I just bought the game during GOG's 60% off sale, and after only eight hours I'm convinced I wasted my money. I've seen games that are light on documentation, but this takes the cake.

After doing the hyperdrive mission I have the drive installed and charged, but the map consistently says "Unable to warp". I can choose the nearest destination, but there is no visible way to activate the hyperdrive and nothing in game to explain HOW to warp or why the map says I am unable to do so.

So giving up on that, I decided to claim and expand a base. I've got to the part where you're supposed to hire a scientist to run the science terminal. All the game says is that specialists can be hired at any space station, and about every website I've seen for help spews the same statement verbatim without explaining HOW. Where are these scientists? I call BS. The only station I've seen has six NPCs, one of which is now my construction manager and none of the other five are scientists or for hire. I've been back to the base dozens of times over multiple sessions, and it's only ever the same group of unhirable NPCs, no scientists.

If there is more to this, then the game needs to SAY MORE about how these things are done. The skimpy explanations in game do not match my experience of the game, in which it just is not possible to progress beyond the beginning. Websites supposedly devoted to the game simply parrot the in-game explanations without embellishment. This is FRUSTRATING, not fun, and it's not worth my time to gather resources for a base that can never be completed while I backpedal endlessly to avoid being instakilled by exceptionally vicious dinosaurs that move too fast to hit even with an advanced rifle multi-tool with a rapid fire upgrade.

At least you worked out to press and hold down 'E' to start the game! :)

To some (possibly large) degree this is intentional. It's conceptually an exploration and discovery quest, not a level-up fight the Boss style. As you (painfully) observe.

As I understand it, the devs WANT answers and solutions to be community-based and not from a step by step playbook.

Warping. You should be able to warp at least 100 "LY" with a basic warp drive. Right click to scan the diamond-shaped selector around for target systems. Left click to inspect, long left click to initiate the jump.

Different systems will have different types of NPCs available to hire. You'll find Scientists in Korvax systems.

Another large part of the game is balancing your choices. For bases, some prefer a nice climate and docile critters. Others take advantage of hazardous climates to grow particular crops outdoors rather than in planters or dome rooms.

As for nasty critters, keep an eye out for the plasma grenade blueprint. Decent kill radius and you don't need to be right on target, so nice to use when you're surprised by a nasty. After all, close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes...

Thanks for the useful reply.

I'm not interested in a "level up to fight the boss" game, which is why I chose this. But telling me I can't warp and not explaining why is ridiculous. Nowhere in game does it say that you have to be a certain distance from something (in fact, the prompt to warp by opening the map appears whenever you are in space, implying that all you have to do is open the map), and without any clues at all "Unable to warp" means warp doesn't work. Period. I'm not asking for a "step by step playbook", I'm looking for basic information that it is reasonable to expect will be provided at some point. The game isn't about grocery shopping, mowing a lawn or working in an office or warehouse, it's about exploring space with tech that does not exist in the real world.

Saying that it's conceptually a 4x game without documentation just means the devs were too lazy to produce documentation. I've checked four different wikis and none of them have any more info than what is given in the game itself.

Given the sparcity of info, why should I believe that I won't accidentally warp to a system without access to animatter leaving me with no way back?

I've extensively explored three planets and a moon (can't go or do anything else), and in my experience there is no such thing as a planet/moon with 100% docile creatures. You are either going to have to fight a lot or flee a lot, especially at night. Can't get grenades without a scientist.

I will give your suggestions a shot, but it seems this game is stacked against the player.

Pastoral planets are out there. My base is on one with no predators (out of nine species), moderate weather, no storms ever, and decent resources. There's even a trading post on a neighboring island. Basically sip gin and tonic on the veranda overlooking the ocean and watch the sentinels fly by. ;-)

Your warp distance limit is listed in the drop down on the ship's inventory screen. Look under the ship class label (S/A/B/C).

Suspension fluid, electron vapor, antimater, and warp cells are craftable from common elements (carbon, plutonium, heridium, zinc, and thamium 9), although early on you won't have blueprints for all of them. They are for sale on stations, trading posts, and from individual ships, along with a few other methods. The local system space station is probably the best place to start if you're looking to buy since it will have the most variety of items both from the station and from the ships that land there.

Gamepedia is probably the best online resource. The suspension fluid entry reveals one way of getting that blueprint.

Thanks again for being helpful, but just about everything you're describing is out of reach.

I saw the "100.0" on the dropdown before, but without a frame of reference, "Hyperdrive Range 100.0" is utterly meaningless. You said light years, but everything in game is measured in "ks", w/eth that is, and I can't convert an unknown measurement unit to light years.

