Author Topic: Fortresscraft Evolved  (Read 15246 times)

Offline TheVampire100

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Fortresscraft Evolved
« on: November 27, 2015, 11:21:56 pm »
Since 2.0 is about toget released, which fills a lot of the gaps that were present during release, I think it's time to make a thread for Fortresscraft evolved.
Does anyone know the game or have it?
The game is a typical voxel-based sandbox game (also known as "Minecraft-clone") with digging, building, crafting and mobs. However, the game takes this to the next level.
First, it has a more futuristic look to it with lasers and drills that replace the boring pickaxes, swords and other stuff. You play as a human pilot whose starship crashed on an inknown planet after it was hit by an asteroid. You manage to set up the central power hub from your ship which is the center of your base and all your technology. The goal of the game is to survive on the planet and find a way back to the space station you origin from.
Unlike minecraft there is no hunger that you have to fight, instead your suit provides everything you need, including all your basic equipment and a protection against the hazards of the planet (temperature, radiation etc.).
What the game makes so unique is the giant machine/energy system it features. Minecraft has is Redstone and this is totally fine. Some people build really awesome machines with it but Redstone is really hard to understand and you have to understand some basics of electric circuits to get really into it. Casual players don't have the time or endurance to learn what they can do with it.
Fortresscraft has a more accessible machine system that you can learn rather quickly.
Fortresscrafts machines are mostly about mining. The core of machines are the so called "hoppers", little storage crates that function also as small computer devices. They take resources from nearby sources and give them to other sources. Conveyor belts for example move all blocks of a hopper and transport it to another hopper or to an attached machine. Hoppers do take resources from other machines, for example automated drills give coninously ores away to attached hoppers they've mined. You can move that ores to another hopper that is attached to a smelter that makes bars fromt he ores. That way you can automate your mining process and focus on other tasks.
Fortresscraft Evolved emphasite the automation of processes. Conveyor belts for transportation of resources. Hoppers for autmating your storage. You can even automate your crafting. Just attach a hopper, give a automated crafting command and the crafting station will craft the item as long as it has resources (which you could literally do forever if you build an advanced machine system).
Another big part of the game is the base defense which is similiar to tower defense. The more you mine, smelt and progress, the more threat you generate in your base. Enemies are attracted by this and will attack in waves. You can build automated turrets to counter this or shoot with the gun from your high-tech suit. Your base can get destroyed whenyou don't pay attention, however on smaller difficulties this does not have any penalities except that you loose all your power until the base has rebooted.

Energy plays a big role in the game. Almost every machine needs energy, the more advanced more, the most simple none. Convenyor belts don't need any energy bu are a rather slow resource transporation (and painful to build after some time) but they can be replaced with better transporation methods. Energy can be stored in energy blocks. You can generate energy either with your base (which uses either solar or coal energy) or build other generators to expand the energy generation. Energy can be transfered either with your suit (which also acts as energy storage) or with energy beams that fire in a straight line.

There is a lot of other stuff to discover and the game is real fun to play. I really disliked the alpha. The game featured a lot of placeholders and stuff to show what the game could be but wasn't. It was a typical Early Access game with promises but no deliveries. The final release however gave the game a lot of content and a PURPOSE. All the stuff that was in there before was finally useful and you could feel how everythings works together. However, the game still feels in a lot of places unfinished and the developers said themself, the game is actually not finished and they released the game early only because of the backlash of the community at that time. The game is technically finished in a way that you can play from start to the beginning. But there are some gaps in the game where you have the feeling somethign is missing or that you progress to slowly. The upcoming patch will most of this as well as making some balnce chances to the game.
For 13$ hoever the game is worth to look at if you like Minecraft-like games.


tl,dr: Fortresscraft is an amazing game for people that like to build complex machines.

