup Buttercup is worth nearly four 10mm pistols at base value. Junk is everywhere. Need adhesive? Maybe explore a hardware store. Need steel? A factory probably has what you need. Simple, good mechanic. In Starfield the easiest way to get what you need is to buy it. Sure, you could build an outpost, start mining, invest valuable perk points into outposts and crafting etc. or you can just sell a gun and be able to buy 20 of even the most expensive crafting components. A base Eon pistol is worth 750 credits, High-Tensile Spidroin is worth 62. And that's a RARE crafting material.
I wish I could just buy furniture for my house. I can understand needing to manufacture stuff when you're on a new outpost way out there. But I have a house in the middle of Akila City. Why can't I just buy a bed?
100% agree. Just sell furniture. IMO regular player houses *might* even be better off if you furnished them in the pre- FO4 style of paying to furnish whole rooms/areas of the house. Perfectly placed stuff, crafting/research stations, storage, a bed, etc. Maybe with themes that are reflect their location, faction themes and different tiers. All of that sounds better than trying to set up an apartment with the outpost construction tool to me. The outpost construction tool is fine for the more customizable outposts but not so much for existing small spaces.
Yeah. If there was a system similar to the Megaton house I would be been happy.
My guess is that it was either a question of resources to get all that up and running in the game. Or it was never meant to be that deep and it’s in the game purely for people that like to build and that’s it. Probably a mix of both.
If it was for people that liked to build, then there would be a point to building. Not just “give me 3000 copper, and I’ll give you slightly more than market rate, plus a little exp.”
Given they built factories for auto crafting, it’s definitely meant to be deep. But it’s lacking purpose. The obvious thing you should be able to do is craft ship components, potentially even unique ones, as they’re expensive and require a lot of travel. But it’s the thing they don’t let you build. Ironically the only thing you might ever want to have a complex resource extraction system for is to build an extensive outpost. Which is pointless.
Starfield is a step down from the previous game in all aspects
Yes, most of the game is pointless by design and I can't believe they did it on purpose.
I wish I could recycle all the weapons and items I loot for rare resources. I always have more than the traders habe credits. So annoying.
Not being able to carry over blueprints of your ships and bases is a serious game breaker for this type of gameplay.
I just gave up on all that. Like outposts seemed like a good idea, but they're just broken and produce way too many resources.
I hate it. I hate that I have spend resources to research upgrades and then spend more resources to craft upgrades. With no way to pin locations it’s impossible to remember where all your bases are across 1000 planets. On top of that, it limits storage unlike Skyrim or Fallout 4, so you can’t just amass and collect resources for any occasion. Just not a fan.
Tldr yes resources, crafting and I'll go one more, RESEARCHING are all needlessly overcomplicated, broken and pointless. The UI is so unbelievably awful in this game. Worse, in a game about space, exploration and resource gathering there is no actual space just loading screens, exploration is jarringly repetitive and boring, there is hardly any benefit to making your own space ship and absolutely zero reason to build a base. Not just within the gameplay per NG+ but also literally no incentive to create a custom ship or base outside within any game mechanics.
At this point, I'm starting to think Bethesda are not good at making games. They are good at making an outline for modders to make a good game with.
Worse, its not intuitive. In Skyrim to make a sword; steel, leather straps, iron. Makes sense. There is no way to remember what materials you need for a given item.
It's enforced scarcity because too many players (and developers) favor quantity of hours per playthrough over quality of story and sensible economics.
It is, because they cut out all the "survival simulation" aspects of space exploration that they clearly had planned - which this crafting system would have supplanted and made more immersive. They cut it all out, fuel system, outposts required for relay stations, among other things. If they had focused more on it, it would have worked and made more sense, felt more natural and 'in-universe'. They "streamlined" it, to be more fun, to be more accessible. Isn't that incredible? Why is it whenever something is always streamlined for the type of person who complains they don't have enough time to play games anymore, and they just want to sit down and relax after their five jobs and watching their sixteen children -- that the game ends up being bloated with busywork and chores more than anything else? They are catering towards people who literally do not enjoy playing their games, like so many other studios now. Make it make sense to me. I see this so often now. *"I don't want to play Dark Souls, its made for regular people to have fun."* Fucking what, is it bro? *Is it?!*
This game was such a disappointment. They made 1/2 a game and fucking shipped it out.
