How many people started playing this after watching Vinny and Brad?

I always love watching Vinny play games (partly it's all the narrative scifi stuff and partly I get a kick out of his "I'll just do this.. oops!"). I've enjoyed the Astroneeringwith Vinny and Brad series which has it all except a narrative. I installed Astroneer from Game Pass about the same time I watched the first one and it's helped me keep going with the game -- which when played alone can sometimes feel a chore after you've made it to space. But when they made it to the glittery mushroom underground level at the end of the Apr 22 episode, I was motivated to get a rover and a drill and dig. Now I'm at 33 hours, I can make almost everything (missing some gases), and have to keep digging.

Is anyone else playing? How are you liking it?

Has everyone else decked their rovers out to be 100% blind spot monstrosities like mine?

I’ve started playing again after a long break - thankfully Game Pass games have cloud saves so my previous base was intact. Took a bit to get my bearings but now I’m back into it! I stopped playing at about the time I made a round trip to space and back since as you said the game suddenly became a bit more of a chore than the typical mining grind.

Funny enough my breaking point for reinstalling the game was also the moment they drilled into the mushroom kingdom!

If I had a PC built, I absolutely would be playing it. Macs aren’t great for gaming.

This series though...it’s quickly become one of my favorites, and I’m glad they returned to it.

Funny and calming

I’m close to starting it... downloaded it on Game Pass on PC, so it’s only a matter of time now...

Bought/downloaded it yesterday, played the tutorial and I really like it but I have a perpetually growing pile of stuff to get through atm so it's on the back-burner for now.

It has sorta tangentially renewed my interest in Factorio & Subnautica, looking to scratch that building/survival/exploration itch. Really wanna go back to Satisfactory also but I no longer have a PC that will run it :(

Played dozens of hours before launch. Only really played 1.0(more like 1.14) When Vinny and Brad started their stream. It very much still. holds interest but the progression of locking resources/items to a planet made me just want to bee line to the last planet. Now like many other players watching these streams I'm trading in launches to the outer reaches for delving deeper in the worlds.

I didn't know there were unique biomes underground so I want to see what else is down there.

I've definitely kept an eye on this game probably since Brad first started playing it on UPF and more recently with Vinny and a few other youtubers playing it now that there's more content and systems set up.

I discovered the fold down features of the medium storage trays about 3 minutes before Vinny did in the video and giggled as he made the same gasp. I've since upgraded to a convoy of three large rovers packed with storage silos to collect about a dozen research pods back at once tonight just finished dragging 4 solar salvaged large solar arrays back to my base, which was a journey I tell you. I have many fields of crevasses on my planet so building enough bridges and clearing through forrests to allow the god awful winch physics to let me pull those suckers through was testing my patience.

Its great mindless fun and progression, which is appreciated these days. I wish there were better storage solutions because honestly the space a good haul of materials takes up is ridiculous and it feels so dumb resorting to the pit method when there are literally a dozen storage tools that all feel lacking for whatever stage of gathering you're at.

Once I start reliably gathering gases from other planets, I'll set myself up with a jetpack and start spelunking in earnest.

Coming back to this game and dumping a ton more hours into it I really think the developers still haven’t come up with a good way to transition into the space loop. There is this hard cut off between everything you do on planet and then going off world that is really unsatisfying and tedious.

In most resource games you do something the hard way in order to unlock a means to make that hard activity easier. The fun stems from being efficient - whether this be in resource gathering or base productivity. Gathering gas from planets is just this trip you need to take. The entire process of setting up an atmospheric condenser on a planet is annoying enough unless you have a large shuttle.

I feel like they need to introduce teleporters or possibly solar powered boosters cause I love everything you do on Your home planet but then every once in a while there is a thing you want to build and oh yah...you need Argon... let’s go up and back just to build this one thing for tour cool home base.

@humanity:Have you been to the centre of the planet?

I've only just done it the first time today (and lost part of my rover on the way), but I think it might resolve the issues you're having? I'm not quite sure.

I think their loop is "go to space so you can reach the core" which isn't too arduous (I only did one gas pumping mission so far and I think I only got Silicone out of it).

I do think they need better bread crumbs after your first space mission. Kinda feels like you won the battle but the war will be long. Glad I had Vinny and Brad to send me underground.

@someoneproud: Playing Astroneer has made me want to check out Satisfactory even more. The amount of manual inputs in this game (especially using their selection cursor with gamepad) make me thirst for automation.

@kalos: That’s my next step. I had just hunkered down and invested deep into setting up two planet outposts to get their unique glasses which meant building up to the Large shuttle and a hydrazine booster engine. Also Atrox has some very high value research so I’ve been bringing those back to base just so that I can finally unlock the rest of what I want on the research tree. Only things I’m really missing are the RTG, Extra Large Shredder and some drill upgrades. I already have quite a deep shaft going down so we will see. I was thinking about maybe checking out the rest of those alien temple places as well!