Offline Shrugging Khan

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2015, 03:17:44 am »
It seemed like a nice variation on the minecraftlike, but since I recently bumped straight off of Spacechem, I ended up too reluctant to try it. Also I really don't like the screenshots that all have their bottom right quarter obscured by the gravity gun from Half-Life.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #2 on: November 28, 2015, 06:47:40 am »
I dunno, as a huge fan of Minecraft, which I often list as one of my 3 favorite games ever (or maybe THE favorite), I'm not too sure on this one.

It seems like it has a really huge emphasis on automation and such, which is an aspect of Minecraft that I never got into (regardless of wether it's redstone or things like Industrialcraft's machines), despite such things being popular in that game as well.  Neither with Redstone or various mods, I never got into the "techy" stuff much.  I tend to get more into the adventure and exploration aspects of the game, preferring to do mining and such myself rather than using some sort of giant drill or something, while exploring every cave and travelling mostly via Nether gates.  Usually, mods I install add more exploration stuff (biomes, blocks) and alot of hostiles to dramatically increase the challenge (normal game, way too easy, though it received a nice difficulty boost very recently), or maybe stuff that gives normal hostiles a boost.   Though I play it without mods too.  

But yeah, Fortresscraft looking like it just lacks alot of that aspect, ehhhh.... I dunno.  I havent picked it up as I dont really want to spend a ton of time just learning that it bores me.  I probably should maybe start watching an LP of it, come to think of it.  That might be a good way to learn more.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #3 on: November 28, 2015, 12:36:01 pm »
Yeah, the design for the build gun could've been better chosen but I actually never take notice of this.

About the exploration aspect, I cannot say how deep the planet goes (the developers themself said it's so deep that it is impossible to reach the end of the world with normal means. Except you have no life and spend 1000 hours just for digging downwards.). I didn't notice any different biomes on the surface (in EA it was planned, that you can repair your starship and travel to different biomes of the planet with that but as far as I know that was scrapped), there are however different biomes downwards. I currently breached the forst biomes and now need a better heater before I can go further down. It's full stalactites made of crastals. Looks pretty cool. But I froze very quickly to death, should have put some torches down.
Since you automate your mining process, you have of course more time for exploration. You search for new regions in the game (when I breached the big cavern with the Camobots I dropped my jaw) and resources. There is however nothign like the Nether in the game. I've heard however, that the bigger enemy waves in the end game are really hard and feature multiple boss-like enemies.
I think the game is not really meant for exploration fans (beside the search for resources of course) and more for building fans.
I've made some screenshots of the game if you want to look: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198050705438/screenshots/?appid=254200

Offline crazyroosterman

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #4 on: November 28, 2015, 03:26:01 pm »
does this game have a demo? if so ill definitely try that out?.( more for performance tests than anything else)
c.r

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #5 on: November 28, 2015, 03:40:08 pm »
No, sorry, there does not seem a demo aviable (which is common in the indie game section).

Offline crazyroosterman

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #6 on: November 28, 2015, 05:28:58 pm »
No, sorry, there does not seem a demo aviable (which is common in the indie game section).
edit what the shit?! I only just noticed that my reply here doesn't have any text did it seriously spawn in without any text guys? if so that really friggin weird.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2015, 04:52:28 pm by crazyroosterman »
c.r

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #7 on: November 30, 2015, 03:28:47 pm »
new Patch came out today with a lot of improvements to the game:
Quote
    -This is Unity 4.6.9 - about 18 months newer than the last version of Unity we were using!
    Improved corrupted world recovery (doing what I can to overcome Windows' awful file system)
    Fixed a bunch of achievements!
    Major improvments to wasp route finding
    Added Organic Solar Panels!
    Added brand new Advanced Conveyor Filters, allowing SPECIFIC filtering of items!
    Added Tunnelling mobs - still using placeholder graphics
    Added Threat Generators and Calmers, allowing you to control your threat better (Still using placeholder graphics)
    Rebalanced wasp attacks
    SpiderBot improvements
    Added detail setting "bloom" to the console
    Segment pop-in has been substantially improved
    DAPPER DLC OWNERS! You can now colourise torches with the paintgun!
    Conveyor Slopes!
    High-tier batteries now correctly level charge between them.
    Improved initial tutorial experience. Hopefully it's a lot less subtle now.
    Much improved Conveyor and Storage Hopper interactions; should lead to a much more even split of resources.
    Lots of placeholders removed!