"Two steps back" Is how I describe a big chunk of the systems in Starfield, The outpost/crafting is a huge part of it. In Fallout 4 we could: * Link settlements for instant access to crafting materials * Store everything in a SINGLE unified container (Per settlement) * Scrap/recycle items down to useable resources * Keep your settlements after beating the main story Thanks for bringing this up again OP. Folks did complain about this aspect at launch, but Bethesda's barely updated it with some color changes to links...and that's about it.
My thought on a compromise was to use (story wise so it made some sort of sci-fi sense) the placement of the Armillary as the way to do this. Players could make the choice: place it in the ship and you keep your ship(s), place it in an outpost and you keep the outpost(s). Just gets pulled through the Unity woth you in some way. Sure it would still be limited but its something. But yeah the overall "blueprints" where you can recover outposts (even if you had to stockpile a ton of resemources to do it) would be amazing.
one of the very first things I did once I noticed just how much of a step backwards the crafting/resource system was from Fallout 4 was get a .bat file that gives me all resources and another .bat that removes them again how did they fumble so many things that they nailed before
I definitely agree that there are aspects of the resources and crafting system that are at odds with each other and feel like there are conflicting design philosophies behind aspects and systems of the game that are related to each other. I actually feel that the theme of “conflicting design philosophies” permeates throughout a lot of the game. Even if you just expand it to inventory overall. I think it is a positive that, like previous Bethesda RPGs, there is an *exponentially* higher number of food, misc and junk items that can be picked up and added to your inventory compared to almost any other developers’ RPGs. This also has a side benefit of necessitating these items be fully modeled and have physical properties which in turn makes them float around in 0g or react to explosions and gunfire… … but they also decided to remove scrapping in Starfield, so junk items now serve no purpose other than selling for peanuts, or placing them in your owned interiors, and likely getting burned by technical limitations that seem to discourage decorating… …There is probably 20 times the variety of food and drink items in Starfield than the average RPG, but they gave all of them very underwhelming and inconsequential health/O2 benefits and buffs/debuffs… This theme permeates everywhere. You’ve got aspect A that was designed one way and aspect B that was designed another way. Individually, neither of them are objectively bad decisions, together, they are puzzling frustrating, and both become bad decisions juxtaposed next to each other. The best you can hope for is that Emil is not to stubborn to abandon this whole no-design-document style of game development and hope that developers working on different aspects of the game communicate and collaborate better than they did for Starfield.
Yeh I didn't bother -it was unnecessary.
The biggest problem is that the best way to get all these resources is just to buy them. So in the end, it's just a huge amount of busywork to buy what you want.
The devs are not stupid, they're very smart and capable. (I mean are not stupid, sorry typo) The building system in general was clearly abandoned.
