Space Trash Scavenger News

Hi all,

This is pretty much a hotfix to try and quickly address the most prominent and urgent feedback I have heard on the forums and in discord.

Some of these approaches to balancing may be refined, but I think its a good start and should help those of you who were crying out for more leeway in difficulty.

This is not the be all and end all of difficulty options! I am aware and look forward to adding plenty of other options if needed. For example perhaps we will add an option to disable attacks entirely for those who want a very quiet life.

I have also balanced turrets, laser rifles and tech level behaviours.

Options can be found in Options > Game.

Build 0.338

-Reduce laser ammo charge ingredients
-Increase rifle clip size
-Increase laser rifle projectile speed
-Turrets deal five times more damage.
-Turret recipes reduced.
-Turret 1 uses 50% less electricity.
-Tech level is clamped per quadrant: 0 to 10 in starting Quadrant, 10 to 20 Industrial, unclamped thereafter. You may need to advance tech level to trigger a change. Tech level is visible in the top right corner.
-Tech level increases 50% slower. It may drop on existing saves.
-Add attack interval slider, in game hours. (default is 50, prior builds this was 48). The precise interval is a random value around the avrg. level you set here, on a normal curve with a standard deviation of 24 hrs so note it can fall either side what you set this too. Just to be clear, if you want frequent attacks, the interval would be lower. if you want to be left alone, set it high!
-Max entity level slider (defaults to 20, prior build this value was 30, if you are happy with this by all means increase)

Al.

Some Known Issues
-I am still aware of the Key Binding bugs and working on a fix, this will come soon enough. Apologies for the inconvenience.
-Sudden jump in entity shot damage. As your tech level increase (visible top right corner), so does the entity health anc shot damage. I'm now understanding there may be a bug where damage dealt might increase suddenly, too much. But I'm not sure. Because they can get a critical hit. Keep me posted with video or saves. The instructions to get saves and how to email me are pinned in the forum. FYI armour suit mods are highly recommended at higher levels.
-Rig attack numbers. The number of entity that attack should not be more thab double the danger level of the current sector (visible in quadrant map). I'm seeing reports of numbers that are too large. This could be a bug. The trigger may involve sleeping before or during attack, but more info would be useful on this.

Hi All

A late night hotfix to fix some reports of the game not saving correctly. This seemed to be primarily related to drone pads not itemizing in the structure save list. Should now be resolved. Many apologies to anyone who lost time or data as a result. And thanks to you who sent me your save files to quickly identify this.

Do keep me posted on such issues and I'll do my best to fix asap.

Cheers!

Al.

Build 0.337
-fix null error when saving missing structures.

Hi all,

Thanks so much for checking the game out in early access. I really appreciate it, that and all the thoughts and feedback across steam and in discord.

Thanks also to everyone who left us a positive review, it really helps us at this early stage. I have made this hotfix to address a few things you let me know about.

I am active on the forums and can see some good ideas and suggestions, including difficulty settings, improved balancing and resources, and thoughts on automation and NPCs. I'll be looking at these all over time.

I also am aware of some bugs with the keybinding system, failing to save and resetting keys. I'll be working on resolving this asap too.

[h2]Build 0.336[/h2]

-prevent corridors or hatched components clipping out of spaceship hull. This will fix a glitch where you can approach and accidentally get stuck in hatch area clipping. Apologies if you got stuck in clipping areas.
-fixed rig control unity dupe on packing bug
-updated naming in blueprint shop to correctly call the quadrant Industrial and not Mining by mistake which was confusing everyone
-Updated microchip price and multiple other product prices accordingly.
-Added camera control to controller bindings
-fixed bug where players get stuck in cubes after jumping when the rig has been piloted to a different rotation
-added lithium to all farming hatch items.
-Hunter gives 2 carbon.
-Various recipe updates for balance

Greeting Scavengers!

After almost 3 years’ work, Sarah and I are hyped that Space Trash Scavenger is finally launching into Early Access today!

Space Trash Scavenger is all about collecting space trash from a bygone era, in an abandoned corner of the galaxy called the Outer Reach. It’s up to you to build your own Space Rig, process that trash, and sell it on for profit.

At its heart, it’s an open-world survival crafting game. But we tried to bring something new to the genre, by setting it in a series of toybox-sized, partially procedurally generated asteroid fields - where local “Mario Galaxy” type gravity mechanics come into play.