As an experiment, I set all known planets behind me and pulsed in a straight line away, stopping to mine more iron everytime I ran out. I started with six 500 unit stacks and stopped to mine two more stacks each time I ran out. After exhausting that 12,400 units of iron, it was four hours later and the map still said "Unable to warp." I don't think I ever got more than 16,000 ks away from those planets. They still looked like they were only a stone's throw away.

It just seems to me that if I know how to pilot a starship, I should know how a hyperdrive works and why it doesn't work. And I just don't, because there isn't a damn thing in game to tell me anything useful. No other space sandbox I've played made interstellar travel such a chore.

Thanks for that help. The map screen is really not intuitive at all, and it seemed to me that the mouse had no visible role at all. Even with your advice, it was a very random experience. It's like there is a cursor that is completely invisible, and you're trying to select one of several closely spaced dots without any visual guidance. I thought I had been selecting the nearest star with Tab and X, but I see now that that star is not the star highlighted on the left of the screen.

Even trying to find your way back to a known system is hit or miss, and requires fiddling with the mouse for several minutes while the highlight briefly moves over the intended destination before popping off and moving randomly elsewhere. And while you're doing this, you're subject to attack by any pirate that happens to spawn nearby. Again, of the three space sandboxes I've played, none made interstellar travel such an obnoxious chore. The map requires specific instructions or a complete redesign. Something as simple and commonplace as a visible cursor would have been helpful, for crying out loud.

With your advice, I was able to get to another system, got my scientist, the blueprints for Antimatter and Plasma Grenades and a crashed S Class shuttle (expensive to repair, but still considerably less money than I would have had to pay outright for the same ship).

Getting that ship was another struggle, thanks to the lack of planetary maps, notes or the ability to set waypoints without finding a high-level blueprint for a craftable device. Without these fairly commonplace MMO elements, your chances of finding a crash site after you've visitied it once are practically nil, which is completely unrealistic. The sites should at least be revealed by scanning, even if scanning only reveals sites already known to you.

Thanks again for your help.

This game could do with a lot of QoL adjustments like that.

I'm embarrassed to admit that, despite your help, I had a bad turn yesterday, gave into anger and uninstalled the game. Primary among these is that the G key does not respond during combat, meaning that if you're ambushed whilst gathering resources your only options are fleeing or melee (the former is insulting, the latter not worth the effort). Accompanying that bug (I assume it's a bug) are the homicidal deer-like critters that appear to exist on every planet in both the systems I've explored, who can walk THROUGH your starship and can even attack you while you're in the cockpit. I died, it took forever to get to the grave marker, and none of my lost inventory items (including enough plutonium, iron, Thermium9 and carbon to sustain the ship, the multi-tool and life support for several days, and a sizable number of trinkets to improve standing with all three races) were restored.

Of course, the last save was an autosave that was written after the character revived. Useless. Inexplicably, I also lost about two-thirds of my units and all of my nanite clusters even though they were stored in ship's inventory.

I see three options here, and I'm leaning towards the first.

1. Walk away. Most modern MMOs are pretty bad, due to being rushed out to meet deadlines and poorly thought out, but they have less of a learning curve and better QoL than this one.

2. Reinstall and trust that GOG's synced backup can restore the character. I'm fairly certain I can reacquire that A Class multi-tool, but I think it's unlikely I'll be able to replace the S Class shuttle.

3. Reinstall and start a new game. I don't think I've cooled down enough to consider this one.

Your saves *should* be synced with GoG and so be recoverable.

The last non-autosave (i.e., a save initiated at a spinner pole or at a crafted save point thingie) should still be there. Depends on how far back in time it was since the last "manual" save was but that may be an option.

You could leave that slot fallow and start a new game in one of the other, ununsed slots just to see how that goes. It sounds like you had unusually bad luck on your initial planet, what with the nasty eaters and all. AFAIK, every initial environment will be at least moderately hazardous (heat, radiation, toxic, cold) but won't necessarily have neighbors who are trying to munch on your toes.

One hint/trick that may help. The "camera" point of view that is used for screen shots is built into the game now and so I consider it "fair use." If you toggle into camera mode, the game freezes (no expenditure of health or hazard protection) and you can use the camara POV to get a look around at the environment. Think of it as a short range drone. You can't do a scan from it but it's sometimes nice to use it to get a look from a higher altitude and a peek over the hill. The focal length (field of view) can be changed to a mild telephoto, too.