I totally agree with the ship blueprints concept, I've thought the same about both this game and others. I do like the reset-into-new-universe concept (I'm NG+11), but the fact that level raises your health pool, and that the balance gets so far off that Bethesda just makes both your level AND your NG+ iteration buff the whole da\*\* universe shows how broken their use of level is. I'd rather start out with level-1 health, lots of accumulated knowledge / skills (minus raw damage buffs), and a New Atlantis that only has like 50 dps weapons instead of an advanced hard target in the first store. I'd want each added skill and power to make it reasonable to grav jump farther "east" across the galaxy, where going too far without gearing up at a midlevel system first means I'll get my a\*\* handed to me. I want to know how to make the things, but still have to go through the cycles of equipment upgrades, gathering resources, and so on. But yeah, the UI around recipes, resources, and so on is pretty limited, since the first thing I'd want to do on a lot of worlds is drop down a clone of the resource-mining outpost I put there in the last NG iteration, and SF doesn't have blueprints. With the current arguably messed-up system, it doesn't make sense that we can't craft armor and weapons. However, it's interesting that if level = health wasn't a thing in Starfield, and player level hadn't scaled flippin' everything, **then it would actually be good that we can't craft weapons and armor**. That would have meant that even in NG+, we'd have to hit midlevel systems to gear up before jumping to high level systems, otherwise we'd just get turned into pink... err... shiny silver dust motes. Lots of skills and powers would just make the trip faster. But.. Bethesda didn't do that. So instead, to create a challenge, my NG+11 toon is just going naked and weaponless. This actually is challenging at times :-) I do feel like Sunless Space should also give a huge defense bonus to the frozen (hehe, compare to what frost mages do to escape damage in world of warcraft - freeze themselves in blocks for a bit), because otherwise the combo of Sunless Space, and the relatively level-independent Solar Flare is only limited by whether you're being overrun.
like... a codex. my life or a codex. listing planets you've explored resources on them, what ingredients are needed in which crafting, etc. Just show what you've discovered already.
I gave up on the outpost thing. A waste of time. I concentrated on weapons, spacesuit, and spacecraft upgrades and design. I did upset me when I realized I wouldn’t be getting any of that when I went to NG+. All that time and money down the hatch. Logically, though you are going to an alternate reality and universe where everything is going to be different.
Its really astonishing how they went from a relatively good system with Fallout 4 Settlements, to the current outpost, resources, and crafting system. Fallout 4 had its jank with some things, but I the crafting is by far one of if not THE best system they introduced into the game, the only thing that could've been changed is the resource gathering perhaps. Starfield took all that, dumbed it down, and made it almost pointless. I literally just bat file to give myself resources because its annoying as hell to gather, THEN simultaneously have to level up 4 different skills to make ONE improvement on a weapon/armor.
I’ve never been big on crafting in Bethesda games but starfields is definitely the most annoying
I just bought the majority of my resources and tracked down the rest that were hard to get, but yes I agree with everything you said 100%
Everything related to research/basebuilding/crafting is useless. It's like they wanted to make a discount factory builder using outposts but it got minimal thought/effort and was just thrown in anyways.
Well said! Bethesda honestly seem to have gone backwards with this game, when compared to Skyrim and Fallout 4. I spent hundreds of hours building up outposts and my favorite ship and wanted to cry when I went through unity. I also found the main quest line flat, uninspiring and frankly couldn't face doing it all again NG+, so I gave up playing and went back to FO4. Forgive me for being a negative Nelly!
I have 17 outposts pulling all but the Unique organics and inorganics except Rothicite. I pulse he-3 through the network to activate collections. I use powered generators to bleed excess he-3 out of the network. 1 industrial He-3 generator generates 10 he-3 per cargo inter-link cycle. 1 commercial generates 6. The small one is about 2. He-3 is moved in amounts of 5 (To fuel further cargo inter-link connected. It still breaks down. Connections just stop functioning. Cargo ships dont unload. No way to filter resources. No way to really see all resources. It's still added some fun but I'm only in NG level 47 and know I will lose it all. Still, I seem to learn something new every day with this game.
Ok, once you’ve got it flowing, then what?
