Found this via youtube, simple but looks great and fun.
On my first play, I made myself a portable shelter like PurpleCow suggests, and although I didn't finish it until day 8, I did walk off into the wilderness and set up camp for the final night. (RTG+airlock+oxygen generator+crafting table) Takes up four slots, but you can cruise out for a long distance and then deploy it.
My suggestions would be:
- When the timed survival mode is successfully achieved, how about duplicating the sequence from the start of the game and show a rescue ship landing to take you home? (Touch the rescue ship to win, or just a wave and a cheer fade to black)
- Objects should not use power when they're not in use. The smelter is the main thing here. It could be set to use far more power (or time) to process ore, if it were also to stop eating your energy when it is idle. The oxygen generator could also shut down once your base is maxxed out, and like your Dad probably nagged you, turning the lights off when you leave a room is a good idea :)
- On a related note, power priorities would be nice. It looks like it might be location or build order at the moment, but more life-critical things should get first dibs on the power, with the thing you're currently interacting with having top priority. (oxygen, greenhouses, smelter, lights) Flickering lights would be the first sign of trouble.
- Oxygen and water in the base are listed on the left. How about energy level too? When you have no batteries, it could just show red or yellow without the number. Putting a tiny amount of storage into each generator equal to the generation amount would also work well. (RTG gets 5 battery points, and solar gets 10 battery points) In such a case you'd see 5/10 energy on a base with just an oxygen generator and a solar panel.
- The starting facilities are a bit strange, but currently required to even have a chance. As an alternative, your lander could act as a crafting table, and if the impact scatters an initial set of metal plates, components and electronics, that would be enough to build the airlock, oxygen generator and solar panel required to get started.
- As already mentioned, more uses for suit power. Faster digging with a power assist, or running the drill.
- It looks to me like the truck is eventually meant to have an internal battery, since it looks like the garage starts needing power only after you start driving off. The truck having a trunk would be super nifty. You could pack the portable shelter in there, or whatever other bits you need for a satellite base.
- If encumbrance becomes an thing, being able to pack your bags into the car will be very handy. An attachable trailer (or just a bigger truck with storage) acting like a mobile storage locker would be cool too.
- While I totally understand the code mechanics of why it happens, it is a bit sad that you can't carry a charged battery with you and use it elsewhere before carrying it back to recharge at the main base. If you do come up with a way to retain the charge level in an inventory battery, that would be nifty.
- With all the dust blowing... wind turbines? They'd require batteries to balance the load, but add some variability that doesn't require manual fixing.