I’ve already given an overview of what we wanted to do in Dev Blog 1 and talked about how we thought about spatial dynamics in Dev Blog 2.

But there’s more to talk about. Space Trash is a 3rd person action game. Combat plays a big part in this game. And then there is the automation too. And NPCs. So let’s dive into it!





We wanted combat included right from the start. I think it’s because we wanted a sense of danger and tension, and it suited the 3rd person perspective. Right now you get a selection of different weapons, automatic rifles, and slower but more powerful pistols. You can craft grenades and you can craft buffs, including crit hit modifiers, time dilation and damage resistance.

A lot of the buffs are crafted from food. We were keen to have farming and watering crops - just because it seemed fun - but using the food as ingredients for buffs, along with more exotic components sometimes - seemed like a nice way to encourage that side of the game and give it meaning. There is a hunger meter, but certain foods in and of itself will give you buffs to help you when going into the “dungeons”.

Based on feedback, I’m really looking forward to adding more tools to your arsenal, as well as more enemy types, going forward.




I mentioned the asteroid fields, but just as important are the derelict ships and abandoned mines and outposts you come across. Over time we’ll be adding more locations. These have procedurally generated layouts, enemies and loot. So they are kind of similar to a roguelike dungeon in that way. Personally, I like this because it means I don’t know what I’m getting when I venture into them while playtesting!

The interiors are dark and foreboding. Later they can get pretty tough, so you need the best weaponry and medpacks to survive. The corridor spaces mix up the combat from the outdoor stuff, with a more claustrophobic space horror feel. It’s for these places that the scavenger has a torch on the helmet! Some of these locations are locked, and you should keep hold of any keys you find around the place.




When you enter your world seed as you create a new game, it will affect everything from the types and positions of asteroids in every sector, as well as the layout of the locations. Most importantly, it keeps it different and adds a lot of replayability.

Because you jump forward on the galactic map to each of your salvage sectors, I see a lot of cross-over with roguelikes here. I even thought about taking that further and going fully rogue with permadeath, or perhaps rogue-lite. After some thinking, we decided it would just be too punishing to lose your whole base when you died. Instead, you are “recloned” by ScavCorp in the same sector, and you go back to your body to get your stuff. I think it’s a good balance.




From time to time, you’ll receive product orders from your employer ScavCorp. You’ll need to build up your Space Rig, a base of operations to process what trash you have found and refine it to products to sell at the local stock market.

There is a factory-style game here, if you are so inclined. You can automate this process, using conveyor pads (which transport items by floating them along pathways), and I made sure you can use splitters with ratio sliders to move the resources around in the amounts you need, to different factory machines.

There is scope to get pretty advanced here; however, you could choose to do it by hand if you prefer. You can also automate the input using tractor beams. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts in Early Access about where to take this side of the game.


Once you have your products you can sell them at the Stock Market. Prices here are dynamic, so remember to sell high! And be careful of flooding the market, because the prices will react. I was keen to have this in from the start too. I was certainly inspired, at least initially, by my times playing Elite, but also Slime Rancher has a similar sort of system. It adds an extra dimension to your decision-making about when and what to sell.




It’s our goal to have the game feel good through the interplay of its main systems of scavenging, building, crafting, selling, combat and exploration. But we do want there to be some story elements, and we want there to be other people to meet and discover on your journey through the Outer Reach. We’ve added a few NPCs to the game already. Over time we’re looking forward to adding more, with more quest types and revealing more background story through these characters.


Early Access is a chance to hear your thoughts and make the game as best we can. So please do give us your feedback. Just hit F1 in the game to open a feedback form if you have any thoughts.

Or join the discord, where I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts and chat things over, or leave comments in the forum.

Hope you can join us on our journey towards 1.0.

Al and Sarah

Welcome, Scavengers, to the start of our Early Access release!

That’s right, Space Trash Scavenger is now released in Early Access, and for the first 7 days, you will be able to benefit from the launch discount of 20%!

Check back in later today as we will have another Dev Log, but for the time being, enjoy the game and let us know your feedback on Discord and in the Steam Discussion section. We hope you'll have a blast with Space Trash Scavenger.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1759350/Space_Trash_Scavenger/

Check out our release trailer here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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