• Artem
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Topic: Things to do while mining: SpaceChem

Fans of smart, rich, interesting science-fiction games might also like SpaceChem. It's the most recent, and awesomest so far of Zachtronics Industries "Games for Engineers". If you haven't played them, all the others are free, and Infiniminer was the direct inspiration for Minecraft.

The idea of SpaceChem is you're a nanotechnological engineer manipulating atoms; it's not realistic like FoldIt (which is also an awesome game if you haven't played it yet: http://fold.it/portal/) but it's design-based puzzling that really isn't like anything else.

http://www.spacechemthegame.com/

  • TM-PL
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Re: Things to do while mining: SpaceChem

I appreciate the tip, but I have the same issue with mining in Perpetuum that I had with mining in Eve.  Eve had the in-game browser so it was easy to surf or play online games while mining.  But then I had the realization that if you need to play -another- game just to keep yourself entertained in the original game, then there's a deeper problem at work.
Mining is necessary, and mining is boring.  But it shouldn't be so boring that the only option is to play something that was created by a different company and development team.

  • Artem
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Re: Things to do while mining: SpaceChem

I see your point - in some ways , yes, it would be good if mining were a really excellent puzzle game. However, the MMO-nature makes game design very difficult - if you spliced SpaceChem into the mining system wholesale, you would annoy a lot of people who like the present system, please a few people like me for a short while - but then the SpaceChem levels would have well-known published solutions, or (if they were randomly generated) the puzzling would be automated - and we'd be back to the mining-by-time system.

(And I would loathe a system where you buy the game and then have to buy the level solutions list or bot in order to be an effective miner/industrialist/whatever.)

For example, Puzzle Pirates is an MMO where most of the verbs in the game are themselves fairly difficult-to-automate puzzle games - but they do have problems with bots.

As I understand it, MMOs and non-MMO games offer two different pleasant experiences, and neither substitutes for the other. SpaceChem has no pretensions of worldiness - there's no economy behind it, and you can't affect other players. Worldiness, economy design, making everything connected and relevant to each other, and durable, long-term play is what MMO game design is about, and what Perpetuum offers that SpaceChem cannot supply.

By the way, did you play it? Do you have any interesting solutions from the first four planets? (I don't want to spoil myself)

  • BKK
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Re: Things to do while mining: SpaceChem

tbh, during mining with a riveler, i have no time to do anything but to keep the material flow up (locking new tile, activate laser, move mined materials into the container)
i wonder how those beta miners do that without botting and still driving around with a combat bot on other islands doing PvP.

harvesting is even harder if you try to keep the plants alive.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear