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Scrap Mechanic >  Workshop > The Red Builder's Workshop > Crashlander: Square One > Discussions
Crashlander: Square One
Description Discussions276 Comments1309 Change Notes
Agent West 22 Dec, 2023 @ 7:12pm
My feedback about the mod
These are just my personal opinions. It is clear that the dev group put a lot of effort into the mod. Cheers to them for doing so!

The Good:

  • Weather system is amazing, clouds were a good addition as well.
  • New story line makes it feel like a lived-in world, and that's a good thing
  • New craftable items make it more fun to build 'factories'
  • New logic items (speedometer, for example) are just fun to have
  • Achievements- an occasional "oh neat, i did a thing"
  • New enemies are fun, i especially like how Wocs are now protected by Llubs.

The Bad (and how to make it better):

  • Crafting benches - while having different more specialised ones is fun, what's not fun is trying to remember crafting recipes, especially if one thing needs a part from a different bench that in turn needs more parts from the third bench. Good luck keeping track of everything.

  • Locations/travelling - it's the same "This could have been sorted out with a phone call" issue that shows up in many games: a bunch of running between two locations to basically be a messenger. Here in particular (and literally having the in-world communication tech) it could have been avoided with "Make two walkie-talkies" quest that would then give you remote instructions without having to constantly run half way across the map.

  • Oil/diving - sort of ties in to the point above. Since your character's air supply is reduced, getting underwater oil nodes is just a pain in the rear. What makes it worse is that it's used not only for fuel, but for other things as well, so you'll need a bunch of it.

  • Tool swing speed (and diving again, sort of) - I understand that the idea was to have tiers of tools that allow better resource gathering as your tech advances, but it feels more like a massive nerf to your character rather than tools. Tool animations still play at the same speed, they then just pause for a bit. Why? That's not how it would work IRL and even as you get tired you don't just pause, you move slower overall. Additionally, a bad tool will not cause you to just stop, it would cause you to (in case of let's say a dull axe) take more swings to get through the same log. I think that would have been a better way to show tech advancements- reduced 'power' level for the 'bad' ones, then let them do more at later stages. Diving is similar, in the base game your character can hold breath for way longer to begin with, so why the nerf? Speaking of, another way to show 'bad vs good tools' could have been to use that diving mechanic in some way to basically show your character getting out of breath quicker with low quality equipment.

  • the HQ (and the air vents in particular)- just no. You can't even mark (build, paint, anything) places where you've been, so instead of the 'mission impossible' infiltration mission it just feels like running around and hoping you don't go in circles. What's especially not helpful is that pretty much all ducts look identical, so good luck navigating. Some lights or sounds would have been a neat addition for that section. Maybe if this ever gets voice-acted, hearing a faint mumbles of "what's that noise coming from the vents" would give the player an indication of going the right way, along with the excitement of "oh, someone else is here!"

  • Noises (enemy attack noises in particular)- they simply don't exist. It the base game every bot makes some sort of "I'm going to eat you now" sound before rushing you so you know something is happening. Here the creatures will just silently rush you, often resulting in "WTF is going on!" panic as you try to figure out what's happening while a single wolf one-hits your workshop out of existence. Wolves also seem to spawn randomly, so you won't see any from just looking around, then get ambushed as you get busy doing something else.

  • Become "wolf" to avoid getting attacked- a rather odd choice. Would have made more sense that if had some woc meat in your inventory, a wolf would just grab it (reduce inventory by 1) and run off instead of attacking.

  • "Conversations" - they don't really feel like conversations, more like reading a string of text messages or one of those 'visual novels'. No choice to be made, and you get spoon-fed information one line at a time. I'd rather get a couple quick "you do this now" lines of dialog with a book/note of "read this if you want to know more" instead of current one-line-at-a-time thing. Devs, don't over-do it with backstory though, you don't want to Fallout-76 yourselves :D

