Hardspace:Shipbreaker Salvage-all

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New game from Blackbird Interactive, the company that did the Homeworld remake and is working on Homeworld 3

This game is GOOD. Real good.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker sends you to space, where it’s too expensive to die

You’ll spend most of your time salvaging ships for raw materials using a suite of tools such as modular cutting torches, gravitational tethers, and a grappling gun. Your helmet-mounted scanner transforms every ship into a translucent framework of key materials and highlighted support structures. You can melt those supports with your torch to remove entire panels for access to new areas. Your grappling gun lets you collect assorted salvage and propel yourself back to certain structures on your own ship, so you can turn what you’ve gathered into usable materials or scrap.

That looks pretty interesting. I've actually been watching Starbase for the same type of gameplay. I tossed this on my wishlist and I'll likely get it at some point.

I'm in when it hits PS4 so I can play on the big screen with the kids.

Early access is pretty cheap already at $24.99, but according to IsThereAnyDeal, it's currently on-sale across multiple sites, including Steam. Current best offer is 30% off at Green Man Gaming for $17.59.

https://www.greenmangaming.com/games...

Nifty, it kind of looks like the bits of Space Engineers that I actually enjoy, wrapped and made shinier.

I've had my eye on it for a while, looks like my kinda pace of game so will download for the weekend.

My brother sent me the trailer for this, then I watched some gameplay videos and now I'm certain this is the sh*tty Space Job Simulator that I never knew I needed. Looks like it might push some of the same buttons for me that artfully disintegrating buildings in Red Faction: Guerilla did.

Also, I can roleplay that I'm a Belter from The Expanse, labouring under the thumb of the Earther corporations. Man, if this game gets VR support and co-op...

How well am I doing? Monday I forgot there was one tiny piece of ship I hadn't depressurised, so when I cut through it for quick access I blew the airlock door right into my stupid face.

Fortunately, on Tuesday I totally learned from that mistake.

Something I learned today that I don't recall seeing in the tutorial - if you're grappled to something, pressing the right mouse button will reel you in to it. This enables you to cover gaps much faster - if, for example, you didn't pay attention to your oxygen meter and need to get back to Jack in a hurry.

In related news, don't neglect the "brakes" update for your suit. You can use your face as a brake, but only once because the second time the helmet visor breaks and you get to make the Total Recall face.

I'm loving this game. Just got to the Gecko class ships. It's so much bigger than the first real one with some intricate puzzles. I haven't gotten through one cleanly yet, and haven't gotten "the whole Buffalo" on it yet, nowhere close.

Even though this is early access I'm excited about following along as they add new ships.

Anyone else having stability issues? Seems like every other ship the game crashes after either cutting the thrusters or depressurizing the cabin. Also playing audio logs while on shift 100% crashes every time.

(Otherwise I’m loving this game.)

Zero issues here, which has surprised me as I've seen mention of a few on the Steam hub.

Another thing I learned today!

If you're unsure if you've completely cut an item free roll over it with the grapple and look for the weight that pops up on the HUD. If it's a couple hundred kilos then you're probably fine. If it's a couple hundred tons then it's probably still attached to the ship and you're going to need more tethers.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/QxVzxYV.png)

Don't be bashful about firing huge chunks into the recycler though. I got low on shift time and had cut the whole front section off, so I just triple tethered that thing and watched it get slowly dragged into the blue checkout. I destroyed a bunch of the furniture and computers inside the cockpit, but it was a huge chunk of nano carbon I wasn't going to get paid for if I left it hanging in the dock.

I watched a few minutes of this game at PAX East earlier this year and it sure does look pretty and has some nifty physics/geometry effects, but please help me: Is there more to this than repeatedly cutting ships up into scrap? Is there a story being told, or is it more like a "mundane job simulator" (if cutting space ships up into scrap while in space could be called "mundane", of course).

merphle wrote:

I watched a few minutes of this game at PAX East earlier this year and it sure does look pretty and has some nifty physics/geometry effects, but please help me: Is there more to this than repeatedly cutting ships up into scrap? Is there a story being told, or is it more like a "mundane job simulator" (if cutting space ships up into scrap while in space could be called "mundane", of course).

