It's pretty open about its "ARCHAIC... IN SPAAACE" style. You've got two species of space primitives, one of space knights, and one of space samurai. I laughed about the pickaxes when I first saw them too, and would really rather you just upgrade the matter manipulator or something, but it's definitely not a thematic clash by any means.PhoneLobster wrote:1) They are fucking pick axes in space. Boo! You are stuck with them for way too fucking long, also Booo! You STARTED with a fucking matter manipulator and have to switch to pick axes or suck DOUBLE BOOO!
There are only 6 pickaxes total. Once you have the robotic crafting table, there are 5 drills (which seem like they would satisfy some of your complaints about theme). They even each look slightly different! Not just in color! Yay, everybody be excited!PhoneLobster wrote:2) There are like... what? 6 tiers of them available in sector 1 of the game. SIX TIERS of incremental recolored fucking identical fucking pick aces.
I can't decide how I feel about pixel costs overall, because they keep changing them and I can't actually be assed to replay fairly each time and get a feel for them. But the drills are ridiculously too expensive, agreed, and the whole idea is stupid to boot and pixels should probably just be saved for the printer.PhoneLobster wrote:3) Pixel build cost bullshit rapidly becomes evident with them.
I don't think that's true at all. I've never noticed dirt or stone getting harder by tier, though "dire stone" (which shows up anywhere as far as I'm aware) or whatever is harder than regular stone and the deeper you go the harder it gets whatever tier you're at. There are some planet types later on that are basically all difficult to mine materials, but all of the old biome types still show up and you can just run around on tier whatever forest planets instamining dirt.PhoneLobster wrote:4) They really are just microscopically more effective reskins of the same fucking thing that works in the same fucking way. They don't even dig bigger patches of blocks they just dig faster, very slightly faster... only dirt and stone gets harder to dig the higher level the planet/deeper you go or some crap, so all you are doing is upgrading to keep up the same digging rates in the same damn ways.
Not only that, they're the only thing that fucking degrades in the entire game. It's like they realized repair mechanics were ass but had to have one. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they only mine slower when the bar is empty, and repairing them is super trivial at this point (you can use any ore on any pickaxe/drill, so you just grab some of that copper you see everywhere and throw it at it every now and then). They seriously might as well just take out their one and only pointless durability mechanic.PhoneLobster wrote:5) Oh yeah and wear and tear... because fuck you that's why. They degrade unless you keep throwing resources at them. And AS they degrade they mine slower so yeah, double fuck you grind more and harder with your pick axe.
I think that's all I've got to add.