this is meant to be more of an informational post, feel free to ignore it.

on the star map, if you met an alien species, it should show which services they offer at a certain star port, including healing, repairing hull, or repairing modules. though, healing is easier achieved by aquiring healing items and using them accordingly. if you haven't met an alien race providing the starports in a cluster, you still should see the purple icons of gates and star ports on the system info on the star map.

about the money: main income are quests, a valid criticism to those is that they are, since luck dependend, too rare for some. second main income is figuring out which alien race likes what the most, and then sell them those ressources. if you don't want to be bothered with figuring that out, there is the wiki, which lists that stuff.

the lander thing is... well, can't say much to that. i would like to say it has influence on your run, but as far as i know that's just lore fluff.

the only engineer crewmember can actually fix things with spare parts. what get's fixed is random, though. the other more technically inclined crewmembers can either salvage stuff for ressources, or build a new module out of it.

ash can make medicine out of plants you get from biomes.

now, let's add myy personal opinion(if you ignored above post, you should probably ignore that one too.): yes, the game is a grinder, but it has the alien interactions and the novels worth of background story to help skip over all that stuff. the game is a ♥♥♥♥ at the beginning, because it wants you to feel lost in a new place, that part is based on a similar experience of the lead game designer temporarily working in marokko for ubisoft. it all comes down to the decisions you make, and the game forces you to acknowledge that you made a couple of bad decisions, not just one error you can quickly overcome. but it's the small steps, the small victories, that cut you out of the negative feedback loop (unless you're judging the success only on how the run ended), and clinging to those small steps then get's you in the phase where you get farther, even feel more comfortable to risk more to get that extra bit of information.

many people seem to have an issue with that even a failed run rewards you with knowledge on how to advance further, by learning from it or discovering something new, rather than a better item, or ship or whatnot that just boosts your progress by being flat out superior.

summary:
i like the game for what it is, because i prefer knowledge over arbitrary character number 257: more shieldsweaponswhatnot.

if you don't: that's fine.

game's a ♥♥♥♥ at the beginning. on purpose, but doable, if you have the patience to adapt, and the word count of the alien interactions and quests alone rivals a book, if you get past the learning stage.

certanly a very niche game. console ports are in the works, but as it stands, no more creative stuff is going to be done on it.

Thanks for the reply!

All i ask is about repairing things. I read your answers and i know all of the things mentioned. Still, no crew member can repair anything (which is highly unrealistic and therefore highly frustrating to not have it in the game, Heck, even the Apollo 13 guys made it back to earth, with selfmade makeshift repairs). Random selection just doesnt cut it as a mechanism, if you have survived with 16 defects like me till 30 jumps and damages are still ramping up.
Also, in my 30-ish jumps i only once encountered an item that i can use to repair stuff. And it broke on the next landing. Again.

So to not percieve this as a frustrating grindfest this should have smaller feedbacks loops which you can change to a positive outcome.

Ideal game:
Got a module damage? Gather the parts and ressources necessary, select a crew member with a good repair rating, fix it over the next jump (or given time, depending on the damage).
Price to be paid: Maybe some system jumps, landings, some ressources, times. Like a sidequest in an RPG. But i can be done eventually.

Here:
Crew has now clue to fix their own stuff. Aliens - if you meet any - dont help either or barely never. In 30 jumps i encountered one starport. And they only offered to repair my hull. Woopdidoo. I can do this by myself with any metal i find. Thats not the problem. Any starport should be able to repair all kind of damage done to the ship, because it's a sophisticated alien shipyard...

Having means to repair damage or even grind towards reparing module damage would fix a lot of gameplay and make it MUCH more enjoyable.

The module situation is only fixed by pure RNG. With highly unlikely dice rolls. Thats just not a satisfactory mechanism. You just cant do anything except rollign dices. And that gives frustration in a game, because it means the player isn't allowed into control of his situation.

In contrast, i can repair the ship and lander hull everywhere. And i don't even need to. I did enough landings with 20% hull and made it back with 10%. I desperatly fought lots of pirates with 25% hull and won. I can beat all Mizzourani vessels. That's all not a problem. Because the game offers solutions. Game design-wise it presents the player with a problem, and he can solve it.

The repair of damaged modules problem is not allowed on the other hand.