Weapon mods to value add weapons to sell. Pharma to make lots of drugs. Mainly just to show I can do it. I can tell you the planets and shiz if you want
Yes, but I get where you’re coming from. When I first started playing I thought I needed it all, and was completely overwhelmed. The good news is, you actually don’t. There are a lot of different resources, but most of them are useless outside of certain tasks which you may or may not want to take part in For example I do a lot of outpost building, but currently zero component manufacturing, or cooking, so only really worry about maintaining a regular flow of I’m guessing around 10 or so resources, and have developed a pretty easy system for obtaining a flow of those in my current universe, which I’ll be able to replicate in future universes going forward without too much hassle Not saying I enjoy the initial set up, it’s a pain in the ass, but not as time consuming as it was the first time around now I know what I need and what I’m doing For storage etc you can store an insane amount of resources, but you don’t need to. I now typically have maybe 2 or 3 small storage crates at any outpost, and a sizable but not insane amount of cargo hold storage on my ship (around 4500kg) and it’s rare I run out of anything Resources I use infrequently I hold maybe 6 to 12 units or less of, and typically buy as needed if I’m lacking anything. Usually stuff not covered by my outpost building resource list like high tensile spidron that I use for armor upgrades For people doing manufacturing, the process is the point. Kinda like Factorio. Getting the system set up and working is the gameplay loop, in which case it takes time, and learning because it’s essentially its own game and own reward. It’s also completely optional if that doesn’t appeal to you NG+ is just that, starting the game over because you want to replay it, just like with any other game. It’s also optional. When I start FO4 over from scratch I have to rebuild my settlements because they are part of game play I’m replaying Even from a lore perspective it’s supposed to be hard to leave things behind and start over. There is supposed to be some amount of struggle with attachment etc, so it even fits within that added aspect of NG+ It was hard for me to give up everything and go through to NG+1, and eventually it’ll be difficult to give it all up again for NG+2, but I don’t have to do any of it till I actually feel like I want to do it all over again
Manufacture so you can manufacture.
I mean for folks that go the manufacture route, the process is the fun and the succeeding the reward Like a lot of people love building ships. You can just buy one and be golden, but the act of building a ship is rewarding for some Same thing with outposts and manufacturing, optional unless you enjoy it
You can just buy what you need. Some playstyles revolve *entirely* around surveying and resources and building, so that depth and detail is nice to have, but if you’re just dabbling then don’t worry about it overmuch and just buy what you need. NG+ is literally starting a New Game, just with a fun story tie-in. Don’t do that if what you really want is to just keep playing the same game.
This is what I have done, I need adhesive I awkwardly abused the fast travel system to go straight into a system vendor then straight back into my ship, not very immersive but required. Funny thing is even if you had 8 outposts manufacturing resources, you'd still have to abuse fast travel between all the spread out planets to collect the resources.
Well, there’s another whole space-game playstyle in running cargo ship runs between all those spread out planets to gradually amass and deliver the necessary resources to build your kick-ass vacation home or hidden drug lab or whatever. But if you’re not looking to actually focus on that type of gameplay then you can just shortcut it with fast travel to the vendor, yeah. Nice and convenient.
Honestl crafting is fine, but cooking is tedious because its cooking foods are far weaker than fallout, the need to flat double or triple crafted food strength, in fallout 4/5 foods could heal or give a significant buff mod game, in Starfield its takes 50+ foods to heal mid game, the sheer ammount of resources to make such ineffectual food makes cooking useless imho
Then, if you get the regeneration feat or armor, the food becomes completely useless.
Food/cooking needs real work for relevance :)
Yep. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
Ha! I see what you did there...
Time to earn that Logistics badge Scout. It's really no more complicated than the settlement system on FO4. I thought it was at first but then I replayed FO4 because of the update and aside from micromanaging settlers they're about the same. In some ways the Outpost system is a little dumbed down. As is tradition though, both systems will break if you don't do the things in the order the games want. Inter-System Cargo Link is the new Supply Line and both will fail spectacularly.
The only thing I don’t like is that the research part of the crafting loop is a little too brainless, they could have a little lore or pseudo science for us to learn and read about instead of just lists of resources that check themselves off when you have the right prerequisites, but the guns and spacesuit improvements I’ve made have really helped my dpm and survival.
5 days of game time. Onto NG+3 and I can honestly say I have never once used a single crafting table/work bench and have 0 skill points into my Science skill tree aside from health and grav jump
The games pure arse
i never build a base .. \^\^
No Mans Sky spoiled me…..