I had the same questions. Looks neat but what's the point? I think I would get bored of this after a few weeks.

You get bits and pieces of lore through data pads and audio logs you find on the ships, but there’s no real story to speak of. Puzzling out how to dismantle the ships and complete work orders is fun and a bit unpredictable but there’s currently only a few different classes of ship.

The game is a puzzle where occasionally you open the box the wrong way and the puzzle explodes in your face, so the core loop is always going to be cutting ships to bits. As the game matures there will be more ships and the ships will have different challenges inside, even when from the outside two of them might look identical - maybe this one has part filled fuel pipes you need to vent before taking the thrusters off... maybe this one has leaking coolant, so the reactor is hot before you even get inside... maybe this one has a bad electrical issue and every metal surface will shock your suit.

There will also be a daily challenge mode with global/friends scoreboards eventually.

As for a story... there are data packs you can find inside some ships, but these are simple vignettes of life in the Shipbreaker universe, advertising pamphlets and the classic emails you weren't supposed to see.

So far they mostly seem to be there to just add some flavour to the world, talking about how corporations have replaced governments, labour rights have been completely eroded and individuals are seen as interchangeable and unimportant, there to act simply as fuel for the corporation's ambitions.

You know. Science Fiction.

I think this is a pretty good overview of the game:

Does this have - or plan to have - multiplayer? I could see this having some interesting co-op possibilities. That is to say, as something of an a*hole prankster, I would get lots of laughs from blowing one of my fellow Goojers out into the depths of space.

Or, you know - working together to make sure that doesn't happen... Either one.

So it sounds like it's a bit more of a puzzle game than mundane sim?

Edit: Oh wait, Scott Manley endorses it? Ok, I'm in.

merphle wrote:

So it sounds like it's a bit more of a puzzle game than mundane sim?

I'd say so, yes. For example, the ship I just salvaged was of a type I've done many times before, but this time the coolant was leaking, meaning anything it got near froze and broke. Also instead of being in a hidden unit in the wall it was in a large tank affixed to the main cabin area. So the first job was cutting that out and getting it outside the ship before it broke anything valuable.

Then after getting that clear, removing the reactor, thruster cap and thruster, my work order wanted me to get the Power Cell. Normally in this ship that's in the starboard wall forward near the cockpit. In this ship it was in the rear port wall, right next to a major fuel pipe.

Putting my hand on the pipe I could feel fuel flowing inside and I couldn't see any shutoff valves or venting levers. So with shift time running down I did the sensible thing... floated back 15 feet and then just yanked the power cell off the wall.

This caused an immediate electrical arc which ruptured the fuel line and set fire to the fuel inside.

Thankfully the explosion was pretty small and I was somewhat protected by bulkheads, but the reactor room was totally gone when it was done.

On the plus side there was a ton of broken metal now just floating in space that I could quickly shunt into the furnace for some cash. It had also disconnected a lot of the port side structure, so I tethered that to the recycler and pulled a few hundred kilos of nanocarbon into the bank account before time expired.

Sydhart wrote:
merphle wrote:

I watched a few minutes of this game at PAX East earlier this year and it sure does look pretty and has some nifty physics/geometry effects, but please help me: Is there more to this than repeatedly cutting ships up into scrap? Is there a story being told, or is it more like a "mundane job simulator" (if cutting space ships up into scrap while in space could be called "mundane", of course).

I had the same questions. Looks neat but what's the point? I think I would get bored of this after a few weeks.

Its an Early Access $20 game, you might be asking too much of it

I'm 12 hours in just cutting up ships and loving it.

polypusher wrote:
Sydhart wrote:
merphle wrote:

I watched a few minutes of this game at PAX East earlier this year and it sure does look pretty and has some nifty physics/geometry effects, but please help me: Is there more to this than repeatedly cutting ships up into scrap? Is there a story being told, or is it more like a "mundane job simulator" (if cutting space ships up into scrap while in space could be called "mundane", of course).