I don't have anythign against a high skill ceiling, but please give me SOME mechanism to counter an ingame event like taken damage. Because till now, i don't see any (occuring). If it would be down to my good/bad decisions, that would be ok. If it overly depends on dice rolls players get detached.

This is what would make the game exceptionally good and likeable, and not the mediocre 50% meh rating as it sits on the store right now.

The game is awesome, but it has problems, undeniably. And sadly, they would be easy to fix.

so, to recap:
-game needs some means to put the player in control of repairing submodules
- this can be a crew member with repair stats, which will decide the outcome quality or success of the submodule repair.
-usually all astronauts on a mission are trained and suited for ship repairs.
-repairs could be made by requiring scrap from other wrecks, circuits, ressources, time, search star systems, whatever.
-find the spare parts by destryoing other ships (pirating? :) ), buying at stations, exchanging from aliens, salvaging stuff, etc..
- a mechanism like that would even feel like sidequests as in a RPG, which (positively) reward the player with beeing able to repair some modules

The game would be even more fun with these mechanisms.

My current situation:
As it stands now after 30-ish jumps I am doomed to float helplessly in space.Most of my scanners are broken to wear and tear, i cant see anything.
My jumpdrive reduced its range drastically due to damage.
Engine fuel consumption is sky.high.
My lander is so damaged with 16 damages so the thrust even cuts sporadicallywhen going down. Still, i manage landings and can extract 1-2 resources. No more, because also the drill is nwo highly broken to -guess- random RNG wear and tear. And i was extra careful at the beginning to not drill into the red bar. But earthquakes do the rest..
I was lucky to buy an EM tank extension, so i can freely jump around (more or less)
But nobody in my current galaxy can repair a thing
I jumped to every star in my galaxy, and there is only the gate station
The gate station cant repair anything except hull, which is a cheap self-repair anyway.

Still, i am no fool and can make my way around even with this kind of damage and all odds against me. Most people would have abandonded ship lang ago. Still, i am holding up and i can fly around.
I just can't repair anything.

And this is frustrating as f***.

i didn't post anymore stuff because i think this can stand as it is valid as a critique.
i personally have seen a streamer do 500 jumps on the easiest difficulty when he first made it actually to earth.

i also play on rogue, at least used to, and stream that on twitch, but my RAM is broken and it took a while to find the problem, now waiting for a replacement. ah, got distracted. i wanted to say that yeah, i can have quite hopeless situations too, but never that dire on a long period of time. words. i should cut that paragraph....

In the multi-hour stream on the last publisher sale of daedalic, there was a segment by the lead game designer, a programmer, and partially the author of the game about the development. one can see there, that they had to cut a whole lot of things and why, i'd guess you'd find that quite interesting.

Thanks again. I hope it is understood as constructive criticism, because i want this to be a great game. Having a gap in the game design/gameplay mechanisms can be the crucial point to let the game just be 'meh' instead of 'great'. I tried to put my finger onto the design omission and explain the consequences.

I hope at some point they will come up with an updated version that lets you deal with module damage. I don't fear the difficulty; It just should be possible to overcome the problem whatever means necessary.

well, the lead game designer left the company after an intermediate time working as a game scout, and while the team is not officially disbanded, it's dormant and probably void of members at this point.

another team of the publisher is working on console ports, since those guys are more experienced with that, but i fear that the game is just too much based on people acknowledging their errors in the first 2 hours, having knowledge being the meta gain and having difficult controls that it is just not worth it for the publisher. maybe we get some sort of sequel in the faaar future with the lessons learbed of this one, but that's more a wish than based on anything else.

Yeah, I read about that too. What a pity.

Here's my feedback for The Long Journey Home (2) after playing it for 78 hours. I'll try to stay minimalist.

The game needs a quality of life update:

- these should be available from every screen: galaxy view, current system's map and its info

- these should be always visible: ship's and lander's status and their risk of malfunctions

- COM tab content should be always visible when switching to other tabs

- more hints for consequences (for instance: If I pick a single hydrogen near a city, this will mean war)

- ship's trajectory prediction show on system map, lander's current thrust power versus planet's gravity in numbers before the descent

- restore point saving indication.


Not so minimalistic feedback: onboard 3D printer (or is it already in the game as module for purchase?)