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[leiavoia]

First, thanks for creating this wonderful gem of a game. Please consider my humble and easy to implement suggestion.

Consider adding one or two random "fun items" to the starting scrap heap besides the stock parts. This would give each game an ever-so-slight difference in starting condition to provide some initial direction and make this part of the game worth not skipping.

Also consider adding an unusually high level, broken item to the scrap heap. This does three things:
- Gives players an interesting decision to make at the start (leave it, or lug it around in hopes of fixing it)
- Provides a fun early game side-quest (getting it fixed).
- Makes use of chronically underutilized Repair facilities at the beginning of the game.

thanks for reading!

[Kyzrati]

Hi leiavoia, welcome!

Repair Stations in Materials are indeed not all that important/useful compared to their potential later, although Refit can come in handy in a pinch for some people.

The main problem with roguelikes that use potentially meaningful randomness to generate alternative starting conditions is that then you have lots of people "start scumming," which is the opposite of fun xD. Basically you keep restarting again and again until you get what you want, because the cost of doing so is low. Alternate starts for roguelikes are best handled in a deterministic manner (e.g. via character creation--at that point for convenience you may as well end up adding step where the player picks what they want from among the available options ), which then goes against Cogmind's general principle of adapting to and dealing with what you encounter randomly to gradually work on your build over time...

In Cogmind the opposite approach is instead encouraged by simply providing the quickStart advanced setting, so you can essentially skip the Scrapyard entirely and get right to Materials.

The "find high-level broken parts you can lug around and repair" game already exists in the mid-game, if you want to Chute-dive, where you'll often find really good but broken late-game parts and can drag those back out to the Factory for repairs.

[zxc]

In a way, the 3x4 item stockpiles you find in Mats serves this purpose.

Plus, as soon as you enter Mats, you can find random things on the floor. Placing the first random thing in the scrapyard doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things.

[Kyzrati]

Ah that's true you do get a boost from those caches which tend to add some variety and happiness to the early game loot, and you technically have to spend just a bit of time to find them first (plus they'll not likely be something you'll want to carry forever anyway), so overall not really start scumming bait, but still come with similar benefits.

[Jeffg10]

First, thanks for creating this wonderful gem of a game. Please consider my humble and easy to implement suggestion.

Consider adding one or two random "fun items" to the starting scrap heap besides the stock parts. This would give each game an ever-so-slight difference in starting condition to provide some initial direction and make this part of the game worth not skipping.

Also consider adding an unusually high level, broken item to the scrap heap. This does three things:
- Gives players an interesting decision to make at the start (leave it, or lug it around in hopes of fixing it)
- Provides a fun early game side-quest (getting it fixed).
- Makes use of chronically underutilized Repair facilities at the beginning of the game.

thanks for reading!

Maybe this area could have randomly broken [1-2] & [1*-2*] items in it? as well as special variants of the [4] 'makeshift' derelict items called jerry rigged items [2] for some spice?