What Did You Like About Op1?

[croxis]

What did you like about outpost in and of itself?  What do you think you would have liked if it was implemented well?  What parts of the game you didn't like and still wouldn't like even if it did work

[Tramis]

I liked the thing about choosing what to bring, and landing all the stuff on the planet instead of starting from the middle.  I didn't like the Rebel colony's AI, it was just plain retarded.  Landing in the middle of impassable terrain, no agris, more Administration buildings than it needed, just dumb.

[Freeza-CII]

I like that they made a sequel to it

[Betaray]

I liked having the tech advancements, all of a sudden your buildings look a whole lot cooler looking

[Arklon]

I like that they made a sequel to it

Except the only real similarity between OP1 and OP2 is a namesake.

[neutrino]

I would have liked to see the terraforming in action. In the beginning, it took me a huge amount of hours to get to the terraforming. (took me at first many days). Now I can do it in 2 or 3 hours.

The game always crashed when reaching that stage, or started to behave in many weird ways, having the interface freezing or changing colors and many odd stuff, including losing yor game data of being unable to save...

I really like seing that video animation of the small plane flying over the planet. But there was nothing else thereafter.

Clearly the game wasn't meant to reach that stade or they didn't care finishing the game to that stage, since it is too long to get there. I serached many times in the ressource files of the game and found a blue planet image, with clouds and clearly an atmosphere. When I discovered that there was such a planet, I started all the possible missions/solar-systems/planets, in case that you could land on that peculiar earth-like planet.

That never happened. Outpost 1 is incomplete in many ways. You could either end up launching a new spaceship (which was complete), or either terraform your planet and live for ever on it. (that could not be completed).

That could not be completed because it's the laws of physics that dictate that; a small computer (especially those of 1993) can't handle all the possibilities of a permanently evolving empiric universe. And Outpost 1 was really complete in that sense, since you had an infinity of configurations possible.

I loved trying new ways of interconnecting my buildings. I was at school drawing schemes of cities on squared sheets. Trying to create the most optimal distribution of buildings, in search of the ultimal ratio of Buildings/Tubing. Where I named buildings by code letters and imagined my city level by level.

I would have like to see real railways and trucking/highways, which were pretty useless in their current implementation, and that are still missing in Op2.

Op1 had a really deep search tree, including social science, psychology, ecology, medecine, materials, energy productions, and so many topics that made the game really complete.

I also really like the "Fundamental research" that was never complete. You could always spend time on that research and it increased the global level of knowledge and technology. That is also missing in Op2. It could be a continual "Productivity Engineering" that exists in Op2.

In brief, Op1 gave me a lot of good times.

[Leviathan]

i liked it because it was turn based.

[Kalshion]

As strangely as it sounds - I liked the research aspect and the turn based portion of the game.

Op1 is currently the only game that EVER had a SHAT LOAD of research to do. And believe it or not, I still play it today

I wish OP2 had that much research in it....

[White Claw]

Hmmm.... Like I said in the other post, I don't even know where to begin. I loved all the research and buildings you could make. The underground portion really added some "depth" to your colony (pun intended).

I loved plowing out areas and digging underground. Pipe layout and buildings. You really had to plan out the colony or you ended up with problems down the road.

I really liked the micromanagement too. Piddiling with all the details of every robo and whatnot. It was just sweet...

Yeah it had bugs, but I still liked it. I was a bit disappointed with the terraforming ending. (i.e. non-existent)

[BinaryMan]

I've been able to terraform to completion (although it often does bug out). It just lists the atmosphere differently and takes forever, but otherwise seems to have no effect. I think there was a version 1.2 or something before 1.5 that was more stable for certain bugs (like terraforming bugs), but lacked some features.

You can build stuff next to a tube, then destroy the tube. As long as buildings are next to each other, they will function. If you build two rows of tube, doze the inner row, build stuff, then make another row of tubes outside and repeat, you can use all (or almost all) the tiles for buildings and avoid the annoying tubes. Use this trick to combine factories/labs with administrative buildings in a checker-board pattern and double your output.

If you complete a certain number of "basic research" tasks, it appears that your research speed increases to a point (yes, I sat there and counted progress).

Has anyone ever been able to construct a geothermal plant? That's the one thing that I've always wanted to do but there are no tiles with steam vents for it on any planet system (and I spent hours searching each and every planet type for one). I know the graphics for the building exist.

I wish I could build solar plants instead of nuclear generators. They have no risk of explosion (useful on hard mode, but easy to manage if done right). Seems that you can bring a couple, but the research doesn't allow more to be built after that.

[White Claw]

I was also never able to figure out how to build a geothermal plant. And as far as I can recollect, you cannot build any additional solar sats. You only get the ones that come with you.

I never did the tile bulldoze thing. I guess I don't mind the way they look. I also like spreading out all over the map.

The last time I terraformed, I build like 200 plants. (I don't know that it was that many, but it was over 100.) It really cut back on the number of turns to complete...  

I also liked the way the research tree was laid out...

[BinaryMan]

I also liked the way the research tree was laid out...

I have a certain design in mind for research in my game. It will most likely be categorical with different allocations for the research points (% sliders). I just don't have the time to make all those pictures for each research, but I can make a few broader categories. Although I enjoyed the variety in the old tech tree, it's a bit slow sometimes. I was going to assign tech levels (1-100) to categories where each level results in a small bonus to the capacity of buildings in that category. At certain milestones (like level 20 or 50) specific technologies or enhancements become available, and this will be known in advanace from inspecting the research section. It's a bit easier to assign priorities to categories than trying to get 20-30 labs to do different techs each time they finish one (you can set and forget, just adjust when you want to).

Geothermal plants, nuclear, and solar panels will always be available (maybe research required), but I will try to create a strategic reason to use certain ones in certain situations.

Tubes will no longer be required, as buildings are no longer required to be connected directly to each other on the surface (right now, I'm thinking it's all underground and you only build on the surface). However, some things will have a coverage area like the maintanance post and the environmental control where buildings cannot function for long (or at all) without being within range.

[Falciform]

I really enjoyed the theme of the game.  I bought it way back when in its first edition and lived through all the bugs and lack of content just because of the theme.  I also was never able to build a geothermal plant.  It's nice to see a version now that includes roads and monorails, but they are pretty useless.

[White Claw]

Many people don't seem to like the tube system but I think it's great. OP1 was a bit painful to do the tubing, but it was still a little unique. Also, it makes realistic sense to me since you can't "beam" oxygen and water to other buildings like you can microwave power. It's fine if a building on the surface is connected to one under the surface. Then, in turn, the underground building is connected to the rest of the colony. Otherwise how are the people going to get back and forth. I don't think I'd want to live in a lab my entire life. imho