Full patch notes here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/523897653295682540/

I think the Threat reducers are good for me because currently I need to redesign my defenses. i somehow messed it really up and lost my Base already three times. I have to place my turrets at better positions.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #8 on: December 29, 2015, 09:07:02 pm »
Currently Fortresscrafthas become a little grindy. Actually I have over 2000 abrs in Tin and copper, but less in all the other metals. I need a lot more iron at this point, but for some reason my energy network isn't sufiicient enough anymore. i need better energy transmitters because the energy gets used up faster than it's transported.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #9 on: March 16, 2016, 07:58:06 am »
Fortresscraft Evolved will get its first expansion and had some overhaules in order to make it more compatible with the future expansion (which should be released around 2-3 months). The biggest change is to the end game. Before the last patch, you've won the game, when you charge your Orbital Energy Transmitter in order to power up your space station. This is still basically the same, however, you can charge it now up to four times and everytime you do so, you destroy one of the four enemy nests on the map, reducing the points from where you can get attacked. After destroying all four nests, you aren't attacked anymore (however, undergorund enemies stil exist, this just wipes out the regular attacks on your base).
The expansion will then continue to the point after you've wiped the surface of the xenoscum. You can built an underground base/factory that generates so much heat, that it has to be built in the cold cavern biome. The purpose of this whole thing is not entirely clear at this point but it seems your character starts to drill the planet core for energy (geothermal reacter, magma drill). The underground enemies don't seem to like it and despite being docile the whole time unless provoked, they now actively attack the new underground base.
I'm very curious how this will play out it the game when finished. The whole thing is currently in Beta or about to start the beta for people that pledged on Patreon.
The next patches will also introduce some general improvements to the game like loot collecting robots and cargo lifts (will make transferring resources vertically a lot easier).

This somehow gave me  reason to jump back into FCE because I now finally want to finish the game in order to see the content of the upcoming expansion.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #10 on: July 06, 2016, 11:24:38 pm »
The new expansion, Frozen Factory, is going to be released on the 11th, the same day as Release Raptor. This coincidence is really funny because the release date was originally also the 8th.

The release of FCE has been a bumby one and that's an udnerstatement. The game didn't feel finished in any way, a lot of stuff was unpolished or not intuitve.
Has this changed since then? Yes. Every month the developer releases a big patch to adress old problems as well as adding new stuff to the game.
Frozen Factory will be the first expansion of the game. There have been two minor cosmetic dlcs already but Frozen Factory expands the basic game and adds a new layer of gameplay. The game continues at the point when you have finished the main game. You get a new machine to build whcih acts as underground base in the cold caverns (hence the name of the pack). After you start aup this base you attract a new enemy type, cryo plasma, some sort of slime that freezes machines ion contact. And it creeps towards your new base. Your goal is to defend the cold cavern base with new defense structures and push back the cryo plasma. You can also elimate the cro spawners that appear after you have built the new command station. These will stop spawning cryo plasma from that point. If you have played Creeper World you get the idea.
The goal is to build a magma drill that slowly drills to the core of the planet and then you can use the magma to heat up the cold caverns.