@kalos: Tbh it's the automation aspect of these sorta games that I like most. Looking over my monstrosity of a factory churning away indefinitely is just so satisfying to me.

I have an awful habit of scaling everything up to ludicrous levels right off the bat in an effort to maximise efficiency, only to have to re-do everything when I unlock more tech.

Then I often burn out...

Got me a double large rover with an RTG strapped on and hauling behind me the extra large shredder. Scrapping on the go. I need to attach a research station too so I can also research at the same time. Controlling the drill is kind of a nightmare but I guess they’ll fix it later on or something cause half the time you can’t see anything. Got my diamond drill too, guess I’m ready to drill down.

@someoneproud: When they added water pumping stations that fed into coal power plants that took gravity into account by the time I stabilized everything and got steel processing up I just had to save and quit. Playing on the desert map is cool but everything is so far away from each other you need to drive just to see what is wrong with your whole setup.

@humanity: I can't wait to upgrade to some larger vehicles. I am currently riding a tiny tractor around treacherous underground passages with three trailers each holding tier one resource silos. I can barely drive up some inclines and it gets stuck often. But driving through some of these caves systems is definitely it's own kind of fun.

All that said the ice planet seems to only have five resources and I can't find some of the "every planet has these" resources. I also lost track of my tungsten base on the desert planet and I'm too stubborn to start a new one after wasting four boosters jumping from landing zone to landing zone looking for it.

@merxworx01: You can hit Esc and look at built in Encyclopedia thing they have for planets and it lists what resource each one has. All the base stuff you need is on your home planet and the other planets basically offer 1 or 2 unique resources you might need. Of course if you start investing in shredders you can exchange scrap for every type of resource apart from gas. So planets basically become you bases for gathering unique gas types needed for some of the more unique materials. Also some of the more exotic planets have research items that are worth way more than your starting one. On Atrox I've found research "nuggets" worth 3,500 byes each while Sylva only has like 750 a pop.

As for vehicles, I actually prefer spelunking on foot really. I have more control that way and I can pave my way down confidently knowing I won't suddenly bore down into a huge chasm. That said the big rovers are great later on for on-surface exploration since you can attach huge batteries and even research terminals onto them meaning you can drive around while researching, or scrapping for example. You can also just hook up your rover to anything that requires power and pop it open without much trouble.

I'm excited to see what Brad and Vinny will do on tomorrows stream!

@humanity: Hrrmm, looks like I haven't been reading my handy guide correctly. I assumed incorrectly that Wolframite is on every planet. Guess I have no choice but to go back to the Dune planet to get tungsten melange. Once I get some more items I might try to build a trade station and so some small scale @base scrapping to offset all the travel.

Research wise I am at the Ice planet and there are loads of research items everywhere that give bits in the four digits range. Just not enough light or wind power to keep the research stations running consistently. I just need to suck it up, go to Calidor and start a new base.

The last stream actually made me rethink what I want to do in the game so I hope they continue going deeper. I don't want to hope too much but I really hope every planet has different hidden biomes in each one. My favorite thing to do in Minecraft was to find massive domed caves and this game give me what looks like unending places to explore(granted I won't be expecting monsters or dungeons) but seeing eerie caves that just keep going and navigating it in a tractor is alot of fun. I'm not even going to ask how I am getting wind power so deep below.

@humanity: The life of a interstellar garbage man on a frozen hell world ain't easy but it is good honest work.

@merxworx01: now that’s why I call astroneering! Maybe I’ll post a pic of my “rig” when I play later today.

I just downloaded it on Game Pass before heading to work. This looks really fun.

It scratches that itch! After playing it for a while, I would love an amalgamation of Astroneer and Outer Wilds.

@hamdemon01: Like Vinny I would love for it to go a bit more into the Factorio direction with more automation and stuff. It’s like the game dips it’s toe in that with the way tables automatically feed machines but they don’t commit fully.

I've been playing it for a bit. It's really charming and interesting and relaxing and chill, and it's nice to have one of these without monsters trying to kill you. Not that monsters are a bad element for these games, just that it's nice to have one where I don't have to worry about that.

However, I have to say that this game is a prime example of why the vast majority of these things are in first person. The perspective makes this thing extremely clunky to play, whether with a mouse and keyboard or controller. Everything feels so slow and inaccurate, as compared to all the Subnautica I played not too long ago, which was intuitive and easy and I never felt like controls were getting in my way and all. If this game were any more active or had any tension at all, I'd probably stop playing for that reason. But it's not, and I'm having fun, so I'm going to keep playing.

