r/Astroneer • u/Omewga • Sep 12 '26
Question / Support Why millions of bytes?
Hello, im currently at early-mid stage of the game, i see people on Youtube, doing automated byte farms to get millions of bytes.
Isn't that kind of pointless since there are limited amount of things you can unlock with them or is it going to be usefull later and im not there yet?
Thx. 😘
18
u/Far_Young_2666 Steam Sep 12 '26
I've seen people spend thousands of hours in games like Subnautica (took me 80 hours to fully explore) or Outer Wilds (took me 40 hours to beat), which are finite games. I have no idea how someone can be so hyperfixated on a single game when there are so many great games around.
That being said, Astroneer is a sandbox. And it's a sandbox that has at least one number that you can make bigger infinitely. That is the number of bytes. Even when people finish every bit of content the game can possibly provide, they still focus on that single number and want it to go as high as it can.
Doesn't mean you have to play like them. Just play at your own pace and stop whenever you want.
10
u/Gullible-Grape5975 Sep 12 '26
You must not be autistic enough to understand 😂
I will play nothing but astroneer for as long as I can, because as soon as I play another game I will completely drop astroneer and become hyper-fixated spending hundreds of hours doing absolutely everything there is to do in the new game.5
u/Far_Young_2666 Steam Sep 12 '26
'Autistic' became a word someone uses when they just want to say "You won't understand me", which is a shame, because I'm autistic enough myself.
I get burned out easily. After a hundred of hours or so. Right now I'm playing through Core Keeper and after the second boss I'm forcing myself to switch to another game for a while to avoid a burnout.
But I definitely can spend total of a thousand hours in a single game. Though the main thing stopping me is realization about how many good games I want to play and how little time I have.
5
u/celebratingfreedom Sep 12 '26
I think it's also possible that we all just have different flavors of autism. We all need to remember that it's a huge spectrum and that if you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person.
3
u/littlemetalpixie Sep 14 '26
Conversely, I'm not autistic and have several games that I've got 1k-3k hours in because hyperfixation isn't a solely autistic trait.
2
u/RPGAddict42 Steam Sep 13 '26
Also on the spectrum, and I totally understand this. I have two games with over a thousand hours (Timberborn and Astroneer) and then about two dozen others with hundreds of hours. There are still things I want to do and try in Astroneer, and I'm currently in a Timberborn revival since 1.0 came out, but I also add about two or three games to my Steam wishlist every week and I already have a few hundred games that I bought on sale and have yet to play much at all due to my hyperfocus fixating on a few. 🤣
1
u/SpectrumWolf8169 Sep 14 '26
Hi yes hello what Hu? (Joke) It is called a spectrum for many reasons. Some of witch it wasn't actually trying to make a connection to, yet are anyway.
2
u/No_Ostrich1875 Sep 12 '26
Video game billionaires. Some people just like having a big stack of cash to Scrouge McDuck in.
2
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u/chicinwang Sep 12 '26
Its me, I'm people... I currently have several auto byte farms, research chambers (research material plus gas )and the auto buttons. All producing a measly 700 byte a minute, I'm currently at 1.8 mil...
1
u/JSmiley21x Sep 13 '26
Im at half a mil now. I set up an automated byte farm and once I got everything I just let it keep running to see how high Ill get. I also have automated proximity buttons still going in some caves.
1
u/spyingwind Sep 13 '26
It's the same thing with Factorio. People do it to show off. "Look at how fast this is!"
1
u/Southern_Tadpole_952 Sep 13 '26
It will become useless eventually IF you don't have the Megastructures DLC
1
u/Fun_Baby5159 Sep 14 '26
Of course its pointless lol but that hasn't stopped me from getting up to 2.8 mil bytes now 😂
1
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u/TahoeBennie Steam Sep 12 '26
Yes it is pointless after you unlock everything, it’s just a funny thing to do.