Quick Look: Astroneer

Looks great compared to the Unfinished video.

There is only 360p quality for this quick look...?

RTG: Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, probably. Small fission heat power sources for space vehicles going away from the sun.

@mistersims: Nope. I'm watching in 1080.

Man I'm already juggling No Man's Sky and Portia. If I add another crafting game my head might just pop but this looks so cool...

If anybody knows what's up with the red power cables near the beginning, let me know. I thought the research chamber and battery charge at the same time were drawing more power than the base could output, but apparently it was something else?

@brad: Hey Brad, the power cables turned red once you stuck the emptied battery into your backpack again. So basically the base charged the battery first and after it was fully charged again the cables turned back to yellow.

I guess that happens so you can't exploit battery bonuses forever, just like you and Ben were wondering about.

I feel bad for Brad...falling into holes is a real pain in the ass

@brad: If I had to guess from the video think the overload happened only when you pulled the battery off the base and put it in your backpack, because at that point the battery was recharging itself while you were linked and stealing all the power before it could go to the research station, since your backpack gets priority. When you were recreating the circumstances you only yanked it off the base, but didn't put it in your backpack I don't think, so the battery was not pulling any power off the base, and only the research station was drawing power.

I should be in the target audience for this game, but I don't enjoy the way every object looks like a Fisher Price toy. The bright, clashing colors of the landscape are unattractive to my eye, too.

Is it just me?

The red power cables means you're getting zero power, which should never happen when you're connected to a habitat like that. Seems like a bug. The habitat will always supply a small amount of power and you could see the yellow lights on its power generator (yellow = power) still working away while the cables were red.

Edit: Also that cubby in the habitat is for the oxygenator, the game was trying to tell you to put it there.

@brad: When you took the empty battery off the wall and added it to your pack you exceeded the power output of the base itself, basically.

Longer explanation: Underneath every power terminal (the point the cable extends from and connects to) you see a little meter that fills with yellow. When that meter is drained to red you don't have enough power being generated to supply everything drawing from that source and the whole system shuts down. That's when you see those red cables.

In your case, that meter was about half empty while you were researching the object. It was drawing about half the power the base was putting out. Your addition of the battery added reserve power but didn't generate any more. Then when you took the battery off and added it to yourself you increased your own draw and sapped the rest of that meter.

Indeed. And he exceeded that small power output. The yellow you saw was the base's empty reserve trying to refill, which it could not do at the rate power was being used both to research and to fill his battery while it was on him and charging. The habitat itself has pretty weak power generation while multiple things are attached. Once it runs through its reserves, beefy as they may be, it can only power maybe one or two active modules.

When you're running at full speed, it's way too easy to blow past the maximum length and drop a tether when it's a hair too far away to connect to the previous one, forcing you to stop, turn around, and reposition it. Don't let that stop you from being condescending on the Internet though.

Hmm, for some reason I'm getting ads on this video even though I'm logged in with Premium. Not a huge deal to me, though don't recall having that happen before. Odd~

@brad: The planets are actual spheres, you can tunnel to the core for some really weird gravity effects or just keep going in one direction to circle it.

Just like the planets in the night skies are the actual planets you can land on with the shuttle, some are further away and orbits matter.

Would be interesting to see what happens if somebody farms away a massive part of a planet, it should be visible from the other planets.

Could maybe make for a really cool coop task for a GB video feature?

It's non-obvious, but the line connecting the tether to your suit "breaks" before you're actually at the max length from one tether to another, there's like an extra 6 feet or so after the line disappears where it is still valid to deploy a tether. So you can deploy a tether for a few seconds AFTER your suit's tether line disappears and it will still work, which is effective but doesn't really make any sense. I don't know if this only works with the "deploy tether" button (D-pad down) or if it also works if you have your tethers in one of the suit's special quick button slots (which is what @brad implied he was doing in the video).

A more intuitive design might be that if you hold the "deploy tether" (D-pad down) button that it will deploy a tether automatically right as you go out of range of the previous one.