But the expansion wasn't the only thing the deveolpers had been working on. There have been numerous other things been added to the game.
A better inventory system with sorting options.
FALCOR drones that collect junk that lies around, mostly used for collecting loot of defeated enemy waves.
A new cargo lift that travels very fast underground and collects ore from storage hoppers for you.
A new help system that gives you hints and "quests" in ordr to push you int he right direction of what to do next.
Workfloor excavator for digging out big areas to place machines and other stuff.
A complete new Spiderbot upgrade tree. Your Spiderbot starts out with nothing but can be equipped with researched weapons and will then protect your base.
Enriched coal. You can use organic parts to build a machine that infuses coal with power, so you get more energy out of it.
A better way to remove resin (hard alien block that grows if you let it eat ores from your conveyor lines). Basically a laser that removes the resin, before that you had to use explosives.
Mass storage upgrade. Now mass storages work a lot faster.
Crash sites. From time to time drop ships crash on the planet and contain research parts for research points (resource to unlock new recipes).
You can scan storage hoppers sou you can see what they contain.
Ore scanner improvement. It now shows exactly what ores it has found instead of just where ores are.
Organic recombination. Make useless organic parts useful.
Easier gameplay for newer players, balancing improvements so early recipes aren't that expensive anymore.
Casual mode for players that don't want to wait a full day to get all the resources they need.

And a lot of other stuff that I cannot list. But these have been the best improvements of the game in my opinion.

However, there have also been soem decisions that I don't like. Smelters now work only on the surface, they used to work anywhere, so you could smelt your ores directly at ore veins and then transport your bars to the storage. This was changed because the developer felt that people abused this too much.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #11 on: July 07, 2016, 03:30:10 am »
I dunno, as a huge fan of Minecraft, which I often list as one of my 3 favorite games ever (or maybe THE favorite)...

This amazes me. I'd expect someone with an even worse attention span than myself to absolutely loathe games like Minecraft. Then again, I did enjoy Terraria, so perhaps there's something in them that appeals to people like us.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #12 on: July 07, 2016, 04:23:52 am »
Well, Minecraft does or does not do a few things:

1.  No cutscenes.  This means it instantly wins 10000 internets.  There are no words to describe my hatred of cutscenes in games.

2.  I can do what I want, when I want.  It's not going to try to stop me via some artificial means.  All I have to do is get the resources.   
3.  There's about a millionty different things to do, and lots of ways to do them, so there isn't really anything that has time to get overly repetitive.

4.  The whole "emergent" gameplay thing... instead of some bloody storyline that I don't want to hear about, and instead of anything resembling linearity, I decide on my own "quests", and how to complete them.  And the process of going after those goals can lead to deciding on new goals, and so on.  The one and only pre-set "goal" in the game is defeating the Ender Dragon, and you don't HAVE to do that if you don't want to, but it does open up an entire new area if you do so.

5.  The exploration aspect never goes away.  Which is something I look for a lot in games, really.  These days I mostly stick to games with procedural generation, otherwise this aspect vanishes quickly.

6.  Goddamn skeletons and their blasted arrows, the stupid jerks...

7.  The monsters break up the pace nicely, much of the time.  Even routine mining can be suddenly disrupted by the stupid skeletons I mentioned.  Or creepers.  Or more skeletons. 

8.  Any aspect of the game can be enhanced massively by mods.  I tend to keep a vanilla world, and also a heavily modded world, and choose between the two based on my mood.  The modded world typically has a lot of things that make the game much more difficult.  Creepers are one thing, but spiderweb-flinging firebreathing teleporting nuclear thunder creepers are just a bit more of a threat.


I play Terraria too, and that has a lot of the same appeal that works for a lot of the same reasons.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #13 on: July 07, 2016, 06:43:00 am »
Interesting points. I tend to get bored VERY quickly of games without goals. That's why I don't like Minecraft. There's literally nothing driving me to progress. Terraria at least has bosses to beat and new biomes to reach. I think that's enough of a push in the right direction for me. But Minecraft really put me to sleep in no time.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Fortresscraft Evolved
« Reply #14 on: July 07, 2016, 10:04:26 am »
You can get a couple of mods that'll add that (quest systems, bosses, etc). Twilight Forest being probably the most popular.  Roguelike Dungeons is another.

 

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