Yeah, I'm 100+ hours into this game now and the amount of inadvertent input I still experience is highly unusual for a game that I'm this deep into, whether it be failed selections, wrong selections, or even the incredibly inefficient way the construction options are listed in arbitrarily ordered lists that you're forced to cycle through to find what you want. It's like the two aspects of the game UI are designed for entirely different platforms and control systems -- one part is built around pixel-hunting mouse input and a monitor, while the very simplified research and print menus are designed for a dpad while sitting far away from your TV, and neither of them do their job very efficiently.

Trying to print something from a small printer usually involves multiple clicks of trying to select the desired printer (and not the medium storage of resin sitting right beside it), and then a half-dozen clicks through the list to find what I wanted to print. Oh never mind, the thing I wanted to print was actually on the medium printer.

@hughj: yah I love a lot about it but the more you play the more certain things can start to be grating. Now that I have the big rover with a drill it is really inconvenient that the camera simply doesn’t accommodate for this. Controlling the tilt of the drill by having to pan your view in a way that makes it impossible to see anything is frustrating. They are married to their physical interface to a fault. I have a ton of things to print from my backpack and having to cycle through the icons one by way has become a very style-over-function experience. What wouldn’t I give for a simple grid of icons. Also surprised that they still haven’t integrated any sort of automatic tether laying function. Even make it an equippable object that takes up a slot on the backpack. After 50 hours there is no more magic left in having to press T every few seconds.

@humanity: Yeah, the front-equipped drill is actually something I've spent my last dozen hours or so becoming very familiar with, as I've been attempting to dig a large vertical shaft down to the lowest strata for a functional launch pad at an interior base. I've gotten better with handling that drill, but as you said - it basically boils down to inching forward and driving blind as your camera view is buried in the ground while you're tilting the drill up. I'm going to switch to using the crane+drill today, as that really seems better for this sort of task.

The tethers I've come to rely on less and less, as everything I do revolves around the crafting stations or vehicles. As my main base has expanded I've actually started removing my old tethers because there's enough oxygenated+powered tables that behave as a tether, and aren't nearly as susceptible to breaking. Am starting to route power lines through a sub-floor in order to connect tables that are further away without having unsightly extensions laying everywhere. (You can dig a hole, connect a power line through it, and then fill the hole without having the power line break.)

Another favorite of mine: The act of picking up a series of items from a crafting station. It almost always results in hitting your backpack limit which means the last item you picked up drops and clips through the crafting station, often leading you to having to pull the station off the table to fish out the item. That probably happens to me a few times per hour.

@hughj: @humanity: It could be better but subterranean drilling for me consists of drilling+paving and watching the whole thing from a side view and tilting the camera to the left as much as possible and turning off the drill when things go pearshaped. I still think for what the game gives you, you can do tremendous things with a drillpaver setup where you are swimming through the earth like a mechanical worm or making land bridges that perfectly align with alien structures.

I just bought this on PS4 after watching Brad and Vinny play it and I’m enamored. One thing I will note however is that the draw distance is horrible. I’m not sure if maybe I just have a bad seed but the terrain in my first area is mostly flat and I can’t see anything more than a slight jog away. Anyone else having the same experience?

I decided to give this a shot yesterday after realizing it was on PC Game Pass and, despite being a little overwhelmed by the tutorial (which bombards you with almost too much information and not enough context) I was hooked almost immediately once I started playing for real. The blend of exploration, tech-tree stuff, base-building, and above all the relaxed nature of it (no time pressure, combat, hunger mechanics, etc) is really perfect for me right now. I want to watch the rest of the Brad/Vinny videos, but I think I'm going to wait until I've "finished" the game because I want to discover everything myself.

On the topic of the controls, I haven't had any real issue with them aside from needing to crank the mouselook sensitivity up to the literal maximum to make it feel responsive. An option to disable camera inertia would be real nice.

Anyone know how this is on console? I'm super interested in trying it out after watching them play.

@ericjasonwade: I think it’s just how the game is. It used to be like that on PC when it was in early access. It has improved on PC, but it’s still not great.

I saw some news in their newest dev-stream that they are introducing some form of automation in the upcoming update which seems exciting. I've "solved" about 3 planets now and gotten to a point where I could easily do the rest but it would just require time so I think I'll just hold off and wait until new things are introduced. While the phrase "how do you know you're satisfied" was a joke back in the day I've reached this point in Astroneer. I haven't "finished" it but I do feel like I got everything I wanted out of it. Excited to check it out later on and see all the new features they'll keep adding on.

@humanity: I would happily buy some DLC that added another solar system that added new mechanics, tools and vehicles. I don't think I've seen everything this game has to offer but I think I might have done everything I wanted to do in the game. By any chance have you tried Space Engineer? There are a number of interesting intersects with Astroneer but it is the definition of "You will need to watch a few tutorials to start" sort of games. Thankfully there are some really good tutorials out there that cover every facet of the game really well.