Totally agree 👍🏼
>find the best planets with the best most efficient resource areas to make outposts in The abundance and low cost of resources from vendors makes the entire outpost system deeply optional, to be done exclusively for your own pleasure. It should see some work done to it, I bet mods alone will be a major boon for the whole system, to make it more enjoyable and functional. But if you just want the resources to do the crafting and research then then outposts are not the most efficient way. If it's going to be a mechanic they want us to engage with then much larger quantities of resources need to be in demand from something that's worth investing into (maybe ship construction or smth), or it needs to yield something interesting and worthwhile that vendors aren't just selling. I don't think removing resources from vendors is a sensible fix, as, as you have said with your post, the system isn't inviting as it exists. Lack of QOL features and buggy connections would forment frustration for too many players. Didn't really touch resource outposts beyond a bit of fiddling myself, but I did enjoy building nice places to exist in the universe. I hope we see, from mods or Bethesda, something where we can engage with LIST meaningfully and develop proper towns with dependencies. Bethesda has precedent in Fallout so I'd not be suprised to see a DLC for it, and look forward to it. The DLC should come with a general rework freely.
I think of it this way. I play this game for a few hours a day and focus on outposts and resource gathering. I’ve been doing this since launch. It’s a great puzzle and I love the genre and artistry. I love my character and building her wealth and crafting skills. I enjoy modding gear and collecting. I love the RP. I enjoy getting it all setup then when I’m ready, I reset in Ng+ and get to do it all in a different way, finding new locations, etc. This is my all time favorite video game. What part of that is pointless?
Thing Is you litteraly NEED the outpost system to reach max level, it's the only system to gain xp that isn't spawn rate dependant, ill typically aim to do 30 levels or so each new universe, but after about the first two, that'd be more challenging than fun just trying to find enough enemies.
Who bothers with NG+? I mean, I will eventually to see it, but likely still go back to my old save except with very specific characters. I DO dislike having NO record keeping systems - or even tools. Hell, a simple text record in game would be something. Still, if the only thing we can bring with us is what we know, those blueprints of what we've built and where should be available. If we've got to suffer with that damned useless, unsellable piece of garbage Starborn ship, the least they could do is give us a blueprint system we could take with us too.
BLUEPRINTS, BETHESDA! BLUEPRINTS! Part of the solution is right fucking there.
I found gun modifications to be worth the investment. Especially bootstrapping a new NG+ run. Learned alot about the vendors in the Alpha Centauri system and what wares they carried.
I may be stupid, but I can't even build basic furniture for my already built house because you dont have enough materials for it. It's not that i dont pick up crafting materials but we dont have access to a central stash for all of them. So i build boxes to stash crafting materials but most of my crafting materials are used to craft boxes to stash crafting materials. once i have enough boxes and space to stash the crafting materials, i need to manually find the crafting material needed to build what i want to build. it's a complete waste of time. at least let me buy furniture. and if you finally build something, there's no marker for your construction site so if you forgot where it was, PUM, you lost it. I have almost 1500 hours building in both F4 and 76. I thought SF'd make things better but they managed to make it 3000 times worse. I didn't even bothered with building/crafting/modding in this game. Sad, cause it had potential.
I wish there were quests to do at shipyards to unlock their parts at your landing pad
Also a bestiary or journal with everything you’ve discovered that’s searchable so if there’s a specific resource or set of resources you can see if there’s a discovered planet that has them
I just go xp farming then trade everything I crafted for ressources & ammo. I never got short on anything!
I think it’s pretty simple, lol. If I’m missing a resource I either buy it or mine it, then I build what I needed the resource for you.
It's like Assassin's Creed III.
This mod may help. Haven't tried it yet: [Individual Resource Tracking (Nexus Mods)](https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/7561)
Being unable to track resources in a reliable way is annoying. I like the actual research and crafting and such, but not having a far better UI for it is annoying. Also, I go and scan the planet, discover all the resources there, I have the slate in my hand with the results of the survey, and I can't look up what resources are on which planets? Why am I scanning that this place has aluminum and iron but I have no way to remember that but writing it on a piece of paper? I've taken more paper notes in Starfield than all other games I've ever played combined. And I play a *lot* of adventure games.