@brad: I just started playing this version but if you look at the power cables there's a meter around the cable ports. In the video when you were trying to reproduce the power outage you were at half power. When you had a red cable, that meter was completely red. Since power is sort of shared throughout the base I believe that means your shelter/habitat had half power. In previous versions habitats didn't create power at all so you had to figure out ways to generate your own power for research purposes. In this version I believe you start with a reservoir of power in the habitat or it just has a slow self-recharging generator. (Possibly solar? The dome kind of looks like it could be a solar panel)

When you were charging the battery you were in fact just siphoning power from your habitat's power stores and injecting it directly and more quickly to your research.

despite all my rage i am still just a rover in a cave

Having put a good handful of hours into this now this game is not at all what I expected. Pretty much anyone who plays it will have this point of "oh, I just wasted 5 hours doing something that's supposed to take an hour at most and now it's a very different game". I played through the tutorial thinking "damn, you're basically showing me a mini version of the entire game aren't you?", but boy was I wrong.

I guess it's a testament that sometimes a QL needs more than a few hours investment before it can show a good picture of the game. This would've probably been a very different video if Brad had been 10+ hours into the game.

@ares42: Interesting... Without spoiling, could you help me out by answering something (if you're far enough into the game to know, I mean)? Does this game unravel like Subnautica into a more focused experience with distinct goals to achieve after those 10+ hours, and does a tangible end-goal start peaking over the horizon? Or is it more a case of exploring for exploration's sake and having your curiosity rewarded?

It looks great, but I've been burned by so many of these types of games. Edit: I heard Brad say you ultimately get off the planet, but that's not the end, is it, just what the Astroneer does?

@brad:You seemed confused when you tried to recreate the circumstances for the cables turning red, but the cables didn't turn red the second time you tried charging the battery. It's actually because you built and connected a second generator without thinking about it (at 22:36). So the cables didn't turn red because you had enough power the second time.

@brunothethird: I haven't really played Subnautica so I'm not the best judge, but no, that doesn't quite sound like what I'm talking about. That might be in there though, as there are things I'm still discovering too, but what I'm talking about is more mechanical. Like, there are major important features to the game that were not presented in the QL.

So uhhh... why am I getting the youtube version of this video on the site?

@mostman: Because why pay for bandwith when YouTube will host it for free? And since it isn't a Premium video, there is no reason to lock it down.

tractor did nothing wrong

@therizzle: Ha, nice one. ;)

@adamcboyd: I'm paying for premium so I don't have to look at ads, that's why.

@spoodie

That's correct. And you don't on Premium videos. This is not a premium video. So...not sure how to clarify that more.

Quicklooks are never premium videos. As far as I know. so you're complaint is that your paying for premium so you shouldn't see ads. That is correct but the video you're watching is not a premium video. Did you watch a premium video? They don't have ads. I think you're complaining is that you think because it's on the Giant Bomb website and therefore should be considered premium because of how you're viewing it. Well, it's a business model dude. It allows them to make more content so they can continue to be the leader in the space. trust me there are plenty of other grudges you can hold around here but this isn't one of them .

@adamcboyd: I don't want Quicklooks to be premium. I pay for premium mostly just to support the site and the QLs are my main interest. But if I play a video on the site while logged in as a premium user I'd rather it play a video hosted by Giantbomb, not Youtube. It's a minor inconvenience and I could use the download option instead. And it's only a problem when Youtube manages to get around my usually excellent ad blocker (pihole is awesome).

BRING

HIM

HOME

@adamcboyd: Unless something's changed that I'm not aware of, Giant Bomb has never actively shown ads to premium members on non-premium videos. Youtube- and Twitch-hosted videos have ads, but that's different. In all but maybe a few cases, videos hosted off-site also have the option to watch from Giant Bomb servers and download the video. If they don't, it's probably a glitch/mistake. Usually it's the other way around, where the Youtube version isn't uploaded or published yet.

Please correct me if I'm wrong and/or submit a bug report if you're getting ads on non-premium videos.

Just wanted to comment and say there is a compass in the game. Just move the cursor over your character and the compass pops up on the ground around your character.

Also there is a page that describes how power works in the menus.

@spoodie

If you hover over the video, in the bottom-middle there should be a button with 3 dots named 'player options'. If you click that , you can switch to the GB player instead of youtube. No ads for ya.

I like how Ben ended on the conclusion that it was a game that's easy to navigate, after that whole rover in a hole episode :D

@onemanarmyy: Thanks, useful to know. Seems to stick on that for other videos as well.

could you put a wind turbine on a buggy and have it act as an alternator of sorts?