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Ghostly8 days ago(+1)

I appreciate the constructive criticism! Were you using the starting laser all the way? I intended for each subsequent weapon to be stronger than the last after getting enough upgrades into it, but I've had people who didn't feel incentivized to try the new weapons before, which leads me to conclude that the weapons need a rework. I'll probably end up moving away from being able to upgrade every single weapon stat altogether, since as you said, it might be nigh impossible to balance.

Good point about having the tractor beam be able to penetrate the walls from the get-go, having those crystals slip away is frustrating. There's an upgrade in the late game that makes pickup-eligible crystals become unable to pass through walls, but I'll probably keep as an upgrade, since otherwise collection would become a bit too easy.

My furthest plans involve giving the player a choice between asteroid-rich and enemy-rich levels as he progresses, so I hope the game will suffer less from doing both at the same time.

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Rezydent8 days ago(+1)

I tried the third weapon by ditching the laser altogether and going all in on damage and it carried me through thanks to shield generator. Laser is a defensive weapon mostly, so giving a shield generator last second before a big fight while player needs to reinvest from mining to combat is definitely tricky but I don't disrespect that design decision (the cost of the shield might filter some players though).

A lot of problems come from the zoom being upgradable. It makes unupgraded weapons look like peashooters or at worst the projectiles aren't visible at all (missile launcher). This also throws off your sense of scale (ie. planet sized enemy appears? I don't have any point of reference to comprehend that so it's not as impressive, largest crystal so far? can't really tell).

The way it's all set up so far it feels like I can't execute much of a plan, as asteroids are really fast and chaotic so only greedy approach works, and same goes to enemies that are so ever-present that it comes down to outgunning and shielding. When those factors are combined most of the crystals you can get are pretty much given to you by rng because of how many things can go wrong outside of your control, while constantly fighting floaty physics on a timer. Weapon balance is somewhat fine but tighter controls and reliable traction beam by default could help a lot.

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Ghostly8 days ago(+1)

I've been having lots of second thoughts about upgradeable zoom myself, it really ruins the size factor of massive asteroids. I'll probably scrap it altogether and set the default zoom value to an equivalent of one or two bought sensor upgrades.

I've gotten lots of similar feedback about the controls being hard to deal with, but I'm unsure how to amend that while preserving ship inertia for that semi-realistic feel. Would higher linear velocity damping values help?

I would also like to know which difficulty were you playing on. On easy and medium, asteroids move significantly slower than what I originally intended, but maybe I should also reduce their right-side spawn probability,, that will definitely make things less chaotic.

As for the tractor beam, do you find it unreliable because a crystal you're using the beam on can miss your ship if your lateral velocity is too high? Again, I don't find that unrealistic and upgrading the tractor force should definitely help with that, but since it appears to be a constant source of frustration, I will tune its values a bit.

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Rezydent8 days ago

It could be worth a try to have slower with snappier movement and auto braking, and booster mode (let's say by holding LShift) where it's all inertia and no safety guarantees. I played on medium. Traction beam is not that bad, but since you need to switch out from a weapon and turn off shield to use it you can buff it to maximize the fun rather than put you on the mercy of more physics. It could be snappier, powerful out of the box, with more uses to make it something that helps players handle the inertia heavy physics reliably. Think more in the direction of gravity gun from HL2? Sure players can upgrade it, I did, but the starting point should give you a decent start and get invested into it ie. by slingshotting small asteroids into enemies.

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Ghostly7 days ago

Honestly? I think making it HL2-like is a great idea, I'll work on that. Regarding movement, it becomes a lot more responsive as you acquire more movement upgrades, and I kinda want to keep it this way. I will experiment with stronger auto-braking, though.

Needing to turn off a shield to pick up things was something I didn't put much thought into, it just felt "right", but if it's a source of annoyance then I'll opt against it. 

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Rezydent7 days ago(+1)
Needing to turn off a shield to pick up things was something I didn't put much thought into, it just felt "right", but if it's a source of annoyance then I'll opt against it. 

I don't think so. It adds gameplay friction but in a good way since player is perfectly in control. Stuff like this should actually be common across the game, as the game teaches you its nuances in intuitional ways. Even better if there's additional depth by implementing obscure and situational ways to utilize the collision between shield and crystals.

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