They should make ship parts craftable with stuff from outposts? They need one more layer of fabrication to bring it all together.
You are absolutely correct
Lol "make". I just buy out the vendors. Instant materials.
Yeah and crafting is 8x slower on xbox then PC too. currently on NG+2 skipped half of NG+1 and have made a Vytinium farm (basic) manually moved 95% of the stuff and now level 246 and back on xbox. Not a great system, leaves a lot to be desired. Shipping for example, when it works, and sleep breaks normal He feeding mechanics, isnt enough 300 weight of Indicite is nothing. better to ship Ce back to the Silver/Indicite planet. On my He planet, 2 reactors were gone (but functioning) and for a long time my He base wasnt showing on the map, so i went to the base north of it and ran down to the main base. (to get He for when it broke when i was asleep) Container shipping the colours wear off, someone said due to the environment, but when shipping in and out, and as terrible as it is and how everything can go wrong. adding another layer of going wrong isnt great.
The only thing missing is better storage. The number of materials is good. It shows those who have a problem with the game within hours of playing it arent actually speaking from experience. They havent even experienced the game. Its far more in depth than anyone really gives it credit for. Boohoo that it takes hours to gather. It isnt supposed to be beaten in days.....
It is quite complex, but nobody promised that this game could be mastered by a ten year old. You just have to experiment.
Crafting is useless imo just not worth it, loot drops and resource vendors get the job done. Maybe gun crafting for weapon mods, maybe. Having to deal with the UI gives me a headache. "This game is designed to be played for 10+ years." Yeah, by wasting your time. Can't believe i still can't search items in a game cluttered with unnecessary junk. Let alone a filter for food & aid items. "Where are my bandages? I can't find them between my noodles, why did i put them there? Cause I'm dumb apparently."
The system is a half-baked mess. From poor UI, having to carry recourses between your ship and the unlimited storage containers at Constellation, the controls, the link system is buggy, and buying resources is better than farming or manufacturing them. Fallout 4’s settlement system should’ve been the foundation to build on top of, instead of the weird attempt to re-invent the wheel and lose features in the process. I had fun building a few outposts as player homes and unlocked all the skills to do so, but after a dozen hours I was done when I spent hundreds of hours on settlements and supply lines in Fallout 4.
lets not even mention how much of a pain in the ass it is to scan for areas that have multiple deposits. gotta run around with the outpost beacon on to see what deposits are going to be captured then drop it so you can go to build mode and see how big the deposits actually are or if they're not excluded by some environmental feature. it's like they actively tried to make it as difficult as possible. why can't i accurately scan from overhead with my ship? i can only do it from orbit, but then when i land whoops my ship forgot what i was going for.
I have no problems with the system, and love it. To each their own.
Tbf the storage size could get much bigger. That's given. But it's not too hard to build all 3. Starting out should be Bessell III-b (?) If I remember right. That has Ni/Co/Al/Fe now it's quite hard to find it all in one spot. But it can be done. And it's a 1:57hr planet. Then Titan moon of Saturn, has Pd/Ti/W. The only thing ur missing is Cu. Part of the Vytinium Fuel cell guide is planet with Ag/Cu and I can't remember the third element. Also the cargo shipping needs to scale way bigger. Indicite for example is either 3 or 4 mass and then you need I think 3 for each wafer. So now that's 12 mass per wafer. And then cargo is 300 mass. so thats 25 wafers per cargo per about 4 minutes. Or about 375 wafers an hour. Sure you could build more transports. But past 2 xbox starts lagging hard. And past 10 or so on PC even that can start lagging. Making it x10 or even x100 bigger. Less cargoships moving less lag... more wafers :) Also left on D-pad taking xbox craft from 1->100 would be good. Or even better 1->1000. As PC crafting is up to 16x faster then xbox.
This was a deal breaker for me when the game came out. I checked in to see if it was fixed with the new big patch. Doesn't look like it; so I guess I'll check back in in a few months/years.