I had the same questions. Looks neat but what's the point? I think I would get bored of this after a few weeks.

Its an Early Access $20 game, you might be asking too much of it

I'm 12 hours in just cutting up ships and loving it.

A few weeks seems an awful long time to me, I'm sold! Lol

A few hours tho? Not so good.

With so many great games coming down the pipe - not to mention PS5 - I was trying to be good and hold off for a while, but for $17.59, I can't help myself...

DOWNLOADING!!!

I'd say its crashed on me 5 times and I keep jumping back in immediately, which tells you something about both the game's quality and something about me and abusive relationships.

I think most of the crashes involve big physics interactions, so its sort of an additional penalty for failure, hah

I died during the first tutorial. Twice.

Spoiler:

It wasn't exactly clear where to send the two antennas, so first I sent it into the red "destroy" gate, and then I tried the blue "harvest" gate... and only after that did I notice the giant "salvage" net wayyy down below me.

And then I caused my cutter laser to explode a few times, nearly killing myself...

Spoiler:

...before I realized that with the starter laser, you have to get EXTREMELY close to the thing you want to cut. The logsplitter head is much more forgiving.

I've been playing with controller, for a more laid-back reclining experience, but I'm starting to wonder whether K+M precision is going to be needed. Has anyone here tried it both ways and have an opinion?

My first death involved an explosive decompression (remember to also depressurize the airlock when you depressurize the cabin!) that flung me into the furnace.

There really are a lot of nice little touches in this game.

I cut off a piece of wall to make a door and then used the grapple push to fire the bit of metal down the hallway to get it out of the way.

Two seconds later something fizzes past my face going the other way at about eleven thousand miles per hour. Turns out I'd punctured a thruster fuel can and it was venting propellant as it fired off past me into the dock somewhere.

But it left a nice green cloud behind it that slowly dissipated over time.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/curavxi.png)

I'm being kind of dense- is there any concrete meaning to the top yellow bar and the green/red markings on it? It seems to represent how much value there is in the ship, and maybe the first mark is a minimum amount you should get and the second marking that the ship's running out of value. But I can't find any description of the HUD elements in general.

Huh I havent noticed the markings on that bar. The bar itself is probably total value remaining, and the markings might have something to do with helping you figure out if you've made enough to retire for the day without getting charged?

Im on day 3 of a Gecko salvaging. Really all thats left is a lot of hull. The yellow bar is about 1/3rd full, the green dash is to the right of the bar, past what I've done, and the red part is maybe 10% to the left of the bar's leading edge.

I came to post some other things I've learned. One is that you can help with the weird physics you sometimes get detaching objects like computers. Once you start to grapple it shows a square on the center of the object. If you keep your reticle on that little square the object will be less wild when you detach it. I think there's a bug with detaching from 'parent' objects that are tilted off their starting axis though and you'll always have to just clench a bit there when detaching dangerous things like fuel barrels until they fix that.

Another thing is that you can straight up melt big aluminum panels once you've upgraded your cutter a bit, by shooting it till you almost overhead, let your gun cool down about halfway, then hitting it again till you're almost overheating. Its hard on your cutter but you can make it easy to collect a lot of furniture and stuff that way.

Lastly, Cargo ships are just way easier than the passenger ships. I haven't really figured out any tricks for the tedium of shooting chair after chair after chair into the barge. I noticed the barge rejects things that are not slated for it, maybe you can move a whole ship down to the barge, then back up with all the goodies auto-detached?

I haven’t tried it yet because I usually don’t bother with furniture unless it’s convenient or in the work order, but I don’t see why you couldn’t just cut out the whole floor of the passenger area at once and send it down to the barge with the chairs attached. The split saw prioritizes floor and wall panels over the girders, but once you make a panel cut you can then cut the girder itself and take out large, multi-panel chunks of flooring/walls

First two missions done.

Playing keyboard+mouse but wondering if this wouldn't work better with controller. Any downsides?

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