  • Oh the vast emptyness! - despite being busy, the world feels empty. Sure, it has a bunch of things like rocks, hills, and trees, but you can only look at those for so long. While removing original warehouses does fit this new story, i think keeping some old/broken structures would have given more 'life' to the map, as well as more things to just look at. Some dirt roads may be good as well. Would not only visually explain how an entire 3-story building ended up where it is (i.e. it had to be built and populated, therefore there would have been traffic around it), roads would have also indicated that 'there may be something interesting nearby' instead of relying just on map markers. Heck, maybe even keep paved (or gravel) roads in couple places to show that there was more equipment moved between particular locations.
Last edited by Agent West; 22 Dec, 2023 @ 7:16pm
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Showing 1-11 of 11 comments
7k 24 Dec, 2023 @ 8:22am 
*raises left eyebrow* What was that about Fallout 76?
#1
RedneckRanger27 24 Dec, 2023 @ 10:56am 
i found an oil pool fairly close to bills so i have a pumping station for that and the pumps are sped up
#2
Agent West 2 Jan, 2024 @ 7:35pm 
Finally beat the mod after soft-locking it a few times via sequence breaks (getting into rooms before properly unlocking them with keys, for example), and my "final" though is that the ending...

MAKES NO SENSE ...technically...

Here's why (SPOILERS):

The 'end game' slide after the cutscene claims that "Antenna exploded and damaged vital components that can not be re-created", yet as soon as the credits roll and you can play again, the only non-craftable 'vital component' AKA the battery is sitting right there among the rubble.
#3
7k 2 Jan, 2024 @ 8:45pm 
The explosion is processed semirandomly - i mean it is some what inconsistent. I did not get to retrieve the battery for example.
#4
Morgindale 3 Jan, 2024 @ 2:21am 
Guys, the Mod is not named "Square One" for no reason :D
I'm sure the current ending is just a filler till there's more added. If you go back to the 3 guys after the credits they even say something like that, that "they" have to wait. :)

The only thing what was sad for me is, i built my base in one of the new forest tiles (pine forest) and the antenna worked really well as a scenery object - seeing it exploding at the end was kind of sad. I welded the remains to the ground afterwards, now it's also some kind of a abandoned antenna scenery item, but the fully built thing would have been nicer.
#5
Agent West 3 Jan, 2024 @ 3:17am 
Originally posted by Morgindale:
seeing it exploding at the end was kind of sad.

That may have been the point- you spend so much time gathering everything and building the structure only to see it go boom as soon as it is turned on. Devs basically Subnautica'd us lol
#6
Morgindale 3 Jan, 2024 @ 4:46am 
Just as a question, did it really take you so much time building it since i read it from a couple of people already? In my opinion the building was fine and i had like 3/4 of the materials already in my base and just had to farm a little bit more to get it done.

Maybe it's my experience in Scrap Mechanic in general (>350hours) to build a effective mining vehicle, but gathering the neccessary material wasn't really that bad. The materials used are mostly Tier 1 materials at all, only the "technical stuff" was a bit material-consuming, like the sattelite-dish.
#7
TerranTerr  [developer] 3 Jan, 2024 @ 10:28am 
that battery dropping was not intentional and it is now fixed
#8
Agent West 4 Jan, 2024 @ 12:19am 
Originally posted by Morgindale:
Just as a question, did it really take you so much time building it since i read it from a couple of people already?

I play a bit differently and usually get bare minimum resources (boring) to progress the story (interesting) as quickly as possible Though you're right, it's not that massive of a grind to get everything for the tower. I was speaking more in terms of "this is the biggest project that story requires".
#9
electrodoc68 4 Jan, 2024 @ 1:34pm 
On the Oil diving thing..
Find an oil pond in a desert biome, drop a vacuum pump a switch & a normal interactive case.
Scrap wood as a temporary frame holding the vacuum nozzle under the oils surface.

Surely you've come across an oil pond.?
Especially with so much travelling.
Or does an oil pond need to be located next to a POI nowadays due to folk watching to much TikTok.?


Has anyone played any Vanilla Scrap Mechanic.?
Lol
Last edited by electrodoc68; 4 Jan, 2024 @ 1:37pm
#10
Agent West 4 Jan, 2024 @ 3:11pm 
Originally posted by electrodoc68:
Or does an oil pond need to be located next to a POI nowadays due to folk watching to much TikTok.?

You speaking from experience there?

Considering that there are several mods that boost amount of oil you get from the sea, i think it's safe to say that it's not a process that should be made more difficult.
#11
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